CHAPTER 23

Setting a New Course

Loyalty, above all loyalty to traditional values and organizations, is a watchword among members of Armed Forces throughout the world. It was loyalty to the existing order which had been behind the resistance to COHQ and SOE, as well as to the creation of Raiders within the US Marines in 1942. Regardless of initial successes, which enabled forces of the New Order to obtain authority for a considerable expansion in 1943, the upholders of the Old Order prevailed in the resistance to changes which they instinctively regarded as pernicious, as Mountbatten found out when C (the abbreviation for Major-General Sir Stewart Menzies, the Director of the SIS) made known his latest objection to small-scale raids.

The SIS had undergone a most deflating experience since 1940 when its principal espionage agents in Germany had been eliminated and its contacts throughout Europe disrupted by German occupation. The dissatisfaction of its principal customers – the Foreign Office, military and Ministry of Economic Warfare – was justified, at least until the end of 1942 when discontent within the occupied territories began to generate sufficient dissidence to produce a renewed flow of information. Only then did C feel strong enough to call for special favours from old friends to ease the movement of new agents he was recruiting in and out of Fortress Europe. There was general agreement within COHQ, SOE and SIS that, so difficult was it now to land on the Dutch and Belgian coasts and so strongly guarded was the coast of Northern France, that only Norway and Brittany were relatively easy to penetrate. C complained that raids stirred up these safer havens and hazarded the insertion or extraction of agents.

The matter was thrashed out on 4 January 1943 by the Vice-Chiefs at the Chiefs of Staff Committee. The VCNS explained the difficulty of adjudicating between the conflicting interests of SOE, SIS, and COHQ, and proposed a formula that allowed the Admiralty to arbitrate when there was a clash of interests. The army and the RAF, abetted by the navy, felt that information provided by C should have priority over small raids. At this point Mountbatten entered the meeting, briefed to be sympathetic to SIS but to resist his veto as far as possible, on the lines that small-scale raids, by forcing the enemy to strengthen key points along his coast, were likely to compel a reduction in the standard of coast-watching generally. But in emphasizing that it was Churchill’s decision to intensify small raiding, Mountbatten drew from the VCIGS, Lieutenant-General A. E. Nye, the retort that, in giving effect to the Prime Minister’s instructions, other interests, such as C’s, must not unduly suffer. Mountbatten’s tacit acceptance of what amounted to a fait accompli by the Vice-Chiefs provides yet another example of his realistic approach to obstructions which would have driven Keyes to distraction and been followed by an impassioned appeal to Churchill. Moreover, the formula suggested by the Admiralty, although it restored a strong measure of control to the navy, was by no means totally prohibitive or inflexible. For although the Admiralty was granted the role of arbiter in settling who raided, where and when, and gave priority to SIS over SOE, it also reserved to the Chiefs of Staff the power to intervene, thus guaranteeing Mountbatten a strong voice of appeal in case the navy placed too heavy a hand upon his activities – as C-in-C Plymouth was already proposing to do by adopting the Ramsay line that ‘raiding was forcing the enemy to improve his defences’.

In practice the new policy proved totally prohibitive only to SOE. A specially appointed Admiralty Deputy Director, Operations Division (Irregular) – DDOD(I) – who proved, as Foot says, ‘no friend of SOE’, stated imperiously, ‘In home water clandestine operations are controlled by the Admiralty’. This confrontation merely went to show that, beneath the surface, the Admiralty retained its entrenched sectional interest and that if Churchill had not formed a Directorate of Combined Operations in 1940 and placed men of drive and character in charge, amphibious operations would have remained seriously restricted and the return to the Continent delayed longer than it was. The existence of collusion between the SIS, the Admiralty and the Chiefs of Staff in provoking a crisis that would trim Mountbatten’s influence cannot be entirely ruled out, but is unlikely. SIS, instinctively guarding its authority and genuinely fearing the intrusion of additional agencies to the clandestine field, had resisted SOE from the start and successfully blocked efforts by America’s OSS to act independently of SOE in 1942. In the short term, Mountbatten’s comprehensive raiding programme had to be curtailed and SOE’s amphibious activities limited to unobtrusive missions to ferry in agents and supplies on suitable occasions – to the annoyance of DDOD(I) who favoured a complete ban on SOE. As Foot wrote: ‘SOE was seldom contented to let well alone, or to be satisfied with an inch when an ell seemed there for the taking.’

