An artist’s representation of the cliffs and beaches at Dieppe, part of the topographical report on Dieppe prepared by Godfrey’s Inter-Services Topographical Department, which supplied the information required for amphibious operations. One of the many specialties of the ISTD was zero-elevation aerial photography, usually taken close to the water’s surface to simulate the view of an incoming ship; the photos were then pasted together into horizontal strips. It also scavenged for and called up old magazine photographs, postcards and family holiday snapshots to get clear pictures of the different German-occupied areas. (photo credits 9.1)
At the base of the same eastern headland lay the harbour mole, a massive stone breakwater protected by two jetties that protruded like giant, welcoming arms for scores of vacationers arriving by ferry as well as the small fleet of cargo and fishing vessels returning from a day’s work along the coast. But getting into the port, particularly after the events of 1940, was a complicated affair. Before a ship could reach either of the harbours, it had first to slip past the block ships and squeeze through a slim 330-foot gap in the mole, with the chalk bluff of Pollet Cliff rising above on its east, or left, side and some of Dieppe’s buildings and shops on the right, to the west. Then it entered the inner channel, a claustrophobic funnel that, depending on the tide and the frequency of dredging, forced any vessel to remain arrow straight for nearly five hundred yards or risk running aground. Once the ship got through this narrow passage, the outer harbour appeared to the right while, directly in front, another channel opened up that led to the inner harbour, which connected to the Bassin Duquesne and the Bassin du Canada, named before the war to honour a group of colonists who sailed to New France from Dieppe in 1632.
The outer harbour was the centre of action in Dieppe. Fishing boats, pleasure craft, ferries, steamers, dredgers and barges all jockeyed for berths alongside one of the three quays that ringed its sides. On the right as ships entered stood the small port railway station, the Gare Maritime on Quai Henri IV, which catered to people travelling by train to or from Paris.1 Directly across the outer harbour to the left was “the island,” an artificial construct roughly 500 by 300 yards in size that housed a small dry dock, a ship-repair facility, and a fish-curing factory on the Quai du Carénage where the fishing fleet offloaded the daily catch for sorting. Connected to each side of the port by a series of swing bridges, the island controlled all the traffic in the port for pedestrians and vehicles, along with the shipping accessing the inner harbour and the two large basins that connected to the customs house, rail yards and several warehouses stocked with coal and timber. Straight ahead lay the Quai Duquesne, where the fish market once drew crowds that congregated in front of the hotels and cafés that “arcaded” the outer harbour. There the port control office guarded a small drawbridge that connected to the island and the Quai de Carénage. Quai Duquesne was also the main route linking the port to the beachfront, running past an oddly placed tobacco factory that sat sandwiched between the hotels, schools and cafés lining the boulevard de Verdun. From there, pedestrians could stroll across the grassy promenade to the boulevard Maréchal Foch, which connected to Dieppe’s main beach. Traditionally, Dieppe was a lively, thriving place, save for the dark years of German occupation.2
Taken from a report on Dieppe created before the raid, this photo shows the daunting route HMS Locust and the rest of Ryder’s Cutting Out Force were to take to reach the inner harbour and the pinch targets. In the foreground is the harbour mole, with two jetties extending like welcoming arms under the watchful gaze of the eastern headland known as Pollet Cliff, crowned by the Notre Dame de Bonsecours church. In the middle lies the inner channel, flanked on one side by the cliffs and on the other by the town. In front of the buildings lies Red Beach, where the Essex Scottish would land. Behind the buildings is the Quai Henri IV, where the trawlers were berthed, and, to the far right, the island where Locust was supposed to bring the Royal Marines. The photo cuts off just short of where the Hôtel Moderne is located to the right. (photo credits 9.2)
The German army’s 302nd Infantry Division was responsible for defending the area around Dieppe, along with units from the Kriegsmarine, which controlled the port defences, coast guard stations and a few coastal artillery batteries. As part of their defensive doctrine for foiling raids, the Germans focused on firepower, fortifications and obstacles such as roadblocks and barbed wire in order to maximize their manpower. Given the topography at Dieppe, they did not need to man every inch of the beachfront with infantry. As long as they had machine guns, artillery, anti-aircraft guns and mortars that could cover the area and dominate the ground, they could bring down punishing fire on any invader at short notice, buying time to bring in reinforcements to drive the enemy back into the sea.
