Ian Fleming and SOE's Operation Postmaster: The Top Secret Story Behind 007: The Untold Top Secret Story

Product Information

I had a thought whilst reading this that some might buy the book thinking they were going to get lots of James Bond. This is not a James Bond book in the slightest, you could see how it might have the origins of a James Bond Book about it, but don’t buy it for that. What you get is a very clever and smart book about an incredible operation very few knew about at the time. This book is a fantastic tale and it had me hooked from start to finish, a book I will definitely will be promoting and recommending a lot. A very good 4.5 stars indeed.

is estimated to have lost about 25% of the some 480 agents parachuted into France in the latter part of WWII.

The Mission

of the crew's quarters. Apart from Bourne she had a crew of seven. On the night of September 2/3 1942 MTB 344 was anchored off the Casquets

The British authorities in the area refused to support the raid, which they considered a breach of Spanish neutrality. Permission for the operation to go ahead eventually came from the Foreign Office in London. On 14 January 1942, while the ships' officers were attending a party arranged by an SOE agent, the commandos entered the port aboard two tugs, overpowered the ships' crews and sailed off with the ships, including the Italian merchant vessel Duchessa d'Aosta. The raid boosted SOE's reputation at a critical time and demonstrated its ability to plan and conduct secret operations no matter the political consequences. [2] By mid-September 1942, Gus had led first the Maid Honor Force and then the SSRF for seventeen months with conspicuous success, and without suffering a single casualty at enemy hands. He and his men had dared and had won. The SOE continued causing chaos, particularly on the fringes of the main theatre of war, and clearing it up was a drain on time, German manpower and morale. Captured German prisoners supplied vital information under interrogation. AS THE new 007 film, No Time To Die, is finally premiered, military historian Lord Ashcroft tells the story of the real-life war hero who inspired James Bond. After completing his training, Winter worked with the Small Scale Raiding Force (SSRF). During 1942, while the rank of warrant officer, he took part in three key missions – codenamed Operations Postmaster, Dryad and Aquatint.Major Lassen is buried in the Argenta Gap Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery in Ferrera, Italy beside those who fell with him. Such acts of kindness by the supposed cold and callous marauder earned the undying respect of his own men and the affection of the civilian population. Men would follow him anywhere. He had escaped from so many tight corners that they began to think of him as indestructible.

Saunders, Hilary St. George (1959) [1949]. The Green Beret: The Commandos at War. London: Four Square Books. No1 Army Commando". Commando Veterans Association. Archived from the original on 10 May 2010 . Retrieved 21 April 2010. In an earlier operation on 3 October 1942, Lieutenant Lassen was part of Operation Basalt, a tiny raiding party that sped across the English Channel to the Channel Island of Sark in a small motor launch named ‘Little Pisser’.

Debriefing

Zuehlke, Mark (2008). Operation Husky: the Canadian invasion of Sicily, July 10 – August 7, 1943. Douglas & McIntyre. ISBN 1-55365-324-6. The history of the Commando Foundation". Korps Commandotroepen. Archived from the original on 2010-10-31 . Retrieved 17 April 2010. The very simple included stink bombs intended to be used in German officers’ cloakrooms in the winters of Northern Europe to impregnate their overcoats with such evil smelling fluids that they had to send them to be thoroughly cleaned, thereby creating a shortage of warm clothing. The sophisticated included short range single shot miniature pistols disguised as cigarettes, and sleeve guns, openly described in the catalogue as murder weapons, for the assassination of targets from close range.

a good sea story, an interesting footnote to history." International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, December 2021 A British submarine surfaced off the French coast and launched five canoes, each carrying two commandos, for the strike. The port was hundreds of miles inland up a river, and the commandos had to paddle the whole way, taking several days to make the journey and hiding on the shore during the day. Only two of the boats managed to reach the safety of inland waters; two others capsized, and one disappeared. After reaching the harbor, the four remaining commandos blew up six ships. This is a well-researched adventure story. Operation Postmaster was a highly controversial, extremely dangerous secret operation in West Africa during World War II. The Official Secrets Act kept the story out of the public eye long after the end of the war, and it was an enterprising modern author, Brian Lett, who researched and told the tale long after it happened. NetGalley, Melissa McDaniel Probably one of the craziest operations ever conducted by Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the war, the operation to kidnap General Kreipe, the commander of the German garrison on Crete, was designed to engender resistance on the occupied island. Having been secretly inserted onto the island months before the kidnapping would take place, the two commandos tasked with the operation put their plan into action in April 1944.Taking heavy fire, the boat began to sink and the raiders attempted to swim to the MTB, which had been discovered, hit and forced to temporarily withdraw. Since they had left the Maid Honor behind in West Africa, the SSRF now used a specially adapted Motor Torpedo Boat, MTB 344. Anderson Manor became known as a Commando Camelot, and the SSRF would set out from there for each and every one of its raids, usually sailing from Portland. However, it remained a secret unit, using the code name 62 Commando. In 1941 the British had begun to receive reports that U-boats were using river estuaries in Vichy French Equatorial Africa as refuelling bases. The unit selected to investigate the reports was the Small Scale Raiding Force (otherwise No. 62 Commando), which had been formed in 1941 and currently comprised 55 commando-trained personnel working with the Special Operations Executive. Commanded by March-Phillipps, the SSRF came under the operational control of the Combined Operations Headquarters. Maid Honor, a 65-ton Brixham sailing trawler, left Poole on the south coast of Dorset on 9 August 1941, bound for West Africa with a five-man crew under March-Phillipps. The rest of the SSRF, under the command of Captain Geoffrey Appleyard, had departed earlier aboard a troop transport ship. On 20 September Maid Honor reached Freetown, Sierra Leone, which Appleyard’s party had reached at the end of August. The objective for the raid in occupied Normandy was to test enemy defences, collect information, and take prisoners.