St. Nazaire Raid

[donno54]

the smug german talking before the destroyer went Booom! talking 100s of germans with it .God we british are good

[ArmedtotheTeethProd]

Didn't the United States give/sell the Campbelltown to the United Kingdom? I just want a verification/correction, no fight/debate required.

[seal201111]

@ArmedtotheTeethProd yes campbeltown was a vessel transfered to the royal navy through the ships for bases scheme, but it was used in the raid because it was junk, worthless and obsolescent. It had to be completetly gutted/stripped and heavily modified with double plated armour, different engine, etc. And then it was converted to make it appear like a german motor boat.

[ArmedtotheTeethProd]

@seal201111 Thanks for that! The story of this raid always amazes me!

[mattbibbey]

For you information: This complete idiot below, germaniajim, has been removed from youtube because he is clearly a total c**t!

[germaniajim]

twice in a row, the english cried for help after they started a fight, Help us america, we're getting our asses handed to us, help help , They are all wankers and cowards

[EcoWarriorNB]

@germaniajim exactly how did the English start this war? I think you might need to read your history.

[hunghuge12]

This was after dawn so must have been taken within hours of the ship blowing. Whoops. :o)

[pettycurbay]

By the foreshore immediately west of the Avant Port at the base of the Place du Commando, is the Monument du Commando, consisting of the barrel of HMS Campbeltown's forward gun and a tall granite column. The French have always remembered, and indeed it was a French woman who at some risk tended the Commando graves at Escoublac La Baule Cemetery during the remaining war years, and for many years after. A few being unfriendly does not matter - the majority remember the fallen with honour

[m1garand00]

i was at Nazair a couple of days ago, it's suprising that there is nothing to commemorate this event, but there is the dock gates that was blown to smitherenes by the Campbeltown and the huge u-boat pen. But i suppose the French suffered alot under Germans so easier to forget, but we did save them! oh well.

[CanadaUK01]

No doubt about it, if the Americans been involved in the attack, there would have been a huge Holly Wood Movie about it and how they won the whole by themselves....

[270ambrose]

Just have come back last week from St Nazaire , Bayeaux ,Amboise and Caen but im not going to deny people were not friendly .

[666nocturnal666]

Mission Achieved! Incredible!

[grassroots59]

This raid was the greatest raid of WW11.

I wish someone would make a movie about this. Remember, the Yanks were not involved at all.

[shashi2005]

If they ever got round to making a movie of the incident, the tale would be told as if Americans did it.

Not denigrating Americans here, only Hollywood's usual inaccuracy with historical topics.

[TheMightOfTheEnglish]

wasnt senseless at all , the dock was destroyed when the campletown which rammed the dock gates blew up , the dock was put out of action and the tirpitz was unable to use than dock ,keeping the battleship out of the atlantic ,complete success

[eus478]

@TheMightOfTheEnglish There was no plan to send Tirpitz into the Atlantic since the loss of the Bismark. Even Scharnhorst and Gneisenau returned to Germany a month before operation Cerberus. So you can say complete waste of lives and material as well.

[TheMightOfTheEnglish]

@eus478 thats just it , the british didnt know that they wernt going to send the tirpitz out, so just in case , we took away the only shelter they could of used once out in the atlantic.

,,as it was we had already damaged the tirpitz and held up any operations by the tirpitz ,the operation succeeded were others had failed , if you were talking about dieppe id totally agree with you ,although lessons were learnt from that debacle

[rampking1]

@eus478 Thanks for replying to TheMightoftheEnglish for me. You kept it short, kept to your point and suppled facts....not B.S.

He seems unaware of the famous channel dash of the Scharnhort and the Gneisenau.

His whole argument about a base for the Tirpitz up in smoke.

Call it for what it was, a suicide mission.

5***** for Eus478

[merseyside]

the germans thought it was a failure ,until the campletown ,packed with explosives blue the dock and a couple hundred germans to bits, putting the dock out of action the rest of the war, probably the bravest and most outragous raid of the war ,total success

[transonicbuoy1]

Funny, really. I went to Paris over Christmas, and all I saw was loads of dog shit on the pavement.

[kaa13]

" This senseless operation of the Brits..."

Baooooooooommmmmmm !!!!!

[merseyside]

senseless operation you said ,the lock gates and the dry dock at st nazaire,was the only dry dock in western part of nazi held france that could accomodate the Tirpiz battleship , the british decided to destroy the dock and dock buildings to put it out of action, they had to sail up the estuary then ram the dock gates , the commandos then set about destroying the dock facilities ,after a vicious battle ,the british surrendered , the campletown wedged firmly ,the germans thought it was a

[kaa13]

I was just translating the german comment: "Diese sinnlose Unternehmen der Briten auf Saint-Nazaire, etc ..."

Of course i know it is was great success.

at the time of these newsreels, the Campbeltown had yet exploded, but not word about it, only "this senseless operation etc etc".

[Talbot6832]

Didn't they film that before the ship had blown up? The British Commandos also managed to kill more of the Germans... incredible given the offensive attack they had to make.

[kaa13]

Sure,these newsreels were shown to the public much later( technical reasons,image control, etc), after the actual aftermath of the operation was known.

[270ambrose]

Kind of senseless liberating your country French person ,what gratitude do you have for American , Canadian , British who lost their live to allow you to remain speaking Frech !

[kaa13]

If you did the effort to read me you'd understand that I was just translating the german text , with irony.. senseless / sinnlos is the word used by the german speaker...pure propaganda of course, we know it...and my father landed in Southern France two month later and was wounded in Marseilles some days later...

PS:come in france and talk to people, you'll always find gratitude towards the US and Commonwealth people.