What was the Dieppe Raid?
The Dieppe Raid, code-named Operation Jubilee, was an Allied raid on the German-held French port of Dieppe on 19 August 1942. About 6,100 soldiers, 4,963 of them Canadians, landed at five points on the coast. Only No. 4 Commando took all its objectives. The main assault was pinned down on the beaches in front of the town, and by early afternoon the raid was over, with 3,367 Canadian casualties, including 1,946 prisoners.13
It was planned as a raid, not an invasion: the troops were to seize the town, destroy what they could and leave on the same tide. The naval force of 237 ships and landing craft had no ship larger than a Hunt-class destroyer. There were eight of them, seven British and one Polish, ORP Ślązak.14
A raid instead of a second front
In 1942 the Soviet Union, fighting the German invasion, pressed its allies to open a second front in western Europe. Britain could not yet mount a full-scale invasion, so Combined Operations Headquarters under Lord Louis Mountbatten planned large raids on the French coast instead. A raid in force would test the German defenses in the West and try out new landing craft and equipment before the real invasion.15
Dieppe was chosen in April 1942. It had a harbor, a radar station and coastal batteries nearby, and it lay within range of fighters based in England. But high cliffs commanded the sea approaches, and the only gaps in them were the town itself and two narrow beaches at Pourville to the west and Puys to the east. The army planners favored a frontal assault on the town, while naval officers thought it too hazardous.16
The troops came from the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division, which had been training in Britain without seeing battle. A first version of the raid, Operation Rutter, was ready in early July. On 7 July German aircraft bombed two of the landing ships lying off the Isle of Wight with troops aboard, and with the weather still unsuitable the operation was called off. Combined Operations revived it in mid-July under the new code name Jubilee.17
The plan and the force
The plan called for landings at five points on a front of about ten miles. At 4:50 a.m. British time, just before dawn, four flank attacks were to go in: No. 4 Commando against the coastal battery near Varengeville, the South Saskatchewan Regiment at Pourville, the Royal Regiment of Canada at Puys and No. 3 Commando against the battery near Berneval. Half an hour later the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry and the Essex Scottish were to storm the main beach in front of the town, with Churchill tanks of the Calgary Regiment landing beside them.18
The heavy air bombing of the town planned for Rutter had been dropped, partly so that rubble would not block the streets for the tanks. Paratroops were replaced by Commandos. Fire support would come from the destroyers' 4-inch guns, some specially armed landing craft and cannon-firing fighters. Roskill, the British official naval historian, judged it nothing like adequate against defenses of such strength.19
Major General J. H. Roberts commanded the troops and Captain John Hughes-Hallett the naval force, both aboard the destroyer HMS Calpe. Air Vice-Marshal T. L. Leigh-Mallory directed the air forces from England. Stacey counts about 6,100 soldiers: 4,963 Canadians, about 1,075 British, some 50 US Rangers and 15 Frenchmen. The force sailed from ports on the south coast of England on the evening of 18 August.20
The flanks: Berneval and Varengeville
Bad luck struck at 3:47 a.m., about an hour before the first landings. The landing craft carrying No. 3 Commando to Berneval ran into a small German convoy and were scattered in a sharp fight at sea. Two destroyers screening that flank, HMS Brocklesby and the Polish ORP Ślązak, did not intervene. Roskill writes that their senior officer thought the gunfire came from the shore, and Stacey identifies him as the Polish commander of Ślązak.21
Only seven of the 23 craft carrying No. 3 Commando reached the shore. Most of those who landed were soon overwhelmed. But one boatload of three officers and 17 men landed unseen, climbed a gully and sniped at the Berneval battery for about an hour and a half, keeping its guns from firing on the ships. Then they got away by sea.22
On the western flank No. 4 Commando, about 250 men under Lord Lovat, landed as planned, stormed the battery near Varengeville with the bayonet and destroyed its six 15-centimeter guns. It withdrew at about 7:30 a.m., the only unit of the raid to take all its objectives. Captain Patrick Porteous, wounded twice, led a troop that had lost its officers in the final charge and won the Victoria Cross.23
Puys and Pourville
At Puys, a narrow gap in the cliffs just east of Dieppe, the Royal Regiment of Canada needed darkness and surprise. It had neither. The first craft touched down late, at 5:07 a.m., in growing daylight, and the defenders on the cliffs were fully alert. The men were pinned against a wired sea wall and very few got off the beach. The survivors surrendered a few hours later.24
Stacey counts 227 fatal casualties among the 554 men of the regiment who embarked, and only two officers and 65 men back in England. The Juno Beach Centre gives 556 who sailed, more than 200 killed and 264 captured. Veterans Affairs Canada calls it the heaviest toll suffered by a Canadian battalion in a single day of the war. With the east headland still in German hands, its guns could fire on the main beaches.25
