Churchill's Secret Warriors: The Explosive True Story of the Special Forces Desperadoes of WWII by Damien Lewis Read Free Book Online

West African ports, from where they were flown north to those airstrips still in British hands.
    Or at least it had been. But by the summer of 1941 German U-boat attacks along the West African coast were threatening the safety of those convoys – many of which had been forced to re-route thousands of miles across the Atlantic.
    Spain’s Falangist government under General Franco was seen as being neo-Fascist, and an enthusiastic, if secretive supporter of the Axis Powers. During the Spanish Civil War Italian troops had fought alongside Franco’s forces, and German Stuka dive-bombers had provided devastating air support. Inshort, while Franco’s Spain paid lip service to her much-vaunted neutrality, Fernando Po’s Santa Isabel port was suspected of being a clandestine German U-boat refuelling and rearming depot.
    What gave added weight to those suspicions were the three enemy ships – one flying the German Swastika, one the Italian flag – seemingly permanently anchored in Santa Isabel harbour. The largest, the
Duchessa d’Aosta
was an 8,000-tonne Italian passenger liner-cum-cargo ship, manned by an Italian crew of between forty and fifty. Her hold was stuffed full of valuable war materials – including copper ingots, plus a quantity of materials any further details of which the ship’s Captain had refused to divulge.
    A copy of the ship’s manifest had been obtained by the SOE, but it was the missing page that proved most tantalizing: ‘The manifest as forwarded contains six pages,’ the SOE reported, ‘It is understood, however, that a seventh page is missing … The Spanish port authority requested a copy of the missing sheet from the ship’s master, who declined to produce it but offered no explanation.’
    The repeated refusal by the
Duchessa
’s captain to divulge the nature of the materials detailed on the seventh page of the manifest fuelled speculation that his ship was in truth carrying weaponry, and possibly even spare parts for German submarines.
    The second largest vessel moored in Santa Isabel harbour was a modern German tugboat, the 200-tonne
Likomba
, which came complete with German captain and crew. The
Likomba
was the perfect kind of vessel for going to a crippled U-boat’said, and towing her to the shelter of the nearest hidden tropical lagoon or ‘neutral’ harbour. Moored alongside the
Likomba
was a luxury pleasure yacht, the
Bibundi
, which was also presumed to be a German vessel.
    Whatever the three ships and their crew might be up to – with the suspected connivance of the Spanish port authorities – a decision was made that they had to be stopped.
    The SOE had been formed entirely so that its actions could be disowned by His Majesty’s Government. It was clear that any mission to raid Santa Isabel Harbour and to take out the three enemy vessels would have to be carried out by SOE agents – for this of any mission called for absolute secrecy coupled with total deniability.
    At the SOE headquarters various options for the assault – codenamed ‘Operation Postmaster’ – had been considered. Bombing the ships from the air was unthinkable, for British warplanes would be wholly identifiable. Such a wanton breach of neutrality would almost certainly provoke Spain into joining forces with the Axis powers, after which Portugal would very likely be forced to follow suit, with potentially disastrous consequences for Britain’s fortunes in the war.
    Infiltrating the port and sinking the vessels where they lay at anchor was the next most obvious option, but that wouldn’t provide the knockout blow. The harbour was comparatively shallow with a firm, rocky bottom, and a vessel the size of the
Duchessa d’Aosta
would simply settle a few feet onto the seabed. It would be possible to repair and re-float her, and possibly also the German tugboat. And so the mission had become a ‘cut-out’ tasking – one designed to free the vesselsand spirit them into British hands, and all without any