Operation Jericho (Ramrod 564) took place on 18 February 1944 during the Second World War. Allied aircraft bombed Amiens Prison in German-occupied France at very low altitude to blow holes in the prison walls, kill German guards and use shock waves to spring open cell doors. The French Resistance was waiting on the outside to rescue prisoners and spirit them away.
Mosquito fighter-bombers breached the walls, prison buildings and destroyed the guards' barracks. Of the 832 prisoners, 102 were killed by the bombing, 74 were wounded and 258 escaped, including 79 Resistance members and political prisoners; two-thirds of the escapees were recaptured.
Two Mosquitos and a Typhoon fighter escort were shot down and another Typhoon was lost at sea. The raid is notable for the precision and daring of the attack, which was filmed by a camera on one of the Mosquitos. There is debate as to who requested the attack and whether it was necessary.
Background
French resistance
During 1943 Allied and German interest in the Pas de Calais increased; the Allies wanted information about the Atlantic Wall defences against an invasion, to keep as much of the Westheer as possible away from Normandy and operations Bodyline and Crossbow against V-weapons sites appearing in the region. The Germans wanted to keep preparations for the Allied invasion and the V-1 flying bomb reprisal offensive as secret as possible. Oberst Hermann Giskes was head of Abwehr (German military intelligence) in the Low Countries, Belgium and Northern France and controller of the Englandspiel (1942–1944) counter-intelligence operation. Lucien Pieri, a shopkeeper in Amiens, had run a profitable sideline as a Gestapo informer since 1941 and by 1943 had a network of informers which penetrated many of the resistance (La Résistance) networks in northern France. The Gestapo and Abwehr were able to expose many French, British and US espionage and sabotage networks in northern and north-west France.
In late October 1943, the capture of the résistant Roland Farjon, a senior figure in Organisation civile et militaire (OCM), began a period of mass arrests of résistants from OCM, which claimed a membership of 100,000 men and women, including about 12,000 in A region (Amiens), Alliance, Sosies and other groups ready for an expected Allied invasion. Prisoners of the Gestapo winter offensive of 1943–1944, taken around Amiens were imprisoned at the local prison where, in December 1943, twelve résistants were shot. On 14 February 1944, Raymond Vivant, the sous-préfet of Abbeville and the last OCM leader to remain at liberty was arrested. Earlier in the war, Vivant had established an information-gathering system in which people gleaned information on the defences of the Channel coast and passed it to village mayors, who delivered it to Vivant for onward transmission to London by wireless. With the loss of so many resistance leaders, Vivant had come to know far too much about the invasion and how the resistance was expected to support it, which included a plan to reorganise the resistance and to expand it tenfold. The loss of Vivant brought OCM and other networks to the brink of collapse.
News that Raymond Vivant had been captured was smuggled out of Amiens prison and transmitted to England. The US Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) feared the Germans might uncover his identity and extract information from him; the damage to Allied plans would be incalculable. News also arrived that two American spies and a British agent were in Amiens prison, two of them apparently recent arrivals in France. A request for a rescue attempt was made by William J. Donovan, the head of OSS to Stewart Menzies, the head of MI6, which was passed on to the War Cabinet. The Gaullist Bureau Central de Renseignements et d'Action (BCRA) in London was asked for all its information on Amiens prison and the escape and evasion specialists of MI9 and MISX, the US equivalent, began collecting information for a breakout attempt. At all costs, London and Washington wanted Raymond Vivant freed or killed in the attempt.
Amiens prison
Maurice Holville obtained a permit to deliver parcels to the prison, to draw sketches of the interior layout of the prison and to study the rhythms and routines of guards, to go with the blueprints stolen from the town archives. Another member of the resistance studied the outer walls while seemingly kissing his girlfriend but the resistance failed to discover the true thickness of the outer wall or that its stone blocks were not mortared. The information revealed by the espionage was recorded and the papers were cut in two. One set of halves was retained by a senior member of the Sosie group and the other set was given to "Serge" to deliver onwards. An armed raid was feasible, as had been attempted at St Quentin prison recently, although this had been bloodily repulsed and security increased in other prisons. "Serge" was arrested by the Milice with his half of the documents on him and shot; the Gestapo reinforced the guards at Amiens prison with 80 troops and set up a permanently manned machine-gun post in the courtyard, which made a ground attack suicidal.
Reconnaissance photographs of the prison showed that Building A, the main prison building, was cruciform and 425 ft (130 m) long along the north side, 410 ft (120 m) on the south side, parallel to the main road, 325 ft (99 m) on the east side and 315 ft (96 m) long on the west side. The building was 49 ft (15 m) high at the eaves and the ridge of the roof was 62 ft (19 m) up; no machine-gun posts could be seen near the prison. The grounds of the prison were enclosed by a wall 11 ft (3.4 m) high with fenced courtyards to segregate prisoners while exercising. Intelligence reports put the German guards' quarters on the short sides of the cruciform, drawn in a sketch received from the Resistance. The guards' mess was in the quarters at one end and the guard room in the other. The guards had lunch at noon and many of the prisoners had their midday meal at the same time in the central hall of the prison. Beyond the grounds and 80 yd (73 m) to the north was a trench near a road junction. Building B in the photographs appeared to be a small estate of semi-detached two-storey houses with gabled roofs, thought to be private dwellings; building C was marked as Hospice St Victor. The attackers would have to breach the prison walls and hit each end of the main building to blow open the gable ends. The shock of the explosions should spring open cell doors without destroying the building and massacring the prisoners.
