[Newsbot]

Title: Dieppe veteran on doomed raid: 'It felt I was on the target range again'
Category: History
Posted By: Hyack
Date: 2015-08-19 16:44:40
Canadian

[martin14]

Only 3 left.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

At least we now know there was a good reason for the raid and it wasn't just some idiotic waste of life. Well, I guess any war is an idiotic waste of life but there was at the time a legitimate and vitally important reason for raiding Dieppe.

[martin14]

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

At least we now know there was a good reason for the raid and it wasn't just some idiotic waste of life. Well, I guess any war is an idiotic waste of life but there was at the time a legitimate and vitally important reason for raiding Dieppe.

And the reason was ??

Oh, did you watch that doc about chasing down an Enigma machine ?

hmmm, the proper word is... poppycock.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

martin14 martin14:

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

At least we now know there was a good reason for the raid and it wasn't just some idiotic waste of life. Well, I guess any war is an idiotic waste of life but there was at the time a legitimate and vitally important reason for raiding Dieppe.

And the reason was ??

Oh, did you watch that doc about chasing down an Enigma machine ?

hmmm, the proper word is... poppycock.

Actually, it's not. Although I did see the doc and it does confirm the purpose of the raid based on everything I've read.
In the 60s-70s, William Stephenson even alluded that the purpose of the raid was a pinch raid. He stated the purpose was to steal a copy of a new top secret radar set that was going to be outfitted on U-boats or something along those lines. Of course he couldn't state the actual piece of equipment they were going after because it was still classified information at the time.
Then Churchill's old saying, "In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies", ties it all in for me. Who knows, maybe the reason for the secrecy all these years is the intelligence method they used to learn about the 4th wheel on the naval enigmas in the first place was a method they continued to use during at least part of the Cold War.

Here's what else I know. Since 2009-10 a lot more information from WW2 was declassified and more and more of it will be made public as it's uncovered/discovered.

[martin14]

Radar set, 4th wheel, in the end it wouldn't matter.

First thing the Germans would have done on Aug. 20 was look to make sure that their secret stuff had not been captured or messed with.

If we had stolen the 4 wheel Enigma, you can be sure the Germans would have stopped using it the next day. Same with the radar or anything else in that area, thereby rendering the whole pinch raid idea less than useless.

At any rate, I am far more critical of the RN and RAF becoming absolute pussies, refusing to really help with the raid. If it was so important, why the last minute cowardice ?

It's a whitewash to keep the name of Mountbatten in good repute, nothing more.

We got thrown under the bus that day.

[Wolf1412]

I tend to disagree that Canada was thrown under the bus. McNaughton had been given the full support of the Canadian Government at the time to act as he saw fit. As Commander of the First Canadian Army, McNaughton, along with General Crerar, Commander of 1St Canadian Corp (both vets of WW1)had been sitting on thousands of Canadian soldiers for 2 years who had yet to see battle. Both Commanders readily accepted the chance for Canadian soldiers to get some combat experience as back in Canada the public was also starting to question our involvement with the extended inactivity

Couple this with a large force of troops wanting to get into the action and it is easy to see why the task was accepted. Though politics and infighting contributed to the failure of the mission and its objective, McNaughton had full authority to commit or stand down as he saw fit. Pointing fingers at Mountbatten is an attempt to pass the buck on the final decision to attack Dieppe.

Though largely a Canadian operation of approx 5000 there was also 1000 British troops and 50 American.

[martin14]

Wolf1412 Wolf1412:

Pointing fingers at Mountbatten is an attempt to pass the buck on the final decision to attack Dieppe.

Ummm, that's because Mountbatten was the final decision maker.

Montgomery removed his approval after Rutter, just before he left for North Africa.


The Royal Navy refused to have anything larger than a destroyer on the mission,
and no preliminary naval bombardment. The destroyers were too small to provide effective
support during the raid.

I'll remind you this decision was made by Dudley Pound, the man also responsible
for giving the Prince of Wales and Repulse no air cover in 1941,
and for removing all protection and then scattering convoy PQ17 for no reason.

Operation Rutter called for a parachute drop, which was cancelled for Jubilee.
To be fair, the 2 Commandoes more or less got the job done, so cancelling the drop
was not the reason for the failure.

But again, no preliminary bombardment from the RAF either, and they did not provide
enough cover against the Luftwaffe.

Every picture you see from Dieppe shows a vehicle stuck in the stones;
pre-raid intelligence was idiotic.


It seems during the planning stages, everyone was all rah rah, and then,
'well, we're not doing this, were not doing that, we'll cut back this and so on'.


As far as McNaughton and the ground commander, John Roberts, neither of them commanded
troops in the field after Dieppe.


If this isn't being thrown under the bus, I don't know what is.

[bootlegga]

martin14 martin14:

Radar set, 4th wheel, in the end it wouldn't matter.

First thing the Germans would have done on Aug. 20 was look to make sure that their secret stuff had not been captured or messed with.

If we had stolen the 4 wheel Enigma, you can be sure the Germans would have stopped using it the next day. Same with the radar or anything else in that area, thereby rendering the whole pinch raid idea less than useless.

At any rate, I am far more critical of the RN and RAF becoming absolute pussies, refusing to really help with the raid. If it was so important, why the last minute cowardice ?

