 See hello, what's poppin? We are on Twitch. We are not live but you can leave a like comment subscribe Turn on your post notification bells. My let's continue to grow the family from Chicago to the UK If we do kind of go live, which I probably think we are gonna go live later today It's a terrible day outside in America, I mean in Miami, it's raining hard bad Anyway, this is where the highlights of the live would be Don't forgot we do got a discord, you know drop suggestions and we do got the patreon And it's boom and we post Monday through Friday Sundays movies never miss a beat This is we're gonna do Jeremy Carson's the greatest raid of all time I've seen a couple If you want to be on camera you want to be behind the camera you want to do radio podcast whatever it is this this is a I was looking for a way to make some extra money I saw this video of a guy talking about how much money he made on board that I figured I'd give it a shot And I'm so glad I did get it started. It's North one is the channel. Yeah, let's get into it, man Don't waste no time. It's an hour long A couple of years ago. I made a TV program about my father-in-law who won a Victoria cross at Arnhem and Since then I've been on the hunt for a follow-up another nugget of incredible heroism in the face of impossible odds Of course, most war stories are well known. Well documented and well celebrated The Battle of Britain rocks drift and so on But one day while trolling through a second-hand bookshop I came across a story that's hardly known or celebrated at all It's the story of an amazing battle a battle where more VC Sorry if y'all hear that humming in the background. I Accidentally left my freezer door open when I fell asleep And now it's like trying to it's working overtime to keep cool back down But these were earned more quickly than any other action in the Second World War It's a story full of ingenuity pluck and genuine courage It had the lot having read it I decided to do some digging and it turned out that while very few people in the outside world know anything about this Extraordinary battle they certainly do in military circles, and they call it the greatest raid of all The Britain was one but the Battle of the Atlantic was still raging and we were losing German U-boats were running amok among the convoys bringing supplies from America Nine million tons of shipping had already been sunk and the shipyards in Britain simply couldn't replace it fast enough Britain was beginning to starve History class again Welcome to history class I'm gonna be learning a lot on this one because I have no idea Winston Churchill said in his diaries The only thing that's truly frightened me in the war was the U-boat peril Said he was even more anxious about the Battle of the Atlantic than he was about the Battle of Britain and Then into the equation sailed the turpits Turpits was the fastest and most modern battleship in the war Even though her armor was a foot thick she could thunder along at 30 knots and with 815 inch guns She packed a huge punch Certainly the Royal Navy had very little in its arsenal to take on a ship of this magnitude And that was a nightmare for the people who worked here in Churchill's war rooms Each of these dots on this map represents a convoy movement If turpits got among them beyond the range of the Royal Air Force, we would almost certainly lose the war It was that simple They lose the war it was that simple There was however a drawback to turpits a size You see if she were to be damaged while out in the middle of the Atlantic She couldn't very well go back to Germany for repairs because that would mean Limping past Britain past the RAF past our coastal fleet and that would be a death sentence for her So she'd have to go to a dry dock on the Atlantic coast of France But there was only one dry dock on the Atlantic coast of France That was big enough to handle a ship of turpits a size This one This is the Normandy dock in Saint-Nazaire It had been built in the 30s when France was making giant ocean liners And now to make sure the turpits could never have a home on the Atlantic seaboard It had to be destroyed Yeah but they beat that thing down You can't have turpits getting repaired When they've taken damage that you really could issue out Now the only way that you could put this dock out of action is to destroy this gate And that was a problem It couldn't be done with a naval bombardment because the mouth of the estuary is actually six miles away In that direction It couldn't be done with a submarine because this whole area was crisscrossed with anti-submarine nets Couldn't be done over land because Northern France was in German hands And for two reasons, it couldn't be done from the air either Firstly, second world war bombing raids were notoriously inaccurate Only 22% of bombs landed within five miles of the target Yeah that's 22% of bombs landed within five miles of the target You're still missing No guided bombs yet, huh? No rocket propell, GPS So the chances of being able to hit a dock gate from 6,000 feet in the sky were slim at the best of times The best of times because right next door to the dry dock were 14 U-boat pens What does that mean? These were some of the most precious facilities in the German armory And to protect them the San Nazaire area bristled with 80 anti-aircraft guns and artillery pieces And in the town itself, there were 5,000 troops Destroying Where in the dock then, using conventional forces, the army, the air force, the navy, out of the question So the job was given to a group of men who really had only just been put together The commandos Eddie, I don't The commandos were the brainchild of Churchill who'd seen similar outfits operate successfully in both the Boer War and the First World War A small number of highly trained soldiers would get in fast to a huge amount of damage and then Do they kind of like seals? Get out before the enemy had time to get organized Churchill liked this He called it the butcher and bolt approach So what kind of men were they? Well, if popular myth is anything to go by, they were lantern-jawed killing machines who could headbutt their way through