Every year, around this time of the year, I write something about WWII in my country and role of the Allied forces. A little earlier than normal, but it's something that happened 80 yrs ago.
On April 11th, 1944, the 6 RAF Mosquitos bombed the Dutch National Register of Population in The Hague.
All Dutch citizens had to wear a ID card on them for the Nazis to check who they were. It made resistance difficult because these men and women needed fake IDs to keep them out of the hands of the Gestapo. Before the war, there was a big 'artisan industry' in the Netherlands for a lot of countries all over the world: designing and printing stamps, paper money etc. So there was a lot of 'in-house know how' in the country. But the Allied figured that messing up the system by bombing the Register would make it even harder for the Nazis to check the papers.
A James Bond avant la lettre from the SOE Section D was dropped into the country by parachute: Pierre Louis d'Aulnis de Bourouill, a glasses-wearing artillery captain with a French name but Dutch family landed a year earlier to assess the possible raid. He was never caught by the Germans (and died peacefully in 2012). He figured out that the best-possible time to raid the building was... during the daylight. Because during the day, the safes with the list and data had their doors open! The Allied command was afraid of the risks and all-Dutch flying crews manned the Mosquitos. Men who'd found refuge in the UK, Can and the US when the war started. It took them a few months to train the whole situation. A few pilots were from the The Hague area and knew the local situation first-hand.
A long story short: the RAF and the Dutch Government in exile (in London) figured out a plan how to raid the building The Hague. A white building loosely related to the Royal Family's town houses. The building was located only a few hundred meters from the shoreline where the Germans had their Atlantic Wall; a few weeks(!) before the invasion. It was fully operational. 6 Mosquitos did the raid. On April 11, they crossed the North Sea and came above shore just north of Antwerp. Above the River Scheld. A weak spot in the German air defense: they managed to reach the shore unseen.
From there, they started a heart-pounding (I guess...) run East. Not to the North. They kept on flying for about 80kms over land, at 10, 15m height avoiding towns. What a sight that must have been: 6 Mosquitos, full power, over the roof tops of farms, houses. After about 80kms, the turned NW for another 60, 70km and then, with The Hague on their left, they made the last turn to the West, flying over the Lowlands. The really flat part of the country. Flying as low as possible. So, the Allied attack didn't come from the West but from the East. The first two Mosquitos had bombs to 'open' the roof, the 3rd and 4th came with fosfor & oil bombs. The 5th and 6th also had those fosfor bombs with delay fuses to keep the fire brigade at a distance and the pilots of those planes had to take pics... The last plane was unable to drop its bombs; the mechanism jammed and when it worked again, the pilot turned his plane and bombed the Nazi Grüne Polizei HQ nearby (Obviously he'd paid attention during the briefing). From there it was straight west. Crossing the Atlantic Wall appeared to be easy: the German troops were not prepared for planes coming from the East, a few meters above the ground, on full speed. They had no time to react.
All 6 planes returned to base safely and unharmed. Theheu raid was succesful: the Germans' system had collapsed. The very sad side to it was that the Resistance had managed to get forgers into the building where they had access to the real papers and documents where they could forge them 'at the source' so to speak. Quite a few were killed during the raid.
https://i.postimg.cc/1z2qFnjC/temp-Imageur0-V5-S.avif
