During World War II, Le Croisic was home to a radar station for the Wehrmacht following the Fall of France and construction of the U-boat pens at Saint-Nazaire, in order to protect the Loire estuary from Allied attacks due to the Normandie dry dock at Saint-Nazaire that could be used to repair the large Kriegsmarine battleships such as the Bismarck and its sister ship, Tirpitz. However, in the March 1942 St Nazaire Raid, a British Commando team on the obsolete HMS Campbeltown and several motor launch boats were able to slip by the Le Croisic radar station and ram Campbeltown into the Normandie dry dock gate, before sabotaging other vital parts to the dry dock. Delayed action explosives on Campbeltown went off several hours after the night raid, destroying the dry dock gate and putting it out of commission until long after France was liberated and Nazi Germany had surrendered to the Allied Powers.[6]
Legend
In a medieval French legend recounted during the funeral of Anne of Brittany in 1514, Le Croisic was the scene of a story which explained the origin of the use of ermine in heraldry. In the story, Anne's supposed ancestor Innogen, the daughter of Greek king Pandrasus and wife of Brutus of Troy from Geoffrey of Monmouth's pseudo-history Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1136), was attending a hunt at Le Croisic, when a stoat being pursued by Brutus' dogs took refuge with her. Innogen saved and fed it, and adopted it for ordre et armes ('order and arms').[7]
^WWII's Greatest Raids - Commando Do or Die – via American Heroes Channel
^Cornette, Joël (2021). "'La Royne est morte! La Royne est morte!'". Anne de Bretagne. NRF Biographies (in French). Paris: Gallimard. p. 209. ISBN9782070770618.
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