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The X-Craft Raid
Recreates the successful attempts of British midget submarines to destroy the German battleship Tirpitz stationed in the fjords of Norway during World War II.
170 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1971
24 people want to read
About the author
Thomas Gallagher
32 books9 followersThomas Gallagher (1918-1992) was a widely published journalist and the author of eight books. His novel The Gathering Darkness (1952) was nominated for a National Book Award; his Fire at Sea: The Story of the Moro Castle (1959) won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for nonfiction.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
September 12, 2020
3.5 stars, but given the research by the author, 4 stars for my opinion.
Nagging, nagging, very nagging that I had read this account before or perhaps there was a movie made about it. Too many parts familiar for me. Innovative. The British Navy's best resources. Exhaustive training; determined young men going against a well defended German warship in WWII. Using mini-submarines to destroy a royal pain in Churchill's ass that owned the northern Norwegian seas.
Non-fiction. Historical account. Less than two hundred pages. A nice break for me. But again.....did I read this a long time ago?????????? Ah, books. So many. So many.
I am usually disappointed about books involving submarines. They are rarely accurate. This was a fair account. I'm no expert, but earned my US Navy dolphins in 1968.
Nagging, nagging, very nagging that I had read this account before or perhaps there was a movie made about it. Too many parts familiar for me. Innovative. The British Navy's best resources. Exhaustive training; determined young men going against a well defended German warship in WWII. Using mini-submarines to destroy a royal pain in Churchill's ass that owned the northern Norwegian seas.
Non-fiction. Historical account. Less than two hundred pages. A nice break for me. But again.....did I read this a long time ago?????????? Ah, books. So many. So many.
I am usually disappointed about books involving submarines. They are rarely accurate. This was a fair account. I'm no expert, but earned my US Navy dolphins in 1968.
July 23, 2017
I discovered this book in the library as I was searching for books whose titles start with the letter X and I'm glad I did.
World War II continues to amaze me because even though the entire thing lasted less than 6 years, there are so many fascinating stories that happened all over the place. The story of the midget subs dubbed the X-Craft is one of those.
One of the biggest, baddest battleships in the German navy was the Tirpitz (named after Admiral Von Tirpitz), and so fearsome was the ship that it terrorized the entire northern ocean. Not only did it have some of the most powerful guns of any ship at the time, it was also throughly armored like a floating tank, and had blistering speed, so it could make lightning raids against ports and ship convoys, devastate them without fear of being damaged, and make an escape before any defenses could be brought to bear.
The British had to maintain numerous ships and aircraft carriers in the North Atlantic just to guard against this one ship, and those ships were desperately needed in the Pacific. So the British admiralty and Churchill made sinking the Tirpitz one of their highest priorities.
The Tirpitz was so well protected that attacking through conventional means couldn't hope to succeed. It was anchored in a remote Norway fjord, in a bay protected by destroyers, mines and numerous gigantic anti-submarine nets, overlooked by a small fishing village dominated by the Nazis and patrolled by the Gestapo. The overland approach from the south was a trackless arctic desert, and the hills around the fjord offered excellent sight lines in every direction, with anti-aircraft emplacements surrounding the area. Attacks by air, land or sea would be seen miles away and easily repulsed.
Thus was hatched the idea of using midget subs, crewed by four men, to sneak in under the numerous defenses of the anchorage, drop massive bombs to the bottom of the harbor in order to hit the Tirpitz in its most vulnerable spot -- directly underneath -- and then get away undetected.
Things don't go as planned.
This is a terrifically exciting story, full of twists and turns, setbacks and freak accidents and fortuitous turns of fate. I couldn't help thinking what an amazing movie this would make. It's so tense in some spots that I was torn between eagerness to find out what happened next and not wanting to know, lest my worst fears were realized. I think that feeling was heightened by the fact that this is a true story, which always raises the stakes.
Gallagher did a thorough job of researching this raid, including going over the ships' logs and interviewing many of the surviving combatants. (The edition I read was the original hardcover from 1969, so it was written some 26 years after the events.) There are so many interesting little tidbits that he uncovered, such as the fact the mini-subs were too small to use typical naval equipment, so they had to improvise. One such improvisation was using the same four-cylinder Diesel engines which powered London's double-decker buses. Not a great solution, but the best one they could come up with given the time constraints. They had to design, build, test and launch the operation as soon as possible, which meant the subs had to be designed and built in just a couple of months. That kind of thing always amazes me.