oak doors The reality, though, was rather different Gerard Brett in my regiment was in my commando, 12 commando, and he'd written a book on the Byzantine age or Byzantine architecture or something One fellow who got a divinity degree from Trinity College Dublin Lance Corporal Potts had been a don at either Oxford or Cambridge They included a poacher, a TT, motorcycle rider, so a mitzvah What they represented was a complete revolution in the concept of soldiering Because they were chosen for their individuality, their intelligence, their initiative And nobody embodied that ethos more than this man, Mickey Byrne I've got his autobiography here and what a life He had a privileged upbringing, Winchester, Oxford And then he met Guy Burgess, the chap who went on to become a Soviet spy, and they became lovers Mickey, though, became a Nazi sympathizer, went to Germany, met Hitler Got a signed copy of Mein Kampf and was one of the very first people to be shown around Dachau, the concentration camp He knew Bertrand Russell, he knew Audrey Hepburn, he knew the king and queen, he even met Roosevelt He really was a telegraph obituary writer's wet dream But all things considered, not the sort of man you'd expect to find in a commando's green beret By the start of the war, however, Mickey had seen the Nazi threat for what it really was And had found something else to suit his maverick streak, the commando's People were left to make up their own minds In war, anybody, everybody may be killed And what decides the action may be the action of a private soldier who's left to command a trench It wasn't put like that, but the feeling we were given that every single one of us might be as important as a burgoteer We were all individuals, you know, discipline did matter, of course But I wouldn't have said it was absolutely first The commando forces were made up of volunteers from any of the regular army units And the philosophy of how they went about their daily business was a million miles from that of the conventional military For a start, they didn't bother with barracks or regimental headquarters Because the commando's didn't want to waste training time on mundane chores such as cleaning or maintenance Instead, they simply got digs in a nearby town And there was no sergeant major on hand to tell them what to do every minute of the day Instead of saying parade tomorrow on the main square in Weymouth It might be parade tomorrow at 10 o'clock on the market place at Dorchester And find your own bloody way there, you know You weren't shouted at, there wasn't any of this shouting or bullying or anything that you got in the regular army You led by example, so, you know, the officer had to do everything that you did If the officers can do it, I can do it If the officers can do it Unfortunately though, the British... Army top brass were a deeply conservative bunch And they really didn't like the new commando philosophy The regular army were doing their best to get us disbanded They hated us, some of them We were newtons And because our standards were so high We'd creamed off the best of the people in the regiments And in fact a lot of COs refused to allow people to volunteer This resistance by the regular army certainly got Churchill's back up What I have here is a letter That's crazy because they are fighting the same battle He wrote to the Secretary of State for war And he says, I hear that the whole position of the commandos is being questioned They've been told no more recruiting and that their future is in the melting pot Says he feels very strongly about this Says the defeat of France by Germany was accomplished by an incredibly small number of highly equipped elite While the dull mass of the German army came on behind And then here, for every reason therefore, we must develop the commando idea Pretty clear cut As 1941 drew to a close, Japan joined the war And the Royal Navy had to send a fleet to the Far East So there was even less to hold the turpits at bay What's more, we were losing the battle of the Atlantic We were losing in North Africa and London was in ruins So if Churchill's commandos really could smash up San Nazaire It might give a sense back home that Britain wasn't finished just yet Everywhere almost, we were on retreat And people were really becoming negative And Churchill wanted something which would be successful aggression Do you take this woman to be a lawfully wedded wife? No! Nancy The plan to destroy the 1500 tonne dock gate was codenamed Operation Chariot And it was certainly bold The commandos would get hold of a couple of destroyers from somewhere And sail them from Cornwall over to western France And one of these destroyers would be filled with explosives And while the RAF distracted the Germans with a bombing raid over San Nazaire They would somehow sneak it up the estuary without being seen By anyone in the gun emplacements here, here, here, here Am I going to lie? That seems like an impossible feat Y'all have y'all distraction way up here So you think this distraction is going to pull all of these resources? Did it? Let me hear this Here, here, here, and here Or by anyone with a searchlight here, here, here and here And then to see what happens next We have to turn to the actual model built to plan the raid The destroyer with the explosives in it would ram the dock gates here And the commandos would jump off and right underneath all the guns Positioned to protect the U-boat pens here They'd run around shooting anything that moved And blowing up anything that didn't Sound like a good plan No, actually it sounds like a crazy plan But it doesn't sound like it's going to work Let's be honest Then after the destroyer exploded Destroying the lock gate They'd all meet here at this not at all exposed jetty And get back on the second destroyer Which somehow wouldn't have been blown to pieces While it was hanging around in the estuary for a couple of hours Waiting for them to finish It would then sail back down the estuary past all the guns And go home Sounds like a suicide mission The plan was presented to the war office by Louis Mountbatten Head of the Combined Operations Unit And unsurprisingly