How the British SAS Bombed an SS Barracks After the SS Executed 34 of Their Men
British SAS Archives
64,790 views
#OperationBulbasket #SAS #WW2History
It is the dinner hour at a château in western France, the fourteenth of July 1944. The building is a barracks now, and the men inside wear the runes of the SS. Their plates are on the tables. Their rifles are on the racks. Fourteen aircraft are coming up the valley at treetop height, so low their propellers are ripping leaves, and in their bomb bays is a weapon so new it barely has a name. The men at the tables have about ninety seconds left. To understand why these aircraft are coming to this building at this hour, you have to go back eleven days — to a forest clearing at dawn, and thirty-four British SAS prisoners standing in a line with their hands tied.
This documentary tells the true story of Operation Bulbasket and the reckoning that followed it. In the summer of 1944, a small party of the First Special Air Service Regiment under Captain John Tonkin was dropped into the Vienne department to cut the rail lines feeding the German front in Normandy. Betrayed and surrounded, thirty-four captured SAS men were executed under Hitler's Commando Order by elements of the Seventeenth SS Panzergrenadier Division at Verrières and Saint-Sauvant. This is the story of the massacre — and of what the survivors did next.
Discover how the men who got out asked for a reprisal, planned it, and had it answered: an RAF strike, directed personally by Air Vice-Marshal Basil Embry, that fell on the SS billet at the Château de Marieville above Bonneuil-Matours at the dinner hour on Bastille Day, in one of the first tactical uses of napalm ever conducted on the continent of Europe.
🔥 In this video:
Two Clocks: the countdown of the condemned men (3–7 July) and the countdown of the reckoning that ran to the fourteenth.
The Massacre at Saint-Sauvant: how 34 captured SAS men were shot in cold blood under the Commando Order.
The Survivors' Request: the reprisal asked for by the very men who had lived through the ambush.
Embry's Mosquitoes: the low-level RAF strike aimed at the 17th SS billet at the Château de Marieville.
Napalm on Bastille Day: one of the first tactical napalm attacks in Europe, delivered at the enemy's dinner hour.
Sources of Where I get my facts:
McCue, P. (1996) *Operation Bulbasket: Behind the Lines in Occupied France, 1944*. Leo Cooper, London.
Macintyre, B. (2016) *SAS: Rogue Heroes*. Viking, London.
Mortimer, G. (2011) *The SAS in World War II*. Osprey Publishing, Oxford.
Asher, M. (2007) *The Regiment: The Real Story of the SAS*. Viking, London.
The National Archives (UK), WO 218 series — Special Air Service War Diaries and Operation Reports.
Disclaimer: This video is a historical documentary intended for educational purposes.
#OperationBulbasket #SAS #WW2History #JohnTonkin #SpecialAirService #WW2 #WorldWarII #Normandy #CommandoOrder #WarCrimes #Napalm #MilitaryHistory #SecondWorldWar
20 Comments
Comantry too long winded and verbose also if you dont haave photoes of aircraft do t use fake picturs
The Mission and Massacre:
Operation Bulbasket involved B Squadron, 1st SAS, operating behind enemy lines near Poitiers. Their mission was to sabotage rail lines and disrupt the movement of the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division toward the invasion beaches in Normandy (4:16 - 5:37).
On July 3, 1944, the SAS camp near Verrières was surrounded and attacked by German forces. Thirty-one SAS soldiers and an American pilot, Lincoln Bundy, were captured, tortured, and eventually executed on July 7 in a wood near Saint-Sauvant under the illegal Commando Order. Three additional wounded soldiers were murdered in their hospital beds (7:02 - 16:38).
The Reckoning:
Survivors of the SAS unit requested a reprisal for their fallen comrades. Working with the French Resistance, they identified the Château de Marieville in Bonneuil-Matours as the billet and officer’s mess of the 17th SS reserve battalion responsible for the massacre (17:05 - 20:56).
Air Vice-Marshal Basil Embry approved the strike, personally briefing the aircrews. On July 14, 1944—Bastille Day—fourteen RAF Mosquito aircraft conducted a highly precise, low-level attack on the château during the dinner hour (21:23 - 28:50).
The strike was carried out in four phases, including the use of napalm incendiaries to destroy the building, followed by high-explosive bombs and strafing runs. The operation was designed to destroy the enemy unit while leaving the surrounding town and civilians unharmed (36:51 - 41:59).
Aftermath:
The SAS survivors continued fighting until the operation formally ceased on July 24, 1944 (42:37 - 42:55). The massacre victims were later recovered and buried with honour in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery at Rom (43:47 - 45:10).
The narration is at times like 'early reading' in a primary school!
And as for the illustrations!
How the British SAS Bombed an SS Barracks After the SS Executed 34 of Their Men
British SAS Archives
64,790 views
#OperationBulbasket #SAS #WW2History
It is the dinner hour at a château in western France, the fourteenth of July 1944. The building is a barracks now, and the men inside wear the runes of the SS. Their plates are on the tables. Their rifles are on the racks. Fourteen aircraft are coming up the valley at treetop height, so low their propellers are ripping leaves, and in their bomb bays is a weapon so new it barely has a name. The men at the tables have about ninety seconds left. To understand why these aircraft are coming to this building at this hour, you have to go back eleven days — to a forest clearing at dawn, and thirty-four British SAS prisoners standing in a line with their hands tied.
This documentary tells the true story of Operation Bulbasket and the reckoning that followed it. In the summer of 1944, a small party of the First Special Air Service Regiment under Captain John Tonkin was dropped into the Vienne department to cut the rail lines feeding the German front in Normandy. Betrayed and surrounded, thirty-four captured SAS men were executed under Hitler's Commando Order by elements of the Seventeenth SS Panzergrenadier Division at Verrières and Saint-Sauvant. This is the story of the massacre — and of what the survivors did next.
Discover how the men who got out asked for a reprisal, planned it, and had it answered: an RAF strike, directed personally by Air Vice-Marshal Basil Embry, that fell on the SS billet at the Château de Marieville above Bonneuil-Matours at the dinner hour on Bastille Day, in one of the first tactical uses of napalm ever conducted on the continent of Europe.
🔥 In this video:
Two Clocks: the countdown of the condemned men (3–7 July) and the countdown of the reckoning that ran to the fourteenth.
The Massacre at Saint-Sauvant: how 34 captured SAS men were shot in cold blood under the Commando Order.
The Survivors' Request: the reprisal asked for by the very men who had lived through the ambush.
Embry's Mosquitoes: the low-level RAF strike aimed at the 17th SS billet at the Château de Marieville.
Napalm on Bastille Day: one of the first tactical napalm attacks in Europe, delivered at the enemy's dinner hour.
Sources of Where I get my facts:
McCue, P. (1996) *Operation Bulbasket: Behind the Lines in Occupied France, 1944*. Leo Cooper, London.
Macintyre, B. (2016) *SAS: Rogue Heroes*. Viking, London.
Mortimer, G. (2011) *The SAS in World War II*. Osprey Publishing, Oxford.
Asher, M. (2007) *The Regiment: The Real Story of the SAS*. Viking, London.
The National Archives (UK), WO 218 series — Special Air Service War Diaries and Operation Reports.
Disclaimer: This video is a historical documentary intended for educational purposes.
#OperationBulbasket #SAS #WW2History #JohnTonkin #SpecialAirService #WW2 #WorldWarII #Normandy #CommandoOrder #WarCrimes #Napalm #MilitaryHistory #SecondWorldWar