Target Tirpitz: X-Craft, Agents and Dambusters - The Epic Quest to Destroy Hitler’s Mightiest Warship. Patrick Bishop
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a reign of terror down the enemy coast’. But it had no real resources of its own and was dependent on the cooperation of the other services, which was by no means automatically forthcoming.
Over the next weeks Mountbatten and his team drew up a plan of outrageous boldness. It depended on speed, surprise and devastating force and was just the sort of operation that delighted Churchill, appealing to his romantic weakness for the dash of pre-industrial-era soldiering. If successful, it would have very welcome psychological as well as material results. With the Soviet Union and the United States as allies, Britain was no longer alone. On land and sea, though, the war was not going well. As Commander Robert Ryder, who would lead the naval force in the attack, observed, ‘some feat of arms that would hearten the country in such a dark hour’ was an added good reason for the great risks involved.2
The Normandie dock was 1,148 feet long and 164 feet wide with lock gates, known as caissons, at each end. It ran at a slant with one end opening into an inner port basin, the Bassin de Penhoët. The other connected to the river. The caissons were made of hollow steel sections and were thirty-five feet thick.
The basic plan was to sail an old destroyer, the Campbeltown, accompanied by eighteen shallow-draught launches, up the Loire estuary to St Nazaire and drive her at full speed through the lock gates. Next, 277 commandos, split into eighteen teams, would set about destroying the dock machinery. Then, time-delayed fuses would detonate the four and a half tons of Amatol high explosive packed into the Campbeltown, destroying the dock.
The commandos at the heart of the operation were all volunteers, dedicated, skilful and aggressive. In the six weeks they had to prepare, the teams trained with an intensity that reflected the hardening professionalism and determination of the British war effort, carrying out dummy runs in the port facilities at Cardiff and Southampton. In Southampton they had the advantage of familiarizing themselves with the King George V Dry Dock which was an almost exact replica of the one they were going to attack.
The force was led by Lieutenant Colonel Charles ‘Charlie’ Newman of 2 Commando, which provided most of the troops. Newman was an amiable and good-natured thirty-seven-year-old, who was married with four children and a fifth on the way. He had been a successful civil engineer before the war, though, as well as a Territorial Army officer. Much of the rest of his spare time was spent playing rugby, golf and the piano. He smoked a pipe and reminded one of his young volunteers of a ‘benign elephant … due to the downward curve of his prominent broken nose’, the result of his time as an amateur boxer.3
A week before the operation was due to begin, Newman returned from a meeting with the Chief of Combined Operations and addressed his commandos frankly. One of his men recalled him telling them that Mountbatten was confident that they would ‘get in and do the job’. He made it clear, though, that ‘we cannot hold much hope of you getting out again’. Newman also passed on Mountbatten’s offer that ‘any man could volunteer out of the forthcoming operation should he wish to do so. Charlie though was wasting his time … Everyone stayed put, satisfied in their work and of course labouring under that strange illusion – their own immortality.’4
The flotilla set off from Falmouth on the afternoon of 26 March, escorted by two destroyers. The Campbeltown was in her second incarnation. In her previous life she had been USS Buchanan of the United States Navy and had been transferred to Britain as part of the Destroyers for Bases Agreement, earlier in the war. She was captained by Lieutenant Commander Stephen ‘Sam’ Beattie, a thirty-three-year-old Welshman who was to win the Victoria Cross for his part in the raid. The rest of the flotilla was made up of sixteen wooden-hulled motor launches, one small MGB (motor gunboat) and one MTB (motor torpedo boat) to provide covering fire and to evacuate the survivors of the raiding party.
The raid was to open spectacularly with the Campbeltown driving at full speed into the southern caisson, lodging herself firmly in the middle of the structure to cause maximum devastation when the twenty-four Mk VII depth charges she was carrying, each weighing 400lb, exploded. They were packed into a steel tank and concreted over and fitted with long-delay fuses timed to detonate after eight hours.
Then it was the turn of the commandos. The teams were divided into three groups, one on the Campbeltown and the other two on the launches. They were to storm ashore and set about their demolition tasks. Each team was divided into two, with one half laying their charges while the others held off the defenders with guns and grenades.
The force on board Campbeltown had the mission of wrecking the machines that operated the Normandie dock – the pumphouse and winding sheds that filled and emptied the basin. They were also tasked with destroying the northern caisson. The other two groups were to be landed to the west at the Old Mole and the Old Entrance to smash up bridges and locks. In the unlikely event of the operation going perfectly to plan, they would then seal off the area to allow an orderly evacuation on the motorboats. Finally, the flotilla’s MTB was to fire torpedoes at the lock leading to the main dock, the Bassin de St Nazaire, on which the submarine pens lay.
The mission bordered on the suicidal as all who took part in it knew. Major Bill Copland, Newman’s second in command and a forty-four-year-old veteran of the First World War, who was leading the group embarked on the Campbeltown, spelled out the likely consequences in a farewell letter to his wife Ethel. ‘My dearest,’ he wrote. ‘I have to write this letter although God knows I hope you never receive it – which you only will if I don’t come back. We sail in a day or two on a somewhat desperate venture, but one of high purpose. If we succeed, and only the worst of ill-luck will stop us, then we shall have struck a great blow for the cause of freedom. Remember too that if I do get blotted out I shall probably die in good company, for never did a finer crowd set out on a doughtier task.’5
The force sailed south-west, across the English Channel, then south round the Brittany Peninsula and into the Bay of Biscay, taking a meandering route and keeping well out to sea to disguise their ultimate destination. The Campbeltown had been given a quick cosmetic refit to try and alter her lines to something resembling a German warship, reducing her four funnels to two. All in the flotilla flew Kriegsmarine ensigns, weathered and tattered for authenticity.
The assumption was that sooner or later they would be spotted by an enemy vessel or aeroplane and on the morning of the 27th they were. They were 160 miles south-west of St Nazaire and just turning back towards the coast when they sighted a U-boat that was making its way back to port. One of the destroyers gave chase and dropped depth charges but the submarine got away. Its radio message reporting the encounter led the German naval command onshore to conclude that the British force was on passage to Gibraltar or on a minelaying mission.
The expedition’s luck had held but the hazards were only just beginning. Even with surprise on its side the risk of catastrophe was high. The area around St Nazaire was heavily protected by gun emplacements operated by German naval troops. To reach St Nazaire they had first to sail past the heavy seaward defences set up at the mouth of the Loire. There were forty-three guns ranging from 75mm artillery pieces to hefty 240mm howitzers mounted on railway trucks. Closer to the port they would face flak batteries equipped with 40mm, 37mm and 20mm cannon. The port itself was defended by a thousand men and studded with pillboxes and strongpoints, while harbour defence boats patrolled the waters outside. The whole area could be lit up at night by searchlights sweeping the docks and waterways. If the men charged with the defence of St Nazaire failed in their duty there were another 5,000 German troops based in the town to fall back on.
The purpose of all these precautions was not, however, solely to protect the Normandie dock. In the minds of the Germans, the most important potential target were the submarine pens which lay on the west side of the Bassin de St Nazaire, surrounded by flak batteries and searchlights.
Moored inside the pens were the craft of the 7th Submarine Flotilla. More U-boats were on the way and the facilities were being extended to accommodate the 6th Flotilla which was in the process of transferring from the Baltic. The day before the raid, the officer commanding the U-Boat fleet, Vizeadmiral Karl Dönitz, had inspected the defences together with the commander of the 7th Flotilla, Kapitänleutnant Herbert