The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #145275   Message #3362903
Posted By: GUEST,Teribus
13-Jun-12 - 10:58 AM
Thread Name: BS: Normandy -- 68 years ago...
Subject: RE: BS: Normandy -- 68 years ago...
I don't know why it would not reflect well on us, it was after all a "raid" the purpose of which was to find things out and to see exactly what it would take to capture a French Channel port intact.

The Canadians in England basically said use us or we are going home, British, Indian, Australian and New Zealand troops were fighting in the Western Desert and in Burma, the Canadians far from home and feeling a bit left out of things wanted to get stuck in.

Lots of things were learned, but there again lots of things that were not done at Dieppe were omitted to reduce the likelihood of incurring unnecessarily high French casualties as the Torch landings were just about to take place in North Africa.

They reckoned that every life lost at Dieppe saved ten or twenty in Normandy and that Normandy would have failed had it not been for Dieppe. Two of the biggest "trumps" that came out of Dieppe:

- Mulberry, the artificial prefabricated harbour
- 79th Armoured Division (aka Hobarts "funnies") specialist armoured vehicles designed to overcome beach obstacles. The US First Army turned them down for Normandy, and that decision cost them dear.