Operation Jericho

To be jailed by an occupying force in your own country

must be hard enough to bear.

But imagine cowering in a cell as bombs rain down on you.

Bombs dropped by your own allies.

The bombing of Amiens Jail in Northern France in February 1944

was one of the most daring and controversial air raids of the war.

We had the honour of going in first.

And if we hadn't completed the job, they were to go in

and literally blow the prison apart.

It's hard to imagine the chaos and carnage inside the jail.

Amidst the dead and dying, the lucky few picked their way out

amongst the rubble.

But why did the RAF attack a jail holding resistance fighters?

Many were killed.

Was there someone inside whose freedom was so important?

And what secrets did they hold?

And why did they risk the life of Britain's most famous bomber pilot?

A hero and a film star. On a mission he described as death or glory.

As an aviator with a passion for war stories that's been with me

since boyhood, I'm fascinated by this particular story.

And 67 years after the raid, the motives for it

are still shrouded in mystery.

So I'm flying back on the same route the bombers took

to see if I can shed some light on the raid they called Operation Jericho.

I'm on my way to meet living aviation history.

The last surviving member of the mosquito crews from the Jericho raid.

This is a recording that pilot officer Maxwell Sparks made,

after the raid in 1944, for the BBC.

A loud speaker broke rudely into my sleep early on that February morning.

It barked through our hut with the list of aircrews who were

wanted at the briefing room at once.

My own name was on the list.

Of all things, it was snowing.

If we were being yanked out of bed to fly in that stuff, it must be

either some kind of practice of some kind of a practical joke.

But when we found guards posted at the briefing room

and they asked us to prove our identity,

we knew there was neither a joke nor a practice in the air.

Maxwell Sparks was part of the Royal New Zealand Air Force

contingent who joined Australian

and British air crews on Operation Jericho.

Even these hand-picked airmen could not possibly have been

prepared for what they were asked to carry out it.

The jail at Amiens in France,

and more than 100 Frenchmen were held there awaiting death.

The idea of the raid was to break the walls of the prison open

and bomb the German guards' quarters while they were at lunch

to enable the French Resistance people to get out.

Were you aware that there could be casualties amongst the resistance?

Yes. We were very much alive to the fact that we could...

..kill a few people that we... hadn't intended to.

All I can say is that...war is cruel.

It's difficult to say but it had to be done.

Men and women that had helped escaping aircrews,

prisoners of war escaping... People who'd done a hell of a lot for us.

And we'd found out that they preferred to die by British bombs,

rather than German bullets.

Some believe there were no resistance fighters

awaiting execution that day.

In France, what's considered in Britain as one of the RAF's

finest achievements is often seen in a very different light.

Retired doctor Jean Pierre Ducellier was living here

with his grandparents, 20 miles away from Amiens, when the raid took place.

Operation Jericho became his lifelong obsession.

For decades he has studied the raid and has published a book

which he claims disproves the official version of events.

TRANSLATION:

The story of Jericho has always interested me.

I had an aunt and uncle who lived close to the prison,

and they fled to their cellar when the bombs were going off,

so I knew a bit about the story.

But it was the need to find out what really happened

that set me off on this course.

One day, a veteran RAF officer came to the area to give a talk,

and it was nothing but a tissue of lies.

I found the lawyer who looked after the prisoners

who were due to appear in front of the military tribunal at this time,

and he assured me that absolutely no-one was condemned

to death in Amiens prison in February 1944.

Never mind 120 people, there wasn't even one.

There were no resistance workers to save,

so why was the order given to attack the prison?

I'm here to look at the official files on the raid.

Maybe they'll offer some clues.

The records show that seven months after Operation Jericho,

which still had not been made public, the RAF despatched

one of its own intelligence officers - Squadron leader Edwyn Houghton -

to the now liberated city of Amiens on a fact-finding mission.

Part of Houghton's mission was to find out exactly who had

requested the attack and how many were to be executed.

He found answers to neither question

So the RAF couldn't establish why it had been asked to carry out the raid

It's officially claimed that leaders of the French resistance had

requested it through intelligence channels.

There were two main secret services working into France

during the Second World War.

The first was the Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6.

The other was the Special Operations Executive, or SOE.

SIS was the mature veteran of the set-up,

SOE was the new kid on the block, only being formed in 1940.

Both secret services ran covert sorties into occupied France

in order to support the French resistance fighters,

dropping agents and equipment behind enemy lines.

They did different things.

SIS wanted to go when it was quiet, stealth, to secure intelligence.

SOE wanted to create armed resistance.

This, of course, occasioned some substantial amount of rivalry

between the two. And this was compounded by the fact that they

were rivals for the same aircraft, Royal Air Force,

the same recruits that they wanted to turn into secret agents, the same resources.

