One Day in August

by David O'Keefe

  The British escort destroyer HMS Fernie, which, along with HMS Calpe, was specially fitted to act as a headquarters ship for Operation Jubilee. On board the Calpe, Ham Roberts and Jock Hughes-Hallett would command the sea and land portions of the raid, while a backup set of commanders would stand by ready to take over in an emergency situation on the Fernie, where Ian Fleming also waited for the intelligence booty obtained by his IAU. (photo credits 13.2)

  Long obscured in the history of the Dieppe Raid, the Ultra Secret role of the heavily armed gunboat HMS Locust was to breach the harbour and deliver roughly two hundred men—the “Tiger Force” of the Royal Marine A Commandos that included Fleming’s No. 10 Platoon (his Intelligence Assault Unit)—to their targets. (photo credits 13.3)

  Capping off the day in grand style, a motor launch approached the Locust, bringing Mountbatten for a visit before the raiding fleet sailed. “We were all up on deck,” recalled Douglas Bevan, “the whole ship’s company, all the Royal Marine Commandos, and, typical of Mountbatten in those days, he jumped up on one of the cap stands at the front of the ship. He stood up and told one of the ship’s officers to stand us at ease.”11 Up front with No. 10 Platoon, Paul McGrath was impressed too, noting that the Chief “cut a splendid figure, in the admiral’s uniform” as he gave a quick pep talk, then “dashed off to give repeat performances on other ships.”12 Mountbatten’s visit had the desired effect: it left everyone with the distinct impression that this “was the real McCoy, it was on definitely”—a welcome relief after the disappointment of Rutter six weeks earlier.13

  Sergeant John Kruthoffer, the usually tough-minded, twenty-one-year-old second-in-command to Lieutenant Peter Huntington-Whiteley, found these expectations intensely moving. He wrote later that “the unit was in prime condition—very well trained—handpicked really keen types … with a genuine desire and anxiety to prove ourselves.”14 August 19, 1942, would provide that chance in spades. As Paul McGrath recalled in his memoir, “On that awesome day, we were baptised in the blood and thunder of war, and those who survived the carnage will never forget it as long as they live.”15

  On August 17, Jock Hughes-Hallett and Commander David Luce, two parts of the planning syndicate that had conceived the idea for a raid on Dieppe eight months earlier, reviewed the plans and orders “very carefully” and “went over the whole operation in our minds trying to imagine and anticipate all the contingencies that might arise.”16 That night the raid was postponed briefly because of inclement weather, but Hughes-Hallett would not give up. After an intense three-hour meeting with Mountbatten, Admiral James and the force commanders in which he, along with Mountbatten, pressed hard for the raid to go ahead. The Admiralty and the Air Ministry meteorologist were “every bit as gloomy as Old Testament Prophets,” Hughes-Hallett wrote, but a local weather expert dismissed their predictions, stating that a pocket of fine weather would cover Dieppe on the morrow. With this encouraging news, Admiral James agreed to launch the raid.17 At 1715 hours, a warning order, followed minutes later by the code word Tulip, officially signalled the start of Operation Jubilee. General Andrew McNaughton quickly relayed the message to Ottawa, just as Major General Hastings Ismay sent it on to Churchill as he was returning from his visit to Stalin in Moscow.

  By 1800 hours, Jock Hughes-Hallett and Ham Roberts, aboard the Calpe, had sailed out of Portsmouth harbour, stopping only at the “gate through the Spithead anti-submarine room to watch as the whole force passed through, eastward bound, in perfect formation.” To Jock Hughes-Hallett, the new Dieppe naval force commander who had replaced Tom Baillie-Grohman—with Mountbatten’s ecstatic approval—it had “a certain dream-like quality.”18

  Over the previous few hours, nearly 250 ships had crept out from bases in southern England and the Isle of Wight and formed into thirteen assault groups bound for Dieppe. First, though, they had to navigate through a dangerous mid-Channel minefield. Led by a few minesweepers, each group would maintain its course through carefully cleared lanes marked by dimly lit dan buoys. Ploughing through at close to twenty knots in order to reach Dieppe under cover of darkness, there was little room for error. Although they were aided by advanced navigational gear, some borrowed from the RAF’s Bomber Command, Hughes-Hallett’s orders called for immediate cancellation if one of the large mother ships ferrying the infantry and their landing craft to the drop-off point, ten miles off the coast of Dieppe, succumbed to a German mine or any other enemy action. The men on the crowded ships donned Mae West life preservers and collectively held their breath as each group took its place in the queue to slip through the danger zone.

