Allied cross-channel smuggling of agents/equipment?

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mihu
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Allied cross-channel smuggling of agents/equipment?

#1

Post by mihu » 01 Apr 2020, 17:44

Can anyone recommend accounts of Allied smuggling operations by sea (rather than air) across the English Channel into Axis-occupied territory? I was doing a bit of reading on insertions of SOE operatives into France and supply drops to the resistance, but the accounts I found were via airdrop, and I'm more interested in how this sort of thing would have been done by sea, if it was done much at all...

Carl Schwamberger
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Re: Allied cross-channel smuggling of agents/equipment?

#2

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 02 Apr 2020, 07:27

I've never run across a account of a seaborne insertion of pick up. Possibly the German patrol & security measures in the Maritime provinces were enough to discourage it. They were aggressive and successful in running down agents in the interior. In at least one case they infiltrated and took control of a network of agents across Netherlands and northern Belgium. They ran the network for approximately a year before the Brits accepted the loss.


mihu
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Re: Allied cross-channel smuggling of agents/equipment?

#3

Post by mihu » 02 Apr 2020, 11:10

Carl Schwamberger wrote:
02 Apr 2020, 07:27
I've never run across a account of a seaborne insertion of pick up. Possibly the German patrol & security measures in the Maritime provinces were enough to discourage it.
But not enough to discourage seaborne raids like Dieppe?

Tom from Cornwall
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Re: Allied cross-channel smuggling of agents/equipment?

#4

Post by Tom from Cornwall » 02 Apr 2020, 14:00

I remember finding a book about this. Using French trawlers and MTBs I think. I’ve a look around but can’t find it at the moment. Will keep looking though. I think they were mainly early in war though.

mihu
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Re: Allied cross-channel smuggling of agents/equipment?

#5

Post by mihu » 02 Apr 2020, 14:34

Tom from Cornwall wrote:
02 Apr 2020, 14:00
I remember finding a book about this. Using French trawlers and MTBs I think. I’ve a look around but can’t find it at the moment. Will keep looking though. I think they were mainly early in war though.
Thank you. If you find anything I'd certainly appreciate you sharing it here.

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Re: Allied cross-channel smuggling of agents/equipment?

#6

Post by Tom from Cornwall » 02 Apr 2020, 14:51

Hi,

This is the book I was thinking about: Secret Flotillas: Clandestine Sea operations to Brittany by Brook Richards.

Regards

Tom

mihu
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Re: Allied cross-channel smuggling of agents/equipment?

#7

Post by mihu » 02 Apr 2020, 15:15

Tom from Cornwall wrote:
02 Apr 2020, 14:51
Hi,

This is the book I was thinking about: Secret Flotillas: Clandestine Sea operations to Brittany by Brook Richards.

Regards

Tom
Great, I'll add it to my reading list. Many thanks!

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Re: Allied cross-channel smuggling of agents/equipment?

#8

Post by Carl Schwamberger » 03 Apr 2020, 01:55

mihu wrote:
02 Apr 2020, 11:10
Carl Schwamberger wrote:
02 Apr 2020, 07:27
I've never run across a account of a seaborne insertion of pick up. Possibly the German patrol & security measures in the Maritime provinces were enough to discourage it.
But not enough to discourage seaborne raids like Dieppe?
Well, the brits did reduce the raid thing as time passed.

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EKB
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Re: Allied cross-channel smuggling of agents/equipment?

#9

Post by EKB » 03 Apr 2020, 10:22

wrote: PART VII: THE ENGLISH CHANNEL — D-DAY AND AFTER
1. D-DAY AND THE MASON LINE

THE ENGLISH Channel was the British Coastal Forces’ own backyard. From the summer of 1940, when the German blitzkrieg flashed across the Low Countries and northern France, until the end of the war in Europe, the MTB’s, MGB’s, and ML’s fought 464 actions in British home waters, claiming 269 enemy vessels sunk or probably sunk, as against the loss of 76 Coastal Force craft.[22] With the British boats carrying out the double mission of preying on enemy coastal convoys and protecting Allied shipping from E-boat attack, there was no need for American PT’s in the Channel until the spring of 1944, when the invasion of Normandy was imminent.

