The Germans and Air Power at Dieppe: The Raid and its Lessons from the ‘Other Side of the Hill’

I. Introduction

The historical understanding of Operation JUBILEE, the Dieppe raid of 19 August 1942, is an imbalanced one. In the more than 75 years since the Canadian-led assault on those now famous beaches, civilian and military historians have failed to properly acknowledge the ‘other side of the hill’ in their discussions of this military disaster. From the main 5000-man strong Canadian land component, 3367 became casualties of which 1946 were prisoners of war – more prisoners than were lost in Canada’s entire 1944–1945 campaign in North-West Europe. For the naval forces, 1 destroyer and 33 landing craft of various types were destroyed. In the air, a staggering total of 106 Allied aircraft were lost. ¹ Dieppe remains the costliest day in terms of aircraft losses in the Royal Air Force’s (RAF) history. While there have been a seemingly endless number of publications on the Allied experience and ‘lessons learnt’, the same cannot be said for that of the German story. The role of air power in the raid is no exception. What operational lessons did the Germans learn, and what effect did these have on their defence of occupied Europe? This paper answers these questions and seeks to redress the imbalance in the historiography. It does this in several ways; first, by investigating what the Germans expected from Allied air power in a large-scale coastal landing in 1942; second, by viewing Operation JUBILEE from the perspective of the Luftwaffe, the German air force; and third, by identifying air power ‘lessons learnt’ from the viewpoint of both German ground and air forces. This last theme will investigate both lessons regarding defensive preparations against future Allied air power as well as the offensive use of the Germans’ own air strength. The paper concludes by noting the perils of relying on one-sided histories where ‘the other side’ is not taken fully into account.

A review of current historiography reveals a serious deficiency in the emphasis given to the German side of JUBILEE in general, but particularly the Luftwaffe’s story. Partly to blame is the nature of the writing on this topic. The raid is a chapter of military history that has too often found itself the subject of unproductive popular histories. The first historical work on the Dieppe air battle from an operational standpoint came with Colonel Charles Stacey’s official history of the Canadian Army during the Second World War. ² When Stacey penned this history, he was writing about a Canadian national tragedy, and so his coverage understandably focussed on the planning and execution of the raid, as well as on the issue of how the Canadians became involved. Consequently, his description of the air battle extended only to a few paragraphs in total. A far more recent publication, Norman Franks’ book The Greatest Air Battle: Dieppe, is also disappointing. ³ His contribution interrogates only English-language sources and fails to view JUBILEE as a contest of conflicting air forces exercising their own doctrine and influence on events. Instead, Franks seems to view the RAF as the only side enjoying its own capability for independent action, with the Luftwaffe invariably being on the receiving end. It is more a work of British oral history than a rigorous academic assessment of the air battle and its consequences.

Far more promising of a template for the air power historian is a master’s thesis entitled The Royal Air Force, Combined Operations Doctrine and the Raid on Dieppe, written by Ross Mahoney at the University of Birmingham. ⁴ His research focussed on assessing the RAF’s effectiveness at Dieppe and how JUBILEE fitted into the wider context of Combined Operations doctrine. Though he considers events at Dieppe almost exclusively though British eyes, in making his argument Mahoney rightly avoids viewing RAF air power in isolation as indeed so many works have done before. The core of his analysis concerns the RAF’s role in Combined Operations doctrine and operations, and he provides a useful discussion of the Allied ‘lessons learnt’ based on the more suitable, inclusive approach to the Dieppe air battle. Ultimately, Mahoney’s thesis concludes that the impact of Allied lessons taken from JUBILEE can be seen mostly in developments in 1943, not 1944 as has traditionally been proposed. Regrettably, valuable German-language publications on the Dieppe raid are sparse. One useful contribution is found in a doctoral dissertation on the development of the Atlantic Wall by Thorsten Heber, a retired Major of the modern-day German Air Force. His thesis is one of the few works to properly acknowledge and investigate the German awareness of the Allies’ ability to land in occupied Europe. Heber provides a detailed and comprehensive discussion on German preparedness. ⁵ As this paper demonstrates, the German Armed Forces (Wehrmacht) were not surprised by JUBILEE and engaged in considerable thought and planning for a large-scale Allied landing both before and after the raid.

II. Germany’s war in 1942: a distinctive strategic position

In mid-1942, British political and military leaders were confronted with the fact that they were, precluding the total economic collapse of Nazi Germany, unable to land in Europe and thereby create a so-called ‘Second Front’. Churchill’s Soviet allies had repeatedly demanded such an undertaking since their entry into the war on the Allied side in June 1941. For Churchill, however, lend-lease supplies to the Soviets and the ‘raiding programme’ against occupied Europe were all that could be offered until Operation TORCH, the landings in North Africa, at year’s end. ⁶ Decision-makers in the United States also saw direct action in northern Europe as the surest path to victory in Europe. ⁷

This foreign pressure was plain to see from across the Channel. Berlin clearly understood that it may well result in action in the military sphere that would otherwise be considered foolish and irrational. In a directive issued in March 1942 from Hitler’s headquarters, that possibility was explicitly acknowledged:

