Allied Commando Raids

St Nazaire Raid BBC documentary in six parts on youtube, first part here;
YouTube - Jeremy Clarkson's Greatest Raid of All Time 1/6

The other parts are linked in the "related videos" box on the right hand side.

A short account of the life and times of Geoffrey Nathaniel Pyke

From the site recommended by The Historian in post #18.

 

St Nazaire was classic. Typical of British guile and courage, I would have loved to have participated in that raid.

 

Bump

 

The Channel Island Raids:

There were several commando attacks on German installations on the British Channel Islands duing the war. I'll list the others as I get time. Tonight the target is Casquets, a small island west of Alderney where there was a lighthouse. The Germans used the lighthouse as both an observation post and signals station.

On 3 September 1942 a raid was taken on the lighthouse. Rather than recount this here's a good website:

Lighthouses@Lighthouse Digest ... CASQUETS LIGHTHOUSE COMMANDO RAID

 

IIRC the commandos, while not always successful, was a thorn at Rommel's side throughout the campaign. They successfully raided his HQ and killed a number of his staff; Rommel was not present, having decided to spend the day on the frontline. The number of Axis aircrafts lost on the ground by commando raids was also considerable.

 

There is always the infamous raid on Nazaire in 1942. Also prevalent were many of the commando operations on D-Day.

 

Excellent links, guys! Very interesting information on the Jedburgh and SAS teams in ww2!!! I will bookmark these and collect the info on the KIA's for my research.

I checked Operation Amherst (The French para drop in Holland, april 1945) but couldn't find a good website. Did find a book about the operation. A French book, translated into Dutch by that Lt. Col.

I was surprised to find out that beside the French casualties there was also a Syrian paratrooper KIA!

 

A link to a small article on Op Amherst and the site its from about the French SAS.FFLSAS

 

This should be of intrest The story of the Belgian SAS Parachutists 1942-45

 

Thanks for the link. I've been wondering who said this line:

“It is not enough to do our duty. We must do more than our duty - everything we can, to the absolute limit.”

And it turned out that it's Major Apple.

 

I am interested if anyone knows details of a British Commando raid at St Laurent (Omaha Beach) in 1942 or 1943 called the Aquatint Raid. THANKS FOR YOUR HELP

 

OPERATION AQUATINT 12-13/9/1942... AN SSRF OPERATION

Hope this helps

 

Hi, all -
I arrived at this thread because I'm trying to piece together the events that led to my father's rescue from forced labour.
My Dad was Polish and not quite 14 years old when the Nazis invaded his homeland.
He eventually wound up as part of a group of Poles forced to work on building defences for the Nazis on the Dutch coast. He was rescued by a group of Canadians who arrived by sea. Fortunately for my Dad and his workmates, one of the raiders recognized the Polish language and that is probably what saved them from being attacked. Apparently, the German guards fled at the first sign of trouble. He was taken back to Britain and arrived in Harwich on 3rd September, 1944 and that's about as much as I know about it.
I wonder if anyone might have any information about this raid?
Leslie.

 

The Bruneval Raid has always interested me persionally as I was born on Friday February 27 1942 roughly at the time that the British raiders landed at Bruneval.
The raid was depicted in the 1954 Alan Ladd film about the British Red Berets alled ''The Red Beret' on its intial release but changed to something else later.
However, Friday February 27 1942 may have been a good day for the Commandos raiding Bruneval and my paents greeting their second son into the world but former Arsenal goalkeeper and BBC sports broadcaster Bob Wilson's, elder brother-Sergeant John Primrose Wilson- was killed-aged 19- flying a Spitfire V-B on a Rhubarb mission from North Weald that day flying over France with the Royal Air Force. on Friday February 27 1942.
There is a statue to David Stirling f S.A.S fame in Doune, Perthshire Scotland, where his family were landed gentry (the British actress who played Emma Peel -Diana Rigg -in the cult British tv programme -whose name I've forgotten -married into the Stirling family and resides part of the year near Doune.
There is also an excellent statue to the Commandoes at Spean Bridge Speyside Scotland where the British Commandos were trained featuring several ommandos standing on the statue plinth in Commando gear looking out to the Scottish countryside where they did their ardous basic traning regimes.
It was at Spean Bridge on Speyside that the U.S. Rangers who took part in the August 19 1942 Dieppe Raid also trained.
Don't forget the ''Cockleshell Heroes''-Royal Marine Commandoes immortalised in the 1956 movie of identical name starring Jose Ferrer, Trevor Howard and Antony Newley about Commandos who kayaked up a major French river; placed limpet mines on parked merchant ships; which subsequently sank, then tried to escape but some who were captured, were summarily shot under Hitler's Commando Edict.
Australian Commandos carried out a similar raid on Singapore Harbour-in either 1943-or 1944 and were summarily beheaded -the ones who were caught by the Japanese-

 

In September-October 1944 the Canadian army was heavily engaged in clearing the Scheldt, the approaches to the port of Antwerp. Not a raid anymore, the Allies were there to stay! Like most of the European coast, the area had been fortified against invasion, and the Germans probably tried to build new defenses when the Allies approached overland. I don't know that much about the Scheldt operations, but it did involve amphibious operations, some shore-to-shore.

 

A post I made on a different site about little known battles that had a much larger implication then would have seemed possible.

Although not really a single battle and all told the amount of forces involved in actual fighting were very small, the subsequent effect of these raids was to tie down a huge number of German forces and equipment for the entire war just because of the threat of invasion.

Commando raids in Norway

Commando Operations Norway

The most significant was

Vaagso Operation Archery

Filming of Operation Archery

Operation-Claymore, Operation-Archery, Nazi-prisoners, Soviet-coal-mines

The type of raid and results that caused the Germans to heavily reinforce Norway.

Commandos raid Spitsbergen

Commandos raid Vaagso