In one of World War II’s most spectacular raids, the Royal Navy and British Commandos virtually ensured that the battleship Tirpitz would never venture into the Atlantic. As the spring of 1942 approached, the British Admiralty had its hands full with the Battle of the Atlantic, which had been raging for two and a half years. U-boat wolf packs, surface raiders, and warplanes had sent about eight million tons of Allied shipping to the bottom, and the situation was getting worse. Slipping out from their havens in the western French ports of Brest, Lorient, La Pallice, Bordeaux, and Saint-Nazaire, the...