The coastline of Europe will, in the coming months, be exposed to the danger of an enemy landing in force. The time and place of the landing operations will not be dictated to the enemy by operational considerations alone. Failure in other theatres of war, obligations to allies, and political considerations may persuade him to take decisions which appear unlikely from a purely military point of view. ⁸

Far away from France, in Russia, the German summer offensive in 1942 began on 28 June and achieved great success. Some formations advanced 30 miles on its first day. ⁹ On 9 July, with specific reference to these achievements on the Eastern front, a circular telegram reinforced the earlier directive: ‘Our rapid and great victories may place Great Britain before the alternative of either staging a large-scale invasion with the object of opening a second front, or seeing Russia eliminated as a political and military factor’. ¹⁰ The German 15th Army back in France, whose area of command covered Dieppe, had consistently ordered a higher state of readiness at various points leading up to 19 August. One of these periods ended on the 18th, but the 302nd Division – the division at Dieppe – delayed this until the 19th. ¹¹ Nevertheless, one should not get the impression that the area around Dieppe was the only one believed to be under threat. The prospect of a landing somewhere in northern France was common talk among German servicemen. Hans Detlef Teske, a parachutist stationed near the Cherbourg peninsula – well over 100 miles from Dieppe – recalled after the war how from 16 August he had slept by the roadside in a ditch with his motorcycle unit, in anticipation of a landing. ¹²

In addition to the weaknesses of the British war position which provoked the Germans to consider the possibility of a rash British venture, precedent provided just as good of a reason to be wary. Several raids of varying sizes had already taken place against the French coast by August 1942, most notably the attack on St. Nazaire’s port facilities in March. Confronted with the Allies’ ability to strike at the European coastline, so clearly demonstrated, strategic principle if anything would have provided the impetus to prepare for enemy operations against Europe’s occupied coastline. Moreover, it did not escape German minds that these operations may take place on a divisional scale, much larger than any previous raid that had come before. In summary, at least strategically speaking, the Wehrmacht was distinctly aware of their adversaries’ capability and willingness to commit to a large-scale landing in northern Europe. That the Allies eventually acted in this way came as no surprise to them.

III. Expectations of allied air power in a coastal landing

With the threat to their occupied coastline clear in German minds, what did the Wehrmacht expect in terms of air power in a large-scale landing before August 1942? Those commanders in the West tasked with defeating it concluded that air power would play a central role, although the specifics of the Allied approach to this kind of operation were unknown. The German Naval Staff believed that any large-scale landing would be timed to coincide with best light conditions for the use of airborne infantry. ¹³ Supreme Commander in the West, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, made his expectations clear in July. ¹⁴ In an order that evaluated expected Allied landing means and techniques, he wrote that:

At the point of landing, the enemy will win command of the air. He will then use the bulk of his air forces against defences on the ground . . . The enemy – in order to achieve an attack en masse – will use all the aircraft he has, even slower types. ¹⁵

He emphasized that strafing attacks were to be expected, especially against mobile reserves transitioning to the front – an eventuality for which all combatants had to prepare themselves. To this end, all vehicles in units approaching the battle area were required to possess some form of anti-aircraft weapon for defence against low-flying aircraft. Wirkung vor Deckung (‘effect comes before cover’) was the principle here; effectiveness against aircraft was more important than one’s own protection, even when the only weapons available were rifles. In addition, Rundstedt highlighted the potential use of airborne forces, which he predicted would be used to ‘block chokepoints, occupy bridges and structures to the rear of fighting units, take airfields, raid staffs and depots’. Recognizing that the greatest point of weakness for paratroops was directly after landing, the drop zones themselves were where Rundstedt sought to base the defence against them. ¹⁶

Assessments such as these may seem like any that a military commander might make before a possible action, but it must be borne in mind that these observations concerned joint (or ‘combined’ in the contemporary lexicon) large-scale landings on a divisional scale, which were much different to the relatively small-scale raids seen previously as part of Churchill’s ‘raiding programme’. Allied technique for large opposed landings was not yet known, as JUBILEE was the first operation of its kind. Also, there was no Luftwaffe doctrine specific to coastal defence to base preparations on, above all because Germany was primarily a continental land power. At their core, pre-war German ideas of air power were chiefly concerned with its offensive use in a land campaign, quite different from the defence of a coastline; first, fighters could best support ground forces through intercepting enemy aircraft and second, ground targets outside friendly artillery range should form the predominant focus of ground attack. ¹⁷

There also existed a cultural issue within the Wehrmacht concerning what would today be termed ‘joint operations’. The proportional representation of the three services at the High Command of the Armed Forces (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, OKW) offers clear evidence to this point. In March 1942, Luftwaffe officers assigned to OKW were outnumbered five-to-one by Army officers. No Luftwaffe officer of one-star rank or above was employed there, in contrast to seven Army and two Navy representatives of such seniority. ¹⁸ As head of the aerial service, Hermann Göring likewise rejected serious cooperation with his naval partners outright. His oft-quoted boast that ‘everything that flies belongs to me’ epitomized his attitude towards collaboration in coastal matters. ¹⁹ Under such circumstances, one can understand the lack of attention to coastal defence technique as an issue, since this required the united attention of all three services in a truly land-sea-air environment.

