Operation Crossbow (1965)

Operation Crossbow, later re-released as The Great Spy Mission, is a 1965 British spy thriller and World War II film, directed by Michael Anderson and written by Emeric Pressburger, under the pseudonym "Richard Imrie", Derry Quinn and Ray Rigby from a story from Duilio Coletti and Vittoriano Petrilli. It was filmed at MGM-British Studios.

The film is a highly fictionalised account of the real-life Operation Crossbow, made with a large cast of the time's popular film stars, but it does touch on the main aspects of the operation. The scenes alternate between German developments of the V-1 flying bomb and V-2 rocket, with a German cast speaking their own language, and British Intelligence and its agents who are attempting to defend against the threats.

Synopsis

From 1943, Nazi Germany started working on terror weapons, the V-1 flying bomb and V-2 rocket while British Intelligence learns about a new secret weapon. Technical problems with the V-1 lead the Germans to create a manned version to ascertain the flight problems of the rocket but all the test pilots are killed flying it. Aviator Hanna Reitsch (Barbara Rütting) successfully flies and lands the V-1 prototype, discovering the problem (mechanical shifting of the rocket's weight and change of speed) and how to solve it, which leads to the mass production of the V-1.

Actors