Interesting how the Germans commented on captured vehicles that they thought they
were old designs which were expendable and not the Brits latest and best

Not a tank I know much about.

Sounds like the Brits managed a super lemon. Just like their SA-85/ L85.

They should buy American stuff when it comes to mil stuff.

Wiki:Yikes.

I'm far, far too young to have fought and none of my relatives were there,  but my asshole puckers when I see the name Dieppe.

Attached File
Attached File
Attached File

Mountbatten's clusterfuck, wasn't it?

Not really. No one knew the importance of taking some low altitude oblique photos of the landing beaches to check the height of the sea wall. It had a higher vertical face than the Churchill could climb, and the Churchill could climb very high ones due to that WWI style high tread height.
The other thing was the loss of air superiority due to the FW190A being superior to both the Spitfire V and Typhoon I

Churchill had a habit of forcing these operations to happen when they shouldn't. I read he managed a lot of battle plans early in the war, most of them ended in failure.

I always thought: "wheels are too small, and there are too many of them".

Many believe the poor choices made in the raid were resolved for D-Day and saved significantly more lives than the raid cost.

There were a lot of factors that led the raid to a huge disaster.

TLDR: Not a fucking chance


Understanding the Dieppe Raid means discarding the bulk of WWII history that was written deceptively out of ignorance or to protect British SIGINT. The British didn't declassify info gathered from ENIGMA/Ultra crypto code breaking until the 60s, and by then the histories of WWII was written. When they were released, they weren't dumped in bulk to everyone, they released info piece by piece and usually only upon request, so unless a historian was specifically looking for info they didn't get it, and thus were working off of old info.

Dieppe is not alone in having its history grossly distorted, the entire North African theater history seriously ought to be rewritten to include Italian, German, British, and American code breaking and their major influences on the war. For instance, early in Germany's involvement, when Rommel took command in Africa, the Italians had penetrated US military attachee codes after breaking into the abandoned US embassy in Rome and pinching all their crypto. They shared this intel selectively with the Germans, who themselves later broke the code too, allowing them to read numerous US codes, to include that used by US govt's military attachee to the UK's war effort in Africa, stationed out of Egypt, done by a well connected colonel by the name of Bonner Fellers. Every day Fellers would write out an extremely complex and detailed SITREPS for Marshall, FDR and everyone else back in Washington DC desperate for news. Even though he'd been told the code was likely compromised Fellers played the good boy and followed orders, and wrote and sent his detailed reports on the compromised code. He gave up every single detailed plan about British future and current operations in detail, he gave out exact troop dispositions as well. He gave supply situations, logistic supply dumps, morale issues, etc. To put this into perspective, Rommel the Desert Fox is remembered for his uncanny ability to always hit the British in their weakest point, to race around flanks, to find and exploit gaps in a way that was pure maneuver warfare genius. But the reality is most of Rommel's successes in Africa, where he was chasing the British all the way to Egypt, was due to him having the ability to know everything important about his enemy. And then it ended, as did his unprecedented successes. Just before the 1st battle of El Alamein, British intelligence, who'd known for a while they had a mole somewhere and were compromised eventually figured out it was their American allies inadvertently telling them everything. Col Fellers was relieved, sent home, where he would later serve on MacArthur's staff in the Pacific and finish the war as a brigadier general. But Rommel lost his precision intel just in time to run headlong into the El Alamein defensive line where he got the shit handed to him in two lost two battles in a row, which began the long and costly retreat west. Next, Monty, the hero of El Alamein, just so happened to be put in position when British had broken Engima and other German codes, where some intel (British intelligence were very wary of giving out Ultra intercepts for fear their efforts would be compromised) managed to make their way to British forces fighting on the line, giving Monty his own ability to read German mail, which he would use for success in North Africa, and then later the US Army too.  

Now let's get back to Dieppe. Historically, no satisfactory explanation was ever provided as to what the objective was. Nearly all planning was classified and only explanations coming from participants, usually in the form of memoirs (like Churchill's, which was full of lies and half truths). The most commonly accepted explanation was that the raid was designed as a test run for future amphibious assaults (this is bullshit), that the raid was to help pull German defenders to the Atlantic Wall defenses, shifting dozens of divisions that could have been used on the Eastern Front (this has truth to it). But the most glaring reason for the war was never made public until fairly recently when a Canadian historian dug up a little bit of info and then pulled on the thread until he managed to come up with the true reason. And that reason was Crypto.

British forces had captured an intact Enigma machine (Three rotor) from U-110 back in '40. This pinch (the British intelligence nickname for operations that result in crypto successes) allowed British Intelligence at Bletchley Park to use early computers, along with Polish mathematic formulas, to break the early Enigma codes used predominately by the German Kriegsmarine, but also by more services. But in '41 the Germans went to a Four rotor machine, which completely changed everything and Ultra went dark again. They needed new crypto intel. This is where Dieppe comes into play, the harbor was home to numerous trawlers and other surface craft known to house their own devices onboard. Additionally, nearby to the harbor at a local hotel was the regional Kriegsmarine HQ, which had its own crypto rooms, full of intel.

