“The Royal Navy retrofitted torpedoes with steering wheels and dubbed them Chariots.”

By Rachel Lance 

IN THE winter of 1942, six British commandos and four Norwegian resistance fighters, armed with little more than a fishing boat and a mound of peat, crept past Nazi harbour security to attack the German battleship Tirpitz. However, a harsh turn of the weather plunged them into a freezing Nordic nightmare that would cost them life and limb in one of the most daring failed gambits of the Second World War.

The completion of the legendary Tirpitz in 1941 was not a secret. Like her infamous sister ship the Bismarck, the Tirpitz was armed with eight 15-inch guns powerful enough to menace all shipping off German-occupied Norway. The Allies wanted her sunk, and they were willing to experiment to do it.

At the end of December, 1941, the Italian navy made military history when six divers straddled three steerable torpedoes — nicknamed maiale — and rode the weapons past the booms guarding Alexandria harbor in Egypt. Wearing “rebreather” apparatuses that recycled their exhaled breath leaving no telltale bubbles on the surface, the Italian divers dropped their massive bombs beneath their target ships. In one covert op, the Axis had disabled four Royal Navy warships, including the battleships Valiant and Queen Elizabeth, thereby knocking out the core of the Allies’ Mediterranean fleet. Although the six Italian frogmen who carried out the mission were captured, the operation was a stunning success.

Impressed, Churchill issued orders to mount a British version of the attack against the German navy immediately. The Royal Navy was years behind in underwater science, but nevertheless, they retrofitted torpedoes with steering wheels and dubbed them Chariots. A pair of the two-seat contraptions were loaded onto a rickety fishing vessel re-painted with Norwegian markings. Their target would be the Tirpitz. The mission was codenamed Operation Title.

The intended riders of the first Chariot were Sub Lieutenant Brewster and Able Seaman Brown. The riders of number two were Sergeant Craig and Able Seaman Evans. Two other British personnel named Tebb and Causter would come along too, to help the Charioteers climb into their rubber diving suits, pull on their narrow-visored hoods, and attach rebreathers to their chests. The six Brits donned worn fishing clothes for their journey from Scotland to Norway in the unreliable little fishing boat. The Chariots lay buried in the hold below, under peat, alongside their breathing apparatuses.

Four Norwegian guides, Bjørnøy, Larsen, Strand, and Kalve, agreed to risk their lives to help the Charioteers pass German harbour security. Once outside Trondheim harbour, the team lowered the Chariots into the water, suspending them on lines beneath the cover of the escalating waves. Two fishermen spotted the process and puttered closer, but their silence was bought with a bribe of rationed butter. On Friday morning, Oct. 30, the crew of 10 puttered into Trondheim, their ancient boat engine dying intermittently along the way. If discovered, they would all be executed.

When the crew of a German patrol boat boarded the vessel to inspect its cargo and crew, below deck lay a mountain of peat, concealing a trap door into a hidden compartment concealing the British personnel. The Germans spoke in broken Norwegian, trying to offer the four native speakers tobacco in exchange for eggs, but they approved the false papers and let the little boat through. The team was relieved. They thought the worst was over. It was the last bit of luck they would have. 

The weather continued to rise. Even in the sheltered waters near Trondheim, the wind began to howl, “and then everything happened very quickly.” Waves smashed against the little boat. They felt one of the Chariots ricochet against the hull, and as they watched shattered flotsam trail off behind them, they “felt another bang on the bottom of the ship.”

Able Seaman Evans dressed in his rubber diving suit to investigate, but the water was too rough, he could not make the dive. They puttered with their gasping engine closer to shore, finding waters calm enough for Evans, but the Chariots were gone, he reported, both of them. They had snapped free. Gone with them were the bombs with which they were supposed to attack their prey.

Then, too, the fishing boat’s engine died, this time for good, unwilling to accept further improvised repairs. They were dead in the water, dead with no equipment to complete their task. The Tirpitz floated in the distance. Without a working boat, they could not return home.

With few options, they scuttled the fishing boat in deep water to keep it away from German eyes and rowed ashore. Once on land, they divided into two parties of five each to make the overland trek into neutral Sweden. At the start of November, in a country coated with snow and famous for long winter nights, they set off on foot to tackle the intervening mountains.