In the eighteen months leading up to the Dieppe Raid in August 1942, the Germans progressively laid out a series of fortified zones along the coast which could extend their range miles out into the Channel. One such zone covered the sea approaches to Dieppe and all the beaches in the area. The defences included concrete pillboxes and bunkers, weapons pits, abandoned seafront buildings turned into fortified positions, and the numerous natural caves clawed deep into the chalk headlands that now housed machine guns, anti-tank guns and artillery pieces. Together, these carefully crafted killing zones would expose any raiding force to a torrent of bullets and shellfire. The Germans marked each zone on a special gridded battle map as an easily recognizable two-digit location reference, rather than the six- or eight-digit indicators traditionally used on military maps, to provide the defenders with a quick way of communicating and calling in additional firepower during the heat of battle. Having been in the area for two years by 1942, the Germans also enjoyed the home-field advantage of knowing every crack and crevice, every bottleneck, and they pre-sighted their weapons accordingly and held regular drills to rehearse their reaction to every situation that might suddenly confront them.
An aerial reconnaissance photo of Dieppe harbour from a previously classified intelligence report, taken in the spring of 1942. Note the trawlers and other small craft to the right of the outer harbour, berthed along the Quai Henri IV: these were the main targets, along with the Hôtel Moderne marked at the top, for the Royal Marine Commandos that included the No. 10 Platoon (Fleming’s carefully gathered Intelligence Assault Unit). In the Bassin Duquesne, to the upper left of the “island” in the middle where the Royal Marines were to land, are the German invasion barges whose capture was to be a part of the cover for the pinch raid. (photo credits 9.3)
Five potent artillery batteries ringed Dieppe; later, Jock Hughes-Hallett, the lead planner and naval force commander for the Dieppe Raid, would code-name them Hitler, Rommel, Goering, Goebbels and Hess. In theory, these batteries were designed to work together to destroy a raiding fleet as soon as it approached any beach in the area—particularly the main beach. Two of the bigger batteries, Hess and Goebbels, were of the larger coastal type that belonged to the navy and straddled Dieppe on its extreme flanks about five miles out on either side of the town. To the east, around the hamlet of Berneval, stood the six 150-millimetre guns of Goebbels battery, which could sling a salvo of six 113-pound shells a distance of thirteen miles once every minute. On the opposite flank, just outside the little town of Varengeville, lay Hess battery, with seven guns, three of the 170-millimetre type that could deliver a walloping punch to any exposed ships preparing for or supporting a landing. The other batteries held smaller guns but were located closer to the city—Rommel behind Puys, Hitler south of Dieppe on the high ground next to the river Arques, and Goering to the southwest.
Closer to Dieppe, in and around the flanking towns of Puys and Pourville, German defensive works sprouted up on the hills and cliffs overlooking the beachfronts. At Puys, situated in a narrow bowl with two great bluffs on either side, three bunkers stood poised on the eastern side to pour heavy fire down on invaders as they rushed up from the waterline. A fourth, farther down on the heights overlooking th
e seawall, covered one of only two obvious ways to get off the beach and head inland—a narrow staircase built into the seawall—while a fifth stood guard high atop the cliff that led to the eastern headland. But dense barbed wire entanglements clogged the stairs and lined the base of the bluffs, protecting the bunkers and slit trenches manned by the German defenders.
To the west, the seaside village of Pourville sat in the valley of the tiny river Scie. The surrounding terrain was more open than in Puys, and the Germans, considering it the natural landing spot for any raiding force attempting to capture Dieppe, went to considerable lengths to defend the area. They placed bunkers and pillboxes in the town overlooking the beach, and others along the valley walls farther inland. These defences were to catch raiders in fully exposed enfiladed fire as they attempted to work up the river valley towards the Luftwaffe airfield on the southwestern outskirts of Dieppe a few kilometres in the distance, or along the rolling hills that led to the western headland overlooking Dieppe’s main beach.