A redefinition of priorities was overdue in the raiding field and departmental overlapping was rife. If SOE tended to encroach on SIS and COHQ ground, the same could also be said of COHQ in reverse. It could be claimed that Freshman in November had been a genuine SOE task, as was proved in February 1943, when a party of Norwegian soldiers under SOE direction in a brilliant action (Operation Gunnerside) wrecked the Rjukan plant without loss, putting it out of action until August. It was therefore logical that the ‘inland’ projects CCO’s Search Committee had laid claim to should not be proceeded with. Such were:

Cornet, an attack by commandos flown in by flying boats upon the Mohne Dam in Germany, scheduled for February/March and eventually carried out with celebrated success by RAF Bomber Command, using a ‘bouncing’ bomb.

Comatose, a sort of Airthief to steal an aeroplane.

Cognac, a parachute attack on power stations at Milan.

In other words, SOE and Combined Operations were to become complementary rather than competitors.

Most of the SSRF raids projected for Brittany, as well as some by 14 Commando to Norway, were also cancelled, eight of them falling foul of SIS objections – the so-called C ban. However, the Admiralty placed nothing in the way of small raids against targets which identified with Admiralty interest, especially operations such as Petrify/Witticism, which was intended as a joint SSRF/MGB raid against shipping in St Peter Port, Guernsey; or Pussyfoot, another landing on Herm. Fog stopped both of these, winter weather accounting for far more last-minute cancellations than the enemy. Only Backchat, a typical SSRF reconnaissance from MTB 344 of the beach at Anse de St Martin, had to be cancelled because of a chance encounter with two enemy patrol vessels.

With typical prescience, allied to faith in Churchill’s and Brooke’s abilities to weld the Americans to British strategic intentions, Mountbatten at a second meeting on 4 January and explained to his newly formed Military and Air Committee the deep effect of the North African campaign on Combined Operations policy. The Americans were intent upon Round-Up in 1943 – intended as a heavy blow to the enemy heart, as opposed to the British leaning towards pinpricks against extremities. The British were against it because they were convinced that re-entry into Europe by way of strongly-defended coasts was impossible until the enemy had been further worn down and their own forces and techniques improved and built up. The Americans wanted to complete the conquest of Tunisia and close down major operations in the Mediterranean. But Mountbatten confidently told his staff that Round-Up would have second priority and ten days later he was proved right during Conference Symbol at Casablanca where he helped Churchill, Roosevelt and the Chiefs of Staff hammer out the strategy which would win the war.

Germany would remain the prime target but sufficient resources would be allocated to the Pacific to enable the commanders there to mount a sustained offensive against Japan. The massive strategic bombing offensive which would be launched against the Axis might shorten the war; but the policy of Unconditional Surrender would embitter and, arguably, prolong rather than hasten the end of the struggle. Round-Up would be deferred and the North African campaign extended beyond Tunisia into Southern Europe via Sicily (Operation Husky).

The effect upon COHQ, as Mountbatten had envisaged, was profound. Automatically the debate between Eisenhower and Mountbatten over Sardinia was snuffed out when Husky superseded Brimstone. By focusing on the Mediterranean there occurred a large-scale subtraction of resources from British waters. Many vessels were taken from Force J, notably LCTs, of which, at this crucial moment, the latest Mark IV version was found to have a structural weakness demanding instant modification. The immediate re-deployment of CCO’s best planning staff from London to Algiers to advise Allied Forces HQ (AFHQ) on Husky distracted attention from a series of larger-scale raids already in preparation against France and Norway. To begin with, and working on the assumption that Operation Bunbury would be linked to Round-Up, General Paget, the GOC-in-C Home Forces, had ‘strongly opposed’ it on the grounds that it would draw attention to the Cotentin Peninsula and lead the enemy to strengthen their defences in an area which was likely to be included in any major operation on the Continent. For Bunbury aimed to destroy the garrison on Sark in May and would comprise an attack by 120–240 parachutists against Big Sark and a troop of 60 men from 4 Commando, carried in two LCIs to Little Sark, plus assistance from 20 to 30 men of SSRF placed ashore from an MGB and an MTB. It was inevitable, once Husky was decided upon, that larger scale raids should be struck from the list, such as:

Hadrian, the capture of Cherbourg.

Arabian (later Lethal), an attempt to seize the submarine bases in Brittany, and thus related to other operations in the spring such as Contour, a naval and airborne landing on Brittany.

