Re: Dieppe

Allan Goodall wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 08 Apr 1998 08:55:03 +1000, Barry Cadwgan <bcadwgan@fl.net.au>
wrote:
> 
> >> (My historian side demands I say this.  My Canadian side still
winces when I
> >> hear the words Dieppe, especially since my hometown of Windsor is
where the
> >> Essex/Kent Scottish (one of the reg't involved in the raid) was and
still
> >> is home based.)
> >
> >That, of course was one of Monty's.. along with Market Garden,
closing
> >the Falaise gap (in which between 20,000 to 40,000 germans escaped),
the
> >pursuit after Alamain..
> 
> Monty was only involved in some of the preliminary planning. The blame
really
> goes to Mountbatten. The rest of the stuff is right.

Some things that are not so well known about Dieppe:

a) The Allies needed a practice run before D-Day. Many things (tactiocs,
methods, equipment) were tried out for the first time at Dieppe. Not
everything worked as planned. That, plus inept execution, made even the
Canadian's raw courage unequal to the task.

b) One reason for the raid was to cover a very secret operation to steal
some parts of a German Radar, vital for the Allied war effort. So vital,
that the sacrifice of an elite division would almost have been worth
it...

c) But the real kicker is that the operation above covered a VERY SECRET
INDEED operation to recover most of the French research data from the
Curie institute about Nuclear Fission, and a shadowy figure involved in
German Nuclear weapons Research. This probably saved the Manhattan
Engineering District nearly a year, and cost the Nazis any chance of
getting an A-bomb before 1950. This part was only revealed relatively
recently (6 years ago, under the 50-year rule), and wasn't given much
publicity.

So: Dieppe was an awful shambles, but despite this, the guys who died
there did not do so in vain. I just wish the Butcher's Bill had of been
as light as it should have been.

-- 
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