By the end of January the forces allocated to Operation Biting had been identified and the task of detailed planning and training was under way. For the Royal Navy it was a matter of helping to train Frost’s paratroopers in embarkation techniques and arranging for the flotilla of vessels to be offshore at the appropriate time. For the men of C Company, 2nd Parachute Battalion, they had to become proficient in landing by parachute and regrouping on target, accomplishing the objectives of the raid and getting out again with as few casualties as possible. For the RAF, No. 51 Squadron had to convert its Whitley bombers to carry parachutists, train with them as airborne transport and get the men to their target safely and on time. Other RAF units would conduct diversionary raids and fighter cover as required.
Operation Biting was not a punitive raid; it had a much greater purpose than merely to terrorize a German garrison and take prisoners. Its main objective was to steal radar equipment and this in itself required expert personnel and engineering support. C Company was the brute force of the enterprise, intent on imposing its will on the German defenders and marshalling its men to ensure that the theft was successful. Expertise in engineering aspects was provided by a detachment from the Airborne Division’s Air Troop Royal Engineers under the command of Lieutenant Dennis Vernon. Crucial to the operation was the inclusion of a radar expert who could determine what parts of the radar equipment were valuable to the objective and what were not. That expert was RAF Flight Sergeant Charles Cox.
Flt Sgt Cox was a technician at the Chain Home radar station at Hartland Point in north Devon with a good working knowledge of RDF. He was regarded as being one of the best radar mechanics in Britain. On 1 February 1942 Cox was called to the Air Ministry in London to see Air Commodore Tait. The senior officer asked him to volunteer for a dangerous mission that was vital to Britain’s war effort. When asking what exactly was the mission Cox was told that the operation was still secret and the air commodore was not at liberty to divulge its objectives. Without knowing what was being asked of him, Cox immediately volunteered for the mission and was whisked away to Manchester to undergo parachute training.
When Cox eventually joined up with C Company at its camp at Tilshead he was introduced to Lieutenant Vernon and his sappers along with their NCO, Corporal Jones. Cox was told that he would be working closely with Vernon and six other engineers on the operation to dismantle the German equipment. The flight sergeant was asked to help with the training of the party on the rudiments of radar. Should Cox or Vernon be incapacitated during the raid, it was hoped that at least a few of the other engineers would be able to dismantle something useful from the Würzburg.
An elementary electrical course was run by Lt Vernon to teach the sappers to recognize electrical equipment and to learn how to avoid electrocuting themselves. Later Colonel Schonland, superintendent of the Radar Operational Research Group, gave the engineers lectures on RDF equipment. This included demonstrating with a Mark I Mobile RDF set, which was dismantled and reassembled again and again by the sappers. Finally a test was carried out with a mock-up set made to look as much like the German one as possible. The inside was full of gadgets, some useful, some merely ornamental, to test the sappers’ ability to recognize vital equipment.
C Company exercising their embarkation techniques on one of Dorset’s shingle beaches in preparation for the raid. The calm sea and bright sunshine were in stark contrast to many of the previous training sorties, where bad weather and poor organization made them into something of a shambles. Nonetheless, when the time came to put their training into practice during the raid, the paratroopers were embarked with little difficulty once the landing craft had arrived on the beach. (IWM H17407)
Lieutenant Vernon and Corporal Jones were also taught the elements of flash photography with a Leica camera to be ready for the task of photographing the German installation. The engineers had duties other than the radar and were taught how to arm and lay Mark IV anti-tank mines along with the use of the recently introduced Polish mine detector. They were also given opportunities to use burglars’ tools to open up the set if it was locked – it was later said in a report that the men showed a marked aptitude for this particular task. Training was also given in the use of explosive charges for opening safes etc. In addition to all this work, the sappers joined the paratroopers on the firing range, on map-reading exercises, on night work and on tactical schemes.