On this commanding point, in the shadow of the old castle, the Germans used the cliff caves that ran just under the bluff’s crown to place artillery that could cover the far end of the main beach and hit invading boats a few thousand yards out into the Channel. On the beach lay the decrepit hulk of the formerly whitewashed casino, now camouflaged with greenish-brown and yellow paint. The Germans maintained a modest barrack in the casino and positioned small-calibre anti-tank guns on each side of the building and a few machine guns within the walls. Snipers could perch on the casino’s roof and its tall twin towers, as well as on the headlands and in the buildings facing the water.
An RAF aerial photograph showing the German pillboxes housing machine guns, anti-tank guns or artillery pieces, as well as a dug-in captured French tank doubling as a pillbox on the Dieppe harbour mole, defending the entrance to the inner channel at the base of Pollet Cliff. These were the first of the formidable German defences that would be faced by the men on the ships when they ran the gauntlet through the inner channel into Dieppe harbour. (photo credits 9.4)
This reconnaissance photo shows a further part of the gauntlet that the raiders would have to run to reach their targets: the Hôtel Moderne and the trawlers in the harbour. The plan was for the Essex Scottish, after storming ashore on Red Beach, to first take control of the buildings (bottom of the picture) and then fire into the caves across the channel, while the Royal Regiment of Canada, landing on Blue Beach, would capture the German positions on the cliff top above. The Canadians’ task was to create a secure corridor to allow unfettered entry and exit from Dieppe. If they failed, the raiders would run the gauntlet anyway with all guns blazing; if their ship was sunk or ran aground in the narrow passage, the men were to jump ship, swim to the ladders lining the harbour walls and fight on. (photo credits 9.5)
Looking ahead over to Pollet Cliff, the defenders could see the hotels, the grassy promenade and the beach, the tobacco factory, the left arm of the jetty and the harbour mole. The long, narrow beach, devoid of sand but covered with pieces of chert rock the size of a man’s fist, is one and a half miles long but stretches only about a hundred yards deep from the waterline to the seawall. At this point in the war, the Germans had yet to sow the beach with land mines, but they had erected underwater obstacles designed to rip the hull out of any vessel attempting to land troops onshore during high tide. The beach itself changes with every tide, with parts of it sometimes left in either a steep or a gentle rise, creating small rolling valleys whose dips provide the only cover, or “dead ground,” a man might find between the sea and the seawall. And from that barrier wall the Germans erected a sizable barbed wire entanglement stretching out for fifteen feet towards the beach. It was designed to slow or stop any invaders, allowing the defenders to subject them to murderous fire.
On the other side of the seawall lay the three-hundred-yard-wide grassy promenade between the boulevard Maréchal Foch on the town side and the now-vacated hotels, schools and cafés on the waterfront boulevard de Verdun. Here the Germans dug a series of slit trenches and strategically placed machine-gun pits and pillboxes, protected by a smattering of barbed wire and backed up by machine-gun and sniper positions in several reinforced rooms in the hotels behind. On the tiny streets that ran perpendicular to the boulevard de Verdun and led to the port, they built ten-foot-high concrete barricades to prevent raiding tanks or vehicles from penetrating the town and the port beyond. If these defences withstood destruction, enemy vehicles would remain trapped on the main beach, open to fire from the town and from the headlands on either side.
In the port, however, the Germans placed few fixed defences—only a pillbox and a long string of barbed wire that ran along the western bank of the inner channel, through the Quai Henry IV and then down the Quai Duquesne. They did, however, keep a Kriegsmarine security force in the town, which in the event of a raid was tasked with destroying the pumping stations, swing bridges, and any classified material that was housed in the port commandant’s headquarters and other facilities. Otherwise, they placed their faith in the defences along the east headland.
Pollet Cliff formed the other arm in the horseshoe that overlooked the main beach. Like the west headland, the caves on the sides and at its base provided excellent natural positions in which to place weapons designed to hit the main beach or control access to the port. On top of the cliff, the Germans built an observation bunker and set up a battery of anti-aircraft guns near the port’s signals station. In the cliff itself they positioned artillery pieces that faced the harbour mole and the beach. In the caves at the base overlooking the inner channel, they fixed anti-tank and machine guns to shoot up any vessel daring enough to attempt to breach the harbour and run the deadly gauntlet of fire.
