The Granville Raid

Victory in vain

Not every single battle gets to influence the outcome of a war. Some don’t even move things forward in a small way. They just end up as a victory or a defeat, a story of brilliance, courage and loss, which in the end was in vain. One such battle was the Granville Raid, a daring attack on an Allied port by the German forces occupying and trapped on the Channel Islands in the late days of World War II. (The Channel Islands in WWII) It also showed that the Germans could still cause some uncomfortable surprises even so close to the end of the war.
 
Located in the southwest corner of Normandy and 30 miles (42 km) from Jersey, the largest of the German-occupied Channel Islands, Granville was one of the first French seaports to be liberated after the D-Day landings. By late 1944, Granville was mainly receiving colliers bringing coal from Britain to help the French civilian population survive the harsh winter. There was also a prisoner-of-war camp nearby, the inmates of which were used to unload cargo from the ships.

On the evening of December 20, four German paratroopers and a naval midshipman escaped the camp. They attached themselves to a work party and stole a Higgins boat (The Higgins Boat) tied up in the inner basin of the harbor. They piloted it through the lock into the outer basin without being challenged, and from there got out into the open sea. Bad weather in the morning prevented an air search for the escapees, and they made their way to the Channel Islands, which were still held by German forces cut off from supplies or reinforcements.
 
The daring escape was a morale booster for Germany, and Hitler wanted to personally decorate the men. That, however, was never to happen: flying over Bastogne, Belgium and the Battle of the Bulge on Christmas Night, the plane carrying the men was shot down by an Allied fighter, leaving no survivors.

The escapees brought valuable intelligence with them to the Channel Islands, as they had been observing the goings-on at the harbor. They informed the garrison that not only did the port always have around five ships full with coal, but there was also a warehouse holding C-rations (Feeding an Army). The commander of the German occupation forces, General Rudolf Graf von Schmettow, started planning a raid on Granville for the coal and the food, both of which were in great shortage on the islands.

The first raid attempt departed on the night of February 6-7, 1945, but had to be called off due to bad weather and technical problems on one ship. One particular escorting E-boat (a fast boat similar to American PT boats (The “Devil Boats” of America)) picked up and redeployed some British mines, and led an American submarine chaser on a 20-mile (32 km) merry chase.

A second attempt was made on the night of March 8-9. By this time, Schmettow had been ousted by Vice Admiral Friedrich Hüffmeier, an incompetent naval commander but an ardent Nazi. Led by Kapitänleutnant Carl-Friedrich Mohr, the 13-ship flotilla approached in four groups under the cover of night.
 
Allied radar quickly noticed the approaching ships, and Granville’s naval defense, the submarine chaser USS PC-564 moved to intercept. The ship fell into a trap: the vessels it approached at 00:13 a.m. were Group 2 of the German force, three artillery lighters whose mission was specifically to draw away the submarine chaser. The first shot from the lighters penetrated PC-564’s wheelhouse, causing heavy damage and killing or wounding everyone inside. The next three shots set the ship on fire and incapacitated the crews of two guns, while the third gun suffered a jam after its first shot.

Taking heavy damage and suffering high casualties, the ship’s commander Lieutenant Percy Sandell, gave order to abandon ship. Realizing that the German ships stopped firing for a while and that he had a possible avenue of escape, he rescinded the order, but 10 or 15 of the crew (sources differ) had already lowered a raft and jumped offboard; they were never seen again. With German fire barking up again, Sandell eventually beached the ship sometime after 1.14 a.m. to prevent it from sinking, and sent for aid overland. Out of a crew of five officers and 60 men, two officers and 12 men died, 11 men were wounded and 14 went missing.

There was also a second warship, the anti-submarine trawler HMS Pearl, present at Granville, scheduled to escort colliers back to Britain the next day. For unclear reasons, the Pearl did not leave her position to join the battle, even after receiving several messages. The diary of a crewman suggests the ship’s commander might have been afraid of running aground in the shallow waters in the dark, or might have been paralyzed by the poorly understood tactical situation.
 
While Group 2 was finishing off PC-564, the other three German groups approached the port of Granville. Group 1a, a tug (some sources claim an E-boat) and two M1940-class minesweepers armed with a heavy 105 mm cannon each and lesser guns, sailed directly into the outer basin of the harbor. They opened fire on the harbor facilities and the French barracks overlooking the harbor from a hilltop, then landed soldiers. Meanwhile, Group 2b, two other minesweepers, stayed outside the harbor to fire at any Allied forces that might try to approach the harbor on ground. One of the minesweepers entering the harbor ran aground by accident; it continued to fire at Allied forces, and was eventually scuttled when it became clear it could not be freed.

