The Raid At Dieppe

[LeEnfield]

Now I have seen many articles written about this raid where the Canadians suffered some very loses and although the raid did not achieve it's objectives, was it a total failure. From out of this failure came the successful D Day operation.
Now just what did they learn from this raid,
The need for secrecy, as many Officers had been going around London talking about this raid. So on D Day most people where not told until the day they went.
The need for harbours to unload the equipment hence the massive Mulberry Harbours.
The need to get huge amounts fuel ashore hence the undersea pipe line known as Pluto
There was a need for a whole range of of specialised tanks that became known as Hobart's funnies.
There was the DD type that swam ashore and this worked well when it was not asked to swim 12 miles to the shore like they did at Omaha beach.
There was the Flail Tank that would clear the mines and the barb wire.
There were tanks to destroy strong points by firing a huge mortar type round the size of dustbin a couple of hundred yards.
There were bridging tanks and other that carried cassions to fill in trenches or bridge flooded ditches.
There were flame thrower tanks which towed a large container of fuel behind them, the Germans would shoot the crews of these tanks if captured.
There was also the Sherman Firefly with a 17 pounder gun that could deal with a Tiger Tank.
The Americans refused all offers of this type of equipment except for the DD type of tank which they then total mis used by trying to get it to swim some 12 miles ashore in a heavy swell, I often wonder just how they would have got on if these had got ashore at Omaha beach.
So although the Canadian Raid was failure as such it did lead to a successfully D Day and saved thousands of lives

 

[Redleg]

Moved to the appropriate forum, and off-topic posts deleted.
No personal attacks will be tolerated!

Now let's continue on-topic.

Thanks

 

[Strongbow]

Now I have seen many articles written about this raid where the Canadians suffered some very loses and although the raid did not achieve it's objectives, was it a total failure. From out of this failure came the successful D Day operation.
Now just what did they learn from this raid,
The need for secrecy, as many Officers had been going around London talking about this raid. So on D Day most people where not told until the day they went.
The need for harbours to unload the equipment hence the massive Mulberry Harbours.
The need to get huge amounts fuel ashore hence the undersea pipe line known as Pluto
There was a need for a whole range of of specialised tanks that became known as Hobart's funnies.
There was the DD type that swam ashore and this worked well when it was not asked to swim 12 miles to the shore like they did at Omaha beach.
There was the Flail Tank that would clear the mines and the barb wire.
There were tanks to destroy strong points by firing a huge mortar type round the size of dustbin a couple of hundred yards.
There were bridging tanks and other that carried cassions to fill in trenches or bridge flooded ditches.
There were flame thrower tanks which towed a large container of fuel behind them, the Germans would shoot the crews of these tanks if captured.
There was also the Sherman Firefly with a 17 pounder gun that could deal with a Tiger Tank.
The Americans refused all offers of this type of equipment except for the DD type of tank which they then total mis used by trying to get it to swim some 12 miles ashore in a heavy swell, I often wonder just how they would have got on if these had got ashore at Omaha beach.
So although the Canadian Raid was failure as such it did lead to a successfully D Day and saved thousands of lives

Excellent post LeEnfield. The Dieppe experience certainly helped with the planning for Normandy.

Interesting that in some sources Montgomery has been blamed for the Dieppe debacle. (Montgomery of Alamein by Alun Chalfont).

 

[papasha408]

Excellent post LeEnfield. The Dieppe experience certainly helped with the planning for Normandy.

Interesting that in some sources Montgomery has been blamed for the Dieppe debacle. (Montgomery of Alamein by Alun Chalfont).

Mountbatten should have been blamed for the debacle, not Montgomery.

 

[BritinBritain]

Mountbatten should have been blamed for the debacle, not Montgomery.

But then again the Soviets were pushing for a second front, despite being told the Western Allies were not yet ready.

At a meeting with Stalin Churchill and FDR, Stalin asked Churchill if the British were afraid to fight. Churchill was far more polite then I would have been. I would have reminded Stalin that he signed the non aggression pact with Germany, stole half of Poland, congratulated Hitler when his forces reached Dunkirk, that he wanted to join the Axis, sending of supplies to Russia by sea and that he should be damn lucky that the Western Allies don't leave Hitler to finish the job.

 

[samneanderthal]

I think the Germans should have allowed the allies to take Dieppe and disembark 200,000 men and some equipment and then use them to train their green troops and encircle them and sink a lot of allied ships thanks to air superiority. The prisoners would have been a good bargaining chip.
The captured trucks, etc, would have been valuable in the USSR.