By the summer of 1942, the once-peaceful seaside resort of Dieppe had become a strongly fortified area designed to stop raiders dead in their tracks with all the will the defenders could muster. And in the spring and early summer of that year, Lord Louis Mountbatten’s Combined Operations Headquarters was intent on making bold plans that would test that resolve.
I have yet to uncover any evidence that explicitly states when the original idea for the Dieppe Raid materialized. Although Jock Hughes-Hallett stated many years after the fact that the concept for a raid on Dieppe germinated during his January 1942 brainstorming session with his advisers David Luce and Dick de Costobadie the day after Godfrey introduced the new pinch policy, there is no record of any serious planning or intelligence collection at that time to definitively support his statement.
As one digs deeper into the Combined Operations files, Dieppe does register in a cursory way in the summer and fall of 1941, when Godfrey’s Naval Intelligence Division and General Sir Bernard Paget’s GHQ Home Forces—the British army headquarters that held jurisdictional responsibility over military operations in the Channel—both provided sporadic and limited intelligence about the port. In addition, because Dieppe lay so close to the English coast, standard operating procedure called for a constant watch on the port, and very brief mentions routinely appeared in reports. Even in the two months following Hughes-Hallett’s group session, there is no sign of any active interest in Dieppe, probably because of the trio’s preoccupation with the planning for Operation Chariot at St-Nazaire, Operation Myrmidon at Bayonne and Operation Sledgehammer at Cherbourg. Everything seems to have remained relatively quiet on the Dieppe front. Then, suddenly, in the week-long period between St-Nazaire on March 28 and the launch of Myrmidon in early April, the collection of intelligence and operational planning for what would become Operation Rutter—the direct predecessor to the Dieppe Raid—went secretly into overdrive.
On April 3, the previous trickle of intelligence turned into a flood. The GHQ Home Forces produced a report on the defences and terrain in the Dieppe area; the Ministry of Economic Warfare provided a list of potential industrial targets in the town; two days later, on Easter Sunday—the same day that the commando forces involved in Operation Myrmidon failed t
o pinch material—the Inter-Services Topographical Department delivered a special report on “Dieppe and the Beaches Five Miles to Each Side” in response to a direct request marked a “matter of urgency” from Hughes-Hallett’s planning group.3 This report, according to Godfrey, represented “a first class indication that the operation had got really hot.”4 At close to eighty pages, it displayed the best that the ISTD had to offer, supplying detailed terrain and potential targeting information that not only laid out the broad outline for the raid but clearly indicated that, right from this formative stage, the NID was working hand in glove with Mountbatten’s headquarters to produce two possible plans for the Dieppe Raid.
The first plan called for an indirect three-prong pincer attack: the infantry or commandos would land on both sides of Dieppe at the little towns of Puys and Pourville while tanks and infantry landed farther west, down the coast at Quiberville, before rushing overland to envelop the town and port as rapidly as possible. On paper, this plan seemed the less risky option because it avoided a direct frontal assault on the town; this was the one to adopt if the objective was simply to test the ability of the various service arms to work together in an amphibious raid, score a quick propaganda victory, or attempt to draw the Luftwaffe into a battle of attrition.
The second option was a much riskier and more complicated proposition—a 1942 version of “shock and awe.” In addition to the flanking attacks, it called for a direct assault in a crablike fashion over the main beach. Under the cover of darkness, infantry would land from the sea at Puys and Pourville, then push on towards the port while airborne units would drop from the skies to attack the coastal gun batteries at Varengeville and Berneval. That would be followed sixty minutes later by the frontal assault, led by tanks, infantry and engineers, which would storm the main beach in Dieppe after a bomber strike and naval bombardment had obliterated the hotels and other structures that lined the waterfront, separating it from the port tucked a few hundred yards behind. Using a carefully synchronized formula in which surprise was paramount, the assaulting forces would employ speed and a dual thunderclap of aerial bombing and naval bombardment to bewilder the defenders, allowing the raiders to close quickly on their positions, seize the dominating headlands and penetrate over the main beach into the town to capture the port.
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