by Tim Saunders
‘...no responsible general will be associated with any planning for invasion until we have an operation at least the size of an attack on Dieppe behind us to study and base our plans upon.’
Naval Action
One of the British planning assumptions, based largely on the performance of their own RDF or radar, was that the Germans cliff-top radar would not spot the Jubilee Naval Force heading south across the Channel to Dieppe. In the event, both German and British radar spotted and reported enemy activity, which if acted on, especially in the case of the British, may well have made a significant difference to the outcome of the raid.
German radar or RDF stations were springing up all along the coastline to give warning of the approach of enemy aircraft and shipping.
The thirteen groups of the Naval Force assembled, and were ‘more or less in their planned positions as they reached the buoys marking the entrance of the swept channel and crossed through the German minefield.’ So far, the operation was proceeding much better than during the two Yukon exercises. But they had been spotted by German radar. However, luck was with the Allies: as was often the case, the radar plot had been dismissed as ‘either false or it was the Kriegsmarine convoy from Boulogne.’ There are also reports that information was passed to 302nd Infanterie Division, who, it is believed, passed messages reinforcing vigilance among its troops, who were already at their posts, trying to get some sleep. It is worth emphasising that, following a series of radar-inspired false alarms since May, this was not a general ‘Alarmsignal’ and was not acted on as such, but it certainly adds to the emerging picture of subsequent speedy German reaction.
A flotilla of R Craft leaving Newhaven on the eve of Operation Jubilee.
As already mentioned, radar could also have played a significant role in the conduct of the raid on the British side of the Channel. As early as 2130 hours, various Chain Home radar stations detected three enemy vessels off Boulogne, heading south-west towards Dieppe. However, they were at extreme range and ‘subject to intermittent fading.’ A vague insubstantial warning was sent to the Headquarters embarked on HMS Calpe, but the Jubilee Force had already passed the ‘point of no return’ once it was through the minefield. There is also doubt whether these messages ever reached Jubilee’s naval commanders.
Meanwhile, on the eastern flank of the British force, Naval Group 5, made up of eighteen (five had already broken down) Landing Craft Personnel (Large) (LCP(L), also variously known as R Craft or ‘Eurekas’), carrying No. 3 Commando to Yellow Beach and the Goebbels Battery. Onboard the accompanying Steam Gunboat 5 (SGB 5) was Captain Barber, who had ‘cadged a lift’ to Dieppe:
‘It all seemed so peaceful. I travelled on the bridge, and was asked to man a Browning machine gun in case of emergency. The steam gunboat was larger than an MGB and had a funnel from which occasionally would belch forth a volley of sparks in a most disconcerting manner. Each time this happened, an absolute tirade of abuse from the Captain would pour down the speaking tube to the engine room and then all would be peaceful for a time. It was after one of these unnerving explosions of sparks … that there followed a loud report’
Thus it was that two hours before the commandos were due to land, British and German naval forces clashed off the French coast. The official report records:
‘At 0347 hours . . . About seven miles from the coast, a ship on the port bow of SGB 5 was observed. Immediately afterwards, the group was lit up by a star shell. Heavy fire from anti-aircraft guns including a few rounds of 3-inch or 4-inch shells was experienced.’
At first, Group 5’s commander, Commander Wyburd RN, thought that the clash could have been the result of mistaken identity by two of the escorting destroyers Brocklesby and Slazak, who were supposed to be covering the force’s left flank. These two ships were in fact off to the north-east, and, amidst much criticism, their Captains explained that their lack of response was due to their belief that the engagement was on land. Meanwhile, ‘more enemy ships opened fire on Group 5, and SGB 5 eventually found herself engaged by at least five enemy craft, spreading in an arc from the port to the starboard bow.’ These craft were the armed tanker Franz and her escort of five E-Boats. The tanker’s cannon and the E-Boats’ automatic 40mm guns caused significant damage to the lightly armed Group 5. In a matter of minutes, SGB 5 was hit and was almost dead in the water, and six of the light plywood R Craft carrying the commandos were sunk. Many of the other craft scattered into the cover of the darkness and dawn mist. Lieutenant Lewis, aboard LCP 15, recalled the action:
‘The air was filled with the whine of ricochets and the bang of exploding shells, but the flak was flying ahead and astern of us. Putting on full speed we went under the stern of the disabled steam gunboat and tore away from the lashing beams of flack.’
