Hello and welcome to another episode of Battleground 44 with me Saul David and Patrick Bishop.

Today we're going to concentrate on questions and and the first one is from Christopher Curtis.

And he writes, I'm wondering if Patrick Bishop and Saul David might be interested in presenting

a definitive podcast, which would each probably require three episodes on the two very

different subjects below.

The raid on San Nazaire, 1942, otherwise known as Operation Chariot,

and the 30th Assault Unit, 30AU. What do you know about those two subjects, Patrick? I think we all

know a little bit about the raid on San Nazer, don't we? I mean, yeah, that's pretty famous,

probably a little bit less so about 30th assault unit. Yeah, well, Radon Sanders is very interesting part of the kind of British

war story because it was really a morale boosting thing more than anything else. It was, of course,

Mountbatten's first foray into his new job as head of combined operations. And it was, you know, it was a great success.

They blew up the dock there, which was meant to be the only place on the Atlantic coast

where the turpets could be refitted and basically repaired or whatever if it actually made

it out into the Atlantic. So that was the

ostensible objective of the raid, but I think at least equally important, was the effect it was

going to have on British morale. Things were pretty grim in those dark days of the spring of

1942, even though the Americans were in the war. The outlook was very little to cheer about,

and so this gave the British public and showed the Americans as well that the Brits were

really in the fight in a serious way, etc. Of course, you know, the casualties were huge,

a great number of VCs were one, which is usually an indication of a pretty bloody battle,

and not necessarily a very pointful one, if I can put it like that.

But yeah, it's a great subject.

...