Dan Snow's History Hit - Operation Jubilee: A Pinch Raid at Dieppe?

Episode Date: March 30, 2021

On 19 August 1942, a six thousand strong combined Allied landing force took part in a raid on Dieppe, Northern France. Sixty-seven percent of these became casualties. The raid has gone down in history as a catastrophe conceived by Lord Mountbatten. With the help of 100,000 pages of classified British military files, however, David O’Keefe has uncovered a pinch mission undertaken at Dieppe, concealed by the raid, to steal one of the new German 4-rotor Enigma code machines. In this first of two episodes from our sibling podcast Warfare, David tells James about the main raid, undertaken in the majority by his fellow Canadians, and explains the evidence which supports the theory that this was a pinch raid, not just by opportunity, but by design.Listen to part two of this podcast: The Enigma of Dieppe

Hello everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History. It gives me great pleasure to announce this is an episode of our sibling podcast, now called Warfare. We've extended it out. No longer just deal with the First and Second World Wars, we've extended this to become a kind of modern, early modern military history podcast. We're going to reach back all the way to the middle of the 18th century, seven years war-ish and onwards. I mean, if there's some War of Jenkins is here, War of Austrian Austrian succession and that, we'll probably put it in. We're not too dogmatic about these things. So this is the New Warfare podcast with Dr. James Rogers, of course. Now this episode is all about Dieppe. On the 19th of August 1942, a raid took place against the German-occupied French port of Dieppe.

It was a bloodbath. My family are Canadians, and this is remembered in Canada as one of the darkest days of the Second World War. Canadian troops bore the brunt of fighting, which saw thousands killed or captured on the beaches. The effectiveness of German defence was such that it encouraged the Allies, it encouraged Churchill to stop thinking about attacking a port when the eventual invasion of Europe arrived in 1944, instead to attack a beach where defences would be thinner and bring

their own port with them for resupply. Hence the plan to attack the beaches of Normandy and take the Mulberry harbours with them, these gigantic harbours towed across the Channel and built within just a couple of days. Anyway, this episode features David O'Keefe. He's uncovered a secret mission within the Dieppe landings to pinch Enigma-related material, the top-secret German encryption machine that the Allies were so desperate to break into. This is an extraordinary story, so enjoy this episode of the Warfare podcast, all about the Enigma of Dieppe. If you want to listen to this or any of our other podcasts without ads, if you want to watch some of the hundreds of hours of documentaries that we've got access to, please go to historyhit.tv for a small subscription, very small subscription. You get access to like the Netflix for history. It's got the audio on there. It's got the videos on there. It's got it all happening. Head over there to history.tv after listening to this episode of Warfare

with David O'Keefe. Hi, Dave. How are you doing today? I'm doing fine. I'm doing fine. Thank you so much for having me. No, no worries at all. How's your new year going? So far, so good. We're handling the pandemic like champs, like London in 1940 with the Blitz. We're hunkering down and we're soldiering on.

Well, I think we're all happy to be in 2021 and long may it improve. So you're talking to us from Canada today. Yes, I am. I'm from a little place called Rigo, which is in a little mountain community just outside of Montreal in Quebec. And so I'm hunkered in my bunker like most people are. I mean, it doesn't sound like it's tropical or warm, Dave. No, not at all. As a matter of fact, it's about minus 15 today. A little bit of snow on the ground, and of course, this is what it's going to be like for the next 90 days. Oh, wow. I mean, it does sound pretty beautiful, though. So, you know, you can't complain too much. It's one of the most beautiful cities in the world. I'm not complaining. Well, Canada seems like the right place to be given the

topic that we're talking about today. August 19th, 1942, the darkest day in Canadian military history. What happened on this day? August 19th, 1942, that one day in August is the Dieppe raid which is considered to be one of the most controversial operations in the entire second world war as you mentioned extremely important for Canadians although in reality it's a British or combined operations raid it has massive Canadian, and it turned into a disaster very quickly. 5,000 men took part in the raid, at least the landing force, and out of them, over 67% became casualties. 1,000 were killed. That includes British and American and Polish, and 907 of them were Canadians. So you can imagine, I mean, our losses in Afghanistan were roughly about

