By 2200 that night the force sighted a light from the Royal Navy submarine Sturgeon, posted as a navigational beacon to mark the starting point for the final leg into the mouth of the Loire. The little flotilla altered course and started into the cannons’ mouth, the MGB in the lead and Campbeltown right behind her. Atherstone and Tynedale turned aside, cruising in close support off the mouth of the estuary. Every man had checked and rechecked his weapons, and the demolition teams had carefully packed their plastic-explosive charges in the order they were to be used. Each charge-varying from half a pound to two pounds-was carefully wrapped in waterproof paper.

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Over St. Nazaire, up ahead in the darkness, German tracers arced into the gloom of a cloudy sky, a beacon in the night. The RAF was putting in a diversionary raid, though in the event most of the bombers did not drop their loads for fear of killing French civilians. In fact, British concern for French lives aroused the suspicion of the German garrison commander, who noted that the bombers were dropping only a single bomb at a time. ‘Some devilry is afoot,’ he said, and warned his garrison about’suspicion of parachute landings.’ The RAF pilots, who knew nothing of the coming raid below them, later said they would cheerfully have come down to bomb at zero altitude had they only been told what was at stake.

At 2300 on board Campbeltown explosives expert Lieutenant Nigel Tibbets set the fuses on his ship’s big bomb. The charge would explode between 0500 and 0900 the next morning. The British columns cruised sedately into the Loire estuary, keeping their speed down to 10 knots. The little boats did not handle well at slow speeds, but Campbeltown drew less water at 10 knots than at high speed, and it was critical to keep her draft to a minimum to clear the mud flats.

Now the whole raid depended on one man, Royal Navy Lieutenant A.R. Green, navigator on the motor gunboat. It was up to him to lead the way, keeping the destroyer off the shallows and mud flats that lurked all around her in the blackness of the river. Twice Campbeltown scraped bottom on the mud, reducing her speed by half, but she kept going. Green’s navigation was superb-professional Loire pilots said after the war that his guidance of Campbeltown through the shallows was ‘without parallel in the history of the port.’

Still in their neat columns, the British flotilla cruised boldly on through the night, but by 0115 the flotilla was spotted and the German headquarters signaled ‘Achtung: Landegefahr!‘ (’Attention: Landing danger!’) Only at 0122, however, did the German coast defenses react. Searchlights glared across the river from both banks, and the Germans challenged the vessels. A British signalman in German uniform replied, giving a call sign extracted from a captured signal book. That held off the German batteries for a few minutes more, and the British followed up with further signals, asking for immediate berth for ships damaged by enemy action. Finally, as the Germans at last began to open fire, the British made the international signal for ships under friendly fire.

Once the German guns started shooting in earnest, the British tore down their German colors, ran up the White ensign and returned fire with every gun, including the Bren guns of the commandos. Immediately, their fire began to tell. The Sperrbrecher was quickly silenced, her deadly 88mm gun knocked out. German fire from the shore began to slack off, and several searchlights were shot out. The effective British return fire was a triumph, Ryder said later, ‘for the many gunlayers in the coastal craft and in the Campbeltown.’ In the confusion, the little wooden boats, making smoke, turned sharply in toward the looming black mass of the dockyard complex, and Campbeltown’s captain, Lt. Cmdr. R.H. Beattie, called for all the speed he could get.

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