So not a very happy relationship, all things considered.

Into this murky world of espionage were pitched group captain

Charles Pickard and his navigator Flight Lieutenant Alan Broadley.

Working on secret missions behind enemy lines,

they formed one of the most enduring partnerships of the war,

flying more than 100 operations together.

And they would go on to lead Operation Jericho.

He had dropped a French agent off somewhere in France.

And his aircraft got stuck in the mud.

All the French resistance fighters who were there all had to come out

of the bushes and woods and push his aircraft to get it flying again.

Pick got a pin or something, pricked his thumb and Alan's

and they put it together and said, "Now we're blood brothers."

Pickard was a battle-hardened pilot.

but his face was world famous, thanks to his role

in one of wartime Britain's most popular movies.

That's a good thing. I haven't been off the ground for a week.

It's all very well for you, I have a party tonight.

-That's saved you a headache.

-Thank you very much.

I've come to watch Target For Tonight,

the film that made Charles Pickard a reality star of his time.

Barry Norman knew the director who cast Pickard.

Why do you think they choose Pickard to play the lead?

He's a fairly unlikely choice on the face of it.

He's not a bad-looking guy, is he? I thought he played his part very well.

He was already a war hero, after all.

He collected three Distinguished Service Orders and one Distinguished Flying Cross.

I think he got a couple of the DSOs before they made this film

or around about the time they made it.

I would think Harry Watt, who I knew slightly, would probably have cast

a very careful eye over the available candidates

and just decided, he's for the best. I think he was a good choice.

Crew of F for Freddy.

Dixon, you're a captain...

Pickard stars as Squadron Leader Dixon,

leading his men in a low-level bombing raid over Germany.

Target for Tonight was a government propaganda film

showing the raid through the eyes of a fictional bomber crew in the plane F for Freddy.

But all the crews in the movie were real airmen.

What impact did the film have in Britain and in the wider world in general?

Very positive. Not only here, but in America.

It was shown in about 12,000 cinemas in America.

I think it's a really good documentary

and it was very important at the time because it was really the first documentary

made in this country during the war that showed Britain fighting back.

-I hope we haven't kept you waiting, sir?

-Good Lord, no. Come and sit down.

Pickard would have become quite a hero to the cinema audience of that time

because it was a time when Britain was looking for heroes.

The rest of the crew obviously had huge respect for him

and affection, too, I think.

Yeah, he had that quality. He's the kind of guy you would follow.

You'd go tiger shooting with Pickard.

THEY LAUGH

Not that you'd want to shoot a tiger, but you know what I mean.

This is where Operation Jericho was made possible.

'An aircraft capable of the speed, accuracy and agility necessary'

to pull off a seemingly impossible raid was designed and built here.

A warplane so good, it beggars belief that furniture makers built it from plywood.

This is the de Havilland Mosquito, the Wooden Wonder.

And that's the prototype. How amazing.

Yes, we've just dismantled it this year.

And how did it start? How did the RAF come to commission a wooden aeroplane?

-Well, they didn't.

-Was it their idea?

No, private enterprise, de Havilland.

They were turned down, thought they were crazy. Geoffrey de Havilland said,

"We've got to do something for the war effort with all that experience."

So the Mosquito was evolved,

the prototype was built where you're standing here, which is behind us.

It was dismantled, taken over to Hatfield, test flown by a young Geoffrey de Havilland.

They called the Ministry down and when they saw it, they cancelled all the other orders.

Mosquito, Mosquito.

What was it about the Mosquito that was so perfect for the Jericho raid?

I don't think there was another aircraft capable of a raid that

was planned as per Pickard's raid.

Low level, high speed, highly manoeuvrable

and virtually impossible to catch.

-Its defence was speed.

-Yes.

-It was the fastest aircraft from '41 to '44.

-That long?

-That long.

"I turn green with envy when I see the Mosquito.

"The British knock together a beautiful wooden aircraft

"that every piano factory there is making."

These are the words of Hermann Goering, Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe.

The aircraft that we had on the squadron previous to the Mosquito

was the Lockheed Ventura.

The difference was the difference between...

Del Boy's three-wheeler and a F1 grand prix car.

HE LAUGHS

Today, there are few clues to suggest that one of the most

remarkable raids of the war was launched from here.

The men who could unlock many of the mysteries of Operation Jericho

once lived and flew from here.

Today, all but a handful are gone...

their secrets with them.

But this is where the 18 Mosquitoes took off in February 1944.

Only microlights fly from here now

and it's only from above that you can still see

the outline of the old runways.

So we'll be taking off elsewhere to fly the route of Operation Jericho.

Today, we're attempting to retrace the Mosquito bombers' flight to Amiens.