One must also see material preparations in the wider strategic-level context. The coastal defence of the West against a possible large-scale amphibious operation paled in comparison to other Luftwaffe concerns, though this was of course the case for the Wehrmacht as a whole. Germany’s air assets were committed in the Soviet Union as part of the summer offensive, and the air war in the skies of the Reich itself was growing in significance. Over the course of 1942, for instance, the dedication of night fighters to home defence nearly doubled from 180 to 350 airframes. ²⁰ Commitments to the Mediterranean theatre cannot be overlooked either. To sum up its position, at least in the occupied West, the Luftwaffe was rather more concerned with RAF Bomber Command’s strategic offensive than the tactical matters of coastal defence. Regardless, the anticipation by various German commanders of the means and methods of a divisional-scale Allied amphibious operation shows that this prospect was viewed as a distinct possibility.

IV. Operation JUBILEE through the Luftwaffe’s eyes

When Air Fleet (Luftflotte) 3, responsible for all air operations in occupied France, produced its assessment of the Luftwaffe’s conduct at Dieppe, on the whole it made for very pleasant reading for the victors. Despite a marked inferiority in numbers the Luftwaffe had managed to effectively confront Allied fighter aircraft while engaging in their ground-attack task. While the RAF had put up 2614 sorties, the Luftwaffe managed fewer than half that figure. ²¹ In terms of pure numbers, the Allied air forces lost 106 aircraft, the vast majority of them fighters, while the Luftwaffe lost 48 aircraft in total, 25 of them bombers. ²² The report from Air Fleet 3 attributed this disparity to various factors. Primarily, it was the ‘aggressiveness and better training of the German fighter pilots’ which resulted in the aerial defence’s success. ²³ The imbalance was not entirely attributed to Luftwaffe training. In fact, the pilots of the Spitfires who provided air cover for the naval and land force also came in for criticism. Air Fleet 3 put it as follows:

The capabilities of the Spitfire pilots varied greatly. Some units showed very good teamwork, kept good formation and were very aggressive. Other formations flew like novices and, aided by the [clouds], it was not difficult to make surprise attacks on them. The well-trained formation weaved a great deal and kept a good watch to the rear. ²⁴

However pleased the Luftwaffe may have been about the quality of their pilots, the marked inferiority in German aircraft numbers nonetheless left its mark. Since all the fighters had to be committed over the beaches, the bombers could not adequately be escorted to their targets. Air Fleet 3 noted in its report that had the preferred escort been given to the bombers, there would have been no fighters over the beaches to cover ground forces. ²⁵

The Germans considered the performance of their Focke-Wulf 190 exemplary during the air battle. This type formed the bulk of the air defence. RAF Fighter Command was all too aware of the FW 190’s capabilities in the pure fighter role; between January and mid-June 1942 it had lost 259 aircraft in return for 58 kills in operations over occupied France, many of them to FW 190s. ²⁶ Nevertheless, it was as a multirole aircraft where the aircraft shone at Dieppe. Air Fleet 3 understatedly wrote that the FW 190 was ‘in every way suitable as a fighter-bomber’. ²⁷ In particular, German ground troops reported how much strafing attacks had contributed to repelling the South Saskatchewan Regiment at Pourville to the west of Dieppe. ²⁸ One German radio crew that happened to be near the town at the time managed to record the sounds of the battle, and their broadcast was filled with the noise of low-flying aircraft. ²⁹ One German sergeant described such an attack:

English fighters raked us with their weapons and once again covered the city in smoke. Enemy fighters attacked us, flying low, and fired not only at us, but also at their fellow countrymen and their allied supporters, regardless of whether they were wounded or captured. ³⁰

Nevertheless, for the Luftwaffe this kind of close air support for ground forces was not the norm during the air battle. Bombers and fighter-bombers were almost exclusively concerned with engaging targets at sea rather than those on land. The German Port Commandant at Dieppe initially claimed that coastal artillery had sunk HMS Berkeley – the Royal Navy destroyer lost during the operation. ³¹ In fact, she was only damaged by artillery, and fell instead to irreparable bomb damage. The ship was later scuttled. ³² In his diary, Flight Sergeant Allen Mawer described his view of the battle from his Spitfire cockpit: ‘Our turn came at 0730, . . . escorting three Blenheim bombers that were to lay smoke . . . There was [sic] bags of flak and FW 190s everywhere’. Of his second sortie flying escort for ground-attack Hurricanes he wrote,

The air was full of planes and the sea was full of ships. The navy was blazing away merrily and, although the fighter cover was layered up at 5, 10 and 15 thousand feet, Dornier 219 [sic, Mawer meant ‘217’] dive bombers were breaking through. I saw one ship blow up like a bloody great mine [HMS Berkeley], leaving nothing in its place except a huge pool of burning fuel oil. ³³