it met resistance One commander in chief was particularly vocal I remember we started the meeting by saying Well, take your cock if you're all prepared to lose all your soldiers and all your ships I suppose you can take on this task which I regard as absolutely impossible I said it's the fact that it is regarded as impossible Which makes it possible The Germans will never think we'll attempt it Okay Yeah, I don't... So we're trying to use reverse psychology Like this plan is so crazy they never think we even try it So that's just going to give us an advantage That's the plan? So you think they're going to underestimate y'all? Well, that's... Okay, so... Underestimation in anything is the quickest way to lose a battle So you may be so Mountbatten's enthusiasm certainly didn't rub off on the RAF Rub off on me You can see here in these operation chariot minutes That the POWs that be requested a force of about a hundred aircraft For the diversionary bombing raid In three waves At the back, Vice Marshal Saundby says I don't agree that such a heavy scale of attack is needed We want about 20 whittlies which are bombers Hanging around overhead Dropping an occasional bomb And he's backed up by one of his advisors This chap called Willets Who really says the operation chariot can Whistle for the hundred bombers He says bomber command can provide no more than 35 aircraft Without prejudicing their other commitments And then you can push back from your own people Don't even want to get y'all to proper, you know what I'm saying Units of aircrafts, like... It have thought the Navy would be keen Especially since the operation was designed To neutralize the turpits But, no The commander-in-chief here from Plymouth Command writes The plan entails the sacrifice Of the landing party And endangers two valuable ships For a small chance of success He actually says negligible chance here See, it sounds like a suicide mission to him too There's another guy writing here who says I'm not hopeful as regards the result of the impact Between the destroyer and the lock gates I think the lock gates will remain partially intact And the destroyer will look silly Yo, I can feel like from watching these videos Like, I'm always making this face right here I can feel it, like, starting to stick I'm like, how are you trying to rub it out? Happens much of the proposed plan fails Much of the proposal intact And the destroyer will look silly If that happens, much of the proposed plan fails Eventually, though, the Navy did find one boat It was called HMS Campbelltowner Clapped out American World War I destroyer One destroyer that was on loan to the British She was not ideal for the job known for her Poor slow speed maneuverability And her large turning circle But these drawbacks didn't dampen the spirits Of the commandos I thought we would get away with it That I would be wounded romantically In a beautiful nurse who took after me in hospital That I would be wounded romantically In a beautiful nurse who took after me in hospital Yeah, you out your mind, you really You're delusional Looks like I'll be wounded romantically This bullet gonna hit me in a sexy area And I'm just gonna go to the hospital And fall in love with a beautiful nurse I was very young We were doing all this heavy training Nothing's happening, so very frustrated When we were finally briefed on the model I mean, we thought, well, this is gonna be something We had been trained both in the dark Blindfolded in the day In every form of demolition To do with dock demolitions Trains and anything So when we heard That we were going to blow up the dock installations At San Jose I suppose really It was a feeling of elation At this stage People were saying, well, what do you think? To me, you see And I said, it's gonna be a piece of cake We're gonna go in there And knock them for six Because that reflected the optimistic attitude We're gonna go in there Blow up this bloody dock And we'll be out We had Did y'all have the right information? Did y'all see the plan? Or was y'all just so young And like, you know what I'm saying Young and full of life And full of hope Y'all never caught no ails Got a lot of ambition Blinded Volunteered after all For danger And there did seem an off chance That it was impossible And therefore it would succeed Off chance that it was impossible And therefore it would succeed Yeah, that's delusion I'm rooting for y'all But that sounds delusional I don't know the outcome Of this particular incident As the commandos prepared on land The navy set about the Campbell town The old tub would have to sleep Past 80 gun emplacements On its way up the San Nezare estuary So it had to be disguised And they only had 12 days To do the work In the end they removed two funnels And sloped the other two backwards So at a glance it looked A bit like a German destroyer And then there was the problem Of turning it into a time bomb This job was given to a brilliant Young naval officer called Lieutenant Nigel Tibbets He was a shy chap with a stammer When his girlfriend announced That she'd become fond of him Replied, well then I suppose We shall have to get married However, while he was not Desperately confident with women He was a whiz with explosives One of the best students The Dartmouth naval college had ever seen But even he faced difficulties With how you turn a whole ship Into a bomb The first problem he had Was deciding where in the ship To place the explosives Because you see If you can imagine this Is the gate to the dock And this is the ship What's going to happen after it hits I mean is it just going to end up here In which case you want the bomb in the front Or is it going to rear up In which case you want the bomb Sort of in the middle Toward the bottom I suppose theoretically It would be possible if the ship Was going fast enough for it to actually Ride right over the top of the gate And end up in the dock itself I mean who knew Day and night, Tibbit struggled with this Until he decided on a spot 40 feet back from the prowl Low down next to the keel Then he had to work out How to set the explosives off Back then there was no accurate timing device So he