It's a truth that conspiacy theories are always more prevalent in an information vacuum and that all plans go out of the window on contact with the enemy also as far as i'm aware at no point in 2WW was bombing accuracy that pinpoint. Altogether another win for the "cock up" theory of history.
A good few years ago I wrote and presented a documentary for Channel 5 on the Amiens raid. From what I could find in the TNA and elsewhere I was in no doubt that the aim was to allow resistance detainees to escape before they might be executed.
It still intrigues me, but I'm not sure if Duncan Stewart would have known if the documents still survived in SIS or not. Certainly Daphne Park told me that 'secrecy' was often used as a cover for their shame that so many documents were destroyed at the advent of computers if they were not of operational interest. My father describes his part in the plan's conception, and rules out any notion of 'préavis'. He, and everyone else, seem silent as to the identity of the high value prisoners who might be liberated. One author even suggests that my father was one of them! The idea that it was part of Fortitude is surely ruled out by SIS involvement: if it were part of the invasion plan would it not have come under Combined Operations or even SHAEF rather than SIS?
It's a truth that conspiacy theories are always more prevalent in an information vacuum and that all plans go out of the window on contact with the enemy also as far as i'm aware at no point in 2WW was bombing accuracy that pinpoint. Altogether another win for the "cock up" theory of history.
A good few years ago I wrote and presented a documentary for Channel 5 on the Amiens raid. From what I could find in the TNA and elsewhere I was in no doubt that the aim was to allow resistance detainees to escape before they might be executed.
It still intrigues me, but I'm not sure if Duncan Stewart would have known if the documents still survived in SIS or not. Certainly Daphne Park told me that 'secrecy' was often used as a cover for their shame that so many documents were destroyed at the advent of computers if they were not of operational interest. My father describes his part in the plan's conception, and rules out any notion of 'préavis'. He, and everyone else, seem silent as to the identity of the high value prisoners who might be liberated. One author even suggests that my father was one of them! The idea that it was part of Fortitude is surely ruled out by SIS involvement: if it were part of the invasion plan would it not have come under Combined Operations or even SHAEF rather than SIS?