Contents
Acknowledgements vii Introduction ix Chapter 1
Bridges at Maastricht
1
Chapter 2
Italian Fleet at Taranto
7
Chapter 3
Attack on the Gneisenau 17
Chapter 4
Sink the Bismarck 21
Chapter 5
Litani River
28
Chapter 6
Raid on Bremen
37
Chapter 7
Rommel’s Headquarters
44
Chapter 8
Vaagso 49
Chapter 9
Postmaster 56
Chapter 10
Channel Dash
Chapter 11
Bruneval 69
Chapter 12
St Nazaire
82
Chapter 13
Boulogne Harbour
92
Chapter 14
Augsburg 96
Chapter 15
Barricade 105
Chapter 16
Hess and Goebbels Gun Batteries at Dieppe
110
Chapter 17
Reconnaissance of Saint Honorine-des-Pertes
119
62
vi Daring Raids of World War Two
Chapter 18
Barce 124
Chapter 19
Basalt 132
Chapter 20
Cockleshell Heroes
Chapter 21
Chindits 148
Chapter 22
Vemork Heavy Water Plant, Telemark
156
Chapter 23
Dam Busters
162
Chapter 24
Midgets Against the Tirpitz 170
Chapter 25
Reconnaissance of the Normandy Beaches
179
Chapter 26
Amiens Prison
184
Chapter 27
Pegasus Bridge
191
Chapter 28
The Bridge Too Far
201
Chapter 29
Lake Comacchio
215
Chapter 30
Midgets Against the Takao and Myōkō 222
136
Bibliography 228 Index 231
Introduction
A
mongst the titanic strategic battles of the Second World War, countless daring raids were carried out by British units across all operational theatres – by land, sea and air. These raids varied in size enormously. Some involved thousands of men, such as at Dieppe, Arnhem and in the jungle of Burma, while others were carried out by a handful of men and, in some cases, by just a couple of individuals. Included in this latter category is a raid carried out by two men in a canoe on an enemy vessel in the enemy-occupied harbour at Boulogne, and a mission carried out by two men who, night after night, swam ashore from a midget submarine to carry out vital reconnaissance of the beaches that were soon to become centre stage for the Allied invasion of Normandy. While some raids have since been immortalized in dramatic form on the big screen and have become household names, such as the legendary Dam Busters, others, no less daring or dramatic, have disappeared into forgotten archives, only to be remembered by those who took part. The latter could happen for any number of reasons. Some took place thousands of miles from Britain or involved specialist units of which little was known back home at the time, such as the raid on Barce in North Africa by the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) and a raid carried out by two midget submarines against Japanese cruisers in the Johore Straits of Singapore at the very end of the seemingly forgotten war in the Far East. Some ended in dramatic failure, such as the disastrous reconnaissance of Saint Honorine-des-Pertes, while others were deliberately not publicized back home, such as at the Litani River, where a British commando raid on Vichy forces resulted in French casualties. However, while some raids went largely unheard of at the time, others were seen as great opportunities to provide the British public with some much needed good news. The sinking of the mighty German battleship Bismarck, for example, or the successful commando raid at Vaagso
x Daring Raids of World War Two
on the west coast of Norway, both during 1941, was news considered too good not to tell, and those who took part returned home as heroes. A pattern of raids emerged as the war progressed. In 1940, when Britain’s survival was the priority, there were often not the resources, nor the expertise for that matter, to strike back at the enemy. But the formation of new organizations, such as the Army Commandos and the Special Operations Executive (SOE), formed by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to ‘set Europe ablaze’, introduced new players into the raiding game, who quickly became specialists in their trade. At that stage of the war it was vital to hit back at the enemy in any way possible, but some of the early commando raids were hastily planned and, therefore, resulted in disaster. One commando raid towards the end of 1941, for example, on what was believed to be General Erwin Rommel’s headquarters in North Africa, ended in failure and brought an end to what some considered to be raiding of a rather gung-ho nature. The intelligence on which the raid had been planned turned out to be hopelessly wrong and it cost the Commandos one of their finest men. From the end of 1941 until the Allied invasion of north-west Europe in 1944, there were many British units capable of taking the war to the enemy in a variety of ways. In addition to the conventional forces of the Royal Navy, British Army and the Royal Air Force (RAF), there were many other smaller units operating within the Services: the Small Scale Raiding Force, the Combined Operations Pilotage Parties, 101 Troop, the Royal Marines Boom Patrol Detachment and the Long Range Desert Group to name just a few. The importance of co-ordinating with other organizations soon became apparent but, even as the war progressed, this did not always happen as it should. For example, when a small group of Royal Marines carried out one of the most physically demanding of all raids, by paddling 60 miles up a river to attack enemy shipping in the Nazi-occupied French port of Bordeaux, in a story better known as the Cockleshell Heroes, they did so without the knowledge that the SOE was planning its own raid against the same port. Of the many British raids carried out during the Second World War, some were quite audacious to say the least. Had their stories not be true then some would struggle to believe them. These include the raid on St Nazaire, often described as the most daring raid of them all, when a Royal Navy warship was packed with explosives and rammed at full speed into the dry
