St Nazaire raid by 2 Commando, 28 March 1942, naval forces included: 2 Hunt-class destroyers as escorts; the destroyer HMS Campbeltown stripped for shallow draught: 16 Fairmile ‘B’ Motor Launches (MLs) mahogany skin hulls 112 by 19½ft beam with 2 650hp engines and each manned by 2 officers and 13 ratings (3 extra) for raid—12 carried 20mm fore and aft, 4 had 18-inch torpedo tubes in case there were guardships and with usual MLs 3 pdr Hotchkiss—all had wireless but no radar; MTB No 74 with foredeck tubes for delayed action torpedoes; MGB No 314 Fairmile ‘C’ mahogany hard-chine hull 110 by 17½ft beam with 3 850hp engines (max 25 knots), Vickers 2 pdr hand operated pom-pom forward, aft 2 pdr in Rolls Royce semi-automatic turret, and amidships 2 twin-5in m/c guns in powered mountings, she carried a fixed fore-and-aft radar, wireless and navigation equipment.
Earlier plans for a purely commando raid had been abandoned, as mentioned earlier, because St Nazaire stands on the Loire estuary with only one deep-water channel which was covered by coastal batteries in 1942. The river’s broad mud-flats were thought impassable. However, Captain John Hughes-Hallet RN of the Planning Staff turned these shallows to the raiders’ advantage, because on the extra-high water of a spring tide it was possible that lightly laden ships and boats might scrape over these flats. Aerial photographs showed there was no boom protecting the dry-dock gate (the caisson ‘E’ on diagram p. 46) nor were there any barbed-wire entanglements ashore on the quays. The Captain also knew that mining the shallows was an unlikely precaution and technically difficult, thus leaving open a side entrance to the port. When they were ashore, Lord Mountbatten suggested, the raiders ‘might do something different’. This they did.
The destroyer HMS Campbeltown was given an explosive warhead to ram against the outer caisson. As big as a block of flats, this steel gate was 167ft × 54ft × 35ft thick (about 50m × 15m × 10m). Commandos would land from the destroyer and from coastal forces motorboats in small assault parties, demolition squads, and protection parties. Their part in the plan was to demolish the lock gates (‘L’ and ‘G’) so making the submarine basin tidal, and preventing U-boats passing freely into their eight bomb-proof pens on the west side of this basin, where five additional pens were being built. The raiders would also attack the inner (northern ‘B’) caisson, setting charges if possible inside its box sections. Other installations would be demolished, including the gates’ winding gear (‘A’ and ‘F’) which hauled the caissons aside to allow ships of up to 85,000 tons to enter the 1,148 feet (351m) dock. Also to be destroyed were the pumps used to empty it, these being in a deeper chamber below the dock level.
The commando parties were to come ashore as three points: over the bows of Campbeltown; on the Old Entrance quays; and on the Old Mole. Their first objective would be to capture quick-firing 20mm and 40mm guns around these positions; secondly they would hold perimeter bridges leading to the south and west sides of the submarine basin and the dry-dock while others gave close protection to the demolition parties. These squads were armed only with automatic pistols as each man carried a 60lb (27kg) rucksack of explosives and some had as much as 90lb (40kg) loads. The raid would truly be ‘the sauciest since Drake’.
The Elizabethan admiral was ‘war’ and wakin’ on that March weekend in 1942 when the navy’s little ships—lightly built wooden craft designed for high-speed attacks rather than close-quarters work—stormed into St Nazaire with their landing parties. The crews included many officers and men in for the duration, the ‘Hostilities only’ (HO) personnel like Able Seaman William Savage who manned the forward 2-pounder pom-pom on the motor gun boat. Although he had all the appearance of an old hand with his beard and sea-salt’s pipe, he was a brewery worker by trade. The little fleet’s senior officer was Commander R.E.D. Ryder RN, who had spent four days alone in the Atlantic after his Q-ship was sunk before she could bring her hidden guns into action. A dedicated professional seaman, he practised his motor launches (MLs), the motor gun boat (MGB), and the modified motor torpedo boat (MTB 74) operating in close company, manoeuvres they did not normally execute and only had a few weeks to learn. Indeed, MTB 74, with her torpedo tubes on the foredeck instead of amidships, was ready for sea only a few hours before the raid, her crew having changed one of her five engines. Details of these craft are shown in the caption to the diagram on page 46, but MTB 74 was an unusual ship even among these fast midgets. Her individualist skipper—Sub-Lieutenant R.C.M.V. Wynn RNVR—had devised an engineless torpedo with 2,200 lb (over 450kg) of explosive to be launched at close range. The torpedo then sank under a moored target and was fired by a time fuse which allowed MTB 74 time to get clear.