had to use fuses Like this The idea is that you squeeze The top part here which breaks A glass capsule on the inside Releasing acid that then Slowly burns through a strip Of wire Now when that snaps It releases a spring Which boings out setting off The detonator And this was very advanced in 1942 But there were a couple of problems First of all it was very susceptible To jolts and shock You wouldn't for instance Want to Ram some lock gates at 25 miles an hour With one of these on board Because it might go off instantly Killing everyone It was also very vague The strength of the acid varied From fuse to fuse, the strength of the wire Varied, the tension of the spring varied Tibbits couldn't say to within An hour when the bomb Might actually go off Choosing what explosive to use However was fairly straightforward He went for amatol and to show how Big a bang that produces We've placed a pound of something similar Between the front seats of this car Three, two, one Fire in That was a pound, Tibbits was going to use Four and a quarter That was one pound Blew the whole inside of that Magalbini How much was it going to use? That was a pound, Tibbits was going to use Four and a quarter tons 8,500 pounds Right? Still, even if the explosives And the fuses could be trusted to work Properly, and even if They could get across to France without being Detected and up the estuary without being blown To smithereens, and even if The Campbell town could hit the lock gates Exactly right and the commandos could Get off and do whatever it is They had to do, they still had A problem How do they get home again? Because the navy wouldn't provide A second destroyer, they were instead Given 16 of these They gave them their fisherman boats What is that? Today, this fair mile MLAs A tourist boat taking trippers around Torbay, and certainly it's better suited To this than it ever was For operation chariot They made a big light-bundled climate It was a cheap Mass production boat designed primarily To make the navy look bigger Than it really was It was filler It certainly wasn't particularly Good in the open sea It tended to roll badly in a swell Which made everyone on board Queasy It's not so bad if it was only used to bring The soldiers home, but this little fleet Would also be used to get half The commandos out to San Nazare As well So there'd be 15 Commandos wedged down here with all Their kit And when they got to the other end They'd be expected to get out and start fighting Immediately It's a journey There wasn't only seasickness to worry about Because while each ship had Small guns for an aft It didn't have any armour No really, all that stood between The German guns and the men down here Were A few planks of wood And to make matters worse Each boat was fitted with Two 500 gallon long range fuel tanks Which were completely exposed On the deck On the deck One thing hit that It's over Was a bomb on purpose These things, they were bombs by accident Honestly, it's hard to think of any vessel Less well suited To the job in hand A canoe The commandos were hard men Good fighters But they'd been picked for their intelligence as well So they must have known Hey, please don't forget to hit the like button, bro I'd be having videos of Two, three thousand With 80 lights That don't even make sense The chances of getting to San Nazare Were small The chances of doing the job were microscopic And the chances of them getting home again On a wooden boat Growning under the weight of exposed fuel tanks Past an alerted enemy were Virtually nonexistent They must have known that operation I wish I could react to top gear, man Top gear is blocking everything I ain't even gonna try It's blocking everything For the vast majority Was gonna be a one way ticket We were all of us told if we wanted to Leave a letter for our next-of-king Or our loved ones You could do so And you wrote on the envelope To be posted in the event of my filing to return That's a red flag for me I'd have been like, wait, what you want us to do that for You can't, hold on, hold on, hold on I mean, I guess it's always like a Never a guarantee in war Any type of battle with any type of equipment Good or bad that you're coming home But come on now Y'all got me on a wooden boat With a 500 gallon tank of gas On top of it Like, I'm going through 80 80 gun 80 gun things Like, nah, I'm good I don't know about this one I knew them all very well indeed And I remember seeing his face And I knew he knew he was going to be killed Time you get this, I shall be one of the many Who have sacrificed their unimportant lives For what little ideals we may have I can only hope that by laying down My life, the generations to come Might in some way remember us And benefit by what we've done At a time like this, I turn to you, Dad And God I hope there will be peace for everyone soon My love to everyone, I'll remember you You loving son Not even gonna lie, that's a salutable person That's okay I said it's like that, okay I'm giving it up for future generations So we can be at peace Which was really what it was You know what I'm saying, but me right now You know what I'm saying Like, mmm, but Well Somehow I thought it's Unlucky to write your last letters Your powers No My attitude was I'm coming back A man came to me and said Would you take These letters home To our wives If we're killed, and I said, but wait a minute I'm going with you Oh, you won't be killed, I said They will both kill The son Dang! So they knew they was getting up out of there They had complete faith in you though What they say about you You was out here really doing stuff Frigerators weren't allowed To reveal details of the operation To their loved ones But for the bomb designer Nigel Tibbet Recently married and the father of a young son The thought of keeping his wife in the dark Was too much So he told her And she said afterwards they both sort of knew He wouldn't be coming back Film degrees at Full Sail University Puts the tools Frigerator motor really working hard I feel like All of a sudden So as the commandos gathered here In Falmouth in Cornwall Ready to join the Campbell town And the little boats that were anchored