RAF Wick’s wartime role remembered in new book
THE part reconnaissance flights from RAF Wick played during the Second World War are recalled in a new book which is based on the analysis of once top secret aerial photography.
“Operation Crossbow” reveals secrets of Hitler’s V1 flying bombs and V2 rockets – targeted at the UK – for the first time.
Author Allan Williams is curator of the Edinburgh archive which holds over 25 million once top secret aerial photographs, taken throughout the Second World War and Cold War. He says the story of the photographic intelligence unit – the Allied Central Interpretation Unit (ACIU) – is one of the great lost stories of the war.
His book focuses on the operation to destroy the “V” weapons – codenamed Operation Crossbow – and is published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the earliest parts of the collection first being declassified by the Air Ministry.
During the Second World War tens of millions of aerial photographs were taken by allied reconnaissance aircraft.
A number of the high-altitude unarmed reconnaissance missions were flown over Germany from RAF Leuchars in Fife and over Scandinavia from RAF Wick, states Williams.
“Without this photographic intelligence – which was created at remarkable speed – the Germans could have launched potentially devastating attacks on Britain before D-Day that could have easily changed the outcome of the war,” he said.