Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Raid on St. Nazaire

Episode Date: June 2, 2021

In 1942, two and a half years into the Second World War, the British were facing a problem. While the British Navy mostly commanded the Atlantic, the Germans had one significant advantage: The battleship Tirpitz. Rather than attack the Tirpitz head-on, they came up with an alternate plan which would effectively limit the effectiveness of the battleship. Learn more about The St. Nazaire Raid on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1942, two and a half years into the Second World War, the British were facing a problem. While the British Navy mostly commanded the Atlantic Ocean, the Germans had one significant advantage. The battleship Tirpits. The largest European military warship ever created at that time by total tonnage. Rather than attack the Tirpits head on, which could be quite costly, they came up with an alternate plan, which would effectively limit the effectiveness of the battleship. Learn more about the raid on San Nazaire, the most daring and audacious race, of World War II on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong?

ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. This episode is sponsored by Scotty Vest. If you're listening in North America, it's finally summer, and that means warm weather. In addition to jackets and fleeces, Scotty Vest also has summerwear to help you enjoy the season.

They have a great selection of shorts, t-shirts, baseball hats, skirts, and of course vests, which are all perfect for the summer. They're great if you're going out for the day and you need somewhere to store your sunglasses, a water bottle, face mask, sunscreen, or your smartphone. You can get 15% off your next order by going to ScottyVest.com and using coupon code every day. Everything Everywhere, all one word, at checkout. Once again, that's Scottyvest.com. coupon code, everything everywhere. The Tierpits was a monster battleship. It would be the largest European battleship ever put to sea.

Only the Yamato-class battleships of Imperial Japan and the Iowa-class battleships of the United States would ever be larger. It was part of the peak of the age of battleships, which would soon be obsolete given the rise of aircraft carriers. The Tierpitz was one of two Bismar-class battleships that were created. by Germany. The other being the namesake of the class, the Bismarck. One of the reasons the British were so concerned with the Tirpits was because of what happened with the Bismarck. In 1941, the British encountered the Bismarck in the Battle of Denmark Strait, which is located between Greenland and

Iceland. The Bismarckx sunk the Battle Cruiser HMS hood with a loss of 1,415 men, and critically damaged the HMS Prince of Wales. The British managed to damage the Bismarck, which resulted in a chase across the Atlantic. The problem with the Bismarck was that it was so large there were few places it could go for repairs. In particular, there was only one port on the Atlantic which could accommodate the Bismarck, the port of San Nazaire in the Brittany region of France. The British eventually sunk the Bismarck after a long chase across the Atlantic, which involved most of the ships in the British home fleet. The British didn't want to have to take on the tierpits like they did the Bismarck. One-on-one, the tierpits could take out any ship in the Royal Navy.

If the Tirpits managed to get into the shipping lanes, it could wreak havoc on the supplies coming to Britain from the United States. Moreover, with the Tirpits having moved to the coast of Norway, it had a protected base to operate from in the Norwegian fjords. In lieu of taking on the Tirpits directly, the British came up with another idea. If they could take it the port of San Nazaire out of commission, then the Tirpits would never risk going into the Atlantic. If San Nazaire wasn't available for repairs, the Tirpits would have to sail past Scotland and

the British home fleet to get back to Germany, which would almost certainly spell its doom. Taking out the docks of San Nazaire effectively would bottle up the tear pits in the Baltic Sea. The question was, how to do it? The first idea was to send in bombers and destroy it from the air. The problem with this is that the area around San Nazaire was heavily fortified with anti-aircraft defenses. Bombing in World War II was an extremely imprecise affair. Entire squadrons would be sent out on missions in the hopes that a single bomb from a single plane would hit a factory, and more often than not, they completely missed their target. For the port at San Nazaire, they would have to hit the gates on which separated the sea from the harbor, and that was not a very big target.

They came up with another plan instead, a much more audacious plan. It was dubbed Operation Chariot. The plan, in its simplest form, was to take an old destroyer, fill it with explosives, and ram it into the gates of the dry dock at San Nazaire. The ship selected was the HMS Campbelltown, which was formerly a World War I era destroyer in the U.S. Navy called the USS Buchanan. The ship was obsolete, so it was considered expendable. They had to make the ship superficially look like a German destroyer, so they removed two of the four ship funnels and reshape the remaining two. The illusion only had to work for a little while.

