Meanwhile, out at sea, Tynedale and Atherstone fought off four German destroyers, and Atherstone collected the survivors of three British motor launches, their decks running with blood and strewn with desperately hurt commandos. Tynedale had collected wounded men from three other launches and the motor gunboat, and transferred some of these men to Atherstone. Loaded with hurt men, the two destroyers made top speed for Falmouth, covered by aircraft of RAF Coastal Command. When a Junkers Ju-88 threatened the survivor-laden ships, an RAF Bristol Beaufighter attacked and rammed the German aircraft. The crews of both planes were killed.

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Shortly afterward, the destroyers Brocklesby and Cleveland appeared on the scene, which added considerable firepower to the little fleet. Brocklesby shot down another German bomber, and a Beaufighter destroyed a shadowing German reconnaissance aircraft, blinding a large Luftwaffe strike force that was assembling to attack the retreating British. To gain more speed, the raiders now scuttled the MGB and two of the launches, all of which were badly shot up.

Three other motor launches got home on their own, on the way damaging one German aircraft and shooting down another. ML-14 came close to winning her way into the clear, but some 45 miles from the estuary she ran into Jaguar, a larger, more heavily armed German torpedo boat. Little ML-14 fought the warship for a solid hour as the enemy tried to ram or board her. Not until her decks oozed blood and she was sinking beneath her still-defiant crew did ML-14’s skipper finally surrender. To his credit, German Captain Paul took great care of the British wounded. In fact, a German officer-most likely Paul-later visited Newman, then a prisoner, to pass on a favorable account of the gallant British defense. The German’s report led to the postwar award of the Victoria Cross to Sergeant Thomas Durrant, who stuck to the twin Lewis guns of the little launch and died on board Jaguar after being hit a total of 25 times.

Back at St. Nazaire, the smoke had blown away and the killing was over. The British prisoners had been led away, and the corpses of both sides collected. In the dry dock, about 40 German officers, some with French mistresses on their arms, had ventured aboard Campbeltown, inspecting the battered ship. Another 400 or so curious Germans were clustered on the edges of the dock. They were still there in late morning, chatting and taking photos, when the old destroyer’s enormous charge went off, scattering bits and pieces of Germans all over the dockside.

The blast knocked the caisson completely off its track, blew off Campbeltown’s bow and finished the dock for the rest of the war. Beattie was being questioned at the time by a German officer, who had just finished commenting that the British clearly did not realize the strength of the dock. At that moment Campbeltown’s charges went off, the window blew in and the building shook. Beattie could not resist commenting softly that just perhaps they had not underestimated their targets.

German casualties from the blast are unknown, but later French inquiries set their losses at 60 officers and some 300 enlisted men in addition to those killed and wounded by the commandos. The story persists that one or more captured British officers were on board Campbeltown as well, and that perhaps they sacrificed themselves, telling the large group of German officers some concocted story to keep them on board until the charges exploded. The French of St. Nazaire believed that something of the sort happened, or that an officer returned to fire the charges. If that was so, it was cold courage of the highest order.

The next day, MTB-74’s two delayed-action torpedoes went off in the St. Nazaire Basin, producing panic in the German defenders. Some of the German troops began to fire indiscriminately into groups of French dockworkers, even at their own Todt Organization labor force personnel.

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