The Calgary Tank Churchills From Dieppe
 

Ran across a post raid photo of 'BERT' with a thrown left track and wondered if any of the Churchills were ever discovered anywhere after the war, or had they all been hauled away and recycled by the Germans?

David

I suspect that the Churchills, being somewhat slow and undergunned, did not fit into the German order of battle. There is a reference to the Germans suspecting that the UK had sent obsolete tanks into the raid expecting them to be lost.

Even if they were buried as gun emplacements, the main gun would not have been supported for spares or munitions.

I look forward to hearing different as to whether any of the dieppe tanks survived in any form.

The German's put the track back on BERT (lord knows they had several spare Churchills to get track from) and used it to haul the other Churchills off the beach.

In general, the German Army made heavy use of captured material in any shape of form. If equipment was not useable in the frontline, it was used for guard & policing duties or training. If no operational use was possible, it was recycled to feed the German war machine. So, very little from the early war years is left.

What I gleaned from forums like https://forum.axishistory.com//viewtopic.php?t=27180, is that the German Army was able to make up one running Churchill Mk.III from the Dieppe wrecks and used it for instruction and training. I reckon they were able to get more running out of the total of 53 which landed at Dieppe.

From Atkin, Ronald. Dieppe 1942: The Jubilee Disaster. (London: Book Club Associates, 1980) p. 262:
Interesting to note is that as a consequence of the lessons learned at Dieppe, the British developed a whole range of specialist armoured vehicles which allowed their engineers to perform many of their tasks protected by armour, most famously "Hobart's Funnies". Thus, the Churchill AVRE, succesfully deployed on D-Day less than 2 years later, was the direct result of the failure of deploying earlier Churchill types at Dieppe.

HTH,
Hanno

Attachment 93112

Hanno. Thanks for posting that photo of BERT. It appears to be an uncropped version of the one I saw recently and would suggest BERT actually made it off the beach and to some point into Dieppe itself.

David

David,

There are a number of detailed books available about Operation Jubilee, DIEPPE THROUGH THE LENS springs to mind:

"53 which landed at Dieppe?" . . . Hanno - Of the 30 Churchill tanks of the Calgary Regiment that attempted to land, two were drowned and 27 others made it ashore, while the remaining tanks returned to the United Kingdom, having been unable to land.

Cheers

Mark, apologies: I should have checked my sources better! :bang:

As the author of this book (http://www.servicepub.com/churchill.htm), could you fill in some of the blanks?

Cheers,
Hanno

29 tanks landed, 15 got off the beach and spent the day going back and forth on the promenade until they either fell into holes or had a track shot off. Once the "vanquish" order was given the tanks that were able to we recalled to the beach and tried to line up parallel to the water. This was done to help provide cover for the withdrawal of the infantry.

No tanks were able to ever exit into the town. All of the exit roads except for one (Rue de Synagogue) had been blocked by concrete walls. The exit road had a concrete wall with a large steel gate in it. This was also covered by an anti tank gun further up the road away from the beach.

In some original source documents from the RHLI war diaries there is some mention by a couple soldiers under Cpt Hill, who encountered this gun while in the area of the Dieppe post office a few blocks into town away from the beach.

This is worth a read as well:

https://servicepub.wordpress.com/201...9-august-1942/