by Ross Kemp
The guns under which it was necessary for the flotilla to pass were truly formidable, even for far more heavily armed and armoured ships than the little wooden motor launches. At the entrance to the estuary, the Germans had made major improvements to the existing French installations. In all, St Nazaire was protected by over 70 guns, ranging in calibre from 75 mm (of which there were 28 pieces) to 150 mm and 170 mm, and to the massive 240-mm railway guns a few miles to the north at La Baule, positioned to engage enemy ships long before they reached the estuary. In addition to the heavier artillery, there were over forty 20-mm to 40-mm calibre guns that doubled as anti-aircraft and coastal defence weapons. If an attacking force succeeded in negotiating these forbidding layers of defence, a further bulwark awaited them in and around the town itself where over 5,000 German troops, military and naval, were stationed.
In mid-March, all the elements of the raiding force began to assemble at Falmouth on Cornwall’s south coast. The motor launches that would carry most of them were already in harbour when the troops of 2 Commando arrived from their training base on the west coast of Scotland aboard the troopship Princess Josephine Charlotte. The demolition groups, having completed their intensive rehearsals on the docks of Southampton and Cardiff, slipped into the town at the same time. In order to maintain a veil of secrecy over the operation, all the Commandos were ordered to remain out of sight below deck. Spies were known to operate in every naval port in the world during the war. Loose talk and slack security could compromise the operation. A cover story was invented to mislead the gossipers and safeguard CHARIOT from intelligence breaches. Word was put about that the flotilla was being organised into ‘Tenth Anti-Submarine Striking Force’ for a sweep of U-boats out in the Bay of Biscay.
In order to familiarise the troops with conditions at sea, the Commandos were embarked in the motor launches and other small ships and taken around the Scilly Isles, forty miles off Land’s End. They set off in rough weather that soon developed into a strong gale. By the time their Navy hosts decided to seek shelter in the bays of the Scillies, virtually every one of the 250 soldiers had been sick. Back in Falmouth, two further weeks of training exercises focused on approaching the target, and on disembarking and reboarding in the dark. On 18 March, Newman summoned his thirty-nine officers and divulged the nature of the mission. The following day, one by one, the officers revealed the plan to the men they would be commanding on the night. Only the name of the port was withheld, but several immediately guessed its identity. Throughout the army contingent, the reaction was one of excited astonishment mixed with trepidation. Most of the young men had never seen combat, but they were savvy enough to understand the scale of the challenge and the grave risks it involved. The Commandos were a volunteer organisation and it was in that spirit that Newman offered the opportunity for his men to pull out and, without recrimination or dishonour, return to their regular units. No one took him up on his offer.
A detailed model of the dockyard was displayed in the briefing room aboard the troopship and, one after another, each of the Commando subgroups filed in to have their specific tasks spelt out. Once the raid was underway, Newman’s military HQ was to be set up at the Old Entrance to the harbour where Group Two was to have disembarked. Communications on the night were to be carried out by radio and by runners. The original plan to take six bicycles was considered impractical and was dropped. All tasks were to be completed within two hours. The signal to withdraw was to be made first with green and then red flares. In an emergency, if the operation had to be aborted, all flares would be fired at once and the crews of every ML would sound their klaxons. The operational orders issued to Newman and Ryder stipulated a number of security precautions. All badges and distinguishing signs were to be removed (except badges of rank) and no papers or letters disclosing the identity of the unit or formation were to be taken ashore. Recognition between the men on the ground was to be made by the use of surnames plus a password and countersign.
Useful French and German phrases were learned by all ranks. In French, the expressions were to be forceful and helpful: ‘Obey and you’ll be OK . . . Disobey and you’ll be killed . . . Where are the Germans? . . . Get out! . . . Shut up!’ In German, the phrases were designed to intimidate and mislead. They included: ‘Scum . . . Quickly for God’s sake . . . You’re surrounded . . . We’re two battalions . . . It’s a whole army . . . Hands up!’