Coughdrop, a parachute attack on Lorient in company with heavy bombing in June, rejected by Brigadier Laycock as ‘a bad one’.

Kleptomania, a very large raid against Ushant which was deemed impracticable at any time in any circumstances.

Audacity, a revival of the cancelled 1942 raid against Norway referred to previously.

Nevertheless, the Admiralty nurtured distinctly aggressive designs against Norway, despite SIS objections and the deep concern of the C-in-C Norwegian Forces in London, who feared a recent German proclamation imposing the death penalty on any Norwegians who might discover, and not report, the existence of raiding parties. There were valuable prizes to be won from raiding Norway, which, the Chiefs of Staff implied by their acquiescence on 4 January to a raid upon pyrites mines, out-weighed all other considerations. These prizes included the interruption of a vital enemy supply line, the damaging of warships threatening the convoy route to Russia, the smashing of the heavy water plant at Rjukan and, of indirect but immense importance, the known German fear of invasion and the diversion of forces from more threatened areas as a result of expensive fears implanted at low cost in Hitler’s mind.

Symbol also marked, if indistinctly, a change to the purposes of small-scale raiding in all theatres of war. In addition to establishing a clearer demarcation line between work by clandestine parties of SOE nature and by uniformed raiders, there was of necessity an abandonment of ‘periodical battles’, as Mountbatten phrased it, or ‘raiding for raiding’s sake’ as others said. The heavy fighting in Tunisia, the prospective invasion of Sicily and the greatly enhanced opportunities of striking at the Japanese in Burma and throughout the Pacific, made battles easier, if not all too easy for some, to come by. And, linked inextricably with each invasion, were the vital pre-attack phases of reconnaissance and softening-up of the enemy which so often fell to execution by raiders of one sort or another.

For example, the decision at Symbol to provide sufficient support to allow Nimitz and MacArthur to continue an offensive in the South-West Pacific, which coincided with the admission by the Japanese of defeat at Guadalcanal, led to a thorough reappraisal by the Americans of their amphibious techniques and an expansion of their raiding forces. The outstanding combat abilities of Darby’s 1st Ranger Battalion in North Africa led to multiplication of the number of Army Ranger battalions by four prior to Husky. Formed in the US in April 1943, 2nd Battalion was made up of 500 men from 2,000 eager volunteers from many units. 3rd and 4th Battalions were formed in North Africa, based on cadres from 1st Battalion. In September, 5th Battalion took shape in the USA, and finally the 6th in the Pacific in August 1944, formed from the 98th Field Artillery Battalion. It must be made plain that small-scale raiding was not the purpose of these new Ranger units; with campaigns based on opposed landings ahead, it was deemed essential for standard combat formations to be spearheaded ashore by specialist units who could storm the beaches and take out particularly tough defences which might prove beyond the capabilities of tyros in amphibious assault.

Likewise the expansion of Marine Raider and Parachute units in the Pacific had ‘spearheading’ largely in mind, although there would be occasions when they did raid. 3rd and 4th Marine Raider Battalions had been formed, respectively, in September 1942 – the former in Samoa, the latter in the US. Opposition from the Commandant of the Marine Corps was now quelled because he was in no position to stand up to the combined weight of the President, some among his own senior officers, including General Vandegrift, commander of the 1st Marine Division, Rear Admiral Turner (who successfully promoted Raider battalions as being far more effective tactical ‘bricks’ in island warfare than larger formations) and popular support in the press, whipped up by Carlson. The creation of 1st Raider Regiment in March 1943 appears, however, to have been an administrative and training concept in support of the four existing battalions. For although the regiment would soon assume an operational role, it never operationally commanded all its Raider battalions together since, usually, they were detached to separate tasks.

The Marine Parachute Battalion underwent a similar experience, 1st Marine Parachute Regiment being formed on 1 April 1943 to take charge of the existing 1st Battalion (formed 1941), 2nd Battalion (also formed 1941) and 3rd Battalion (formed September 1942), with 4th Battalion joining later after its formation in the US on 2 April 1943.

Never would a Marine parachute unit make an operational jump. Infrequently would they, or the Raiders, raid in the British manner. Preference for concentrated blows no doubt had a bearing upon it, along with branch of Service rivalries – quite apart from the problems of fighting an island war over a vast expanse of ocean. Yet it remains a misconception in the writing of popular American history that hit-and-run raiding came to an abrupt end after Makin in 1942. For the nature of island topography and deficiencies of information alone made it essential that these techniques should be used for survey, for pilotage and obstacle clearing, slow as Turner was to recognize it.

