Page 421 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo I

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ActA
“Wishful Thinking?” Air Integration, Dieppe, 19 August 1942

William A MARCH

n Wednesday, 19 August 1942, approximately 6000 soldiers, the majority of them
O Canadian, supported by a large naval force and almost 1000 aircraft launched Op-
eration JUBILEE; a combined “raid in force”, against the German occupied French port
1
of Dieppe. The goal was to take and hold the port for a specified period of time, destroy
facilities, gather information and intelligence, including a naval Enigma machine, and
withdraw. Overhead, the Royal Air Force (RAF) was tasked to provide an aerial umbrel-
la that would protect the assault force, provide close air support and, finally, bring the
German Air Force, the Luftwaffe, into open combat where it could be destroyed. It was
2
a combined operation on a grand scale and was to last, from start to finish, mere hours.
It was a failure. Over sixty percent of the ground forces involved in the attack were
killed, wounded or captured. The Royal Navy lost another 550 personnel and took a
severe pounding as they provided invaluable support to the troops involved. Virtually
none of the objectives of the raid were achieved. At the time, the only bright spot was
deemed to be the performance of the Air Force. They had provided an almost perfect
air shield over the invasion force and decisively defeated the Luftwaffe. Or had they?
Many post-war authors and historians have noted that the Luftwaffe actually lost far
few aircraft that the Royal Air Force (48 to 106) and there has grown a sense that the
Air Force could have done much more to support the ground forces. So let us examine
Operation Jubilee from an Air Force perspective. 3
There were very good reasons for a raid on this scale to be mounted. The first half
of 1942 had not been good for the Allies with reverses in the Far East, the Middle East
and the Atlantic. German successes in Russia were of particular concern. There was
tremendous pressure to mount some sort of “second front” to bolster morale and relieve
some of the pressure on Russia. A major invasion was out of the question, but a large
raid, for the reasons already noted was feasible. There were many precedents for this
4
type of action, the most recent of which had been the raid on the St. Nazaire, Operation
CHARIOT, in March 1942, which had resulted in the destruction of a valuable dry dock;

1 In World War II, a “combined” operation involved forces from two or more of the military services (army,
navy and air force), while a “joint” operation involved forces from the military services of two or more
countries.
2 For a good overview of the operation see C.P. Stacey, Official History of the Canadian Army in the Second
World War, Volume 1, Six Years of War: The Army in Canada, Britain and the Pacific (Ottawa: Queen’s
Printer, 1955), 310-412.
3 Given the rich historiography associated with Operation JUBILEE, it is interested that there is only one book
that deals with the air battle: Norman Franks, The Greatest Air Battle: Dieppe, 19 August 1942 (London:
Grub Street, 1992). The text is narrative in nature and provides only limited analysis.
4 For a general discussion highlighting reasons for the raid see Denis Whitaker et al, 23-35, or Jacques Mordal,
Dieppe: The Dawn of Decision (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1962), 72-87.