Night Raid

by Taylor Downing

  The men of Nelson were finally to make contact with the navy and signal to the landing craft using radio beacons, and if necessary bright flares fired into the sky, when it was time to come ashore and carry out the evacuation. Captain Ross’s men were to remain in position protecting the evacuation and were to be the last themselves to embark.

  The second group of paratroopers were to drop five minutes later, at 0020 hours, about half a mile inland from the main site. Their objective was to capture the principal cliff-top radar installation. They were split into three parties. Hardy was a group of twenty men led by Major Frost himself. Their task was to launch the first round of the night raid, to capture the seaside villa known as Villa Gosset on the top of the cliffs that was thought to be the base for the radar operators and where many of the men would probably be sleeping. Jellicoe, led by Lieutenant Peter Young, was a party of ten men who would immediately afterwards seize and capture Henry, the Würzburg itself, and the dugouts and pits around it. They had to keep this area secure for the rest of the night’s operation. The final group of ten men, codenamed Drake and under the command of Lieutenant Peter Naumoff, were to contain the enemy situated at the large rectangle of buildings to the north of the main site, known as Le Presbytère. The French underground agents had established that this was the base for about sixty Luftwaffe troops who were guarding the Freya radar installations further along the coast.

  Just forward of this position was a farmhouse at Theuville. The planners at Combined Operations called this the Rectangle because that’s what it was, a rectangular defensive position surrounded by a line of trees. It was anticipated that once the firing began, this was where the major German opposition to the raiders would come from. Aerial photography had identified machine-gun positions around the perimeter of the Rectangle, but it was still not certain if heavier weapons, such as mortars, were located here. Drake was to cause a distraction to divert fire from the Rectangle, allowing the vital work to take place at the Würzburg installation. When this had been completed, Naumoff was to withdraw his men to the beach with, as the orders put it, ‘all possible speed’.

  The final party of forty men were codenamed Rodney, led by Lieutenant John Timothy. He was excited to be going into action at last as part of this daring raid. The Rodney party were to drop five minutes after the other paratroopers and to form up to protect the eastern, landward side of the operation. They were to act as a sort of mobile reserve and provide support wherever it was most needed. If the Germans rallied any sort of substantial counter-attack, either from Le Presbytère or along the Bruneval road, Rodney was to oppose it and hold it up long enough for the rest of the raid to be carried out. Two more sappers with their anti-tank mines were attached to this group. Having fought off any counter-attack, Rodney was then to provide a rearguard defence of the evacuation if needed.

  Cox and Vernon were attached to Hardy with two of the other trained sappers. After photographing the Würzburg they had to dismantle it and remove as many of the key parts as possible. They had a supply of pickaxes, jemmies, hacksaws, chisels, screwdrivers and spanners in order to carry out their task.4 This core element of Operation Biting was only allocated thirty minutes in the schedule. If it took longer, if they had the wrong equipment, or if they came under fire and were unable to complete the process, the whole mission would have failed. Every aspect of Biting had to work like clockwork. Timing was critical.

  The Whitleys of 51 Squadron under Wing Commander Pickard had to fly with pinpoint precision at night over a blacked-out countryside to ensure that the men landed exactly in their drop zones. There was bound to be anti-aircraft fire which might put the pilots off course. The RAF planned to carry out a series of bombing attacks on Paris, so that aircraft would cross the French coast in the general area between Le Havre and the Somme estuary every night during the week leading up to the raid. The local defenders would become accustomed to the presence of low-flying bombers at night. On the night of the raid itself, further bomber diversions were to be mounted in the Le Havre area to distract the local defences from the parachute drop. The Whitleys carrying the raiding party were to fly north–south about one mile out to sea and then turn inland near Le Havre and fly north again up to the drop zones.

  The final stage of Operation Biting was the evacuation organised by the navy. HMS Prinz Albert had travelled south from Loch Fyne to act as the co-ordinating headquarters for the operation. It would set sail from Portsmouth in the afternoon before the raid and head towards the Bruneval coast accompanied by a flotilla of six motor gunboats (MGBs) for defence. Commander Cook would be on board leading the naval operation. When it had taken up its position off the French coast, the Prinz Albert would launch its six ALCs and two Support Landing Craft. It would be too large a target to remain so close to the French coastline and so was then to withdraw to Portsmouth. Cook would transfer to one of the landing craft that had to locate the beach at Bruneval.

  This was what had proved so difficult in the rehearsals. Cook’s ‘biggest worry by far’ was finding the tiny three-hundred-yard-wide beach between the towering cliffs after travelling by dead reckoning merely on a compass reading, a hundred miles across the Channel.5 And this stretch of coast was full of tiny beaches between high chalk cliffs. If the wind got up and was blowing at anything more than Force 2 or 3, the whole naval operation, from lowering the landing craft from the Prinz Albert to finding the beach itself, would be put at serious risk.

