August 19, 1942

[PJ Hardtack]

Just watched a doc on the Dieppe Raid of Aug. 19, 1942. I've always had a keen interest in that event as that was the year I was born. I grew up hearing the bitter resentment over the sacrifice of so many fine young men in a futile attack on Hitler's 'Festung Europa'.
The Canadian public and the world were led to believe that it was a debacle, a botched 'dress rehearsal' for 'D-Day', achieving nothing for the loss of 1,500 lives out of an attacking force of 5,000. Recently researched 'Top Secret' documents reveal another story .....

No less a figure than Ian Fleming (of James Bond fame), then a high ranking officer in the RN Operations department was off shore awaiting the intended prize of the attack - a German four wheel 'Enigma' machine from the Kriegsmarine HQ in the town. The blame for the failure lies with those that planned the operation, Lord Mountbatten among them, the buck stopping on the desk of Churchill himself.

Had this objective been attained, it would have made a significant difference in the Allied war effort, particularly with regard to the 'Wolf Pack' U-boot battle in the North Atlantic.

The planners had failed to take into account the nature of the rocky beach which made it impossible for the supporting tanks to give the needed support to the infantry. Without that, they were unable to gain the ground, even if they had been able to get off the beach themselves. Poor intel led to poor planning.

There were other factors as well, including a belief that there was a security leak that gave the Wehrmacht advance warning of the raid. Survivors were told - "We were expecting you."

When surviving members were informed of the truth, they expressed shock and I'm sure anger towards those responsible. Learning the facts made the losses more acceptable despite the failure to achieve the objective. Their friends had not died in vain.

[Drydock]

As the Duke of Wellington once said of the disasterous Flanders campaign (his first, as a junior officer) "It taught me what NOT to do, and that is very important!"

[Shotgun Franklin]

The object of fighting a war is to win that war, often at a terrible price.

[S. Quentin Quale, Esq.]

I did not see the program; my reaction is "well, maybe."

The problem in covert ops is not just to keep the op quiet, but to ensure that the fruits of the op are not known to your adversary.  Grabbing the machine from a KM office sounds good, but how do you ensure the KM does not notice the gear is missing?  Total destruction of the building might do the job, but if other building were not also totally destroyed you've still left a big "footprint."

The claim "we knew you were coming" is open to serious question.  Interrogators will often use this ploy with prisoners to weaken their will to resist.  I'd need to see some serious evidence to back it up before I'd accept it.

IIRC the four-wheel machine the Brits got came from a captured U-boat.  That's a much better way to go as that way the KM never knew it lost the machine.  They also got the code books on that one and that gave them quite a "leg up" for a period of time.

A while back I watched a piece on the capture of the U-505.  This was RADM Gallery's own project, not really discussed with all his superiors.  When he did it there was a great fear that the Germans would learn of it, figure the ENIGMA machine was compromised, and change it.  Gallery wanted to make a big PR deal of it; it didn't happen because of fear that the Germans would change the machine.

The Germans never did figure out their security had been breached.

The Brits got stung really badly at Gallipoli in WWI.  It was dogma in the RN (and the British Army) that opposed landings were not possible without unacceptable losses.  The raid on Dieppe occured before Operation Torch (that was 8 NOV 42) and before the USN/USMC team proved that opposed landings could be successful (but will always be expensive).

SQQ

[PJ Hardtack]

I believe that the intention was to utterly destroy the Kriegsmarine code room in Dieppe. Would that have aroused suspicion about an Enigma machine being captured? Most assuredly.
But it would have given the code breakers of Bletchley Park a leg up on German cryptography, which they eventually managed to do the hard way.

I'm inclined to buy the latest revelation based on newly released documentation as it makes more sense than telling Officers that took part in the raid that the object was to capture a port. How in hell were they going to hold it? In reality, the aim was to hold it just long enough to get a captured Enigma on board, nothing more.

Any U-boot that disappeared would also have raised questions about the loss of an Enigma machine. There was a famous convoy from Canada that was allowed to be intercepted by U-boots, resulting in several ships being torpedoed. This was after the code had been broken and the Allies did not want it to be known.

The losses were deemed acceptable. Such are the vagaries and vicissitudes of war.

[S. Quentin Quale, Esq.]

I believe that the intention was to utterly destroy the Kriegsmarine code room in Dieppe. Would that have aroused suspicion about an Enigma machine being captured? Most assuredly.
But it would have given the code breakers of Bletchley Park a leg up on German cryptography, which they eventually managed to do the hard way.

I'm inclined to buy the latest revelation based on newly released documentation as it makes more sense than telling Officers that took part in the raid that the object was to capture a port. How in hell were they going to hold it? In reality, the aim was to hold it just long enough to get a captured Enigma on board, nothing more.

Any U-boot that disappeared would also have raised questions about the loss of an Enigma machine. There was a famous convoy from Canada that was allowed to be intercepted by U-boots, resulting in several ships being torpedoed. This was after the code had been broken and the Allies did not want it to be known.

The losses were deemed acceptable. Such are the vagaries and vicissitudes of war.