The commandos rehearsed their demolition exercises to the point of boredom, believing they were merely on another training course. But after a couple of weeks around Cardiff and Southampton docks—where there was a similar dry-dock to the battleship dock at St Nazaire—they could each carry out almost every demolition in under 10 minutes. The raiding force were then assembled at Falmouth, and on the afternoon of 26 March, a Thursday, they sailed with the khaki uniforms of the soldiers out of sight below decks.
At sea the force rolled south-westward in a light breeze, making 13 knots (24kph) with the MTB and MGB towed by destroyers. The crew of the explosive blockship HMS Campbeltown had been reduced to 75 hands; the four funnels she had carried as the USS Buchanan, old Buck, had been replaced by two raked-back stacks to resemble a German Möwe-class destroyer. She rode light in the water despite the extra armour-plate around her bridge and forming fences amidships to protect her commando landing parties where they would crouch on her final run, but she was carrying a minimum of fuel and water and her guns were gone except for a 12-pounder forward and oerlikons on the bridge wings. Below decks were 24 Mark VII depth-charges each of 4000lb (180kg) concreted into a steel box. Placed abaft the column of her forward gun, the warhead would be protected from the impact of ramming the caisson as the bows crumpled, and the eight-hour delay chemical fuses would give the raiders time to get clear before the acid ate through copper discs. Alternative two-and-a-half-hour fuses were available, but all who might know if these were also used were killed in the action.
During Thursday night the force changed course, and hoisted German colours. Next morning they sighted U-593 and attacked her; about midday they came on a fleet of French trawlers but were satisfied they carried no German radio operators. News from Plymouth of five Wolfe/Möwe destroyers in the estuary caused some concern, but these ships were sent to investigate what mines had been laid by the force—mistakenly thought to be sailing west when U-593 signalled her base. There was little for the crews to do. They smeared grease or paint to prevent the MLs’ bridge windows glinting and on Campbeltown the commandos mounted their two 3-inch (76mm) mortars forward of the gun and the last rehearsal was held.
The success of their final run depended on a diversionary air raid. But the possibility of French casualties, with cloud at 3,000 feet (1,000m) obscuring the docks, led to only four of the bombers dropping their loads, while some 30 other Whitleys and 25 Wellingtons flew around above the clouds. The activity was unusual enough to cause Captain Mecke, commanding the naval Flak Brigade’s anti-aircraft guns, to guess ‘some devilry was afoot’ when the air raid petered out before midnight.
An hour before then, at 2300 hours, Lieutenant Nigel T. B. Tibbetts RN set the fuses on Campbeltown’s warhead. An expert on explosives he had been responsible for the design and building of this 4½ tons charge. Its fuses were expected to blow the lot about five o’clock next morning. Saturday, or at the latest by nine o’clock.
The ships had some 10 miles to go; the MLs had used their extra fuel and filled the spare tanks with seawater as they stole into the estuary in two columns, headed by MGB 314:
MGB 314
Ryder and Newman
(7) ML 270
with torpedoes
Irwin RN
(8) ML 160
with torpedoes
Boyd RN
HMS Campbeltown
Beattie RN
Copland directing landing
Roy assault
Roderick assault
Chant, Smalley, Burtenshaw,
Brett, Purdon—demolition
Proctor 3-in mortars
(9) ML 447
Platt RN
Birney assault
(1) ML 192
Stephens RN
Burn assault
(15) ML 446
Falconer RN
Hodgson assault
(2) ML 262
Burt RN
Woodcock demolition
Morgan protection
(11) ML 457
Collier RN
Pritchard demolition
Walton demolition
Watson protection
(3) ML 267
Beart RN
Moss HQ party
(12) ML 307
Wallis RN
Bradley demolition
(4) ML 268
Tillie RN
Pennington demolition
Jenkins protection
(13) ML 443
Horlock RN
Basset-Wilson demolition
Bonvin demolition
Houghton protection
(5) ML 156
with torpedoes
Fenton RN
Hooper assault
(14) ML 306
Henderson RN
Savayne demolition
Vanderwerve protection
(6) ML 177
with torpedoes
Rodier RN
Haine assault
(10) ML 447
Brault RN
cdo to (15)
before action
(16) ML 446
Nock RN
spare boat
(17) MTB 74
with special torpedoes
Wynn RN
Note: References in () are operational numbers for the St Nazaire raid.
