Can anyone remember the name of the 1950's black and white film which tells the story of capturing the Wurzberg radar, please?
If memory serves me correctly in this film when the British scientist, who is taken on the mission to advise, is asked for his name by a German sentry he replies with the slightly amusing line of "Ich habe mein name vergessen.", (I have forgotten my name.).
Last edited by Flying10uk; 12-21-2019 at 02:41 PM.
Here you go: The Bruneval Raid (TV Episode 1998) - IMDb
'Tonight my men and I have been through hell and back again, but the look on your faces when we let you out of the hall - we'd do it all again tomorrow.' Major Chris Keeble's words to Goose Green villagers on 29th May 1982 - 2 PARA
There was 'Red Beret', the movie about the birth of the Parachute Regiment that starred Alan Ladd that featured the Bruneval raid and the Operation Torch assaults.
There was a childrens' book club fiction/fact book, I think called The Radar Raid that told the story through the eyes of a French boy that helps the Commandos plan the raid. I can't find it these days.
Bob
"It is said, 'Go not to the elves for counsel for they will say both no and yes.' "
Frodo Baggins to Gildor Inglorion, The Fellowship of the Ring
I was referring to an early black and white film made not that long after the end of WW2.
Flying10uk, you have triggered memories from my teenage years when I first read about the Dieppe Raid. Around 1959/1960, I recall lots of 2/3 full page stories with photos in Sunday newspapers, one was definately about the Dieppe Raid, another was D Day, I remember with a photo of Bill Millin piping on the beach. Reading these newspaper stories started me reading many wartime stories throughout my teens and I'm pretty sure the Dieppe Raid was the first and it certainly brought home the true nature of war.
I first became aware of the Dieppe Raid when back in the mid to late 1970's, as a child, I pulled a copy of, Dieppe, The Shame and the Glory, off the bookshelf and started looking at it and then started asking other family members about it. At this time there wasn't any Enigma code connection made with the raid and indeed it wasn't so widely known that Britain had broken the Enigma code during WW2.
Dieppe: The shames and the glory: Amazon.co.uk: Terence Robertson: Books
Interesting how we get attracted to these books at a young age. I've just realised that the first war story I read was when I was 13, it was The Great escape, reading about the Dieppe Raid came later. I don't want to cause a change to this thread, so I'll keep this short. If you're still an avid reader, try Skis against The Atom by Knut Haukelid, unless you have already done so. I read this when I was 15, as my aunt was the girlfriend of one of the saboteurs.
Last edited by IanS; 12-23-2019 at 07:50 AM. Reason: Spelling correction to Hauklid
All histories pertaining to WWII and written before 1977, have to be re-written, or at least re-examined, with Bletchley Park and Ultra in mind. Our whole view of the North African/Mediterranean campaign alone is completely changed by Ultra.Originally Posted by Flying10uk
I've read that Dieppe book, courtesy of our public library when I was a kid, whiling away the time between classes immersed in history, especially WWII. I've also seen the documentary to which you refer. It's actually a Canadian production, one of a number made by that same group. It speculates that Ian Fleming, of 007 fame, was waiting offshore for the commandos to deliver to him the codebooks. Certainly intelligence-gathering teams would have been attached to this raid, as they were for all such operations, and they undoubtedly targeted the communications installation. That they were specifically after the Enigma materials I'm not so sure. The miracle of Bletchley was not just that they had broken the German secret (building on the prewar work of the Poles, brilliant mathematicians who started well ahead of us.) The real miracle is that they kept it all a secret from the Germans right through the war. The Germans never lost faith that their system was unbreakable. If they'd thought for one minute that we had broken it, they would have changed to something else, with disastrous results for us. No piece of Ultra material could be acted upon unless it could be reasonably attributed to another source, lest the enemy figured out what was going on. That was the whole reason we maintained a base on Malta, for example. The codebooks salvaged from U-559 were believed by the Germans to have gone down with the ship. If you take the same materials from a shore installation, their loss would be obvious and the jig would be up. Photograph them maybe, but they couldn't disappear. I think the documentary was a clever bit of Canadian story-telling, but flawed in its conclusions.
My understanding of the Commands intentions, had they been successful in obtaining the the Enigma code books/material from Dieppe, was that they planned to demolish the building/s with explosives once the material had been taken from that building/s. Once a building has been reduced to a pile of rubble it is very difficult to decide what is and what is not missing. Presumably if this had be done several buildings would have been demolished, not just the one containing the Enigma material?
I don't think that the documentary was flawed in it's conclusions but I also don't think that the purpose of the Dieppe Raid was solely to capture Enigma related material.
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