DIEPPE RAID

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 199, 24 August 1942, Page 3

DIEPPE RAID

INVASION PRELUDE?

Lord Halifax Reports British Elated With Success

Rec. 11 a.m. NEW YORK, Aug. 23. A message from Baltimore states that Viscount Halifax, British Ambassador, and Lady Halifax, have arrived there from Lisbon. The Ambassador declared that he was unable to say whether the Commando raid on Dieppe was the forerunner of a second front, but the British were elated over the success of the raid. "Everyone thought it illustrated very well the co-operation between the three Services," he said.

"Allied Service chiefs are studying the results of the Dieppe raid to determine what went right, what went wrong, and why," says William Stone, of the Chicago Daily News foreign news service, in a copyright dispatch from London.

"It can be said immediately," he adds, "that the German defences were very formidable. There was nothing to suggest that an Allied invasion of Western Europe would be any easier than had been thought. Except on the flanks, where the Commandos smashed isolated gunposts, opposition was heavy throughout the raid. Ships lying offshore were under heavy shellfire until the end.

"In other words, much opposition was never overcome. This indicates that the British, with the massed might of the R.A.F., just did not have the weapons.

"The proponents of the divebomber inevitably argue that pillboxes and artillery emplacements could have been knocked out if divebombers had been available. It is admitted that they were not knocked out, either by the cannon fighters or the bombers.

"As for the big guns farther in the rear, the immediate suggestion is that air-borne troops could have been used, as in Crete, to overcome heavily-defended positions behind the coast.

"It now seems more evident than ever that the United Nations can hope to over-run the German defences only if they are heavily supplied with dive-bombers, paratroops and troop carriers. Whether something is being done about this probably will be known only when an invasion is attempted. The outstanding success was the performance of the R.A.F. and Allied fighter pilots."