These motorboats are difficult to handle at slow speed and Campbeltown was sluggish, but at speed she drew an extra foot aft and every inch counted as she came towards the mud. They passed the old wreck of the SS Lancastria, Campbeltown steering 050 degrees to offset the tide’s strong northerly set, and reduced speed to 10 knots, the MGB’s echo-sounder probing for some depth of water as the destroyer twice churned over mud-bars. Two German boats away to port challenged them but could not report the instrusion as these harbour patrol boats had no wireless.
Bill Copland ordered action stations at midnight, when the German searchlights were going out as the anti-aircraft defences stood down. Only the murmur of ships’ engines and swish of bows cutting the tide could be heard across the calm sea. In the port column heading for the Old Mole, an ML skipper caught the distinct smell of countryside, sweet traces of grass scents among the more pervasive exhaust fumes.
The clouds were parting and the moon showed dimly at first when the 12-pounder gun’s crew of cooks and stewards closed up aboard the destroyer. The commandos moved forward to man the 3-inch mortars. The destroyer passed a disused tower in midstream, but already the ships had been spotted at 0115 hours and Mecke signalled: Achtung Landegfahr—Beware landings. There was an unexplained delay of five or ten minutes—perhaps while the searchlight crews came back to their action stations on the great lights, including the five-foot beam on the west bank a mile or so downstream from the port, and the light commanding the river from the end of the Old Mole. German radar at St Marc or lookouts at about this time reported 17 ships, so the coastal batteries were closed up for action against ships.
The columns of MLs led by the destroyer riding high out of the water were suddenly caught in the harsh glare of the west bank searchlight. Other searchlights came on, but the German-looking silhouette of Campbeltown and some other confusions of identity enabled the intruders to bluff their way for another five minutes and about 2,000 yards (1,800m) nearer the harbour. Ryder fired some German Very recognition signals but these were the wrong shade of red for that night, and at 0127 the defence opened fire in its full fury.
Campbeltown struck her German colours and hoisted her battle ensign: she had about a mile to go. The 12-pounder exposed on a turntable mounting, the mortars and the oerlikons all fired at the flashes of German guns, as did the commandos in the MLs, firing brens in a pre-arranged fire-plan that helped conserve ammunition. As if to escape from the great pool of light, the destroyer gathered speed, but it moved with her, red, green, and orange tracer streaming into her sides. Occasionally there was the heavier judder as larger shells struck. Forward on the MGB’s exposed foredeck, Able Seaman Savage racked the Sperrbrecher with his 2-pounder pom-pom, knocking out this mine destroyer’s 88mm (3.5in) gun and setting fire to its ready-use ammunition lockers on deck. But the Sperrbrecher, unidentified before the raid although moored a few hundred yards from the east jetty was a strong ship. Nevertheless, for some five minutes the British guns seemed to gain a temporary advantage.
Campbeltown took the brunt of the shot and shell, her captain—Lieutenant-CommanderS (Sam) H. Beattie RN—blinded by searchlights yet making last-minute corrections to her course when a rift in the smoke showed she was not heading for the caisson, still 700 yards upriver. The coxswain and the quartermaster were killed at the wheel, and Nigel Tibbets took the helm. MLs 7 and 8 drove ahead, firing at the Mole and dockgate batteries. At the last moment a heavy incendiary bomb—from an RAF plane—hit the foredeck of Campbeltown but the ship forged ahead, ripped over the anti-torpedo nets, and rammed the caisson. Sam Beattie swung her stern to starboard as she hit, leaving clear the Old Entrance for the MLs’ landing. It was 0134 hours, just four minutes behind the planned time of impact.
