Greatest raids of all time BBC2 9pm tonight !

Thanks Owen

 

Major Robert Henry Cain, a remarkable man indeed Cash 13. Thanx for posting that. He more than deserved the award.

 

Thanks, Adam.
I'm still not sure that it would really have been a huge job for the Germans to repair or replace the caisson.
It can't have been all that massive, I'd have thought, since it had to float out of the way whenever a ship went in or out of the dock - at least, that is, if it worked on the same principles as the caissons of the locks in Portsmouth dockyard that took Britain's largest battleships.
I'm getting curious about this now. Any insight appreciated.

 

Sorry don't mean to hi jack this thread but who played Major Cain in A Bridge to Far?


Also got to say what it doesn't mention is that after he run out of ammo for the Piat he grabbed a Mortar and went around firing it from the hip straight at the Germans...........

 

Sorry don't mean to hi jack this thread but who played Major Cain in A Bridge to Far?

Cain didn't appear in the movie.

Steve W.

 

The St Nazaire dry dock was 1148 feet long and 164 ft wide. The largest dry docks at Portsmouth were (still are) Locks C and D: 850 feet long and 119 feet wide.

From my limited understanding of the way the Portsmouth docks worked, it seems to me that if the St Nazaire dock was built on the same principles as the Pompey (and I suppose other British) docks, then, even though the width was 50% greater, it should not be a tremendous task to repair or replace a caisson.

I have a book published by the Portsmouth Royal Dockyard Historical Society which explains the advantages of caissons over their alternative: lock gates. Caissons are easier to maintain: you can even take one away and replace it by a spare (most cost-effective of course if you have several docks of the same width).

But now from hints I find here and there I’m getting the impression that the caissons at St Nazaire were not really pure caissons, but something more complicated. On Historynet.com, for example, I found this sentence:

"The dock itself was enormous, a basin 1,148 by 164 feet. It was opened and closed by monstrous 35-foot-thick gates, so massive that the British called them ‘caissons.’ They loomed a gigantic 167 feet by 54 feet square, and were designed to move on huge rollers."

This seems to suggest that maybe the British (not necessarily the French or the Germans) called these objects ‘caissons’, because they had the same function as the caissons in a British dockyard: opening and closing to let ships in and out. But this usage was misleading. These so-called ‘caissons’ were actually complex gate-like objects.

If so, I can see that, if blown up, they would need a lot more repairing than a pure caisson. But this is just my current working thesis. Can anyone confirm or nuance or refute it.

 

Cain didn't appear in the movie.

Steve W.

Frankly I find that deeply disturbing and insulting for his family & comrades and no doubt others were left out as well.....

But to leave what is arguably one of the most important actions of the Arnhem campaign out is unbelievable

 

That was some raid, and no mistake!! What a brilliant enterprise.

 

Back to the programme, it mentioned a sailor on one of the little boats who despite being shot 16 times, kept on firing back until he was killed. One of the german officers recommended that he should be given the VC. Who was he?

 

Nice one Adam.

 

It was also a case of blowing up the valves and winding gears for the gates....these meant the dock wasn't ready to use till I believe 1948....

Hopefully I've attached an image of the dock taken just before the raid.....

 

Repeated this coming Sunday at 20.00 BBC2.

BBC - BBC Two Programmes - Jeremy Clarkson: Greatest Raid of All Time

Sun 5 Dec 2010
20:00
BBC Two (except Northern Ireland (Analogue), Wales (Analogue))
Excellent programme just wish they would re-run the one on his father in law, Major Cain of Arnhem fame.