← WW2 Pod: We Have Ways of Making You Talk
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- [00:02]
Owen Murray
Thank you for listening to we have ways of making you talk. Sign up to our Patreon to receive bonus content, live streams and our weekly newsletter with money off books and museum visits as well. Plus early access to all live show tickets. That's patreon.com wehaveways.
- [00:25]
Red Bull Summer All Day Play Announcer
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- [00:51]
Marvel Television Announcer
Where is Daredevil? I'm right here. Don't miss the return of Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again.
- [00:59]
Owen Murray
So what's next? I feel liberated.
- [01:02]
Marvel Television Announcer
We're gonna take over medicated in an all new season. Now streaming only on Disney plus.
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Owen Murray
They're hunting us.
- [01:10]
Red Bull Summer All Day Play Announcer
It's time we started hunting them.
- [01:12]
Marvel Television Announcer
I can work with them.
- [01:15]
James Holland
This should be tons of fun.
- [01:17]
Marvel Television Announcer
Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again. Now streaming only on Disney plus.
- [01:32]
Owen Murray
Having seen the men off at the aerodrome, I sat down to supper with the glider pilots. It was hard to keep silent and yet hard to talk. The next few hours would mean so much. One could look at each munching face and say to oneself, aha, you have no idea. In two or three hours I'll be flying off to France. I have a rather exciting appointment. Fleetingly, during pauses in the conversation, a twinge of fear would grip one's heart and one would say, lucky devils. Soon going off to bed in a warm little hut. Well, we'll be shivering somewhere up above going to goodness knows what. And that was Major John Frost recalling the eve of the Bruneval raid in his actually rather entertaining memoir, A Drop Too Many. Welcome everyone to we have Ways of Making youg Talk With Me, Owen Murray and James Holland. And we offer you at last some good news from February 1942.
- [02:23]
James Holland
Ah, thank goodness. I mean, you know, it's been really,
- [02:26]
Owen Murray
really hard work having dragged ourselves through the disasters of the Channel dash, and this is only a fortnight. The Channel Dash. By the way, this happens. What's amazing about the first half of 1942 is an awful lot happens and at breakneck speed. But this is something that we can warm the cockles of our listeners hearts with.
- [02:47]
James Holland
That we can cheer about.
- [02:49]
Owen Murray
Exactly.
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James Holland
Fly the flag for Team GB and
- [02:52]
Owen Murray
for the maroon machine. Because this is a great victory for NASA airborne forces.
- [02:57]
James Holland
So Johnny Frost. I thought. I thought he was a. I thought he was a West country man.
- [03:00]
Owen Murray
No, no, no, no. He's a Scot.
- [03:02]
James Holland
I thought he was a posh squire, a sort of yeoman of the. Of the sh.
- [03:06]
Owen Murray
That's where he ends up. But he's a Scotsman. He's the son of a general. He's been working with the Iraq levies
- [03:11]
James Holland
with his hunting horn.
- [03:12]
Owen Murray
Exactly. He misses 1940. He misses the disaster in France. Anyway, this is. I think we can call this an unmitigated success, this raid. And you could argue, and I think I might, that this is the only totally successful British airborne operation of the Second World War. But what this is also about is the electronic war.
- [03:34]
James Holland
So really what you're saying is this has got a little bit for everyone. It's got airborne forces, it's got tech boffins, high end electronics.
- [03:41]
Owen Murray
Louis Mountbatten as well. Jim, I. Basically, there's trailer breadcrumbs here to cheer James Holland's heart. Everybody. As we all know, right, in the electronic war, the British have the advantage with the cavity magnetron, Jim's favorite device. If you're a regular listener, you know that the cavity magnetron, that's your number one item, isn't it, in what wins the war for the Allies, right?
- [04:02]
James Holland
Yes. And I would say my most common mentions are the awful weather of the winters and the cavity magnetron.
- [04:08]
Owen Murray
Yeah, there we are. Right. Okay.
- [04:10]
James Holland
But, you know, that's reassuring in its own way.
