Dieppe raid

Dieppe raid, undertaken, predominently by Canadian troops, primarily to test the defences of this German-occupied French port. Launched on 19 August 1942, it was the biggest such operation of the war.

Originally codenamed RUTTER, the raid was planned by a British organization, Combined Operations Headquarters, and by GHQ Home Forces which delegated its authority to Lt-General Montgomery, then C-in-C South-Eastern Command. Under Montgomery's chairmanship the raid became a frontal assault without a heavy preliminary air bombardment and the Command's 2nd Canadian Division under Maj-General J. H. Roberts was nominated to undertake it after Canadian pressure to allow its troops to see action. Bad weather then caused its cancellation on 7 July 1942. Montgomery recommended this should be ‘for all time’, and shortly afterwards he left to command the Eighth Army in the Western Desert campaigns. However, the Chief of Combined Operations, Vice-Admiral Mountbatten, revived it under a new codename, JUBILEE, an unprecedented decision, raising security risks.

JUBILEE was mounted from five different English ports between Southampton and Newhaven with a force of 4,963 Canadians, 1,075 British personnel, and 50 US Rangers. The naval force, organized into 13 groups, totalled 237 warships and landing craft, including 8 destroyers some of which gave fire support to the landings, the employment of battleships in the confines of the English Channel having been ruled out. Air support was also inadequate, the air ministry having opposed the diversion of heavy bombers from the strategic air offensive against Germany. However, 66 of the participating 74 squadrons from 9 Allied nations, commanded by Air Vice-Marshal Leigh-Mallory, were fighter formations in the hope, fulfilled, that the Luftwaffe would be brought to battle.

Intensive photographic reconnaissance had revealed most of the defences—though not the gun positions in the headland cliffs that were to cause such slaughter—but intelligence was lacking on other essentials. Little was known about the strength of the positions or the whereabouts of German command posts; the beach gradients had to be calculated from a holiday snapshot; and the German order of battle was incorrectly assessed.

At dawn flank attacks by commandos and Canadian troops were launched along a ten-mile front. These were, from west to east: on the coastal battery near Varengeville (No. 4 Commando); on Pourville (South Saskatchewan Regiment and later Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders of Canada); on Puys (Royal Regiment of Canada); and on the coastal battery near Berneval (No. 3 Commando). The local garrison apparently had no foreknowledge of the raid but the defenders at Puys and Berneval were soon alerted when at 0348 a small German convoy exchanged fire with part of the landing force. (The Admiralty had twice warned the naval force commander that the convoy was in the area, signals which he apparently never received.) As a result the vital element of surprise, upon which the planners had gambled, was lost. Only a handful of men from No. 3 Commando landed, but they made the battery temporarily inoperable by sniping at its crew. At Puys the Canadians' difficulties were compounded by being landed late. They were unable to move off the beaches and suffered heavy casualties. However, No. 4 Commando landed without being fired on and stormed the Varengeville battery, the only unit to capture all its objectives. At Pourville, too, the South Saskatchewan Regiment beached without coming under fire. But some were landed in the wrong place, fatally delaying the vital seizure of high ground to the east, though a few did achieve their objectives. The Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders of Canada were landed on the same beach 30 minutes later as planned and some penetrated further inland than any other troops that day, but German reinforcements soon forced them back.

Half an hour after these flank attacks had been launched, at 0520, the main frontal assault was mounted by the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry, the Essex Scottish Regiment, and tanks of the 14th Army Tank Regiment under the cover of smoke screens laid by aircraft. The infantry landed on time, but the lightness of the support fire allowed the German defenders to recover quickly and a fatal delay in landing the supporting tanks destroyed the impetus of the troops and few managed to reach the town. Only 15 of the 27 tanks which landed managed to cross the sea wall and these were soon halted by roadblocks.

Worse was to come as inaccurate information led Roberts to reinforce disaster by ordering two of his floating reserve units ashore. Les Fusiliers Mont-Royal, landed under the port's cliffs, were soon pinned down; and the Royal Marine ‘A’ Commando was only saved from total disaster by its commanding officer who turned back some of its landing craft before being mortally wounded.

Withdrawal from the beaches began under heavy fire at 1100 and was completed by 1400. Of the 4,963 Canadians who had taken part, 3,367 were killed, wounded, or taken prisoner, though 4,056 eventually survived. British casualties amounted to 275. The Royal Navy lost one destroyer and 33 landing craft, and suffered 550 casualties. The air battle was equally disastrous, the RAF losing 106 aircraft, the Luftwaffe only 48 of the 945 committed. German ground casualties were just 591.

The fiasco of Dieppe was created by a complex web of political and military pressures on Churchill and the British Chiefs of Staff at a critical juncture of the war. Domestic, and Soviet, demands for a Second Front to relieve German pressure on the USSR; inter-service disputes for the allocation of scarce resources; US expectations, aroused by British promises of action; Churchill's insistence on offensive measures, and his elevation of the inexperienced, malleable—and ambitious—Mountbatten to ensure some; all these, and more, contributed to an uncontrollable impetus to launch an operation that, with hindsight, was never viable.

The Chiefs of Staff may well have acquiesced in JUBILEE because it was a lesser evil than some other plan Churchill might have foisted on them; and the fact that no written record survives of their having approved it has led to speculation, almost certainly unfounded, that Mountbatten proceeded without their authorization. However, he certainly kept its remounting under a cloak of excessive secrecy, denying his own second-in-command, the three service intelligence chiefs, and the Inter-Services Security Board any knowledge of it.

Lessons were learned, in particular the need for heavy bombardment as the preliminary to any major landing. But JUBILEE is not now seen by all historians as being an essential prerequisite to any full-scale invasion of France. Some now regard it as an unjustified gamble which, without adequate air or sea support, had no chance of success. See also amphibious warfare.

Bibliography

Villa, B. , Unauthorized Action: Mountbatten and the Dieppe Raid (Oxford, 1990).