Despite the success of German air power at Dieppe, there were certain aspects of the Luftwaffe’s experience which were causes for concern. Foremost was the reliance on physical telephone wires for communication; Dieppe showed these to be particularly vulnerable to air attack, even though there was no concerted attempt from the joint Allied force to disrupt enemy communications. This weakness in the Allied plan brought great relief. ³⁴ German accounts indicate that what few attacks of this kind were carried out had a significant effect on Luftwaffe operations. For instance, all telephone lines at the installation responsible for reporting aircraft contacts were knocked out by a direct hit very early on in the operation. At 1030 hours British time, a full five and a half hours after the initial landings, American B-17 Flying Fortresses conducted a pre-planned attack on the Abbeville airfield to the northeast of Dieppe. This caused significant disruption to German communications infrastructure. ³⁵ The Air Force Commander for JUBILEE, Air Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory, suggested afterwards that the airfield itself was knocked out for as much as 2 hours by the American bombers. ³⁶ However, it seems that Leigh-Mallory somewhat exaggerated the impact of the B-17s’ attack. Evidence collected by Donald Caldwell for his reconstructed war diary of the German fighter squadron based at Abbeville suggests that at least some activity continued. ³⁷

The Luftwaffe found that the ammunition stocks immediately available to fighter commands in the West were inadequate, at least when it came to operations against a large-scale landing rather than the less intensive RAF fighter sweeps that they had previously dealt with. For instance, by late afternoon on the 19th all 20 mm cannon ammunition had been expended. Though there was a great resupply effort in subsequent days, there was not enough ammunition for routine air operations on the 20th or 21st. ³⁸ The Army reported similar logistical problems – due to the inexperience of its soldiers they were extremely wasteful and could not have maintained their high expenditure rate for much longer. ³⁹ In addition, the day’s action took a great toll on the serviceability of German airframes. By the evening of the 19th, only 70 of the roughly 230 available were combat-ready. ⁴⁰ As the Germans recognized, if the landing could have been sustained as was intended, the effectiveness of the defensive ground and air forces would eventually have diminished substantially. The German defenders were extremely fortunate that the JUBILEE force was defeated within just 9 hours.

V. German criticisms of allied planning

Fundamentally, the conclusions that the Wehrmacht came to regarding the weaknesses inherent in Operation JUBILEE were the same which English-speaking military figures and historians have been discussing in the decades since. The lack of air bombardment was a ubiquitous criticism, featuring in reports at all levels from divisional to theatre command. The 302nd Infantry Division wrote a particularly scathing criticism of the employment of Allied air power: ‘The British High Command rather seriously underestimated the quantity of weapons required for such an attack. The strength of air and naval forces was entirely insufficient to suppress the defenders during the landings and destroy their signal communications’. ⁴¹ Higher up, LXXXI Corps agreed with its subordinate division that the attack did not fail due to any lack of personal bravery. Rather, the deficiency in fire support both from sea and air was the cause. ⁴² General Curt Haase, commanding 15th Army, wrote that the large number of prisoners taken did not represent the true fighting value of the Allied soldier; he believed that no attack could have succeeded given the circumstances – there was simply not enough fire support. ⁴³ Finally, at the top of the tree, Rundstedt commented that it was clear in the face of the defeat that the Allies would place far greater emphasis on aerial support. ⁴⁴ In particular, he highlighted the relative weakness of the ground strike element of the Allied air component and consequent failure to protect the beachhead. The only rational explanation for this, Rundstedt indicated, would have been if aircraft were being spared for ‘the Invasion’ as a second stage – that is, an Operation OVERLORD in 1942. He knew this was never the case since a copy of the Combined Operations Plan had already been captured and translated. Referring to his enemy, Rundstedt simply concluded, ‘He will not do it like this a second time!’ ⁴⁵

The surprise at the assault’s weakness did not end there. The Combined Operations Plan was for the Germans a lesson in itself on how not to write an operational scheme. Once fully translated the plan ran to 121 pages, including the assorted annexes. German commanders universally agreed that the level of detail included in it hampered JUBILEE from the outset, because it left no room for individual freedom or initiative once contact with the enemy had been made. The withdrawal plan, for example, contained 12 different stages of withdrawal, each one given an exact bomb line. ⁴⁶ The belief that the plan’s prescriptive nature hindered the operation was a staple of German comment. From their perspective, it was incomprehensible how such a rigidly controlled operation could have been brought to execution. As a draft report for 302nd Infantry Division’s war diary put it, ‘the attack was supposed to take place schematically, in precisely timed lines – as if no defence was to be expected’. ⁴⁷ Rundstedt thought similarly: ‘The plan is in German terms not a plan, it is more a position paper or the intended course of an exercise’. ⁴⁸ Those in the Wehrmacht wondered how a scheme like this could ever have expected to properly use all three services in a genuinely joint manner.

