Dieppe Raid, worst lost of Allied Battles?

[davebender]

Dunkirk gets my vote. British propaganda says the BEF was saved at Dunkirk. In actuality the 3 BEF army corps were destroyed as combat units.
2,472 out of 2,794 total artillery pieces lost. (I assume this number includes AT and AA guns)
63.879 out of 66,618 total motor vehicles lost.

[CharlesBronson]

Allied footage of the operation jubille.

YouTube - Desembarco en Dieppe 1942. Version Aliada.

[buffnut453]

Dunkirk gets my vote. British propaganda says the BEF was saved at Dunkirk. In actuality the 3 BEF army corps were destroyed as combat units.
2,472 out of 2,794 total artillery pieces lost. (I assume this number includes AT and AA guns)
63.879 out of 66,618 total motor vehicles lost.

Huh??? Sorry, Dave, but I don't get it. The British Army did indeed lose a large amount of heavy equipment (it's bloody hard to evacuate heavy equipment) but the keypoint is more than 300,000 troops (of which roughly one-third were French) were successfully evacuated. Think about it - almost one third of a million men in just a few weeks. It was nothing short of miraculous! And, no, you don't win wars by retreating...but it remains one of the pivotal events of WWII. It was a stunning achievement. I guess I'm just a glutton for propaganda!

[freebird]

Huh??? Sorry, Dave, but I don't get it. The British Army did indeed lose a large amount of heavy equipment (it's bloody hard to evacuate heavy equipment) but the keypoint is more than 300,000 troops (of which roughly one-third were French) were successfully evacuated. Think about it - almost one third of a million men in just a few weeks. It was nothing short of miraculous! And, no, you don't win wars by retreating...but it remains one of the pivotal events of WWII. It was a stunning achievement. I guess I'm just a glutton for propaganda!

Not Dunkirk, but "Fall Gelb" is a strong candidate for worst Allied loss, with the Allied forces outnumbering the Germans. there is no way that a well equipped defender should have been routed like that

.

[Njaco]

Huh??? Sorry, Dave, but I don't get it. The British Army did indeed lose a large amount of heavy equipment (it's bloody hard to evacuate heavy equipment) but the keypoint is more than 300,000 troops (of which roughly one-third were French) were successfully evacuated. Think about it - almost one third of a million men in just a few weeks. It was nothing short of miraculous! And, no, you don't win wars by retreating...but it remains one of the pivotal events of WWII. It was a stunning achievement. I guess I'm just a glutton for propaganda!

Very good book on the subject is "Dunkirk" by Walter Lord (he of "Night to Remember" fame) and he does his usual throrough minute by minute account of the action.

[parsifal]

This kind of testing was not needed, the could use similar British beaches to test it.

Short answer, no, it had to be proven that direct assault of a German held port was not feasible. Also, that specialised armoured support was a great advantage to assaulting defencded positions. They also needed to probe the dfences to test reaction timers and the effectiveness of the fire support plan.

Its easy with the benefit of perfect hindsight to say "oh this could have been worked out on the4 sand table"....it cant.

Dieppe was a necessary evil needed to work out a number of critical issues in the cross channel plans. Far from a defeat, it was a victory, of sorts, because it enabled changes to be made in the plans for the normaqndy crossings.

The last great amphibious landings undertaken by the British against a heavily defended target had been Gallipoli, and this had been a disaster.....the attacks in the Solomons were the only other major amphibious operation up to that time, and this had not been against a well defended beachhead, or a defended port. It had to be determined what was possible, and waht was needed, and the Canadians courageously showed waht needed to be discovered. I think the battle was an exemplary example of the Canadian dogged determination and courage under fire. And more to the point, it saved many more lives than it lost, through the knowledge gained that day and in the subsequent analysis.

[buffnut453]

Great post Parsifal. I undertook several "staff rides" to the Dieppe beaches when I was an instructor several years ago. We would travel on the ferry to Dieppe so we could see the entire beach frontage almost as it appeared to the invading British forces in 1942. We'd visit all the beaches, including Lovatt's successful attack on Green Beach, with presentations on what happened there. We also looked at the parachute landing grounds and wrapped up our tour by visiting and laying a wreath at a military cemetary. It was always a very moving experience for me. It is a tragedy that so many brave lads died to prove the impossibility of assaulting a heavily-defended port. However, many lessons were learned relating to intelligence, deception and the operational art of beach landings.

[JoeB]

Not Dunkirk, but "Fall Gelb" is a strong candidate for worst Allied loss, with the Allied forces outnumbering the Germans. there is no way that a well equipped defender should have been routed like that

.

I agree, if speaking of Western Allies the Battles of Neth/Belg/France aka Fall Gelb, dwarfed Dieppe as a disaster. Dunkirk itself wasn't an Allied defeat but a salvaging of more than could be expected, once the overall campaign of which it was part had deteriorated to that point. The expected outcome once the British (and part of French) force was hemmed into the Dunkirk bridgebead was loss of almost all their heavy equipment (as happened) *plus* virtually all their men as POW's (which was avoided).