150 soldiers over the 13 years we were there. 907 Canadians died in just between six and nine hours on the beaches on August 19th. So you can imagine that this had an incredible impact on Canada in 1942. I mean, how bad did it get on the beaches of Dieppe? Because this specific episode of the Second World War has always fascinated me. Because my granddad was manning one of the guns on a destroyer during the entirety of this raid, and the stories that come out of this, well, they are bloody horrendous. What sort of percentage are we talking about in terms of attrition of entire regiments? Well, we're talking about the main Canadian battalions that land on the main beaches at Dieppe and even on

the flanks. We're talking about 94 to 97% casualties. They are completely wiped out. We are talking about the opening day of the Somme, essentially, in microcosm, of course. And the fighting on the beaches was absolutely horrific. As a matter of fact, most of the Canadian soldiers could not get off the beaches, or if they did, they got onto the promenade but couldn't penetrate into the port. Some of them, for instance, the Royal Regiment of Canada, which was outside of Dieppe, a little place on the flank called Puy, known as Blue Beach, they didn't even get off the beach. The men who were not gunned down, kind of like the opening of Saving Private Ryan, if you will, were not gunned down trying to make it to the beach, ended up hunkering under the cliffs. And if you've ever been to Dieppe, you understand the dramatic

landscape. Dieppe is a port that's nestled in the cliffs on the French Channel coast. And of course, it's flanked by two giant cliffs that overlook and control the entrance to the port. So unless you are able to get these into your hands and into your hands quickly, any raiding force is going to pay a heavy price. And that's exactly what happened on August 19th. So drawing on your own military experience, because I know you were an officer in Black Watch in Canada, could this get any worse if you are an invading force? Could the situation be any more dire? You're stuck almost literally between a rock and a hard place. Yeah, that's it. No, I don't think you could get worse in a situation like this. There were a few, if you will, bright

spots, relatively speaking. There was a limited amount of success on the right flank at Green Beach, but not enough to change the fortunes on the day. Main Beach, Red and White Beaches, as they were called, were absolute charnel house. That's where you would get the 97% casualties in the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry in the Essex Scottish of Canada. Not to mention the tanks, the Calgary Tank Regiment, which were landing Churchill tanks, which were considered to be experimental at the time, they are wiped out completely. And when I say wiped out, the tanks are not lost. The tanks are abandoned because frankly, you can't get them off the beach at the end. They run out of fuel, they run out of ammunition, and they lose roughly about 30. All 29 that are scheduled to land end up being lost to the Germans at this time. And then, of course,

there's also a massive air battle going on. People tend to forget that you've got roughly 800 aircraft in the sky, RAF, all different squadrons in the RAF, whether it be Canadian squadrons or Czech squadrons or Polish squadrons, and of course, the British squadrons. So you've got a massive air battle that's going on above. And then you have 250 ships, small vessels, of course, as you were mentioning, your grandfather was on a destroyer and destroyer was about the largest or most potent vessel that was in the raid. But 250 ships is a sizable armada to be able to sneak across the channel. So this is quite the operation to say the least.

And everything goes off the rails almost immediately. quite the operation to say the least, and everything goes off the rails almost immediately. The basic reason is that it's predicated on surprise and surprise to a level. And of course, you always need surprise or you would like to have surprise in any operation you pull off. But part of it has, when you get down to the planning, where you set the sliders. In other words, how much are you going to go to one end in your attempt to achieve surprise? And that was the key here for so many years, taking a look at why surprise was so primordial to this operation, even to the point of seeming irresponsible. And of course, that was one of the big mysteries, which, you know, through the research, I was able to shed light on and solve that surprise was everything, because that's exactly what they needed to be able

to pull off a pinch operation. Okay, so put this mission into a broader perspective for us. We've had the failures of Dunkirk in 1940, and of course, Overlord doesn't come until 44. So in 42, we're still at a time of uncertainty in the war. And there's definitely no guarantee of victory. In fact, things really weren't going well. So what is Dieppe all about? Was it a rehearsal for D-Day? Is it an attempt to show allied fighting spirit? Are we trying to test Hitler? Is it an invasion? What is going on here? Well, I think one of the problems is getting your head around what this operation was, at least architecturally speaking.

A lot of times we see it in the context of D-Day or the context of other amphibious operations. And yes, without a doubt, it's an amphibious operation. But this really is, as Churchill said, a butcher and bolt raid. You are not coming to set up shop. You are not coming to create a bridgehead, set up a lodgement, build up a lodgement, break out, and take the fight to Nazi Germany. That's what you're doing in 1944. That's what you're doing in 1943 or even 42 in Torch and 43 in Italy.

