Background
On 30 June 1940 the Germans landed troops on the Channel Islands. Two days later, the British prime minister, Winston Churchill sent a memo to his chief staff officer, General Hastings Ismay, asking him to begin planning an operation for a raid on the islands as soon as possible and stating that he felt that it would be the type of operations that the newly formed Commandos would be suited for. After that, things began moving very quickly. Indeed, the War Office approved the proposal for the raid later that day and shortly after planning began in earnest.
It was decided that a raid by 140 men would land on the island of Guernsey and attack the airfield with the purpose of destroying aircraft and buildings, as well as capturing or killing members of the garrison. The units that were chosen for the raid were 'H' Troop from No. 3 Commando and No. 11 Independent Company. No. 3 Commando, under Lieutenant Colonel John Durnford-Slater, had only just been raised, having completed its recruitment on 5 July, and had not yet begun training, while No. 11 Independent Company under the command of Major Ronnie Tod had been raised earlier in June and had a few weeks earlier undertaken Operation Collar, which had been a hastily organised and largely unsuccessful raid on Boulogne.
During the planning stage, Durnford-Slater went to London where he worked out most of the details with David Niven, who was then serving as a staff officer in the Combined Operations Headquarters.
On the night of 7/8 July a reconnaissance operation was carried out, when Lieutenant Nicolle, an officer in the Hampshire Regiment who was originally from Guernsey, was landed on the island by the submarine HMS H43. Three days later he was picked up and based on the information that he provided it was determined that the garrison on Guernsey consisted of 469 soldiers, concentrated mainly around St. Peter Port and although there were machine gun posts all along the coast, they were sited in a manner that meant that it would take about twenty minutes between an alarm being raised for reinforcements to be dispatched.
Read more about this topic: Operation Ambassador
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