The columns of MLs were now under heavy fire, the port group of MLs making for the Mole to land their commandos, the starboard group intending to slip under the stern of Campbeltown into the Old Entrance. Something of the MLs’ agony as they fought their way towards the quays can be seen in the diagram on page 46. Most of them were so badly damaged that they sank or were forced to withdraw as shell splinters cut their steering lines and tracer set fire to fuel tanks, but they gave a good account of themselves because the port was defended by well-sited, quick-firing guns used for anti-aircraft or anti-ship fire. Some of these guns were on the top of the submarine pens, others were on concrete towers as large as a couple of houses but far more strongly built. The tower near the south caisson received more than a hundred hits from the British motor launches and other Royal Navy guns, but the strongpoint on the Old Mole, some 400 yards downstream from the Old Entrance, still commanded the river despite the raiders’ fire. The 20mm and 40mm quick-firing guns here were in or on concrete emplacements, and although the crew of the outer guns were knocked out for a time the Germans got this battery firing again, and the searchlight on the Mole’s tip was never put out.
A few commandos struggled ashore, among them Captain Michael Burn, who went alone threequarters of a mile across the docks to near the northern bridge where he did what he could to destroy an unmanned battery and was visited by Bill Copland doing a round of the northern positions. Many of the commandos, though, died out on the river: Regimental Sergeant-Major A. Moss leading the tiny reserve of 2 Commando’s assault troops was killed swimming in the river after giving his place on a life-raft to a young soldier; many were burnt in the pools of flaming petrol.
Despite the heavy fire and German infantry dropping grenades from the Mole, ML11 got Captain Bill Pritchard, Lieutenant Philip Walton, and Lieutenant W. H. (Tiger) Watson ashore with their squads. Bill Pritchard hurrying them on towards their objectives around the south entrance bridge (‘D’) beyond the old town, although Tiger Watson wanted to clear the Mole first. Two other MLs got men ashore under Campbeltown’s stern and the MGB landed Charles Newman with his fighting headquarters—two tommy-gunners and a signaller—about the time Campbeltown rammed the lock. Landing the headquarters at the Old Entrance was itself a miracle of seamanship among the blazing wrecks and heavy fire directed at
the MGB.
The destroyer’s forward gun crew and mortarmen were all dead or wounded, her bow a cauldron of smoke and thermite fumes, even though the incendiary bomb was put out before it set fire to Campbeltown’s warhead of depth charges. Her oerlikons blazed at the batteries on the harbour wall as Bill Copland calmly marshalled the assault parties. Dressed for easy recognition in white blancoed webbing, with clean (at the start) faces, and with every second man carrying a blue-lensed pencil-beamed torch, the assault parties dropped their scaling-ladders over the bow and plunged ashore. John Roderick’s party attacked the guns off the starboard bow, the 12 men capturing the first gun’s sandbagged emplacement in a grenade-throwing rush along the dock wall. They knocked out the next emplacement, but then came to one of those house-like a ack-ack towers. Unable to get up is outside flight of steps, they lobbed grenades on to the gun platform, killing the gun commander and men drawing ammunition inside the tower, before moving along the harbour wall to take a 40 mm gun position. Then they returned to the destroyer. Beyond this last position was a fourth gun and a searchlight which were also destroyed, although not by Roderick’s men. Possibly some men from an ML or maybe the boats’ gunfire did this damage.
Within a couple of minutes of going over the destroyer’s port side, Donald Roy’s kilted Scotsmen were attacking the pumphouse 50 yards from the caisson (‘H’ on diagram p. 46). The gun crews on its roof fled, and the commandos doubled on to the bridge (‘G’) across the Old Entrance lock into the submarine basin, holding this exposed position for half an hour under fire from 20mm guns on the roof on the submarine pens and other buildings on the west side of the basin.
For the demolition parties the days of scheming and planning were over: now they needed steady nerves and physical strength. The five squads aboard Campbeltown had several targets. Stuart Chant (5 Commando), with four sergeants, would destroy the pumping station. Robert Burtenshaw (also from ‘No.5’), with six NCOs, had a reserve of explosives to place inside the southern caisson if the destroyer had failed to ram. Christopher Smalley and four NCOs would demolish the winding-house for this caisson. The other two squads had further to go in attacking similar installations around the northern or inner caisson. All these men were encumbered with their heavy loads and had only automatic pistols. Some where wounded before they left the destroyer, including Stuart Chant and Sergent Chamberlain. Many of these squads also carried sledge-hammers, axes and incendiaries.
Commandos and Rangers of World War II Page 6