Operation Obviate was an unsuccessful British air raid of World War II that targeted the German battleship Tirpitz (pictured in 1943 or 1944). Conducted by Royal Air Force heavy bombers during the early hours of 29 October 1944, it sought to destroy the damaged battleship after she moved to a new anchorage near Tromsø in northern Norway. The attack followed the previous month's successful Operation Paravane, during which Tirpitz was crippled by British heavy bombers. In Operation Obviate, 38 bombers and a film aircraft departed from bases in northern Scotland. Obscured by clouds, the battleship was not directly hit, but was damaged by a bomb that exploded near her hull. A British bomber made a crash landing in Sweden after being hit by German anti-aircraft fire, and several others were damaged. The plans for the attack were reused for the next raid on the battleship, Operation Catechism, on 12 November, when Tirpitz was sunk with heavy loss of life.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Obviate

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1955:

An explosion, likely caused by a World War II–era mine, capsized the Soviet ship Novorossiysk in the harbor of Sevastopol, with the loss of 608 men. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_battleship_Giulio_Cesare

1969:

A student at UCLA sent the first message on the ARPANET (message log shown), the precursor to the Internet, to a computer at the Stanford Research Institute. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET

1999:

About 10,000 people died when a tropical cyclone made landfall in the Indian state of Odisha near the city of Bhubaneswar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Odisha_cyclone

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

signage: 1. (uncountable) Signs, particularly those imparting commercial, directional, or road traffic information, taken collectively. 2. (countable, chiefly India, elsewhere regarded as nonstandard) A sign, a signboard. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/signage

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

There is no better way of exercising the imagination than the study of law. No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets the truth.   --Jean Giraudoux https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean_Giraudoux