The Cockleshell Raid--Bordeaux 1942 Read online

  THE COCKLESHELL RAID

  Bordeaux 1942

  KEN FORD

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  ORIGINS OF THE RAID

  INITIAL STRATEGY

  PLANNING AND TRAINING

  THE RAID

  The Sea Voyage

  The Journey Upriver

  The Attack

  The Escape

  ANALYSIS

  CONCLUSION

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  INTRODUCTION

  During 1942 the war between Britain and Germany was not confined just to the battlefields of Europe and North Africa, for both sides were also engaged in the routine operations associated with economic warfare. The two countries were each attempting to undermine the manufacturing capability of their enemy by trying to choke off the other’s supply lines, since both relied on imported raw materials to maintain their war efforts. Neither side had easy access to all its needs and had to resort to shipping supplies across hostile seas.

  Germany was more fortunate in that it gained most of its resources from within the territories it had overrun and captured. Britain relied to a much greater extent on shipping imports from around the world and the Nazi regime went to great lengths to interfere with these supplies through a vigorous campaign of U-boat attacks. In reply Britain attempted to place a blockage across the sea routes used by the Axis powers. Unfortunately, the task of trying to police the sea lanes of the world looking for individual enemy ships was almost impossible. A few German vessels, popularly known as ‘blockade busters’ or ‘blockade runners’, managed to slip through the cordon and evade the Royal Navy’s and Royal Air Force’s best efforts to sink them.

  During 1942 the Ministry of Economic Warfare began to evaluate the importance of these ships to the enemy. It concluded that the vessels trading with Japan and the Far East were carrying freight that had a strategic value far above the simple tonnage that they carried, for their cargoes were not bulk shipments of war materials but consignments of special and highly prized items such as rubber, tin, manganese tunstate (tungsten) and specific animal oils. All of these products were vital to German and Italian manufacturing processes. The blockade runners, however, were just one of the many problems facing the nation at that time. This period, the third year of the war, was not a particularly good one for the British. It was true that the USA had entered the conflict in December 1941 and given the nation hope that the progress of the war was at last going to improve, but it would take time for America’s contribution to become effective. In the meantime it was down to Britain and her Commonwealth to contain the Axis powers in Europe and North Africa, while Stalin’s forces tried to deal with the German invasion of the Soviet Union. In none of these theatres was the war going well for the Allies: Hitler’s attack on Russia was driving its way inexorably towards Moscow and deep into the USSR’s satellite states; Rommel’s Gazala offensive in North Africa was pushing the British back into Egypt and the all-conquering Japanese onslaught in the Far East was showing no sign of faltering. At the sea the U-boat war looked as though it was being won by the enemy. The air analysis of the RAF’s bombing offensive against Germany was showing signs that it was becoming costly and mostly ineffective.

  During the early part of the war Combined Operations raids against enemy occupied targets were no more that small nighttime attacks with limited success. In December 1941 this changed when a large party of commandos was landed at Vaagso in Norway and took control of the whole town during daylight hours wreaking great destruction to German installations. (IWM N459)

  Across the Channel France was a divided nation, occupied in the north by Germany and in the south by the Vichy regime under Marshal Pétain. The administration at Vichy was no more than a puppet government intent on trying to please, or at least trying not to aggravate, its Nazi masters. Its police and militia operated under German instructions and were compliant with all orders issued to them by the occupying powers in the north, including rounding up Jews and other foreign nationals, and seeking out and handing over all enemies of the Third Reich, which of course included any British servicemen found in the country.

  At home, the nation’s morale was lifted to some extent by the exploits of Britain’s Combined Operations (CO) organization. Significant raids against German forces in occupied territories organized by CO had grabbed the headlines. Successful operations at Vaagso and Lofoten in 1941 and the spectacular assault against the dry dock in St Nazaire in March 19421, both made by commandos ably assisted by the Royal Navy, demonstrated to the public that the country’s fighting spirit was alive and well. The mood was tempered somewhat by the disaster that befell the Canadians when they launched a large-scale raid on Dieppe in August 19422. The attempted landings were a disaster and over half of the 6,000 men who took part were killed. Nonetheless, the appetite for specialist operations that reaped high rewards survived but it remained to be seen whether such a raid could be planned to tackle the problem of the ‘blockade busters’.

  1 See Campaign 92: St Nazaire 1942 by Ken Ford (Osprey Publishing)

  2 See Campaign 127: Dieppe 1942 by Ken Ford (Osprey Publishing)

  ORIGINS OF THE RAID

  The concerns felt by the Ministry of Economic Warfare about the blockade busters were given a higher profile when on 9 May 1942 its minister, Lord Selborne, raised the matter with the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. He asked for something to be done to stop or interfere with the trade between Germany and the Far East. Since the Nazi invasion of Russia in June 1941, the Trans-Siberian rail route to the Far East had been closed to Axis traffic and resulted in the continuation of trade between Germany and Japan becoming entirely dependent on seaborne means.

