Ahead of the 76th anniversary of D-Day, historian and author John Nichol, the former RAF navigator who was shot down and tortured during the 1991 Iraq War, reveals how the most famous bomber squadron of WWII, 617 Squadron, fooled Nazi Germany into believing the Allied invasion was going to be at Calais, rather than Normandy, by creating a fake fleet with their Lancasters.
Using once-classified secret documents and log books, D-Day And The Dambusters (June 1st, 9pm) also chronicles the precision bombing missions that 617 Squadron carried out after they attacked and breached the dams in the heart of Germany that created their legend. These include destroying most of Adolf Hitler’s super weapons: the giant battleship, the Tirpitz, in Norway; a V2 ‘vengeance’ rocket site in France; an underground ‘super gun’ silo, which would have rained huge explosive shells into the heart of London; and a massive ‘mega’ U-Boat facility in northern Germany, which would have produced three submarines every week.