Out there in the bay Lord Mt. Bach gathered them all together And very unusually He said to them that any man Who wanted to step down Could walk away without a stain On his character How many people left? Not one of them did On the 26th of March 1942 the Armada set They would have said that to me I would have Hey look, good luck out there I wish everybody the best Back in those days Your mind was a little bit different The way you thought was a little bit different Let's be real If I had to go to war right now I would Would I like it? No I would not like it But if I had to For the existence of my daughter's well-being And her future That would be the only thing That would keep me moving With 264 commandos And 357 navy personnel on board That's a total of 600 I don't know if y'all know this story When I was 19 I was like 20 I don't know how old I was I enrolled in the navy But see I had got Kicked out of high school my senior year And I had to go to an alternative school And they red flagged me So I couldn't go to the navy I had done my ass-vaps already I had done the physical training I had got my blood taken And I scored high on my ass-vaps I scored in the top 5% Because I've always been really good at taking tests Always Like it's never been an issue for me It's nothing But like I scored really high on it In the top 5% So you know when you score high When you go into the navy You don't come in as like The lower level When you get a certain score You automatically come in as a higher Ranking than everybody else That get that normal They wanted me to be an aviator And the navy And fly planes and shit And things of that nature It was cool I was ready for it at the time I was excited Everything happens for a reason You know what I'm saying But I was ready for that I was going to be lit I would be a whole different person Right now y'all wouldn't even know me It's tough And they lost my High school diploma I'm still mad about it Matter of fact I'm going to do that today And 21 men Only 227 Would come back Hell on board That's a total of 621 men Only 227 Would come back So about a third of them came back That's enough Light to read a book That I was reading And I just concentrated on reading this book The thought that crosses your mind is I hope I'm going to be able to Do my part Without Being overcome by fear We chatted to each other about What we're going to do and I We all went through it with our blokes I and my four guys just Went through what we were going to do I certainly thought to myself My God I hope I'm not going to Show fear In front of my men if I'm frightened Tents I suppose Would be the thing Anticipation yes Fortunately I think we were More worried about It being rough Because It's very as you can imagine Physically exhausting To be seasick all the time But we were lucky It was calm 33 hours later They arrived at the mouth of the estuary And the captain of the Campbell town Lieutenant Commander Sam Beattie Instructed tibets to set the fuses On his bomb He then began to creep up the estuary Ideally he'd have stuck to the Deepwater channel the channel But this would have meant hugging The northern shore right under The noses of the German sentry That's too crazy They got a burp Like they can really see now That there ain't no German ships So he had to go right down The middle despite the fact that The water even at high tide Was just 10 feet deep To reduce the ship's draft Much of the heavy armor and the big guns Had been removed so if she did Become grounded She'd be a sitting duck We did go across Send Bank A couple of times and dragged a bit going over But it was so quick That you hadn't got time to think Good God if I'm marooned here I'd be shot to pieces It's hard to know really what the German Gunners in this pillbox were doing When the Campbell town chugged by I mean yes she'd been hurriedly Converted to look a bit like a German Ship but she was trundling Right down the shallows You'd have thought that would have Alerted them to the fact something was up But obviously it didn't Because they didn't open fire And nor did the guns at the next Pillbox or the one after that But then things Started to go wrong Okay what happened now The REF had finally agreed To stage a bombing raid but the Pilots had been told not to bomb If there was cloud cover in case Of civilians Unfortunately it was cloudy And they hadn't been told what to do instead So they just flew around Alerting the Germans to the fact that Something was up Their flag guns turned Very easily down onto the Surface of the river Plus their search lights With the Germans now suspicious The Campbell town's Heath Robinson Modifications and fake German flag Wouldn't fool them for long And sure enough they were soon challenged By a signal from the shore But the British had a trick up their Sleeves We found the The German code books, naval code books And the Germans didn't know we had them And so we had The up-to-date passwords Counter-signs And we were using them See how I found they playbook Yeah I'm moving different See how I found they play The consternation of the German signalman who was flashing Signals asking who we were And we were We were flashing Back, the right answers Were a friendly force coming in For the night, we've got a damaged Ship or something like this you see And putting them off Twice the Germans opened fire But each time they were silenced By reassuring signals coming from the Campbell town Nearer and nearer to the target Evan? To stay poised To stay poised like that And stay on mission when you hear them Guns firing down at you Actually though the Germans realised that Yes, unbelievably it really was A British raiding party Sailing right through their front door I managed to get to this point here Just 2,000 yards The dock gates which are Just round the headland Maybe you can see it just over there And all hell broke loose A lot of stuff hitting Campbell town I mean it was absolutely Hitting our poor little ML's But a Campbell town being the big Target you know and And There was a sort of glare of search Lights The air was filled with things that Whistled on and shrieked The laser Are you a business