THE BACKGROUND TO THE OPERATION
LtCol Augustus Charles Newman VC, known as ‘Colonel Charles’ to his men. He commanded 2 Commando and was designated Military Force Commander for the raid. The majority of the commandos who took part in Operation Chariot came from 2 Commando. (Imperial War Museum, HU 16542)
On 24 May 1941 the battlecruiser HMS Hood and the battleship HMS Prince of Wales confronted the German battleship Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen in the north Atlantic. After just ten minutes of action the pride of the British fleet, the Hood, blew up and sank. The two German ships then concentrated their fire on the Prince of Wales, causing it some damage. The engagement was soon broken off and the British battleship withdrew, but not before Bismarck itself had been hit, causing her to lose fuel oil and take in sea water. Later that day she separated from the Prinz Eugen and set a course for the French port of St Nazaire. History will relate that she was intercepted on route by a superior British naval force and sunk.
The town and port of St Nazaire lying on the western side of the River Loire, six miles from the sea. The Normandie Dock (Forme Ecluse Louis Joubert) is seen lying at an angle near the mid-top of the picture. At the top right, jutting out into the river, is the Old Mole. The section of water in the middle of the picture is the Submarine Basin, with the incomplete submarine pens below and the Southern Entrance to the docks on the right. (Imperial War Museum, C3465)
St Nazaire contained the only dry dock on the Atlantic coast capable of handling the great German warship. The massive Normandie Dock in the port was, at that time, the largest dry dock in the world. It was completed in 1932 to hold the great passenger liner Normandie and remained at the centre of the important shipbuilding and repair facility that thrived in the town prior to the war. When the Bismarck was damaged the dockyard at St Nazaire became the immediate and obvious destination for the battleship. It was fortunate for the British that she never arrived at the port, for once safely within the heavily fortified perimeter, the ship would have posed a sustained threat to Atlantic commerce and would have been a very difficult target to attack. Indeed this point was well illustrated a little later when the two great battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau remained holed up in Brest for several months, surviving a series of unsuccessful bombing raids by the RAF which caused them virtually no damage at all. In February 1942, they broke out of the port and dashed through the English Channel, defying the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force and numerous coastal gun batteries to join up with other German capital ships in the relative safety of the Baltic ports.
The German battleship Bismarck after she had been damaged by HMS Prince of Wales during the action in which HMS Hood was sunk. Bismarck’s fo’c’sle is lying low in the water and she is making for the great dry dock at St Nazaire on the French Atlantic coast for repair. (Imperial War Museum, HU 400)
The end of the Bismarck did not free the British Admiralty from the spectre of a powerful German strike force breaking loose in the Atlantic, for the Bismarck had an even more powerful sister ship, the Tirpitz, nearing completion in Germany. In 1941 Britain was fighting alone and depended on its sea routes to supply the material it needed to feed its people and to prosecute the war against the Axis powers of Germany and Italy. The success of the German submarine campaign against its shipping often caused great hardship and shortages, but the German U-boats could be attacked, and often contained, by small destroyers and frigates. Battleships and heavy cruisers were another matter entirely. These great leviathans could only be countered by other capital ships or aircraft and the availability of these weapons in the vast wastes of the North Atlantic was limited.
The existence of this German battleship, the Tirpitz, was the prime reason for the raid. The mere threat of the ship breaking out into the north Atlantic was enough to keep several British battleships idle, waiting to react should such an event take place. (Imperial War Museum, HU2627)
In January 1942 the Tirpitz became operational and left the Baltic for the shelter of the Norwegian fjords. The threat that the battleship posed, and the realisation of what it could do to Britain’s vital supply lines, became almost an obsession with the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. The mere existence of Tirpitz meant that four British capital ships had to be held in readiness at all times, waiting for her should she exit into the deep waters of the Atlantic. Added to this force were two battleships provided by the Americans, who had entered the war in December 1941. Churchill told his Chiefs of Staff that no other target was comparable to the destruction of the great German capital ship. He even went so far as to say that the whole strategy of the war turned on her mere existence. This message was not lost on the leaders of Britain’s war effort who were all too aware of the Tirpitz’s awesome reputation. Both the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force were already devising methods of using their hard pressed resources against the German battleship.