The Commandos’ uniform included special-issue boots fitted with rubber soles for silent movement (which soon came to be known as ‘commando boots’). The orders regarding uniform and appearance continue: ‘oldest battle dress, roll-neck sweaters, first field dressing, knives (fighting), Mae Wests, 2 identity discs around neck, gaiters, steel helmets, no respirators, faces and hands clean, scrubbed skeleton order [= clean faces & hands, bare minimum kit], full water bottle slung, no entrenching tool.’ Special carrying equipment was also issued to those armed with grenades, Tommy guns and mortars. The conclusion of the Operational Order, signed off by Admiral of the Fleet Forbes, reads: ‘In an operation of this nature, difficulties may arise which have not been foreseen. I rely on all officers and men to overcome these by the display of initiative and the aggressive spirit.’
On the night of 21/22 March a full-scale dress rehearsal was carried out at Plymouth and Devonport under the ruse of testing the dockyards’ defences. It quickly turned into a fiasco that depressed the planners and participants in equal measure (although it brought some cheer to those tasked with the defence of one of Britain’s most important naval bases). The approaching raiders were immediately picked up by the port’s defences after the crews of the ships had been blinded by the searchlights. Had the exercise been for real, the entire party would have been blown out of the water long before they reached the target.
On 25 March, seventy-two hours before the force was scheduled to depart, a distinctly Germanic-looking Campbeltown caused a stir when she slid into Falmouth Harbour. Just 22 days after the Chiefs of Staff had given the operation the go-ahead, 21 ships, one submarine, and 611 sailors and highly trained soldiers were ready for action. The operation was scheduled for the night of 28/29 March when the tides in the Loire were at their highest, but eager to make the most of the favourable weather, Commander Ryder brought the timetable forward by twenty-four hours. On the afternoon of 26 March, escorted by the destroyers HMS Atherstone and HMS Tynedale and a lone Hurricane fighter, the flotilla slipped out of the Cornish harbour at 1400 and headed towards the Bay of Biscay. A gentle swell rolled beneath the ships and a mellow, hazy sunshine filled the skies above, but the calmness of the scene did not fool anyone aboard. The Operation Order insisted on military personnel staying out of sight. If anyone was to come above they had to do so in a naval duffle coat or oilskins. ‘It is essential that reconnaissance enemy aircraft should NOT learn the presence of Military on board,’ the order reads. For most of the passage, the Commandos remained below deck in fairly cramped conditions, relieving the tension with nervous banter and jokes.
The 420-mile voyage to St Nazaire had been plotted so as to maintain the impression that the flotilla was on a U-boat sweep. The course that had been set took them well past the Brittany peninsula into the Bay of Biscay before they turned sharply and steamed for the French coast under the cover of darkness. As soon as it had left the relative safety of home waters, the flotilla went into anti-submarine formation. If an enemy ship or reconnaissance aircraft did spot them, it would have appeared that the British convoy was on a routine passage to Gibraltar. In this way, it was only in the final few hours that the raiding force’s true intentions might be suspected.
As darkness began to fall, the last of the escorting Hurricanes swept low over the ships and headed back to England. The Ensign of the Third Reich was hoisted aboard so as to try and fool any Vichy fishing vessels they might encounter. The night passed without incident and, to the dismay of Ryder and his crews, daybreak ushered in a beautifully clear day with brilliant visibility. It was shortly after 07
00 and the force had just turned east for France when the alarm was raised. Tynedale spotted a U-boat, its periscope up, seven miles to the northeast. Ryder understood the critical importance of the moment: he must either destroy the enemy boat or force her to dive before she radioed in the sighting of the flotilla.
Tynedale was immediately ordered to go after her. Casting off the HQ motor gun boat (MGB) she was towing, the destroyer, flying the German Ensign, sped towards the sub at a maximum speed of twenty-seven knots. The U-boat fired off a pyrotechnic rocket that burst into five stars as a recognition signal. The Tynedale replied with five long flashes of her Aldis lamp. At 4,000 yards, Tynedale ran up her White Ensign and opened fire. If she had closed any further, it would not have been possible to depress her guns low enough to hit the target. Giant plumes of water burst around the U-boat but the near-misses were not near enough to cause any damage. The U-boat (U-593), damaged from an earlier confrontation with the British, had tried but failed to launch a torpedo at the Tynedale. She had no option but to crashdive and wait for the inevitable pounding beneath the surface. Minutes later, the German crew felt the mighty percussion of depth charges. Such was the force of the explosions that U-593 was forced to the surface, but she quickly dived again, strafed by Tynedale’s short-range guns from close range. HMS Atherstone was now at the scene and the two destroyers swept the area using ASDIC underwater detection device. But dropping to about 500 feet below the surface and reducing her speed to a barely perceptible one knot, the U-boat evaded her hunters. After two hours the destroyers broke off the search and rejoined the flotilla. Ryder’s main fear was that the U-boat had succeeded in reporting the British presence before diving. There was nothing for it but to continue as planned. All would be revealed in the coming hours. If the Germans ashore had been alerted, Operation CHARIOT was badly compromised.