On board SGB 5, clouds of steam hissed from the fractured pipes, as the boat lost way. Lieutenant Colonel Durnford-Slater recounted:
‘...with the moans of the dying in my ears, I managed to reach the bridge through tangles of wreckage. A shell had scored a direct hit and it was piled with about ten dead and wounded sailors. One badly wounded naval officer cried, “This is the end!” I was inclined to believe him and took off my boots and blew up my Mae West, as it looked as if we would soon be swimming.’
Despite the naval clash, a small part of Naval Group 5 faithfully executed Commander Wyburd’s orders to press on towards France, even though it was obvious that the enemy on the coast would have been alerted. On shore, however, the reaction was patchy. Many infantry units disregarded the naval action as ‘a routine event’ that had nothing to do with them, although in some headquarters it added to the picture already painted by German radar. What is obvious with hindsight was not necessarily obvious to the tired and bored night-watch-keepers and staff of 571 Infanterie Regiment, who may not even have received the details of the radar warning.
Some miles astern of the leading groups, with Naval Group 7, Sergeant Major Dumais of the Fusiliers Mont-Royal recalls hearing the action:
‘Suddenly there was a noise in the far distance. We listened intently. It was far too early for the assault. The naval officer cut the engine and the boat settled in the water. We all held our breath in an attempt to catch the least sound, but all we could hear was the gentle slapping of waves against the side of the boat. Then from astern, came two short blasts on a siren, and a destroyer emerged from the light fog, only to rush past, full of majesty and chasing with its bow a mass foam…’
An hour later, off Dieppe, a German tug was waiting to help manoeuvre the tanker into the port of Dieppe. As darkness gave way to nautical twilight, the tugboat’s captain saw destroyers and smaller craft bearing down on him. This was not what he expected, and he ordered full steam back to port. Meanwhile, the port’s naval signal station had been warned of the activity, and had spotted the unidentified and unexpected ships. No response was received from the ships to the recognition signals, and according to the divisional report, 3 Battery, I/302 Artillery Regiment, positioned on the cliffs above Dieppe, opened fire at 0445 hours. The battle for Dieppe had begun in earnest.
Dieppe 1942 – COHQ photograph
As the commandos and the inner flanking attacks went in to assault their objectives, the main force was either completing its passage or waiting off Dieppe. With the first shells passing overhead, Sergeant Major Dumais in an LCP:
‘... began to get everyone busy. We had to shave and wash in seawater; I tried to convince the men that seawater was very good for the gums! In the best tradition, we could not die without a shave and shiny boots. Nobody had a brush, so we had to borrow a rag from one of the sailors.’
Some of the much-criticised ‘Army bull’ had brought an air of normality to a platoon of nervous infantrymen who would shortly be in action for the first time, but:
‘A destroyer on our right suddenly opened up with its heavy guns; we felt at last that the pleasant sea voyage of ours had come to an end. The dreamy haze of that August morning had been finally
and firmly dispelled; the fighting we had been preparing for for three years was on us.’
CHAPTER FOUR
THE GOEBBELS BATTERY
‘Young soldiers will follow their commanders out of innocence of their hearts.’
Brigadier Peter Young to generations of
Officer Cadets 1941 - 1975
Number 3 Commando’s operation had not started well. Naval Group 5 had lost five of the unit’s twenty-three LCPs to breakdown; four were damaged in the encounter with the German convoy; leaving seven craft to press on with a Motor Launch (ML). Another seven were dispersed during the engagement. In addition, the Commanding Officer Lieutenant Colonel JF Durnford-Slatter was marooned on the damaged SGB 5, whose radio had been knocked out during the fighting. It was not until 0630 hours that Commander Wyburd and Durnford Slater managed to find a set working on one of the dispersed LCPs and pass the information to Headquarters on board HMS Calpe that ‘5 Gp dispersed by enemy’.