This is a raid very similar to what had happened at the Lafoten Islands twice on two occasions, St. Nazaire and the aborted raid at Bayonne. This was all part and parcel of a developing doctrine and a developing strategy. And as the research reveals, this was part of a developing pinch policy. In other words, for capturing material that was related to anything to do with the four-rotor enigma by 1942, but they had started these raids earlier in 1940 and 41. And I think one of the big things is when we start taking a look at it is we have to now question or do a rethink of Mountbatten's combined operations. In other words, we thought that a lot of these raids were put on simply for PR purposes. In other words,

you know, a little poke in the eye to the Germans. We want to get back in the game. And without a doubt, there are elements of that. But remember, you can dress up anything you want to make it look like what you want when you're the one calling the shots. And in combined operations, you are the master of your own domain. You control everything. You know when you're going to strike. You know how you're going to strike. So as a result, you can dictate the storyline, the narrative afterwards. And so a lot of those narratives that we see throughout all these operations was for PR purposes. And the reality is that there is a pinch component to every single one of these operations. And this is the only way that the British are able to pinch the material

desperately needed by the codebreakers at Bletchley Park during the period of 1940 to 1942. And they've done this. They've done this up in Norway. They've done it successfully. And now they are actually developing, which is a pinch policy. And I think that's probably one of the things, if you talk about eureka moments during research, that would have been it. When GCHQ released some material that showed that there was actually a pinch policy in practice, that they were developing this. And starting in 1940, 41, they basically divided it up into three categories. You had pinch by chance, pinch by opportunity, and pinch by design. So basically, pinch by chance is very simple. In other words,

middle of an operation, you find a code book or any kind of material, or maybe even this funny thing that looks like a typewriter, which happens to be an Enigma machine, part of the wheels or whatever else, grab it. Fantastic. Bring it back. Pinch by opportunity. In other words, we have something planned and we're likely going to come into contact with what you're looking for. So be prepared for it. And then finally, we have a problem to solve. Solve it now. Create an operation by design and go get it. So this was the moment during the research where I thought, oh my God, this is the glue that holds it all together, where then I felt comfortable enough coming out almost seven years ago and shooting my mouth off and saying, this is what Dieppe

was all about. Because the pinch, when I discovered that there was a pinch element to Dieppe, I really thought it was a caboose on a train. I thought it was kind of ad hoc, thrown on at the last moment. But when you see that there was a tremendous amount of thinking, tremendous amount of effort put into this, not only with Dieppe, but with the Lafoten operations, two of them, one in March of 41, one in December of 41. A whole bunch of smaller pinch operations during 41 as well. And then into 42, a lot of people don't realize that there was also a pinch component with the St. Nazaire raid, the famous St. Nazaire raid.

And of course, its twin operation, which was aborted at the last moment when they were just outside of Bayonne. So what you now have is precedent. You have a series of pinch operations, and when you put them all together, it completely recasts our understanding of what combined operations was there for. Combined operations becomes the ultimate delivery vehicle for these kind of operations because they're the only ones capable of doing it in this desperate time that we're talking about, when Great Britain is on the defensive, essentially right around the world. So hang on, Dieppe has gone down in history as not only a bloody massacre of troops, but also one which had little strategic success.

But are you saying to me that at the core of this was a pinch operation? Was this pinch by design? Was this pinch by opportunity? Was the whole mission planned around this? Yeah, well, that's the interesting part. As bizarre as it seems, it does come down to an argument

between the pinch by opportunity and pinch by design. The overwhelming amount of evidence, in my opinion, and you can read it in the book and you can see it, is that it was a pinch by design right from the start. As a matter of fact, in March of 1942, Naval Intelligence makes the discovery that the four-rotor Enigma, and I'll probably have to back up a little bit, it took so much blood and treasure, if you will, for the British to break into the three-roader version of the naval enigma. So basically, the odds of breaking into a naval enigma without captured material to help you cheat the system is about 150 million, million, million to one. So in other words, winning a lottery every day for 150 years, good luck.

Well, they did do that. Not only men like Alan Turing, but Peter Twin and Dilley Knox. There were a lot more than just Turing working on this issue. But what gave them the leg up is the first break. And the first break came from captured material. And they realized that this was how you feed the beast of Bletchley. So as a result, this is how they started to move. And they made great strides with breaking into the three-rotor enigma. And of course, this changes the complexion of the war at sea. The Germans are experiencing what they call the happy time. In other words, they are sinkings of British merchant vessels are going through the roof,

particularly when it comes to tankers. And that was a real choke point, something that the Brits were very sensitive of, without a doubt. So generally speaking, you could calculate anywhere between 130,000 and 300,000 tons of merchant shipping losses per month and everything would be fine. During the first happy times, we're talking about 500,000 to 600,000 that are being lost. So twice the rate that's considered to be acceptable. So you can imagine the kind of strain that this is having on Great Britain,

particularly when they're alone in 1940-41. that this is having on Great Britain, particularly when they're alone in 1940-41. You're listening to Warfare, a new podcast from History Hit on Dan Snow's History Hit. More after this. Land a Viking longship on island shores. Scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence.

Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Breaking into Enigma rebalances things, if you will, gives them hope because something like cryptanalysis is an incredible weapons system because now you have insight. It may not be 100%, but it's kind of like sitting in a poker game where you can read three or five of your opponent's cards. It may not mean that your hand

is going to beat his, but at least you'll know where to hedge your bets. And so that's the key, particularly in the strained conditions of 1940 and 41, where the British are looking for anything and everything to maximize what little they have. So once you know what your enemy is up to, what he wants to do, what he plans to do, where he's going to go, et cetera, then you can make calculated rather than blind risks. And that's certainly what we see in the Battle of the Atlantic in 1941. Well, unfortunately, the Brits, as I found out, British Naval Intelligence finds out that a four-rotor version of the Enigma actually exists in early 1941. And from what we can see for the

first four months, they don't really do anything because they're so worried about the three-rotor and trying to break into it. The four-rotor hasn't come into effect yet, but they know it exists, which means 150 million, million, million to one. Now those odds go up to, and being a historian, I had to look up this number, 92 septillion to one. So a million, billion, trillion, quadrillion, quintillion, sextillion, and septillion. So you can imagine the absolute terror that was felt by Bletchley Park and Naval Intelligence knowing that this could could very well be a permanent blackout if the four-rotor comes in, unless they are able to make strides. Well, their first couple of pinch raids in 1941 end up gaining some success when it comes to the three-rotor, but they're striking out with the four-rotor. But they keep pushing the envelope in the summer of 1941.

pushing the envelope in the summer of 1941. And unfortunately, that appears to have tipped off the Germans that something was amiss and that they better start speeding up the introduction of the four-rotor. And so sure enough, in the fall of 1941, the Brits discover on a sinking U-boat a lid from a four-rotor machine. In other words, they hadn't become operational, but they were being distributed in preparation for becoming operational. So when they were going to come, they didn't know. So they threw on another pinch rate up in Lafoten, hoping they were going to get to score again. They didn't. They got a lot to do with the three-rotor, but nothing on the four-rotor. So basically, and this is where I argue in the book, Admiral John Godfrey, who was the director of Naval Intelligence, I would argue makes an extremely crucial mistake.

He sticks his head in the sand, basically hoping that the Germans are never going to bring this in as long as they can maintain the faith that the three-roader is still secure. Well, that changes because Admiral Donitz, who was the head of the German U-boat fleet, decided that things were not as secure as he had hoped. So he orders the introduction of the four-rotor cipher. So suddenly on February 1st, 1942, all U-boats in the Atlantic go over to the four-rotor and instantly Bletchley is blacked out. And so now we were talking about the Balancing Act before. Well, now the Balancing Act before. Well, now the Balancing Act returns to the Germans. The sinkings of merchant vessels are now skyrocketing

to about 650,000 to 700,000, 750,000 at times per month. I guess in some cases from the British perspective, it's offset by the fact that now a lot of those ships are Americans because the Americans have come into the war. But this opens up another Pandora's box. And this is part of the intelligence sharing agreement. There's a lot of political pressure here because as part of the sharing agreement, intelligence sharing agreement, which was going on before the Americans were actually officially into the war, the British were supposed to provide all enigma-related intelligence successes to the Americans. When I sat down with Professor Harry Hinsley, the legendary intelligence analyst at Bletchley Park, and of course, Professor Emeritus, he mentioned, he said, yeah, you have to understand

that not just in 1942, but the way we looked in Britain at something like ultra and cryptography and what Bletchley was doing was kind of like a last natural resource. Brits were trading away bases for destroyers. The very empire is hanging together by threads in many cases. And the last thing that Great Britain has that is distinctly their own is cryptographic technology. Great Britain is building the world's first computer at this time. So he said that part of this agreement was very important for Great Britain because they would open up the taps, they would build a pipeline and give everything to the Americans. So the Americans would never be in a position of pushing them aside and tapping into their own oil well,

