PREVIEW: ORDERS, DECORATIONS, MEDALS AND MILITARIA: 7 NOVEMBER

A Conspicuous Gallantry Medal group relating to one of the most daring missions of the Second World War comes to auction here with an estimate of £40,000-50,000.

It is hard to think of a more intractable problem facing the Royal Navy than how to deal with the Kriegsmarine in the North Atlantic in the early days of the war – and the solution proved to be an operation against the most stupendous odds.

The occupation of Norway in 1940 provided the German Navy with ideal fjord anchorage for its capital ships. Safe in the knowledge that the Royal Navy lacked the strength to be constantly on patrol, the Kriegsmarine was free to menace the North Atlantic trade routes at will.

When harboured in the fjords, the German battleships were far from the open sea, out of reach of surface ships and conventional submarines, and well beyond the range of the R.A.F.’s heavy bombers. The Tirpitz, in particular, acted as a major influence over the movements of the British Home Fleet, and consequently a way had to be found to attack her where she spent most of her time – in harbour.

Such an attack could only be achieved by submarine, but not a craft of any usual size, which might be more easily detected. Instead, the Royal Navy devised a four-man Midget Submarine or X-craft. At fifty feet in length the X-craft was small enough to penetrate the fjord defences and yet large enough to carry a four-ton charge and to operate unsupported for several days.

Armstrong Vickers was commissioned to build six operational X-craft in May 1942, while the call went out to volunteers for ‘special and hazardous service’.

One of those volunteers was Edmund ‘Eddie’ Goddard an apprentice tool maker who had joined the Navy aged 20 in 1941 only to find himself fire-watching on the roof of the Royal Naval Barracks in Portsmouth.

Goddard joined the early crew and faced thorough and dangerous training in the waters around the Isle of Bute in the summer of 1943. It took a year to bring the crews to ‘concert pitch’ and by 10 September 1944, they were ready when news came that the Tirpitz, Scharnhorst and Lutzow were all at anchor in the fjords.

Using conventional submarines as tugs, the X-craft were towed over 1,000 miles to their starting points before embarking on their individual assigned missions. But, during the eight-day journey to the slipping position, tragedy struck when X9 (Sub-Lieutenant E Kearon) parted her tow in foul weather and disappeared without trace. X8 also ran into difficulties and had to jettison her explosive charges.

That left four X-craft to set out on the mission: X5, X6, X7 and X10, which began with a 50-mile journey fraught with danger. 

Mechanical failures put an end to X10’s planned attack on the Scharnhorst. Goddard was the helmsman in X6, captained by Lieutenant D. Cameron, which had been detailed, along with X5 and X7 to attack the Tirpitz.

Acting independently the three X-craft began their journeys to the Tirpitz lying in Kaa Fjord on 20th September. The first obstacle was a minefield and X6 crossed it on the surface. At 1 a.m. as X6 entered Stjern Sound, Cameron discovered that its periscope was leaking, a defect that was to have serious consequences later on. By noon they had reached the Alter Fjord and that evening they arrived at their predetermined waiting positions close to the entrance to the Kaa Fjord.

After ‘a rather disturbed night charging, making good defects and dodging traffic,’ it was found that X6’s port charge was defective, and so Cameron re-set the fuse to fire one hour after release. Shortly after 5 a.m., Cameron was able to make out a small Coaster, heading up the fjord towards the great battleship and leading the way through the open gate of the anti-submarine boom net that enclosed the Tirpitz.

Once inside, X6’s periscope proved almost entirely useless, and so the final approach had to be made half blind. At 7.20 a.m., X6 broke surface just 80 yards from the Tirpitz and was sighted. Whilst the German sailors rushed to their battle stations, X6 dived beneath the last line of defence, a 50-foot anti-torpedo net. Passing under the Tirpitz’s keel, X6 hit an obstruction, and Cameron, thinking that they must have struck the net on the far side, decided to check his position. X6 came up under Tirpitz’s port bow and manoeuvred astern, bringing the Midget Submarine to a position abreast “B” turret, where her four-ton amatol charges were released.

With a useless periscope little hope remained of reaching the open sea and so Cameron gave the order to scuttle X6 and give themselves up. Under a hail of small arms fire, Goddard threw open the hatch and, followed by Kendall, Lorimer and Cameron, stepped aboard a German launch into captivity.

