By Adrian Olivier
On August 19th, 1942, an Allied force of 4,963 Canadians, 1,005 British commandos and 50 U.S. Rangers mounted an amphibious assault on the small port town of Dieppe, France that ended in disaster. Codenamed Operation Jubilee, the 9-hour-long Dieppe Raid resulted in catastrophic Canadian losses. Fewer than half the Canadians who departed for Dieppe made it back to England.
The raid was conceived in the aftermath of the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940 when British and Allied forces had retreated from France. Britain and the commonwealth would stand alone against Hitler from June 1940 until June of 1941 as they fought over control of the deserts of Libya and Egypt. With their Western Front stabilized, the Germans looked east. In the summer of 1941, the Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, the largest military operation ever launched. The Germans threw over 3 million men against the Soviets and by December 1941 had blitzed their way within sight of Moscow.
These swift German advances on the Eastern Front had raised the spectre of a collapse of the Soviet Union and Britain, with pressure from Stalin and the Americans to relieve the onslaught and tie down German troops in the west, conceived of a raid to seize territory from the Germans and re-open the Western Front. This raid would be called Operation Jubilee and would test the Allies’ ability to conduct large-scale amphibious landings. It would also provide a morale boost for the Allies and provide valuable experience for future amphibious landings.
Operation Jubilee was the successor to the cancelled Operation Rutter. Both plans aimed to seize and hold Dieppe for a short time, destroy German defences, gather intelligence, and then evacuate on the outgoing tide. After weeks of training and preparation, Operation Rutter, scheduled for 4 to 8 July was cancelled after the Canadian troop ships were discovered by German bombers. This discovery, along with bad weather meant the operation – which relied heavily on the element of surprise – was cancelled. However, the British Combined Operations Headquarters still wished to proceed with the raid. Consequently, a “new” plan, Operation Jubilee, was drawn up which was practically unchanged from Operation Rutter and the target remained Dieppe. The Canadians had been told their target was Dieppe and it’s unclear why, with the risk of German spies knowing the target – or at least knowing an amphibious landing was imminent – the target was not changed.
British Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, in charge of Combined Operations Headquarters, believed that a bold strike on Dieppe would support the Soviet Union and provide the restless Canadian troops with a much-needed taste of action. Canadian troops in Britain, an all-volunteer force by 1942 numbering over 200,000 were organized into three infantry and two armoured divisions, as well as several armoured brigades and artillery formations. Three years of training and performing garrison duties while preparing for a German invasion of Britain that would never happen was having a deleterious effect on morale. When Canadian Lieutenant-General Harry Crerar heard rumours of a major raid, he demanded that the British Chiefs of Staff select Canadians for the task.
It was decided that Canadian troops, already located in the southeast since the beginning of the war, would be used. The plan was a simple one: Allied forces would seize and hold the town until sunset, destroy the defences, take German prisoners and leave on the evening tide. The raid would demonstrate that the Western Allies could contribute to the war effort, allow Canadian troops to gain battlefield experience and test the coordination between the army, navy and air force. It was also hoped that the Luftwaffe could be persuaded into dogfights with the RAF, inflicting a defeat on the Germans. Suffice to say, the plan did not go accordingly.
At the time of the assault, Dieppe had been in German hands a little over two years and the defenders, the Germans 302nd Infantry Division, had not been idle. The coastline was hardened with defences, including concrete walls, barbed wire and booby traps. The shoreline of Dieppe itself is relatively flat, but it is bordered by high cliffs to the east and west. These cliffs provided the Germans with excellent vantage points for their defences. Heavy guns and machine guns were positioned in concrete bunkers on the cliffs, allowing the German forces to command a clear line of fire over the beaches and the port.
Concrete pillboxes covered the shoreline and the perimeter of the port which was surrounded by roadblocks. In Dieppe itself were three field batteries of 4in and 5.9in guns. Eight 75mm guns were placed overlooking the town along with machine guns and light antiaircraft weapons. A naval unit equipped with eight 37mm guns and two heavy Antiaircraft batteries also provided defensive firepower. On the extreme flanks, two batteries of large coastal guns covered the sea approaches with their ten 150mm guns.