We're going to fly down the western side of London and join their route at Henley.

'And I'll be navigating for Chris Norton, a former RAF Harrier pilot

'who saw action in Kosovo and the Gulf War.'

He, like Pickard, received the Distinguished Flying Cross for his courage in the air.

Pickard led the raid despite having had very few hours flying experience in a Mosquito,

or of daytime, low-level attacks.

Operation Jericho was originally to have been led

by Air Vice Marshall Basil Embry.

But at short notice, he was told he couldn't fly.

Basil Embry's Commander-in-Chief,

Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory,

forbade him to go on the raid, partly because he was known to have

inside knowledge of Operation Overlord

and many other aspects of Allied operations.

He'd also been shot down previously in the war and escaped from Germany

and was a wanted man as far as the Germans were concerned.

-And they were attacking from this direction, were they? Not here?

-Yes.

'I've flown with Chris before.

'We retraced the route of the famous Dambusters raid last year.'

And I'm a qualified pilot

but the thought of flying at ultra-low level across the channel

is making me somewhat nervous.

We'll set off 1-2-0 across the channel,

and this bit here, we'll fly low...

-until we hit that straight, old, Roman Road.

-Lovely road.

And that will lead us straight to the prison.

Nearly 70 years ago, the crews could barely believe

the target they were being asked to attack.

Well, it's one of the very first truly precision raids.

In 1944, precision could mean... Several hundred yards between a bomb

and its target would still be considered to be quite precise.

But in the Amiens Prison raid, there was no room for any error.

This was how Mosquito pilot Maxwell Sparks recalled the briefing

a few months after the raid.

They brought with them a large wooden box.

The lid was removed and we craned forward

to see what the box contained.

It was a model - a model of a building -

and it looked to me at once like a prison

because of the high wall around it.

It sounded like a bit out of a dramatic novel.

Today, as Chris explains how the raid was carried out,

it's hard to comprehend how difficult and dangerous

that task must have seemed.

They say the motive was to free the prisoners.

-The threat, of course, was it's 1944...

-Exactly.

..and D Day is coming. But they have no information.

The Gestapo had closed down all of the Resistance

so they had no help as to dispositions of German forces

and things like that.

So they really wanted to free some of these people, get them out.

So, we're about to recreate the journey those brave airmen

embarked on in February 1944.

-Reading out there.

-Yep.

Henley down the left hand side. And they came from Hunsdon

-which was over there.

-Right.

-And joined... This was where they started the route.

-OK.

We're on their route from here on in.

The weather conditions were terrible and the crews were not alone

in hoping they wouldn't have to take to the skies in white-out conditions that day.

There was a sudden snowstorm

and I remember feeling very happy that night and thinking,

"Oh, that's all right, they can't fly in this."

But, of course, they did.

And then there was just this awful silence.

The final decision to carry out the raid was made just

two hours before the target was due to be bombed.

Operation Jericho could hardly have started less promisingly.

Four Mosquitoes lost contact with the formation

and had to return to base, leaving 14 aircraft to continue.

There was strict radio silence to prevent the enemy detecting the approaching bombers.

So it was vital the airmen didn't lose sight of their formations.

-So, we're going to go down the coast to Seaford.

-Yep.

I'm navigating, and keeping track of our position is hard work.

We're now on the same flight path as the Jericho raiders.

But what sort of men were in the cockpit of that lead Mosquito?

Charles Pickard was born in Sheffield in 1915.

You'll find no commemorative plaque on the wall here,

but this is the birthplace of one of World War II's

most celebrated and decorated pilots.

He joined the RAF at a pretty young age.

I believe it was about 1936 he joined, maybe a little later.

So when the war started, he was already quite an experienced pilot.

A hundred miles from Pickard's birthplace,

at the other end of Yorkshire,

the other half of an enduring wartime partnership was born.

I think he lived for this moment of joining the RAF.

He'd always wanted to fly

but he didn't reach the pilot's grade

and so he trained as a navigator.

Seven and eight - 78.

Pickard's father established the Mecca leisure empire

having started in the quarry business.

Soon the family became wealthy and successful.

He was sent to a school,

quite a well-known public school called Framlingham.

I don't think, educationally, he was particularly bright.

In fact, I think his headmaster

was quite hostile about his achievements at school.

Alan lived with his father and his stepmother

and they ran a large hotel called Terrace House Hotel.

My uncle, being the youngest of the family, there were five of them,

and he was the youngest, so he was called Boy Pickard,

so the children all called him Uncle Boy.

I remember, you know, things like playing hide and seek,

a man of 6" 4' wanting to play hide and seek

with seven, eight, nine-year-olds.

