War hero who won an MC for his part in the famous St Nazaire raid of 1942 and was later sent to Colditz

Maj Gen Corran Purdon, who has died aged 97, commanded a demolition team in an audacious raid on the French port of St Nazaire in the spring of 1942, after which he was taken prisoner, finishing the war in Colditz, the camp for incorrigible allied officers who made repeated escape attempts.

The raid, widely regarded as the greatest of its kind in the second world war, was an intricate assault involving 621 sailors and soldiers in 18 small vessels, sailing brazenly into the estuary of the Loire. Their objective was the huge lock at St Nazaire, built for the great French liner SS Normandie.

The target was of strategic importance because the lock, which could be sealed by gates at either end to convert it into an outsize dry dock, was the only place on the Atlantic coast capable of handling the German super-battleship Tirpitz if it left its remote Norwegian lair to attack allied shipping.

Experience with its fellow ship, the Bismarck, sunk with great difficulty in a key battle in May 1941, showed that the Tirpitz represented a major threat to allied convoys as long as it existed. To deny her a refuge at St Nazaire, the old destroyer HMS Campbeltown was fitted with an explosive charge in its bow and ordered to sail into the port and ram the lock gates. It exploded the following day, causing many German casualties. Lt Purdon led one of the commando demolition units ashore, while a motor gunboat, a motor torpedo-boat and 16 launches carried other commandos to attack various targets.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Aerial reconnaissance photograph taken after Operation Chariot – the raid on St Nazaire in March 1942. Photograph: Alamy

Some of those who got ashore tried to escape inland from the harbour but were captured, as were all the surviving attackers trapped in the port. A total of 34 naval officers and 157 ratings were lost: 85 were killed and the rest captured. Nearly all the commandos were lost, of whom 59 were killed and the remainder taken prisoner. Operation Chariot was completely successful and the dock was unusable until after the war. The Tirpitz never entered the broad Atlantic and, after several British attacks by submarine and air, sank in Norway in November 1944.

Purdon, who was awarded the Military Cross for his exploits, was sent, with several other officers, to Spangenberg prisoner of war camp near Kassel in Germany. He and a colleague soon managed to escape and, despite being in uniform, remained at large for nine days, travelling only by night. The pair were caught at a railway station.

On his return to captivity he joined in digging a tunnel for a planned mass escape, but it was discovered by guards. As an unrepentant would-be escaper, he was transferred to Colditz, near Dresden – a prison camp set up by the Germans as an “escape-proof” fortress which however proved to be a “university” for the most determined escapers. Purdon was confined there until the US army liberated it in April 1945.

Purdon was born in Queenstown (now Cobh) in County Cork, Ireland, the son of William, an army doctor who also became a decorated major general, and his wife, Dorothy (nee Coates). After Campbell college in Belfast he entered the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst and was commissioned into the Royal Ulster Rifles in 1939.

Keen for action, he volunteered for the commandos when they were founded in 1940. Once liberated from Colditz, he rejoined the Royal Ulster Rifles and was posted to Palestine when the regiment was attached to the 6th Airborne Division for the fraught peacekeeping duties that preceded the contested foundation of the state of Israel in 1948.

Later assignments included a course at staff college and an attachment as a major to the staff of Far East land forces in Singapore. He took command of his regiment as a lieutenant colonel in 1964 and as such was involved in the Indonesian–Malaysian confrontation that stemmed from Indonesia’s opposition to the creation of Malaysia.

Purdon was then detached to Oman for two years to take charge of the sultan’s armed forces as a brigadier, a posting that led to him being appointed CBE. He later became general officer commanding the North-West district as a major general. His last army appointment was as general officer commanding the Near East land forces based in Cyprus, retiring in 1976.

He was appointed deputy commissioner of the Hong Kong police from 1978 to 1981, for which he received the Colonial Police Medal, and later took senior honorary posts in the Order of St John and the Royal Humane Society.

He published a memoir in 1993, List the Bugle: Reminiscences of an Irish Soldier.

His first wife, Particia Petrie, whom he married in 1945, died in 2008, after which he wed Jean Otway. Jean survives him, as do a son and a daughter from his first marriage. Another son predeceased him.

• Corran William Brooke Purdon, soldier, born 4 May 1921; died 27 June 2018