In the aftermath of Watchtower, as preparations were being made to reconquer the Solomons, the Gilberts and the Marshall Islands, an intensive study was made of the known amphibious shortcomings. High on the list was the need for pre-attack survey of the invasion area to fill gaps left by inferior maps and the inability of aerial photography to penetrate the jungle canopy. Through the intermingled staff communication systems linking London and Washington to Theatre Headquarters, similar lessons were already being disseminated as a result of Jubilee and Torch. Thus knowledge of British reconnaissance parties in Europe was available to Nimitz and Turner in the Pacific. In addition, the Americans held in high respect the Australian Coast-Watchers Organization which had been raised prior to the war by the Director of Naval Intelligence (DNI). This consisted of unpaid volunteers drawn from the native islanders, led by Administrative Officers, traders and others with the task of reporting by radio the movements of hostile craft. In due course they were joined by men of the Australian Independent Companies – recruited in 1940 as the equivalent of British Commandos – and by several New Zealanders and Americans. Engaged initially for a passive role, and were told officially to disband once the enemy had arrived and been reported; many, using their knowledge of jungle survival, withdrew inland to continue reporting. Gradually they assumed military status and, despite heavy losses, fought on as guerrillas, joined in April 1942, by the New Zealand ‘Southern Independent Commando Company’. Towards the end of Watchtower what became known as the South Pacific Scouts, comprised mostly of Fijians, began to arrive on Guadalcanal and shortly after this the Americans started to employ them to work with their amphibious Reconnaissance Patrols.

Guadalcanal became the home of a Combat Reconnaissance School at which experienced Marine Raiders and coast watchers instructed small elite teams, recruited initially from the Raider units, to probe ahead of every subsequent Allied landing. Carried to their destination in MTBs, submarines or PBY flying boats, they would travel either in rubber boats or in native war canoes. Theirs were the tactics of caution in arrival, stealth in investigation, commonsense use of local knowledge and diplomacy for survival, and shrewd, timely withdrawal with the requisite information before detection. They were similar in many respects to the COPP which, raised in December 1942 from survivors of the Party Inhuman, were starting their examination of Sicily’s beaches in January. Like their opposite numbers in Europe they could not count on a friendly welcome from the natives. Many islanders were pro-Japanese.

British raiding forces were expanding as fast as those of America, and, in some respects, in a more diverse manner. As early as September 1942, when the ships and craft for Torch and Force J were assembling and at a time when new craft were coming in quantity from the British and, above all, American shipyards, the First Sea Lord concluded that the task of running this enormous Assault Fleet was getting beyond COHQ and ought to be taken over by the Admiralty. At the same time CCO reported the very great difficulties being experienced in the maintenance of craft and the provision of sufficient crews. As a result of instructions from the Chiefs of Staff to solve the problem quickly, a large-scale change in responsibilities took place in 1943. The Admiralty took over the running of the Assault Fleet at about the same time as the Royal Marines underwent a radical alteration of role linked to reorganization. At a stroke the existing Royal Marine Division was disbanded and its battalions converted to Commandos (under a new Commando Group Headquarters) with 43, 44, 45, 46 and 47 (RM) Commandos coming into being to join 40, 41 and 42 already in existence. No doubt Admiral Turner would have approved, for this tallied with his ideas. At the same time the army, the RAF and the Marines were to ‘join’ the navy by providing crews for landing craft of all sizes up to LCT, introducing a major departure from past practice by authorizing Marine officers to skipper craft. Consideration was also given to inviting American participation, but was rejected on the grounds of administrative and disciplinary difficulty, and a prevalent nationalistic prejudice that this would add to the danger of the Americans claiming the whole subsequent victory for themselves.

Inevitably, Joint Service workings created an intricate jumble of overlapping functions and associations which could never be tidily resolved by those at COHQ or anywhere else. It was a very complicated war in which no single plan or activity could be viewed in isolation since all plans interacted upon each other with knock-on effects which were incalculable. By this time it was almost a miracle if any of the small raiding groups consisted neatly of one nationality, let alone a single Service or regiment. For example, 14 Commando, which was formed towards the end of 1942 to specialize in raiding Norway in kayaks, incorporated British, Canadians and Red Indians, plus the Norwegians who were to be attached for local expertise. A COPP team usually consisted of four naval and one RE officer, four naval ratings and three Sappers and was commanded by an experienced navigator or hydrographic officer, since it was essential that the evidence they were seeking should not only be quickly and accurately found but also be reliable.