  There was a limited number of ships under German control capable of making voyages from Europe to the Far East, either by Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope, without bunkering en route. If this relatively small number could be reduced further, then the trade would be seriously affected. Some of the vessels were commandeered French ships of the Vichy regime, but most were German. By mid-1942 the total number of these ships was believed not to exceed 26. Fifteen potential blockade runners were at that time awaiting cargoes in French Atlantic ports and they were expected to sail before the end of the month.

  Lord Selborne explained the scale and importance of the trade and cited that in the 12 voyages completed between July 1941 and May 1942, approximately 25,000 tons of crude rubber had passed through the port of Bordeaux to Germany and Italy and during that period six or seven ships had left the port for the Far East. He estimated that if the traffic was maintained at that level, Germany’s war requirements of crude rubber would be met and that there would be considerable spare tonnage space for other valuable cargoes. He also noted that the traffic was two-way, as Japan required specialized equipment for manufacturing processes, prototypes of various weapons and other special component parts for arms and equipment. Germany was, he went on, trying to meet those needs with the tonnage space available in the blockade busters. Even just a few of these cargoes would appreciably strengthen both Germany’s and Japan’s war efforts.

  The matter of interdicting this trade was referred by the Prime Minister to the Chiefs of Staff Committee for it to consider a military solution to the problem. Such a resolution was not easy to find, for the blockade runners were just a few single ships that easily became lost to the British in the huge wastes of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans and in the desolate seas around the capes.

  The quayside at Bordeaux, now turned into a public promenade. The German blockade busters attacked by Maj Hasler and Cpl Sparks in the raid were tied up along this section of the River Garonne. (Ken Ford)

  The main
base for these enemy ships was Bordeaux in France, an inland port some 60 miles from the Atlantic coast up the Gironde and Garonne rivers. It was a perfect harbour from which to operate the blockade runners. Bordeaux was sufficiently far from the open water to render itself safe from naval bombardment, it had immediate access to the Atlantic Ocean, and its quays and facilities were strung out along the banks of the wide River Garonne. This meant that it was an almost impossible target to strike from the air. The only material thing the Chiefs of Staff Committee could do was to refer the problem to the three services – the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the army – and to the Combined Operations HQ for further consideration.

  All three services reviewed the options available to them to meet the Chiefs of Staff’s directive. With the ships sailing singly and at irregular intervals it would be costly, time consuming and hazardous for the Royal Navy to attempt to blockade the port. The navy also decided that there was little it could do once the ships had entered the river on their way up to the inland harbour. Seemingly the navy could only continue its efforts to intercept the vessels while they were at sea, with mixed results.

  The RAF considered how it might affect the trade by aerial bombardment. Precision raids at this time, however, were quite inaccurate and the chances of hitting individual vessels moored alongside long quays were minimal. Massed bombing against the whole of the port facilities would cause great material damage and loss of life to French civilians, as the harbour was situated right in the centre of the city. The Foreign Office was against the bombing of any French target that might incur appreciable numbers of civilian deaths. It claimed that such raids would adversely affect public opinion in France and amongst the Free French forces fighting with Britain in North Africa and the Middle East. The RAF concluded that its main involvement, like the navy’s, would be to attempt to intercept the vessels at sea. It did also volunteer to continue laying mines at the mouth of the Gironde.

  The army contemplated an attack by land against Bordeaux; in effect an invasion from the sea and an advance in a direct line of over 30 miles to attack the city. Such an operation would most likely involve three divisions, huge numbers of landing craft and massive air and naval support. Clearly such an attack would be very difficult to mount at that time and would inevitably be a very precarious enterprise. The lessons of the Dieppe raid showed that Britain still had a lot to learn about launching punitive amphibious raids against the fortified coast of France. That left Combined Operations as they only other group who might be able to tackle the problem.

  Combined Operations HQ, with the limited resources available to it, was also at a loss to know how to tackle the problem of the blockade busters. A raid to attack and sink the ships would require a large amount of explosives to be placed by hand in key positions on the vessels. If the raid was mounted from the sea the commando force would have to carry these demolition charges, weapons and other vital stores approximately 60 miles upstream to Bordeaux, past coastal defences and enemy positions, through areas patrolled by French police and their informers, right into the centre of the city to the wharves lining the river front. Not an easy or viable task. Landing a raiding force by parachute would face the same problems getting to the ships. It was likely that neither of these methods would gain their objectives, and if the attackers did manage to plant and blow their explosives, few of the troops taking part would be able to successfully make their way back to the rescue ships waiting offshore, through a countryside alerted to their presence.

  Up until that time raids planned by Combined Operations HQ had been tip-and-run affairs along the coast. Raiding parties either landed and were evacuated by sea, such as in the Lofoten and Vaagso raids in Norway as well as the Dieppe raid in France, or landed by parachute and withdrawn by sea as in the raid on the Bruneval radar station in northern France during Operation Biting in 1942. Bordeaux was too far inland for the adoption of either of these tactics and was also well guarded by the enemy.