It was unbelievable, cos it was damn difficult to hide himself

when you're that size. He was a real fun guy.

It was like, I suppose, um, a partnership.

Pick was there.

He was the tall, dashing, very foolhardy at times,

but a bit of a lad and, um, Alan -

steady, controlled - absolutely adored him.

He'd do anything to be with Pick and be flying together.

And, if he got moved, then he always made sure that Alan moved too.

He used to go on so many different sorties and we always used to get

the most incredible stories about the various trips he went on.

Um, but we used to get those a bit belated,

because a lot of them were very secret missions.

We became formally engaged on my birthday,

which was December the 4th, then he came home.

They were allowed leave, I think, Christmas leave

and all he said to me was, um,

"Pick and I have got a job to do when we get back,"

but, of course, he couldn't tell me what it was

and he never mentioned it further.

Push south across the Channel, across the FIR boundary at XIDIL

in approximately two-zero mikes.

'I'm about to experience flying at the same height

'as those airmen as they headed for the French coast.'

This, Martin, this looks like the height that they were flying.

-110?

-Thank you.

-100?

-Unfortunately, it's a still day, there's no waves.

-Yeah.

This was the height they flew across the Channel to avoid detection.

Barely 30ft above the waves.

This kind of flying was difficult and dangerous,

but not as dangerous as being detected by enemy radar.

Pickard and Broadley knew all about the importance of radar.

Two years earlier, they had taken part in the daring Bruneval raid,

dropping paratroopers near Le Havre.

They captured parts of the German Wurzburg radar installation,

escaping with vital enemy technology and prisoners

to waiting naval vessels.

After the Bruneval raid,

he had a visitation from the King and Queen.

He walked in and the King said,

"Excuse me, what are these black marks on the ceiling?"

He said, "Oh, well, sir, we had a bit of a celebration last night

"after the Bruneval raid and they blackened my feet

"and carried me along the ceiling and those are my foot marks."

And, when they got to the end, the King said,

"What are those two black blobs?"

He said, "I'm afraid, sir, that's my bottom."

And, of course, the King burst out laughing, but that's the sort of thing he would get up to.

This remarkable footage from Operation Jericho

was shot by a camera inside one of the Mosquitos.

It shows just how close the aircraft were to the sea and to each other.

-Having seen that film, Martin, I reckon this was about the height they flew.

-Looks like it.

100ft, going down to 30ft, especially in you're flying in formation,

all that does is make it really difficult for the wing men.

A moment of lack of concentration and then it takes

just a little bit of a degree before you're in the water.

Flying so low at 350mph, there was every chance

that the raid could have gone catastrophically wrong

before the aircraft had even crossed the Channel.

But the crews had been handpicked for their skill

in such high-speed precision attacks.

They all knew the task facing them as well as the risks.

But the chain of command through which Operation Jericho was ordered

remains far from clear to this day.

Maurice Buckmaster was the former head of the French section

of the Special Operations Executive

and one of Britain's most famous wartime spymasters.

He was pressed on the subject of the raid

in a Panorama interview in 1982.

Well, it's always been a bit of a mystery to me,

but we were, so to speak, the lucky side beneficiaries of a...

of an attack which was organised and thought of

by someone else and I don't know who.

So, his organisation didn't order the raid, so what about the SIS or MI6?

There is a letter which actually says,

"I have been asked by C to express his gratitude and gratitude of his officers

-"for the attack carried out on Amiens Prison."

-Oh, yeah?

-Yeah.

-So C is the head of MI6?

Is he?

You know that.

I believe it's true, yes.

So doesn't that letter at least suggest that, um...?

-Yes.

-..MI6 was involved?

I've never seen this letter or heard of it before,

until you mentioned it just now, but that could well be, yes.

I just don't know. It's not my kind of work at all.

But the SIS did not mount

this particular operation at your instigation?

Not at my... Oh, no, I don't know who mounted it, I'm afraid.

The letter that Buckmaster knew nothing about

is here in the National Archive.

It is written on behalf of C, head of MI6, and his officers,

thanking the RAF for carrying out the raid and included is

what is said to be a message of thanks from the resistance.

It says, "Thanks to admirable precision of the attack,

"the first bomb blew in nearly all the doors and 150 prisoners escaped.

"Of these, 12 were to have been shot on the 19th of February."

Those who are sceptical about the official version

claim that this is all made up.

TRANSLATION: Also in this document, they point out

that 50 German soldiers were killed, which is completely false.

'After more in-depth research,

'we concluded that only five or six were killed on February the 18th.'

So was MI6 involved in this raid?

The head of the RAF's air historical branch believes it's likely.

If the suggestion, as it is believed it did,

comes from resistance circles, it's got to come back

either through MI6 or the SOE.