Further radar expertise for the raid was to be provided by the addition of a scientist, Donald Priest, from the Telecommunications Research Establishment at Swanage. Priest, however, was a security risk, for he was a leading expert on British radar and familiar with all of the latest developments in RDF. It was imperative that he be kept from any possibility of being made captive. It was therefore decided that Priest would go over to France with the naval force and would wait offshore until word came that Frost’s men had totally secured the area, permitting him to land and investigate the whole of the radar site at Bruneval without falling into enemy hands. If the parachutists failed to gain total and complete control of the area then Priest was to remain at sea.
Major John Frost did not join with his company on its move to Tilshead Camp towards the end of January; he had another more pressing task to accomplish. The major had previously been the battalion’s adjutant and had taken over C Company only just before word of the special operation arrived. He had not yet completed the statutory number of jumps to acquire his parachute wings, for he had been injured on his first jump the previous year and was unable to return to Ringway aerodrome in Manchester to complete the course.
Whilst his men settled into their new home in draughty barracks on a cold and wintry Salisbury Plain, Frost was trying to squeeze in his last three jumps from Whitley bombers in equally dismal weather in the north of England before the deadline given to him by his colonel expired. Fortunately he made the grade just in time and rushed south to organize his company into a proficient fighting unit before the proposed demonstration to the War Cabinet.
A practice exercise for the company was soon organized on a specially selected area of high ground near Alton Priors close to the Kennet and Avon Canal in Wiltshire. The high ground represented the cliffs at Bruneval and the canal was the sea. The exercise called for C Company to be split into a number of parties, each with a special task and each dropped at small intervals. There were no actual airborne drops to be made during this practice scheme; the purpose of the exercise was to train for the ground operations of the eventual raid.
When the major considered the proposed plan he was not at all happy with it. His company was normally organized into three platoons and a company HQ, and the break-up of this natural formation into fighting groups unbalanced all that the company had previously trained for. He felt sure that the exercise would be a shambles. Frost decided to go to divisional headquarters to see if the organization for the exercise could be changed into something more manageable. There he met with the division’s liaison officer, who took the major into his confidence and told him that his company was, in fact, not preparing itself for an important demonstration to members of the War Cabinet, but that this exercise and training on the high ground was a preamble to a raid on enemy territory. The reorganization of Frost’s company into small parties was important to the final plan of the operation, as was the addition of the group of Royal Engineers and the tasks set for his company.
The ground training at Alton Priors fortunately turned out to be successful, with all groups accomplishing their tasks to the major’s satisfaction, although the whole of this period was often interrupted by heavy snow. On 7 February contact was made with Wing Commander Pickard and his pilots of No. 51 Squadron. The squadron flew Whitley Mark V bombers, which needed some modification to enabled parachutists to exit safely and quickly from the aircraft. The squadron was based at RAF Thruxton for the raid, on an airfield that had just been upgraded to bomber-station standard by the addition of three concrete runways. The aerodrome was located just on the edge of Salisbury Plain, 24km east of Tilshead Camp. It was here that Frost’s men practised loading containers and themselves into the aircraft and undertook exit drills. It was also a period during which they could get to know the pilots and their ground crews.
The Armstrong Whitworth Whitley bombers that would take Frost’s company to France were, by 1942, coming to the end of their active service. The first prototype twin-engine Whitley had flown in 1936 and was introduced into the RAF the following year, replacing the Handley Page Heyford biplane. When war began it was the oldest of the three bombers in service with the RAF – the other two were the Hampden and the Wellington – and it was by then virtually obsolete, but more than 1,000 of them were produced before a suitable replacement could be put in service. One of its main problems was that it could not maintain altitude on only one engine. The aircraft was designed as a night bomber and flew the first bombing mission against German soil in March 1940. When the need to find a transport aircraft arose from the establishment of parachute forces, the Whitley was selected to temporarily fill the task.