The German defence of the port was under the command of Oberstleutnant (Lt Col) Hermann Bartelt's 571st Infantry Regiment, headquartered in the Château overlooking the main beach in Dieppe. His forces of two battalions were depleted, numbering only 1,500 men to cover Varengeville-sur-Mer in the west to Berneval-le-Grand in the east. Just 50 men guarded the beach at Puys just east of Dieppe and 150 men at Dieppe. This was a very thin defence, but there were reserve battalions and the 10th Panzer Division within 50 miles.
The bulk of the Allied assault force came from the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division, led by Major-General J.H. Roberts. Roberts is said to have told his troops "Don't worry men, it'll be a piece of cake," a comment that would haunt him for years afterwards. The raid began in the early morning hours with a naval task force of 237 ships and landing craft. The plan involved multiple simultaneous attacks at 4 different points along the Dieppe coastline.
The Canadians assaulted Dieppe at the four designated sections. At Blue Beach, below the village of Puys (1.6 km east of Dieppe), troops of The Royal Regiment of Canada and The Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) of Canada arrived late in their attempt to take out enemy artillery and machine guns. The German defenders kept the Canadians pinned down with heavy fire until the raid was over.
On the other side of the town at Green Beach, by the village of Pourville (4 km west of Dieppe), the South Saskatchewan Regiment arrived on time and in the dark, but the part of the unit tasked with reaching a radar station and anti-aircraft guns to the east of Pourville landed on the wrong side of the River Scie, which ran through the village. These troops could only cross the river over Pourville’s single bridge, which was ferociously defended by the Germans. Both the South Saskatchewans and Cameron Highlanders of Canada were pushed back.
At Red and White Beaches directly in front of the main port, the Essex Scottish and Royal Hamilton Light Infantry (RHLI) regiments landed without their armoured support, the 14th Canadian Army Tank Regiment (the Calgary Tanks), which was late. The enemy, from higher ground and in the town's beachfront casino, hit these units hard. Some infantry managed to get off the beach and enter Dieppe, but they failed to achieve their objectives there as well.
During the raid, communication was poor and unreliable, with a miscommunication between the troops on shore and the British Royal Marines leading to further casualties. On a ship offshore, Maj.-Gen. Roberts, falsely believing that enough troops had entered Dieppe, sent in the Fusiliers Mont-Royal, who landed ashore only to join the growing casualty list.
With both attempts to flank the enemy and seize the cliffs overlooking Dieppe Beach having failed, the main assault on the beach was doomed. The Calgary Tanks were 10 minutes late which left hundreds of men vulnerable. Out of the 58 tanks that set out, only 29 were able to offload at the shore, most of which got stuck on the shingle beach’s large pebbles almost immediately. Some 15 tanks made it into the town, but their guns couldn’t destroy the concrete barriers placed in their path. The tanks that survived covered the retreat, but all the tank crews were either killed or captured. By mid-day, the raid was over, resulting in 907 Canadian soldiers being killed, 2,460 wounded, and 1,946 taken prisoner – more prisoners than Canada would lose in the 11 months of fighting during the Northwest Europe campaign of 1944-1945.
Operation Jubilee was a disaster in both planning and execution. The Allies had underestimated the German defences that awaited them, lacked intelligence and saw a failure of communication. The terrain and fortifications of concrete bunkers and heavy gun positions could not be overcome. Despite the losses, the Allies learned valuable lessons. Tanks and surprise were not enough to attack a coastal port. Planning and better intelligence, along with proper communication were vital in pulling off a successful amphibious operation. There was also the realization that specialized landing craft and tanks would be needed. These lessons would contribute to the success of later and larger amphibious landings that successfully established beachheads and helped lead to the liberation of Nazi-occupied Europe.