The plan to assault the Goebbels Battery (Second Batterie 770 Coastal Artillerie Battalion) had been simple. The main force was to land with the Commanding Officer on Yellow 1 Beach; a secondary force, under the Second-in-Command, Major Peter Young, was to head for the smaller Yellow II Beach, where they would make their way up the cliff under cover of darkness via a path in a steep gully. Once on the cliff top, the force would silently infiltrate around both flanks and attack the battery from the rear: they hoped to achieve surprise.
Even though the bulk of the force had been dispersed, and only a fraction of the 450 commandos were aboard the landing craft heading to the coast, they were determined to carry on with the mission, hoping that more craft would appear out of the darkness.
Lieutenant Colonel Durnford-Slater (left) and Major Young photographed in Normandy in 1944.
One of the pre war postcards of Yellow I Beach used to brief the commandos on their task
A modern picture showing the two exits from Yellow I
An extract of the intelligence overprint map prepared before the raid, showing German defences in the Berneval area.
Landing Craft Personnel (Large) or R Craft photographed during the raid.
Yellow I Beach
Colonel Stacey, the Canadian official historian wrote of No. 3 Commando’s main landing:
‘Certain of the landing craft of Group 5, however, had pushed-on on their own responsibility and made a gallant attempt to complete their task. Five of these landing craft, and subsequently a sixth, reached Yellow I Beach and landed their troops under covering fire from ML 346, five craft touching down at 0510 hrs, 20 mins late.’
The enemy were by now fully alert, however, and to make matters worse, it was virtually full light. Sergeant Dungate recalled after his release from captivity that,
‘When we were going in you could actually see the defenders standing on the cliffs. The amazing part about it was that they never blew us out of the water but waited until we got right into the beach. You could see the Germans through binoculars watching us come in.’
A German infantry section of ten men from III/571 Infanterie Regiment, armed with rifles and a machine gun, were manning their defences, covering the four hundred yards of Yellow I Beach. They opened fire, and both the crafts’ crew and commandos suffered casualties as they approached the beach, because the light wooden craft offered virtually no protection from enemy small-arms fire. On board LCP(L) 42, the commandos were given the option to turn back, but they were of one accord: ‘We go in!’ But as the craft approached the coast, ‘The Coxswain had been killed and Lieutenant Commander Corke mortally wounded. A trooper of No. 3 Commando took the helm and the troops were landed from the craft when it was in a sinking condition.’ Lieutenant Commander Corke, having overseen the transfer of the wounded, went down with his craft.
This photograph copied from the report shows the intended route off Yellow I Beach as it was prior to the war.
Meanwhile, on the final run-in to Yellow I, ML 346 and Landing Craft Flak No.1 did their best to suppress enemy positions on the cliff top, in order to cover the landing craft. On the cliff top, a large white house and what appeared to be a small chapel, which were providing cover to the enemy machine gunners, were heavily engaged by ML 346, with 3-pounders, Oerlikon and Lewis guns, and set on fire.
The commandos, consisting mainly of Captain Wills’s No.6 Troop, dashed across the beach to the foot of the cliff. Two gullies led up from the beach. The intended route was blocked with coil upon coil of dannert wire, laced with Teller mines on trip wires. Finding a second seemingly less heavily wired gully, Captain Wills set his men to work with wire cutters. Without the sections of tubular ladder, which had been on the craft that did not make it to the beach, it was a slow business, but the commandos forced their way up the cliff. As soon as they reached the top, they came under fire from a Spandau. Captain Wills, originally from the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, was badly wounded, having been hit in the neck. However, two men cleared away the immediate opposition. Corporal ‘Banger’ Hall, also of the Duke of Cornwall’s, charged the enemy machine-gun position single-handed in a ‘near-suicidal’ charge, dealt with it using grenades, and finished the opposition off with his commando knife. US Ranger Lieutenant Loustalot attacked the second position, but he was not so lucky, and became the first American soldier to be killed in Europe during the Second World War. Reinforced by twenty men from a sixth LCP, the commandos started to push on inland to their objective, even though other enemy positions were still active on the cliff tops. Sergeant Dungate recalled:
‘We did the best we could with what we had, but we were no longer an organized fighting unit after the attack at sea. We had been trained to a pitch for this, but had no plans in case of anything going as badly wrong as this.’