As a transport for airborne troops the Whitley was not the best of aircraft. The only means of exit for the parachutists was through a circular hole cut in its floor. If they did not exit correctly there was a risk they would bang their head against the sides. The inside of the aircraft was very cramped and the troops had to sit on the floor facing alternate ways with their backs against one side and their feet against the other. Loading was crucial to obtain the correct centre of gravity, which was essential for the stability of the aircraft in flight. Each passenger on board had to be weighed along with his weapons and equipment and placed in an appropriate position. Records show that the 12 parachutists in Major Frost’s aircraft weighed 828kg and that Frost himself with his pistol and ammunition weighed 97kg. Such detail was essential for a successful mission.
On 9 February Frost took his men north to Inveraray in Scotland to undertake training with the Royal Navy on Loch Fyne. For five days and nights they practised embarking onto landing craft and moving about the open waters. During this period they stayed on board the Combined Operations support ship Prinz Albert, which made a welcome change from the damp conditions at Tilshead Camp. The ship had been built in Belgium in 1937, taken over by the British in 1940, and then armed and converted for use by special forces. The Prinz Albert carried eight assault landing craft (ALC) and was protected by the addition of a mixture of Oerlikons, 12-pounder and six-pounder guns.
This pre-war picture of the tiny beach at Bruneval was used in the planning of Operation Biting. It shows just how small a target it was for the landing craft to find on a dark February night. The seafront here is now much changed. (Crown Copyright)
On 14 February C Company returned to Wiltshire ready to participate in practice drills with No. 51 Squadron. The following day there was an airborne drop of the whole force and their containers onto ground close by Major General Browning’s HQ at Syrencote House just outside the village of Figheldean, 19km north of Salisbury. Although Frost thought that the exercise was ‘a shambles’, the general seemed to be satisfied with the drop.
Bad weather continued to interfere with training. A practice with the Royal Navy at Redcliff Point in Dorset was abandoned on 16 February. The next day a full night rehearsal with the landing craft and the RAF was planned to take place in the area of Arish Mell near Lulworth. It was intended that the airborne troops would be lorried to an assembly area as though they had arrived by air and for No. 51 Squadron to drop containers onto the designated drop zone. The troops would rendezvous with their equipment, carry out their set tasks and then withdraw by sea on landing craft. Unfortunately the weather turned bad at the last minute and the landing craft could not arrive. The aircraft dropped the containers wide of their mark and Frost’s company went to the wrong place. Major Frost described the exercise as ‘a disaster’.
The same was true for the following day at Arish Mell. The landing craft were due to arrive at 2000hrs, but the weather got the better of them and at 2015hrs the practice was once again called off. The three days spent in Dorset exercising for the raid were a failure. The company returned to Tilshead on 19 February and were told that the operation was set to take place in just five days’ time on 24 February. One final attempt to practise with the landing craft took place the next day, 20 February, in Southampton Water. The flat-bottom boats came into the beach as planned at 2015hrs and the troops embarked onto the vessels. However the falling tide left the landing craft stranded in the mud and the troops disembarked and went home to bed.
A parachutist, wearing the canvas and sorbo-rubber ‘bungee’ training helmet, is poised to exit through the floor of a Whitley aircraft during parachute training. The picture shows the incredibly cramped conditions inside the aircraft, which could carry no more than 12 troops into battle. (Sgt. Elmer R. Bonter/Dept. of National Defence/Library and Archives Canada/PA-115854)
The RAF had also been busy during this period, preparing No. 51 Squadron for the raid. Group Captain Norman’s report after the raid detailed the types of training undertaken by the squadron. First, of course, the pilots had to learn the general theory of dropping parachutists rather than bombs. Next came various familiarization missions such as dropping practice dummies, map-reading at low altitude, timed cross-country flights with low approaches to selected fields, cross-country flights at dusk, a whole-day mission with all 120 paratroopers and a final dusk rehearsal dropping only containers.
