Captain Robert Montgomery was one of the explosive demolition experts assigned to instruct the army commandos scheduled to take part in Operation Chariot, which was celebrated afterwards as “The Greatest Raid of All”. The aim was to wreck the dry dock at St Nazaire, which was built for the French liner Normandie and was an ideal base in 1942 from which the German battleship Tirpitz could attack shipping in the Atlantic. The Allied raid was entirely successful but many lives were lost.
The night before the operational battle group sailed, Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Newman, the land force commander who was to win the VC at St Nazaire, informed Montgomery that the Tirpitz had left Altenfjord on the Norwegian coast and that if the demolitions were not