- [04:13]
Owen Murray
It is, it is. And this is Randall and Boot's genius invention at Birmingham University, gifted to the Americans for mass production. They take it over. They say, can you please mass produce this for us? And you can have it as well. And while the British have got the edge with this, they really need to find out what the Germans are about in terms of radar. And it's crucial to the bomber offensive, which is, after all, let's not forget at this stage of the war, it's the cornerstone of British strategy.
- [04:39]
James Holland
Still is. Even though they're rubbish.
- [04:41]
Owen Murray
Even though they're rubbish. And the Navy have buttoned down the Atlantic by this point. It's the turn of 41 into 42.
- [04:47]
James Holland
Yeah.
- [04:48]
Owen Murray
As we all know, the Kriegsmarine and surface fleet has been successfully bottled up in Brest until the Cheldac, which by Bomber Command. But they're really turning their attention to how do we make this work? And they really want to know what the Germans have got in the way of radar. They want to get across to Europe undetected, or at least with proper countermeasures in place. Right. And it's absolutely key. This is key to the bomber strategy, which is, apart from the fighting in the desert, all that Britain has gotten a way of prosecuting the war against the Germans. The heavies are coming and so they need to figure this out. And at the center of this electronic warfare campaign is R.V. jones, Stone Cold Boffin, 100% Legend. And he's had brilliant success in bending the NICA bean beams, the X, the Y gerate. And he's done a great job against the German blitz in coming up with electronic countermeasures to blunt the German blitz offensive. Because of his experience in the blitz, he wants to know what can he do to the Germans in return and what might they have up their sleeve? And they know about the Freyr radar, which is a longer range radar. But there's this other ingredient in the German radar system. In lots of ways this is like chain home and chain home low right. The Germans have got a longer range radar and then a shorter range radar. For the uninitiated, that's the British RDF radio direction finding. You have the long range aerial that sees the formations far out and then the shorter range area that can actually count the numbers more accurately and ascertain their direction. And so the Germans have a thing called the Wurzburg radars, which are made by Telefunken. And there's a series of radars through the war from A to D. And the Germans have developed these before the war. And the Wurzburg A system is rolled out as a mass produced item and the British think it's a gun laying radar. That's what they're really worried about. They can actually lay their guns with this first Berg radar. And they're worried about this because it's that, that's their own aspiration. They want that kind of tech themselves. And they're also worried if the Germans have got a gun laying radar, getting bombers over the coast into Germany is going to be that much more difficult as it turns out. And as we'll see, the Wurzburg A in particular, which is the piece of kit at the center of this story, isn't that sophisticated in practice, but it's got an 18 mile range and it's accurate to about 25 meters in range itself. So it could give you a good radio direction and range. And it's got a paraboloid dish antenna. You know, it's what we think of as a radar with a big dish. The Dish can be folded in half so it can be moved. The Germans, if they want to move the radar can, they could, they could take it elsewhere. And if they, there's a bigger dish that could be fitted to this thing that improves what it can do. But that means it's a static piece of kit and it's accepted in service in 1940. And the 4,000 of this basic radar set are ordered and delivered and improvements follow. So obviously the British, they have an idea that this thing exists. They have an idea that it's out there and they would really, really, really like to get their hands on it so that they can come up with the electronic countermeasures they need.
- [07:55]
James Holland
It is very like Chain Home and Chain Home Low, isn't it? The two versions, Freya and Verse, both together.
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Owen Murray
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And they know about Freya because they can hear Freya, they can hear the signals. They, you know, they're listening and they can, they can see or see the signal.
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James Holland
And also R.V. jones had worked that out in 1940, hadn't he?
- [08:13]
Owen Murray
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And you know, Freyja is of course named after a Norse goddess, but Versburg is the mystery. And there is some irony here, right, that the bomber war people who've exerted their primacy via the Air Ministry over the airborne people, you know, they won't give them planes, they won't give them training time. They give them one aircraft in 1940, the Air Ministry, you know, it's this out of date thing that no one wants to use. It's a sort of. Even by this stage, nearly two years later, access to aircraft is basically very, very hard for airborne forces. But they're going to now have to rely on airborne forces for this part of the jigsaw in their air war. And there's a bargain to be struck with this operation. So our story starts on 15 November 1941. An RAF Photographic Reconnaissance Unit aircraft takes pictures to the coast north of Le Havre. And something interesting is turned up. There's the cliffs. There's a villa with a road that runs down to it and then sort of bends around it a bit like a, sort of like it's been hooked. And right between the villa and the cliffs there is a black mark.