Other techniques had to be evolved, one of which was for the automatic release of the equipment containers at the same time as the parachutists. The bomb-release circuit on the Whitley was modified so that its circuitry became active only after the ‘green’ light for the drop was switched on. The containers were actually released when contact was made via a standard intercom plug. This plug was attached by a short cord to the static strop used by parachutist No. 5. On the ‘green’ signal the stick of troops would launch themselves from the aircraft, each man’s parachute being operated by the static strop. When the No. 5 of the stick jumped out, the static strop freed his parachute and the plug attached to his line then released the containers from the bomb bay allowing the men and their containers to land together.
In addition to providing the 12 Whitley bombers that would fly Major Frost’s paratroopers to Bruneval, the RAF had other aspects to their air plan. On several nights prior to the operation, No. 4 Group Bomber Command was to carry out raids with its bombers crossing the coast at low levels close to the objective at Bruneval. This would make the Germans in the area of Le Havre become accustomed to aircraft coming in from the sea at low altitudes. On the night of the operation a diversionary raid was to take place around Le Havre. To protect the sea passage of the naval forces involved in Operation Biting, No. 11 Group Fighter Command was to provide fighter cover to the returning ships once daylight had broken. This air cover by Spitfires would escort the small craft all the way back to home waters.
The navy plan was to evacuate and return the raiders to Portsmouth after the operation. Frost’s men were to be taken off the beach by landing craft from the vessel Prinz Albert. The Combined Operation’s ship would leave Portsmouth early on the afternoon of the raid and proceed towards the target area accompanied by Commander Cook’s motor gun boats. Off the French coast the Prinz Albert would release her landing craft and then return to England, for she was much too big a target to remain at sea in the area throughout the night. The assault landing craft and the MGBs would then close on the beach at Bruneval and await offshore for the signal to run in and pick up the raiders. The paratroopers, including those carrying the vital radar components, would be transferred from the ALCs onto the MGBs which would then tow the landing craft back to the home port (the landing craft themselves did not have the range to return to England under their own power).
The operation was set to take place on the night of 24 February, weather permitting. The last few days before the operation now became filled with activities to perfect the final details. It was a busy period for all involved: equipment had to be collected and tested; special clothing provided; identity discs checked; containers had to be packed; and weapons issued. Further training was undertaken in attacking pillboxes and crossing barbed wire by day and night. Then there was a final rehearsal by each party concentrating on its own particular tasks. Finally, models and air photographs were revealed and each man could at last see the real objectives they would be faced with. The separate groups that had been formed from the start could now learn of their individual targets.
The main object of the raid was to capture various parts of the Würzburg and get them back to England. There were many other secondary objectives to be seized if circumstances permitted. Foremost of these was to capture any German prisoners who might be connected with the radar, especially operators and technicians. Photographs of the whole site were also important, as were any documents and diagrams that might be found at the Würzburg or in the adjacent villa. To complete these tasks the area had to be secured, as did the escape route down to the beach, and the beach itself, to allow the landing craft to come in and embark the paratroopers.
This was to be a lightning raid in which timing was most important. The raiders could not linger too long on their tasks for they were going into action very lightly armed. The payload of the Whitley aircraft was too small to include the carrying of heavy weapons. Frost’s men would not have the benefit of mortars or any other means of holding strong enemy forces at bay. The latest light machine pistol, the Sten, was to be the weapon of choice. It had the capability of being very effective at short range – providing it did not jam – and it was light to carry and easy to use. Spraying an area with Sten gunfire was an effective way of making sure the enemy kept his head down. Pistols and rifles were the other weapons to be carried, supplemented by a few Bren light machine-guns. All of these weapons would, however, be ineffective against any armour or mortars that the enemy might bring against them, so the intention was to get in and get out as swiftly as possible.
The final plan called for C Company and its attendant eight Royal Engineers, 120 men in total, to be split into three main groups containing a number of small parties, each of which was allocated a specific task. The parties were each given code names, as were several of the key places within the site to be attacked, the most notable of which was the Würzburg, itself labelled ‘Henry’. The names of the individual parties were chosen from a list of notable British admirals and reflected the navy’s part in what was a truly combined operation.
