I was talking to a chap who is writing a book on the British Home Guard, and learnt a rather interesting fact. Many (well, a few!) Home Guardsmen were found when POW camps were liberated. They had been snatched from Britain by German 'commando' raids. Obviously, this was very very heavily covered up. After all, we commando-raid them, they don't dare come near us! His info came from interviews with Home Guards members, and on one occaision he met a guy who used to work for Military Intelligence, who was amazed that he had found this out. Stories include one man, an engineer (reserved occupation), who joined the HG to 'do his bit'. One of his jobs was to check the beach look-out positions. Often, they would be empty of HG members. Usually, they had bunked off to the cinema, or the pub, but sometimes they were just missing... So, German commando raids on mainland Britain...
Actually, it's not that surprising that such things happened on occasion. What *is* surprising is that it didn't happen more often.
The Luftwaffe had a unit which specialized in what are called "intruder operations". Basically what happened was that German night fighters would trail the British bombers to their home bases, join the landing pattern, then shoot down one or two bombers, returning home afterwards. British losses were starting to reach alarming levels, with a corresponding drop in the morale of the RAF bomber crews, when Hitler stepped in and ordered the intruder missions ended immediately. Seems he believed that destroying British bombers at their own bases was useless; German civilians needed to see them shot down over Germany. So that was the end of that.
Apparently RAF Blenhiems occaisionally used a similar trick - they would even enter the landing pattern with their landing lights on, then bomb the parked aircraft!
No, not at all - very unsporting! To be truey English, we should have flown overhead trailing a Union Jack, landed, unloaded the massed pipes & drums of the Scottish Regiments, then bombed the airfield... :roll:
Further news of German 'commando' raids - an attempt to sabotage the Western Desert railway (on the night of the 28th May 1942) failed when 2 'portee' guns of the an Irish LAA battery were sent to investigate an explosion by the railway tracks. They arrived in time to capture one Feiseler Fi 156 'Storch' - and to watch another fly away chock-full of Germans. The damage done to the railway was slight enough to repair easily, as the saboteurs had been successfully chased off.
Never let an Irish man investigate an explosion, they will only be repairing the still they put up too close to the railway tracks.