  Almost miraculously, everything went better than Hughes-Hallett had expected, and almost all of his ships navigated the lanes on time and on target. The major exception was the Locust: with a top speed of only seventeen knots, compared with the brisk eighteen-to-twenty-knot pace for the rest of the raiding force, the river gunboat had apparently been given special permission to trail behind. Following it came Motor Launch 291 (ML291), which most likely was the designated craft that would whisk the pinched material out of Dieppe harbour. As Hughes-Hallett recorded in his official report: “After passing Nab Tower, Locust was unable to maintain speed of Group 4[,] proceeded independently …”19 Ryder’s memoirs concur: “Proceeding along the Sussex coast we finally lost all contact with the main body off Beachy Head. Between Rye and Dungeness[,] neither of which were visible in the dark, we had to alter course in a South Easterly direction through a swept channel across a mine field.”20 Except for the ML219, Ryder and Captain William John Stride found themselves alone, behind schedule and on the edge of what they hoped was one of the two channels through the minefield. As Ryder recalled:

  This was to have been marked by a lighted Dan buoy but we could see no sign of it. “Well Skipper” I remember saying to Stride “What do we do now?” “It’s awfully best to take them at right angles Sir” he replied calmly … we took his sound advice and plunged boldly through the minefield, breathing rather more freely when by dead reckoning we thought we were across.21

  Whether sheer luck, the shallow draft or a combination of both saved the ship from certain destruction remains unknown, but the Locust was now significantly behind time for its rendezvous off the main beach, where it was expected to provide fire support for the Essex Scottish as they began their landing at 0510 hours. That delay, however, was minor compared with the calamity that was about to unfold.

  Despite the scores of post-battle rumours on both sides of the line that the Germans knew in advance about the Dieppe Raid, nothing in any file currently in the public domain suggests that the Germans were aware of it. Through Ultra, the British knew that ever since the raid at St-Nazaire, the Germans had been expecting more raids somewhere along the French coast or in Norway, particularly before the raiding season came to an end in the late fall. The Combined Operations planners expected to encounter a heightened state of alert along the entire coast of France.

  Even if the Germans did know about the raid and Allied intelligence had missed that fact, there is no evidence in the available German records that they made any preparations to counter it. No U-boats or German patrol boats suddenly appeared; no extra bombers reinforced Luftwaffe squadrons; no additional army units arrived to augment the German division defending Dieppe. Everything was proceeding normally, including the welcome news gleaned through Ultra that a small convoy of trawler-type vessels, scheduled to arrive on August 17, was delayed until the following morning but should be in port when the raid began.22 These types of trawlers were expected to house the targeted signals materials, and the message confirmed that, when the raiding fleet arrived in Dieppe, their “prizes” would indeed be ready for the taking.

  At 0127 hours, however, just as the last ships cleared the minefield, a series of messages decrypted by Frank Birch’s Naval Section at Bletchley Park, sent to Admiral James’s headquarters in Portsmouth and then relayed to the raiding fleet, indicated that Hughes-Hallett’s luck was about to run out. Th
e first warned that at 0100 hours a collection of “small craft” was on patrol off Treport, just over fifteen miles up the coast from Dieppe.23 There was nothing to indicate that these craft would enter the operational area, but less than an hour later “fresh reports showed that this was very possible.”24

  Between 0212 and 0244 hours, further intercepts clearly revealed that a German coastal convoy was indeed bound for Dieppe and set to cross paths with Group 5 on the far left wing of the raiding force. At 0216 hours, another Ultra message confirmed that a German coastal convoy, consisting of a small number of armed trawlers, had left Boulogne at 2100 hours on August 18 and was set to arrive in Dieppe around the same time that the landings were slated to begin. A quick navigational calculation by all the ships in the fleet that received the message confirmed that this convoy was on a collision course and would wander into Group 5 about sixty minutes before H-hour, at 0450.25