‘Nelson’ was the biggest party, with a particularly vital role to play. It consisted of 40 men organized into three light sections under the command of Lieutenant E. C. B. Charteris and a heavy section led by Captain John Ross, Frost’s second-in-command. It was Charteris’s objective to capture and hold the beach and to eliminate the fixed enemy positions in the casemates either side of the exit. Captain Ross and his men would provide Charteris with a rearguard as his men moved in to seize these objectives and then seal the road leading from Bruneval village assisted by two sappers with their anti-tank mines. Once these tasks were completed, contact would be made with the naval force and the landing craft could be brought in ready for the evacuation.
The second grouping of paratroopers consisted of three individual parties. ‘Drake’, with ten men under the command of Lieutenant Peter Naumoff, was charged with containing the enemy housed in the rectangle of buildings at Le Presbytère to the north of the villa. Once the firing began, the first enemy resistance to the landings would most likely come from the coast defence troops and Luftwaffe personnel located there. It was Naumoff’s task to protect this northern flank of the area under attack from enemy interference whilst the radar was dismantled. ‘Hardy’ was commanded by Major Frost himself and his initial objective was to seize and clear the villa. The third party, ‘Jellicoe’, was led by Lieutenant Peter Young, and its main task was to capture and hold the Würzburg whilst the sappers under Lieutenant Vernon and Sergeant Cox set about dismantling it. The three parties consisted of 30 men in total.
Men of C Company practise embarkation drill onto landing craft. During training each group of men was called down to the boats in a strict order, and each craft came in one at a time. During the actual raid, the confusion that surrounded the lateness of the arrival of the landing craft and the eagerness of a radio operator to get the boats to come in immediately meant that all six of them arrived at once and all the men on the beach swarmed forward to be taken off. (IWM 17412)
Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Sir William James, KCB
Admiral William James was born in 1881 and graduated from the naval training ship HMS Britannia in 1901. During World War II he served as flag officer on HMS Benbow from 1916–17 before joining naval intelligence. He worked as a code breaker in the famous ‘Room 40’ in Whitehall and eventually became Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence.
Between the wars he served on a number of stations before taking over command of the Battlecruiser Squadron flying his flag in HMS Hood. In 1938 he became a full admiral and served as Commanderin-Chief Portsmouth until his retirement from the service in 1944.
Air Force Commander, Group Captain Sir Nigel Norman
Nigel Norman was born in 1897 and served in France during World War I with the Royal Garrison Artillery and Royal Engineers. In 1926 he became a private aircraft owner and joined the Auxiliary Air Service as a pilot officer. In his civilian life he helped form the aviation company Airwork, which specialized in developing airports at home and abroad. He served with No. 601 (County of London) Squadron, where he later acted as a flight commander, and in 1931 he was appointed to command the squadron. He went on to command No. 110 Wing at Ringway and, from 1940, the Central Landing Establishment. His final appointment came in 1942 when he was chosen to form No. 38 Wing. During this time he worked in close collaboration with the army to develop techniques for carrying airborne troops. He was air force commander for the first parachute operation in Italy, then at Bruneval and finally during the invasion of North Africa. Nigel Norman was killed when his aircraft crashed on take-off at Portreath on 19 May 1943.
Naval Force Commander, Commander F. N. Cook RAN
Commander Cook joined the Royal Australian Navy between the wars and was serving in Britain as a lieutenant commander with the Royal Navy when war broke out. He was one of the 375 survivors that escaped from 31,000-ton battleship, HMS Royal Oak, when she was sunk in Scapa Flow by Günther Prien’s U-47 on 14 October 1939. He later commanded HMS Tormentor, the landing craft operational base at Hamble on Southampton Water. Just after the Bruneval Raid an approach was made to the Royal Navy by the Australian Commonwealth Government seeking advice and assistance in the setting up of a Combined Operations Training Centre at Port Stephens, along the lines of those already operating in England. Commander Cook was assigned to the task and returned to Australia to raise and command the establishment for the remainder of the war.