owner or looking to For the German gunners was the bridge Of the Campbell town where the captain Was trying to keep a steady course By calling out steering directions The chap at the wheel was killed His place was taken by another Raiding, he was killed almost immediately So then the chap called Montgomery Who was a royal engineer took over And he was standing there thinking What do I do with this When suddenly there was a tap on his shoulder The egghead old man and it was The egghead the brilliant scientist From Dartmouth the man who Designed the bomb in the bow Found himself at the wheel as the Destroyer was on its final charge This is my mission I got it that's real stubborn That was the Tintas down in that war baby I remember Red hot Shell passing through The ward room Just over our heads and going on out Didn't explode If just one shell hit the rudder Or the engine or worse the bomb in the Bow the mission would be over But at this point it wouldn't have Mattered because BT was lined up On the wrong lighthouse so he was Heading for the wrong target God damn it Guys We got one shot at this At the last minute a search Like picked out the lighthouse over there The green one and BT Realized his mistake he barked Out an order so Tibbet Swung the wheel hard to the right To try and miss the jetty Here and then hard To the left again and he Gonna remember he's in a ship that doesn't Handle doing 22 knots At night under a Hail of enemy fire and Yet he managed to just Graze the jetty There This reenact This is some of the best It's just an extraordinarily Brilliant Look at Jeremy Hey Jeremy You made this Piece of seamanship You gotta rephrase that Seamanship is a crazy I get it but like it's 2023 you gotta pause Okay let's continue Nearly million pieces Seamanship They came round the old model But really shifting at this point And pretty soon you can pick up The duck nakes there they are look There they are Maybe I don't know 500 meters to go Really cranking it up now The old girl 1942 Dark searchlights Cannon machine gun Massive fire coming from that bank Aiming straight for that What's the impact it's gonna be like It's gonna be you Just wanted to hit that to flood it So they can get these ships out of the way Putting tidbits as four ton bomb right over the gate And despite the firestorm Beatty turned to his men and said Well there we are Four minutes late The Navy had done its part of the job Brilliantly And now in the two and a half hours The town blew the army had to get ashore And create havoc Yes the Germans had fixed gun emplacements And yes they outnumbered the British By 20 to 1 Don't matter you got Y'all had heart up in this one Y'all had heart But that was no problem Heart and disguises And y'all planned Planned was ass But y'all executed that ass plan And it worked Problem because the raiding party remember Were commandos They may have been picked For their intelligence and free thinking But my god they were tough Just wanted to start A business Their training was speed marching And each commando unit would compete To see who could go the furthest In the shortest time One group went 63 miles In 19 hours Another marched 53 miles From Harlech to the top of Mount Snowden And then down again in 17 and a half hours And remember they did this While carrying 60 pound packs On their backs Determination is the most important thing Even on speed marches Where our Great aim was to get the chap To do 15 miles in full kit In just under three hours Finish up on the salt course And firing Leisurely go up to the top of Ben Nevers There's all part of Mentally equipping them To do anything Not only was commando training tough But it was also revolutionary The regular army would stay fit By doing star jumps in P.E. kit The commando's trained In harsh terrain in battle dress They invented the assault course In fact their methods were so advanced They're still used By elite forces today A determination Doing things which you thought You couldn't possibly do Like on the Tarzan Like I ain't even gonna lie Like my whole thing was going to the Navy I don't know where my mind was at this time But I was trying to be a seal That's probably why I scored so high On that Aswap Like I was trying to really go gulag I was probably gonna do that to somebody out there I was trying to get up close and personal on something You know what I'm saying I was on a rope bridge Or the death slide And don't forget the chaps and commando's Weren't super men They were ordinary chaps From all walks of life But they were trained well Trained to get the edge And instead of doing weapons training On rifle rangers Commando's practiced in massive mock battles With life And what's crazy is I was heavier than I am No, I was lighter than I am now But I've always been heavy Like my body fat has always been low And I've always had a lot of muscle So when they was looking at me Like man we might be a little too heavy That was like you might be a little too heavy But you know they also do it by body weight I mean fat, like percentage body fat And I was like oh no we good then I'm heavy because of muscle And then they did my body fat That was only 11% I was like I told you You feel me? Let's get it I was determined I ain't even gonna lie I was so disappointed When they did that Fire All over weapon training Was geared to offensive action A little example The Bren gun was normally fired On the ground But why not use it firing it from the hip And this was an innovation Rambo And they weren't just revolutionary with guns either They also learned unarmed combat Stuff no regular soldier had ever even Heard of How to tackle a bloke with your bare hands Knock him out, spoil his prospects And pinch his weapon Who says spoil his prospects? Wait a minute Knock him out, spoil his prospects The spoil his prospects means Kick him in the nuts That's the motion he did The key element Was getting themselves To convince themselves that you'd do anything And you'd only do that And the military said if you train people To urge them on And overcome their inner fears And give them supreme confidence Back in San Nazare The commando raiding party Would need all that