There's no shortage of crazy World War II spec ops stories. By the nature of the job, special forces
got up to some pretty daring, unconventional stuff. Sometimes, things worked out. Other times,
victory came a very steep price. One of the latter sorts of operations was carried out in late-1942
by the British Royal Marines unit RMBPD, which intended to use kayaks and limpet mines
to wreak havoc on some Kriegsmarine forces chilling in France. In this video,
we delve into that audacious yet costly raid, a largely forgotten operation codenamed Frankton.
By mid-1942, the Germans had been reaping the benefits of their occupation of France
for a couple of years, but the Allies weren't just sitting back and doing nothing about it.
One of the initiatives the British War Office came up with was the Combined Operations Command
and its spec ops operatives. As the title suggests, Combined Operations made use of air,
sea, and ground power, a fact reinforced by the department's insignia, which featured
an albatross, anchor, and SMG. The primary objective of Combined Operations was to carry
out spec ops raids on German forces operating in Europe, and by July 1942, British Admiral Lord
Louis Mountbatten had been spearheading the department for the better part of a year.
In that same month, a small unit of the Royal Marines, namely the Royal Marines Boom Patrol
Detachment or RMBPD, was formed, with British Major Herbert "Blondie" Hasler in charge.
The RMBPD was comprised of 34 men at the time,
and they called the naval base Lumps Fort — located near Portsmouth Harbour, England — their
home. Hasler wasn't satisfied just hanging around, though, so he started cooking up a plan.
See, the Germans had been operating out of the French port of Bordeaux — located in the
Bay of Biscay — for some time now, importing resources such as raw materials and rubber to
fuel the German war machine. Hasler saw Bordeaux as a pressure-point just begging to get poked,
but what he had mind was a little unconventional and more than a little sneaky. Originally,
dropping them off in a submarine, he planned to take six RMBPD operatives up the Gironde estuary
into the heavily patrolled port of Bordeaux on kayaks, stick some explosives on maybe a dozen
cargo ships, ditch the kayaks, and then flee into Spain on foot without anyone suspecting a
thing. In September, Hasler proposed this idea to the aforementioned Chief of Combined Operations,
Admiral Mountbatten, but the admiral wasn't quite sold. He didn't want Hasler, personally,
to go on the raid, and he wanted to send out six kayaks instead of three. After Hasler explained
why he needed to take part, Mountbatten gave in, and the RMBPD started training in October.
As part of their training, they got acquainted with the specialised equipment they would be
using in the raid, the most important being the kayaks themselves. These were, more specifically,
Cockle Mark IIs, two-man collapsible canoes about four-and-a-half meters or 15 feet in length.
Inside each kayak were eight limpet mines, a depth sounding reel, a camouflage net,
some rations and water, and a pistol, among other things. When the big day was getting close,
12 men, on top of the defaulted Hasler, were selected to participate in what had been
designated Operation Frankton. But believe me, those 11 men drew the short straws. Hasler was
assigned the kayak called Catfish, along with his buddy Bill Sparks, while 10 men were assigned the
kayaks Crayfish, Conger, Cuttlefish, Coalfish, and Cachalot. The 13th man was a benchwarmer.
On the last day of November, Hasler's unit left Scotland aboard the Royal Navy T-class
submarine HMS *Tuna,* commanded by Lieutenant Commander Dick Raikes.
By the 7th of December, after some delays, *Tuna* surfaced about 16 kilometres or 10 miles away from
the maw of the Gironde estuary. That's when things started to go south, figuratively.
While *Cachalot* was being passed through the submarine hatch, the kayak sustained critical
damage, taking one vessel; and two men out of the count. Following that, under the veil of night,
just five kayaks and 10 men began their journey up the Gironde — a treacherous journey indeed.
From the get-go, they were punished by winds, cross tides, and waves. *Coalfish* was quickly
lost from sight, and *Conger* capsized, forcing her crew to swim to the shore. *Catfish,
Crayfish,* and *Cuttlefish* went on, however, but as they were trying to sneak past a trio of German
frigates, *Cuttlefish* failed its perception check and ended up getting separated; her crew, like
*Conger's,* made for the shore. *Coalfish* managed to link back up with *Catfish* and *Crayfish,*
and these three crews focused on putting paddle to water for about five hours, after which they
pulled over to hide and rest while the sun was out the following day. During this time, unbeknownst
to the other two crews, the crew of *Coalfish* were captured by French police officers.
When night set in, *Catfish* and *Crayfish* went on as intended, and over that night and
the following three nights, they got closer and closer to their target, despite the estuary's
protests. On the night of the 11th of December, Cat and Cray split up to mount their attack on the
dock of Bordeaux, with Cat going west and Cray going east. By 12:45 AM the following morning,
Hasler and his crewmate had set all eight of their limpet mines across four German boats
and were booking it downriver, on the hunt for somewhere to ditch their vessels and proceed
on foot. Cray's crewmen weren't so lucky. The eastern side of the dock was pretty much empty,
so they hit a place called Bassens instead, using all of their limpet mines on just
two vessels. Then they booked it too, and they even managed to meet up with Hasler and Sparks
before the four of them split up into pairs once more and set out on foot for Spain. A couple
of days later, the French seized *Crayfish's* crew, while Hasler and Sparks ultimately made
it to safety via an escape line maintained by the French Resistance. But what happened to the other
eight men, and what sort of damage did *Catfish* and *Crayfish* manage to inflict on the enemy?
Both answers are pretty grim, to be honest. The crew of *Conger,* which capsized,
died of hypothermia on the shore, while the crews of *Cuttlefish, Coalfish,* and *Crayfish*
were captured by German-sympathising Frenchmen or actual Germans and then interrogated and summarily
executed. As for the raid itself, the limpet mines managed to damage but not fully destroy six enemy
vessels. They also managed to spoil a simultaneous Allied operation, too. Without delving into it too
deeply, a Special Operations Executive agent by the name of Claude de Baissac had been
operating out of Bordeaux since July that same year, and had been planning to blast open some
ship-hulls in the harbour for some time. After Hasler and Sparks' limpet mines went off, the
Germans bolstered their defences, inadvertently sabotaging Claude de Baissac's plan, which likely
would have done far more damage than Operation Frankton. Combined Operations Command and the SOE
were so incredibly *clandestine* that they didn't even know about each other's plans for Bordeaux.
Regardless, Hasler and Sparks received the Distinguished Service Order
and Distinguished Service Medal, respectively,
while Operation Frankton's dead participants were honoured with a number of memorials.
In Mountbatten's words, "Of the many brave and dashing raids carried out by the men of Combined
Operations Command none was more courageous or imaginative than Operation Frankton."
And while the operation may have indeed been "courageous" and "imaginative," we'll leave
it up to you to decide if the lives of eight operatives was worth damaging a few boats. So,
do you think Operation Frankton was, overall, a British victory?
Had you heard of the raid before this video? Lastly, do you know of any other
kayak-based operations from the Second World War? Please share your thoughts in the comments.