During that war the Nazis came up with some nastily
creative thinking as far as weapons against Britain were concerned. Usually they thought about rockets and such,
but one interesting weapon was just a gun, a supergun.
It was a very long, very effective cannon. It rested on this unkempt frame inside an inclined
tunnel near Calais. The weapon just sat
there; it never moved and it would launch cruel explosive projectiles across the
English Channel that landed on London to ghastly effect, and it could do all this with impunity.
You see, Allied bombers, try as they might, could
not bomb it. The tunnel was located
inside deep rock.
So the Allied types came up with some creative
thinking of their own.
In a top-secret, and very dangerous, mission (“Operation Aphrodite”) they loaded up a huge bomber, a Liberator, with 20,000 pounds of explosives. They’d navigate this flying bomb until it was right on target for the entrance of the tunnel. Then the pilot would lock in the auto pilot and bail out. The plane would blow up the tunnel and the supergun within it.
A great plan, but…
What happened was a terrible tragedy. Just before the pilot was to bail out, an
electrical fault in the Liberator caused all that explosive material to
detonate.
In a tremendous explosion the plane and the pilot just
disappeared. Here’s his picture. He had been an interesting naval lieutenant,
still in his twenties. Interesting
because he came from a well-known New England family, the eldest of nine
children, and he had had a charmed life up to that time. His family had sent him to Choate and Harvard
and had plans for the young man to become an important figure on the American
political scene.
His father, a former Ambassador, had been convinced
that ultimately he could become President of the United States.
