Operation JUBILEE: The Allied Raid on Dieppe (1942) A Historical Analysis of a Planning Failure
Title: Operation JUBILEE: The Allied Raid on Dieppe (1942) – A Historical Analysis of a Planning Failure.
Author: Lieutenant-Colonel Jim Goodman, Canadian Forces
Thesis: It was not any single event that led to the catastrophe at Dieppe, but rather a cascading series of events which began with the drafting of the plan and ended in the failure of the mission. Discussion: On 19 August 1942, over 6,000 soldiers waded’ ashore at Dieppe as part of Operation JUBILEE. The plan called for a raid-in-force by a closely coordinated joint attack of air, sea and land forces. Planners anticipated that the joint operation would take only 15 hours for successful execution and withdrawal. Unfortunately, within seven hours the raid on Dieppe ended in complete disaster. The losses were grim: 60 percent of the ground force killed, wounded or captured; 106 of 650 aircraft destroyed; 33 of 179 landing craft lost at sea or on the beaches; and one of eight destroyers sunk. The raid on Dieppe was conceived as a coordinated joint plan of air, sea, and land battles. However, as planning progressed, it devolved into a complex and inflexible script, in which synchronization was used to make up for operational shortfalls. Inevitably, Clausewitzian friction affected the battle, and the inability to achieve operational objectives within carefully prescribed timelines meant that the pre-conditions for successive steps were not met. It was not any single event that led to the catastrophe at Dieppe, but rather a cascading series of events which began with the drafting of the plan and ended in the failure of the mission.
Conclusion: Operation JUBILEE did not fail because of poor intelligence, a lack of preparation, or the loss of operational surprise. It failed because a plan that originally started out as a joint battle of air, land and sea forces, had devolved into an overly complex, scripted event that had no possible chance for success.