 

[BritinBritain]

I think the Germans should have allowed the allies to take Dieppe and disembark 200,000 men and some equipment and then use them to train their green troops and encircle them and sink a lot of allied ships thanks to air superiority. The prisoners would have been a good bargaining chip.
The captured trucks, etc, would have been valuable in the USSR.

I don't know what makes you so stupid, but it really works!

 

[Julie]

I think the Germans should have allowed the allies to take Dieppe and disembark 200,000 men and some equipment and then use them to train their green troops and encircle them and sink a lot of allied ships thanks to air superiority. The prisoners would have been a good bargaining chip.
The captured trucks, etc, would have been valuable in the USSR.

How dare you make such a remark. It was men who fought to rid the world of Nazi tyranny. And you will treat them as guinea pigs. Your comment is a slap in the face to all who wear or have worn a uniform. You have no honor .!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[George]

I think the Germans should have allowed the allies to take Dieppe and disembark 200,000 men and some equipment and then use them to train their green troops and encircle them and sink a lot of allied ships thanks to air superiority. The prisoners would have been a good bargaining chip.
The captured trucks, etc, would have been valuable in the USSR.

I don't know what makes you so stupid, but it really works!

How dare you make such a remark. It was men who fought to rid the world of Nazi tyranny. And you will treat them as guinea pigs. Your comment is a slap in the face to all who wear or have worn a uniform. You have no honor .!!!!!!!!!!!

Actually, looking @ it from the German point of view(what he's doing in this "what if")...An Anzio or Gallipoli situation would have worked for the Germans vs a fully developed invasion in '44

 

[Julie]

I still think it´s a rude remark.

 

[samneanderthal]

Hi Julie,
Sorry to upset you. Dieppe was a stupidly conceived and performed operation in which many brave men died or were captured and several ships and planes lost.
It did not stand a chance in hell of succeeding and Mountbatten and Churchill should have known that very well. Britain abandoned Dunkirk, where there were a half million troops already inland and a huge navy with extremely powerful artillery to support them 30 km inland and in terrain poorly suited for German tanks, which were few and very primitive at the time.
Does it make any sense to send in a few thousand, poorly equipped men with little naval artillery support and few planes in the face of strongly fortified defenses and German air superiority?
WW II was won by airplanes, every single important battle. The allies were able to invade North Africa, Sicily, Italy, Normandy and Provence only once they had wiped out the enemy planes and could use theirs for ground support.
On the other side of the coin, Churchill lost in Norway, France, Greece, etc, because the Germans had air superiority, so he should have known better than allowing Mountbatten to sacrifice stupidly brave men and a lot of badly needed equipment.
Surprisingly Mountbatten kept rising after this debacle and would soon be supreme leader in the far east.

 

[42RM]

WW II was won by airplanes, every single important battle. The allies were able to invade North Africa, Sicily, Italy, Normandy and Provence only once they had wiped out the enemy planes and could use theirs for ground support.

That's a load of bollocks!

Infantrymen, and infantry alone, are the ones who decide whether or not the war is won.

In World War 2, Korea, Vietnam and Desert Storm, hundreds of thousands of tons of bombs were dropped on the enemy and although they helped influence the wars the bombs did not decide the wars. The job of the infantryman is one of the hardest ones. He is the prime target and he is the one who ultimately, decides who wins.

Someone is going to have to go in and make sure the enemy is gone. If the enemy is not gone then he will have to be killed or driven off.

 

[BritinBritain]

WW II was won by airplanes, every single important battle. The allies were able to invade North Africa, Sicily, Italy, Normandy and Provence only once they had wiped out the enemy planes and could use theirs for ground support..

Air power does not win battles, you still need boots on the ground to winkle out some other poor bugger with a rifle and bayonet.

You have no concept whatsoever of how battles are fought, won or lost. You have a computer game mentality, where if you lose you stop and start all over again.

 

[MontyB]

Umm oddly enough I will try and agree with Sam here a little bit, I agree that air power alone does not win battles and yes some one physically has to engage the enemy on the ground but I think since WW2 (well I guess we can go back as far as the Spanish Civil war) it has been all but impossible for a side without air superiority to win wars, the only exception to I can think of to this is the Vietnam war.

 

[42RM]

Why Dieppe?

In 1942, the Combined Operations Headquarters had good reasons for attempting a raid on Dieppe: on the eastern front a decisive battle was pitching the advancing German troops against the resistance of the Red Army and the Russian people. Stalin asked Churchill and Eisenhower to help the USSR by opening up a Western front in continental Europe, to prevent Hitler from throwing all the might of his armies against the Soviets. As a result, Great Britain planned a series of major raids against German defence installations along the Channel. Only one such operation was actually conducted: Dieppe.

