Operation Biting : the 1942 parachute assault to capture Hitler's radar

Operation Biting The 1942 parachute assault to capture Hitler's radar

Max Hastings

Book - 2024

"Operation Biting was one of the most thrilling British special forces raids of World War II, and probably the most successful. In February 1942 RAF intelligence was baffled by a newly identified radar network on the coast of Nazi-occupied Europe, codenamed Würzburg. The brilliant scientist Dr R.V. Jones proposed an assault to capture key components. The nearest accessible enemy set stood upon a steep cliff at Bruneval in Normandy. Amid heavy snow 120 men landed, some of whom were misdropped almost two miles from their objective. They nonetheless launched the assault, dismantled the German radar, and after three nail-biting hours in France and a fierce battle with Wehrmacht defenders, escaped in the nick of time by landing-craft acros...s stormy seas to Portsmouth. Taking us from the War Room to boots-on-the-ground action, and recounted in Hastings's signature bestselling style, Operation Biting tells a story that has become almost forgotten yet deserves to rank among the epic tales of courage and daring that took place in the greatest conflict in history"--

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Subjects
Bruneval Raid, Bruneval, France, 1942.
World War, 1939-1945 > Radar.
World War, 1939-1945 > Aerial operations, British.
World War, 1939-1945 > Commando operations.
World War, 1939-1945 > Military intelligence.
World War, 1939-1945.
Published
New York, NY : Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers [2024]
Language
English
Main Author
Max Hastings (author)
Edition
First U.S. edition
Physical Description
xx, 362 pages, 32 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages [329]-343) and index.
ISBN
9780063341081
  • List of Illustrations
  • Introduction
  • Note on Timing
  • 1. Reg
  • 2. Dickie
  • 3. Boy
  • 4. Rémy
  • 1. 'The Most Extraordinary Secret Agent I Ever Met?'
  • 2. Bruneval
  • 5. Johnny
  • 1. C Company
  • 2. Tilshead and Inveraray
  • 6. Charlie
  • 7. 'Party' Planning
  • 1. 'Pick'
  • 2. The Enemy
  • 8. The Jump
  • 9. Henry
  • 10. Junior
  • 11. Cook
  • 12. The Prizegiving
  • 1. Celebrations
  • 2. The Wheel of Fortune
  • Appendix I. Maj. John Frost's Orders for Operation Biting February 1942
  • Appendix II. Order of Battle for C Company 2nd Parachute Battalion 28 February 1942
  • Appendix III. Maj. Gen. Frederick Browning's After-action Report on Operation Biting, March 1942
  • Appendix IV. Extracts from the Report of the Telecommunications Research Establishment on the German Technology Captured at Bruneval
  • Acknowledgements
  • References and a Note on Sources
  • Bibliography
  • Index
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

A storied episode of airborne combat serves as a study in courage and chaos in this gripping account. Historian Hastings (The Abyss) revisits Operation Biting, a British paratrooper raid on Bruneval, a coastal village in German-occupied France; the operation aimed to capture a new German air-defense radar so that British scientists could develop countermeasures to it. The plan, Hastings contends, was a dangerous long shot, requiring 120 lightly armed paratroopers to drop behind enemy lines, dismantle and haul away the radar, capture a German radar operator, and fight their way to a beach for evacuation. Hastings, himself a former paratroop officer, probes beneath the glamorous aura of airborne warfare to its very unglamorous realities--"almost all the paratroopers' first action on landing was to satisfy a desperate need to relieve aching bladders"--and unplanned turns of fortune. (Many paratroopers missed the drop site by miles, but their fatal mistake effectively confused the Germans as to the objective of the raid.) The outsize impact of seemingly minor decisions loom large in Hastings's vivid narrative--he follows two French Resistance agents who gathered crucial intelligence on the radar station before the raid, assisted by a naive German sentry who gave them a tour of the site--and colorful personalities stand out. (He riffs on the "childlike vanity" of Lord Louis Mountbatten.) The result is a jewel of military history that highlights human-scale daring amid the mass carnage of war. (Oct.)

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