Mother Nature had other ideas. Clouds and rain caused the mission to be rescheduled each night. Spirits began to fall until the morning of the 27th rolled around. With the window of opportunity now shutting, ideal conditions arrived and the naval flotilla set off in the afternoon. C Company boarded Whitley bombers at RAF Thruxton airfield and rumbled away in the evening twilight.
Frost had divided the company into five sections named after famous British Admirals. ‘Jellico,’ ‘Hardy,’ and ‘Drake’ would assault and capture the site, as well as the chateau where German technicians and their guards were believe to bunk. ‘Nelson’ was to hit defenses on the beach and secure the evacuation site. ‘Rodney’ would act as rearguard, setting up to take on any counterattacks.
As the Whitley’s crossed over the French coast, the peaceful, serene sky began exploding in orange anti-aircraft shellfire. The planes buffeted under the turbulence, jostling the men about. Nothing deterred their focus and few minutes later a crewmember signaled they were approaching the drop zone. A hatch opened in the floor and seconds counted down until the word “Go” was shouted and men tumbled into the blackness.
Little more than a couple minutes later, the first boots hit the ground and the force collected itself before moving toward the target. To their dismay, they discovered some of the ‘Rodney’ element was absent. In fact, it had dropped two miles away, and was led by the company’s youngest officer, a mere twenty years old. He took stock of the situation and immediately led his group out to try and make the show.
The rest of the company spread out and closed in on the chateau unnoticed after an uneventful jaunt, surrounding it. Confident all was in place, Frost yelled “Open Fire,” and automatic weapons and rifles chattered at the chateau, killing a guard who managed to return fire just before it was rushed. Capturing two men, they were surprised to learn that the main force of troops expected was stationed further inland.
Outside, the Paras worked with speedy hands trying to dismantle the radar dish.
Gunfire suddenly erupted from a nearby enclosure as more German guards came to their senses and realized the danger. Both sides settled in for a lengthy gun battle, with several on both sides falling dead or wounded. Parts of the radar were carried towards the beach and more trouble approached in the form of headlights in the distance. Nonetheless, nothing broke each section’s calmness as they started a gradual withdrawal toward the sea.
After assembling on the beach, a lone machine gun nest that escaped ‘Rodney’s’ initial sweep opened fire, wounding a Sergeant Major. Frost led some of his men back toward the chateau, which they found had been reoccupied. Another brief firefight silenced it once and for all. Frost then headed back to the beach and realized the machine gun had been taken out by the lost ‘Rodney’ element, which had arrived in the nick of time to make the evacuation. “The real hero,” Frost later said, “was the officer commanding the section which was dropped away from the bulk of the troops.” The young lieutenant had made his way through unfamiliar surroundings and enemy fire to carry out his task without exemption, resulting in a secured evacuation site.
Once all the sections were on the beach, a single flare was fired to notify the landing craft. After arriving somewhat late, the six boats broached the sand simultaneously, with the commandoes providing covering fire against Germans gathering on the cliffs. The Paras raced their cargo, then themselves aboard and joined in the return fire, as the boats slipped back into the night to rendezvous a few miles offshore. There the men were transferred aboard Motor Torpedo Boats and scurried back to Britain under protection from destroyers and a flight of fighter aircraft.
Frost tallied his losses. Two killed and six wounded among the company, with at least five killed, two wounded and two valuable prisoners snatched from among the enemy.
After being offloaded and rushed to a laboratory, the radar sections were dissected and studied for weaknesses. It was found that the ‘Wurzburg’ complimented the longer-ranged radar system known as ‘Freya,’ enabling night fighters to find their targets quickly and with great precision. ‘Freya’ alone was unable to provide such results, so the ‘Wurzburg’ was brought online to provide the precision.
British technicians took the information learned from the ‘Wurzburg,’ applied it to their own systems, and developed countermeasures to fight it. Chief among these was window, or chaff, simple strips of aluminized paper sized to fool systems to the whereabouts of aircraft or ships. This proved invaluable in the coming months against the city of Hamburg, which burned to the ground because its ‘Wurzburgs’ were blinded and allowed bomber streams to penetrate. Later, and more importantly, it was used to great effect on D-Day, where German screens spotted with thousands of blips and were unable to detect the approaching invasion fleet.
These countermeasures are still in use today.
Frost and C Company received several valor awards, as well as the coveted ‘Battle Honour’ bestowed for its praiseworthy action. It absorbed back into the 1st Airborne, which went on to fight in ‘Operation Market Garden’ in Holland, which at the time became the largest use of paratroopers in history.
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