On the 13th September 1943, after landing at Taranto in Italy, allied intelligence came into contact with a prisoner who had escaped from a concentration camp at a placed called Pisticci, about 60 miles/100km behind the allied front lines. He reported the prisoners were soon going to be moved towards Germany, where they'll most likely be killed.
Hearing of this, 2SAS quickly put together a plan to rescue the prisoners and kill the camp guard. They faced a major problem however, as there were the two front lines and 100km of enemy territory between them and their target. To do this, they raided the nearby town of Chiantona, hijacked one of the trains there, and then drove it through Axis territory to the concentration camp, where they killed the guards, loaded the prisoners onto the train, and then drove it back to allied lines. As a plan fraught with danger, typical of the SAS, surprisingly little went wrong during the operation. The Italians were taken completely by surprise, as the prisoners were loaded onto the train, and they managed to extract themselves without incident.
Most extraordinarily of all, this whole affair remained almost completely unknown until very recently, when historian Damien Lewis was given access to the papers of Major Paddy Mane, one of the founders of the SAS, who noted the raid in one innocuous paragraph.
Video Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction
01:18 - Situational Context
03:50 - Who Dares Wins
05:57 - A Hidden Secret?
07:50 - Outro
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