Originally code named Operation Rutter, the raid on Dieppe, a German-occupied French port, was launched on August 19, 1942. It was planned by the Combined Operations Headquarters of the British army in collaboration with the General Headquarters of the Home Forces, which had delegated authority to Gen. Bernard Law Montgomery, at the time commander in chief of the Southeastern Command. Montgomery fashioned the raid into a full-scale frontal assault on Dieppe but made no provision for preparation in the form of aerial bombardment. While the raid was planned by the British, it was executed primarily by Canadian troops of the 2nd Canadian Division, commanded by Maj. Gen. J. H. Roberts, largely in response to a Canadian request for a greater role in the war. When adverse weather postponed Operation Rutter on July 7, 1942, Montgomery reconsidered the entire enterprise and ended up recommending that it be discarded altogether. Thus, Dieppe might never have happened but for the fact that Montgomery was transferred to command of the Eighth British Army in North Africa, leaving Vice Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, chief of Combined Operations, to revive Rutter as Operation Jubilee. Not only was this decision unfortunate from a tactical point of view, it presented a grave security risk, since Operation Rutter, planned then cancelled, was no longer a secret. Nevertheless, the operation went forward--and would prove disastrous.

Operation Jubilee was launched from five English ports between Southampton and Newhaven and included 4,963 Canadians, 1,075 British, and 50 U.S. Army rangers, a force far too small for an ambitious frontal assault on the port of an occupied country. Much more impressive was the naval force assembled to support the raid, 237 warships and landing craft, until one recognizes that no battleships were employed because of the difficulties of maneuvering in the English Channel. Eight destroyers were expected to lend fire support to the landings. It was a mission for which destroyers were not at all suited. Naval bombardment preparatory to a major amphibious assault requires the heavy guns of battleships or cruisers. Nor was air cover adequate, because the British declined to divert heavy bombers from the Strategic bombing of Germany. Only fighter squadrons were deployed in the hope of drawing the Luftwaffe into open battle. There was no preparatory aerial bombardment.

Although aerial reconnaissance had been thorough, it was limited to coastal defenses and did not reveal the German gun emplacements in the cliffs of the headlands. Indeed, on-the-ground intelligence was generally lacking, and very little was known about German order of battle or even basic numbers. Terrain had been superficially assessed, not from military maps or eyewitnesses, but from a collection of holiday snapshots. Thus, an inadequate force was being sent, without preparation by naval or aerial bombardment and virtually blind, against the superbly prepared defenses of a highly skilled enemy. . .

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