An hour after Campbeltown had rammed the Normandie Dock gate, the battle was still raging, both on land and on the adjacent river. Ryder, in charge of naval operations, had boarded MGB 314 to review the naval situation. The original disembarkation point, the Old Mole, was still in enemy hands, and his launches were being decimated. He gave the order to pull out. At his headquarters point near the Old Entrance, Newman, in charge of the land force, ordered the men he had left to fight their way through the town to make for open country and head south for Spain. German reinforcements were already pouring into and surrounding St. Nazaire. By mid-morning, most of the men, including Newman himself, had been captured. Only five of the commandos from Operation Chariot made it to Spain.

At 1035, Beattie’s interrogator began taunting him about the British inability to see the futility of launching anything as flimsy as a destroyer against the massive Normandie Dock gates. At that precise moment, Campbeltown’s 4.25 tons of high explosives finally erupted.

As dawn broke over St. Nazaire, German search teams at the Normandie Dock failed to find the concealed explosives in Campbeltown’s bows. Thinking the hulk safe, by mid-morning German officers and their guests were clambering over the destroyer and staring at her battered bows. Beattie, who had commanded Campbeltown and been aboard ML 177 when she blew up, was picked up after several hours in the freezing water. By 1030, he was landed back at St. Nazaire and taken for interrogation. Tibbits had set the fuses on Campbeltown’s explosives at 2330 (with an eight-hour delay), and even given a margin of error Campbeltown should have blown up by 0900. German photographs of captured commandos taken that morning show men badly injured but smiling because of the knowledge that Campbeltown would soon blow up. Now, however, Beattie, like Newman and his men, feared the worst: that their men had been slaughtered and Campbeltown’s explosives had failed to do their job.

At 1035, Beattie’s interrogator began taunting him about the British inability to see the futility of launching anything as flimsy as a destroyer against the massive Normandie Dock gates. At that precise moment, Campbeltown’s 4.25 tons of high explosives finally erupted. The entire dock area shook, huge blocks of concrete hurtled high into the air, and a massive black smoke cloud drifted up and across the St. Nazaire sky. Two days later, MTB 74’s two delayed-action torpedoes blew under the lock gates of the Old Entrance. Operation Chariot was, at that moment, a complete, albeit costly, success. Six hundred twenty-two men took part in Operation Chariot, of which 168 were killed and 200 (most of them wounded) taken prisoner. Seventy-four British decorations were awarded, including five Victoria Crosses – one on the recommendation of a German officer who visited Newman in a POW camp. The Normandie Dock was totally out of action, and was not finally repaired until 1950. The Tirpitz never haunted the Atlantic, and would herself fall prey to other British special operations missions in the years ahead.

This article was first published in The Year in Special Operations: 2009 Edition.