For two hours, no enemy reconnaissance aircraft was spotted as the flotilla continued its course towards the French coast. But shortly before midday, the raiding force came across two French fishing vessels. Enemy radio operators were known to operate from these boats and Ryder was under orders to sink any that he encountered. Atherstone and Tynedale went alongside them and, having taken off the crews, sank both vessels. The captains of both boats gave their word that there were no wireless sets on board either of the craft. By that time, Ryder was reassured that the U-boat they had engaged had been unable to dispatch a sighting report to her Coastal Command. (After the war, it was discovered that U-593 had surfaced in mid-afternoon and the captain made a report that contained one highly significant mistake. He said the British flotilla was heading west, away from their intended target. They were in fact heading southeast. The German coastal commanders assumed the ships were en route to Gibraltar and decided not to send out the five destroyers that patrolled that area. It was a very poor error of judgement by the U-boat crew, and it would not be long before they were made to understand its magnitude.)
Darkness had fallen when one of the motor launches, ML 341, reported that she had lost the use of one of her engines and was unable to keep up with the flotilla’s fifteen-knot pace. Coming at such a critical time, just a few hours before Z-hour, this was a blow on a number of counts. The Commandos on board were an assault group tasked with capturing and holding the Old Mole, the re-embarkation for the raiding force. One of the two back-up launches, ML 446, that had been brought for just such an eventuality, took the troops and a medical team on board, but they were two hours behind the others by the time the handover was completed. Pushing twenty knots, ML 446 succeeded in rejoining the flotilla, but she was forced to line up at the rear of the formation. There was now no chance of the assault party spearheading the attack on the Old Mole and that was a major cause for concern, as the demolition groups that would now go in before them had little more than a few pistols between them.
It was shortly after 2000, five and a half hours from Z-hour, when the force reached ‘point E’ off the French coast and came to a stop. Ryder and Newman transferred from Atherstone to MGB 314, which hauled out to the front of the force as the rest of the ships fell into battle formation. Two torpedo boats, ML 160 and ML 270, were positioned behind them at the head of two columns of motor launches, twelve of them in total, to the port and starboard of HMS Campbeltown. Two further torpedo boats, ML 446 and ML 298, brought up the rear. Ryder was astounded that the flotilla had steamed so close to the heavily patrolled French coast without being detected. So far, the good fortune had been all British.
Navigation was now the key challenge. The submarine HMS Sturgeon, which had sailed from Plymouth twenty-four hours before the flotilla, was to act as a navigational mark for the raiders. From that position, the force would be able to follow the precise course charted for them through the treacherous shallows of the Loire estuary. The rendezvous point was known as Position Z and the responsibility of leading them there fell to Lt Bill Green in the lead gun boat. In the pitch-black night and with no landmarks to assist him, it was some feat that Green not only brought them to the very spot but he did so almost to the second. It was exactly 2200 when Sturgeon’s beacon flashed out of the darkness. Passing within hailing distance of the sub, the crews exchanged greetings before it slipped beneath the surface, leaving no more than a ripple. At the same time, the destroyers Atherstone and Tynedale broke off from the force and steamed away from the coast to await the return of any ships that survived the most ambitious, large-scale amphibious raid ever undertaken by British forces.
By coincidence, six hours earlier, Admiral Karl Donitz, supreme commander of Germany’s U-boat fleet, had made an inspection of St Nazaire and asked Kapitänleutnant Herbert Sohler, commander 7th Submarine Flotilla, what the chances were of the British attacking the port from the sea. He was reassured that an amphibious assault was out of the question. Both men were preparing for another good night’s sleep when 611 British souls steamed through Position Z and into the mouth of the Loire. In three-and-a-half hours’ time, the German commanders would discover whether Sohler’s conviction held true.
