Quote:
Originally Posted by Harry Ree  The only lesson and the most important to be learnt from this farce was that it revealed that it was unlikely that a working port could be captured to support an invasion of France. |
I believe they'd learnt this lesson already, one could even say that for centuries it was known that seaborne assaults on ports rarely succeed and capture from the land is the standard practice.
I don't think we'll ever fully know the true motives for Dieppe, particularly if it really was a most effective signal (or even 'lesson' as Alanbrooke appears to have put it) to the Soviet & US allies calling for an immediate '2nd' front that the French coast would require much more preparation.
Such realpolitik decisions would be exceptionally hard to candidly admit in public and thus are equally hard to prove, but I begin to lean more strongly towards the theory, if only because it adds more meaning to the sacrifice of those 907 Killed & 1874 POW's
(?)
Just pottered onto this rather good page while trying to check casualties:
Combined operations - Dieppe
Cheers,
Adam.