28 March 1942. RANVR officers at the Raid on St Nazaire
THE raid on St Nazaire, France, was conducted with the aim of damaging the port facilities there. LEUT N. B. H. Wallis, RANVR, (Motor Launch 192), and SBLT P. W. Landy, RANVR, (Motor Launch 306), were wounded during the operation.
The St Nazaire Raid or Operation Chariot was a successful British amphibious attack on the heavily defended Normandie dry dock at St Nazaire in German-occupied France during the Second World War. The operation was undertaken by the Royal Navy and British Commandos under the auspices of Combined Operations Headquarters’
St Nazaire was targeted because the loss of its dry dock would force any large German warship in need of repairs, such as the Tirpitz, to return to home waters via either the English Channel or the Greenland Iceland UK gap, both of which were heavily defended by British units including the Royal Navy’s Home Fleet, rather than having a safe haven available on the Atlantic coast.
The obsolete destroyer HMS Campbeltown, (pictured) accompanied by 18 smaller craft, crossed the English Channel to the Atlantic coast of France. The destroyer was rammed into the dock gates.
The ship had been packed with delayed-action explosives, well hidden within a steel and concrete case, that detonated later that day, putting the dock out of service for the remainder of the war and up to five years after.
Wallis and Landy were young Australian officers of the Dominion Yachtsman scheme which sent young men from the Commonwealth to UK to help man the expanding Royal Navy in 1939-40.