The Allies' long-term goal was to get a foothold on the continent and set up a bridgehead from where ground forces could move into Europe. But before it could attempt a large-scale landing, the Combined Operations Headquarters had to test some of its assumptions in real action. Would it be possible to capture a fortified seaport large enough to be used afterwards by invading troops, and that, without destroying its infrastructures? Amphibious landing techniques had been successfully tested in previous operations but how would the new barges designed to carry tanks and heavy artillery behave? There was a need to test the complex combination of land, naval and air manoeuvres required by a large-scale invasion in real action conditions, in order to check the efficiency of new equipment, communication lines and chains of command. The August 19th, 1942, raid was to answer all those questions.

Dieppe was a pathetic failure. Sixty years later, it seems obvious that is was a bizarre operation with no chance of success whatsoever and likely to result in a huge number of casualties. In August 1942, British and Allied officers did not have yet the knowledge and combat experience to make a proper assessment of the risks of such an operation. This catastrophe was useful precisely in providing that knowledge which was later to make victory possible.

The Dieppe fiasco demonstrated that it was imperative to improve communications at all levels: on the battlefield, between the HQs of each unit, between air, naval and ground forces. The idea of capturing a well-defended seaport to use as a bridgehead was dropped after August 19th, 1942. In addition, the raid on Dieppe showed how important it was to use prior air bombings to destroy enemy defences as much as possible, to support assault troops with artillery fire from ships and landing crafts, to improve techniques and equipment to remove obstacles to men and tanks.

The true meaning of the sacrifices made at Dieppe was made obvious two years after this ill-fated date, when on D-Day the Allies gained a foothold in Europe to free the continent from Nazi aggression.

 

[BritinBritain]

Umm oddly enough I will try and agree with Sam here a little bit, I agree that air power alone does not win battles and yes some one physically has to engage the enemy on the ground but I think since WW2 (well I guess we can go back as far as the Spanish Civil war) it has been all but impossible for a side without air superiority to win wars, the only exception to I can think of to this is the Vietnam war.

That doesn't mean a war can be won using air power alone.

 

[42RM]

Air superiority gives a commander a tremendous if not decisive advantage allowing normally venerable strike aircraft and helicopter gunships to attack with little risk, recon assets to rove the battlefield proving up to date information, and interdiction to take place with ease. The effect of this can be clearly illustrated in the Gulf War 1991 and the Iraqi war of 2003, yet despite these successes no war has ever been won by air power alone, ground forces are always needed to take and hold ground.

 

[MontyB]

I agree but air superiority has more or less become a prerequisite for successful ground operations when dealing with conventional warfare.

I agree completely that having command of the air does not mean you have won a war and obviously if you do not have the capacity take and hold ground you wont win but lets be honest here there is a reason why most wars since WW2 have been started by airstrikes.

 

[MontyB]

Air superiority gives a commander a tremendous if not decisive advantage allowing normally venerable strike aircraft and helicopter gunships to attack with little risk, recon assets to rove the battlefield proving up to date information, and interdiction to take place with ease. The effect of this can be clearly illustrated in the Gulf War 1991 and the Iraqi war of 2003, yet despite these successes no war has ever been won by air power alone, ground forces are always needed to take and hold ground.

This is probably a better way of saying what I intended to say.

 

[samneanderthal]

Hi 42RM
if infantrymen alone win wars, why did Britain have to abandon Norway after destroying most of the German navy? why did a half million allied troops with naval artillery to back them up and supply them not hold a piece of land between Pas de Calais and Dunkirk that was not well suited for the few German tin tanks? why did a few paratroopers defeat a large allied army in Crete with naval artillery to support them? why did 130,000 infantrymen surrender to a much smaller Jap force in Singapore? was it not because the enemy plane sank the ships, blew up the fortified defenses, etc,?
Was it not the planes that allowed the battleships to shell Normandy (Texas blasted a Panzer division with its 14" cannon) and who destroyed many tanks and all the trains, trucks, etc, carrying reinforcements and supplies to the coast?
The combined French, British, Canadian, Polish, Belgian, etc, armies in France were formidable and their tanks superior, yet the planes blasted a path for Guderian.

I know that the allied troops did not stand a chance in Dieppe in the face or air superiority and fortified positions, and intact lines to move reinforcements and supplies, because the allied ships supporting and supplying them would have been promptly sunk and the Germans could have rushed a lot of troops, etc, to the area.

Isn't stopping the game and starting all over again what Churchill had to do in Dieppe, Norway, Greece, Asia, etc, and win only because when he restarted the game he had a lot of help?