The author of the James Bond series, Ian Fleming, was an up and coming Naval Intelligence Division (NID) officer who'd helped plan numerous SOE raids before in Norway and along the French shore, sometimes to gather intel, sometimes for simple smash and run raids against specific targets. The most recent success had been the St Nazaire Raid, which was Fleming's baby. With NID and SOE running high on success, and with a desperate need of Crypto intel, Fleming and others devised a NID led raid on Dieppe to pinch a Four Rotor enigma machine, any accompanying code books and manuals. As cover and to ensure success (since the primary landing would actually involve forces attacking into a defended harbor), additional non-NID/SOE forces were brought in, which included an unused and bored Canadian force (stemming from pressure from Canadians to use their forces in combat). The Dieppe Raid started small and very focused, but as more "conventional" minded individuals got involved, mission creep occurred; the best modern example would be what happened during Operation Anaconda, which started early as a small CAG led recon with an SF unit/local Afghans as the assault element, to suddenly entire battalions of conventional forces getting involved, adding their two cents, and fucking things up. For Dieppe, even Churchill got his fat fingers involved, he was giddy for it since this raid would suffice for promises he'd made to Stalin to open up a western front in France. A large raid into coastal France would force the Germans to acknowledge the threat and then force them to commit necessary forces to defend it, which they ended up doing (which was partially the reason Overlord was to be such a pain in the ass). Months earlier, the British govt was even leaking to the press that raids to the French shoreline were to be expected.  

Primary landing forces at Dieppe were done Royal Marine Commandos, either those attached to  Special Operations Executive (SOE) or those directly working for NID as their own personal pinch commandos (these Fleming controlled personally, he was the one who had them created in the first place, and Fleming spent the raid off shore on a destroyer waiting for the Pinch material to reach him). The primary objectives of the commando assault force was to hit the hotel Kriegsmarine HQ, to hit the boats in the harbor, to grab everything they could and then cover themselves by destroying everything to hide what was taken. Meanwhile, Canadian infantry and armor, some conventional British forces, and even some US Army Rangers on loan for experience, were to land at beaches to the flanks of the harbor, their objective was to race around the city center to its flanks and rear to block any German reinforcements for a necessary amount of time necessary for the harbor force to conduct their pinch. Other Commando forces would land further out to the flanks to attack shore batteries that could threaten naval support, and to conduct their own pinch operations against local crypto targets. They were supposed to have had massive pre-landing bombing support, as well as local on hand air support from RAF squadrons, as well as intense naval bombardment (which was called off at the last moment) from accompanying naval vessels.

None of this worked of course, hardly any of it happened even remotely close to how it was planned. The naval and aerial support mostly never happened, the bombings were called off at the last moment, fighter support was poor due to weather conditions, and most of the naval gun fire did little as they were preoccupied with staying alive. The naval force was compromised hours before the planned landing time by a German naval patrol, a small but costly skirmish had the Germans escape with knowledge of a large enemy naval presence, which forced the landings to commence far earlier than they were supposed to, with few units in the correct position. The beach and harbor defenses were so much more well laid out then anticipated, with machine guns having half mile long fields of fire with no cover to hide behind, mortars and shore batteries having registered targeting plans. The harbor assault force shot to pieces before they even touched the docks, they encountered heavy resistance in the port and never even reached the hotel. All told, there were I think 3,000 German military in the town, far more than believed.

Many historians suggest Dieppe was really done as a test run for future amphib attacks and to provide lessons learned. I say that's bullshit, its a whitewash to try to find positives for a major debacle that cost 60% of the assault force (dead or captured). The key lessons of Dieppe were that if you send in infantry to assault defended beaches with little to no support, they will get slaughtered (already known). That if you send tanks along sandy terrain, they will throw tracks (already known). That air support helps when it actually happens, but not if it doesn't (already known). That more landing craft are necessary, especially when many of the leading craft are destroyed early (this was known from countless landings in the Pacific that occurred prior to June '44). It was a pinch that got too big, was poorly planned, too audacious, based on shitty intel, had too many components that couldn't be controlled, and contained little to no actual rehearsals or training.

So the pinch at Dieppe failed utterly but the British were still able to get their Four Rotor Engima machine shortly thereafter another way. They then broke Enigma again, as well as basically every other intelligence code used in the period, which likely included US codes. Which is why the British never even openly acknowledged the existence of Ultra until the 60s-70s, because at that point their methods were still allowing them to read everyone's shit, they couldn't spy on everyone in the same way the NSA can and does spy on everyone, including our "allies".


