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16 February 1908 - 29 June 1986
Royal Navy
HM Motor Gun Boat 314
Robert Ryder joined the Royal Navy in 1925. On 27-28 March 1942 he led the naval force in Operation Chariot, with the aim of wrecking the gates at the entrance to the huge dry dock at St Nazaire, the only one in western France capable of accommodating the German battleship Tirpitz.
The force, commanded by Ryder in MGB 314, comprised sixteen motor launches, a motor torpedo boat, and the destroyer HMS Campbeltown which, loaded with explosives on a time fuse, was to ram the dock gates. It also included 257 commandos, who were to demolish dockside installations.
Just before 1.30am on 28 March, Ryder’s force reached its objective, where the Campbeltown succeeded in ramming the dock gates. Ryder remained on the spot to conduct operations, going ashore at one stage to look around. Returning to MGB 314 - by then under intense close-range fire - he organised the evacuation of men from the Campbeltown and the rescue of as many commandos as possible. After being in action for well over an hour, MGB 314, still under fire and full of dead and wounded, at last withdrew and eventually reached England. The Victoria Cross awarded to Ryder was one of five won during the raid.
Ryder retired from the Navy in 1950 and served as Member of Parliament for Merton and Morden from 1950 to 1955. He died during a sailing trip to France in 1986, aged 77.
Courtesy of the Imperial War Museum
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