RE: Dieppe

I have to stop lurking for a bit ;-) My regiment was at Dieppe as well,
the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry.  We've had many lectures on Dieppe
and even had 2 veterans from the battle give us their impressions and
memories of it.

>From what I've heard and from what I've read, the main reason for
Dieppe
was more political than military.  Stalin had been pressuring the other
Allies for some time for a 'Second Front' in Europe.  I've never heard
of the attack being used as cover for a raid on German radar.

The reason Canadians made up a large part of the group was because they
were well trained and, as others mentioned, doing nothing at the time.
One of the veterans mentioned that it seamed as though they were over
trained (this may be because several training deaths occurred prior to
Dieppe).

-----Original Message-----
From: agoodall@sympatico.ca [mailto:agoodall@sympatico.ca]
Sent: Thursday, April 09, 1998 10:09 AM
To: FTGZG-L@bolton.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Dieppe

On Tue, 07 Apr 1998 19:51:49 +1000, Alan E & Carmel J Brain
<aebrain@dynamite.com.au> wrote:

>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...

Are you sure about this? This is the first time I've heard of this. This
sounds like you've got the Bruneval raid mixed in with Dieppe. As far as
I
know, beside the Canadians and British landing on the main beach, there
was a
British Commando raid to take out some gun emplacements overlooking the
beach
(this commando raid was successful; one of the few bright sparks on the
raid).

>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.

Again, I have doubts about this. A lot of the Curie research, including
all
the uranium they had, was moved to Czechoslovakia. As for any raid
stopping
the German A-bomb, the raid on the Norwegian heavy water plant set back
the
uranium project. However, the Germans were never really on the right
track to
produce an A-bomb. While Hitler wanted a bomb, the German scientists
believed
that coming up with a nuclear reactor was the first logical step. They
were
pushing for this, in an fairly underpowered project, and weren't on the
right
track for a bomb. I've read several places where Heisenberg, after being
captured by the allies and upon hearing of the Hiroshima bomb, did the
math to
work out the critical mass needed for a bomb for the first time. He was
out by
a couple of orders of magnitude.

The Germans weren't that far along in bomb research. Ironically, the
Japanese
were quite a bit further ahead and might (though it's not very likely)
have
built their own bomb...

>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.

The raid wasn't in vain, mainly because the debacle was so complete that
there
was a lot to learn from the raid. In particular, the lack of naval
support
(which Monty had required while he was part of the planning, but which
got
cancelled before the raid) was acute. During the D-Day landings,
overwhelming
naval artillery support was available and probably turned the tide (I'd
hate
to think what Omaha beach would have been like without naval
bombardment).

Allan Goodall	     agoodall@sympatico.ca

"Once again, the half time score, 
 Alien Overlords: 142,000. Scotland: zip."
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