Operation Musketoon - Aftermath

Aftermath

The raid was considered a great success, as it seemed likely that the power plant would remain out of action until after the end of the war. After returning to the United Kingdom and a debriefing, Lance Sergeant Richard O'Brien was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal, and privates Trigg and Fairclough were both awarded the Military Medal. Of the four survivors, Corporal Granlund was killed in February 1943, along with one British and four Norwegian commandos as part of Operation Seagull, when the Norwegian submarine Uredd sank off the Norwegian coast. Private Trigg was killed in Italy and is buried at the Cassino memorial. Lance Sergeant O'Brien and Private Fairclough survived the war.

After the war, on 15 November 1945, Captain Graeme Black was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and Captain Joseph Houghton the Military Cross backdated to 22 November 1942. Black and Houghton and the other five men of Operation Musketoon are commemorated on the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp memorial plaque and the Brookwood Memorial. The Brookwood memorial is for men and women of the British and Commonwealth armies who died during the Second World War and have no known grave.

The German commander in Norway, Generaloberst Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, was captured after the war and tried by a British military court for his part in carrying out the Commando Order. Found guilty on all eight charges of urging the forces under his command to kill men captured in commando raids or handing prisoners of war over to the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) for execution, he was sentenced to death, which was later commuted to life imprisonment.{He was released in 1953 and died in 1968}