- [09:23]
James Holland
And it looks like there's a sort of country house at the end of a, end of a road, isn't there?
- [09:27]
Owen Murray
Yeah, it's a country house at the end of a road and there's a little black mark between the cliffs and the country house. They know that there's A Freyr station up the road. But they know for the transmission footprint, there's something else there. So R.V. jones and his assistant, Dr. F.C. frank. So we're in full boffin territory here. They look very carefully at this house, the villa, they think in broad daylight there, it's got to be a Wurzburg. So they order low level PRU because they can do that. So on the 4th of December, 1941, Flight Lieutenant Tony Hill, DFC, goes in at super low level and sees the apparatus in this loop in the road and says it's some sort of electric bowl. And he takes pictures and they don't come out properly. So he goes back the following morning and has another look and this time he captures perfect pictures. And the thing is, the picture is absolutely amazing. The Germans have done a diabolically poor job of disguising the Wurzburg.
- [10:22]
James Holland
Basically, they paint it black, right? I mean, that's it, isn't it?
- [10:25]
Owen Murray
They painted it black. It's piss poor, let's be honest now. And Jones is extra excited because the Wurzburg is perched right on the cliffs and in wide open space below the cliffs is a beach. There is a village nearby. And immediately, RV and fc, so RV Jones and FC Frank start to wonder about a raid to capture the radar set. And Jones is really unhappy.
- [10:48]
James Holland
I say, rv what do you think? I think we can get some of our commando chaps in there, don't you? All right.
- [10:54]
Owen Murray
I don't know. I'm rather nervous about the prospect of risking lives, but it's too tempting. Oh, boy.
- [11:01]
James Holland
Pass me another ginger nut, will you? F?
- [11:06]
Owen Murray
So, large ginger nut left in England, he punts the suggestion up to Combined Operations hq. So. So this is really important, right, because they're up at Lochvine and this is an interesting moment with Combined Operations hq, because they're under new management. This is an important part of the story. So Admiral Keyes, who's the hero of the zeebrugge raid of 1918.
- [11:30]
James Holland
Sir Roger.
- [11:31]
Owen Murray
Sir Roger. And he has been fired. And he's been replaced by an altogether different character. A thruster, let us say, Lord Louis Mountbatten. This happens in October 1941. So just before this story gets going. And he's a, you know, Royal Family smoothie, he's quite the operator. And Keyes is then sort of shuffled off and promoted, but fired. He goes on to suffer smoke inhalation, visiting the USS Appalachian when it's attacked by the Japanese and dies as a result.
- [11:59]
James Holland
And it's his son who's killed, isn't it? His son is killed trying to murder, assassinate Rommel.
- [12:04]
Owen Murray
That's right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And Keyes has overseen Operation Colossus, the failed airborne operation earlier in 1941. And basically what you have here, though, is new management, right, and new aspirations for combined ops at headquarters because they've been trying to perfect this butcher and bolt operations that Churchill wanted, commando raids, so Lofoten Islands and so on. But Mountbatten is more ambitious. He wants to have an effect and he wants combined operations to expand and the operations to get bigger and bolder because they're the way forward. It's amphibious landings which require air superiority. It's what's going to have to happen. And Mountbatten wants to make this join up and work. And I think what's really interesting about Combined Operators hq, though, it's just a staff organization. It has no actual forces on its order of battle.
- [12:55]
James Holland
So in other words, it can call upon forces when it needs them.
