Page 422 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo I

422 XXXIX Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

albeit with heavy casualties to the attacking force. 5
Why Dieppe? Certainly there was a belief at that time that an invasion of occupied
Europe would require the Allies to obtain harbour facilities, so in a way it made sense
to attack a port. However, the size of a port required to supply several armies dwarfed
the facilities of town the size of Dieppe. Dieppe was the right size to potentially yield
valuable intelligence and to provoke a response by the Germans if attacked and held.
Furthermore, it was within range of RAF fighters, an important consideration as the Air
Force was a strong supporter of the raid. 6
The RAF was cognizant of its role in support of combined operations. However, it
tempered its responsibilities in this area with the need to ensure that the autonomy of
the Air Force was never in doubt. From the perspective of senior RAF commanders, the
primary goal in a combined operation was to establish and maintain air superiority. With
this accomplish, the Air Force would be free to undertake its secondary, but extremely
important role, of providing direct support to ground forces be it through what we call
today Close Air Support or Battlefield Interdiction. To maintain Air Force integrity, the
air forces assigned these tasks would be commanded by a senior air officer. This ap-
proach was reflected in the 1938 Manual of Combined Operations. 7
In the months leading up to the Dieppe raid, the Royal Air Force had responded to
demands by Combined Operations Headquarters, headed since October 1941 by Lord
Louis Mountbatten, for the provision of air staff to assist in integrating air elements into
combined operations training and the planning of actual missions. Although the training
was just commencing in earnest by the summer of 1942, it focused primarily on medium
day bomber and fighter-bomber units which would provide close air support. Fighter
units, whose focus would be on air superiority, were deemed not to require as much
formal training in combined operations.
8
Doctrinally, air support for combined operations would be “fighter heavy” which fit
in well with the Royal Air Force’s desire to bring the Luftwaffe to battle and diminish
the enemy forces through attrition. This supported the aggressive policy that the RAF
had been pursuing in the West via fighter sweeps and escorted day bomber raids. The
9
5 For more information about the raid see Jon Cooksey, Operation Chariot: The Raid on St. Nazaire (Barnsley,
United Kingdom: Pen and Sword, 2004).
6 Terry Copp, “The Air Over Dieppe: Army, Part 9” in Legion Magazine, 1 June 1996. Available online at
http://legionmagazine.com/en/index.php/1996/06/the-air-over-dieppe/, accessed 14 October 2013.
7 United Kingdom, National Archives (hereafter UKNA), AIR 10/1437, Manual of Combined Operations
(1938).
8 For an excellent overview of the training engaged upon, see Ross Wayne Mahoney, “The Royal Air Force,
Combined Operations Doctrine and the Raid on Dieppe, 19 August 1942”, and unpublished Master of Arts
thesis, University of Birmingham, August 2009. It is available online at http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/445/1/
Mahoney09MPhil.pdf, accessed 14 October 2013.
9 The different RAF offensive fighter operations were given specific codenames. A “Rodeo” was a fighter
sweep from squadron to wing strength, a “Ramrod” was an attack by bombers on a specific target with
fighters along for protection, and a “Circus” involved a bomber formation as “bait” will the accompanying
fighters dealt with enemy aircraft. For additional detail see Hugh Halliday, The Tumbling Sky (Stittsville,
Ontario: Canada’s Wings, 1978), 10-11. In very many ways, Operation JUBILEE could be considered a
Circus.