  According to the plan, the landing craft would come ashore when the signal was given, load up with the paratroopers and their stolen cargo of electronic radar components, and depart. All this would take place before dawn under cover of darkness. To add to the limited firepower that the raiders possessed, each landing craft contained five soldiers armed with a Bren gun. If fighting was still taking place on land, they would be tasked with firing up into the cliffs or wherever there were German defensive positions that had not been overpowered. This would keep the heads of the enemy down while the delicate operation of embarkation took place.

  In addition, a medical officer and twenty medical orderlies would be on the landing craft to deal with any seriously wounded. Finally, Donald Preist, the radar engineer, commissioned for the duration of the raid as a flight lieutenant in the RAF, was to be on board one of the landing craft, with two men to protect him. His party was codenamed Noah. He was only to land and assist in the technical assessment and dismantling of Henry if Major Frost had confirmed that the whole area around the Würzburg was secure. The operational order stated in block capitals: ‘IT IS OF THE UTMOST IMPORTANCE THAT FL.-LT. PREIST SHOULD NOT FALL INTO THE ENEMY’S HANDS’.

  The landing craft were to withdraw as soon as they could, with the Bren gunners still firing, if required, to distract the enemy. They did not have the fuel to cross the Channel under their own power, so the Paras and their cargo were to be transferred on to the faster MGBs, which would tow the landing craft back to Portsmouth. As dawn broke these vessels would be highly vulnerable to air attack, and so RAF fighters were to provide an escort to the armada of little ships as it crossed the Channel. Finally an escort of naval destroyers was to accompany the ships back into Portsmouth.

  As this was to be the first raid of the newly formed Airborne Division, the men were acting as guinea pigs for all sorts of new ideas and gadgets. It was important for the future of the division to learn as much as possible about how men would react in a real night-time raid and to discover precisely how to meet the needs of those carrying out a raid of this sort. In addition to being equipped with the new Sten gun and radio system, some of the men were issued with morphine to administer. A potent analgesic drug used to relieve severe or agonising pain, morphine was usually administered through a syringe applied near the point in the body where the injury was causing pain.

  In the British Army at this time, only medical officers or orderlies usually administered morphine. However, because of the restricted numbers that could be taken on the mission, limited b
y the fact that there were only twelve aircraft available and each aircraft could carry no more than ten men, the planners decided that there was no spare capacity to drop medical orderlies. For the assault, one in every ten men taking part in the raid was given special medical training to provide emergency field relief, which included administering prepared syringes of morphine if required. The medical officers of the Airborne Division realised they were setting a precedent and waited with great interest to see how it would work out.

  The Paras were given all sorts of other new bits of kit to try out on the raid. Since, during the training exercises, the landing craft had found it so difficult to locate the correct beaches, the signallers in the raiding party were given a new radio transmitting beacon called Rebecca. Signallers in the landing craft were provided with a matching receiver, Eureka. As soon as the beach had been captured the operators were to turn on the Rebecca transmitters and it was hoped the Eureka receivers would lock in to the signals and guide the landing craft in to the right beach. But the technology was new and after all the fiascos in training no one was totally confident in it. In case of disaster, the transmitters were fitted with explosive charges and the signallers were instructed to blow them up to prevent them falling into the hands of the enemy.

  All company communications were to be carried out on the same frequency on the new radio sets. The company commander, Major Frost, would normally go into battle supported by a full headquarters team to co-ordinate communications between his officers and across the company. He was told to use the 38 radio sets instead, to keep in touch with what was happening and to issue his orders as the raid unfolded.

  The raid also provided the chance to trial a new method of labelling the containers of equipment dropped by parachute. A light attached to each container was set off when it was thrown out of the aircraft so it could be quickly identified in the dark. Containers with arms and weapons had red lights. Containers carrying signals equipment had green lights. Containers with equipment for the engineers had purple lights. Three specially constructed trolleys would be parachuted in with the function of carrying down the cliff to the beach any electronic equipment seized. The containers holding the trolleys had orange lights. Everything was designed to work smoothly and efficiently in the limited time available.

  The final days leading up to the operation were hectic. After the last exercise in the Solent on Sunday 22 February, Cox noted that the men were cold, wet and ‘browned off’ by yet another foul-up.6 They then returned to their camp at Tilshead. For two busy days the equipment for the raid was handed out and had to be checked. Weapons were issued and ammunition loaded into magazines. The engineers had to check their mine detectors, wire cutters and anti-tank mines, as well as the jemmies, chisels and explosives needed to dismantle Henry. The trolleys were assembled and tested, then folded up again. Everything had to be packed into containers for the parachute drop.

  Only at this point did the officers explain to the men the full nature of their mission. During the last two days before the raid everyone was shown models of the site and its surroundings, based on aerial photographs and made at Medmenham by the model-making department. These terrain models were extraordinary.7 They were made exactly to scale and with great accuracy. The contours were laid out using hardboard cutouts, mounted layer by layer on the baseboard. A mosaic of aerial photos was laid over the outline of the contours to provide a precise 3D landscape model, and the surface was then painted to show fields, rivers, hedgerows and trees. Tiny models of significant buildings were constructed, also to scale, and placed in situ.