It can't come back through any other organisation.

One of those has got to have fed it into the RAF and asked them to do it.

We know that C, the head of MI6,

thanks the RAF for mounting the raid, ergo, it seems to me pretty clear

that the request came back from the resistance via MI6 to the RAF.

That's not a mystery.

But according to Monsieur Ducellier,

any involvement from MI6 wasn't quite so straightforward.

TRANSLATION: So, in reality, there were two versions.

The first aimed at the French, to free the resistance,

and the second at the Germans to make them believe

there was a British agent in the prison

who knew the secrets of the D-Day landings.

Seagulls on the sea will leap airborne at the sight of a plane.

They could come up and hit them,

but the Mosquito was fairly sturdy, even for a balsawood aeroplane.

'Back over the Channel, the Mosquitos didn't have speed alone to shield them from attack.'

Above each group of six Mosquitos was a squadron of Typhoon fighters

to protect them against enemy aircraft.

And Frank Wheeler was flying

his first sortie for the RAF that day as a Typhoon pilot.

He's the last surviving member of the fighter crews who escorted the bombers to the target.

We fell in each side of them

to escort them, just a bit above them,

lining up on each side of their formation.

Our job was simply to ensure that no German aircraft came in

to interfere and attack them. We went across at this very low height

and, when we got to the coast, to my amazement,

they stayed at that height and we went at treetop height all the way.

-Paris can't see them now, even on the transponder.

-Oh.

-Down at 100 feet.

-Radar wasn't as sophisticated then as it is now anyway?

-No, no.

-And it was definitely something that we were a lot more advanced..

-Yeah.

-..than the Germans were.

'Entering French airspace,

'we're now less than 100 miles from the target.'

-Now is the point they declare to the world, "We're coming."

-Here we are, yeah.

"But we're not going to say where we're going."

'At the speed the Mosquitos were travelling, they were a quarter of an hour from the jail

'and the unsuspecting German soldiers were settling down for lunch in the guardhouse,

as they always did at noon each day.

Maxwell Sparks flew in the first wave of bombers to attack the jail.

We turned right and headed for Albert,

turned right again and picked up the main road from Albert to Amiens.

A long, straight road.

The beginning of it was lined with poplars

and I had to keep my wing tilted away from the poplars,

we were so low.

When the poplars petered out about two miles from the prison,

Typhoon fighters suddenly swept across in front of us.

I won't say what I said, but we carried on

and got tighter and tighter into formation.

My wing was just in front of the leader's tail plate.

Just moments away now and very few inside the jail would've known what was about to hit them.

It's believed some prisoners had received word of the attack

from resistance operatives on the outside.

Two from one. 30 seconds to overfly.

Lower and lower and lower

and down to a speed that was no more

than a few knots above stalling speed, with a heavy bomb load.

One of the other pilots that was watching us going in

saw swirls of snow from our slipstream.

The attack plan formed the template for modern air combat

and is still in use today.

The Mosquitos criss-crossed the target in waves

to confuse the enemy about the direction of attack.

The 500lb bombs were dropped so low, delayed fuses had to be used

to stop the aircraft being destroyed by their own explosions.

SIREN BLARES

By the time the first wave of bombers had attacked,

the Luftwaffe was alerted to the raid.

German pilots were scrambled from a nearby airfield into their fighter planes.

Moments later, they were airborne, hunting down Pickard and his men.

'And we're about to get our first view

'of the Mosquitos' target that day. We're approaching the jail.'

-Overhead?

-It's a big old building, isn't it,

-even with modern-day skyscrapers.

-Yeah, absolutely.

-Four storeys high.

-Yes.

That's a monstrous target that, that sort of target.

We opened the bomb doors and, around about between 10 and 15 feet,

well below the wall, I saw the Wing Commander's wing bomb drop,

I pressed my bomb tip, the aircraft lifted up,

full throttle, and as we swept over the wall,

I look along the wing and up

at the top of the prison,

straight into the eyes of an open-mouthed guard.

And that was, stick hard forward, back onto the deck and snaking away,

because he had a machine gun and could've fired at us.

As Frank Wheeler circled the prison from above,

he saw what the aircrews had hoped to achieve.

There was this one man, large man,

getting away from the prison and clamouring over rubble to get out,

probably the first person to escape.

So, mission accomplished.

Pickard gave the call, "Red, red, red, the oranges are ripe" -

the code for the success of the operation

and immediate return to base.

They were to be the last words his men ever heard him say.

I don't know whether he stayed too long.

But, as it so happened, he was attacked by two Focke-Wulfs

-and he had no chance of escaping the deadly fire.

-Yeah.

They shot his tail off and he crashed.

Killed instantly.

