UK Folks - If you missed Jeremy Clarkson's "Greatest Raid"...

[Neil]

...it's repeated on Sat (24th)

Jeremy Clarkson tells the story of what has been called the original Mission Impossible - the audacious commando raid on the German occupied dry dock at St Nazaire in France on March 28th 1942. Operation Chariot, as the raid was codenamed, had a simple aim: to destroy the dry dock and thus deny the German battleship Tirpitz a safe haven on the Atlantic coast of France.

Great GREAT program!

BBC2 - Sat 24th 20:25 - Greatest Raid of All Time
BBC2 - Mon 26th 19:30 - The Making of Jeremy Clarkson: Greatest Raid of All Time

Puts a hard day at the office in context!!

[capncnut]

Mmm, I'll check it out.

[MinionZombie]

Hell yeah I watched it and it was bloody marvellous. Now THAT is what Britain is supposed to be and should be all about, blokes banding together, under the leadership of a strong-willed man who seeks to do the "impossible", to actually pull off the impossible.

That's the sort of British pluck that made this country great, sadly we don't have much of that lying around these days, usually most of it is left to the same men who defined the term itself (blokes like Ranulph Fiennes - the sort of bloke who'd rather saw their frostbitten fingers off in the garden shed, rather than be bothered with the 3 month wait to have them surgically removed).

Pluck, grit, determination and going against the odds - marvellous. It was especially double-eyebrow-raising when the German soldiers and officers were commending the Commandos as, despite being opposing forces, they recognised the sheer brilliance of what had been done - like that officer recommending our country award a man he was shooting at be given the Victoria Cross (which was indeed given out, although the hero in question was killed, if memory serves of the documentary last night).

Bloody superb, we could do with that sort of gumption today, it's sorely needed. It goes without saying really, but I have maximum possible respect for those chaps, what they achieved defies reality.

[Neil]

like that officer recommending our country award a man he was shooting at be given the Victoria Cross (which was indeed given out, although the hero in question was killed, if memory serves of the documentary last night).

Yes, shot 16 times before he passed out at his gun! ... and later died...


There is a rumour that the reason the device took so long to go off, was infact some commandos sneaked back onboard and manually set it off!

[MinionZombie]

There is a rumour that the reason the device took so long to go off, was infact some commandos sneaked back onboard and manually set it off!

You mean it failed to go off automatically, so some snuck back to make sure it went off? Damn...that's most definitely worthy of maximum respect, without that blowing up it would have been all in vain.

And aye, shot sixteen times and still fighting ... bravo. :)

[capncnut]

Sounds like excellent viewing, I shall definitely give it a go this saturday.