This paper has already covered German commanders’ expectations that airborne troops, whether delivered by parachute or glider, would form an integral part of any large-scale joint landing on occupied Europe’s shores. JUBILEE’s predecessor operation (RUTTER) included an airborne attack on Arques-la-Bataille, which lies four miles to the south of Dieppe’s beaches, since intelligence (incorrectly) indicated the German divisional headquarters were located there. ⁴⁹ In the final JUBILEE plan, paratroops were ultimately swapped for Commandos on the amphibious force’s extreme flanks. That this arm did not appear at Dieppe brought great relief to the defenders in hindsight. LXXXI Corps judged that, had paratroops been deployed at the rear and on the flanks of the operation, the situation in that would have been much worse for the defence. ⁵⁰ In particular, it deemed that Pourville in the west would have been as good as lost had airborne forces appeared there – their absence in the JUBILEE assault was ‘contrary to all expectation’. ⁵¹ There was some foundation for the removal of the parachute troops – weather conditions and briefing time were reasons that Stacey highlighted in his official history – but the Germans simply did not view the matter in this way. ⁵² Fundamentally, they regarded the benefits of including the airborne element as far outweighing the risks, to the point that the decision to remove them was almost inconceivable.

These criticisms of Allied air power employment are all the more poignant considering the fact that they entirely concerned facets dismissed during JUBILEE’s planning. The original plan from Combined Operations Headquarters called for flanking attacks on Dieppe, in order to bring about an envelopment. The scheme of the operation was later changed to a frontal assault, but the preliminary air bombardment that one would naturally expect as a consequence did not emerge. On the contrary, the preliminary air bombardment which had originally been planned was shelved, the justification being that using air forces in this way would simply put the defenders on alert. ⁵³ In the official British naval history The War at Sea, Captain Stephen Roskill ventured as far to say that such reasons were – at least in hindsight – ‘not altogether sound’ and that the failure to exploit air power in this way ‘may well have contributed to the failure of the raid’. ⁵⁴ German judgement was, as we have seen, not so understated.

General Bernard Montgomery, as commander of forces in the South-East of England, was involved in the planning stages of RUTTER. He regretted in hindsight that these decisions that reduced support for the amphibious force were made on his watch, before he left to take up command of 8th Army in North Africa:

Certain modifications [to the plan] had been introduced . . . The most important were – first, the elimination of the paratroops and their replacement by commando units; secondly, the elimination of any preliminary bombing of the defences from the air. I should not myself have agreed to either of these changes. Commando units, if thought necessary, should have been an addition to, and not a replacement of, the paratroops; the demoralisation of the enemy defence by preliminary bombing was essential. ⁵⁵

As this paper has so far demonstrated, the weaknesses of JUBILEE were at once recognized by the ‘other side’. The uniformity and strength of Wehrmacht criticism should be considered a damning verdict of the planning process in general. With all its flaws that seemed obvious to them, German commanders wondered how an undertaking in JUBILEE’s style could have been brought into being since so many issues were the product of inexcusably flawed planning. Regardless, they judged that their adversaries, being the professional armed force that they were, would never carry out something so irresponsible for a second time. This was the dominant German conclusion.

Post-war accounts have sought to argue that the high Canadian casualties on the Dieppe beaches were worth the ‘lessons learnt’. In his history of the Second World War, Churchill printed Lord Louis Mountbatten’s narrative essentially verbatim. Mountbatten was Chief of Combined Operations during 1942 and the driving force behind JUBILEE’s execution, especially after the cancellation of its forerunner RUTTER. Mountbatten’s account as accepted by Churchill read in part:

Looking back, the casualties of the memorable action may seem out of proportion to the results. It would be wrong to judge the episode solely by such a standard. Dieppe occupies a place of its own in the story of the war, and the grim casualty figures must not class it as a failure. ⁵⁶

Yet, it was precisely the high casualties that German figures believed would make Dieppe a significant event for the Allies and thus prompt major improvements in offensive landing technique for next time – whenever ‘next time’ came. This required a great attention to the raid’s lessons on the occupied side of the Channel. Rundstedt’s comments in September 1942 are enlightening in this regard:

Just as we have gained the most valuable experience from the day of Dieppe, the enemy has learnt as well. Just as we evaluate the experience for the future, so will the enemy. Perhaps he will do this to an even greater extent because he has paid so dearly for it. ⁵⁷

This idea is at the crux of the failure of previous historical investigation regarding Dieppe. There has been a widespread failure to admit that the Germans also had a say in how the experience would change the future conduct of large-scale multi-service amphibious landings – the ‘other side’ was able to adapt too, which inexplicably seems to have been ignored.

VI. After the battle: dealing with allied air power

Though German commanders were highly critical of the JUBILEE plan, especially when it came to support for the amphibious element, the fundamental German assumptions about Allied Combined Operations landing technique were not altered in its aftermath. Regarding the expected means and methods of air power that coastal forces may have to repel, Dieppe changed very little. Before the raid, the Wehrmacht expected strong aerial forces to both achieve control of the air and perform ground attack missions. Airborne forces were considered a strong possibility. JUBILEE’s failure in no way led the Wehrmacht to believe that another similar raid on the divisional scale could or would not be repeated. On the contrary, one was to be expected, only that it would be far better executed than before.