- [12:59]
Owen Murray
Yeah, exactly. That's the idea, yeah. And there are commando units being put together and there are landing craft specialists and all those sort of things. But he doesn't have an order of battle, he doesn't have an Orbat. And the idea is it gets people to work together. They pitch. They come and pitch projects and then the headquarters gets the forces together to carry out these operations. And Mountbatten sees the very basic issue very, very clearly. He needs some successes. Combined operations Headquarters needs some proof of concept. D Day is down the road somewhere. And the other people who need some successes are British Airborne forces. Their story, I mean, is they've been formed in complete reaction to German airborne successes in 1940 and 1941, which are dazzling, modernistic, glamorous. They're packed with tactical innovation and surprise.
- [13:47]
James Holland
And also huge losses.
- [13:49]
Owen Murray
Well, yeah, and lots of dead Falchem, Jager. Yeah, I mean, that's the other thing to remember. Churchill thinks, right, this is what we need. It's modern, it's new, and we need new ideas because the old ideas have failed, because the old ideas, the old way of doing things, the attempt to fight the First World War again in northwest Europe has failed. The Air Ministry, however, as we've said, has other ideas. Bombers. The bomber offensive is what's going to win the war. And they do everything they can to. To throttle the new venture. And even as the army and RAF are setting up the landing school and people lower down are cooperating, but the people at the top are just not interested. And you get, you know, the Special Service Brigades are then split to create two special service brigade, or 11, depending on how you read the numerals, is turned into Special Air Service Battalion, the 2nd Special Air Service Battalion, or 11 Special Air Service Battalion. But they can't get recruits. They're hard to come by.
- [14:42]
James Holland
Why not?
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Owen Murray
Because basically, if you've got keen men in your infantry battalion who want to go off and join some new unit, you want them to stay because they're keen.
- [14:52]
James Holland
Yes.
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Owen Murray
And the rest of the army are very, very unhappy about commando and airborne forces, which is the same thing at this point.
- [14:58]
James Holland
Creaming off the cream.
- [14:59]
Owen Murray
Yeah. Losing the people who know what they're doing, Losing the motivated people, particularly when the army is in crisis and needs to figure itself out and shake itself down. And so what they often do is send troublemakers and people that are no good. And Frost complains that they're getting the dregs at one point, that they're just getting all the people with poor disciplinary records and stuff they're getting. They're being dumped on them. And their only proper show that 2 SAS battalion do is Operation Colossus, which is an all an out and out. Balls up the attempt to destroy the Trojino Aqueduct in February 1941. There's poor intelligence. They actually don't know how many aqueducts. They think there's one, there's two. Drops are scattered, the demolitions landed the wrong place, a disastrous exfil, the Navy cancelled the submarine, negligible results. And yes, the Italians do have reinforced places it hadn't before, and it makes a stirring propaganda story. But Colossus fails on its own terms, which is that they're going to blow the Tricino Aqueduct up and starve Barry of fresh water, cause a crisis within Italy. But by the end of 1941, there is an Airborne division. It's the Parachute Regiment now. They're not Special Air service anymore. There's one brigade of Paris and the 1st Air Landing Brigade, which is formerly the 31st Infantry Brigade, which is a mountain brigade. This whole thing's being driven by Major General Frederick Boy Browning.
- [16:20]
James Holland
He is the commander of the Airborne Division.
- [16:23]
Owen Murray
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Such as it exists. And he's a very natty guardsman. No one really knows how he gets this job, but he's super connected and he has Brigadier Richard Windygale devising stuff. So Browning's doing the networking and the pushing with the War Office and the Airmen Ministry, and Gail is doing the thinking and picking the officers and recruiting. And they need a success. They need something, an op, to go well for proof of concept because otherwise what's going to happen is they'll never get the aircraft and the thing will wither on the vine, they'll all have been wasting their time and then they'll be turned into normal infantry. And these, all these chaps all regard themselves as rather special and they don't want that. So Jones's suggestion of seizing the Freya reaches Combined Operations Headquarters at exactly the right moment. For Mountbatten and for Browning, it's the perfect storm. And although the obvious way to do the raid is to come in by ship, Combined Operations Headquarters settles for an airborne operation. But they think if boats come in, they may get spotted and the enemy will have time to react. With an airborne landing, they will not have time to react.
