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00:02autumn 1940 Britain is being pounded by the German blitz its people are demanding vengeance
00:11but when British bombers take off to attack German cities they hit an invisible wall of
00:16defenses using radar to pick up the incoming British aircraft German fighters can shoot
00:29them down with ease the British look to be losing the war of the bombs the German radar system has
00:41to
00:41be defeated it's up to a handful of Britain's new paratroops to provide the key their action
00:55would be one of the most daring and important raids of World War two and when it ended Germany's radar
01:02secrets had been laid bare now we had the elements we had the friar for long-range detection the small
01:11Wurzburg for anti-aircraft purposes and the giant Wurzburg for controlling night fighters
01:42although victorious in the Battle of Britain the country was soon suffering severely from the
01:47German bomber blitz as Prime Minister Winston Churchill inspected the ruins he was already
01:53ordering a counter-attack the RAF took off on punishment raids over Nazi Germany
02:08the effect of these attacks was immediate Adolf Hitler ordered that an air defense barrier be set up
02:15immediately and put Luftwaffe General Joseph Kammhuber in charge Kammhuber brought together German searchlights
02:25and anti-aircraft gun defenses into a line stretching from Schleswig-Holstein to Liège
02:38this was then linked with a radar network the Germans had already developed their own radar for
02:44offensive purposes to guide their bombers now as Britain struck back in the air they turned to its
02:53defensive use positioning stations along the North Sea coast of their new empire to detect any attack
02:59and guide fighters by 1941 Kammhuber had tied all the elements together in a lethal multi-layered aerial
03:12defense system it started with the coastal radar stations these picked up incoming British bombers and
03:22alerted German night fighter crews given precise directions by the radar stations they could then
03:28intercept the British bombers those bombers have managed to get through then faced batteries of flak guns and
03:40powerful searchlights
03:49RAF bomber command called it the Kammhuber line
03:55it cost many British lives too many
04:04in the face of the German defenses only three RAF bomber crews out of every ten could be sure of
04:09completing their tour of
04:17operations
04:19it was a frightening statistic and meant that Britain faced losing the air war if nothing could be done about
04:25it
04:30British scientist dr. RV Jones headed the team dedicated to destroying the Kammhuber line he knew the key to it
04:37was radar
04:41but he faced opposition Lord Cherwell
04:45Churchill's personal scientific advisor wouldn't believe that the Germans had perfected radar
04:52following the invasion of France in spring 1940 Jones insisted that the Germans had brought radar to the channel coast
05:03he was sure that in July 1940 it had been used to detect a British destroyer that was then sunk
05:09by the Luftwaffe
05:17but he needed proof
05:21intercepted German secret messages referring to a system code named Freya gave him a clue
05:26the
05:28when I thought about
05:29Norse mythology
05:31Friya was the Nordic Venus
05:35and she had
05:36to get possession of a magic necklace
05:44which I think was called
05:45Brzingo men
05:46and this was looked after
05:49for her
05:49by Heimdall who was the watchman of the Nordic gods
05:53who could see a hundred miles by day and night
05:55what better name you see for radar
06:00the task of getting further concrete proof fell to the RAF's photo reconnaissance unit
06:11a photograph of what was identified as a Freya radar station was taken on the 22nd of February 1941 by
06:19flying officer W.K. Manifold
06:24Codebreakers at Bletchley Park provided Jones with a further report about Freya radar
06:29it was being used with some as yet unidentified equipment code named Wurzburg
06:42in the autumn of 1941 an RAF photo reconnaissance sorty returned with pictures of a Freya radar unit installed on
06:49a cliff top on the northern coast of France
07:00it was near the village of Brunewald
07:02and Jones wondered whether the elusive Wurzburg might be there as well
07:06but the question was what did the Wurzburg look like
07:10it was probably smaller than a Freya which was difficult enough to photograph
07:14how could we how could we find one
07:17now there was at the station at Brunewald
07:21which is north of the Havre on the coast here
07:25there was indeed a Freya station
07:29and there was a path that led from the Friars
07:33to a house
07:35on the cliffs
07:38and
07:40the Friars are down here
07:42and my colleague Charles Frank spotted that the path which seemed at first sight to go to the house
07:49didn't go to the house
07:50it stopped about 20 yards short ending in a loop
07:53and besides the loop was a dot
07:57again far too small to be resolved
07:59and even on this photograph which is a much closer photograph than when he took it on
