The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: Part 4 - Toppling the Tirpitz

The ministry was growing, and new recruits were coming in more frequently than ever. That meant someone had to train these new guys still green in the methods of silence, sneaking, stabbing, and sabotage. Gubbins met with two fellows that were to about to lead a brand new training camp in Scotland for the purposes of providing soldiers for the clandestine war effort. They were two portly men named Eric Sykes and William Fairbairn, both having just come from the rough-and-tumble Shanghai streets fighting against gangs and other tough customers. Both experts in gunplay, they also were trained in martial arts from the place known for martial arts. So, not only could they shoot well, but they were well prepared for those movie moments where two hard to kill people both find themselves unarmed in spite of coming with a personal arsenal and have to duke it out hand-to-hand instead. Excitingly.

If their background wasn't interesting enough, their mannerisms filled the gap. They both had cool nicknames they earned in Shanghai, like the "Shanghai Buster" (Shanghai Shuffler would be way better, and I feel that's a missed opportunity) and "The Deacon" due to one's church-like appearance. Sykes was known for ending every instruction about how to dispatch an enemy with saying "and then kick him in the testicles." They were deliberately brutal, having such training exercises as bringing them to slaughterhouses to stab recently killed animals to get a feel for it before they got to the real thing. It's a good thing they did - they would be putting themselves through much worse real quick.

The Tirpitz, escorted by a number of destroyers. If they
cross paths with your boat, you had better yield the Reich of way.

The highly trained, brutal force of men would be soon put to work against an important target. A gigantic Nazi battleship named the Tirpitz was causing plenty of havoc for the allied war effort in the Atlantic Ocean. Such a powerful ship was too strong to take head on without many casualties, and even then there's a good chance that it would be able to limp back to its captured French harbour of St. Nazaire where it stations and come back just as strong a short time later. Gubbins believed that the best route would be to attack the harbour itself, preventing it from ever being able to lick its wounds and retreat to anywhere other than Germany through waters that were heavily defended by the British.

The problem is the the path to the dock was well defended and not something that could be easily stormed and taken. It would require a fleet, and that was not something that the allied effort could provide, meaning the Tirpitz could run amok. However, there was one other option to reach the dock; a different channel was open once a year due to high tides that led straight to it and was practically unused. The plan was to run an old destroyer in there so packed full of explosives it would set the whole place ablaze, rendering the dock useless. 

The HMS Campbeltown, the boat destined to slam into the dock.
A boattering ram. 

The raid was composed of six hundred men using an old lend-lease boat from the United States as well as a number of transport ships intending to bring the soldiers back after the raid. Filling the whole destroyer with explosives, they timed the detonators on the ship to eight hours from when they left on what was called a pencil fuse. This in itself was risky; a pencil fuse is a detonator that relies on acid slowly and steadily dripping on a piano wire until it breaks through, setting off the explosive. It's super unreliable. A slight disruption or miscalculation could set it off very early or very late, resulting in the ship exploding well before it ever reaches the harbour or well after the Nazis discover it. It had to be timed just right or the results would be catastrophic.

Sneaking through the channel, the boat barely made its way through. The bottom scraped the ground and the men on board feared it just might not make it. One can only imagine the feeling on board; they have an unreliable trigger on a massive, boat-sized explosive, and the darn thing might just get stuck. Lucky for them, it pushed through and the old destroyer found its way into the open water, heading straight towards the dock. They flew a swastika to divert attention for as long as possible, which, as they learned quickly, was not all that long. The ship was quickly found out and the dock started bombarding the boat heavily, but not enough to fully bring it down. 

Oddly enough, this is how things look when they go right for the Ministry
of Ungentlemanly Warfare. I feel there's a "men don't ask for directions"
joke in here somewhere.

Amidst gunfire and explosions, some of which killing those steering the boat, the destroyer managed to reach the dock and slammed heavily into it. It firmly stuck into the caisson (a word I'll readily admit I had to look up, and I'll save you the time by telling you it's the water-proof chamber of a dock) but in order for it to flood properly they had to damage the water pumps inside. The soldiers aboard the boat stormed the dock, firing at the defenders and providing cover for a small team that went underground and searched out the water pumps. Once those were destroyed it was time for a rapid retreat, but the soldiers found the transports to be all but destroyed. The only way out was to run free from the dock and fight through the nearby town, eventually hoping to find their way out. Three quarters of the men were killed or captured, but while the men were being interrogated - and mocked for their foolishness by the Nazis that found them - the explosion went off, completely destroying the dock and obliterating those unfortunate souls that found themselves wandering around confused at the odd raiding tactic of the British troops.

All in all, the raid of St. Nazaire was brutal, swift and effective, wiping out a key dock and rendering the Tirpitz far, far less effective. It was a tipping point, fully bringing many previously skeptical people on board with the new ministry. A traditional assault would have cost countless more lives and have cost far more resources. But there was plenty of fight still in the Nazis, and Gubbins' boys weren't through yet.