- [17:27]
James Holland
So they're going to come in low because you don't want to miss and end up in the drink.
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Owen Murray
No, exactly. The site is basically perfect.
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James Holland
And by the way, what else is around? You've got that isolated house, you've got the Wurzburg, you've got the little drop with the horseshoe shaped driveway outside the front of the house. What else is around there? Is it just sort of flat openness?
- [17:44]
Owen Murray
It's flat openness. There's a radar station to the north which houses the Freya. There's a thing called La Presbytere, which is a farmhouse complex. You know, one of those Normandy farmhouse. Cause this is very top of Normandy, it has guys garrisoned in it. And there's a village to the south, the village of Bruneval, from where the raid gets its name. But what Mountbatten does is he submits the finalized raid proposal to the three Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Dudley Pound, Air Marshal Sir Charles Portal and General Alan Brooke on 21 January. And the Chiefs say, go do it. So they have to find out as much as they can around Bruneval and SOE are put onto this. And this is an amazing story. Absolutely amazing story. So the intel for Operation Colossus is piss poor, but there's a crucial difference between Fascist Italy and occupied France. France is full of people who want to help. So SOE are in on this Wurzburg pinch on the 24th of January. So three days after it's greenlit by the Chiefs of Staff, they order their agent, who's codenamed Remy, a man called Gilbert Reynaud Remy. You are tasked with looking into enemy strength and dispositions around the Bruneval site. So he passes this on to Roger Dumont, who is codenamed Paul. Paul, Roger. A sub Agent Charlemagne, Charles Chavro, to assist And Charlemagne owns a garage, so Charlemagne has a permit to drive around the Lehava area. So he's just the chap you need. He drives Paul Roger with him to the Hotel Beaumont in Bruneval, where the proprietors are receptive to helping and they know everything that's going on in the village.
- [19:17]
James Holland
And how far is. How far is Bruneval itself from the Wurzburg?
- [19:22]
Owen Murray
About a mile and a half. The proprietors at the Hotel Beaumont, they know all the comings and goings. They tell them all the German deployments. There's Luftwaffe troops operating guarding the villa, and they're based in this farmhouse complex, La Presbytere, in Bruneval. There's a platoon of Lancers under a sergeant. There's a pair of bunkers overlooking the beach. And what's really amazing is these guys, Paul Roget and Charlemagne Chavraud, they go down to the beach, they persuade the sentry on the beach that Paul is a student from Paris who wants to see the sea one last time.
- [19:56]
James Holland
Really?
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Owen Murray
Yep. I love it. The sentry falls for this.
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James Holland
At a critical stage in the war, young man will come to the coast and claims he just wants to see the sea. I'd believe it, yeah.
- [20:07]
Owen Murray
Jeepers Mere secret site.
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James Holland
Oh, go on then.
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Owen Murray
And the way he moves around the beach then makes it quite clear that the Achtung Minen signs are just for show. They find out that the beach probably isn't mined and they note the machine gun posts overlooking the beach.
- [20:23]
James Holland
So Paul is busy taking photographs, getting out his binoculars, tape measure. Just want to see a seat. Okay.
- [20:31]
Owen Murray
That is fine by me. Don't tell anyone. Yeah.
- [20:34]
James Holland
Keep it to yourself. Okay. Between friends.
- [20:37]
Owen Murray
Exactly. As soon as his vault will be over and you can come back and see the seat properly, I mean, it's. It's absolutely amazing. And this is. This goes straight back to soe, straight onto Combined Operations Headquarters and straight onto Airborne Division hq. And I think we should probably take a break there.
- [20:53]
James Holland
That's all great stuff.
- [21:02]
Owen Murray
Welcome back to. We have ways to make youtalk. So we've done the intel, we've laid out what this operation has to BE. And on the 14th of January, Combined Operations Headquarters instruct Browning, Major General Browning at 1st Airborne Division Headquarters, and Brigadier Gale to provide one company of Paras and accompanying sappers. And this is basically a sappering task actually, for training for a possible raid. So Windy Gale chooses C Company, also known as jock company of 2 Para.