08:03you still can hardly see it even with a magnifying glass
08:05but anyway there it was and Charles Frank said what's that
08:10and we decided that there was a sporting chance it was the radar equipment we were looking for
08:17to double check a second reconnaissance flight was ordered
08:20it was carried out by squadron leader Tony Hill
08:25on the 5th of December 1941 he took his Spitfire low and fast over the English Channel
08:36the result was everything Jones had hoped for
08:40and he came back with just two photographs
08:43which are the great photographs of the war
08:47here was the house
08:49the road had come up to here
08:51and this blob you see really was just like the electric bullfire
08:55he took one flying past it that way for us
08:57and then
08:59it went past and took a side view as well
09:03and of course these gave us our first real sight of a Würzburg
09:09having confirmed the sight of a Würzburg radar station
09:12Jones now had to find out the wavelength of this radar system
09:16then he could jump it
09:19by doing that he would make the first chink in Kam Huber's aerial defence system
09:26but he needed to get hold of the radar equipment
09:31and this would mean penetrating Nazi occupied Europe along part of its most heavily defended coastline
09:43the proposal for a raid on Bruneval was passed from air intelligence to combined operations HQ
09:51its chief was Lord Louis Mountbatten
09:53he concluded that there was only one option from the air
09:59so the task of carrying out the raid was given to an elite group
10:03Britain's new parachute regiment
10:09but this had only recently been formed
10:12and its men had barely finished their preliminary training
10:15jumping out of aircraft on a raid was a brand new form of warfare for the British
10:24on the success or failure of the Paris would depend the lives of thousands of British air crew
10:37it was the Soviet Army which first looked at the possibility of deploying paratroops in a series of massive exercises
10:43before World War II
10:47the Germans had picked up on these ideas using paratroops for raids during the invasions of Norway and Holland
10:52and then en masse to capture the island of Crete in May 1941
11:04British Paris began training in the summer of 1940
11:08the initial force of 500 men grew into the 1st Airborne Division
11:18it was commanded by Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Boye Brown
11:24number 2 Battalion of the divisions 1st Parachute Brigade
11:28had barely completed training when it was given its first challenge
11:31the airborne raid on Bruneval
11:372 Battalion C Company was chosen for the mission
11:40it was 120 men strong
11:43and almost entirely made up of volunteers from Scottish regiments
11:52C Company's commander was a tough Cameroonian
11:55Major John Frost
12:01C Company trained hard for what would be a very precise mission
12:05it was not merely going in to smash up the radar system
12:09but to retrieve vital components
12:13a technical expert would accompany the paratroops
12:16RAF radar operator Flight Sergeant Charles Cox
12:21he'd been a cinema projectionist before the war
12:24and had never been in a ship or an aeroplane
12:30now he had to learn how to jump out of Whitley bombers
12:36Cox Cox would then have to examine the Würzburg on the raid
12:39while under fire
12:41he would have no room for errors
12:43the raiding party rehearsed for the mission
12:45using a scale model made by the RAF's photographic interpretation unit
12:55further information was supplied by local resistance fighters working in Nazi occupied France
13:05the plan was to drop the paratroops in three groups inland from the Würzburg installation
13:10the plan was to drop the paratroops in three groups inland from the Würzburg installation
13:11and well away from the village of Bruneval
13:12where German troops were known to be stationed
13:21the first group led by Major John Frost would capture the village
13:25and then cover the dismantling of the radar
13:33the second group was to advance on the beach
13:36shutting down any German positions and securing a landing area
13:43the third group would screen off the village
13:45and deal with any German counter-attacks from that direction
13:53Royal Navy landing craft would pick up the paras
13:55and their precious cargo from the beach
14:08late on the 27th of February 1942 the planning was completed
14:12it was now time for action
14:16the 120 British paratroopers prepared their weapons for the night raid
14:21and then marched onto the airfield at Thruxton in southern England
14:24from which it was to be launched
14:29ground crew gave the aircraft their final checks as the paras climbed aboard
14:39they took off in 12 black painted whipliers
14:42obsolete bombers known as flying barn doors
14:53during the flight the paras passed round flasks of tea laced with rum
14:58singing masked the inevitable tension
15:03the journey to the drop zone took just over an hour
15:10as Major John Frost jumped he was able to recognize the ground below