The critical document explaining the Wehrmacht’s longer-term response to Dieppe is one produced a month after the raid. On 23 September 1942, OKW distributed a ‘Memorandum Regarding Experiences in Coastal Defence’ to all appropriate coastal commands. This was an implicit recognition that the Germans would be on the defensive for the next great western amphibious operation, not the offensive as might have been the case in 1940 or 1941 – if this fact needed further recognition at all. This document described at length expected enemy behaviour during a Dieppe-style landing and best practice for defeating it. It did not differ significantly from Rundstedt’s evaluations in July in its expectations of Allied air power during a landing. OKW continued to assume the Allied use of offensive counter air attacks on Luftwaffe airfields designed to neutralize defensive air power. These strikes would occur in concert with air landings of paratroops tasked with engaging targets in the rear, such as headquarters and incoming reserves. ⁵⁸ The value of the speed and surprise provided by airborne attack was further recognized by OKW in an order on 2 September 1942. It decreed that all male Germans in a war zone, whether in the inner Reich or in occupied territory, could be called up for ‘short-term conscription’ during an unexpected attack. The order was partly justified with reference to airborne assault. ⁵⁹ In addition, in its memorandum OKW accepted that the strength of Allied air reconnaissance would continue to allow a great amount of detail regarding coastal defences before a landing had even begun, as was the case at Dieppe. ⁶⁰ The weakness of the Allied assault on Dieppe despite the detailed prior knowledge of the defences there caused widespread astonishment to German commanders. ⁶¹

The components of large-scale offensive landing technique discussed above were all perfectly well understood by the German defenders before Dieppe, and this did not change afterwards. This was perhaps because of the widespread belief that JUBILEE failed primarily due to the shockingly insufficient support given to the amphibious element, not a deeper issue of faulty Allied technique or doctrine. Bluntly, German figures were convinced that when the Allies came back, they would come back with more. One report produced in late September 1942 warned in explicit language: ‘A repetition of a large-scale landing operation that takes the experience gained at Dieppe into account must constantly be reckoned with’. ⁶² There were no great revelations regarding the means an enemy would employ in order to successfully land on an occupied coast. At its core, OKW’s memorandum simply restated the fundamental principle of air power that air superiority – if not supremacy – is a prerequisite for a successful air operation and joint services operations as a whole. The Wehrmacht in general, and the Luftwaffe in particular, knew that this tenet applied to amphibious landings against a contested coastline just as it did in any other case.

One significant aspect in which the Germans did believe Allied landing technique would change was the prioritization of ground communications as a target for air attack. They did not merely stand still, expecting their enemies to repeat what they had done at Dieppe and fail to properly realize the value of communications infrastructure to coastal defence. That conviction proved itself to be justified; in spring/summer 1943 the Allies held a ‘Conference on Landing Assaults’ in Britain, in order to discuss and develop landing technique for assaults on heavily defended coastlines. In his lecture to the conference, Brigadier General Robert Candee of 8th US Air Force ranked the suitability of targets for air attack during and/or immediately preceding an amphibious assault. As if to signal the shift in focus that had occurred since August the previous year, he placed ‘attacks on airdromes and communication centres’ at the very top of that list. ⁶³

To counter the anticipated Allied change of focus, German coastal units of all three services along with their communications equipment were integrated into ‘strongpoints’ (Stützpünkte), which acted as self-contained centres of defensive strength. Though the concept of the strongpoint existed well before Dieppe, the raid proved to be an obvious and practical example demonstrating the vulnerability of communications to Allied air attack. ⁶⁴ New prominence was thus placed on their role in German coastal defence. The day after the raid, 302nd Infantry Division’s commander Major General Konrad Haase held a meeting with his Corps commander and theatre commander Rundstedt. ⁶⁵ The meeting focussed on immediate steps that could be taken in order to improve coastal defence in JUBILEE’s aftermath. At this conference, it was decided that the highest priority was to be the repositioning of coastal artillery into the coastal strongpoints. This conclusion was motivated by defence against both air and ground attack. ⁶⁶ Lieutenant General Wilhelm Wimmer, responsible for defensive preparations against air attack in Belgium and northern France, went as far to order that no man could be quartered outside the protection of the strongpoints. ⁶⁷ All of this came alongside the structural improvement of defensive positions with concrete and stone.

