One Day in August

by David O'Keefe

  What is not commonly known is that the St-Nazaire Raid also doubled as an elaborate pinch operation. Restricted by the Official Secrets Act, which for years prevented any whisper of Ultra or the four-rotor crisis, Churchill properly made no direct mention of this side of the story in his carefully crafted memoirs, although there are vague and veiled references to “other sources.” Nor did he dare touch upon the second half of the St-Nazaire saga: its long-forgotten twin operation called Myrmidon, which took place in April 1942 some 260 miles to the south at Bayonne, France.

  As with Vaagso and Lofoten, the plan was to launch twin attacks—Operations Chariot and Myrmidon—within twenty-four hours of each other in an effort to deliver on the two imperatives of the day, the Tirpitz and the four-rotor-derived intelligence blackout. On February 25, Mountbatten presented both outline plans, drawn up by Jock Hughes-Hallett, David Luce and Vaagso pinch veteran Dick de Costobadie, to the chiefs of staff and the prime minister for approval, admitting that both operations were “somewhat hazardous” but “the prize was considerable.”31 While the primary goal of Chariot was the destruction of the Normandie dry dock, the secondary target was the destruction of all the U-boats and shipping gathered there for repairs. The plan made no particular mention of pinch provisions, but the operation obviously did offer the potential for “chance” pinches.

  The stated objective of Operation Myrmidon at Bayonne—“to clear the French Coast of the enemy troops in the areas between the River Adour and the Spanish Frontier” by landing three thousand soldiers to disrupt rail and road transport in that area—appears at first so vague as to be suspect.32 Working from my understanding of the doctrine of pinch raids and the types of targets they sought, however, I undertook more fine-tuned research into the details of the planning papers, which reveal that Myrmidon was a pinch by design. In this case, a naval task force with No. 1 and No. 6 Commando units, carried in assault landing craft (ALC) and destroyers, would sail up the Bayonne estuary to the harbour, where it would strike shore-based strategic facilities, including explosives and petrochemical plants, an unspecified headquarters (likely naval) and a Luftwaffe airfield. Meanwhile, special boarding parties would capture shipping in the tight confines of the estuary and the harbour specifically in search of “code and cipher material.”33

  Mountbatten addresses the troops as they embark for Operation Myrmidon, April 1942. He seized upon and amplified the role of pinch raids in an effort to help “brand” his daring form of Combined Operations. (photo credits 7.1)

  After trolling through both outline plans, the chiefs of staff and Churchill “fully approved” the proposals, with the prime minister stating for the record that in his opinion both “raids were justified.” Signalling his direct interest in the pinch operation, he requested to “hear further details of Op Myrmidon in due course.”34 It is not recorded whether or to what degree Churchill made himself intimately aware of the details of Operation Myrmidon. But if he did flip through the various detailed orders, he would certainly have seen that the main purpose of the operation was clear:

  Enemy armed trawlers are to be attacked with the utmost ruthlessness at short range with pom pom and small arms weapons, the object being to kill or panic the crew but to leave the ship relatively undamaged in order that search may be made for codes cyphers etc. If this search is successful it is essential that there should be no survivors other than prisoners, and that the ship should be sunk as soon as possible.35

  Later, the plan reiterated this imperative, stating that crews from any ship, enemy or neutral, should be overpowered and that any resistance should be dealt with ruthlessly. It continued: “If German, they are better dead, though a Naval Officer would be of value as a prisoner for interrogation.”36

  Operation Myrmidon was scheduled to take place within twenty-four hours of the St-Nazaire Raid, but it was dogged by problems. Weather conditions delayed it, and the records are unclear whether it was then pushed back or the St-Nazaire Raid was pushed forward. In the end, the raids were separated by one week, with Myrmidon following Chariot. Even then, although the raiding force reached the mouth of the Ardour River, leading to the Bayonne estuary, a shifting sandbar—of which the ISTD had made Combined Operations Headquarters fully aware—prevented it from entering. The raid was aborted without the Germans catching on to what had been planned. Given the spectacular success at St-Nazaire on March 28, 1942, the failure at Bayonne proved easy to gloss over, but it nevertheless came as a great disappointment.