  On board Fernie, Ian Fleming was busy carrying out Hughes-Hallett’s instructions to deposit all personal papers and identification in a sandbag that would be kept in the captain’s safe. That done, he climbed into an armchair in the wardroom for a pre-game nap, wondering what kind of prize that bag would make for the Germans should the Fernie be sunk and salvaged.26 On the Locust, meanwhile, the Royal Marines made their final checks for battle, reviewing their maps and memorizing their code words and contingency plans in case things went wrong. On the reinforced bridge, Ryder and Stride destroyed “all secret documents related to the operation” by fire, except for map tracings, photographs and communications orders.27

  At 0347 hours, Fleming and his American comrades were rudely awakened by the noise of distant gunfire echoing off the thin walls of Fernie. Moving swiftly up onto the slick deck of the drab grey British destroyer, Fleming discarded the remnants of a hand-rolled cigarette and pressed his binoculars to his eyes, adjusting the focus wheel to account for the darkness. In the distance, a series of fire-red, mushroom-shaped explosions, topped by the flickering silver glow from star shells, merged with the carnival of red, orange and green tracer fire that darted back and forth. Then came another round of staccato machine-gun and light cannon fire, punctuated at irregular intervals by the whiplash crack of larger-calibre naval gunfire. Something had gone wrong, and everyone on board realized that the carefully synchronized Operation Jubilee had begun—sixty-three minutes prematurely. Fleming, deeply concerned about the impact this encounter at sea might have on the crucial element of surprise, stood gazing at the spectacle, wondering how it would affect his IAU.

  What Fleming and everyone aboard every ship in the raiding force were witnessing was the seemingly avoidable collision between Group 5 and the small German coastal convoy that the Naval Section had warned was making for Dieppe.* Group 5 was led by Commander Derek Bathurst Wyburd in Steam Gun Boat 5 (SGB5), and it consisted of twenty ALCs carrying Lieutenant Colonel John Durnford-Slater’s No. 3 Commando to Yellow Beach and their target—the Berneval coastal battery.

  The German convoy—three converted deep-sea trawlers outfitted for anti-submarine warfare* and five coastal motor boats, or “flak detachments,”† indeed loaded with the desired signals materials—had appeared through low-lying mist and taken Wyburd by surprise. The sharp, wild firefight that ensued set the gunboat alight, knocking out her main guns and shearing off her antennae with a volley from the high-powered flak guns. The twenty landing craft were scattered in all directions, taking heavy fire, with some that carried extra petrol tanks exploding on the first hit. Group 5 now had little hope for a successful coordinated landing on Yellow Beach.

  In Hughes-Hallett’s after-action report and other accounts that followed, the collision between Group 5 and the German convoy was portrayed as a “chance” or “unfortunate” encounter. The Ultra messages prove, however, that the collision between Group 5 and the German coastal convoy was foreseen and that messages were dispatched to all the ships in the raiding force to warn them of the approaching threat. Apparently, all these messages were received, except by the headquarters ship Calpe, leaving Jock Hughes-Hallett and Ham Roberts in the dark, and the two destroyers, Brocklesby and the Polish vessel Slazak, which had been ordered to protect that flank from marauding E-boats or U-boats. Astonishingly, Wyburd admitted later that he had in fact received the warning. However, he had decided even before the raid began that if his group was challenged by a German force on the way across the Channel, he would fight his way through in order to keep the delicate timing and synchronization of his portion of the raiding fleet intact. Clearly, he disregarded direct orders in the Jubilee plan which stipulated that, to maintain the essential element of surprise, captains should take evasive actions and avoid contact with enemy vessels during the crossing. Group 1 had followed those orders when informed of the approaching convoy. Wyburd, however, had compromised the entire raid by his insubordinate actions, and after he was finally rescued from his stricken ship, he was summoned aboard the Calpe to report to Hughes-Hallett. Inexplicably, the naval force commander did not reprimand him; in fact, he later lauded him for his “great gallantry and determination” and recommended him for a decoration! Something surely seems amiss here—but perhaps it can be explained by what happened next.