Pickard's aircraft came down in this field in St Gratien,

about seven miles from Amiens.

The remains of the flaming fuselage with Pickard and Broadley inside

landed by the corner of these woods.

French villagers arrived first at the scene

and recovered their badly burned bodies.

They removed anything

that would help the Germans identify the fallen airmen.

The propaganda value of two such high-profile war heroes

would've been huge, as would the blow to morale back in Britain.

The bodies were then taken to the village hall.

It was a terrific shock, really.

To have lost your Group Captain like that, it was terrible.

After all he had done throughout his career.

Group Captain Pickard and Bill Broadley.

They really were heroes.

The mosquito of Squadron Leader Ian McRitchie was also shot down.

He survived the crash with serious injuries but his navigator Flt Lt Dick Sampson was killed.

It's believed Pickard and Broadley may have gone to look for survivors when they, too, were attacked.

The greatest tragedy was that they'd lost their leader, their famous leader and navigator.

He was a hero.

A tremendous flier and a tremendous pilot and a great leader.

He was a great loss to the Air Force when he went.

So was the navigator.

So, we've retraced the route the Mosquitoes took in 1944

and now we're a few minutes away from landing in France.

I'm hoping I can shed more light on how the raid came about.

This part of Northern France holds many unsolved wartime mysteries -

some dating back to an even earlier conflict.

-Coast clear, Martin.

-Coast clear.

We're landing at the small provincial airport at Glisy, just outside Amiens.

There was a German Luftwaffe base here during the war.

Er, you park in front of the door.

Back on the ground, the next part of my journey will take me into the city of Amiens

to find out more about Operation Jericho.

But the danger wasn't yet over for the Jericho airmen as they headed for home without their leader.

Maxwell Sparks and his navigator, Arthur Dunlop, were about to cross the coast.

He was still firing.

As I turned to cross over the coast, he put a burst straight through my wing.

He made a hole about that size.

Yeah, right in front of the roundel.

The wing dropped alarmingly. I yelled to Alan to help me with the stick.

We literally fell over the coast down onto the water.

We had to snake away because they had a nasty habit of firing at the water after you,

in the hope that the spray from the bullets will go upwards and ingest into the engine.

But Maxwell retained control of his damaged aircraft and crossed the Channel to land safely.

Meanwhile, Frank Wheeler managed to evade enemy attack

and guided his Typhoon across the Channel, despite being dangerously low on fuel.

The success of the raid in military terms is beyond dispute.

The accuracy, skill and bravery of those who carried it out were beyond belief.

But the damage and death was on a terrible scale.

Of 700 prisoners inside, around 100 were killed.

And of those who escaped, only a few dozen avoided recapture.

That was such an amazing experience, that flight, navigating low level across the Channel

managing to find the prison.

And here were are on the road the Mosquitoes used for their run in.

This wonderful, straight Roman road,

which I'm using now to drive to the prison which is coming up quite soon.

The jail at Amiens still houses inmates and has been largely rebuilt,

but the wall still remains.

Driving past the front of the jail, you can still see

where the breach in the wall has been repaired.

Maxwell Sparks reckons this is where his bomb hit.

The scar in the brickwork is a permanent reminder

of Operation Jericho.

Outside the prison, there's a memorial to all those who died.

On the anniversary of the raid, they're still remembered

by the people of Amiens, as they have been every year

since the attack 67 years ago.

Anyone who was there will never be able to forget that day.

Their memories could hold clues to the mysteries of Jericho.

And every year, there are fewer people who remember it.

Madame Felau? Ah, bonjour. Ici Martin. Merci.

SHE SPEAKS FRENCH

This is Therese Felau.

She was a young married woman living next to Amiens Jail in February 1944.

She was alone at home and three weeks away from giving birth

when the attack came.

Madame Felau, I hope it's not too painful for you.

But could you tell us your memories of the raid and that day?

TRANSLATION: I was outside in my yard, I went to get some water

when all of a sudden I heard sirens

and the airplanes appeared immediately.

They almost shaved the top off the house and then the bombs came.

I ran downstairs to my cellar.

I was really scared, then I heard someone coming into the house.

I went up the cellar stairs and saw this man, all covered in black.

He said to me, "Some water, please, quick!"

I was amazed that he was still alive.

I didn't even get to ask him his name. Then, he ran off.

So, then I went outside, I had to cut through the fields

because the Germans had blocked everything off,

that's when I saw all the wounded people coming out of the prison.

It was horrible, horrible.

How do feel about the raid now?

I can't forget it.

It's impossible, it's too hard.

I wondered who could have been bombing us.

I didn't know it was the English.

We were used to being bombed by the Germans, but not by the English.

I've always wondered why it happened.