When the White Ensigns on the ships were hoisted, the raiders were still six minutes short of their target. The 360 seconds had felt like six days to those who survived the gunfire of one of the most heavily defended military bases in the world. ‘It is difficult to describe the full fury of the attack that was let loose on each side,’ Ryder wrote after the war. ‘Owing to the air attack, the enemy had every gun, large and small, fully manned, and the night became one mass of red and green tracer.’
When MGB 314 – the command boat spearheading the approach – reached the east jetty, close to the entrance of the harbour, she was greeted with a burst of fire from the guard ship moored there. Passing no further than 200 yards away, the British gun boat responded with a heavy fusillade from her pair of two-pounders and heavy-machine guns, knocking out one of the German gun positions. The Campbeltown and the other ships followed 314’s example and, in the confusion, German guns also pounded the hapless ship, which was unable to depress its AA guns low enough to attack the flotilla.
The Campbeltown, the largest of the vessels, began to attract fire like iron filings to a magnet. Scores of shells of all sizes punched holes in her hull and waves of machine gunfire swept over her decks. There was not a part of the old destroyer that didn’t feel the full force of German gunnery skills. The Commandos, lying on the decks behind the reinforced armour plates, could do nothing but pray that the flying shrapnel and ricocheting bullets failed to come their way. Casualties were sustained from the opening seconds of the battle and they mounted rapidly. The bridge of the Campbeltown drew such a weight of fire that Commander Beattie ordered his men to the wheelhouse below, where thin armour plates at least offered some protection from the efforts of the gunners of the smaller armaments. The range of vision from there, however, was reduced to a small slit, no more than a foot wide, and it was through that gap that Beattie had to direct the destroyer onto a relatively small target that he hadn’t yet managed to identify
.
With a shower of bullets and shells crashing into the hull, the thickly bearded Commander squinted through the slit, desperately trying to pick out the outer lock. Campbeltown was close to its full speed of twenty knots when a giant searchlight fixed the wheelhouse and left Beattie blinded by its powerful beam. Almost instantaneously, his helmsman slumped to the floor, mortally wounded. The telegraphist immediately leapt forward to take the wheel, but he too was cut down on the spot as fire raked the wheelhouse. Tibbits, the demolitions expert, calmly stepped into the breach to steer the ship. There were just seconds now before impact.
Beattie knew that if he failed to ram the outer lock gate head-on, Operation CHARIOT would be remembered as a very costly catastrophe, a waste of a great many talented, brave young men. He kept his eyes on the gun boat in front, waiting for it to bank to starboard and allow him an open run at the dock. At that moment, a huge shell from one of the larger gun emplacements crashed into the twelve-pounder gun forward of the bridge, instantly killing the gun crew and many of the Commandos lying around it, and leaving many others stunned or writhing in agony. The massive explosion left Beattie dazed and dazzled, but through the smoke he recognised the landmarks of the harbour from the planners’ scale model back in Falmouth. Passing the Old Mole on his port side, he realised he was off course and ordered a sharp wheel to the starboard. As Tibbits swung the destroyer back on course, Beattie could now see the lock gate of the giant dock dead ahead of the point of his bow.
Battering her way through a maelstrom of tracer and incendiaries, punctured by a hundred shell holes, the dead and wounded lying on her decks, but her guns still blazing, the Campbeltown surged towards the entrance at full steam. The motor gun boat swung away to starboard. ‘Stand by to ram,’ ordered Beattie calmly. Those still alive inside the wheelhouse clung for dear life to whatever support they could find and braced themselves for the impact. The dark outline of the dock’s structure appeared to rise out of the water before the impact. A split second later, over 1,000 tons of warship travelling at 20 knots smashed into the thick metal wall of the gate. The violence of the collision shook the ship from bow to stern, sparks and debris flew in all directions and the harsh sound of metallic grinding filled the air. What was left of the bow of the old destroyer hung over the lock gate, pointing skywards at an angle. The impact was so powerful that the front of the ship was crushed back by twelve metres. Through a barrage of artillery fire, with his men falling dead around him, Beattie had guided her straight into the centre of the target. The four and a half tons of explosive below deck were sitting right on top of the gate. He could not have been more precise in his positioning of the charge had he placed it there with a crane. It was 0134 hours. Beattie, a stickler for precise timing, looked at his watch and was heard to mutter: ‘Hmm, four minutes late.’