Operation Crossbow (later re-released as The Great Spy Mission) is a 1965 British espionage thriller set during the Second World War.

This movie concerns an actual series of events where British undercover operatives targeted the German manufacturing facilities for experimental rocket-bombs.

The film was directed by Michael Anderson and stars 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.

[2] Although it is largely fictional, the movie does touch on the main aspects of the operation, which was geared to thwart the German long-range weapons programme in the final years of World War II.

The story alternates between Nazi Germany's development of the V-1 flying bomb and V-2 rocket, and the efforts of British Intelligence and its agents to counter those threats.

After the agents parachute into occupied Europe, the British learn that one of them, Robert Henshaw, has been given the identity of a Dutch sailor who is wanted by German police for murder.

Nora, the wife of the man whom USAAF Lieutenant John Curtis is impersonating, visits the hotel where she believes her husband is staying, to obtain full custody of their children.

V-1 flying bombs are shown being launched from their 'ski' ramps and falling on London, while others are destroyed by anti-aircraft fire, after defensive guns are moved forward to the Kent coast.

The agents learn that the Royal Air Force is mounting a night-time bombing raid, but the launch doors covering the large A9/A10 "New York rocket" must be opened so that the light provides a visible target.

As the air raid sirens sound, Bradley lunges for the microphone and tells Curtis which switch to pull, and is shot by Bamford.

[5] To help increase box office receipts, Sophia Loren appears, courtesy of her husband and producer of the film Carlo Ponti.

She plays the Italian wife of engineer Erik van Ostamgen, a dead man whose identity has been appropriated by Curtis, Peppard's character.

Ponti and the production company worried that the authentic name chosen for the film was confusing and led to a poor initial showing at the box office.

The film played a total of nineteen weeks in three West End cinemas over the next six months, highly unusual at the time for a non-roadshow presentation that had already started its general release (on 29 August).

[16] The New York Times designated Operation Crossbow a "critic's pick" by film reviewer Bosley Crowther, who wrote that the film "is a beauty that no action-mystery-spy movie fan should miss", "part fact and part fiction", and a "grandly engrossing and exciting melodrama of wartime espionage, done with stunning documentary touches in a tight, tense, heroic story line".

[2] A later review by Alun Evans reinforces the more prevalent view that a "starry cast add to the attractive vista but a tighter script would have been appreciated".

[3] Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic wrote "Michael Anderson, a capable director, has made a picture which there is no strenuous reason to see but which, if you do see it, is not boring.