Their scuttled fishing boat, which was filled with buoyant peat, re-floated. After rising to the surface, it drifted to shallow water before it settled in full view of the shore. Germans who found it soon discovered the charging equipment for the Chariots, and the diving suits. They knew these were the tools of spies. The chase was on.

The Charioteers assigned two Norwegians and three British per escape team. Larsen and Kalve would be the guides for Craig, Evans, and Tebb in group one, while Strand and Bjørnøy would help Brewster, Brown, and Causter over the mountains as group two. Each man carried a pistol, a Swedish army compass, and 30 to 40 pounds of biscuits, corned beef, and chocolate, in addition to maps printed on silk and aid boxes designed by British espionage agency MI9.

Able Seaman Robert “Bob” Evans and group one started off along a road, where there was little snow on the ground, then followed the cleared tracks of a railway. The first night was easy — the owners of a house in an isolated village gave them shelter from the early and brutal night. The family’s son served as a guide the next morning, taking the fugitive Allied saboteurs down a safe route and pointing out a notable mountain peak on their maps. Norwegians Larsen and Kalve gave the young man their pistols in thanks.

Group two had a rougher start. A friendly farmer fed them a hot meal. Another local was less hospitable not. They broke into his barn anyway, finding warmth beneath piles of hay, and made their escape unseen the next morning. As they progressed, the terrain became steeper and the havens became fewer. Some evenings they could find no shelter at all. In fact, one night, Brewster and Strand went without sleep at all, “to keep the fire going as it was too cold to sleep,” while they listened to the howling of the wolves. When their supplies ran out, they tried to get food from locals. “The people were too scared to talk to us,” they recalled later.

Meanwhile, Larsen and the first group, minus two pistols, began searching for another friendly farm on Nov. 5, five days into their journey through snow depths measured in feet. The first farmer was suspicious of the ragged group, and diverted them instead to a second farm. Young girls there gave them fresh milk, but said they couldn’t allow the men to stay without permission from their father who was temporarily away.

At the third farm, Larsen met the farmer’s wife. She was “unpleasant,” acidic, refused to help them, and closed the door in their faces. She directed them down a specific road. She also quietly called the Germans.

Two Nazis guards —one in plainclothes, one in uniform — found group one while they were walking along the road in the cold night. The uniformed German, armed with an automatic weapon, barked at them: “Halt.” In the shadows, Larsen saw a pistol in the hands of the plainclothes officer.

The group froze. Larsen muttered in English to their compatriots they should draw their pistols, since his and Kalve’s guns were now in the hands of the son who’d guided them. The Brits struggled to get their pistols out from beneath bulky winter clothes. The guards ordered them to freeze. As Larsen stalled, one of the commandos drew his pistol and fired three times, hitting one of the guards. The five then fled.

The group “pelted down the side of the hills towards the wood” under fire. Moments later Kalve found himself in the trees, alone. The snow was up to his knees and the dark of night blocked his view. Although he could not find his crew, he persevered. He walked as far as he could, searching for his team, before he laid down in the woods unprotected to sleep. He was so tired that he “didn’t care a damn” if the lack of shelter killed him. The next day, he staggered into Sweden.

In all, nine of the ten fugitives made it across the border. The Norwegians had forgotten they wore British-issued boots and were detained and hospitalized for exposure. Evans was reported as dead by the resistance’s network of spies. He was supposedly killed amid the German hail of gunfire. Later reports revealed that the Nazis had nursed him back to health only to execute him. The hospitals that took in the survivors were pessimistic, starting at first that they would all likely lose their legs to the frostbite, because their legs “were simply lumps of ice.” Bjørnøy, at least, lost pieces of his feet.

Herbert Helgesen, a butcher back in Trondheim, the butcher who supplied the crew of the Tirpitz with their meat, reported through the resistance that the Tirpitz remained untouched.

The Allies would need to try again to sink the menace. Royal Air Force bombers would finish the job on Nov. 12, 1944.

Rachel Lance is the author of Chamber Divers: The Untold Story of the D-Day Scientists Who Changed Special Operations Forever. A biomedical engineer and blast-injury specialist, she works as a scientific researcher on military diving projects at Duke University. Before earning her PhD, Lance spent several years as an engineer for the United States Navy, working to build specialized underwater equipment for use by navy divers, SEALs, and Marine Force Recon personnel. She is also the author of In the Waves, and her writing has appeared in Time, Wired, Scientific American, and more. A native of suburban Detroit, Dr. Lance lives in Durham, North Carolina.