THE X-CRAFT RAID

by Thomas Gallagher ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 11, 1971

Churchill glumly called it ""the beast"" and declared that ""the entire naval situation throughout the world would be altered"" if it were sunk or crippled; the 43,000-ton battleship Tirpitz, kept at anchor in a Norwegian fjord, paralyzed the Royal Navy in the North Atlantic. Gallagher has reconstructed the improbable story of how a small band of highly selected British naval officers in ""ugly ducklings"" -- specially designed midget submarines -- carried out the unenviable job of destroying the monster. He has poured through logs, diaries and intelligence reports and interviewed British, German and Norwegian survivors of the nautical David and Goliath encounter and he conveys the perils of the actual raid with mounting excitement. The X-craft (six were eventually launched) was a marvel of British ingenuity; above water it was propelled by the motor of the venerable London bus and its crew of four engineer-acrobat-divers reported that logistically ""climbing inside a midget was like climbing inside a clock."" Dangers included drowning, suffocation, detection and self-detonation. Several volunteers perished, some of the craft had to be scuttled, a few men survived minefields, antisubmarine nets, flooded periscopes, broken gyros and failing oxygen supplies to become post-war heroes. This could hold the attention of even those normally immune to sea-fever and indifferent to sink-the-Bismarck heroics.

Pub Date: Aug. 11, 1971

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1971

Categories: NONFICTION