  Although it is now clear from the declassified records that a pinch was the driving force behind Myrmidon, the main idea in Operation Chariot was essentially preventative in nature: to destroy St-Nazaire’s giant dry dock and prevent the Kriegsmarine from unleashing the Tirpitz on the already beleaguered merchant fleet in the Atlantic. The word “daring” does not sufficiently describe the plan.

  The strategy drew heavily on the legendary Zeebrugge Raid, which had garnered much-needed positive propaganda in the dark days of the spring of 1918. Like it, Operation Chariot required complete surprise: the raiding force, led by the disguised Campbeltown, would have to sail unobserved past the coast of Brittany and down the French west coast through U-boat-infested waters dotted with French and Spanish fishing trawlers. Mountbatten issued strict instructions that, if the element of surprise was lost, the raid should be aborted, the ships returned to English ports, and the mission remounted on the same target once the frenzy had abated. However, if the surprise held, the raiding force would capitalize on the detailed report the Inter-Services Topographical Department had issued, which revealed that an unusually high spring tide would permit a “one time only” chance for a light ship to pass over the shallow water close to shore and avoid the big German guns dominating the approaches to the port. Once the convoy had got past the guns, the Campbeltown, disguised as a German destroyer, would create heavy diversionary fire designed to suppress or otherwise occupy the gunners, just as the raiding force closed on the port entrance at the mouth of the Loire.

  The final plan followed Gonin’s original scheme quite closely. To take full advantage of the confusion, Robert Edward Dudley “Red” Ryder, the naval force commander, riding in a motor torpedo boat (MTB), would use a captured low-level German code book to send a series of deceptive messages to the port to hold fire, passing the force off as a German coastal convoy in need of emergency shelter. Once they breached the harbour defences, one of the MTBs would blast the gates leading to the U-boat pens, the commandos on the other boats would land on the harbourfront and destroy the four lock gates leading to the old dock, and Campbeltown would deliver the coup de grâce. With its bow packed with high explosives rigged up by the experts at the Special Operations Executive and set on a timed fuse, the old destroyer would ram headlong into the main lock gate of the Normandie dry dock. Once lodged, the commandos riding her “back,” or main deck, would jump off and attack the pumping stations and lock mechanisms that controlled the dry dock. In that way, there was an inherent redundancy built into the planning to achieve the major objective: even if the Campbeltown failed to explode on time, three hours after it struck, the commandos would at least disable the dock temporarily.

  In the end, the raid turned out to be as effective as it was daring and deadly. It began badly: the plan was nearly scuttled when the convoy encountered a German submarine, which was chased off, and then two French trawlers, which Ryder boarded and sank. Nothing in the available documents indicates whether he did so for pinch purposes or strictly for security reasons, but his unpublished memoir shows that in the process he did seize lower-level French and Spanish material. This bold and courageous commander then pushed on with the mission because none of the Germans on shore had yet raised an alarm. When the diversionary bombers arrived, however, surprise was no longer possible, and at that moment the commandos hoped the German gunners would be more interested in taking on the bombers than their quickly approaching raiding force. At that time in the war, a Cabinet order forbade the bl
ind bombing of French towns, and with the skies overcast, the airmen’s view of the target below was obscured. All the bombers managed to do was fly around above St-Nazaire, putting the gunners on full alert rather than drawing their fire or making them run for cover. As a result, although the raiding force succeeded in reaching the mouth of the Loire and the harbour in good shape, the captured-code ruse worked for only a short time before the Germans responded with full force.

  Immediately, searchlight beams and heavy fire bathed the raiding force, hitting a few of the torpedo boats while the others made a dash for their targets on shore. As planned, the Campbeltown rammed into the target lock gate at full speed, crumpling her hull in the process. Her commandos leapt off the decks and hit the majority of their targets on shore. The others following in their MTBs were not as successful, but the thirty-seven-year-old commander of No. 2 Commando, Lieutenant Colonel Augustus Charles Newman, or “Colonel Charles” to his men, managed to seize and establish his headquarters in the German harbour commandant’s office.37 From there he organized the attack on shore. They met heavy and increasing German resistance from the start, including from an armed trawler he tried unsuccessfully to subdue.

