Allied concern over V3 cannon in France

A cannon capable of firing nearly 600 shells per hour at London, buried under a hill in the Pas-de-Calais, was a concern for the Allies in 1944. The site, known as Mimoyecques, was intended to house five V3 cannons, which could fire approximately 1500 shells per day at London.

Joseph P. Kennedy Jr.'s fatal mission

The pilot tasked with neutralizing this weapon, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., did not die under German fire. He died in the premature explosion of his aircraft above the English countryside, miles from his target. Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. was the older brother of a future president of the United States.

Mimoyecques construction and abandonment

The Mimoyecques site, located in Landrethun-le-Nord, Pas-de-Calais, was an underground complex built by the Todt organization between June 1943 and July 1944. The project, known as Wiese or Bauvorhaben 711, involved digging five oblique shafts connected to a network of tunnels intended to house five V3 cannons.

Allied attack and the end of the V3 threat

On July 6, 1944, the Royal Air Force delivered a decisive blow to the site using Tallboy bombs, which were capable of penetrating deep into the ground and collapsing the tunnels. The threat of the V3 effectively ended. However, a month later, the general staff programmed an operation against the site, known as the Aphrodite operation.

Aphrodite operation and its failure

This involved transforming old bombers into remote-controlled flying bombs filled with explosives, with the crew parachuting out during flight. The mission on August 12, 1944, was assigned to two US Navy lieutenants, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. and Wilford J. Willy. Their aircraft, a PB4Y-1, carried 21,170 pounds of Torpex, an explosive more powerful than TNT.

Tragedy and political consequences

The aircraft took off from an RAF base in England. Two minutes later, before Kennedy and Willy had even had the chance to jump, the bomber exploded mid-flight above Newdelight Wood, near Blythburgh in Suffolk. Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. died instantly at 29 years old, and his remains were never found. His death had significant political repercussions, as his father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., shifted his ambitions to John F. Kennedy, who later became the 35th president of the United States.

Legacy of the Aphrodite program

The Aphrodite concept was not successful in the long term. The last mission of this kind took place on January 20, 1945, against an electrical power plant in Oldenburg, Germany. The two drones missed their target by several kilometers, confirming the impossibility of stabilizing this type of rudimentary guidance. Today, under the hill of Mimoyecques, there remains a network of tunnels open to the public, a silent witness to a German technological gamble that was never realized.