- [21:32]
James Holland
How many German troops do they reckon are in the major area?
- [21:34]
Owen Murray
About a hundred.
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James Holland
As Many as that.
- [21:36]
Owen Murray
So they are relying on surprise and confusion. They don't have the planes. You can't drop a battalion, there just aren't the planes.
- [21:42]
James Holland
But also, if too many is too obvious, this is a stealth strike and dash job, isn't it?
- [21:47]
Owen Murray
And also too many means more landing craft assault to get them off the beaches as well. And they're in short supply.
- [21:53]
James Holland
Go light and flexible.
- [21:54]
Owen Murray
So 2 Para is under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Ted Flavel, who had fought alongside Gale in the First World War in the Machine Gun Corps, in fact, been Gale's commanding officer in the First World War.
- [22:04]
James Holland
He's not Flavell. I would have thought he'd be Flavelle, wouldn't he?
- [22:08]
Owen Murray
If you're related to Ted Flavell or Flavell, write in and let us know. This company, C Company, are commanded by Major John Frost. Later, the Cameroonians, son of a general, come back from Iraq. He'd been the adjutant of 2 Para, right? But Flavel, he gives him C Company. Frost has not yet qualified as a paratrooper because he's so busy as the adjutant because they're raising this formation. So he's doing all the administration, he's doing all the. You know, the battalion's only six weeks old when this job comes in, right? So he's been doing all the paperwork, all the admin. As the adj. So he hasn't qualified as a paratrooper and he's joined up looking for action and adventure. He doesn't like parachuting very much and he hurts his knee earlier in training and ends up in hospital and ends up in a. In hospital full of people who've broken their legs and necks and things.
- [22:57]
James Holland
What did you do? Jumped out of a plane, old boy.
- [22:59]
Owen Murray
Yeah, exactly. His. His memoir about his stint in hospital is exactly that. That's a risky business in it, old chap. Then on the 20th of January, so basically a week later, Gale briefs Frost, he says special training, but he doesn't tell Frost what's actually happening.
- [23:15]
James Holland
Why is Frost chosen if he hasn't already done his parachute jumps? Is it just because he stands out as the man with the most vim and.
- [23:21]
Owen Murray
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And. And Flavel hasn't qualified either. Nobody's had time. On the 20th of January, Gale briefs Frost. They've got some special training coming in, but he's not told what's going on. C Company have moved from North Yorkshire to Tillshead on Salisbury Plain, which is where the Glider Pilot Regiment have been staged and this move is delayed by weather and they finally get there on the 24th of January, which is the same day Remy gets his instructions from soe. So. But no airborne operation can happen without the corporation of the Royal Air Force. In fact, you could argue it's not a cooperation, it's without the say so of the Royal Air Force. They're the tail wagging the dog here. And the RAF have got three tasks. It's not just that they've got to land them, they've three tasks that come with this operation. They've got to drop the guys in the right place. They've got to run distraction operations to keep the Germans busy and off balance. And they've got fighter escort for the return journey in the morning. 11 group.
- [24:18]
James Holland
So this is a single night op, isn't it?
- [24:20]
Owen Murray
But the ships will be coming back in the morning, so they need fighter cover. And the last time we ran into 11 group, they were covering themselves in glory, dealing with the Channel Dash. So let's hope they can get this
- [24:32]
James Holland
one right and getting themselves shot down on pointless rhubarbs. Thanks, Lee Mallory.
- [24:36]
Owen Murray
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But interestingly, this is a moment of change. And we said about combined Operations Headquarters, Louis Madbatten's coming as a new broom and he's trying to get people to take the combined side of things more seriously on the 15th of January. So just a week before this all gets going, 38 Group is formed. And 38 Group is the Army Cooperation Command in the Royal Air Force. Their job is to work together with the Army. Maybe to some it might seem that, you know, why is it taking this long? But that's their role from now on. And 38 group end up being, you know, the people who take a 6 airborne to, to Normandy and first airborne to. To Arnhem. This is 18 months since Churchill asked the War Office and the Air Ministry to get airborne forces going. But it's finally happened. Right? Chosen for the raid is 51 Squadron. This is like basically the Avengers. They're getting their best people together because this is a Bomber Command squadron, super experienced bomber crews led by Wing Commander Charles Pickard, dfc.
