This was the British first ‘shuttle bombing' raid by Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris's RAF Bomber Command (20/25 June 1943).
The outward leg of the operation on 20/21 June involved an attack by 60 Avro Lancaster aircraft (four ‘Pathfinder' machines of Air Vice Marshal D. C. T. Bennett's No. 8 Group and 56 heavy bombers of Air Vice Marshal the Hon. R. A. Cochrane's No. 5 Group) against the Zeppelin works at Friedrichshafen, on the shores of the Bodensee (Lake Constance). This factory made ‘Würzburg' radar equipment, which was a key element in the German night-fighter interception boxes through which Bomber Command's aircraft had to fly every time they attacked targets in Germany.
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