We stutided the Dieppe Raid back when I was a midshipman.  IIRC the Raid was meant to "raid" and cause damage.  There was never an intent to take and hold anything.  There was tremendous pressure from the Russians that the British and U.S. do something, anything, to relieve pressure on the Russians.  Remember at this point the Germans had yet to suffer any real reverses in Continental Euorpe or in Russia.  North Aftrica was an open question as the Second Battle of El Alamein had not yet been fought.  The large scale bombing offensive of the 8th Air Force was not yet in full swing.  The Battle of the Atlantic was raging and not always going well for the Allies.  It was not a "happy time."

I understand that siezure of an Enigma machine would be a Good Thing from the Allied perspective but I doubt it was the primary purpose of the operation.

I don't know of any convoys that suffered the fate of Coventry (where no special defense was raised even though the RAF knew of the raid hours ahead of time from an Enigma intercept).  A couple were "broken up" and ordered to proceed indepenantly due to intense U-Boat operations.  We really didn't need Enigma to tell us where the U-Boats were; they did that for us by their constant communications with their HQ in France and some very good HF/DF work.  Convoys were routinely routed around known U-Boat concentrations, if that was possible (and sometimes it wasn't).

The difficulty was that an HF/DF fix was a pretty big circle (several nautical miles) and ASDIC/SONAR ranges were measured in thousands, and sometimes hundreds, of yards.  There was a dreadful shortage of escorts.  If you got a contact then you had to run over the position, drop the depth charges, and see what happened.  Often the acoustic disturance of the water from multiple explosions was enough to give the U-Boat a place to hide or an area of "disturbed water" to escape through.

Certainly a lost U-Boat might mean a lost Enigma machine.  But if the KM were to alter Enigma after every U-Boat stopped making reports they'd never have any working machines.  So they had to proceed on the theory that capture of a sub was a virtual impossibility.  IIRC there were only two prior to War's end.  Both were kept Top Secret (much to the chargin of RADM Gallery who wanted a PR coup for the ASW forces).

It's possible that the documentary is right; it's also possible that the whole theory is "revisionist history" by academics who've never walked a deck or flown a MAD trap.

SQQ

[PJ Hardtack]

That's downright generous of you to concede that perhaps the documentary I was referring to might be right, particularly since you didn't watch it. The researcher is an accredited lecturer and historian who had access to hitherto sealed documents and files.

I just did a brief search and there were two such disastrous convoys. Convoy PQ 17 (July 42) lost 24 out of 35 ships. They were ordered to scatter as intel had reported that German surface raiders were fueling to make an intercept. Turns out they were just on maneuvers, but who was to know?
Convoy PQ 18 similarly suffered from joint Luftwaffe and U-boat attacks. Convoy SC 7 (Oct 40) lost 24 out of 35 ships due to Wolf Pack interception.
There was no mention of the Enigma aspect, but reports were based on the official press releases of the era, excluding currently declassified data.
Alan Turing's team of 15 mathematicians and technicians at Bletchley Park created the "Bombe", the precursor of the modern search engine to analyze and crack the Enigma code, first in 1941 and again in 1943 after the Germans made upgrades.  They were aided by several captured Enigma machines taken from U-boats.
However, it is believed that a pole by the name of Rejewski had successfully devised a means of cracking the code as early as 1933.

I don't know of any convoys that suffered the fate of Coventry (where no special defense was raised even though the RAF knew of the raid hours ahead of time from an Enigma intercept).  

It's possible that the documentary is right; it's also possible that the whole theory is "revisionist history" by academics who've never walked a deck or flown a MAD trap.SQQ

[cpt dan blodgett]

Apr 42 a busy time 18th was the Doolittle Raid

[PJ Hardtack]

I believe that the last living survivor (does that make any sense ...? Of course he's living) of the Doolittle raid was recently honoured.

It was a remarkable feat getting B-25s off the flight deck of a carrier. The propaganda effect of the raid far outweighed any actual damage done to the Japanese war machine.

[Sir Charles deMouton-Black]

The great majority of my Mothers male contemporaries from Southern Saskatchewan did not return from the Dieppe Raid.  Her manifestation of PTSD was and is, not to read or hear anything about the Raid. When I told her about the documentary, she was not impressed.  She had lost a generation of friends.

[Books OToole]

I believe that the last living survivor (does that make any sense ...? Of course he's living) of the Doolittle raid was recently honoured.

It was a remarkable feat getting B-25s off the flight deck of a carrier. The propaganda effect of the raid far outweighed any actual damage done to the Japanese war machine.

There are actually four living Doolittle Raiders.  They are all in their mid 90s.  They decided this year to modify the Tontine.  There is (was) a bottle of 100 year old + brandy and a silver cup for each of the raiders.  Until this year they have been on display at the Air Force Academy.  As they passed away, their cups were turned over.  The last two were supposed to share the bottle.  Last week the last four shared the bottle.

Books

[cpt dan blodgett]

The greatest generation will soon be lost to us, how sad!!!

[PJ Hardtack]

There will never be a shortage of heroes. "There will always be wars and rumours of wars ...."

Right now there is a class action law suit against the Canadian government for it's treatment of vets. Instead of a lifetime pension for injuries incurred during service, vets are receiving a lump sum payment to a max of $276,000. In most cases, that is not  as much as they would have received for lesser injuries incurred in a motor vehicle accident.

Reprehensible in the extreme. If they don't want to pay veterans benefits, then it behooves them not to create them. It's been this way since Kipling's days, and I'm sure that Roman Legionaries got the same short shrift.