We were told afterwards that it was to liberate two people,

two resistance workers.

They must have been very important

to have killed so many for just the two.

ACCORDION MUSIC

Sitting by the River Somme, made infamous by a previous conflict,

I wonder what the truth behind Operation Jericho really is.

It's claimed it was to free resistance fighters

but could there be another explanation?

Its position, just 75 miles from Calais, may hold some clue

as to why the prison here at Amiens was bombed.

The D-day landings took place in June 1944 -

four months after Operation Jericho.

Some believe it was to fool the Germans into thinking

that the impending allied invasion would be in this part of France

rather than along the Normandy coast.

Operation Fortitude was a deception plan thought up by allied intelligence

in the hope that the Germans would mass their forces

in the Pas-de-Calais rather than Normandy.

The lives of thousands of allied troops depended on it.

Monsieur Ducellier believes that Operation Jericho

was one part of that plan.

TRANSLATION: The bombing of Amiens prison was the first phase of Operation Fortitude.

It was its first objective. I'm sure that the real reason for the bombing

was to make the Germans believe that the invasion was having to be postponed.

And secondly, the location of Amiens, between the Pas-de-Calais and the Somme, was significant

in making them believe the invasion would take place in this area.

A single raid does not, per se, persuade the German high command

that the Pas-de-Calais is an important area.

It chimes with Operation Fortitude to a degree, so it's helpful,

but it's not the reason for mounting the raid, at least in my opinion.

70 years ago, these streets were filled with fear, treachery and secret defiance.

Those who opposed the German occupation lived in constant fear of betrayal.

It's extraordinary, in a place like this

that is just what you would expect of a fairly quiet town -

very normal, very ordinary,

in these little flats, little apartments around here,

there would have been members of the resistance.

People who are remembered here, who were carrying on their underground fight

with great courage but in constant fear of that knock on the door.

The Nazis and Jackboots and the machine guns

coming to execute them, or worse, their families.

It's an extraordinary feeling to be in the middle of all of this.

But who were the resistance fighters inside Amiens Jail, whose freedom

justified risking so many lives? Were there any?

The RAF's own intelligence documents include one possible name -

Raymond Vivant, who had escaped the jail in the bombing.

But Monsieur Ducellier believes this isn't possible.

TRANSLATION: There was an important resistance worker called Vivant.

He was vice prefect of Abbeville and he's often mentioned as the person who must have known something.

He was imprisoned in Amiens Jail on February 14th.

But the operation had already been ordered several days before this,

so it couldn't possibly have been mounted for him.

So we have been trying to find out what members of the resistance

were due to die. In 1944, everyone in the region was wondering

who were these people who had to be freed.

Of course, there was no end of people who were willing to say

it was them, but no-one has ever been found who could have been a serious contender.

For security reasons, it has not been possible until now to give a full account of this exploit.

This is how the story of the raid was finally presented

to the British public, eight months after it was carried out.

..led by Group Captain Pickard of Target For Tonight fame.

It was to prove his last flight.

But back at the national archives, documents show that, just weeks before,

there was official concern and confusion about just how to tell

the story of Operation Jericho.

In this note from the then Air Commodore David Atcherley,

he struggles to disguise his frustration

at the draft press release he'd been sent to consider.

"Obviously, DPR..." That's the Department Of Public Relations,

"..intends the story to be splashed across the British newspapers.

"We know that the French are a bit out of sympathy,

"with the purpose of the operation,

"and it is reasonable to assume that if uninformed

"and misleading criticisms (verbally or press) from France are to be anticipated,

"we shall have to make certain of the intelligence 'facts'."

And he puts the word 'facts' in inverted commas.

But despite the absence of 'facts', the RAF PR machine was still

desperate to get the story out.

Why were so many high-ranking RAF officers

involved in ensuring that the right version of the story came out?

In the words of the briefing officer, Mosquitoes are to attack

the prison at Amiens to assist more than 100 prisoners to escape.

These prisoners are French patriots condemned to death

for assisting the allies.

TRANSLATION: In France, or should I say in Amiens,

certain voices began to be raised, saying,

"Why have we never found these members of the resistance?"

They looked and never found anyone,

even the resistance themselves.

So, despite the RAF claiming the raid was to free resistance fighters,

no-one was ever identified.

Ten years later, the French began asking, once again,

"Why was the prison bombed?"

But then a new story emerged from an unlikely place.

Jean Claude Beloeil was a French soldier sent to Cyprus

at the height of the Suez Crisis in 1956.

But whilst there, did he unwittingly become part of a new deception plan by British intelligence?

TRANSLATION: One day, a colleague in the regiment told me

that an Englishman wanted to meet me because I was from Amiens.

A car came to pick me up.

It was a senior British officer and he told me his story.

