Tawstock Patrol

Many Auxiliers from North Devon have recounted the story of a practice raid on RAF Chivenor (now Royal Marines Base Chivenor) with all North Devon Patrols seeming to take part. The base was well defended from the land side but the river side was wide open. Tawstock Patrol arrived by boat, having drifted in on the tide up the River Taw from Instow a mile or so down stream. They marked each and every plane with a chalk swastika, and the tide having turned, drifted back undetected.

Other Patrols were said to have handed themselves in, while others by-passed defences by pretending to be regular Home Guards defending the site. All the other North Devon Patrols were involved in this raid and all had different targets on the base. Where the outcome is known all were successful. The RAF base had been provided with security from both the regular army troops and also members of local Home Guard Battalions.

Although defenders were warned of an impending attack, Barnstaple railway station also saw “terrible damage to all of the engines and much of the rolling stock” according to Bert Verney. Chalk swastikas were again used to symbolise the damage they could have caused to the rail links.

Though over 10 miles away for Tawstock Patrol, Bert recalled travelling by lorry to a training raid on Hartland Point Radar Station followed by a later raid on the hutments at Northam Burrows. Hartland Point was a Naval VHF intercept station for the 'Y service'. Jointly operated by the Army, Royal Navy, RAF, Foreign Office, Metropolitan Police and the General Post Office, 'Y service' was a feeder service for the Enigma operation at Bletchley Park. Subsequently it became a 'Chain Home Low' radar station. This system was set up in 1940, and the local station was on Northam Burrows, but additional coastal stations were needed to boost coverage at low-level. These had a dual function of plotting surface shipping and low-flying aircraft.

RAF Northam was a chain home air-defence radar station that operated between February or March 1941 and 1945, although by that date the site's domestic accommodation was probably being used for personnel stationed at RAF Hartland Point. It was located on Northam Burrows and adjacent land, with a domestic complex and orderly room (administration) on the south-west edge of the site, on land now occupied by housing. 1946 RAF aerial photographs shows four steel transmitter masts, two wooden receiver towers and a number of transmitter and receiver blocks, with spinal access road and perimeter fencing.
They are considered the best preserved radar remains in Devon.

A night raid took place at Fremington House and camp, which from 1943 to 1945 was an American training camp and post D-Day rehabilitation hospital. On the departure of the US troops it became a British School of Combined Operations HQ.

Bert recalled another group raid on Stevenson House, St Giles in the Wood, near Torrington. Barely habitable after parts were sold for building materials in the 1930s, it was used to billet men from Warwickshire Regiment and later American Forces.

A exercise by the regular forces to defend against an attack on a gun emplacement at Instow was thrown into chaos by the Patrol. Unnoticed, Bert slipped in with some prisoners taken captive and when taken into the base let off a large thunder flash. “In reality I would have perished with the rest but the gun emplacement would have been blown up” explained Bert.

Other targets would have included booby-trapped roads and bridges and transport in general.