A rather incautious product of the early, unpromising months of 1942, Operation CHARIOT sought to prevent the German battleship TIRPITZ from wreaking havoc amongst the North Atlantic convoys by destroying the giant 'Normandie' dry dock in the captured French port of Saint-Nazaire - the only dry dock accessible from the Atlantic where so powerful a ship could be repaired.
Initially clear in its intent, the planning of the raid was quickly overtaken by a sense of impending disaster, bedevilled both by apparently insuperable logistical difficulties and by the ineptitude and self-interest of those whose job it should have been to see that lives were not needlessly sacrificed. For in addition to the natural inaccessibility of a port which also happened to be a major U-Boat base, the raiders had to overcome numerous problems entirely unrelated to the enemy, with the Royal Navy refusing to allocate suitable ships and the Royal Air Force seeking to extricate itself from earlier promises of air support.
All of which meant that when the force set sail from the British port of Falmouth it was with a potent sense of mission predicated on the shifting sands of irresolution and dissimulation at home. In the ensuing bitter fire-fight, brought passionately to life by Jeremy, the raiding force was shot to pieces by powerful German shore batteries. Unarmoured and fuelled by high octane petrol many of the small craft simply burst into flames when their tanks were hit. The larger destroyer CAMPBELTOWN, turned into a floating bomb for the occasion, did manage to ram the dock and disgorge her complement of Commandos onto the dockside. But the cost of success was insupportable, with 62% of the attacking force being killed, wounded or captured. The essence of the fighting in the dockyard is brought painfully to life in this documentary which more than just relating the story, paints a graphic picture of both the horror and waste of war. Here is a story told with conviction and passion - a fitting tribute to all the young soldiers and sailors who never made it home.
Initially clear in its intent, the planning of the raid was quickly overtaken by a sense of impending disaster, bedevilled both by apparently insuperable logistical difficulties and by the ineptitude and self-interest of those whose job it should have been to see that lives were not needlessly sacrificed. For in addition to the natural inaccessibility of a port which also happened to be a major U-Boat base, the raiders had to overcome numerous problems entirely unrelated to the enemy, with the Royal Navy refusing to allocate suitable ships and the Royal Air Force seeking to extricate itself from earlier promises of air support.
All of which meant that when the force set sail from the British port of Falmouth it was with a potent sense of mission predicated on the shifting sands of irresolution and dissimulation at home. In the ensuing bitter fire-fight, brought passionately to life by Jeremy, the raiding force was shot to pieces by powerful German shore batteries. Unarmoured and fuelled by high octane petrol many of the small craft simply burst into flames when their tanks were hit. The larger destroyer CAMPBELTOWN, turned into a floating bomb for the occasion, did manage to ram the dock and disgorge her complement of Commandos onto the dockside. But the cost of success was insupportable, with 62% of the attacking force being killed, wounded or captured. The essence of the fighting in the dockyard is brought painfully to life in this documentary which more than just relating the story, paints a graphic picture of both the horror and waste of war. Here is a story told with conviction and passion - a fitting tribute to all the young soldiers and sailors who never made it home.