About fifteen minutes after the initial landing on Yellow I, a sixth LCP landed Lieutenant Dreus and his commandos. It was now full daylight, and enemy machine-gun positions poured bursts of fire into the craft, but ML 346 provided suppressive fire, and a total of thirteen men landed on the beach and scaled the cliff by the route opened earlier by Captain Wills. Lieutenant Dreus and his men provided a welcome reinforcement, bringing the number of men from No. 3 Commando landing on Yellow I to a total of 115. However, with the country offering shorter fields of fire than they had been able to appreciate from maps and photographs, movement towards the battery was slow. Sergeant Dungate continued:
‘We’d been ashore quite a while and hadn’t moved very far. I’ll never forget it and I remember thinking, “This is not very clever, it’s too quiet.” We moved out on to a road and there was a tremendous clatter as they opened fire on us. One man called Easterbrook was hit. When we undid his belt, his stomach was in his trousers’
As the commandos had landed in full daylight, and taken a considerable time to clear the barbed wire and climb the gully, III/571 Infanterie Regiment had time to gather troops to reinforce their ten-to-twelve-man cliff-top section, and to call in close air support. First to arrive on the scene was a Spandau team sent forward to reinforce the German section. Next were eight men from a nearby Luftwaffe post who, lacking infantry training, all fell victim to the skilful commandos. Finally, German fighter-bombers raked the cliff tops with cannon fire.
German infantry on the clifts above Berneval taken during an exercise prior to the raid.
It was not long before the well-rehearsed German counter-attack plans swung into action. Major von Blucher, commander of the divisional reconnaissance and anti-tank battalion, had under command a company of his own men mounted on bicycles and a company of lorried infantry from 570 Infanerie Regiment, along with a company of engineers in the infantry role.
Casualties among the commandos mounted, and ammunition was running short. Captain Osmond commented ‘We were the only people in the world who were fighting a war, it seemed. We could see and hear all these lorries heading towards us down the road from Dieppe.’ The commandos started to withdraw the five hundred yards back to the gully, as the
German infantry closed in. Private Grove commented:
‘We had to lie in the grass, take our turn and dash across the path. I was lucky. They just knocked the heel off one of my boots as I ran for it. Every one of my party got across, but a couple of US Rangers came directly down the path. They hadn’t a cat in hell’s chance. All we heard was them screaming.’
The wounded Rangers and commandos had to be abandoned and were taken prisoner by the Germans.
Meanwhile, the armed tanker Franz had sailed in towards the beach and was engaging the waiting boats and the cliffs. ML 346 returned the fire and attacked her tormenter, closing to within thirty yards before the ship burst into flames and was driven up the beach. The Franz’s colours were removed by the British sailors and taken as a battle trophy in spite of fire from the cliff top, which was damaging the waiting craft and causing heavy casualties amongst the Royal Navy crewmen.
Royal Navy sailors of Motor Launch 346 photographed with the tanker Franz’s ensign.
The commandos continued to fight their way back to the gully, suffering further casualties. Captain Wills was carried down to the beach by Private Lerigo, whose strength came from hours of hard training on ropes and on the assault course at the Commando Training Centre Achnacarry. When they reached the beach, it was soon apparent that with the enemy firing down from the cliff top there was no prospect of the few remaining wooden LCPs closing into the beach to pick up the surviving commandos. Captain Wills ordered the remaining commandos to head west along the beach to meet up with the Canadians at Puys. But with stick grenades being thrown down the cliff, they were driven into a cave, where they were forced to surrender when German infantry came down onto the beach and fired into the cave. Captain Osmond recalled: ‘It was obvious that nobody was coming to collect us, so when the Germans got about twenty yards away, I made everyone pack up.’ In the area of Yellow Beach I, thirty-seven men were killed and eighty-two men captured. Only Lance Corporal Sinclair escaped, by swimming out to the LCPs who were being driven further from the beach by enemy fire.