  One of the models of the Bruneval cliffs, made to a precise scale of 1:2000, was carefully brought down from Medmenham and assembled at Tilshead.8 First the officers, then the NCOs and finally the men studied the models. Everyone had time to locate their drop zone, their assembly point, and to memorise the landscape and the local terrain. They could look at the beaches and see where all the known defences were. Finally, those who would be operating on the top of the cliffs could see the steep downward route they would have to follow to evacuate from the beaches.

  Everything had been planned down to the last detail. Or so it seemed to many of the men taking part in the raid. The reality, of course, was that dozens of things could go horribly wrong. The success of the operation would depend upon the men being dropped in exactly the right place, being able to carry out the plan without too many distractions, and then being able to evacuate with their precious cargo on time and without any of the fiascos that had marred their training exercises. But more than anything, its success would depend upon the raiders’ ability to overwhelm the local defenders and carry out the mission before the nearby garrisons could rally to hit back at them. Although a great deal was known about the defenders of this small stretch of French coast, it was still one of the biggest question marks hanging over the whole enterprise. How many and how good were the German troops stationed around Bruneval?

  14

  The Defenders

  Ever since the German army had rolled across France in the lightning war of May and June 1940, the occupiers had been building up their defences along the north French coast against possible incursions. The whole coastal strip was a closed area to anyone other than residents or those with special permits – like Charlemagne, who had a permit to travel in the Département of Seine-Inferieure as he owned a local garage for the repair of vehicles. Later in the war, by 1944, the coastal defences along northern France would form what was called the Atlantic Wall, a huge defensive barrier of machine-gun nests, artillery positions and anti-tank and anti-personnel defences running for hundreds of miles, and intended to defeat any invading force on the beaches.

  In early 1942 there was nothing as co-ordinated or well designed as this. Nevertheless, the Germans had good forces available and were determined to protect their precious equipment, like the sophisticated radar stations scattered along the north French coastline.

  The intelligence available about the German defenders was partly based on an extensive study of the aerial photos by the specialist interpreters at Medmenham, and partly on information gathered by the agents of the French underground. This intelligence continued to arrive after Pol and Charlemagne’s visit to Bruneval, and it made up a highly detailed picture of the organisation and layout of the German defences. For instance, it was known that a team of nine radar operators manned the principal target, the Würzburg radar on the top of the cliff at Bruneval, on shifts around the clock. Allied Intelligence assumed these men were specialist Luftwaffe engineers who lived in the Villa Gosset alongside. The sergeant in charge of this group was named Gerhard Wenzel. British Intelligence knew that, nearly half a mile further up the coast at Cap d’Antifer, there were another thirty operators manning the twinned Freya radar station, the site that had initially attracted the photo interpreters at Medmenham to look at this area in more detail.

  The men working on the two radar stations were kept apart as much as possible and were forbidden to discuss their work. So the Würzburg operators had no idea what the Freya team was up to, and vice versa. They were all, however, part of the Luftwaffe Air Intelligence Branch, the unit that provided the signallers and operators for the specialist radar stations across France. These were the advanced ‘eyes’ of the German air defence system, linked by telephone with a direct line to the coastal defence centre at Octeville-sur-Mer, just outside Le Havre. From here the anti-aircraft batteries at Le Havre and along the coast at the towns of Étretat and Fécamp were alerted and the complex fire control systems were put into action.

  Between the two radar outposts at Bruneval and Cap d’Antifer was the wooded area of Le Presbytère and the farmhouse at Theuville, known as the Rectangle. The photo interpreters had estimated from the size of the barracks that about sixty men were stationed here, and according to the information from the owners of the hotel nearby, they knew they were Luftwaffe troops. The Luftwaffe had its own ground-based field troops. Most of these men operated the a
nti-aircraft guns that protected every airfield. Another section of Luftwaffe ground troops was the German equivalent of the airborne paratrooper forces, the Fallschirmjäger, elite troops armed with some of the best weapons in the German arsenal. But there were also soldiers trained simply to guard airfields or other positions, like those who guarded the specialist radar outposts near Bruneval. They wore uniforms very similar to conventional German infantrymen and were armed with similar weaponry. But they had a Luftwaffe wing emblem on their collar tabs. And they lacked the training or experience of troops in the Wehrmacht, the regular army.

  The men on the cliff-top plateau at Bruneval were part of the 2nd Reconnaissance Company of the 23rd Luftwaffe Air Reconnaissance Regiment. The commanding officer at Le Presbytère was Oberleutnant Hans Melches. The aerial photos suggested that these soldiers were armed with nothing heavier than light machine guns, equivalent to the weapon carried by just a few of the paratroopers, the Bren gun. Any bigger weapons would probably be mortars, but there was no sign of these in the aerial photographs. If they had them they did not seem to use them much.