Brooklyn Eagle (August 20, 1942)
Second front chiefs study raid results
Allied conclave held on applying tactics used by Commandos
London, England (UP) –
A conclave of high leaders of the British, American and Canadian fighting forces was summoned less than 24 hours after the successful Dieppe attack, it was learned today, to study application of the Commando tactics to the eventual invasion of Europe.
Putting all emphasis upon speed, it was learned that the chiefs of the British Army, Navy and Royal Air Force have already received preliminary reports on methods employed in the hard-hitting assault.
The reports, it was said, are being examined with care in collaboration with American and Canadian officers.
Gaps in available information will be filled in later, it was understood, including whatever data can be obtained from German prisoners, including some wounded, who have arrived at a south coast port.
The German radio, quoting a High Command communiqué, reported Nazi casualties in the Dieppe engagement were 400 killed and wounded.
Many officers among captives
The German prisoners taken included a considerable number of officers, who, one Canadian officer said, “came along quietly.”
He said:
We were surprised since we thought they would fight to the last.
The prisoners were blindfolded before being brought ashore.
Contrary to the reports of the German radio, it was understood that Nazi troop losses were severe.
Throughout the night, United States Rangers, Canadian shock troops, British Commandos and Fighting French Volunteers streamed back across the English Channel and on through cheering English country towns and villages to their bases.
The last of the Allied troops, most of them seriously wounded, arrived in mid-morning under an umbrella of Spitfire and Hurricane planes which streaked a broad path across the 60-mile stretch of the Channel to Dieppe above warships and transports.
Long hospital trains wait
Long hospital trains waited at casualty clearing stations along the south coast to take the last of the seriously wounded to base hospitals.
It may be assumed that as a result of this dress rehearsal for a full-scale invasion the entire formidable German Army in Western Europe will be forced on a 24-hour-a-day alert from now on, from the Brest Peninsula to Narvik on the Norwegian Arctic coast 1,800 miles to the north.
Yesterday’s raid cost the Germans up to one-third of their fighter plane strength in Western Europe: 91 planes certainly destroyed and another and another 100 damaged, many so severely that they undoubtedly crashed, against 98 Allied planes of whose pilots 30 were saved.
The Allied casualties in dead and wounded were high but there was no indication that they had been higher, if as high, as the Allied command had reckoned in an operation of this ferocious sort.