In an interview many years later for the B.B.C. documentary ‘Target Tirpitz’, Eddie Goddard recalled:
“We were taken on board Tirpitz’s quarter-deck and told to empty all our pockets, which we did. Then we were taken below, and put in a corridor, and I heard lots of clanging of chains and whatnot, and I thought, oh dear, they’re going to move the ship before our charges go off. Eventually the charges did go off, which shook us a bit; all the lights went off, and a foam extinguisher started to pour forth on my German guard who didn’t like it very much. He grabbed me by the neck, and we went up on deck, and I was very disturbed the ship didn’t appear to be sinking.

“They lined us up before a group of guards with tommy guns; they were all very hostile and murmured Schweinhund and other things. Then an interpreter came along and asked us how many boats were there and so on, but we just gave them our names and numbers. He got very annoyed and said that if we didn’t play, he’d have to shoot us. He pointed at Lorimer and said to me, if you don’t give me the information, I shall have to shoot your comrade too. Oh, well, I said, you just go ahead and shoot him.”

Meanwhile Place had successfully laid X7’s charges, but his attempt to escape was fraught with misadventure. He tried frantically to get through the net but X7 was still stuck in it when the charges went off at 8.12 a.m. The impact in fact blew her clear of the nets but her compasses and diving gauges were out of action, and the boat was difficult to control and broke surface several times, whereupon Tirpitz’s guns opened fire and inflicted damage on her hull and periscope.

As X7 sat on the bottom with almost all her high-pressure air exhausted, Place decided there was just enough air for one more trip to the surface and that he must abandon the craft. So X7 surfaced about 500 yards off Tirpitz’s starboard, whereupon Place got out and began to wave a white sweater. Unfortunately water lapped into X7 and in her low state of buoyancy it was enough to send her to the bottom. Place was taken prisoner, as was Sub-Lieutenant Aitken, who made a miraculous Davis Apparatus escape three hours later, but Lieutenant Whittam and E.R.A. Whitley were drowned.

The exact fate of Henty-Creer’s X5 is uncertain but it would seem that he reached a position 500 yards from the outside of the inner net and was sighted on the surface from Tirpitz at 8.43 a.m., after the charges had detonated, and was sunk by gunfire and depth charges, all of her crew being killed.


Cameron, Place, Goddard and the other survivors became prisoners of war and were lucky to escape execution under Hitler’s notorious ‘Commando’ order. The Tirpitz was badly damaged and would be no menace to our convoys for many months. The explosion had lifted her 50,000 tons bodily about five feet. All three main engines were damaged. One generator-room, the wireless telegraphy rooms, and range-finding gear were put out of action. Two main turrets, the anti-aircraft control station and the port rudder all suffered varying degrees of damage which put them out of commission, and about 500 tons of icy fjord waters flooded through the ruptured hull of the battleship.

Despite this serious damage, the six survivors of the X-craft crews were all well treated aboard their victim, where their bravery was greatly admired. They made their way slowly through Norway to Dulag Nord in Germany for a dose of solitary confinement and interrogation, and then to Marlag-Milag Nord prisoner-of-war camp, near Bremen, on 28 November.

In March 1945, when P.O.W.s were marched from Marlag-Milag Nord to Lubeck, in the face of the Russian advance, Goddard and two others took advantage of a bend in the road and a nearby wood to break away unseen. After surviving for more than a week on the run, they passed through the German lines, having swum the Wummer River in winter with their clothes on their heads, and were found by advancing British troops.

A very full account of Goddard’s part in the attack on the Tirpitz, and especially of his subsequent imprisonment, interrogation and escape can be found on the following link: http://project-purley.eu/R000256.pdf

Also announced in the London Gazette dated 22 February 1944, were the awards of the Victoria Cross to Lieutenants Cameron and Place, and of the Distinguished Service Order to the remaining surviving officers. Goddard was presented with his C.G.M. by the King at an investiture at Buckingham Palace on 22 June 1945.

After the war Goddard worked at the Newbury Diesel Company as a commissioning and troubleshooting engineer and later as manager of the Reading branch of C. W. Glover.. He died at Tilehurst, Berkshire, in 1992.

The CGM group is offered here with a file of copied research, including various photographic images of the recipient.