A rescue attempt of some nature was considered essential to reassure the resistance prisoners that they had not been abandoned, to reinforce the survivors of the recent round-ups with escapees and to recruit ordinary criminal prisoners. The mother of two resistance prisoners got herself arrested and was able to pass on instructions for prisoners to lie down if aircraft appeared overhead and be ready for a breakout attempt. The Resistance estimated that around 700 inmates were in the prison but got the number of "politicals" wrong; such prisoners were usually accommodated in the German section of the prison, where about 100 men and women were being held. Normal prisoners were held in the criminal sections, in such overcrowded conditions that in some cells, eight prisoners at a time lay down to sleep and the rest stood until it was their turn. The Germans put some of the "politicals" in with the normal criminals because of the lack of room and some criminals were really "politicals" arrested for criminal offences who had remained incognito. The Gestapo and the Milice habitually detained people in the prison for weeks before informing the French judicial authorities, which also created misleading statistics; the internal prisoner count on 18 February was 832, including 180 held in the German section. Three British, an American and a Belgian agent were held in solitary, with three Americans captured in civilian clothes, who had claimed to be shot-down aircrew and been imprisoned as suspected agents, rather than prisoners of war. On 19 February, 26 men and three women imprisoned with the criminals and several inmates from the German section were due to be shot by firing squad on the orders of the Amiens Tribunal.
Prelude
Ground plan
At noon for the week before the raid, the Resistance had about 100 confederates outside the prison and about 16 prisoners in the know, ready for an escape attempt; twelve look-outs were placed in houses near the prison and several fluent German speakers were dressed in SS uniforms with markings recognisable to Resistance personnel. Leading up to the midday deadline, ten gazogene lorries and several cars happened to be in the area, some parked and others passing through; bicycles and velocycles were stashed in houses and shops. The Resistance had several teams hidden nearby armed with Sten submachine-guns, pistols and hand grenades, ready to rush through the prison walls as inmates ran out.
Arms and ammunition had been parachuted to the Resistance to arm escapers. Male and female clothing was collected and an interpreter purloined blank ID cards, passes and official stamps. The Resistance fabricated false identities for escapers; safe houses were prepared in Amiens and far beyond in towns like Arras and Abbeville. A French prison warder sympathetic to the Resistance agreed to sound out other warders and a criminal prisoner had drawn a picture of a master key, made a copy and arranged with a guard to try it out, covered in candle black for minor adjustments, then duplicated. As a precaution, the prisoner was also asked to break into the administration offices before escaping to destroy the prisoners' records.
Air plan
Operation Jericho (Ramrod 564), was allocated to 140 Wing, RAF 2nd Tactical Air Force. Eighteen de Havilland Mosquito FB Mk VIs, six from No. 487 Squadron RNZAF (Wing Commander Irving "Black" Smith), six of No. 464 Squadron RAAF (Wing Commander Bob Iredale), both being Article XV squadrons. Six Mosquitos of 21 Squadron (Wing Commander Ivor G. E. "Daddy" Dale) were to follow up in case the raid failed and bomb the prison, killing the prisoners. A photographic reconnaissance (PR) Mosquito was laid on for the Royal Air Force Film Production Unit (FPU), to film the raid. The raid was provisionally set for 17 February; the Mosquitos were to arrive over the prison at noon sharp, to catch the guards at lunch for the second wave to bomb them. The plan was divulged to the Resistance for them to tip off the underground in the prison and to arrange for accomplices to be waiting outside.
Air Vice-Marshal Basil Embry, the officer commanding 2 Group, intended to lead the raid but was overruled and forced to stand down because he was involved in the planning of the Invasion of Normandy. Group Captain Charles Pickard, the CO of No. 140 Wing assumed command of the mission. Each Mosquito squadron was to have an escort of one Hawker Typhoon squadron, 174 Squadron and 245 Squadron from RAF Westhampnett and a squadron provided by Air Defence of Great Britain (the part of Fighter command not transferred to the 2nd Tactical Air Force) from RAF Manston. A plaster of paris model of the prison was built, based on photographs and other details sent from France, a common practice in RAF planning. The model showed the prison as it would look at a distance of 4 mi (6.4 km) at a height of 1,500 ft (460 m); attacking at such low altitude needed careful timing to avoid collisions. Bomb load for the Mosquitos was two 500 lb (230 kg) Semi-armour piercing (SAP) bombs for the outer walls and two 500 lb (230 kg) Medium Capacity (MC) for the inner walls, all fuzed for 11 seconds' delay. The first section of three aircraft from 487 Squadron were to attack the eastern wall at 12:00 at low altitude, using the main road as a guide onto the target, the second three to make a north–south attack on the northern wall once the first bombs had exploded. The first section of 464 Squadron RAAF would attack the south–eastern end of the main building three minutes later and the second section would attack the north–western end.