The Calgary Tank Churchills From Dieppe

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally Posted by David Dunlop

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?

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:

The Germans were also unimpressed by the specifications of Churchill tanks left behind after the withdrawal. One report assessed that, "in its present form the Churchill is easy to fight". Its gun was described as "poor and obsolete", and the armour was compared unfavourably with that used in German and Soviet tanks.

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

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