Inside the ship were four tons of explosives in the form of depth charges, which were mounted in the front of the ship. In addition to the HMS Campbelltown, two other destroyers and 16 small ships would accompany it carrying commandos. The commandos job would be to destroy the pumps and mechanical equipment, which were necessary for the dry dock to function. Basically, wreck as much as possible to make it as difficult as possible to put the facility back into commission. The commandos and sailors on the Campbelltown would then hop into other boats and make their escape. The total size of the British force was 346 Royal Navy sailors and 200,000. 165 commandos. The small fleet set out at 2 p.m. on March 26th from Cornwall.

They encountered a couple French fishing boats, which they detained their crew so they wouldn't report anything back to shore. Just before midnight on the 27th, a bombing mission was sent out as a diversion. Around the same time as the bombing mission was taking place, the Campbelltown was getting close to the port, and they raised German naval flags on the ship to enhance the deception. At 12.30 a.m. on the 28th, the ship entered the estuary and got the, the attention of the Germans. The British began flashing a light signal code to the shore, which came from a captured German ship. However, the version of the code they had was out of date.

Nonetheless, it gave them a little extra time. Eventually, the Germans began firing on the ship, and the Campbelltown radioed in German that they were receiving friendly fire, which also gave them some more time. Finally, the gig was up, and all the ships started getting full enemy fire. At this point, the Campbelltown went full steam ahead and was going 19 knots straight into the gates of the dock. It tore through the torpedo net and smashed into the doors. The momentum of the ship took at 10 meters or 33 feet into it. The commandos then spilled out onto the docks to begin their assigned demolitions. The commando part of the operation didn't go quite as well as the ramming part of it did.

While they got many of their targets, they didn't get all of them. They were pinned down by Germans who were in defensive positions. The big problem, however, was that many of the landing boats for the commandos were destroyed, and the other evacuation boats weren't able to reach the dock. Lieutenant Colonel Augustus Newman, who was the commanding officer of the commandos, realized that evacuation by boat wasn't going to be possible. He assembled the 100-so remaining commandos on shore and gave them three orders. Do your best to get back to England.

Try not to surrender until all your ammunition is exhausted, and try not to surrender at all if possible. The men tried to break out of the dock area and into town so they could hopefully get to the countryside. Most of them never made it that far and eventually were surrounded and captured. The explosives on the HMS Campbelltown were supposed to detonate at 4.30 a.m. But they didn't. In the aftermath of the attack, the next morning civilians were at the dock cleaning up, and a team of German officers was on board the Campbelltown. It was at noon the explosives finally detonated, and 320 French civilians and Germans were killed.

The explosion damaged the docks far more than the initial collision and commando rate, did. If the explosion hadn't gone off, the docks might have been repaired in a matter of months. Strategically, the mission was a success. The San Nazaire docks were unusable for the remainder of the war. However, it came had a very high price. Of the 612 men which set out from England, only 228 returned. 169 were killed, and 215 became prisoners of war. Five of the commandos who were stranded on the docks actually made it to Spain and found their way to Gibraltar, and back to Britain. 89 awards for gallantry and bravery were awarded from this mission,

including five Victoria Crosses, the highest British military honor. The tierpits remained a high priority for the British throughout the war, and it was finally destroyed by the Royal Air Force in 1944. The bell from the HMS Campbelltown was salvaged during the raid, and was given to Campbelltown, Pennsylvania, for whom the ship was named. When a new HMS Campbelltown was launched in 1988, the town lent the bell back to the ship for as long as it remained in service. The ship was decommissioned in 2011, and the bell was returned.

However, on May 21, 2020, the Royal Navy announced the construction of a new HMS Campbelltown. There's no word yet on if it too will carry the original bell of the ship. The associate producer of Everything Everywhere daily is Thor Thompson. If you'd like to support the show, please donate over at patreon.com. There is content only available to supporters, merchandise, and even opportunities for a show producer credit. If you know someone you think would enjoy the show, please share it with them. Also remember, if you leave a five-star review, I'll read your review on the show.