How 611 Commandos Crashed an Old Destroyer Into Hitler's Only Atlantic Dry Dock

In March 1942, 611 British sailors and commandos sailed from Falmouth on one of the most daring missions of the Second World War. Their target was the Normandie Dock at Saint Nazaire, the only dry dock on the Atlantic coast large enough to service the German battleship Tirpitz. Their weapon was HMS Campbeltown, an obsolete American destroyer packed with four and a half tons of hidden explosives. Operation Chariot, known as the greatest raid of the war, saw the flotilla bluff its way up the Loire estuary flying German colours before ramming the dock gate at nineteen knots. Commando demolition teams went ashore and destroyed the pumping station, winding houses, and inner lock gates while motor launches burned on the water around them. Hours later, the concealed charges detonated, destroying the dock for the rest of the war. Of the 611 men who sailed, 169 were killed and 215 were captured. Five Victoria Crosses were awarded, more than for any other single action of the entire war. This documentary tells the full story of the men who volunteered for a mission they were told they would not survive, the five commandos who walked home through occupied France, and the explosion that changed the course of the war in the Atlantic.