At Pourville the South Saskatchewan Regiment touched down at 4:52 a.m. and took the Germans by surprise. But most of it landed west of the River Scie and had to cross the only bridge to reach its objectives on the heights. Lieutenant Colonel Cecil Merritt led party after party across under fire. His Victoria Cross citation records him waving his helmet and shouting, "Come on over! There's nothing to worry about here." The Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders of Canada, landing behind them, pushed inland toward Petit Appeville before they too had to turn back. Merritt's rearguard covered the withdrawal from the beach and was taken prisoner.26
The main beaches
In front of the town the Essex Scottish and the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry landed just after a cannon attack by Hurricane fighters, but the first tanks arrived 10 to 15 minutes late. In that gap the defenders recovered and swept the beach with fire from the headlands and the buildings on the seafront. The Hamilton men cleared the casino at the west end of the promenade, and small parties got into the town, but the Essex Scottish on the open eastern beach could not get over the sea wall.27
It was, Stacey notes, the Churchill tank's first battle. Of the 29 tanks that left their landing craft, two drowned and 15 crossed the sea wall, but concrete roadblocks kept every one of them out of the town. Stuck on the shingle or disabled, they went on firing in support of the infantry, and almost all their crews were killed or captured.28
Aboard Calpe, Roberts had little reliable news. A garbled message suggested the Essex Scottish had got into the town, so at 7 a.m. he sent in his reserve, Les Fusiliers Mont-Royal, in 26 landing craft. They were hit before they touched down and pinned on the beach. Next went the Royal Marine "A" Commando. Its commander, Lieutenant Colonel J. P. Phillipps, saw the fire ahead, stood up in his craft and signaled the rest to turn back. He was mortally wounded.29
Withdrawal, and the battle at sea and in the air
By 9 a.m. it was clear that the Germans still held both headlands, and the withdrawal was set for 11 a.m. The landing craft went in under smoke and through heavy fire. At Pourville many of the South Saskatchewans and Camerons were taken off, but few men got away from the main beaches. At about 12:20 p.m. the beaches in front of the town could no longer be reached, and soon after one o'clock, Stacey records, a last signal came from Brigadier W. W. Southam's headquarters on the beach: "Our people here have surrendered."30
Honorary Captain John Weir Foote, chaplain of the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry, spent about eight hours carrying wounded men to the aid post under fire. His Victoria Cross citation says he refused a final chance to leave, "choosing to suffer the fate of the men he had ministered to for over three years". He was the first Canadian chaplain to win the Victoria Cross.31
Overhead, the Royal Air Force fought a great air battle to protect the ships. It kept the fleet safe from serious loss, but the Allies lost 106 aircraft, the Royal Air Force's heaviest loss in a single day of the war. Post-war research found the Germans had lost 48. The destroyer HMS Berkeley was hit by a bomb at about 1 p.m. and had to be sunk by British torpedoes.32
ORP Ślązak was commanded by Lieutenant Commander Romuald Nałęcz-Tymiński. He is named as her captain both in Hughes-Hallett's naval report on the raid, published in 1947, and by Poland's Institute of National Remembrance (IPN). Poland's wider part in the war is covered in our military history of Poland.33
The cost and the lessons
Stacey and Veterans Affairs Canada both put Canadian casualties at 3,367, a figure that counts the killed, the wounded and the prisoners together. Both count 1,946 prisoners. Stacey gives 907 Canadian dead, including men who later died in captivity, and Veterans Affairs Canada 916. Stacey notes that in nine hours at Dieppe the Canadian Army lost more prisoners than in the eleven months of its later campaign in northwest Europe.34
The Royal Navy had 550 casualties and lost a destroyer and 33 landing craft. German losses in all three services came to about 600, by Roskill's estimate and by the 591 the German High Command admitted.35
On 8 September Churchill told the House of Commons that the military credit "for this most gallant affair goes to the Canadian troops, who formed five-sixths of the assaulting force", and that "The raid must be considered as a reconnaissance in force." Veterans Affairs Canada and the Juno Beach Centre today describe it as a costly failure whose lessons helped the Allies succeed on D-Day in 1944.36
The chief lesson, in the words of the official report, was the need for overwhelming fire support during the first stages of a landing. Both Stacey and Roskill record the decision that followed to form permanent naval assault forces. The idea of opening an invasion by seizing a defended port was dropped. Stacey writes that one answer to supplying an army over open beaches was the prefabricated Mulberry harbor. How those lessons were applied in 1944 is told in our article on the Battle of Normandy and our guide to the Western Front of World War II.37