Introduction xi
dock to put it out of action, and the legendary Bruneval raid; what better way was there to find out how an enemy radar worked than to capture one, dismantle it and then take the key components back to Britain for analysis? And then there was the raid carried out by the SOE to steal three enemy vessels from a neutral Spanish port off the west coast of Africa, later described as one of the SOE’s classic raids, and so it goes on. The significance of all of these missions varied enormously. Some helped gain a tactical advantage in a bigger overall battle, for example at Lake Comacchio in Italy, while others gathered important intelligence, such as those carried out across the Channel by the Small Scale Raiding Force. Some proved a point, such as the first low-level daylight raid by Lancaster bombers at Augsburg deep into southern Bavaria, which demonstrated the capability of the RAF’s new four-engine heavy bomber, while others had repercussions far beyond the locality of the raid itself, such as the commando raid on the Channel Island of Sark that resulted in Hitler’s notorious Kommandobefehl, his Commando Order, stating that all Allied commandos captured by German forces should be killed immediately, even if in uniform or if attempting to surrender. Even now, some raids continue to be the subject of great debate as post-war historians argue whether they were a success or not: one such example is the low-level raid by RAF Mosquitos on the prison at Amiens. The fact that so much resource was applied to sinking or neutralizing the mighty German warships – Bismarck, Tirpitz, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen – shows just how feared these ships were at the time, particularly by Churchill; had these great warships have been allowed to roam the Atlantic then the war may have had a very different outcome. And while contemplating how the Second World War might have turned out, who knows what the outcome might have been had the raid on the Vemork hydro-electric plant at Telemark in Norway, and the subsequent sinking of the Hydro ferry on Lake Tinnsjø, not been successful? Often described as the SOE’s greatest raid of the war, it prevented the Nazis from acquiring deuterium oxide, otherwise known as heavy water, which could well have been used in the production of nuclear weapons – another subject of much post-war debate! I have picked a selection of thirty raids and reconnaissance missions carried out on land, by sea and from the air, which I consider to be amongst the most daring of the Second World War. Rather than cover too many raids
xii Daring Raids of World War Two
of a similar type, I have included a variety to cover all the Services and the main operational theatres, ranging from those involving thousands of men to those involving just a few individuals, to represent all those who fought with such courage in those parts of the world: from northern Norway to the Channel Islands and to the west coast of Africa, and from north-west Europe to North Africa, the Middle East and the Far East. In the case of those carried out from the air, I have been mindful to include raids carried out by a variety of aircraft from the RAF and the Fleet Air Arm – the Battle, Blenheim, Beaufort, Swordfish, Mosquito and Lancaster – again, to represent all the brave crews who flew these types. Whatever the scale of the operation or its location, the raids I have picked all required strong leadership and extreme courage from those who took part. It goes without saying that not all were a success. In fact, some went disastrously wrong, but the men who carried out these raids did so in the knowledge that they might not return. Many were decorated for their deed, some more than once, and where this is the case I have abbreviated all awards as follows: Victoria Cross (VC); Distinguished Service Order (DSO); Distinguished Service Cross (DSC); Military Cross (MC); Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC); Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM); Conspicuous Gallantry Medal (CGM); Distinguished Service Medal (DSM); Military Medal (MM); and Distinguished Flying Medal (DFM). These are thirty stories of the extreme courage and bravery of men who often did not live to tell the tale. I have told them in chronological order to show where they fitted in to the overall context of the war rather than attempt to try and rank them in any other way. When putting them together I was very much aware that selecting these raids is like asking someone to name their thirty favourite films, novels or music tracks – everyone has their own idea. In the end, it is a matter of personal choice, but this is my selection. All have inspired me throughout my life and I only hope they inspire you too. Enjoy the book!