Hailed as the ‘greatest raid of all’, the combined naval and commando assault on the German-occupied port of St Nazaire 75 years ago was an epic of audacity culminating in a unique honour made to a soldier engaged in a fight at sea. Steve Snelling charts an extraordinary story of desperate defiance against the odds
The great Normandie dock was wreathed in flames and scorching heat from the acrid, smoke-shrouded inner port felt like an open furnace. To 19-year-old Ordinary Seaman Ralph Batteson, strapped inside a splinter-matted gun ‘bandstand’ perched on the stern of Motor Launch 306, it appeared they had entered “the mouth of hell” as he later wrote “Large fieldpieces, anti-aircraft batteries and machine-guns poured fire on us from either flank, the deafening roar of the explosions threatening to burst our eardrums”.
It was some time after 0130 on March 28, 1942 in the French Atlantic port of St Nazaire and Operation Chariot, the extraordinary attempt to destroy the world’s largest dry dock in one of the most heavily defended harbours on the planet was in murderous full swing.
The destroyer HMS Campbeltown, her bows laden with explosive, had already rammed the massive o…
