High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Cockleshell Heroes is a 1955 Second World War film with Trevor Howard, Anthony Newley, David Lodge and José Ferrer, who also directed. It is a fictionalised version of Operation Frankton, the true story of a commando raid on shipping in Bordeaux harbour. It was the first Warwick Film to be filmed in Cinemascope. Ferrer plays newly-promoted Major Stringer of the Royal Marines, who comes up with a novel idea for a raid. By using canoes, he believes it is possible for commandos to reach an enemy-held harbour undetected and blow up ships with limpet mines. He is given command of a small group of volunteers. However, he clashes with his veteran second-in-command, cynical, by-the-book Captain Hugh Thompson (Trevor Howard).