OC Parachute Troops, Major John Frost
John Frost was one of the most active of all airborne commanders. Of the ten battle honours awarded to the whole of the Parachute Regiment during the war, John Frost fought in four of them: Bruneval, Oudna, Primosole Bridge and Arnhem. He was born in 1912 and after attending the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) in 1932. From 1938 to 1941 Frost was seconded to the Iraq Levies as a captain, where he commanded a force of local tribesmen organized into infantry rifle companies to guard RAF airfields and installations. When he returned to England in 1941 he joined the Parachute Regiment. After the Bruneval Raid he was involved in the Torch landings in North Africa in command of the 2nd Parachute Battalion. He took part in the abortive Oudna operation and then fought his battalion as infantry for the whole of the Tunisian campaign. He led his unit at the Primosole Bridge action in Sicily and in the invasion of Italy. It was, however, in the Arnhem battle that he won his lasting fame, capturing the end of the strategic bridge in the city and holding it for days against overwhelming odds before he and his men capitulated and were made prisoners of war. On release from captivity in 1945, Frost remained in the army and later commanded the 52nd (Lowland) Division. By the time of his retirement from the army in 1968, Frost had attained the rank of major general. He died in 1993.
The final group was a single party, ‘Rodney’, led by Lieutenant John Timothy. Its 40 men would drop last and move to the east of the attack zone to screen off the landward side from any major enemy interference. Timothy’s group would also provide a mobile reserve as required and eventually act as a rearguard during the evacuation phase of the raid.
The drop zone for the paratroopers was an area of open ground 365m south-east of the villa. The forming-up point from which each party would launch its attack was a line of trees just to the south-west of the drop zone. Each party would move silently into position and the raid would begin when Major Frost blew his whistle just as his party was launching its attack on the villa. Then the firing would start.
Each group was provided with a No. 38 radio, with all sets working on the same 8MHz frequency operated by company signallers. These sets were intended to be used to co-ordinate the land battle. Regimental signallers operated the other communications links that were provided. Two No. 18 sets, working at 8.7MHz, were issued for signalling between the raiding force and the naval craft. To help guide the landing craft into the beach, two systems of homing beacons were provided. The land-based signallers had a portable directional radio transmitter called a ‘Rebecca’, whilst those in the landing craft used its companion receiver called ‘Eureka’. Once the beach was captured the transmitters would be switched on to form an aiming point for the landing craft that would, it was hoped, ‘home in’ on the right beach in darkness. The system was still in its infancy and the transmitters were fitted with an explosive charge to prevent their capture by the enemy. All four of the regimental signallers operating these sets were to drop with the Rodney group, each man in a separate aircraft.
A mobile German Luftwaffe Würzburg radar installation in the field. Unlike the installation at Bruneval the radar operators are open to the elements, for there is no small hut attached to contain the display apparatus. (Bundesarchiv 1011-662-6660-27A)
Operation Biting was a raid in which the Royal Engineers took a prominent role. Its main objective was an engineering one and particular care was taken in the planning and training of the objectives that the sappers were to undertake. They were distributed amongst the paratroopers as follows: Nelson: one sergeant and one sapper to lay anti-tank mines and to tape a path through the minefield; Hardy: Lieutenant Vernon, one corporal and one sapper (along with Sergeant Cox of the RAF) to dismantle and photograph the radar set; and Rodney: two sappers to duplicate the work of Nelson if required. To execute these tasks, the engineers had to carry a wide range of tools and equipment including Polish mine detectors, wire-cutters, hammers, jemmies, explosive charges, anti-tank mines, incendiaries, white tape and three trolleys on which to carry away the booty. All these items, plus many others, were to be dropped along with the troops in eight separate containers. Other containers were to be dropped simultaneously containing weapons and equipment for Frost’s men. Each of these 12 storage boxes showed a coloured light that illuminated on impact so that every man could quickly recognize those containers relevant to his particular group.