15:15reassuringly like the models maps and photographs the paratroops had studied in training
15:28but that was the last moment of certainty on the ground the plan began to go wrong
15:37the second group led by Lieutenant Ewan Charteris had been tasked with eliminating the beach defenses from the rear
15:45but they landed some distance from their drop zone much farther to the southeast
15:49it meant they were the wrong side of Brunewald village
15:57Frost's contingent landed in the correct area to the northeast of the village
16:07they took only 10 minutes to gather themselves together before advancing quickly and silently on the target
16:17Frost led a section of his group straight to the villa
16:22while a second section escorted Cox and his engineers towards the radar
16:25pulling trolleys over a series of barbed wire obstacles
16:31some of them then peeled off to help in the attack on the villa
16:34while the rest continued to the radar station
16:45the attacks then went on while the third contingent commanded by Lieutenant John Timothy
16:51positioned themselves as planned between the radar and the Germans on the beach
17:00they then began to engage them
17:09at the same time Ewan Charteris and his paras set off at the double to bypass the village and get
17:15to the beach
17:17on the way they encountered and eliminated a German patrol
17:25at the villa Frost and his men had come under fire from Germans garrisoned in farm buildings to the north
17:30of their position
17:32Frost detached some of his men to cover Cox and his party of engineers
17:41as bullets whistled over their heads Cox wrenched most of the Würzburg's components out by sheer force
17:50then Frost heard the sound of German vehicles approaching the villa
17:54and gave the order to withdraw
17:58but as they neared the beach their escape route was barred by a German pillbox
18:06it was now that Charteris and his men arrived adding the weight of his force to the firefight and overcoming
18:12the German machine gun mess
18:22with the Germans on the cliff top defeated and the beach secured the Paris now waited for the landing craft
18:30but no radio contact could be made with them
18:37the Royal Navy flotilla had to keep radio silence
18:41waiting offshore as two enemy e-boats passed by
18:47Frost impatiently signaled with very lights
18:52he feared a German counter-attack
18:54as the enemy regrouped its forces near the villa
19:08but as the Germans advanced towards the beach the Navy's boats were sighted
19:14one of Frost's signals brought the news
19:16the boats are here God bless the ruddy Navy sir
19:23even then there was a sticky moment as the landing craft began firing on the cliff top
19:27just as the Paris were preparing their position to repel the expected German counter-attack
19:40under both friendly and unfriendly fire the Paris gathered their wounded and prepared to move off with their precious loot
19:53the withdrawal from the beach was hasty and chaotic
19:59the wounded and the radar equipment were placed in one landing craft
20:02the other troops crammed into the remaining five boats
20:06but in the confusion two of Frost's signalers were left behind
20:16once safely away from the beach the Paris transferred to Navy gunboats
20:20and the flotillas set sail for home
20:28two men had been killed and there were six men missing
20:32but all of those would survive the war
20:42the Paris brought with them two German prisoners
20:45one of them was the Würzburg's operator
20:52with the dawn came an escorting squadron of Spitfires
20:55ready to fend off a last ditch effort by the Luftwaffe to destroy the boats
21:00but there was no sign of German fighters as the flotilla steamed towards Portsmouth
21:05rule Britannia blaring from its loudspeakers
21:10back in London the captured Würzburg equipment was examined by RV Jones
21:24it was then sent on to the telecommunications research establishment
21:30there analysis revealed the extreme limits of the wavelength to which the radar could be tuned
21:38most importantly it was discovered that it had no built-in counter to jamming
21:44with captured pieces of the Würzburg radar Jones and his scientists got to work cracking open the cam hoover line
21:54no longer would British bombers be so vulnerable to German air defences homing in on them with radar
22:11the RAF bomber offensive now went into full swing over Germany
22:16bringing the war home to Hitler and his Nazi henchmen
22:25over the next two years this built up to an awesome and devastating crescendo
22:34all thanks to a handful of newly trained British Paris and the treasure they brought back from Bruneval
22:47today Bruneval is the first battle honor of the parachute regiment
22:56it was a remarkable beginning to an extraordinary regimental history of daring and bravery that continues to this day
23:11even the Germans had to admit that the Bruneval mission was one of the most daring and successful British raids
23:17of World War II
23:18of the world
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