Not only were the technical aspects fascinating and the raid itself nail-biting, but the characters of the young men who volunteered were an incredible mix of personalities.
I think stories like this are amazing for all those reasons. I really want to see James Cameron make a movie about this.
World War II continues to amaze me because even though the entire thing lasted less than 6 years, there are so many fascinating stories that happened all over the place. The story of the midget subs dubbed the X-Craft is one of those.
One of the biggest, baddest battleships in the German navy was the Tirpitz (named after Admiral Von Tirpitz), and so fearsome was the ship that it terrorized the entire northern ocean. Not only did it have some of the most powerful guns of any ship at the time, it was also throughly armored like a floating tank, and had blistering speed, so it could make lightning raids against ports and ship convoys, devastate them without fear of being damaged, and make an escape before any defenses could be brought to bear.
The British had to maintain numerous ships and aircraft carriers in the North Atlantic just to guard against this one ship, and those ships were desperately needed in the Pacific. So the British admiralty and Churchill made sinking the Tirpitz one of their highest priorities.
The Tirpitz was so well protected that attacking through conventional means couldn't hope to succeed. It was anchored in a remote Norway fjord, in a bay protected by destroyers, mines and numerous gigantic anti-submarine nets, overlooked by a small fishing village dominated by the Nazis and patrolled by the Gestapo. The overland approach from the south was a trackless arctic desert, and the hills around the fjord offered excellent sight lines in every direction, with anti-aircraft emplacements surrounding the area. Attacks by air, land or sea would be seen miles away and easily repulsed.
Thus was hatched the idea of using midget subs, crewed by four men, to sneak in under the numerous defenses of the anchorage, drop massive bombs to the bottom of the harbor in order to hit the Tirpitz in its most vulnerable spot -- directly underneath -- and then get away undetected.
Things don't go as planned.
This is a terrifically exciting story, full of twists and turns, setbacks and freak accidents and fortuitous turns of fate. I couldn't help thinking what an amazing movie this would make. It's so tense in some spots that I was torn between eagerness to find out what happened next and not wanting to know, lest my worst fears were realized. I think that feeling was heightened by the fact that this is a true story, which always raises the stakes.
Gallagher did a thorough job of researching this raid, including going over the ships' logs and interviewing many of the surviving combatants. (The edition I read was the original hardcover from 1969, so it was written some 26 years after the events.) There are so many interesting little tidbits that he uncovered, such as the fact the mini-subs were too small to use typical naval equipment, so they had to improvise. One such improvisation was using the same four-cylinder Diesel engines which powered London's double-decker buses. Not a great solution, but the best one they could come up with given the time constraints. They had to design, build, test and launch the operation as soon as possible, which meant the subs had to be designed and built in just a couple of months. That kind of thing always amazes me.
Not only were the technical aspects fascinating and the raid itself nail-biting, but the characters of the young men who volunteered were an incredible mix of personalities.
I think stories like this are amazing for all those reasons. I really want to see James Cameron make a movie about this.
June 17, 2020
Based on documentary research and personal interviews, this book details the British mini-sub attack on the German battleship Tirpitz while she was harbored in the far north of Norway, a menace to Allied shipping in support of the USSR. The attack disabled, but did not sink the craft.
May 8, 2018
I had an old, battered Pinnacle Books copy from 1971 so it actually had 181 pages. I wanted to read this because of it being a true story about a WWII sea mission of a midget submarine attack on the Nazi battleship Tirpitz. Gallagher has based it completely on original sources. He even went to Germany to interview in person men who had been aboard the German battleship in Kaafjord, Norway, at the time of the midget-submarine attack and to Scotland to see John Lorimer, one of the heroes of the attack.
"I cannot fully express my admiration for the three commanding officers....and the crews of the midget submarines X-5, X-6, and X-7, who...in the full knowledge of the hazards they were to encounter...penetrated into a heavily defended fleet anchorage. There, with cool courage and determination and in spite of all the modern devices that ingenuity could devise for their detection and destruction they pressed home their attack to the full....It is clear that courage and enterprise of the very highest order in the close presence of the enemy were shown by these very gallant gentlemen, whose daring attack will surely go down in history as one of the most courageous acts of all times" - Rear Admiral C. B. Barry, November 8, 1943.
"The greatest single act to restore the balance of naval power would be the destruction or even the crippling of the Tirpitz....No other target is comparable to it...The entire naval situation throughout the world would be altered", wrote Winston Churchill in 1942.
