canoeists

canoeists were employed, primarily by the British and Australians, to sabotage shipping and other targets, and for reconnaissance. They were also often used for clandestine purposes such as landing agents from submarines. For example, Maj-General Mark Clark was taken ashore in a canoe from a submarine to negotiate with the French before the North African campaign landings in November 1942. The British formed a number of special units which employed either folding canoes, called folboats, or the more robust 4.8 m. (16 ft.) Cockle Mk II. These units included Combined Operations Pilotage Parties, the Special Boat Section, and the Royal Marine Boom Patrol Detachment, which damaged German blockade runners in the Gironde Estuary in western France (FRANKTON) with limpet mines in December 1942 and which later, as part of Raiding Forces, attacked German warships in the Dodecanese. Special Operations Australia mounted a successful operation with canoes (JAYWICK) in September 1943, when British and Australian personnel, using a captured Japanese motor vessel, Krait, as their base, employed three folboats to destroy 50,000 tons of Japanese shipping in Singapore harbour. But a repeat operation (RIMAU), mounted in September 1944, was a disaster and all 23 participants were either killed or executed. Those engaged in RIMAU were equipped with, but did not use, the 3.6 m. (12 ft.), electrically driven ‘sleeping beauty’, a one-man Motor Submersible Canoe the driver of which wore oxygen breathing apparatus. These were only used operationally once, when two released from a British submarine sank two Japanese ships in Thailand's Phuket harbour.