confidence Just to get us sure We went up on deck And we went to the bows Of the ship with the 12 pounder What is lying around the place Of the blood on the deck And there was a hole in the deck I remember Johnny Proctor lying there With his leg blown off Cheering us on When I came up on deck There was a brilliant flash And a ear-shuttering Explosion And I felt a blow on my knee Which felt like a sledgehammer And it knocked me on one side And I felt to the deck And I was lying there And he called me on the face And said, you're all right lad And it was Major Copeland He said, bumble out at Portsch I don't hang about here It's decidedly unhealthy The tibets and goff were there And they were holding this Scaling ladders And these two chaps Were laughing and swearing and so on And I think We probably dropped Maybe eight feet down The next thing was Germans And they said Handy hoch And I said Handy hoch to you While Tiger was having a set to With Jerry The demolition teams were on their way To their targets One of the main targets Was this underground bunker Because down there But anyway, down there Are the pumps that were used For emptying all the water Out of the dock Stairs The job of smashing this place up Was given to a team of four commandos Led by Lieutenant Stuart Chant Chant, a stock breaker in peacetime Had to place the explosives Even though on the way to the pump house He'd been wounded in the left leg The right arm and both hands Unfortunately, the explosives Had been pre-rigged in England With very short fuses So, Chant sent his men Back up to the surface in relative safety Knowing that when he lit the fuses He'd have just 90 seconds To climb Seven flights of stairs And find his way through this Maze of aerial walkways That's doable 97 flights of stairs in 90 seconds Is very doable It's the confusion of the walkways In the pitch black As there was no light down here then While pretty badly wounded He's a brave man And meanwhile Other teams were having similar successes With the winding houses at both ends of the dock It's hard to believe that Mint Mobile Can be good They let them boys get that close That's just preparation That's preparation That's how they resoluted him And said, so we've blown up the northern winding house And he said, well done, old boy I said, I'm now ready to go back to England, sir At half past two in the morning The surviving commandos came here Where they'd arranged to meet the small boats That would take them home They were pleased as punch With the way things had gone But the elation Was short-lived Because the scene that greeted them Out in the estuary was truly horrific Almost all of the wooden MLs With their exposed fuel tanks Had been blown to smithereens According to witnesses The whole estuary was on fire Chaps were drowning There were pools of burning fuel On the water You had to kick with your feet I'm mad to try and steer the raft Away from the river, from the flames And it was Absolutely inferno There was a sort of sea of black You could see sort of sinking boats And here Chaps coming from the river and so on And then very quickly The colonel said It was obvious that there was no transport home So He said, right We'll fight our way out of the town And we'll split up into small groups And make our way separately Across the Spanish border I thought That's a bit Of a total order A little choice I already did the impossible Let's do it again Spain was adorning 350 miles away But even before they could set off They'd have to fight their way out Of San Nazare itself So that's 5,000 Germans Those who by this stage were awake Alert and organized Against fewer than 120 Brits Half of whom were wounded If you're street fighter You must secure Any crossing Tiger Watson came round this corner Found himself face to face With a German sniper I ran forward Saw him lean forward Pressed the trigger of my Thompson's Watson The magazine was empty Damn His magazine wasn't empty And His shot broke my arm And bowled me over A party of Germans ran up to him And one of them actually used The cliched expression For you, the war is over And I thought Well, I shall have to Escape eventually I don't feel quite up to it At the moment I knew I was obviously not Because there was a watch point At our And I had to go past it The Germans must have seen me And I knew they'd far And they did But they hit me in the back And the arm and the leg Chant, the stopbroker who'd blown up The pumping house, made it to this point When a machine gun bullet fired He was no longer able to walk So he was captured as well The commandos realised That they were trapped on an island And that the only way off it And into the town was across this bridge Which was guarded by what must have seemed like Half the German army By the time they got here There were only 80 of them left But plainly, they still had some Fighting spirit left because they just Formed themselves into a sort of great big mass And charged Captain Roy now led the assault Across the bridge Streams of bullets hitting those girders Brigadiering off the roadway Machine guns, pom poms, rifles It was like a damn good November the 5th No 80 turned into 40 More so Bit by bit, the commando numbers Were whiffled down until the remaining Men, low on ammo, went to ground In the town Corrin Purden ended up in a cellar We suddenly heard all this shouting Outside and then the door burst open And there were Germans standing there with their Coal scuttler helmets and their weapons Looking terribly tense Frankly if I'd been there And I'd have chucked a couple of hand grenades Down and finished us off But they didn't And the colonel Who had his pipe in his mouth Just sort of walked up the steps And said well we've done To do, you know, that's that As dawn broke The battle was pretty much over Just 5 of the landing Party would eventually make it to Spain In freedom and 222 Would escape the horror On the few remaining wooden boats Of the 600 or so men Who'd come to France the previous evening 214 Had been taken prisoner And 168 Were dead And worse still It was now 7am 3 hours after the bomb in Campbelltown's nose was supposed to Have gone off Yeah it