No, I haven’t heard of it either. I was flipping around Youtube watching some Top Gear clips when I happened to see a Jeremy Clarkson video of a documentary called “The Greatest Raid”. I started watching, and boy was I glad I did.
The Greatest Raid was essentially a suicide mission of British Commandos on the docks at St. Nazaire along the Atlantic coast of France in 1942. Designed to knock out a drydock facility for the German battleship Tirpitz the raid played an important role in ensuring the Atlantic convoys continued to feed England in the dark days following the Battle of Britain. Loaded aboard an old US destroyer and tiny patrol boats, the Commandos made their way up an estuary to the heavily defended docks.
It’s all up on Youtube, and it’s a pretty amazing story worth 45 minutes of your life.
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The Greatest Raid of All Time–St. Nazaire in 1942