- [25:39]
James Holland
Yes, we all know him. He is the king of Stoics, by the way.
- [25:44]
Owen Murray
Absolutely. He's a movie star, he's tall, he's
- [25:47]
James Holland
inspiring, he makes a straight pipe.
- [25:49]
Owen Murray
Yeah, yeah, exactly. He gets cracking with training his troops for airborne operations, which is a completely different discipline to what they've been doing. The RAF Grant Pickard 12 aircraft Whitley's,
- [25:59]
James Holland
which is very much an old school favorite.
- [26:00]
Owen Murray
Yeah, exactly.
- [26:01]
James Holland
Guaranteed to get you killed.
- [26:03]
Owen Murray
Yeah, well, pretty much. They're inventing the techniques, it's not been done before, you know, and so they're dropping dummies, they've got to do this at night. The weapons container drop needs perfecting. What we don't have yet is British powers jumping with a kit bag so that they land with their weapons. There's a container that gets dropped and they have to find a container on the drop zone, which is they've copied from the Germans. And how it works is when the fifth man goes out of the aircraft, his static line sets off the release for the containers, so, so that the weapons in theory land in, in the middle of the sticker parachutists as it lands and they're going to be dropping the guys from 100 meters, 300ish feet. So you're out the plane, parachute on the ground, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. In under 10 seconds. The planes are Whitley's. This is an aircraft that's about to go obsolete, which is why the RAF have given it, given it to the airborne forces. There's some absolutely hair raising footage of people jumping out of the Whitley because they put a hole in the floor. And the problem is if you time it wrong, you'll bash your face on the hole as you go out.
- [27:11]
James Holland
No one thinks to put any padding around it.
- [27:13]
Owen Murray
Well, they wear this funny donut padded helmet for a bit. Yeah, for this reason. But you've got broken noses and smashed in teeth. It's called ringing the bell.
- [27:22]
James Holland
Oh God. I mean it's just horrendous, isn't it?
- [27:24]
Owen Murray
It's dog, it's not good. And the parasol sit on the floor, there's no seats and they're all crammed in the cockpit. And if you look at the picture of the men sat on the floor in the Whitley, that ain't no happy ride. And when you jump out, you lean your head right back, you put your head right back like this to avoid bashing your head on the way out, knocking yourself out or smashing all your teeth in. And where they sit on the floor has to be very carefully organized because they don't want to disrupt the aircraft's centre of gravity.
- [27:54]
James Holland
It's a Whitley, it's obsolescent. It was barely designed for bombing. I mean it might be designed for bombing, it's not very effective at it. It's certainly not designed for dropping paratroopers with big teeth.
- [28:05]
Owen Murray
No, no, exactly.
- [28:07]
James Holland
It's absolutely no wonder, is it, that they all sound like they haven't got any teeth on those oral histories you've been listening to.
- [28:14]
Owen Murray
I hadn't thought of that.
- [28:15]
James Holland
I don't know whether. Bloody willy. Because I got it.
- [28:22]
Owen Murray
I mean, what they tried before was jumping out the hole of the back where the turret was. That's what they've done before. It's all. It's real already. Really, really crap.
- [28:29]
James Holland
Until they all started hitting the tail plane.
- [28:31]
Owen Murray
Yeah, but they're at the back of the queue. This is the point. Airborne forces, the back early days. And, and, and they are not going to be given anything that's up to date. So. But the Royal Naval component is under the command of Admiral Sir William Bubbles James.
- [28:47]
James Holland
Admiral James here, but you can call me Bubbles.
- [28:49]
Owen Murray
And he's Commander in Chief, Portsmouth. Why is he called Bubbles, Jim?
