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Already two German battleships, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, had slipped through the English Channel under the bows of the British Fleet. Now, the Third Reich's largest and most deadly warship, the Tirpitz, had only one possible destination on Europe's Atlantic coast: the formidable dry dock of St Nazaire. HMS Rose, an aged and jinxed destroyer, was detailed to join the daring mission to destroy the entire dry dock of St Nazaire. She found herself not, as planned, backing up Operation Chariot as a troop ship, but fighting alone in the icy, fogbound seas.

St Nazaire, 1.22 a.m. 28th March 1942. HMS Cambeltown, supported by seventeen wooden motor launches, approached the German-held port intending to smash into the lock gates of the largest dock in the world; the Normandie Dock-Operation Chariot was in full swing. Against vicious Nazi gunfire, the commandos stormed the docks, and within half an hour, succeeded in their chief demolition objectives, but in the heat of battle, the Royal Navy had lost nearly all of its small vessels intended to carry them back to England.