VII. JUBILEE’s lessons: the Luftwaffe’s ‘Lessons Learnt’

This paper has so far covered the German impressions of the Dieppe raid, both with regard to Allied and German air power. Yet only by discussing adaptations made by the Luftwaffe can one gain a truly useful indication of Dieppe’s worth as a German ‘learning experience’ in the employment of German air power. One of the few components of JUBILEE that found universal German praise was the smoke used to cover the approaching amphibious forces. Though its use, as with most aspects of the raid, was held as a distinct possibility by the Germans beforehand, both Army and Luftwaffe found good reason to make adaptations for the future. The 302nd Infantry Division’s artillery commander reported that his main successes in the battle came from observed fire, but that this was often prevented by Allied smoke. ⁶⁸ In addition, the division’s small anti-tank battalion was not able to properly direct fire due to the reduced visibility. ⁶⁹ Naturally, under these conditions the Luftwaffe’s effectiveness also suffered. Low-flying aircraft were particularly difficult to observe by German fighters operating at higher altitudes. In order to preserve the efficacy of Luftwaffe air power under smoky conditions, a new emphasis on forward-placed direction arose. Instead of simply sending fighter observers forward in order to report on enemy aircraft contacts, those observers became fighter controllers with the authority to independently direct friendly air forces. ⁷⁰ The objective was to maintain proper command and control even when visibility was significantly impaired. Forward-situated direction, as opposed to mere forward observation, was thus a key German message from Dieppe – both for the Luftwaffe and defensive coastal artillery on the ground. With their forward air controllers based on ships, the RAF also experienced firsthand the benefits of this centralized control with decentralized execution. ⁷¹

For the Luftwaffe, there was a considerable delay in initially responding with bomber forces. Indeed, this element was identified by both sides; Air Marshal Leigh-Mallory wrote in his After-Action Report that ‘it was not until about 1000 hours, some six hours after our assault, that our patrols encountered enemy bombers. It would seem, therefore, that these had not been at a high state of readiness’. ⁷² Leigh-Mallory was absolutely correct in his assumption. The same German bomber formations deployed at Dieppe had been on operations the night before and were, as was the norm for the Luftwaffe, not expected to be able to operate again by next morning. The resultingly hasty servicing of the bombers led to their initially weak and piecemeal commitment to the battle. This flaw was immediately remedied; from then on, bombers were to be serviced and refuelled immediately after returning from operations, even night raids. ⁷³ Ground crews would simply have to put up with the extra burden imposed on them. Leigh-Mallory also noted what he saw as a sluggish German fighter response, writing that ‘at first [the enemy] did not appear to appreciate the scale of our effort . . . Early in the day enemy air effort was confined entirely to fighters patrolling the area in small numbers’. ⁷⁴ Looking from a German perspective, one can again immediately find at least a partial explanation. The transfer of many fighters to their night dispersal airfields prevented their use in force in the early hours of the morning. Furthermore, bad weather prevented their redeployment forwards. Air Fleet 3 subsequently limited the practice of night dispersal to airfields very near the coastline. ⁷⁵

The German ‘lessons learnt’ were to an extent influenced by the relative weakness of the air forces stationed in the West. In adapting after Dieppe, the Luftwaffe created a distinctive solution to the problem of bomber escort for future operations in coastal defence. In an ideal situation, a Luftwaffe bomber formation would be ‘picked up’ by its escort over the appropriate fighter airfield on the way to the target. This would not be possible in most cases in view of the number of fighters available – the expected strength of any Allied fighter force during a landing meant German fighters would most likely be wholly committed against them. As a consequence, there would be few, if any, left for dedicated direct escort duty. The solution to this conundrum was in essence to ‘pick up’ the bombers as close to their targets as possible. Bomber headquarters would communicate their intended strike mission to fighter headquarters, along with the requested fighter escort. The fighter headquarters would then set the time and place for the rendezvous as close to the target as possible, so that fighters already in the battle area could provide escort. The newly created forward fighter control units would ensure that both bomber and fighter formations linked up as intended. ⁷⁶ Any Allied ‘swimming reserve’ held back in the water, as used in JUBILEE, was highlighted as a prime target for bomber attack. After the Dieppe experience it was judged that this indirect support would reap greater rewards for ground units than direct ground strikes on the enemy’s beachhead. ⁷⁷

Summarizing the ideas that the Luftwaffe took from Dieppe, one can conclude that the Germans did not take their success for granted, as previous historical investigations might lead one to believe. There is no justification for the view that the Allies were able to learn a great deal while the Axis learned nothing. Common sense would ordinarily tell us this, but the lop-sidedness of Dieppe’s historiography has, at least implicitly, led conclusions in that direction.

VIII. Dieppe’s limits as a German learning experience

In order to accurately assess the practical use of Dieppe as a German learning experience, one must bring the wider strategic picture into consideration. In terms of the air power picture, Dieppe was unrecognizable from the one in later amphibious landings at Sicily and, most significantly, Normandy. Consequently, aspects of the experience were effectively irrelevant. For instance, German ground forces at Dieppe found that the use of mobile reserves was extremely beneficial to a coastal defence. The 302nd Infantry Division was a poor-quality ‘static’ division with few mobile assets, but the little mobile capability that it did possess was extremely useful in repelling the JUBILEE landings. ⁷⁸ Mobility was held to be the key counter to the improved landing operations that the Germans universally believed would come at some point later in the war. To give an example, LXXXI Corps reported immediately after Dieppe:

If the British attack us again on the same scale . . . they are not likely to repeat a massed frontal attack against a strongly fortified area, as in the Dieppe attack of August 19, 1942. It is therefore most important that we have mobile reserves ready for a counterattack. ⁷⁹