Want to know more? Read David O’Keefe's book, One Day in August: The Untold Story Behind Canada's Tragedy at Dieppe.

The Churchill was designed as an infantry tank.  Slow, not a big gun, very thick frontal armor.  The frontal armor got up to 152mm in spots in later versions.  Later versions had bigger armor, a 95mm gun, and it was the basis for the crocodile (flamethrower) and AVRE, which had a huge demo gun on it.  It was quite excellent at what ot was designed to do.

Its gun was inadequate for tank on tank fighting.  Adequate for duking it out with German AT guns as long as the front armor held up.

It wasnt perfect, wasnt great, but it was a better execution of what it was designed to do then the sherman.  The sherman was more of a cavalry tank...inadequate front armor, inadequate gun, but fast, reliable.  Neither were much good in tank v tank.  Both did what they were designed to do, well.    The infantry tank role was far more necessary and common in the ETO then the exploitation role.  An AVRE, crocodile, and mark VII/markVII were good tanks for their roles. The Jumbo sherman was sort of an equivalent.  You could argue the British pioneered 'infantry tanks' in WWI and appreciated them more then the US did.

As far as Dieppe, it was a natural larger progression of the British commando raids which up to that point had been very successful. Operation Jubilee was too small to punch its way in, had inadequate fire support, inadequate air cover, as it was a raid, but too big to hide, as it was 10,000 pax and OPSEC was weak.  The shingle simply made it hard for the tanks to get off the beach.   Significant that on D-Day, two years later, the British beaches were hit by a larger, more intense naval bombardment, and use of tanks, wherever possible, to solve tactical problems that Americna generals such as Bradley thought could be done by infantry.  Flail tanks to breach minefields, based on sherms, crocodile flamethrowers based on churchills, and 30 pound flying demo charges fired by AVREs, a churchill variant.  It was more of a mechanized breach force then a light infantry breach which is where Omaha went south.

I would argue Dieppe was a light infantry assault on a fortified beach that went to hell, similar to the US experiences at Tarawa.  Those lessons learned were appreciated in the Pacific.  Too much emphasis on speed and surprise and light infantry to do things done by firepower and tanks support. The two happened approx a year apart. In Nov 42, the only signifcant US landing was Guadalcanal, so I would disagree with the idea that there were lessons learned that could have been picked up without Dieppe.

The Brits have always said Bradley should have taken on some of the funnies, which were offered. Many historians agree.

As far as the analogy with Operation Anaconda, that is apples and oranges. However Anaconda was the natural reaction to Tora Bora, which demonstrated Afghans could do some things, but not others. Assaulting fortified positions and doing manhunting of high value targets us something not really entrusted to indigineous personnel.

That doesn't seem realistic.  If I were the Germans and I found out that the 6? 10? whatever number of Enigmas in the area and assorted code books and decrypted traffic had been completely destroyed I'd instantly assume that they were in fact stolen and the locations they had been in intentionally destroyed to cover the theft.

It's possible they thought the same but didn't have a backup code ready.

My understanding is that even after a device was captured significant mathematical work went into being able to decrypt communication in a timely manner

Thanks for the knowledge bomb.  WWII history fascinates me.

That's not really the issue.  The British had a far better practice for getting Code books and that was to attack weatherships, and U-boats, as there were no survivors that would get back to German lines; if any did see an enigma captured they could be interned in Canada or someplace. There were some weather ships captured in 1941, and shortly after Dieppe, in late 1942, U-559 was captured with a complete Enigma, with the cribs, rotors, and books. Ther was an enigma captured in a previous commando raid in Norway, but it was on a trawler that was sunk in the process.

A land raid to capture an enigma with a withdrawal is a very bad idea, compared to what the British did do.  It is worth noting, and was a very bad idea on teh Germans part, that the enignas in high risl locations, such as U-boats and weatherships, were the same devices as used in high level strategic communications.

The Brits did not spend enough time in armored slugfests on the battlefield in World War II to really understand tank warfare like the Germans and the Russians came to.

It's not surprising they fielded a shitty design or two.

At least at the end of it, they shat out the Centurion, which is one of the finest tanks of it's day. Variants are still in use, which says something about it.

But wartime, they were too fixated on infantry tanks, cruiser tanks, etc, to field a proper all-around tank.

This is the Word of the Lord. Amen.

Churchill is considered to be one of the better British tanks. Able to get pretty much anywhere, a 'mountain goat', as it were, plus tough enough to take quite a few knocks. Excellent steering system helped with its hill-climbing ability. Could do with a better engine, and the top speed is limited as much by the basic (albeit rugged) suspension design as anything else.

The problem with Dieppe was the shale, which the British just were not ready for. Any tank would have had difficulty.

Many lessons were learned from the raid, resulting in Hobart's "funnies" which were used at D-Day.