building their own refinery and feeding the rest of the world. This was something that was considered to be a British resource. So when suddenly the Americans come into the war and they've been promised all this incredible intelligence, which they were getting through 1941, and then suddenly it shuts off. Now there's panic, not only at Bletchley, but there's panic in the British government because now the Americans want it, they're demanding it. And the fear is that if they don't get it, they're just going to push the British aside and they're going to go out of their way using the great industrial might and their resources to be able to create their own. So this is something that adds to the four-rotor crisis, not just the practical sinking that's

going on and the effects that that's having, not only on food stocks and oil and everything else, but this larger geostrategic question of intelligence relations. So as a result, when the four rotor is introduced, nobody can get into it. Sinkings are going up. There's stress and strain within the intelligence relationship. And now suddenly, March 13th, 1942, the Germans make an encryption mistake on a vessel in the channel. And these vessels have basically been under the watch of the British since 1940. They are always potential pinch targets. So as a result, they realized that through this garbled message that a surface vessel in the channel, which belongs to the 2nd Defense Division, which runs all the way between Boulogne and Cherbourg, using Dieppe and others as waypoints,

but mostly Dieppe because it's right in the center, has a four-rotor. So in other words, the 2nd Defense Division is now being outfitted with four-rotor machines. And so that sets off alarm bells. And that's when Godfrey, Admiral John Godfrey, the director of Naval Intelligence, he writes down, he said, that's when Dieppe got hot, right there. He said, that's in the last two weeks of March. That is it. That's when everything goes into overdrive. And that's borne out. There was some discussion that maybe Dieppe was a target as of January 42, but I have found no supporting evidence. There's only one mention in the memoirs of John Hughes Hallett, who was the naval force

commander and lead planner for the Dieppe operation. He mentions something as a bit of a throwaway line, but there is no supporting evidence. There's no intelligence collection. There's no planning done. There's no traffic in between headquarters. There's no planning done. There's no traffic in between headquarters. There's nothing. Maybe it was considered, but nothing serious was done until after the discovery that one of the vessels in the channel was carrying the forwarder. Then everything goes into overdrive. And what we probably don't realize, because this is a combined operations show when it goes in, was it's naval

intelligence that's doing the planning from the start, laying down the tracks for this operation. And they end up creating a almost a hundred page report all about landing areas at Dieppe and either side of Dieppe. And so that becomes the blueprints, if you will, the foundation for the entire operation. And the planning for what would be known as Operation Rudder, and then when it would go in, it was called Operation Jubilee, starts in two phases. The first phase is actually an outline plan, which is signed off on by the chiefs of staff without all the details in. And the outline plan only contains one unit at this time, and that is the Royal Marine Commando. And of

course, for years, it didn't really seem to make sense. Why was it that the Royal Marines were there? Nobody else was there. They seem to be central to the entire operation. As a matter of fact, getting them into the port seems to be the nugget at the beginning of all this. And it doesn't make sense because apparently, according to the plans that are there, they were there to capture barges, German invasion barges, which nobody could use. Even historian Robin Nealon said this looked like it was made up by a staff officer who was looking for something to do. And what we realized later is, of course, that was cover. That was cover because I was able to

discover the actual operational orders, which show that the pinch was in right from the beginning and the conception of the operation. So basically, the entire tasking of the Royal Marine Commando was to get into the harbor and pinch the material that Bletchley would need. So there's an infiltration plan, there's an exfiltration plan, there's four contingencies that are built in, and on the day, all four of them are exercised. So just from that itself, you can tell that this is the main thread and the locomotive, if you will. Again, like I said, I thought the pinch was nothing more than a caboose ad hoc when I started testing this hypothesis 25 years ago. But then the evidence just continued to build.

And then eventually it showed that right from the start, this was a pinch by design starting in late March of 1942 and carried on right until it went in on August 19th, 1942. So there you go. That was about eight minutes, right? What an eight minutes. I have so many questions, Dave. Right.

I've got one. I've got one ready. Okay. Who is in charge of this on the day? Who does this fall down to, to try and make this mission a success? Okay. That is a very complicated question because Combined Operations was a very complicated organization. What you'd have is actually four force commanders. Two of them are offshore, two are back in England. You have the land force commander, which is a Canadian by the name of John or Ham Roberts. He is a Canadian major general,

second division commander. You have John Hughes Hallett, who is the naval force commander and who was the lead planner. He wasn't the original naval force commander. They had another one by the name of Bailey Groman, who did not get along with Mountbatten and was very skeptical about this, and he was actually replaced. And then you have, of course, an RAF commander back in England who's working the air war or the air battle overhead. And then you have Admiral James, Bubbles James, who is technically the commander in chief out of Portsmouth. And he has overall responsibility for starting the raid. So what you don't realize is a lot of the architects

or a lot of the major players, with the exception of Ham Roberts and all this, are very much wed to Signal's intelligence. A lot of people don't realize Mountbatten's father was director of naval intelligence. He grew up in a naval intelligence household. They used to discuss things at the dinner table, as he would say.

