Dieppe Raid

19 August 1942, Dieppe, Normandy

German victory; the raid a costly failure

Operation Jubilee was a raid in force on the port of Dieppe, to test the defences of the French coast and how a port might be taken. Some 6,000 men, nearly 5,000 of them Canadians of the 2nd Division, with British commandos and a few American Rangers, crossed the Channel in the night in some 237 ships and landing craft. The only naval gunfire support was eight Hunt-class destroyers, among them the Polish Ślązak, and a gunboat; the Admiralty would not risk anything bigger. Before dawn the landing craft heading for the eastern flank ran into a German coastal convoy, and the alarm went up. On the main beaches the Canadian infantry and their Churchill tanks were pinned under the cliffs and the guns of the headland. By late morning the force was ordered off, the destroyers coming in close under fire to cover the boats; Ślązak took 85 men of the Royal Regiment of Canada off the beach. Berkeley was so badly bombed she had to be sunk by her own side, and 33 landing craft were lost. More than 3,300 Canadians were killed, wounded or taken prisoner. The lessons, paid for at Dieppe, shaped the landings in Normandy two years later.