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Did you know that during WWII Naval Intelligence Commander Ian Fleming
was largely responsible for the Commando / Naval raid on Dieppe ?
The raid resulted in the location, seizure and capture of an Enigma machine.
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Yes and one of the people in his department was James Charles Bond
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-45758716
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Good one Pat :-D Elsewhere I found a top secret Memo to Commander Fleming.
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Execution of you mean. It was yet another of Churchil's mad schemes.
"Although extremely valuable lessons were learned in the Raid on Dieppe, a steep price was paid. Of the 4,963 Canadians who embarked for the operation, only 2,210 returned to England, and many of these were wounded. There were 3,367 casualties, including 1,946 prisoners of war; 916 Canadians lost their lives ! "
Among the "lessons learned" was that the Dieppe cliffs are a tough target for seaborn assault, the sea is very cold, the Germans were heavily armed, entrenched and could shoot straight, Allied weapons were way out of date or not fit for task (*) and communication between units was poor to non existent.
(*) eg Spitfire mk.ix is a poor ground attack platform with short range..
Other than the non existent military lessons the main impact of the raid was to convince Hitler to abandon any lingering hopes of a deal with the UK and get on with the "Atlantic Wall". The way this drained resources from the Eastern Front had a disastrous effect on Erich von Manstein and friends far worse than direct weapons delivery to the Reds. It also convinced Hitler that the invasion would be Calais-Dieppe and not Normandie. Oh yes, it was also taken as a flag by the Yanks never ever to put a US Army under Brit command.
Lois Ruth Maxwell (née Hooker; 14 February 1927 – 29 September 2007) was a Canadian actress, best known for her portrayal of Miss Moneypenny in the first 14 James Bond films (1962–1985). Samantha Bond, yes, played Miss M. several times.
BTW the main site for Naval Intelligence and the U-Boat war was under the ground in Derry, N.I.
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"The raid resulted in the location, seizure and capture of an Enigma machine"
Nonsense.
1. No enigma machine was captured.
It is true that at that time Bletchley were having problems with 4 rotor machines but they were resolved by a mix of math analysis and capture of a 4 rotor machine in the North Atlantic.
2. This idea has been advanced by various historians with access to the released files. There is no substance to it.
3. The original 3 rotor machines used by Bletchley were made by the Poles who had managed to reverse engineer the functionality. They gave all their know how to the Brits in 1939/40 - Bletchley did not work from a standing start. The Brits obtained a real machine from a E European capital using blackmail.
Dieppe was a very expensive fiasco there is no getting away from it. D-Day in 1944 would not have been possible without the military savvy of the Americans as well as their industrial machine.
Bond is very entertaining fantasy but has vey little contact with reality.
Real spies present a very boring low profile persona.
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"The raid resulted in the location, seizure and capture of an Enigma machine"
Nonsense.
1. No enigma machine was captured.
Steady on Rollo
Why was there a television documentary on the very subject ?
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I assume you are talking about the voxpop historian David O'Keefe.
Based on declassified files O'Keefe claims that the core objective was to obtain an Enigma 4 rotor machine.
1. Whether or not obtaining a 4 rotor machine was an objective v def it did not happen. Instead using math analysis ( Turing's "bombes/Tunny" ) and the Colussus computer (built by Tommy Flowers from the GPO) the gap was soon made up even before the RN got hold of the real thing. One of my rellies (seconded from the GPO at Dollis Hill) worked at Bletchley. She told me quite a bit before she died not so long ago. Her memory of the sudden lack of Ultra intelligence was sharp.
2. If getting hold of a 4 rotor machine had been the objective an operation such as the Dieppe "raid" was about the worse possible way to go about it. Are you aware that an Enigma machine was highly portable? It is hardly likely that the Abwehr would leave it in harm's way. An up front loss iwould have been immediately countered. The success of ULTRA depended on the 100% belief by Germany that the Allies could not decrypt Enigma and quite possibly were unaware of its existence. Hence the casual operation of it esp on the E Front.
TV gave up on Reith's dictum to "inform, educate and entertain" long ago with "inform" being the major loser. People such as O'Keefe have profited from the gaps.
By 1943 the UK had two working Colussus machines. They were the world's first useful programmable computers. After the war all but one of ten were destroyed the last somehow survived as a box of bits. The top brass and politicians had no idea at all of the damage they were doing.
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Very interesting. I have nothing other than that TV documentary to support my post.
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