Nova Scotia/Nunavut Command of The Royal Canadian Legion www.ns.legion.ca 95 continued ... What went wrong? • There were few less suited locations on the French coast for an assault landing. The tall cliffs in the area of the main landing beaches were perfect for enfilade fire on the assault troops and the deep beach shale was absolutely unsuited to heavy vehicles including tanks. • The intelligence available was inaccurate, incomplete and misleading. The information on the German defences, troop levels and beach conditions was hopelessly out of date. It's been suggested that more up to date information on some aspects was available through ULTRA (the top secret breaking of the German Enigma codes) but was never asked for or passed on. • The assault was viable only when certain conditions of time and tide prevailed. These conditions (high tide at or near dawn) were as well known to the German forces as they were to the British planners. It was not surprising, that during these periods of potential threat, German forces would be on heightened alert. Despite this, the plan depended on tactical surprise. Was it an error to believe that the Germans were unaware of these factors? • Post war post-mortems have often focused on the changes to the original plan in general and the withdrawal of the bombing force in particular. It's arguable that these changes by themselves were not the overwhelming decisive factor. Bombing was not a precision tool at the time of Dieppe, when pin point accuracy was needed to keep German defenders running for cover. It's conceivable therefore that a much heavier weight of offshore bombardment was needed than was provided. If heavier capital ships had been present, they could have kept the defenders’ heads down until the troops were within a few metres of the beach. • The plan was heavily dependent on the critical timing of its various components - there was little or no room for error or delay anywhere without adverse knock-on consequences. The effect of this weakness was compounded by poor communications, which failed to update senior officers of progress in time to take appropriate remedial action. Lessons Learned The capture of a usable port early in any large-scale invasion of enemy occupied territory was ideal for the immense logistics involved in keeping the supply chain open. However, such an objective was fraught with difficulties, hence the long held emphasis on landing directly on to unimproved landing beaches. The experience of Dieppe reinforced the wisdom of this view and it became the inspiration behind the development of Mulberry Harbours and the Pipe Line Under the Ocean (PLUTO) and many other special initiatives that contributed to the success of subsequent major landings in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, Normandy, Southern France and Walcheren. The need for reliable intelligence on the strength and disposition of the defending forces and the topography on and around the landing beaches was clearly paramount. Lt Commander Nigel ClogstounWillmott, RN, who had undertaken beach reconnaissance trials in the Mediterranean, was recalled to the UK in the summer of 1942 to set up training programmes for the Combined Operations Pilotage Parties (COPPs). German soldiers inspect the wreckage on the landing beach continued ...
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