Dieppe Raid
Operation Jubilee or the Dieppe Raid was a disastrous Allied amphibious attack on the German-occupied port of Dieppe in northern France, during the Second World War. Over 6,050 infantry, predominantly Canadian, supported by a regiment of tanks, were put ashore from a naval force operating under the protection of Royal Air Force fighters.
The port was to be captured and held for a short period, to test the feasibility of a landing and to gather intelligence. German coastal defences, port structures and important buildings were to be demolished. The raid was intended to boost Allied morale, to demonstrate the commitment of the United Kingdom to re-open the Western Front, and to support the Soviet Union, which was fighting on the Eastern Front.
The Luftwaffe made a maximum effort against the landing as the RAF had expected, and the RAF lost 106 aircraft against 48 German losses. The Royal Navy lost 33 landing craft and a destroyer. Aerial and naval support was insufficient to enable the ground forces to achieve their objectives. The tanks were trapped on the beach and the infantry was largely prevented from entering the town by obstacles and German fire.
After less than six hours, mounting casualties forced a retreat. Within ten hours, 3,623 of the 6,086 men who landed had been killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. 5,000 were Canadians, who suffered a 68% casualty rate, with 3,367 killed, wounded or taken prisoner. The operation was a fiasco in which only one landing force temporarily achieved its objective, and a small amount of military intelligence was gathered.
Both sides learnt important lessons regarding coastal assaults. The Allies learnt lessons that influenced the success of the Normandy landings. Artificial harbours were declared crucial, tanks were adapted specifically for beaches, a new integrated tactical air force strengthened ground support, and capturing a major port at the outset was no longer seen as a priority. Churchill and Mountbatten both stated that these lessons had outweighed the cost. The Germans also believed that Dieppe was a learning experience and made a considerable effort to improve the way they defended the occupied coastlines of Europe.
Background
Dunkirk to Dieppe
In the aftermath of the Dunkirk evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force in May 1940, the British started on the development of a substantial raiding force under the umbrella of Combined Operations Headquarters. This was accompanied by the development of techniques and equipment for amphibious warfare. In late 1941, a scheme was put forward for the landing of 12 divisions around Le Havre, assuming a withdrawal of German troops to counter Soviet success in the east. From this came Operation Rutter to test the feasibility of capturing a port by an opposed landing, the investigation of the problems of operating the invasion fleet and testing equipment and techniques of the assault.After its victory in the Battle of Britain in 1940 and the Luftwaffe having switched to night bombing in the autumn of 1940, the day fighters of Royal Air Force Fighter Command were "a force without an immediate mission". Without anything else to do, the day fighters of RAF Fighter Command were in the spring of 1941 deployed on a series of search-and-destroy missions of flying over France to engage the Luftwaffe in combat. In the second half of 1941, the aerial offensive over France was greatly stepped up, leading to the loss of 411 British and Canadian aircraft. In the spring of 1942, the Luftwaffe deployed the new Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter to its airfields in France.
The Fw 190 was superior to the Supermarine Spitfire Mk V and Hawker Hurricane Mk IIs used by the British and Canadian pilots and losses over France increased. The RAF was convinced it was winning the air war, believing that the loss of 259 Spitfires over France in the first six months of 1942 were justified by the reported destruction of 197 German aircraft in the same period. A major problem for the RAF was that the Luftwaffe German fighter pilots declined to engage in combat over the French coast and instead operated inland, forcing the British Spitfires to fly deeper into France, using up their fuel, placing them at a disadvantage when the Luftwaffe engaged, and, critically, if RAF pilots had to bail out they would be in enemy occupied territory, i.e. RAF Fighter command was now operating with all the disadvantages the Luftwaffe had to contend with in the Battle of Britain. Thanks to intelligence provided by Ultra, the British knew that if any Allied force attempted to seize a port in France, the Germans would assume it to be the beginning of an invasion and thus the Luftwaffe was to mount a maximum effort. The leaders of Fighter Command lobbied hard in early 1942, for a raid to seize a French port to provoke the Luftwaffe into action with the RAF at an advantage.
Dieppe
Dieppe, a coastal town in the Seine-Inférieure department of France, is built along a long cliff that overlooks the English Channel. The river Scie is on the western end of the town and the Arques flows through the town and into a medium-sized harbour. In 1942, the Germans had demolished some seafront buildings to aid in coastal defence and had set up two large artillery batteries at Berneval-le-Grand and Varengeville-sur-Mer. One important consideration for the planners was that Dieppe was within range of the RAF's fighter aircraft.There was also intense pressure from the Soviet government to open a second front in Western Europe. By early 1942, the Wehrmacht's Operation Barbarossa had clearly failed to destroy the Soviet Union. However, the Germans in a much less ambitious summer offensive launched in June, were deep into southern Soviet territory, pushing toward Stalingrad. Joseph Stalin himself repeatedly demanded that the Allies create a second front in France to force the Germans to move at least 40 divisions away from the Eastern Front to remove some of the pressure put on the Red Army in the Soviet Union.
The proposed Allied invasion of continental Europe in 1943, Operation Roundup, was considered impractical by military planners, and the alternative of landing in 1942, Operation Sledgehammer, even more difficult. The British had been engaged with the Italians and the Germans in the Western Desert campaign since June 1940. At the Second Washington Conference in June 1942, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill decided to postpone the cross-English Channel invasion and schedule Operation Torch, the Anglo-American invasion of French North Africa, for later that year. In the interim, a large-scale Canadian-led raid on the French coast was intended to take some of the pressure off the Soviet Union.
The objective of the raid was discussed by Winston Churchill in his war memoirs:
Role of Louis Mountbatten
On the directive of Winston Churchill, Louis Mountbatten was recalled from captaincy of the aircraft carrier while it was under repair in the US in 1941 and instated as adviser on combined operations of the British Army, later to be promoted to the post of chief of combined operations on 4 March 1942. Churchill personally briefed Mountbatten that he wanted raids of increasing intensity, developing equipment and training with a view to the invasion of France; the chiefs of staff directive limited Mountbatten's authority to approving only small raids, through using special service troops. He held a dual role as adviser to the chiefs of staff and commodore combined operations, handling the administration of both small raids and larger operations. In 1942 Mountbatten was raised by Churchill as a full member of meetings of the chiefs of staff with acting rank of vice-admiral, air marshal and lieutenant general. In May 1942 it was agreed that Combined Operations HQ would handle detailed planning of the Dieppe raid.COHQ proposed flanking landings that would take Dieppe in a pincer movement, but Home Forces argued for a frontal attack as, within the 15-hour window of the raid, the flank attacks would not have enough time to achieve success. At meetings Mountbatten argued that it was sufficient for the raid to show that the tactics would have worked, Montgomery countered that if the raid did not take Dieppe it would be seen as a failure. An initial heavy bombardment from the air was approved then rescinded due to army opinion that wreckage would block streets for the tanks and RAF belief that most of the bombs would end up in the sea or inland. Mountbatten pressed for the firepower of a battleship for bombardment in lieu of bombing but neither this nor cruisers was permitted. Equally, Combined Operations' proposed assault force of marines and commandos was passed over in favour of untried Canadian troops.
Mountbatten was well known for his chivalry and charming abilities; however, he lacked experience in terms of actual warfare. Even before taking up this role, Mountbatten had faced a rough patch at sea captaining the British Navy's as commander of the 5th Destroyer Flotilla, where his performance was so below par that Denis Healey who was secretary of state for defence when Mountbatten was chief of the defence staff in the 1960s remarked, "but his birth saved him from the court martial any other officer would have faced".
Despite his shortcomings, Mountbatten played an important role in the planning of the whole operation. The Dieppe raid was intended as an experiment and was initially planned to take place at the end of June 1942. Preparations were in full swing with two rehearsals taking place in Bridport on 13 and 23 June; the second due to the debacle that the first rehearsal had turned into. However, bad weather delayed the operation by three weeks and two vessels that were to be used had been put out of action by bombs. This made the chiefs of staff uneasy thinking that the Germans would have found out about the attack by then as the plan was no longer a secret to the more than 10,000 Allied troops who had been informed of it. On 8 July, General Bernard Montgomery recommended calling off the attack altogether, and the idea would probably have been shelved had it not been for Mountbatten's proposal to relaunch the operation six weeks later, still aiming at Dieppe. His argument was that although the enemy must have found out that Dieppe had been the original target, "the very last thing they'd ever imagine is that we would be so stupid as to lay on the same operation again".