Like the American Amphibious Recon Patrol, COPPs were taken to their working areas in submarines, MLs or aircraft. The submarine was the favourite since it could make an unobserved daylight reconnaissance through its periscope before putting the party ashore at night. The technique developed will be described below. Here it is only intended to mention the evolution of a new kind of carrier, the midget submarine, which also demanded specially trained men to operate it. The first of the type was, in fact, a British invention of World War I, but it was the Italians and Japanese who developed and first used them to sink ships in harbour. Using what were really manned torpedoes, the Italians had sunk many British ships in Gibraltar Bay when operating from hulks in neutral waters and laying their charges beneath their targets at night. On 18 December 1941, three of these ‘slow-speed torpedoes’, each manned by two rubber-suited frogmen, had slipped into Alexandria harbour and severely damaged two battleships, a destroyer and a tanker. For their part, the Japanese had developed larger, two-man submarines which could be carried to their destination by ocean-going submarines. These failed at Pearl Harbor but one managed to sink a British battleship in Diego Suarez Harbour on 30 May 1942, and others penetrated Sydney Harbour a day later.

Operations by midget submarines, being of a naval character, will be excluded from this work, except in so far as they impinge upon amphibious operations. The British developed three types – the two-man Chariot, similar to the Italian design, the four-man X-type, similar to the Japanese and a one-man craft called the Welman. Mainly the crews were sailors, although the first, abortive Chariot operation (Title) against the German battleship Tirpitz in October 1942 in a fjord near Trondheim was crewed by Norwegian sailors and Sergeant D. Craig, a Royal Engineer belonging to the Commandos. Bad weather, which sank the two Chariots close to the objective, accounted for the failure of the operation.

Less familiar is the story of the Welman one-man submarine which was intended by SOE to land supplies on the enemy coast for partisans. An initial order in December 1942 for 20 was later increased to 150, of which 80 would belong to SOE as freighters, 40 to CCO for survey and raiding and eight to the navy, the latter preferring Chariot and X-craft. Nobody thought much of the Welman. Lack of a periscope was one severe handicap during inshore reconnaissance, while its frail construction provoked an angry and frightened trials officer to complain that a nearby grenade going off would cripple it and that it was only suitable for its original SOE role. Mountbatten, too, experienced one of its weaknesses when the vision block cracked during a dive. A claim that the Welman was a superior substitute to the canoe in inshore operations was rejected. Manned by men from 62 Commando, four were used in November 1943 to attack shipping in Bergen harbour, but failed to penetrate the defences and were lost.

It was apparent to those involved with raiding in Europe that the time had come to put their house in order and control the spread of private armies which COHQ, SOE and OSS so diligently encouraged. A start had been made by Mountbatten when, in accordance with the COS decision of 27 July, he formed North Force on 6 October 1942. Sometimes called Fynn Force after its leader Major F. W. Fynn, Gordon Highlanders, it consisted of men from the Royal Navy and from 10, 12 and 14 Commandos. North Force was tasked to tackle targets in Norway, using 14 Commando for attacks on shipping. It consisted of British, Canadians, Red Indians, Norwegians and US Army Rangers and specialized in the use of Canadian kayaks, which they preferred to Cockles.9 

In due course all would come under the control of the special Small Raids Planning Syndicate set up by Mountbatten in November. Increasingly, too, raiding forces were being brought under strict control by Theatre Commanders who simply could not afford to have plans of enormous moment spoiled by the wild depredations of a handful of adventurers to whom the war was something of a game. It was bad enough when a recognized private army did something eccentric, but quite unacceptable when two bored dental orderlies stole a boat and carried out a personal foray to France in 1942, a breach of discipline which earned them due punishment and posting to the Commandos after they returned home. In the Middle East, on 28 September 1942, 1st SAS was formally established under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel A. D. Stirling and tasked to dovetail its raiding in jeeps and trucks with LRDG in the forthcoming offensive by Eighth Army. There were to be no more Agreement fiascos. The indiscretions of amateurs had to give way to precise execution by professionals.