HMS Campbeltown and the St. Nazaire raid

I know this is a little off topic but I think you might like it.

HMS Campbeltown The raid on St.Nazaire on the 28th of March 1942. The
superintendent of a shipping company was one of a group collecting a

ferry from the shipyard at St.Nazaire. At a dinner he was asked if had ever
been there before. "Yes," was his reply, "I was the last man off the
Campbeltown, I set the charges." The French would not speak to him after that.
        The Campbeltown was an old American WW I flush-decked destroyer
(USS
Buchanan, DD-131) handed over to the RN. She was altered to look like a
German Möwe class torpedo boat as the centrepiece of a commando raid on the
St.Nazaire port. She was use to ram the gates to the drydock at St.

Nazaire and then the explosives on board would be detonated, destroying the
gates and rendering the drydock useless so that German capital ships

could not be repaired there, forcing them to use other ports less convenient
to the Atlantic.

Now for the faint justification for posting this to the list. You couldn't
model it in Full Thrust but Stargrunt is just the man for the commando raid.

I also understand that the CAMPBELLTOWN's charges were fitted with a
delayed fuse which didn't go off until the next day- consequently taking
out a large number of (German) port authority personnel and engineers
examining the ship and the damage it caused to the graving (dry) dock.

> Michael Blair wrote:

> the gates and rendering the drydock useless so that German capital

St.Nazaire was the only port on the French Atlantic coast that could handle
the Tirpitz (sister ship of the Bismarck). Disabling the dock would restrict
the Tirpitz to Norwegian ports.

Avalon Hill published a nice solitaire boardgame on this raid,
appropriately called _The Raid on St. Nazaire_. You play the part of the
British commandos, try to destroy as many targets as possible before the
German defenders are fully mobilized.