- [28:55]
James Holland
Well, because he was the Pear soap model as a boy and Sir Charles Millais is his grandfather, the legendary artist and he's been a code breaker in room 40 during the previous war. So he's a super high powered, brainy naval type boffin with a penchant for soap. So obviously he's called Bubbles. It's just only in Britain would this be the case in Britain of a certain era.
- [29:22]
Owen Murray
I know, and we've talked in the visionary series about, you know, when industry kicks in, there's tons of everything. But industry has not kicked in quite yet. No. Which is why you're jumping out of obsolete bombers and also why you're using a Cross Channel ferry as an assault ship. So Commander FN Cook, Royal Australian, it's
- [29:42]
James Holland
another man man where he prefers acronyms rather than a Christian name.
- [29:45]
Owen Murray
And Commander Cook has a mixed force of motor gun boats, landing craft assaults, which are these new small landing craft and they're using a Belgian Cross Channel ferry called the Prince Albert, which the Royal Navy has co opted in 1940 and repurposes an assault ship and that's going to deliver the LCAs across the Channel. And the idea is the Royal Navy will arrive two hours after the drop to collect and the Prince Albert will then bugger off, having dropped off the lcas because it's too ripe a target. And then the motor gunboats will tow the LCA spat with a fighter escort from 8 o' clock that morning from dawn.
- [30:22]
James Holland
Got shade shades of Operation Sea lion there.
- [30:24]
Owen Murray
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're going to be doing seven knots as they waddle and toddle the way back across the Channel to Portsmouth.
- [30:30]
James Holland
So they need to do it under the COVID of darkness, don't they? This is very much a winter operation.
- [30:34]
Owen Murray
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then there's a bit more intel that comes in. The more recce flights go in and they see further defenses. There's lots of wire at Bruneval. They fight, locate more weapons pits and all this sort of stuff. Frost becomes anxious that the recce flights are making it obvious what they're up to. You know, you're wrecking it too much. You're making it clear. But he maintains training intensity nonetheless. This is a smash and grab job, so we've looked a little at how it's going to be done in our next episode to power of the smash here. Who are the grab? And when we come back in our next episode, we will be saying hurrah for the cre. And if you want to hear that immediately, then the best thing to do is go to our Patreon. Subscribe, become a Patreon member for all sorts of other. We have ways fun. Because what you need right now is to hear some good News from early 1942. And we're laying on with a trowel here. We will see you soon. Thanks for listening. Cheerio, cheerio.
- [31:44]
Gordon Carrera
Why did we really go to war with Iraq?
- [31:47]
David McCloskey
And did Saddam Hussein really have weapons of mass destruction?
- [31:51]
Gordon Carrera
I'm Gordon Carrera, national security journalist.
- [31:54]
David McCloskey
And I'm David McCloskey, author and former CIA analyst. We are the hosts of the Rest Is Classified. And in our latest series, we are telling the true story of one of history's biggest intelligence failures. Iraq WMD.
- [32:07]
Gordon Carrera
In 2003, the US and UK told the world that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
- [32:15]
Owen Murray
But they were wrong.
- [32:16]
David McCloskey
This wasn't a simple lie. It was something far more complicated, far more interesting and far more dangerous.
- [32:22]
Gordon Carrera
Spies who believed their sources, politicians who wanted the public to believe in the threat, and a dictator who couldn't prove he'd already destroyed the weapons.
- [32:33]
David McCloskey
In this series, we go deep inside The CIA and MI6, go into the rooms where decisions were made and look at the sources, forces who fabricated the intelligence that took us to war.
- [32:45]
Gordon Carrera
The Iraq war reshaped the Middle east and permanently weakened public trust in governments and intelligence agencies. And its consequences are still playing out today.
- [32:54]
David McCloskey
Plus, in a Declassified Club exclusive, we are joined by three people who were at the heart of the decision to go to war. Former head of MI6, Richard Dearlove, Tony Blair's former communications director, Alistair Campbell. And Frank, former acting head of the CIA, Michael Morell.
- [33:10]
Gordon Carrera
So get the full story by listening to the Rest Is Classified and Subscribing to the Declassified Club, wherever you get your podcasts.