  Initially, it appeared that the main objective of the raid had failed: the explosive charge, carefully welded shut into the bow of the Campbeltown, did not blow up on schedule. But the next day, when the ship was crowded with German soldiers, sailors and a few captured commandos and surrounded by French bystanders, it suddenly exploded, knocking out the gate, flooding the dry dock and leaving a grisly scene strewn with the body parts of those on board and nearby.

  Only 228 of the original 622 commandos and Royal Navy personnel were able to return to Britain over the next few days, with the total casualty lists recording 169 dead and 215 in German hands. This list included “Colonel Charles” and his small band, who heroically attempted to fight their way out of the port. Newman was awarded the Victoria Cross for his conspicuous bravery and valour, but because he was captured, whatever code and cipher material he may have been able to seize—and it is possible he jettisoned it in advance of being taken—went for naught. Not surprisingly, given the long-classified Ultra Secret nature of such information and of these kinds of materials, nothing has surfaced in the years since in any in-house histories of the Government Code and Cypher School or in other files relating to pinches that failed outright or missed their mark.

  Despite the heavy cost, the St-Nazaire Raid can be considered a success because it achieved several of its intended objectives—and some that were unintended too. On the tactical and operational levels, the destruction of the lock gates rendered the dry dock tidal and successfully denied the Tirpitz a maintenance or repair facility on the Atlantic coast, thereby ensuring it would remain in its Norwegian home for the foreseeable future. Although the raiders did not succeed in knocking out the other three lock gates and flooding the inner port where the U-boats berthed, the brief capture of the port commandant’s office forced the Germans to move all headquarters off the shoreline and into safer but less accessible locations slightly inland.

  On the strategic level, the raid—which Churchill called a “brilliant and heroic exploit” and “a deed of glory intimately involved in high strategy”—demonstrated that Great Britain could strike offensively and remain steadfast during this very bleak period in the war. The success also impressed the Americans, who were looking for signs of life from a war-weary Britain.38 Glowing headlines spoke of the tremendous daring and supreme sacrifice of the raiders—a feat that instantly captured imaginations not only in Britain but around the Allied world. The New York Times ran the banner headline BRITISH RAID ST. NAZAIRE U-BOAT BASE, RAM DOCK WITH EXPLODING DESTROYER, and the Boston Globe likened the event to the celebrated Zeebrugge Raid. For the first time in the dismal opening months of 1942, positive news of daring offensive action greeted readers who were becoming stoically accustomed to stories of Allied reverses.

  On the German side, the raid forced the adoption of a defensive mindset in the west. Hitler slackened his intense focus eastward towards the Soviet Union somewhat and allocated extra matériel and personnel to the French coast, mostly slave labour, to speed up and improve defences all along his Atlantic wall.

  For Godfrey, St-Nazaire clearly demonstrated that the targeting information provided by Gonin’s French sub-section of NID and by his own ISTD had proven its worth. The triumph also further solidified his working relationship with Mountbatten’s rapidly rising Combined Operations Headquarters.39

  The grand success of St-Nazaire invigorated Mountbatten and his staff at Combined Operations and led to a major escalation in operational planning there. The mission seemed to vindicate Mountbatten’s sudden and dramatic rise to prominence under Churchill’s patronage. Just weeks before the raid, the prime minister had promoted Mountbatten three levels to vice admiral and widened his official powers, elevating him from “adviser” to “Chief” of Combined Operations. Initially, the now-ailing Dudley Pound interpreted this unprecedented rise as Churchill’s bid to put Mountbatten in Pound’s own seat as First Lord of the Admiralty; but it was more likely a recognition of the growing importance of Combined Operations Headquarters in the armed services framework, as well as evidence of the prime minister’s desire to inject younger blood into the British leadership. At forty-two, the charismatic Lord Louis Mountbatten was the youngest vice admiral in the long history of the Royal Navy, surpassing even the hero of the Battle of Trafalgar, Lord Horatio Nelson.