Even a cursory knowledge of the later amphibious landings in the Mediterranean and northern France will appreciate that these were incomparable with Dieppe. The air component of Operation NEPTUNE, the amphibious landings in Normandy as part of Operation OVERLORD, will serve as a general illustration. On 6 June 1944 the Allied Expeditionary Air Force flew more than 14,000 sorties while the Luftwaffe managed fewer than 100. German air power never posed a serious threat to OVERLORD – German aircraft flew one tenth of the number of Allied sorties from 6 June until the end of the month. ⁸⁰ In the face of such overwhelming air supremacy, the lessons of Dieppe were not applicable 2 years later. The battlefield of 6 June 1944 bore little resemblance to that of 19 August 1942, where neither side truly dominated all airspace in the battle area. Consequently, in many respects the experiences and lessons that the Dieppe raid provided the Germans with were far less applicable, or even entirely irrelevant, to coastal defence later in the war. Simply put, the Luftwaffe did not possess the means to match those of its adversaries. Commitments on other fronts, all of the Axis’ own choosing, stifled Luftwaffe air power later in the Second World War. With obligations in the skies over Germany, Italy and the East, only a paltry force could come together to face OVERLORD. This was in addition to the strategic effects of the Combined Bomber Offensive on German industry’s ability to feed its air force with planes and fuel. Though German air forces were indeed also numerically inferior to the Allies’ at Dieppe, the situation 2 years later was beyond compare.

Another point to consider when evaluating the worth of the raid to the Germans is the simple fact that Operation JUBILEE was an utter catastrophe. It was a 9-hour engagement resulting from a fundamentally flawed, fatally misguided plan. In no conceivable case could these have been the conditions under which OVERLORD, or any other full-scale and permanent liberation of occupied Europe, would have proceeded. JUBILEE was not OVERLORD or indeed HUSKY, the landings in Sicily. With regards not just to air power but sea and land power as well, the success at Dieppe could never be repeated as a ‘model’ for the coastal defence of France as Hitler hoped it would be when he briefed his western commanders 3 months before OVERLORD. ⁸¹

IX. Conclusions and the perils of historical imbalance

As this paper has sought to illustrate, there has been a critical lack of serious discussion regarding the Germans at Dieppe. What superficial investigations there have been have led to an incomplete and partially misleading understanding of the Wehrmacht both during and after the battle. A proper consideration of the German viewpoint reveals a very different picture to the one previously proposed. Though the expectations of Allied landing technique did not radically change, Dieppe was nonetheless a valuable experience. The Luftwaffe learned much about its FW 190 as a multi-role aircraft. Moreover, the Germans – like their Anglo-Canadian adversaries – noted the benefits of forward air control and made immediate steps to introduce this as a means of controlling air combat on a tactical level. The Luftwaffe took a considerable amount from the air battle regarding close escort of bombers and the importance of their immediate maintenance after flying, even following night operations. The prevailing German conclusion after JUBILEE was that any Allied joint operation on the divisional scale would return with far greater air support for the ground component. The absence of such support was almost unbelievable for German ground force commanders, chiefly because this ran contrary to the fundamental principle of all firearm warfare that the enemy’s ability to engage friendly forces should be eliminated or at least suppressed. The wider Wehrmacht attempted to anticipate the corrections in offensive landing doctrine that they believed the Allies would make as a result of the JUBILEE disaster. The Army’s increased protection of communications networks from air attack, even though there was no attempt to disrupt them during the Dieppe raid, serves as a prime example. In addition, the Luftwaffe was acutely aware of the potential for counter-air operations against its own airfields, despite the failure of the JUBILEE force to do so as part of a wider and coherent local air superiority effort. Those on the German side of the Channel harboured no delusions as to the Allied capacity for change – they saw the raid as an aberration.

Ultimately, the practical benefit of the German ‘lessons learnt’ was greatly restricted when it truly mattered in later landings in 1943 and 1944. This was primarily due to the distinct material imbalance of Allied and Axis forces in those subsequent operations. If that had not been the case, the German lessons of Dieppe may have made a far greater mark on the future conduct of German coastal defence in the Second World War. Engaging in counterfactual history can be equally damaging as the use of flawed historical study; it is sufficient to nonetheless note the Allies’ fortune in the Axis powers’ inability to exploit the lessons of Dieppe to their full extent.

Historical imbalance of the kind found in JUBILEE’s case is dangerous. It can lead us to the false conclusion that only one’s own side enjoys any kind of agency. This is self-evidently wrong – any enemy can and will adapt. If an inadequate and erroneous record of military events is used to educate students of military history, it may well end up having an opposite effect and mislead instead. Even after such a devastating victory, the Wehrmacht did not stand still in evaluating its own performance, as seems to have previously been presumed. This paper has sought to at least partly redress the historiographical imbalance that has led to this false assumption. It is great disservice to military history that the German side of Dieppe has been deprived of the proper study it deserves. No historical narrative should be one-sided. Crucially, the Germans also had a voice as to how Dieppe was used as a learning experience for the future. More fundamentally, one should always remember that there are two sides to any confrontation – to disregard this idea is dangerous in the extreme. The enemy always has a vote.