It's a whitewash to keep the name of Mountbatten in good repute, nothing more.

We got thrown under the bus that day.

I hate to say it, but I agree.

The Allies were being pressured by Stalin to do something and this raid was their peace offering, which is why the effort by the RAF and RN was so half-assed.

[BartSimpson]

Dieppe was a clusterfuck. The British military leadership of the time masturbated themselves to fantasies of bayonet charges against machine gun nests and this was really the last gasp of the leftover arrogance of a fallen empire.

After Dieppe the British political leadership realized they couldn't spare either the men or the resources on these vainglorious military adventures.

Sadly, this swing of the pendulum meant that the British ended up being too conservative in yet other operations of the war and they ended up ceding leadership to the Americans and, as the record clearly shows, to a rising Canada.

[herbie]

Regardless of recent claims about the objective at Dieppe, it doesn't justify or make one feel better about the slaughter of Canadians in a total screw-up that should be thought of as Canada's Gallipoli. The Aussies learned in WWI.
Never thought much about British leadership during WW2 either. From the disaster that ended with Dunkirk to the Africa campaign, the loss of Malaysia and the surrender of Singapore all the way to the fail of Market Garden. The RAF may have been glorious, the Navy stupendous, but the Army leadership was next to fucking useless. Montgomery included. The US had to get involved for him to finish off just a corps in Africa, and I'll bet Ike appointed him 2nd in command just for show.
I personally believe this was due to the social system at the time that leadership came from birthright rather than earned as in the US Army.

[BartSimpson]

herbie herbie:

I personally believe this was due to the social system at the time that leadership came from birthright rather than earned as in the US Army.

Very astute. Ike's biographer, Stephen Ambrose, explored this in detail over the course of several books on Ike and WW2.

The Brits wanted Monty to be the Supreme Commander. US General Marshall was the first choice but Roosevelt wanted Marshall to manage war production (a sound choice) but Marshall threatened to resign if a Brit was going to be in charge of Americans. Ike ended up being the Supreme Commander and he did a pretty good job of it even though his British colleagues looked down on him for not coming from an important family and also for the fact that Ike tended to speak in simple, direct terms.

The odd dynamic was that the patrician Roosevelt tended to sympathize with the Brits about the choice of Ike yet FDR left Ike alone because of Marshall.

And you're right that people who are entitled to things have a tendency to resent the people who earn them.

Thus we see that the same people who advocate for free housing, free income, free healthcare, have no qualms about punishing people who earn their way and provide for themselves on their own. It is a human dynamic that losers resent achievers because the success of the achievers perfectly underlines the failures of the losers.

In the case of Monty et al the failures of the entitled were writ large by the successes of a plain spoken farm boy from an unremarkable family in Kansas.

[Strutz]

martin14 martin14:

Only 3 left.

Yup. Time has a way of doing that unfortunately.

There will come a time soon that there won't be any WWII vets left to attend these memorials. I hope that won't mean an end to remembering the sacrifices of so many that took place.

[BartSimpson]

Strutz Strutz:

martin14 martin14:

Only 3 left.

Yup. Time has a way of doing that unfortunately.

There will come a time soon that there won't be any WWII vets left to attend these memorials. I hope that won't mean an end to remembering the sacrifices of so many that took place.

It will. There are just too many progholes and social justice warriors these days that hate and loathe our countries and they openly hate and loathe the people who fought for them, too.

[Batsy2]

herbie herbie:

From the disaster that ended with Dunkirk

Dunkirk actually says more about inefficient Kraut leadership than "inefficient British leadership." The fact that the German top brass allowed thousands of British, French and Belgian soldiers to escape back to the safety of Britain to be used again in the war, rather than slaughtering them all when when they had the chance, is rather puzzling. Had the Germans done that, it is doubtful whether the British would have been able to stand up to the Germans and Italians in North Africa, potentially altering the outcome of the war by permitting the axis to take Egypt and the oil-fields of the Middle East — in which case it really would have been game over. Instead, the Germans allowed tens of thousands of British troops to get away scot free.

$1:

to the Africa campaign,

A great British victory, but one which would probably never have happened had the Germans not committed their huge blunder at Dunkirk.

$1:

the loss of Malaysia and the surrender of Singapore

The fall of Malaya and Singapore was as a result of Britain having to keep many of her resources back in Europe, closer to home, rather than in South East Asia, to deal with the Germans and Italians in a fight for her very survival. Defending Malaya and Singapore was less of a priority than defeating Germany and Italy.

$1:

all the way to the fail of Market Garden.

I'm sure we could find great American failures of WWII, such as the humiliation of the Battle of Bataan.

$1:

The US had to get involved for him to finish off just a corps in Africa, and I'll bet Ike appointed him 2nd in command just for show.

The North African Campaign was won by Operation Torch (a British idea the Yanks were initially against) and by the British codebreakers at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire.

It is estimated that 40% to 60% of Axis supply shipping in North Africa was located and destroyed due to decrypted information. Heavy losses of German paratroopers in Crete, made possible by Ultra warnings of the drop times and locations, meant that Hitler hesitated to attack Malta, which aided the British in gaining control of the Mediterranean, as did the defeat of the Italian Navy at the Battle of Cape Matapan.