Unit/ Formation: Landing Craft Units
Location: France
Period/ Conflict: World War II
Year: 1942
Date/s: 19 August 1942
The major support craft, in action for the first time in daylight at Dieppe, had RM gun crews and were developments of LCF No. 1, at first designated as a Beach Protection Vessel (BPV2), with twin 4–in dual–purpose guns. This craft carried almost as much fire–power as cruisers of the 1930s, and off Dieppe she successfully engaged the German coast convoy which had scattered 3 Commando’s craft.
Other major support craft — the LCFlak (LCFs), each with four Oerlikons and eight 2-pdr Pom-Poms, and the LC Gun (Large) (LCG[L]s), each with two 4.7-in guns in open gun houses — had come into service during 1942.
At Dieppe LCF No. 2 closed White beach ‘with great gallantry ... to point–blank range ...’ and gave close support until she was disabled, her Captain killed, her guns put out of action one by one until she finally sank’.
Another LCF (No. 5) came close to ‘shooting down an RAF Mustang, the first we have seen of this type’, as she neared White beach, while providing anti–aircraft cover for LCTs heading inshore with their Churchill tanks.
The LCF cruised some 400yds off the beach, getting its first Heinkel 111 soon after the tanks had been landed, although the craft was already under fire — ‘great holes ... torn in the bulkheads and terrible screams ... from the poor lads who were mangled. I felt terribly sick’, one gunner writes ‘but God was with me, and I held out’.
The arrival of Spitfire squadrons about this time cheered everyone up, and the LCFs withdrew into the smoke about an hour after the landing. They lay a mile offshore for a short while, before going back in to spend the next three hours near the beach. Shelled, machine-gunned and taking casualties, they nevertheless were still inshore when the RM Commando was being withdrawn, ‘scores of unfortunates ... struggling in the water 200 yards from the beach ... most commandos and a few Canadians’.
The Marines’ gunnery officer of one LCF called for two volunteers when she was nearing the end of ‘what seemed like years, picking up survivors’, for he had seen wounded survivors, one with a leg blown off, clinging to a raft. Their rescuers took a dinghy through the heavy fire, reached the raft and rowed back with the survivors. A major air battle over the landing area resulted in greater RAF losses than German, but by this date the Germans were trying to conserve their aircraft.
with great gallantry ... to point–blank range ... and gave close support until she was disabled, her Captain killed, her guns put out of action one by one until she finally sank
Royal Marines Related 'Dits':
References/ Further Reading:
Operation Jubilee - The Disastrous Dieppe Raid. August 19, 1942 - Combined Operations
Wikipedia - Dieppe Raid
Government of Canada Veterans - Dieppe Raid
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