Courtesy of AlternateHistory user FPSlover
The Greatest Raid of All: An Autobiography
Admiral Sir George Ritchott, VC, CM, OM, 1st Duke Ritchott
Chapter 10: The Raid
I was the commanding officer of the HMS Resolute, a destroyer in 1941. When the war broke out, the Resolute was stationed in Portland, in the territory of Wabunaki (now called Maine once again). That day, I was visited by Admiral John Marshfield, who commanded the Atlantic fleet. He told me that we needed to strike at Boston. Boston was the major US shipyard in the Northeast.
Ships built there could threaten Portland, St Johns, even raid the Atlantic. We had to stop them. I traveled with Admiral Marshfield to Ottawa, where we planned the operation. The plan was that we would use the Resolute, who was due to be scraped anyway, as a floating bomb. We would disguise the Resolute as a U.S. destroyer and slip past the outer islands of the harbor, most of which had batteries on them. Then, we would ram the ship into the dockyard within the inner harbor.
After that, the commandos sent with us along with the crew of the Resolute would slip into the shipyard and destroy targets of opportunity, mainly ships. Finally, we would board the HMSVictorious and HMS Death, which would force themselves into the inner harbor in all the confusion and hightail it back to Portland.
All told, assuming we do not get into any trouble, the attack should have been a smashing success. A round trip of a day at most. It took a week to convert the Resolute to look like a U.S. destroyer. At noon on October 12th, the crew of the Resolute, 200 men along with 200 commandos, all volunteers, boarded theResolute. By 4 PM, we were within visual sight of the Outer batteries on Outer Brewster Island.
To my horror, they fired at us. Soon batteries on Great Brewster Island, Calf Island and Middle Brewster Island opened up on us as well. As soon as they heard the shelling through radar, the Victorious and the Death came in to support us. Both ships were Battleships, heavily armed and armored, thus, very well suited to smashing the defenses of Boston Harbor. And smash them they did.
Within ten minutes the guns on Outer Brewster Island were demolished. Within half an hour, the guns on Middle Brewster Island, Calf Island and Great Brewster Island were silenced. However, precious time had been lost with silencing the outer defenses. Now the defenders of the inner harbor knew we were coming.
Despite all that, we moved towards Lovell's Island, Gallop's Island and George's Island. Surprisingly, there were no batteries that we could see on any of the three islands. After the war, I learned that the governor of Massachusetts, John Clark, believed that the outer Islands' defenses would stop raiders and thus did not have batteries placed on the rest of the islands.
It was a mistake that we would take advantage of unknowingly. I ordered the three ships to continue into Dorchester Bay and the into the inner harbor. What we saw were latter identified as 12 Destroyers, 6 Battlecrusiers, 6 Cruisers, 4 Battleships and 1 Pocket Battlehsip. I knew then that we had hit the motherload. We swiftly rammed the Resolute into a open slip, right in the middle of the fleet. Then, we disembarked to cause some mischief.
The Commandos had bought several hundred time charges, to be used to blow up the enemy ships, docks and whatever else we found. We did a through search of the ships, expending valuable time. However all the ships were deserted. At the time, I wondered why. Was it a trap? Later I learned that the ships were being repaired and their crews had all gotten leave. I guess they did not think that this would happen.
We set charges on the ships, on the docks and the buildings nearby. As soon as we placed the last charge, we hear shooting. The Marines guarding the Shipyard had finally gone to see what had happened. We were several hundred yards away from where the Death and Victorious were mored up. We ended up making a fighting retreat and continued to fire on the Marines until we had cleared the docks and were out of range. The raid had cost us 53 men, 41 of them crew from the Resolute and 12 Commandos. An hour latter, we saw a huge explosion, that we assumed came from Boston. We were right.
As it turned out, one of the buildings we had put a charge on to was the main Arsenal for the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, filled to the brim with explosives. As soon as we got into Portland, I went to see what had happened with the Harbor. We found out that the explosion had taken out not just the ships in Harbor, but Boston itself as well. The explosion had made a lot of buildings vanish. What the explosion had left behind, the fires took care of. Patriot propaganda put the death toll at a less than two thousand from what they said was a gas leak. After the war, I learned that the true casualty estimate was over eighty thousand people. I never told the man who set that charge the true death toll of that day.
Years latter, he found that out himself. The man who set that charge went on the become my son in law, General Robert Romick of the Royal Canadian Commandos. I know he still bears the pain of killing all those people.
As for me, I survived the war and was given the Victoria Cross and a title for my efforts. Some days I wonder what would of happened had the raid of failed or had we lost the First Great War, but I try not to think too hard of it. I have had a good life and a good family and I would not trade it for anything in the world.