Operation Frankton Introduction

By late 1941 the constraints on mercantile movement, particularly by sea, were imposing severe hardships on both the British and the Germans. Neither country possessed sufficient natural resources to wage a war at the scale then being carried out and both were dependant on external sources of supply, particularly for oil, rubber and tungsten, and certain other essential metals and alloys. Britain was on the defensive, doing badly in the Western Desert, had lost Singapore and Malaya, and was continuing to lose immense tonnages of shipping in the Atlantic. The vast expanse of the ocean and the overstretched Royal Navy made it impossible to ensure that blockade runners did not get their supplies through to the Reich, supplies which were arriving at a rate sufficient to meet the Germans war requirements. The British Minister for Economic Warfare, Lord Selborne, was extremely concerned about the amounts of essential supplies reaching the Reich and carried by blockade runners, and he wrote to both Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee on several occasions expressing this concern. Studies conducted by his Ministry showed that one of the principal ports used by the blockade-runners between the Reich and the Far East was Bordeaux.

During this stressful period Winston Churchill established Combined Operations, an all arms headquarters tasked with studying every imaginable means, big or small, of striking at Germany, and with the authority to initiate and conduct offensive operations. By the time of Operation FRANKTON its head was Lord Mountbatten.

28 year old Major H. G. "Blondie" Hasler, Royal Marines (pictured top left), joined Mountbatten's team in early 1942 and was posted to the Combined Operations Development Centre (CODC) where he had considerable freedom of action in the development of means to attack enemy shipping. His main aim at that time was the development and construction of an explosive speedboat, based on an Italian idea. He had had a lifelong love of small boats, a great inquisitiveness, an inventive mind and a lust for adventure. He was also a thoroughly good Royal Marines officer. As early as 1941, and well before the arrival of Mountbatten, he had written a proposal for attacks on enemy shipping in harbours using canoes and underwater swimmers. Like all good ideas produced before their time, the proposal had been rejected. Despite his main task of developing the explosive speedboat he retained his love of small boats in general and of canoes in particular, and set about developing a canoe light enough for two men to paddle yet strong enough to carry up to 75 kilogrammes of store plus two men, and rigid enough to be lifted, dragged and slid across the mud, sand or shingle with all the stores and the men in place. The result of all his work, study, trials and co-operation with the relevant manufacturers was firstly the "Cockle Mark 1" which turned out to be insufficiently robust and prone to leaking, and then after trials and improvements the "Cockle Mark 2"(pictured bottom left). It was in Cockle Mark 2's that Operation FRANKTON was carried out.

The Cockle Mark 2 was a fully decked two-man canoe designed to carry its crew of two plus their stores. It was approximately 5 metres long, 72cms beam and 28cms high; the width and height were limited by the size of a submarine's forward torpedo hatch. The canoe, empty, weighed about 36.5 kilogrammes.

Hasler proposed the formation of a new unit, with the cover title of the Royal Marines Boom Patrol Detachment, to conduct experiments with the equipment he was inventing and acquiring, and eventually to go to war with it against Germany. This was all very logical and the proposal was approved. Major Hasler set about recruiting to his new unit the best Marines he could find until it reached its total strength of 34. Those Hasler selected he did so for their self reliance, mental stability, tenacity and powers of endurance; they were to need all these qualities in abundance in the months to come. The training was hard, very hard. Initially the only one of the unit who knew anything at all about canoes was Hasler himself, but because of the abundance of natural intelligence among his men they soon learnt the necessary skills. To the skills of paddling a canoe both swiftly and silently, and night navigation, was added continuous and ever harder endurance training. This was just as well as, although they did not yet know it, they would have about 150 kms to paddle from their launch submarine to Bordeaux, weighed down with nearly 75 kgs of stores and explosives. But, of course, at this stage they had no idea what they were training for. Neither, yet, did Hasler.

Operation FRANKTON was drafted by the operational planning staff of Combined Operations, and kept on file. In response to Lord Selborne's concerns expressed to Churchill and Atlee about the quantity of blockade runners reaching the apparent safety of Bordeaux, the Operation FRANKTON draft was retrieved from the filing cabinet, and on 21 September 1942 Hasler was summoned to Combined Operations Headquarters in London to read the file and give his opinion as to the feasibility of the operation. He spent all day studying the outline plan and all available associated charts, and the next morning submitted his written plan for the operation. On 30 October 1942 Lord Mountbatten wrote the following:

MOST SECRET

Secretary,
Chiefs of Staff Committee
October 30, 1942

1.Operation 'Frankton' has been planned to meet Lord Selborne's requirements, referred to in COS (42) 223 (O) and subsequent papers, that steps be taken to attack Axis ships which are known to be running the blockade between France and the Far East.
2. Both seaborne and airborne methods of attacking the ships have been carefully examined and the plan now proposed is the only one which offers a good chance of success.
3. On an average, between six and ten blockade runners are usually to be found alongside the quays at Bordeaux, in addition to other shipping. It is hoped to deal with at least six blockade runners.
4. Briefly, the plan is for one officer and five other ranks of the Royal Marine Boom Patrol Detachment to paddle up the river Gironde in cockles, moving during the hours of darkness only, and to place 'limpets' on the waterline of the ships they find at Bordeaux. The cockles will be carried to within nine miles of the mouth of the river in a submarine which will be on passage to normal patrol duty and thus will not require to be specially detailed.
5. Twelve copies of the summary of this outline plan are attached.

(sgd) Louis Mountbatten
Chief of Combined Operations

MOST SECRET

Operation FRANKTON was under way.

From the day Hasler submitted his plan and returned to his base at Southsea near Portsmouth, training intensified. Only his second-in-command knew of the operation; he and Hasler worked hard, modifying the canoes, sorting out the necessary stores and rations, refining everything over and over again. The operational plan itself underwent many revisions and refinements. Arrangements had to be made for the use of a submarine from which to launch the canoes and the operation, tides had to be studied in great detail, and the training of the men in canoe work, navigation and in the planting of limpet mines had to continue.

Although the film "Cockleshell Heroes" shows Hasler and his men planting magnetic limpet mines by using frogman's equipment and diving to place the mines low on the hull, this was most certainly not the method used in training or on Operation FRANKTON. Hasler's method of placing mines was that used by, and learned from, 101 Troop of the Army Commandos who, in their raid on Boulogne, sank a large tanker. The 101 Troop method was to lower the limpet mine with a 2 metre placing rod, and to ease it gently onto the ship's side until it attached itself by its magnet; the rod was then released from the mine and used again for subsequent mines. Because nearly all ships were divided into watertight compartments several mines were needed for each ship, usually three, including one on the engine room to cause maximum damage. The mines had acid activated time delay fuses. Each canoe carried eight mines.

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