He said he was parachuted twice into the Amiens area

but the second time he was wounded, captured and he had his leg

amputated, then was thrown into Amiens prison.

His story absolutely amazed me.

Especially when he told me why it was so important for him to escape.

He said he was an important link in the chain of events

leading to the Normandy landings a few months later.

It was very important for him to meet someone who came from the place where he'd been imprisoned.

I now think it was in the hope that I would tell people

what he had told me.

And when he returned with that revelation,

he found a city willing to accept a new version of why its prison was bombed.

Actually, the whole deception worked a treat

because when Jean Claude Beloeil returned home from military service,

he told the story to the people of Amiens and to the newspapers.

And so the story went on for 60 years.

Well, I say hats off to the British secret service

because I'm really impressed by their techniques.

I think the idea of there being some super, ace secret agent

in Amiens prison that is the man

that they're really seeking to release

is something maybe for the novel than the history book.

We all inwardly felt he'd been killed because he'd been on loads

of secret missions before, and for us all to be summoned

in the way we were, we thought there's something very serious here.

I decided there and then that I would presume he would be saved

and I wouldn't let any other idea come into my head.

Here it is.

The last resting place of Group Captain Pickard, age 28.

And just behind him, there is his navigator Flight Lieutenant Broadley, 23.

Pickard and Broadley were buried by the French but it would be months

before loved ones back home would have their worst fears confirmed.

He was posted missing for so long, well,

I'm certain the whole family knew that he must have been killed.

There was still no news, and I knew he'd bought my engagement ring,

and so I wrote to the Group Captain and said that I'd be glad

if he would send the ring to me.

And I would like to have it and wear it.

There was always the hope that he was in a prisoner-of-war camp

but that sort of news filters back.

I came down one morning

and the paper was on the table and I just picked it up and read it

and there was this big headline. I had no warning and no inkling

that it would be in the papers like that with big headlines

and I just broke down immediately.

Great, great sadness, particularly my grandmother,

who was absolutely devoted to him.

She broke down, as did my mother and my aunt.

We, as children, were just sort of sat there dumbfounded by it all.

It was as though, you know, all your hopes were dashed

and we kept hoping it wasn't true, but of course it was.

Both men were only too aware that they had lived a charmed life

and that their next sortie could be their last.

This letter from Pickard was only to be delivered should he fail

to return from a raid.

It's written to Lord Londonderry, the godfather to his son Nicholas.

He left instructions as to his education and future.

Pickard wrote in the letter,

"For nearly two years now I have had the feeling that one day or night I shall be knocked down,

"and although myself I am not afraid,

"I do feel my responsibilities...

"My chances of being taken alive are remote, as I always carry a revolver

"and intend fighting it out.

"If you hear I am a prisoner, it will be because either I am too badly injured to fight

"or because I funked it."

The French made their own cross when Pickard was first buried.

On it they wrongly engraved the Victoria Cross -

an honour never awarded to him.

The Ministry of Defence asked the French to remove the VC.

And so the then French ambassador went to see the minister of Defence

and said "Look, you know, he did wonderful things

"for the French, not just the Amiens raid but many others.

"And so, you know, we feel he should get the VC.

"Why have you not given him the VC?"

They would give no reason.

He did over 100 sorties, he should get the VC for that alone.

We have launched campaigns from time to time,

but of course, it's so long ago now that it seems to me

that the Ministry of Defence don't really want to know anymore.

It seems extraordinary that so few people now

know the name of Charles Pickard and of the operation which he led.

I think if he'd wanted to become an actor at the end of the war, he'd have had the opportunities

cos his sister, Helena, was married to Sir Cedric Hardwick who was a very prominent actor at the time.

He had all the right contacts if he wanted to get into the business.

Operation Jericho was an extraordinary raid.

Of that there is no doubt.

But WHY it took place, and so many lost their lives, remains a mystery.

I'd like to stress this -

there's no way that I was a hero in this job.

My part was miniscule, it was over and done in five seconds.

The real heroes, I think, of this particular raid

were the French Resistance fighters who were incarcerated in the prison.

I'm not sure if we will ever get completely

to the bottom of this story.

Let's not pretend that we've got the full story when we haven't.

And let's not fill up the gaps with possibles, make-believes, who-knows.

Maybe, one day, there will be that document,

one day there will be that diary, one day there will be that photograph,

and then we'll have a good story.

And a full story.

They say that truth is often the first casualty of war.

We may never know the real reason why those French patriots

died in the rubble of Amiens Jail.

But the men who led the raid that cut short

those lives are buried just yards from here.

Make no mistake, all those brave airmen truly believed that they were giving the resistance a choice -

albeit a stark one -

death or freedom.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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