  After their invasion of 1940 the Germans had taken steps to defend Bordeaux and the Atlantic coast nearby. The city was a valuable harbour to the enemy but was also the home of a U-boat flotilla, and massive concrete submarine pens were under construction in its inner basin. The depth of these defences in 1942 was nowhere near the level that would be built later in the war, when the likelihood of an Allied invasion became more of a possibility, but they were still formidable. These installations were ringed with flak batteries manned by Luftwaffe anti-aircraft personnel. Further flak positions guarded the estuary of the Gironde, along with a number of large-calibre coast defence batteries and radar stations. Garrisoning the whole area around Bordeaux was the 708th Infantry Division.

  The response from Combined Operations HQ during the summer of 1942 to the request from the Chiefs of Staff was that it would continue looking into the subject of the blockade busters, but, like the other services, it could offer no immediate solution to the problem. Lord Louis Mountbatten, Head of Combined Operations, left the matter with his planners on the Search and Examination Committees.

  At the time of the raid on Bordeaux, Lord Louis Mountbatten was the head of Combined Operations. Churchill chose him to replace the aging Admiral Roger Keyes. The move caused great surprise within military circles for Mountbatten was a relatively junior officer with the lowly rank of captain. The fact that he was a cousin to the King no doubt helped Churchill make the appointment. Mountbatten was quickly elevated to rear-admiral in order to take a seat on the Chiefs of Staff Committee and later proved himself to be a resourceful and energetic commander of Special Forces. (IWM TR1230)

  INITIAL STRATEGY

  Although Combined Operations could offer no immediate solution to the problem of the German blockade busters, the organization did have a team located at Portsmouth that was working on exploring methods of attacking ships in harbour. A very small group called the Combined Operations Development Centre (CODC) was devising new ways and methods of striking back at the enemy. Part of the group, under the command of a Royal Marine officer, Maj H. G. ‘Blondie’ Hasler, was specifically looking at various means of attacking ships with small parties of men. In 1941 Hasler had proposed that such raids could be mounted by canoe or by underwater swimmers. His ideas were rejected as being unworkable – canoes were too fragile for major tasks and underwater swimming was in its infancy. A little later the success of Italian frogmen, together with their development of exploding motor boats and two-man ‘human torpedoes’, led to a rethink.

  The methods the Italians employed in their motor boats were fairly crude. The craft was intended to enter harbour at high speed and be aimed at a particular vessel. Once locked on to its target the pilot would eject out of the back of the craft while the boat, packed with a large explosive charge, continued to its objective. The vessel would then explode on impact. The unfortunate pilot, stuck in the water with no means of escape, surrendered to the enemy. Of course, such an attack would first have to negotiate the boom defences that barred entry into most harbours, so the location of the target vessels under attack was particularly important.

  As part of his investigation into attacking enemy ships in harbour by covert means, Hasler was asked early in 1942 to develop a British version of the exploding motor boat. The craft was given the codename ‘Boom Patrol Boat’ (BPB). He was also ordered to look into ways of improving the performance of underwater swimmers. Combined Operations planners especially liked the idea of the exploding boat and Hasler immediately began working with Vosper Shipbuilders on the construction of a suitable craft. One thing bothered those involved and that was the matter of the boat’s single crewman being forced to surrender to the enemy. Such an action went against the accepted British manner of waging war. It was each serviceman’s duty and, indeed, personal intent to evade capture by the enemy at every opportunity. A method had to be devised that would give the pilot of the BPB at least a chance of escaping.

  Maj Hasler had spent his life enjoying the pleasures of small cr
aft and had been sailing in the sheltered waters of Langstone Harbour close to Portsmouth since he was a boy. He was very much at home on the water, fascinated by all types of small boats, and was intrigued by the agility and flexibility of canoes. He knew that the craft was light and vulnerable in rough water, but he also appreciated that they were silent and manoeuvrable enough to penetrate enemy defences at night unseen. To his mind they could be the perfect vessels from which to attack ships inside enemy harbours.

  During his time with CODC Hasler continued to work with canoes. In the early part of 1942 two ranks from No. 6 Commando were attached to him for experimental work. With the agreement of the Commander-in-Chief Portsmouth, Hasler and his small party carried out night exercises in conjunction with the operational patrol that guarded the Eastern Boom across the Solent, protecting the approaches to the naval base. New techniques were developed for counter-attacking human torpedoes and other enemy craft with specially equipped canoes. His work made him realize that the standard canoe then in use by the navy, the Cockle Mk I, was not as effective as it might be.

  This interest in the canoe and the problems associated with the use of Boom Patrol Boats set Hasler thinking. If the two types of craft were deployed together, the crew of the canoes could help the BPBs negotiate enemy boom defences and then act as a means of escape for their pilots. He felt sure that this proposition could be the solution to overcome the constraints associated with the BPBs. Hasler spoke to his senior officer at the Combined Operations Development Centre, Capt T. A. Hussey, about his idea. Hussey received the details regarding the use of canoes with the BPBs with some enthusiasm. The two men realized that the crews of these two types of craft would have to train together and be conversant with each other’s tasks to be effective. It soon became obvious that a specialized unit would have to be formed and trained to operate the vessels, clearly a task for the Royal Marines.