It is a bit of a slow read because it is so factual and there is just so much detail to take in. I did find myself having to re-read some parts because I just could not keep track and take in all the information at once. It is a shame because the detail itself is actually very interesting, but at the same time is so informative that some of it loses its thrill and suspense. I also found the fact that the times did not have : in them quite distracting and this might also be an issue for other readers. All in all though a very interesting read - just think it would have been better if there were pictures so I could get more of an image of the submarines themselves. It did have a few maps in the back but I was put off by the fact in my edition one had been printed upside down.
"I cannot fully express my admiration for the three commanding officers....and the crews of the midget submarines X-5, X-6, and X-7, who...in the full knowledge of the hazards they were to encounter...penetrated into a heavily defended fleet anchorage. There, with cool courage and determination and in spite of all the modern devices that ingenuity could devise for their detection and destruction they pressed home their attack to the full....It is clear that courage and enterprise of the very highest order in the close presence of the enemy were shown by these very gallant gentlemen, whose daring attack will surely go down in history as one of the most courageous acts of all times" - Rear Admiral C. B. Barry, November 8, 1943.
"The greatest single act to restore the balance of naval power would be the destruction or even the crippling of the Tirpitz....No other target is comparable to it...The entire naval situation throughout the world would be altered", wrote Winston Churchill in 1942.
It is a bit of a slow read because it is so factual and there is just so much detail to take in. I did find myself having to re-read some parts because I just could not keep track and take in all the information at once. It is a shame because the detail itself is actually very interesting, but at the same time is so informative that some of it loses its thrill and suspense. I also found the fact that the times did not have : in them quite distracting and this might also be an issue for other readers. All in all though a very interesting read - just think it would have been better if there were pictures so I could get more of an image of the submarines themselves. It did have a few maps in the back but I was put off by the fact in my edition one had been printed upside down.
December 3, 2024
This is the Dutch edition of 'The X-craft raid'.
I have read this book many, many years ago and decided to revisit it. I remembered it as being a good read, and it still was. We must bear in mind that it was published, or at least the Dutch edition, in 1976. At that time there were still things kept secret from the public. And I think this was still the case here. Ultra was only releaved in 1974, if I remember correctly. So yes, it does give you good details of how the raid was prepared and executed, but I think that there was more than the book is telling us.
Now I must say that it does mention that the Germans, after they salvaged one of the sunken x-craft, were surprised by the amount of information the Allies had about the ship, its routines and such. Obviously the Norwegian resistance did play a crucial role in obtaining all the information, but I think that in the UK more was available through Ultra.
As I mentioned above, this is still a good read. Being aboard the small x-craft and reading how the crews had to live and operate these craft can only lead to being in awe. Their courage and perseverance can only be admired. It is also nice to read about the other side, how the Germans experienced this attack. Only a very small part of the book tells us about what happened to the surviving x-craft crewmembers. Would have been nice if there was a little more of this.
I have read this book many, many years ago and decided to revisit it. I remembered it as being a good read, and it still was. We must bear in mind that it was published, or at least the Dutch edition, in 1976. At that time there were still things kept secret from the public. And I think this was still the case here. Ultra was only releaved in 1974, if I remember correctly. So yes, it does give you good details of how the raid was prepared and executed, but I think that there was more than the book is telling us.
Now I must say that it does mention that the Germans, after they salvaged one of the sunken x-craft, were surprised by the amount of information the Allies had about the ship, its routines and such. Obviously the Norwegian resistance did play a crucial role in obtaining all the information, but I think that in the UK more was available through Ultra.
As I mentioned above, this is still a good read. Being aboard the small x-craft and reading how the crews had to live and operate these craft can only lead to being in awe. Their courage and perseverance can only be admired. It is also nice to read about the other side, how the Germans experienced this attack. Only a very small part of the book tells us about what happened to the surviving x-craft crewmembers. Would have been nice if there was a little more of this.
April 22, 2022
Another true war story that leaves me humbled, awed and saddened by the bravery and dedication of men in war.
February 20, 2015
I read a lot about WW ll and have never read about this before. Did /does it not get much coverage because the US was not involved? These guys were true heros.
December 29, 2015
Great book covering the whole project. The design of the x-craft. The training. The transport to the missions and the attempt to sink the Tirpitz itself.
April 4, 2017
A bit slow but it´s a true story so you can´t adjust the pace that much which is understandable. But it is quiet a good book really compelling in the end.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews