Short URL for this page:
bit.ly/SAUCOC14

[Much of my site will be useless to you if you've got the images turned off!]
mail:
Bill Thayer 		[Link to a series of help pages]
Help 		[Link to the next level up]
Up 		[Link to my homepage]
Home
previous:
[Link to previous section]
Chapter 13 		This webpage reproduces a chapter of

Combined Operations
by Hilary St. George Saunders

published by The Macmillan Company
New York,
1943

The text is in the public domain.

This page has been carefully proofread
and I believe it to be free of errors.
If you find a mistake though,
please let me know!

next:
[Link to next section]
Chapter 15

 p110  14. Reconnaissance in Force: Dieppe

The raid on Bruneval had been small, short and sharp; its success had been complete. The raid on St. Nazaire had been larger, longer and sharper; its success, measured in terms of the Battle of the Atlantic, also complete. It was time to plan the next stage.

In the spring of 1942, the demands of other and distant theatres of war still prevented the concentration in England of a United Nations force large enough and sufficiently well trained and equipped to launch a full-scale invasion of German-occupied Europe. Moreover, to transport thither a force of this size, and to keep it supplied, would require a quantity of shipping in excess of what it was then possible to collect if the widespread commitments of the United Nations throughout five continents were to be adequately met. What could be done was to raid Europe in force. To mount a raid on a much larger scale than that which had been carried out on St. Nazaire would not only harass the enemy, which is, it cannot be too often repeated, the primary object of raiding; it would also be a means of providing the Allied General Staff with very important and, indeed, essential information concerning his defences in the West. His strength must be tested, his methods examined at the point of the bayonet and the Bren gun, if the military problem which the forces of the United Nations will have to meet, should it be decided to launch an army of invasion across the narrow seas, is to be solved.

The task was hazardous, but then so is any operation of war, and the end was imperative. Plans, therefore, for a large-scale raid against a point on the French coast, were under discussion early in April, less than three weeks after the raid on St. Nazaire. It was decided that Dieppe was a suitable objective for an operation of the size contemplated.a It was chosen from a number of French ports, all equally well defended, as could be seen from the study of air photographs. The Dieppe defences could therefore be taken as a fair sample of what the attackers might have to meet at whatever point an assault was launched along the coast of  p111 Northern France. Among other reasons for this choice, many of which must remain secret for the present, were several which should be obvious. Dieppe possesses a harbour used by the enemy as a port of call for his coastwise convoys, on which he is compelled to rely to an ever-increasing extent for supplying his far‑flung garrisons. To render the port unusable would be to hamper the movements of such convoys. There are also in Dieppe marshalling yards, gas works, a power station, petrol dumps and a pharmaceutical factory, all of which it was desirable to destroy.

Moreover, an attack by surface forces in broad daylight against territory regarded by the enemy as his own would, it was thought, provoke the Luftwaffe into giving battle on a really extensive scale, whereas mere air action by itself had repeatedly failed to produce such a battle during the previous months. This was eminently desirable at a time when so much of the German Air Force was concentrated against our Russian allies. Heavy losses over France might well compel Göring to switch bombers and fighters from the East to the West.

Natural Obstacles and Coastal Defences

The planners were at once confronted with two difficulties, the first provided by Nature, the second by man. Not inaptly has that stretch of France's seaboard running roughly from Cape Gris Nez in the north to the mouth of the River Saane, a few miles south-west of Dieppe, been called "The Iron Coast." Nearly all of it is made up of high cliffs, mostly unscalable, broken here and there by narrow clefts or by the mouths of rivers. The chief of these is the Arques, on which the town and harbour of Dieppe are built. Here the gap is •something above a mile in width. At the foot of the cliffs lie stony and inhospitable beaches, the haunt of picnic parties and bathers in peacetime during the summer months. To land at low water on these beaches is very difficult and dangerous because of the rocks in the sea's bed and the angle of the shore itself, which make the task of beaching a landing craft and taking it away a matter of the greatest skill and judgment. The clefts behind the beaches are not numerous and those which exist are, for the most part, narrow and very easily defended. Men moving up them to the attack are at the mercy of defenders in position at their top, who can destroy the attackers with the greatest ease as they clamber laboriously upwards.

To the natural obstacles of such a coast, the Germans have added  p112 defences disposed so as to cover, with a formidable fire of all arms from 5.9 coast-defence guns to rifles, every likely landing-place, especially the main beach running parallel to the Dieppe promenade. Not only this, but many of the defences have been designed to prevent ships from coming close in shore and certainly from remaining there. The planners, therefore, came to the conclusion that naval support to the land forces attacking Dieppe — an indispensable adjunct of success — could only be provided if two heavy coast‑defence batteries, one at Berneval on the east and the other at Varengeville-sur‑Mer on the west of Dieppe, were first subdued. Their fire would do too much damage to ships to make a daylight attack a feasible proposition. Nelson's dictum that "three guns in a well-constructed battery, properly placed, would beat off or destroy any ship in the world" was in their minds when they determined that the destruction of these batteries with a sine quâ non. The planners worked steadily on, and in due course the Outline Plan for the assault was submitted to the Chiefs of Staff Committee and approved by them.

The Canadians, supplemented by Commandos, were chosen for the main part of this hazardous and honourable task. Many of them had been under arms for three years. They had come to Europe in the expectation of fighting in France with the B. E. F. But their time had been spent practising the evolutions of modern war in the quiet fields of southern England where, soon after they arrived, they had expected to fight a savage battle of defence. Each and all of them were filled with an intense and forcibly-expressed desire to come face to face with the enemy. Now at last for some of them it was to be gratified. The Royal Regiment of Canada, the Essex Scottish Regiment, the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry, the South Saskatchewan Regiment, the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders of Canada, the Fusiliers Mont-Royal, and, since the use of tanks was part of the plan, the 14th Canadian Army Tank Battalion (Calgary Regiment) were chosen from the First Canadian Army, from an Army Tank Brigade, to form by far the larger part of the force to attack Dieppe. To these were added detachments from many other units and corps.

Blueprint for a Combined Operation

Once detailed, the troops immediately began an intensive course of training which, though they did not know it at the time, was in fact a prolonged rehearsal or rather series of rehearsals for the operation. While they were thus engaged, the transformation of the Outline Plan into  p113 the Detailed Plan was proceeding under the close direction of the three Force Commanders. These were: for the Navy, Captain J. Hughes-Hallett, who was the chief naval planner at Combined Operations Headquarters; for the Army, Major-General J. H. Roberts, M. C., commanding a division of the First Canadian Army; and for the Air, Air Vice-Marshal (now Air Marshal) T. Leigh Mallory, C. B., D. S. O., then commanding No. 11 Group, Fighter Command, and now Commander-in‑Chief, Fighter Command.

The plans were necessarily elaborate. In making them, the Force Commanders and their staffs had the help of intelligence collected by Combined Operations Headquarters. The information supplied was as full and complete as possible. Reports on the nature and size of the landing places were provided, illustrated by photographs and giving details concerning such vital matters as, for example, the tides and tidal streams flowing round the beaches. Maps and plans of the town and its neighbourhood, with the enemy's defences marked upon them, were got ready. Throughout the period of planning, information of all kinds was got together, sifted and passed on, almost daily. Much of it was derived from air photographs, some of them taken from a very low level, 36 hours before the raid. Special models of the coastline were constructed. Nothing which could contribute to the instruction of the attacking troops, from the whereabouts and composition of the heavy coast-defence batteries to the size of the shingle on the beaches, was omitted. Detailed orders covering every phase of the operation were drawn up by the Force Commanders and issued. These took as full account as possible of all the factors calculated and set down by the planners. The most important point was to ensure the correct and accurate timing of each successive phase of the operation. Synchronisation was the keynote. The timings were carefully worked out and had to be adhered to very closely.

While the troops, still in complete ignorance of the real object of their exercises, were engaged in practi­cing climbing up steep places, street fighting, negotiating wire, attacking pillboxes, advancing with tanks, handling weapons of all kinds — they carried out two full-dress rehearsals — and while the staffs were perfecting the plans and drafting the orders for their execution, large quantities of stores, ranging from ammunition for the 6‑pounder guns in the tanks to the self-heated containers of food to be carried in the landing craft, were being collected in secret.

The assault by the Army was to be made by landing at eight places  p114 MAP  p115  on the coast at or near Dieppe. There were to be two outer flank attacks, one at Berneval and Belleville-sur‑Mer to the east of the port and the other at Varengeville and a point near the mouth of the River Saane, to the west. These attacks were to be delivered by No. 3 and No. 4 Commandos respectively with the object of destroying the two coast-defence batteries of 5.9 guns, whose fire, as has already been explained, would make it impossible for ships to remain within their range during daylight. In addition to the two outer flank attacks, there were to be two inner attacks delivered at Puits to the east and Pourville to the west of Dieppe. Both these places are small villages, noted in peacetime for their good bathing facilities.

The Royal Regiment of Canada was to land at Puits, seize another heavy coast-defence battery, situated some distance inland, and capture the headland over­looking Dieppe to the east. The South Saskatchewan Regiment was to capture Pourville and a similar headland over­looking Dieppe on the west, destroying on their way a radio-location station and a battery of light anti-aircraft guns. When this regiment had seized the village of Pourville, the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders of Canada were to pass through them, move down the valley of the Scie and capture the airfield of St. Aubin. The main assault was to be delivered on the town of Dieppe itself, the Essex Scottish Regiment being detailed to land on the eastern half of the long beach which fronts the Esplanade and the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry on the western half.

The landings were to be preceded by a short and intense naval bombardment followed by a concentrated attack of cannon-firing Spitfires and Hurricanes on the main defences behind the beach at Dieppe, delivered at the moment when the landing craft were touching down. A curtain of smoke was to be laid across the eastern headland from which it was expected that the heaviest fire would come. As soon as the two regiments had landed and cleared the beach, the tanks were to be put ashore from the tank landing craft, enter the town and support the infantry in seizing and holding it while the various objectives already mentioned were being blown up. Out at sea, ready in their landing craft, the Fusiliers Mont-Royal were to wait as a flooding reserve. Behind them was the Royal Marine Commando, carried in small fast motor boats, manned by the Fighting French.

Such was the plan as finally adopted, and on the night of the 18th-19th August, 1942, the first moment at which the weather was reasonably favourable, it was put into execution.

 p116  Throughout the warm summer day of Tuesday the 18th, stores were being loaded, troops going on board. The tanks were already in their landing craft. The force which put to sea as dusk fell that evening was of the most varied kind. Infantry landing ships were filled with armed men and the drab panoply of modern war: at their davits swung the landing craft which would put these men and weapons ashore. More landing craft of other shapes and sizes were spread over the sea nearby, moving forward in ordered lines, and in the rear steamed the blunt-nosed vessels carrying the tanks. All these bore troops, Canadians, Special Service troops, some Fighting French, and a detachment of tough American Rangers.

Escorting the carrying craft were motor gunboats, motor launches, destroyers, seven of the Royal Navy and one of the Polish Navy, a gunboat and a sloop. Of the destroyers, two — H. M. S. "Calpe" and H. M. S. "Fernie" — were respectively the Headquarter ship and the reserve Headquarter ship. On board the former were the Naval and Military Force Commanders and their staffs. On moving to take station as part of the escorting force, "Fernie," being a Hunt class destroyer, played her battle cry on the loud hailer, and as she steamed out of the harbour "the brave sound of the fanfare echoed across the water to the troops embarking at the jetties." By moonrise, well over 200 vessels were moving steadily through the silvered darkness towards the enemy.

Thayer's Note:

a Operation Jubilee.

[Valid HTML 4.01.]

Page updated: 8 Apr 22

Accessibility