Robert Charles Michael Vaughan Wynn, 7th Baron Newborough, DSC (24 April 1917 – 11 October 1998) was a British peer and Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve officer who played a decisive role during the St. Nazaire Raid in 1942 where he commanded a Motor Torpedo Boat.
Born the eldest son of Sir Robert Vaughan Wynn, 6th Baron Newborough, and Ruby Irene Severne, he was educated at Oundle School.
While British forces were being evacuated from northern France he sailed to Dunkirk, and made five successful trips before being hit by shellfire just making Ramsgate.
Wynn then took command of a Norfolk fishing boat and went to beaches south of Calais where it was thought the Guards were hiding in the sand dunes.
[1] Stationed at HMS Hornet, a Coastal Forces shore base in Gosport, he was involved with a plan to attack the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.
The mission would be to fire the modified torpedoes over the anti-submarine net in Brest harbour where they would sink to the sea-bed and explode after a time delay.
Left without a mission, MTB 74 was instead re-tasked to the St. Nazaire raid where it was proposed she could torpedo the inner caisson of the Normandy Dock or a lockgate to the Submarine Basin.
[4] Further tests were carried out prior to the raid on St Nazaire and adjustments made to the delayed-action mechanism of the torpedoes which were fired by MTB 74.
[1] On 28 March 1942, Sub-Lieutenant Wynn was to play a decisive part in the raid on St. Nazaire, the only port on the Atlantic seaboard in which the newly completed German battleship Tirpitz could be docked.
The plan, code-named Operation Chariot, entailed a former US Navy destroyer, HMS Campbeltown, carrying 24 time-fused Amatol explosive charges, ramming the gates of St. Nazaire harbour.
[1] That morning, whilst the Campbeltown was being inspected by Germans, five tonnes of explosive blew up rendering the dock completely useless until after the war.
[7] Hearing that Lovegrove was held in a German naval camp he volunteered to join the relieving force and met again with the man who had saved his life at St.
In 1976 he was called before the magistrates for allegedly firing a 9 lb (4.1 kg) cannonball across the Menai Strait from Fort Belan, which had been built by a relative.