OK long thread time as promised, slightly past the anniversary but never mind. The Granville Raid is an odd footnote to #WW2 which has been a minor obsession of mine for years, & it got worse when I wrote Coastal Convoys & discovered one of my coasters had been dragged into it!
In February 1945 the war had left the Channel Islands behind. Nearly 30,000 bored, cold and hungry German soldiers, sailors and airmen were stranded in what Hitler had designated a fortress, forbidden from surrender, while the fighting moved across France and into Germany.
They were commanded by Vice-Admiral Friedrich Hüffmeier, a fanatical Nazi & former CO of the Scharnhorst. At the end of 1944 four German POWs escaped to the CI from a camp near Granville, just 50 miles or so away on the French coast, former site of Eisenhower’s headquarters. 
Granville was still an important base. The POWs reported it full of supplies, including coal, which was in desperately short supply in the CI, but thinly garrisoned by mostly rear area troops. Hüffmeier planned a daring if unlikely raid, which set off on 8 March.
The Granville Raid wasn’t small. There were 4 large minesweepers, motor launches, two landing craft (MFPs), three Artilleriefährprahm (armed landing craft) and a pair of R-boats, along with a large tug & smaller craft. The plan was to destroy the port and a nearby radar station.
The raiders also intended to liberate POWs, sink any shipping and try to take away as many loaded colliers as they could. As well as 600 sailors, there were nearly a hundred soldiers, and Luftwaffe personnel to destroy the radar station.
On the way in the raiding force was intercepted by a tiny US Navy patrol craft, PC 564, commanded by Lt Percy Sandel USNR, which was set on fire and beached after a brief one-sided action against three AFPs with 88mm-guns.
Then the German commandos landed, blowing up cranes, railway rolling stock and fuel umps, and rounding up startled Allied servicemen. Some resisted, including 38-year-old Lt Roger Lightoller, DSC and Bar, son of the famous Titanic survivor, who was sadly killed.
US troops in the radar station held off the raiders, and by the time they left Granville the tide was out and most of the colliers had to be left behind, although they did manage to abduct the smallest, the veteran channel collier Eskwood, and wreck another three.
The German minesweeper M412 ran aground and had to be abandoned. The raiders freed 67 German POWs, who were doubtless thrilled to be removed from well-fed US captivity to the privations of the besieged Channel Islands, and killed perhaps 22 Allied personnel, mostly on PC 564.
They also took a number of prisoners, perhaps 30, including a few officers & a UNRRA official. Total cost to the Germans was six killed and wounded. Admiral Friedrich wrote that it was 'a pinprick, but the best they could do for their suffering country.'