And also too, we always look at vainglorious Dickie Mountbatten, and without a doubt he was. But he was nowhere near the kind of upper-class twit of the year that he's sometimes portrayed to be. Much more of a technocrat than we ever realized. And also, too, he was very interested in signals intelligence and signals security. As a matter of fact, he ended up writing the entire signal security plan for the Mediterranean fleet. This is something that a lot of people don't realize. So he has a fundamental understanding of what signals intelligence, cryptography, et cetera, is about. You add Bubble James. Admiral James was on the legendary

director of naval intelligence in World War I, Admiral Blunker-Haw. He was on his staff. Director of Naval Intelligence in World War I, Admiral Blanco Haw, he was on his staff. And of course, everybody involved, including the architects of the Dieppe operation, Hughes Hallett, his planning syndicate, were also the ones that planned the Lafoten pinch operations and St. Nazaire and Bayonne. So there is a huge continuity and continuum that is going on here with the planning staffs and what they're after. So there are a lot of people involved with this from the start. So you have the land force commander, Ham Roberts, calling the shots once the first boots touch the beach. You have the naval force commander, which is Hughes Hallett, who basically is responsible for once they leave

British shores to once they return. You have Bubble James, who's responsible for the overall embarking and disembarking from back in England. And then of course you have the RAF commander who of course is responsible for the fighting above. But what about the commandos themselves? Those who actually have to go in there and try and pinch this Enigma machine? Okay, well, this is interesting

because the Royal Marine Commando, and you this is interesting because the Royal Marine Commando, and you have to realize that the Royal Marine Commando is cut from the Royal Marine Division. One of the problems was, of course, Mountbatten did not want Canadians involved to start with, not because he had anything against Canadians, from what I can see. It was just that he was trying to maintain

a logistical tail for the Royal Marine Division, which was on the chopping block. Well, unfortunately, he was not completely successful, but he was able to create a rump unit called the Royal Marine Commando. And this is where you see the debut of a Royal Marine Commando. The Royal Marine Division fades away, if you will, or melts off. And what is left are about 350 Royal Marine Commandos. And they are assigned with the pinch operation in the port right from the start. Part of the pinch policy was that they wanted ports specifically because ports were confined. And so as a result, you had a fixed naval headquarters and fixed

supply installations, which if you were fighting on land, everything's mobile, it will move. But when it comes to Navy, it's fixed, it's in the port, generally speaking, or within the vicinity of the port. The other thing too is, in the summer of 41, they were chasing small German vessels that were outfitted with the Enigma or Enigma-related material out in the North Atlantic. And the key that they discovered with pinch doctrine was that it's all about time and space. In other words, closing with your opponent as fast as humanly possible, using surprise to do it, and then using an overwhelming amount of force allocation and support for a couple of reasons. One was you didn't want to destroy what you were after, but you wanted to kill or capture the crew very quickly. But also too, they were using a disproportionate amount of force

to blind the Germans to what they were actually up to. So for instance, what they were doing out in the Atlantic was they were going after a small weather trawler. Now, of course, a small weather trawler is essentially unarmed or lightly armed, say the most, but they would send two cruisers and three destroyers after it. And the idea was that that kind of contact could only be interpreted by the Germans as incidental in nature and never intentional. Because suddenly, if all your weather trawlers are going off the air, and you're realizing, wait a second, there's a pattern here, why are they going after these weather trawlers? Well, it wouldn't take long before the Germans would deduce that it was code

and cipher material that they were after. So this is what they are trying to do at that particular point. So they're spreading the net wide. I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs,

this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. I've got just a quick message at the end of this podcast. I'm currently sheltering in a small windswept building on a piece of rock in the Bristol channel called Lundy. I'm here to make a podcast. I'm here enduring weather that frankly is apocalyptic because I want to get some great podcast material for you guys. In return, I've got a little tiny favour to ask. If you could go to wherever you get your podcasts, if you could give it a five-star rating, if you could share it, if you could give it a review, I'd really appreciate that. Then from the comfort of your own homes, you'll be doing me a massive favour. Then more people

will listen to the podcast, we can do more and more ambitious things, and I can spend more of my time getting pumummelled. Thank you.