Six men went ashore and headed up a steep footpath towards the top of the Rock, the outcropping at the head of the small peninsula. Their job was to attack the lighthouse, the lookout post and the signal station. In the only unqualified Allied success of the night, the American defenders beat them back.

Meanwhile, a force of 150 Germans went around the harbor, placing demolition charges on the cranes used to unload coal. There were five ships in the harbor, one too far to reach on foot in a timely manner. Raiding parties swept through the other four, capturing or killing British crewmen. The original plan was to commandeer all ships in the harbor and return them to the Channel Islands. The Germans, however, realized that they made a mistake in the timing, and the tide was so low by that point that only one ship, the smallest collier, could pass through the harbor without running aground. They placed scuttling charged on the other three ships, and forced the British crew of the last one, the Eskwood, to navigate through the harbor and steam for the Channel Islands, escorted by the now-retreating flotilla. The Eskwood also carried 67 German prisoners of war, who had not been removed from the area for some reason, and who were rescued by the raiders. Some sources claim that two dozen other POWs were also rescued, but they preferred the relative comfort of the camp to the deprivations of the Channel Islands, and deliberately allowed themselves to be recaptured by Allied crewmen.

While all this was happening, Groups 3 and 4 approached the peninsula from the north, the side opposite from the harbor. Group 4, two auxiliary minesweepers and a cutter, stayed at sea to monitor the situation and provide support as needed. Group 3, three harbor defense boats, landed troops near Hôtel des Bains and Hôtel Normandie, where, as the Germans had previously learned from a French collaborator, some American officers were quartered. Storming the hotels and spraying the hallways and rooms with submachine gun fire, the landing party killed and wounded a few American soldiers and rounded up nine American staff officers and one civilian. They were herded onto the landing craft, with one officer still in the pajamas he got from his mother as a Christmas present, and taken back to the Channel Islands. Six French civilians were killed during the hotel raid when they peered out of their windows to see the cause of the commotion. A seventh one was shot as he was running for cover on the street.

The highest-ranking officer, Lieutenant Colonel Anderson, was not actually caught in the hotel. He heard the gunfire, jumped into a jeep with his driver, and drove down to the harbor to see what was happening, just in time to run into the raiding parties.
 
Another officer killed during the raid was Lieutenant Frederick Roger Lightoller. Lightoller was the son of Charles Lightoller, the second officer and most senior survivor of the Titanic. During the Dunkirk evacuation (The “Miracle of Dunkirk”), father and son piloted a yacht licensed to carry 21 passengers, and used it to rescue 127 British soldiers from the surrounded beach, evading an attack by a Stuka dive bomber. Five years later, in Granville, Frederick Lightoller heard gunfire from the Germans, got in a jeep with two other lieutenants, and drove to the harbor to investigate. They drove right into gunfire that forced them to abandon their car and seek cover. Lightoller set out for the port headquarters, but was found and killed outside Hôtel des Bains.
 
The defense of the harbor fell to Major William Brown, but there was little he could do. The 514th Port Battalion had little combat training and was mainly armed with M1 carbines, which were no match for machine guns, submachine guns and ship-based artillery. The general Allied response along the coastline was lackluster. The Cherbourg (The Liberation of Cherbourg) headquarters originally thought that the ships heading for Granville were only meant as a decoy, and the real attack would target Cherbourg. Notifications about the strange naval activity were sent out to garrisons along the coast, but most local commanders did not take any specific action like raising an alarm or marshalling the troops. Reinforcements only arrived at Granville at 3:35 a.m., more than two hours after Major Brown sent out his call for help, and well after the Germans had all left with their prize of coal and captives.

The German garrison on the Channel Islands was electrified with news of the successful raid, and the arrival of 123 U.S. tons of coal. The Allies had been caught with their pants down – some of the officers in the hotel had just arrived, and weren’t even aware that the nearby Channel Islands were still in German hands. Nevertheless, despite 22 men being killed, 30 wounded, and one collier stolen, things could have been worse. The scuttled ships either stayed afloat or sank but were still accessible at low tide, and a good part of the cargo cranes remained operational or could be fixed in a day. German losses were six men killed, one captured, and the minesweeper that ran aground while entering the harbor. Hüffmeier, the German commander of the Channel Islands, followed up with a smaller, 18-man raid on Cape de la Hague at the northwest corner of the Cotentin peninsula, but the raiding team was captured. In early May, Admiral Karl Dönitz forbade any further raids. The Channel Islands were liberated without a shot by the Royal Navy on May 9-10 immediately after VE Day.
 
If you want to learn more about the German occupation and the spectacular fortifications of archipelago, join us on our Normandy-Channel Islands tour.