  The German convoy took a serious beating as well, losing several ships. The first victim, the Franz, was hit repeatedly by British fire of unknown origin and eventually limped to shore, beaching herself on the rocks just below the Berneval battery, right between the two selected landing zones for Durnford-Slater’s commandos. UJ1404 suffered a similar fate: with engines hit by armour-piercing shot, the converted trawler first slowed and then caught fire, forcing her crew to abandon ship, with twenty-five of the forty-four men falling into British hands. The remaining UJs fled towards the safety of Dieppe harbour, while the flak ships limped back to Treport harbour, where they augmented the port’s anti-aircraft defences for the rest of the day.28 Months later, a report on the capture of UJ1404, based on interrogations of the crew along with “supplementary” sources such as Ultra and “pinch sources,” appeared in files from Birch’s Naval Section. Something, it seems, although not of the golden variety the raiders were looking for in Dieppe, had been captured along with the crew. This outcome suggests that the “chance” contact with the convoy far off the coast was anything but incidental, and that perhaps Hughes-Hallett, at some distance from the coast, had gambled that he could seize what they were after well before they hit the beaches—just as Ryder had attempted before his raiding force appeared off the coast of St-Nazaire in March. At present, however, there is no direct evidence to support this theory, and it remains a seductive mystery.

  This theory aside, many of the contemporary reports, and the historical works that followed, claim that this clash put the entire defences in Dieppe on alert, stripping the raid of the precious element of surprise and leaving the men about to land on the beaches at the mercy of a prepared opponent. The actual facts are somewhat different. Luckily for Hughes-Hallett, none of the escaping German ships realized that they had bumped into an amphibious landing force. Instead, they mistook the gunboat and landing craft for British MTBs, which periodically ventured across the Channel to prey on coastal convoys. At first, German naval headquarters reported: “At 0350hrs attack on our convoy by surface forces, 4 kilometres off Dieppe. Particulars not yet known. It is of the opinion of the Naval Command that it has been one of the usual attacks on convoys.” Without any knowledge that amphibious craft or Allied troopships were involved, there was nothing to indicate to the Germans that they had encountered a very large raiding operation.29

  Three-quarters of an hour later, less than fifteen minutes before the first boot was due to touch down on the flanks, the signal station at Dieppe observed vessels which, when challenged for a response, ignored it.30 Again, there is nothing in the records to suggest that the Germans realized what was happening. Even after the raid began and fighting had started on the flanks, for instance, the German 15th Army, which was responsible for def
ence of this part of the French coast, still believed the flare-up had been nothing more than a mid-Channel squabble. All the same, it did warn the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe, and ordered its lookouts to intensify their efforts.31 The same could be said for the port of Dieppe, whose jetties were fully alight to guide the way for the fleeing trawlers and whose three guard ships stood ready just outside the mole entrance to escort them to the safety of the inner harbour. Although alerted to the clash off in the distance, the German defenders of Dieppe and its environs had no clue what was about to befall them. Even if the surprise was lost, the shock of the large raiding force suddenly descending on the shore might still have had its desired effect of initially sowing chaos and despondency among the enemy.

  However, what British intelligence had failed to understand throughout the planning process was that the German army in 1942 was at its peak. The soldiers defending Dieppe, despite what the assault troops may have been led to believe, were well trained, professional and extremely good at what they did best—defence. British intelligence did not so much underrate the size of the force there as they did the quality of the men defending Dieppe, along with their doctrine, training and leadership. Once the first planes lit up their radar and pounced down to attack the headlands and the beach, followed closely by the naval bombardment from the destroyers, the Germans finally realized that they were facing a raid. At that point, they turned the full might of their defences against the invaders.

  Despite the clash in the Channel, the surprise seemed to hold throughout the landing zones, except for one—and that was the result of plain bad luck. At exactly 0450 hours, the landings west of Dieppe, at Orange and Green Beaches, began with No. 4 Commando under Lieutenant Colonel Simon Fraser (Lord Lovat) storming ashore near their target, the coastal battery at Varengeville, while Lieutenant Colonel Cecil Merritt’s South Saskatchewan Regiment landed on Green beach at Pourville, tasked with securing the town and capturing the western headland overlooking the main beach. Lord Lovat’s landing was stunningly successful; in just two hours, the sharp firefight ended with a classic bayonet charge and fierce hand-to-hand fighting that destroyed the battery guns, prompting the proud signal to Hughes-Hallett and Roberts on the Calpe: “Every one of the gun crews finished with bayonet, OK by you?”