Britain's Greatest Soldier - Part 4: The Limpet Attack
In Extremis - Stories from the Edge of HistoryShow Notes
In the final episode of the Jaywick arc of Britain's Greatest Soldier , Major Ivan Lyon and 13 other operatives move to the execution phase of the most audacious commando raid of the Pacific war. After a tense passage through the Lombok Strait, with Lyon's hand on the detonator that would obliterate the Krait if Japanese capture became inevitable, the men sail acros the Java Sea to the Riau Archipelago — making landfall on Panjang Island on 18 September 1943. From there, the six-man raiding party paddles the 50 kilometres into Singapore Harbour, ground they had to give up to the Japanese eighteen months earlier. On the night of 26 September, the three folboat crews — Lyon and Happy Huston, Bob Page and Joe Jones, Donald Davidson and Walter "Poppa" Falls — attach Mark I limpet mines to seven Japanese vessels. Davidson and Falls paddle into Keppel Harbour through an open boom gate. Page and Jones strike the Bukom Island wharves. Lyon and Huston attack a 10,000-tonne tanker in Examination Anchorage— and are nearly discovered by a sailor at an open porthole. Seven explosions tear through the harbour at dawn on 27 September. The return journey to the Pompong rendezvous is a five-night ordeal through hostile waters, in waters thick with Japanese patrols, on a deadline the Krait will not wait past. Lyon and Page miss the rendezvous by 21 hours. The Krait is then nearly destroyed by a Japanese minesweeper in the Lombok Strait — eight minutes that the crew would remember as the longest of the war. The episode closes with the political fallout. Why the Australian and British governments suppressed news of the raid. What Lord Mountbatten asked SOE to do next. Why Ivan Lyon — recently told that his wife Gabrielle and son Clive were alive — could not be satisfied with Jaywick's success. And how the silence the Allies maintained about the raid would soon unleash a reign of terror on Occupied Singapore — and on a Singaporean schoolteacher named Elizabeth Choy. Next week: Heroine of Singapore, a two-part series on Elizabeth Choy. RESEARCH Research for this particular episode comes predominantly from my own book, Survival in Singapore: Elizabeth Choy, Operation Jaywick and the Battle for Truth in Changi. They also relied on the below secondary sources: Deadly Secrets, by Lynette Silver Operation Rimau by Peter Thompson and Robert Macklin The Heroes by Ronald McKie SOE by Charles Cruickshank
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Nehvizdy, December 1941. Two parachutists land in an open field of snow, miles from their drop zone. One is injured. By first light, a stranger has found their buried parachutes and followed their footprints to the quarry where they’re hiding. Operation Anthropoid is only hours old, and already on the brink of disaster. In Part 2, we follow Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš through five months in occupied Prague. They break the most important rule of their mission to survive, rely on the families who risk everything to hide them, and patiently track the most dangerous man in the Protectorate. As the day of the attack approaches, the Czech resistance begs London to call it off. Then we spend a final morning with Reinhard Heydrich, a man at the height of his power, with no idea what is waiting for him on the road into Prague. SOURCES Callum MacDonald, The Killing of SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich (1989) Robert Gerwarth, Hitler’s Hangman: The Life of Heydrich (2011) Miroslav Ivanov, Target Heydrich (English translation, 1974) Jan Wiener, The Assassination of Heyrich: Hitler's Hangman and the Czech Resistance (1969)
Prague, 27 May 1942. Two men wait at a hairpin bend on a quiet suburban road. One carries a briefcase holding an anti-tank grenade. The other is assembling a Sten gun beneath a raincoat. Their target is Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Nazi security apparatus, ruler of occupied Bohemia and Moravia, and the man who chaired the Wannsee Conference. In Part 1, we go back to how Heydrich seized control of the Protectorate, the reign of terror that earned him the name “the Butcher of Prague,” and the political calculations in London that set Operation Anthropoid in motion. Then we board an overcrowded Halifax bomber over snow-covered Bohemia, as two Czechoslovak soldiers prepare to jump into the night. In this episode The Munich Agreement and the destruction of Czechoslovakia How Heydrich used Karl Hermann Frank’s ambition to push aside Konstantin von Neurath Martial law, mass arrests and the deportation of the Protectorate’s Jews Heydrich’s leading role at the Wannsee Conference Why Edvard Beneš wanted Heydrich dead, and why Britain’s Special Operations Executive agreed The meaning behind the codename “Anthropoid” The night drop of Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš on 29 December 1941 Sources and further reading Callum MacDonald, The Killing of SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich (1989) Robert Gerwarth, Hitler’s Hangman: The Life of Heydrich (2011) Miroslav Ivanov, Target Heydrich (English translation, 1974) Laurent Binet, HHhH (2010), a novel If you’re enjoying In Extremis, please follow the show, leave a rating, and share this episode with one person who loves a good story from history.
February 1912. Lieutenant Teddy Evans is dying of scurvy in a tent on the Ross Ice Shelf. Hut Point is 56 km away. There is food for two days at most. Tom Crean pockets a few biscuits and a little chocolate, and starts walking. Part 2 picks up where we left off, with three men on a runaway sledge on the Shackleton Icefalls. Crean, Evans and William Lashly then pick their way down the Beardmore Glacier through a maze of crevasses, crossing one chasm on a knife-edged snow bridge with the sledge balanced on its peak. Far to the south, Scott reaches the Pole and finds Amundsen's tent waiting for him. Then scurvy takes hold of Evans. Crean and Lashly haul him on the sledge for around 100 km. Evans orders them to leave him and save themselves. They refuse. With the rations almost gone, one man has to go for help alone. Crean had done it before. A year earlier, adrift on breaking sea ice with Henry Bowers and Apsley Cherry-Garrard and killer whales circling, he leapt from floe to floe and climbed the face of the Barrier to raise the alarm. This time he sets out exhausted, half-starved and without water. He walks for around 18 hours with a single five-minute rest, and reaches Discovery Hut half an hour ahead of a blizzard. Sources The Worst Journey in the World, Apsley Cherry-Garrard South with Scott, Edward Evans Under Scott's Command: Lashly's Antarctic Diaries, William Lashly Scott's Last Expedition, the journals of Robert Falcon Scott An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean, Antarctic Survivor, Michael Smith
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Tom Trumble speaks at Reflections at Bukit Chandu, a WW2 and social history museum in Singapore, on the subject of his fourth book, Survival in Singapore: Elizabeth Choiy, Operation Jaywick, and the Battle for Truth in Changi (Penguin Random House, 2025). The presentation occurred on 12 September, marking the 81st anniversary of the liberation of Singapore and the end of the Japanese Occupation. Bukit Chandu—Malay for Opium Hill—overlooks the harbour where Operation Jaywick, a devastating commando mission, mined and destroyed Japanese ships. The museum sits at the edge of the Battle of Pasir Panjang, where the First Malay Regiment made their last stand under Second Lieutenant Adnan bin Saidi before the British surrender. Bin Saidi was captured and executed by the Japanese, and is regarded as a national hero. This presentation examines the unforeseen consequences of Operation Jaywick and the stories of survival and resistance during the Japanese occupation of Singapore. Speaking Inquiries: [email protected]