‘Gardening by Moonlight

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205 Group RAF mining operations over the River Danube in 1944. The product of research in British, Australian, South African, German, Hungarian and Slovak archives, ‘Gardening by Moonlight’ is about one of the least known and most effective of the Royal Air Force’s bombing campaigns of the Second World War. Operating from a group of bases around Foggia, in Central Italy, the RAF’s 205 Group mined the River Danube intensively between April and October 1944, radically curtailing the movement of Axis river shipping and at times halting it altogether. The Wellington and Liberator crews had to sow their mines (hence the slang term ‘gardening’) at low level on moonlit nights, running the gauntlet of night fighters, flak and balloon barrages. Their courage, skill and sacrifice are celebrated in what is an important account of a virtually unknown aspect of the war in the air.