Dieppe Raid Research Paper

The Dieppe raid is a major event in Canadian history that caused many fatalities, it took place on August 19,1942 in the French port of Dieppe. The Canadian Army were a great part of this event, one of the reasons being because at the time they hadn’t had enough involvement in the war, they had been training for two years since the start of the war and they were hungry for real combat, they were also publicly being pressured since they had minimum involvement in the war. The raid was a planned attack by the Allies on German occupied territory. The main point of this raid towards the germans was to test Hitler's Coastal defences, liberate part of the continent and most importantly it would give the allies experience in carrying out an assault. The raid itself was both a success and a failure, many fatalities occurred, but positive outcomes came from them which affected future events.

In order for the raid to be successful, the element of surprise was crucial, since Dieppe was heavily fortified by the Germans. Unfortunately during the day of

the raid timing issues occurred. The original plan was for the raiders to attack just after dawn, targeting eight beaches along the coast, however Canadian troops arrived late and to their surprise the Germans were already waiting for them. In addition Canadian troops were not well prepared for beach conditions, they were not equipped with proper beach landing gear, and their tanks were not able to overcome beach obstacles. Since this obstacles were not overcome it made the Raid a complete failure.

There were other factors that contributed to the failure of the raid. Do to the lack of coordination, out of the 4,963 canadians and allies that were involved in the raid, 907 were killed and 1946 taken prisoner and a lot more were injured. Furthermore during the airbattle which was also very disastrous, air forces were only able to provide protection for the ships off Dieppe from the Luftwaffe for a short period of time. Unfortunately The Royal Air Force lost 106 aircraft, and The Royal Canadian Air Force lost 13 aircraft. Overall it was a disastrous 9 hours in Canadian History.

Certainly we can conclude that The Dieppe Raid was a failure from all the catastrophes that took place, but it was also a success.

The raid was studied carefully after the fatalities that had occurred in order to improve tactics for future attacks. One of them being the location, attacking from the sea was certainly unwise this would later influence landing choices for future attacks. Similarly the allies also concluded that they needed to improve their communication skills between personnel on and offshore. All this adjustments influenced the future attacks but most importantly the attack on D-day. Since all these adjustments were made the future attack on Normandy (D-Day) concluded in a great victory against the Germans. Because of the Victory on D-day it is important to understand that without the disastrous Raid on Dieppe none of these lessons would have been learned and applied , and D-day would've never been a

success.

In conclusion there were many unfortunate events that took place on August 19,1942, many lives were lost, because of lack of preparation and timing problems. Hitler's coastal defences were well fortified, and the allies were not prepared enough to fight against the Germans. This made the raid a complete failure. Although the raid was a failure, it was also a success, without the valuable lessons that were learned, the experience that the allies experienced eand and analyzed, D-day would have not been a success but rather another catastrophe. To this day Canada is still impacted by this major event of The Dieppe Raid unfortunately it’s not something we can go back and fix, but it is something that has taught many lessons to the allies and Canadians , and has impacted future attacks making them more successful and with less fatalities.