Whilst one arm of the Admiralty was attempting to organise the elimination of the Tirpitz as she lay at anchor, other planners were tackling the question of what to do should she ever break out. The Admiralty knew that if the Tirpitz ventured into the great Atlantic Ocean, she would need a safe refuge to return to, especially if she was unlucky enough to sustain damage such as that which befell the Bismarck. The only dock which was large enough to be able to take her for repairs was that provided by the port of St Nazaire. Thus, if this facility was denied to them, it was unlikely the German Navy would risk the Tirpitz in the Atlantic. Any aggressive sorties she might make would have to be confined to those colder waters ploughed by the Arctic convoys. A means had to be found to render the dry dock unusable.
CHRONOLOGY
1932
April
- The largest dry dock in the world is completed in St Nazaire to hold the great Atlantic luxury liner Normandie.
1940
10 May
- Hitler begins his invasion of France and the Low Countries, sweeping all opposition aside.
4 June
- Bulk of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) is evacuated from Dunkirk.
17 June
- The liner Lancastria is sunk whilst evacuating the last troops of the BEF from St Nazaire. Over 4,500 people are missing, creating the greatest single loss of life in British maritime history.
21 June
- France surrenders and signs an armistice with Germany, agreeing to the Nazi occupation of half the country. The German Army moves to occupy the whole of the Atlantic coast of France.
1941
24 May
- German Battleship Bismarck is damaged in an action with the Royal Navy in the North Atlantic and is making for the dry dock in St Nazaire when she is sunk.
August
- German battleship Tirpitz nears completion in the Baltic and the British Admiralty considers the possibility of her and other heavy warships being used against Allied shipping in the north Atlantic, with the dry dock at St Nazaire becoming a refuge and repair facility.
October
- Admiralty considers ways of denying the Normandie Dock to the enemy, but the problem is shelved when no practicable solution can be found.
1942
January
- Tirpitz becomes operational and leaves the Baltic for the Norwegian fjords. Churchill gives the task of eliminating the battleship the highest priority and the Chief of Combined Operations (Mountbatten) is asked to find the means of destroying the Normandie Dock.
7 February
- Draft scheme for the destruction of the Normandie Dock (Operation Chariot) agreed by Mountbatten and put to Vice-Chief of Naval Staff. The plan outlines a raid by naval forces to ram the lock gates, together with a commando force to demolish port installations. 23 February, LtCol Newman appointed Military Force Commander for the raid.
25 February
- Commander Ryder appointed Naval Force Commander for Operation Chariot.
3 March
- Chiefs of Staff Committee finally approve the raid. 12 March, Motor Launches assemble at Falmouth.
13 March
- HMS Princess Josephine Charlotte arrives at Falmouth with the bulk of the commandos who will take part in the operation.
18 March
- MGB 314, Ryder and Newman’s headquarters ship, arrives in Falmouth.
22 March
- Night exercise by ‘Chariot’ forces test the defences of Devonport Dockyard at Plymouth. The exercise is a shambles.
25 March
- HMS Campbeltown arrives in Falmouth with her new captain, Lt Commander Beattie, at the helm.
26 March
- Campbeltown and the raiding flotilla of small ships sail for St Nazaire.
27 March
- Force at sea.
01.34hrs, 28 March
- HMS Campbeltown rams the outer caisson of the Normandie Dock in St Nazaire and the commandos begin their destruction of the port installations.
10.35hrs, 28 March
- HMS Campbeltown blows up, destroying the outer lock gate and putting the Normandie Dock out of commission for the remainder of the war.
PLANNING THE RAID
The Normandie Dock at St Nazaire had, in 1942, become a strategic target of the utmost importance. It was, however, a target that proved a difficult proposition to attack. The problem of how to eliminate the dock had been challenging the planners for many months, even before Churchill had put extra pressure on his Chiefs of Staff to eliminate the threat of the Tirpitz. Various proposals had been put forward, but the difficulties associated with its destruction seemed insurmountable.
