The Canoes that Helped Win the War
1 Dec
We were intrigued by an upcoming exhibit of military canoes at the British National Maritime Museum, which we learned about in THIS story in The Packet.
While we were aware that canoes were used in warfare in pre-industrial times, we didn’t know they helped the Allies win World War II. It turns out the British used the small crafts, referred to as “cockleshells,” to penetrate enemy coasts in order to land or collect spies, launch attacks, and reconnoiter potential landing spots.
Canoes were used most famously in Operation Frankton in 1942, where ten British commandos, in an effort to disrupt Nazi shipping, attempted to paddle some 70 miles from their launch to the port of Bordeaux in order to attach mines to targeted vessels. Only two canoes and four men reached their targets, but four German cargo ships were flooded and a minesweeper was damaged.
Only two commandos survived the mission — two men downed, six were captured and later executed.
The story of the Operation Frankton is told in the 1955 film The Cockleshell Heroes. A book to be released in March, Most Secret: The Cockleshell Canoes, by Quentin Rees, tells the story of the operation as well as those of other World War II, canoe-based missions.
