Operation Crossbow
Operation Crossbow (later re-released as The Great Spy Mission) is a 1965 British spy thriller film directed by Michael Anderson and starring Sophia Loren, George Peppard, Trevor Howard, John Mills, Richard Johnson and Tom Courtenay. The screenplay was written by Emeric Pressburger (under the pseudonym Richard Imrie), in collaboration with Derry Quinn and Ray Rigby, from a story by Duilio Coletti and Vittoriano Petrilli. It was filmed in Panavision and Metrocolor at MGM-British Studios.
Plot
In 1943, Nazi Germany is developing the V-1 flying bomb and V-2 rocket. Technical issues with the V-1 lead the Germans to create a crewed version for flight testing, but the test pilots die flying it. Eventually, aviator Hanna Reitsch successfully flies the prototype, and realises that mechanical shifting of the missile's weight and change of speed requires the trim controls to be changed.
Cast
- Allan Cuthbertson
- Anthony Quayle
- Anton Diffring
- Barbara Rütting
- Ferdy Mayne
- George Peppard
- Helmut Dantine
- Jeremy Kemp
- John Fraser
- John Mills
- Karel Štěpánek
- Lilli Palmer
- Maurice Denham
- Patrick Wymark
- Paul Henreid
- Philip Madoc
- Richard Johnson
- Richard Todd
- Richard Wattis
- Robert Brown
- Sophia Loren
- Sylvia Syms
- Tom Courtenay
- Trevor Howard
More details
| author | Derry Quinn Emeric Pressburger Ray Rigby |
|---|---|
| contentLocation | Germany |
| director | Michael Anderson |
| editor | Ernest Walter |
| events | aviation World War II |
| genre | adventure drama thriller |
| keywords | a crewed version a9/a10 aggregate air force air raid arrest aviator bomb bomber command bombing of peenemünde in world war ii british intelligence british officer capture duncan sandys engineer factory fall fieseler fi 103r reichenberg fly flying bomb hanna reitsch id informant kill mittelwerk nazi germany occupied europe only way open parachute peenemünde peenemünde army research center professor lindemann project a raf bomber command raid rebuild rock royal air force search southern germany test test pilot undercover agent usaaf v-2 want winston churchill |
| musicBy | Ron Goodwin |
| producer | Carlo Ponti |
| productionCompany | MGM-British Studios |
| publisher | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
| theme | spy war |