  But within Mountbatten’s own headquarters, this meteoric ascent had a sharp trickle-down effect on the staff that led quickly to a dangerous overconfidence. In the afterglow of St-Nazaire, Jock Hughes-Hallett could not contain his excitement over “Dickie’s” promotion and its promise for the future. “My own reaction,” he recalled, “was one of exhilaration, almost exultation. At one stride, our organization had penetrated to the very centre and citadel of power. We were now to work for a man with access to all the secrets, and for one who could, and would, be an advocate at top level for any plan.”40 Indeed, along with this sense of validation and vindication came a new-found arrogance and hubris. Yet St-Nazaire, followed by the aborted Myrmidon, had done nothing to alleviate the most pressing issue of all: the four-rotor blackout.

  Immediately after the abandoned Operation Myrmidon pinch raid at Bayonne, Mountbatten had dismissed charges from an army interrogator with experience in several raids (including Vaagso) of poor and hasty operational planning as well as an almost criminal neglect of intelligence. In a confidential report penned for Combined Operations Headquarters (COHQ), this officer noted serious oversights, including incomplete briefings and operational orders devoid of basic information about the enemy. He had been shocked to find crucial items—such as the location of the enemy in relation to key targets, and an assessment of the enemy’s air and naval situation—absent from both the operational orders and the commander’s briefing. He also noted other potentially critical mistakes: the wrong set of aerial photos had been issued for Myrmidon, along with a suspect demolition programme that, if carried out as planned, was bound to inflict more harm to friend than foe.41 These kinds of mistakes were indicative of what Admiral Bertram Ramsay, the man in charge of the Dover area of operations, including the protection of cross-Channel military traffic, later called “inexperienced enthusiasts.”42 In response, a thoroughly irate Mountbatten complained to Major General F.H.N. Davidson, the Director of Military Intelligence, about the critical report, but the officer behind it remained unrepentant. In Mountbatten’s words, he left the impression that if “Combined Operations had been a public company the shareholders would have been within their rights to call a meeting to investigate the way in which the show was being run.” 43

  These complaints were serious and valid. But they went unheeded within the walls of Mountbatten’s headquarters in Whitehall, still basking in the afterglow of St-Nazaire. A mounting level of “victory disease” began to dismiss any intelligence r
elating to enemy forces that might be unsettling or inconvenient: any information that could dampen enthusiasm for a raid was ignored. As Arthur Marshall, the British raconteur who worked as a security officer for Mountbatten, quipped years later, the motto for COHQ should have been “Regardless”—meaning “regardless of effort, regardless of risk, and regardless of cost.”44 But nothing at this moment, save an inglorious and costly defeat, could have shaken the headquarters out of its dangerously triumphant mindset.

  The excitement over the St-Nazaire Raid was particularly intense because it came at a very dark moment, following the fall of Singapore and amidst General Erwin Rommel’s mounting victories for Germany in the North African desert. To ramp up the public relations level into overdrive, maximum press coverage was given when thirty-eight decorations were awarded for merit and bravery, including four additional Victoria Crosses (besides Newman’s), to members of the raiding force. Red Ryder, who would later play a pivotal role in the Dieppe operation, was one of this select group.45

  The classic hero: Robert Edward Dudley “Red” Ryder with his wife, entering Buckingham Place to receive his Victoria Cross. Ryder had commanded the naval force in the St-Nazaire raid and would go on to command the “Cutting Out Force,” which included Ian Fleming’s Intelligence Assault Unit, in the Dieppe Raid. His “brilliant attack” on St-Nazaire was, as Mountbatten described it, “carried out at night, under a vicious enemy fire, by a mere handful of men, who achieved, with certainty and precision, what the heaviest bombing raid or naval bombardment might well have failed to do.” (photo credits 7.2)