If you include the Soviets, then their defeats as a whole in both 1941 and srping '42 campaign surpassed the Battle of France in losses of men and equipment, but OTOH the Germans did not achieve their operational objectives in either of those campaigns (and were seriously mauled themselves, especially in the fall phase of '42 campaign), whereas they did in their offensive into Benelux/France (though failed to achieve their ultimate strategic objective of knocking all their major opponents out of the war, again in part because the British retained at least most of their army personnel at Dunkirk).

The 1940 campaign was one of the greatest victory/defeats for the respective sides in military history, and could easily have resulted in a situation where Germany's worst outcome was stalemate with Britain while dominating Western Europe indefinitely, with a very realistic chance of forcing Britain into an accomodation eventually. Only Hitler's later collossal mistake of attacking the Soviets makes the 1940 campaign in France less of a landmark in history than it might have been.

Joe

[michaelmaltby]

We have a good idea what the Allies learned from Dieppe:

- can't attack an urban port
- beware of rocky beaches
- tanks can be problematic
- don't let officers go ashore with "plans"
- don't handcuff enemy prisoners
- surprise is hard to achieve
- etc. etc

My question is: what did the Germans learn from Dieppe?

My guess is: not much. They had to feel pretty smug about their defense. And THAT in itself may have spelled problems later on - in June '44.

Thoughts on this ....?

MM

[BombTaxi]

Personally, I consider Dieppe a necessary rehearsal for D-Day. Without the lessons learned through combat at Dieppe, D-Day would have been much bloodier and may even have failed. We tend to forget that even including the horrendous losses on Omaha beach, the overall Allied loss on D-Day was relatively light when the operation is considered as a daylight assault against fixed defences over a broad front. Without Dieppe, and also the landing ops carried out by the US in the Pacific up to that date, the tally could have been far heavier. And while the 'Funnies' were not an unqualified success, Dieppe and D-Day were important developmental steps for vehicle types that are still in use today.

Worst Allied loss of the war is probably Fall Gelb, or Barbarossa on the Eastern front. Dieppe, in terms of casualties, and strategic impact, is really a very minor setback in the wider picture. A tragedy for sure, but not a point where the outcome of the war hung in the balance.

[timshatz]

Worst Allied loss of the war is probably Fall Gelb, or Barbarossa on the Eastern front. Dieppe, in terms of casualties, and strategic impact, is really a very minor setback in the wider picture. A tragedy for sure, but not a point where the outcome of the war hung in the balance.

Agree with Bomb Taxi on this one. Dieppe was not critical to anything but the planning for Overlord. Learned what not to do (important part of learning what TO DO). Very helpful in that realm.

Worst loss has to be on the Eastern Front in terms of total losses. Almost anything in the first 6 months of the war resulted in stupendous losses to the Soviets. Only Russia could absorb such losses and keep going.

In terms of affecting the course of the war, strategically, that is harder:

Crete, mentioned already, is a good one (Lost the island and lost the advantage in Africa),

Singapore, not so much, that place was gonna fall no matter what happened.

Battle of France is a good one. Fight the Germans to a standstill in 1940 and the whole war is different.

Dessert war is more about logistics than anything else. Longer the lines of supply, the harder it is to get enough combat power to keep the advances going.

I guess I'd go with the Battle of France. Loss of France and the evacuation of forces from the Continent gave Germany the leisure to expand the war as she wanted and removed a major threat in France.

[davebender]

After a bit more thought I vote for French 1st Army Group. The BEF was only a portion of the huge Army Group destroyed in Belgium during May 1940. Germany must have bagged at least 50 Allied divisions in this fight which lasted only about two weeks. The cream of the British and French armies were among the destroyed divisions.

1st French Army.
2nd French Army.
7th French Army.
9th French Army.
BEF.
Belgium Army.

[BombTaxi]

Dave,

I'm still struggling with the notion that the BEF was 'destroyed' in 1940. True, they left all of their armour, artillery and MT behind. This was only a problem if Hitler was imminently going to invade England. As we have discussed many times here, the German war machine was not capable of doing so at this point. The most vital materiel element of the British force, i.e the fighter component of the Advanced Air Striking Force, was withdrawn without undue loss and participated successfully in the next major engagement with the Germans.

The most vital element of the BEF 'full stop', i.e the combat-hardened men who would form the nucleus of a victorious British army, were bought off largely intact, along with a substantial number of French troops who would flight alongside them.

The BEF was defeated. But given the facts stated above, how can you justify your claim that it was destroyed?

[michaelmaltby]

If you live to fight another day, are you "destroyed" ...?

MM

[imalko]

I believe Dave's point is this... BEF was destroyed as effective fighting unit at Dunkirk. Yes, those 300.000 men were not all killed or captured, but lost all of their armament and equipment during the evacuation.

"Live to fight another day..." Yes, they did, but what if that "another day" had come in summer 1940. I took a long time to re-equip and rearm those troops. Had the Germans been able to invade UK in 1940 I doubt that those 300.000 unarmed men would counted much for the defense.