It was known that bombing raids on port installations were not a very effective way to eliminate the vital workings of a dock. Such raids could destroy large areas of buildings and sheds, but were less likely to hit and destroy such things as lock gates, cranes and pump houses. Here high-level bombers attack the port of St Nazaire. (Imperial War Museum, C3462)
Precision bombing at that time was not the exact science that it became later in the war. The ability of the RAF to hit a precise target at night, in the face of concentrated enemy anti-aircraft fire was questionable. RAF raids on St Nazaire were relatively ineffective, with no vital installations ever having been knocked out. The presence of the French civilian population in close proximity to the dockyard, and a genuine reluctance by the British government to cause innocent casualties, all meant that the RAF was unable to press home an attack that could cause damage to the dock to any significant degree. It was clear that the Normandie Dock could not be bombed out of existence, for the means of doing so were not available.
The liner Normandie, the pride of the French maritime fleet, in the massive dry dock in St Nazaire before the war. In the foreground is the winding shed with the long water-filled camber linking it to the outer caisson of the dock. The dock was opened by pulling the caisson on its rollers back into the camber. Immediately behind the camber is the pumping house. The dry dock also served as a lock, linking the Penhoët Basin with the River Loire. (Imperial War Museum, HL 53265)
A surface raid against the heavily defended port using the techniques of the day would mean certain detection well before any landings could be made – the process of bringing a landing ship close enough to launch numbers of commando-filled landing craft to attack the docks would be sure to end in disaster. St Nazaire is located five miles up the treacherous estuary of the River Loire and is only approachable from the sea by a single narrow channel, which, in 1942, was covered by several batteries of coast defence guns. Any ship anchoring close enough to the shore to launch small craft would be quickly blasted out of existence, as would any small landing craft that attempted the long slow run up the river to the port installations.
The newly built luxury cruise liner Infinity sits in the Normandie Dock being fitted out before delivery to her owners. The view is looking towards the southern caisson, which was rammed by the Campbeltown during the raid. (Author’s collection)
Special Operations Executive (SOE) was asked if it would be possible for its agents in France to sabotage the gates of the dry dock. Its planners considered the matter but concluded that the weight of explosives required and the number of covert operatives needed to carry out the task put the operation beyond its limited resources. Thus it was that the matter was put aside during 1941 as being impractical.
In January 1942 Churchill’s insistence that the Tirpitz threat be given the highest priority resulted in the Chief of Combined Operations, Lord Louis Mountbatten, being asked to look again at finding the means of destroying the Normandie Dock. This time a new approach was found. It was known that in late March there would be exceptionally high spring tides which would allow a vessel of shallow draught free passage over the sand banks and bars that dotted the estuary of the Loire, rather than approaching the docks along the dredged, and well-protected, shipping channel. Clearly the current type of landing ship then in use by Combined Operations – converted cross-channel ferries – was unsuitable, but if a ship could be found that was both light enough to clear the shoals and heavy enough to carry a large load of explosives with which to blow the outer gate of the dry dock, then such an operation might be feasible.
With this slim chance that targeting the Normandie Dock might indeed become a possibility, Mountbatten’s team at Combined Operations set to work evolving a plan. On 31 January they drafted a scheme that took account of most of the problems confronting the operation and proposed solutions to the worst of them.
It was suggested that two specially lightened destroyers would carry out the operation. The first would be packed with explosives and carry a team of commandos trained in demolition techniques. The destroyer would ram the outer gate (caisson) of the dry dock and then disembark the commandos to carry out further demolition work on the dockyard installations. The destroyer would then be blown up by delayed-action fuses, destroying the outer caisson. The second destroyer would act as an escort on the way in and then evacuate the crew of the first destroyer and the commandos once their tasks were completed. To help divert the enemy’s attention whilst all this was going on, the RAF would carry out a succession of air raids in the vicinity of the port. The plan was full of imponderables and was hazardous in the extreme, but at least it formed a possible framework on which to build an operation that was of critical importance to the progress of the war.