An urgent request by the Office of Strategic Services for PT’s to land and pick up agents on the French coast resulted in the hasty commissioning of a new Squadron 2 (the original squadron had been decommissioned in the Solomons in November 1943) on March 23, 1944, at Fyfe’s Shipyard, Glenwood Landing, Long Island. The squadron, commanded by Lt. Comdr. John D. Bulkeley, was made up of three early Higgins boats, PT’s 71, 72, and 199, which had had almost 2 years of service as training boats in Squadron 4 at Melville. After a rapid overhaul at Fyfe’s Shipyard, the boats were shipped to England, arriving at Dartmouth on April 24. There they were fitted with special navigational equipment to give them pinpoint accuracy in locating their objectives on the French coast.

Officers and men practiced launching, rowing, loading, and unloading four-oared pulling boats, constructed with padded sides and muffled oarlocks, until they could land men and equipment on a beach swiftly and silently on the darkest night. PT 71 made the first trip across the Channel on the night of May 19/20, carrying agents and several hundreds of pounds of equipment. The 71 crossed German convoy lanes and minefields, anchored within 500 yards of a beach commanded by German shore guns and a radar station, landed the men and their gear under the noses of German sentries, and returned to Dartmouth without discovery.

That was typical of the 19 missions Squadron 2 performed for the Office of Strategic Services between May and November. Sometimes they put men ashore, sometimes they took them out of France. The boat officers and men never knew the identity of their passengers or the exact nature of their missions. The job of the boats was to land their passengers or to pick them up at precisely the right position on the coast, and to do it without being detected. The squadron completed its 19 missions without once making contact with the enemy, which is entirely as it should have been.

Bulkley, Robert J.. At Close Quarters: PT Boats in the United States Navy (pp. 312-313). Milesian Publishing. Kindle Edition.
PT199 at Dartmouth copy.png
PT 199 docked at Dartmouth and lending assistance to the stricken destroyer USS Corry DD-463. The navy officer mentioned in the story (John Bulkeley) was the PT squadron commander who evacuated General Douglas MacArthur from the Philippines in 1942.

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Re: Allied cross-channel smuggling of agents/equipment?

#10

Post by mihu » 03 Apr 2020, 11:04

@EKB Great excerpt, many thanks for posting it. That's just the sort of thing I was curious about.

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Re: Allied cross-channel smuggling of agents/equipment?

#11

Post by Sheldrake » 03 Apr 2020, 11:09

The British operated the "Shelburn Line" for inserting and extracting agents, and mainly extracting escapees and downed pilots for MI 9. Royal Navy’s 15th Motor Gun Boat Flotilla (established in 1942), operating mainly from Dartmouth and at times Falmouth. Motor Gun Boats (MGBs), and Motor Torpedo Boats (MTBs), together with other light craft and fishing boats had been operating throughout the war from June 1940 until November 1944. There is a lot more here http://www.ww2escapelines.co.uk/belgium ... /shelburn/

Airey Neave joined MI9 after his escape from Colditz. One of the other officers was an RTR officer who had lost an army in North Africa.

The film director Guy Hamilton served as an officer in this unit and had to be himself rescued in June 1944 from a beach in Brittany.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Hamilton Ironically he directed The Colditz Story and Battle of Britian as well as several James Bond films.

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Re: Allied cross-channel smuggling of agents/equipment?

#12

Post by mihu » 03 Apr 2020, 11:41

@Sheldrake Thank you, I'll have a look through the link you posted.

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Re: Allied cross-channel smuggling of agents/equipment?

#13

Post by Sheldrake » 05 Apr 2020, 10:21

It illustrates the rivalry between intelligence agencies that the OSS commission their own service from the US Navy on a section of the English Channel the Royal Navy has owned since about 1700.

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