I should like to thank a one-time shipmate and former X-craft CO, Commander Matthew Todd, Royal Navy, for his kindness in providing answers to technical questions.
Only six X-craft took part in Operation Source. X-11 and X-12 are fictional. Nor was there any convoy PQ 19 or QP 16; the last in that series were PQ 18 and QP 15, after which the prefix letters for Arctic convoys were changed from PQ/QP to JW/AR.
Adding fiction to fact has not been allowed to alter the facts as they are recorded. For instance, Karl Rasmussen was caught by the Gestapo and tortured, and did kill himself rather than betray his colleagues Torstein Raaby and Harry Pettersen. And Lützow did leave Altenfjord just before the X-craft arrived, just as Scharnhorst was at anchor off Aaroy – moving on the forenoon of the attack into the net-cage vacated by Lützow. Donald Cameron saw Scharnhorst in that vulnerable position when he was on his way south to the Brattholm islands in X-6, but his target was Tirpitz and he was not to be deflected. I knew Cameron, and feel sure he would not have objected to my using his ‘magnificent feat of arms’ – Admiral Sir Max Horton’s description of the operation – as a background to this last Everard story.
AF