has After we were washed ashore We were put in the back of the lorry Driven into the town and we were In this big room And the Germans brought in A sailor They fished out to the river And put him on the table And revive him We tried to get the water out of his lungs And by this time We were saying To one another The Campbelltown hasn't gone up The British could only Consult themselves that despite the Failure they had at least Fought like lions They were patting us on the back The Germans were amazing They probably couldn't believe it That The body would venture up into A submarine base heavily defended Some of the stories of bravery Were incredible Incredible Out in the estuary one of the surviving Mls had gone head to head with a much More powerful German destroyer The British gunner a commando called Sergeant Tom Durran was asked to Surrender on a number of occasions But even though he had been shot He kept on firing Until he was overcome By the loss of blood And passed out But the story doesn't end there Because the captain of the German destroyer Was so impressed by Durran's bravery That when he landed he took the trouble To find the most senior British officer And said look I don't know Who was on that gun on that little ship But whoever it was Should get your victory across And he got it That night When the ops give you praise So the commandos had fought well But all they had to show for it Was a destroyed pumping house And two damaged winding stations Even at 10am The Campbelltown still hadn't exploded And by this stage The ship was crawling with German souvenir hunters There was a real possibility The bomb might be discovered At one point in the morning Mickey Byrne was marched Along here right past Where the Campbelltown was embedded in the gates And that called for a remarkable piece of acting He couldn't look pleased That it was crawling with Germans He couldn't look quizzical Wondering why the bomb hadn't gone off And nor could he look afraid That it might go off at that precise moment Blowing into pieces Among the prisoners was the Campbelltown's captain Sam Beatty I was interrogated By a German who spoke very good English He discovered that I'd been In Campbelltown And he was remarking That it was no good Ramming a stulk Soon like that with a flimsy Ship At that moment This the moment it went off, ain't it I keep talking Mickey Byrne Can't you wait There was a bang The gate, thousands of gallons of water Roared in taking what remained of the British Ship with it And the German souvenir hunters They found bits of them on the roof of the U-boat pens 400 yards away A German petty officer Rushed into the room Where we were lying Saying we're going to shoot you all And kill you all We just Were so sort of exhausted and everything else That we were delighted That the explosion would occur And just said Please don't shout Just get on with it Hitler was so Incensed that he later issued His infamous order that in future All captured commandos Would be executed as spies Small wonder Damage to the Normandy dock Was so comprehensive that it was not Repaired until 1947 Two years after the war was over As a result, Terpitz was denied A home base in the Atlantic And as a result of that She was forced to spend most of the war In a fjord in Norway She was finally destroyed By RAF bombers in 1944 Mission success This mighty battleship The pride of the German Navy Went to the bottom Having never sunk So much as a fishing boat Wins a win The price for rendering this Great ship impotent had been high 168 British dead Around 400 Germans And 16 French By SS troops Still The attack did mean that Churchill Could say to the British and the world We're not done yet And it helped In France as well One very important thing Was the French prime minister Said to us on our first return To send us out He said, you were the first Who gave us hope The memorial And what of the men The commandos and the sailors Who brought them on this The greatest raid of all Well, Tommy Durant, the sergeant Who took on a German destroyer Was captured and died of his wounds Shortly afterwards The bomb designer, Nigel Tibbetz After he'd steered the camp Into the dock gate Helped wounded men onto a nearby ML and headed for home But his little boat was hit By machine gun fire And as his wife had predicted He was killed Almost, maybe After being captured, Mickey Byrne Was sent to Colditz After the war, he became a journalist And today he lives in Wales Where his hobby Is reading poetry What a world we might have made Tiger Watson Was sent to the Spangenberg camp After coming home, he qualified as a doctor And ended up in Africa Helping victims of leprosy Tiger Watson, they don't make good names Like these no more I can't imagine all my senses Being so alert You know, every sense of hearing And looking and Your heart pumping Will certainly be the most exciting thing Of my life It made you feel That you You could stand up to the test I think that's Was a relief To know that One didn't fall apart I'm sure The use of Did I would do the same as we did I'm sure they would I think that Some are other, it's such a strange thing The phlegmatic British Do this sort of thing And I could see us doing it again But I'm always reminded when I think about this And it was after The war I came across a quotation By Mark Twain, who said that Mark Twain Courage is Recognising fear Courage is conquering fear And it's absolutely true Couldn't be truer Yes, you were afraid But you couldn't afford to be Okay, well Today, the great moments Of military history are marked With imposing monuments And their anniversary is honoured With much pomp and ceremony But to find the memorial To the greatest raid of all You have to go to a car park In Fulmouth, in Cornwall It's just a rock Propped up against some railings And it seems Rather small I've always had the feeling It really offers some hope Whether it's international Or national or even individual Some idea of your own And it's impossible Never think so, try it Good night Okay, good night That was a good one, man To you all, leave a like Comment, subscribe, turn on your post That was from the Discord, I'm gone