Normandy Normandy (; french: link=no, Normandie ; nrf, Normaundie, Nouormandie ; from Old French , plural of ''Normant'', originally from the word for "northman" in several Scandinavian languages) is a geographical and cultural region in Northwestern ...

Second Tactical Air Force The RAF Second Tactical Air Force (2TAF) was one of three tactical air forces within the Royal Air Force (RAF) during and after the Second World War. It was made up of squadrons and personnel from the RAF, other British Commonwealth air forces, ...

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and ...

Caen Caen (, ; nrf, Kaem) is a commune in northwestern France. It is the prefecture of the department of Calvados. The city proper has 105,512 inhabitants (), while its functional urban area has 470,000,Thury-Harcourt. The château had recently been occupied by the HQ of , the command organisation for the German

Panzer division A Panzer division was one of the armored (tank) divisions in the army of Nazi Germany during World War II. Panzer divisions were the key element of German success in the blitzkrieg operations of the early years of World War II. Later the Waffe ...

s in France and Belgium. Eighteen staff officers were killed in the attack and the commander,

Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg Leo Dietrich Franz Reichsfreiherr Geyr von Schweppenburg (2 March 1886 – 27 January 1974), was a German general during World War II, noted for his pioneering stance and expertise in the field of armoured warfare. He commanded the 5th Panzer Arm ...

was wounded. A counter-offensive being prepared against the Allied beachhead by the was postponed and then cancelled. Command was transferred to the headquarters of the ; the HQ was withdrawn to Paris and remained out of action until 28 June.

Background

(Field Marshal) Gerd von Rundstedt, ( the commander of German forces in western Europe) established , (

Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg Leo Dietrich Franz Reichsfreiherr Geyr von Schweppenburg (2 March 1886 – 27 January 1974), was a German general during World War II, noted for his pioneering stance and expertise in the field of armoured warfare. He commanded the 5th Panzer Arm ...

from 19 November 1943 to 4 July 1944) as a headquarters for the administration and training of the seven

Panzer division A Panzer division was one of the armored (tank) divisions in the army of Nazi Germany during World War II. Panzer divisions were the key element of German success in the blitzkrieg operations of the early years of World War II. Later the Waffe ...

s based in northern France and Belgium. The organisation was also to command the Panzer divisions as a strategic reserve during the anticipated Allied invasion from Britain. On 9 June 1944, three days after the beginning of

Operation Overlord Operation Overlord was the codename for the Battle of Normandy, the Allies of World War II, Allied operation that launched the successful invasion of German-occupied Western Front (World War II), Western Europe during World War II. The operat ...

, the invasion of France by the Western Allies,

Erwin Rommel Johannes Erwin Eugen Rommel () (15 November 1891 – 14 October 1944) was a German field marshal during World War II. Popularly known as the Desert Fox (, ), he served in the ''Wehrmacht'' (armed forces) of Nazi Germany, as well as servi ...

, the commander of (Army Group B) with responsibility for the defence of northern France drove to the HQ of and gave orders for a counter-offensive against the Allied landings in Normandy.

Government Code and Cypher School

The Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) code-breaking organisation at

Bletchley Park Bletchley Park is an English country house and estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes ( Buckinghamshire) that became the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War. The mansion was constructed during the years following ...

read German radio signals encrypted by the Enigma cypher machine and was part of an elaborate system of wireless listening posts, traffic analysis and direction finding used against Germany during the war.

Ultra adopted by British military intelligence in June 1941 for wartime signals intelligence obtained by breaking high-level encrypted enemy radio and teleprinter communications at the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park. '' ...

decrypts on 11 and 18 March 1944 established the existence of and that its headquarters was in Paris. A big increase in wireless traffic from was detected by the British Monitoring Section on 8 June 1944, when the

17th SS Panzergrenadier Division 17 (seventeen) is the natural number following 16 and preceding 18. It is a prime number. Seventeen is the sum of the first four prime numbers. In mathematics 17 is the seventh prime number, which makes seventeen the fourth super-prime, as s ...

came under the command of the . The site of the source was identified by High-frequency direction finding ("huff-duff") at the château in the commune of

La Caine La Caine () is a commune in the Calvados department in the Normandy region in north-western France. History A nunnery was founded at La Caine, probably in 1066. World War II Following the Allied Normandy Landings, the headquarters of Panzer G ...

, about to the south-west of the city of

Caen Caen (, ; nrf, Kaem) is a commune in northwestern France. It is the prefecture of the department of Calvados. The city proper has 105,512 inhabitants (), while its functional urban area has 470,000,Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF; ) was the headquarters of the Commander of Allied forces in north west Europe, from late 1943 until the end of World War II. U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower was the commander in SHAEF th ...

(SHAEF) and other headquarters in Normandy in signals and . had taken up residence at the château and left its vehicles in the orchard with no other camouflage.

Prelude

2nd TAF

Early on 10 June, the

Second Tactical Air Force The RAF Second Tactical Air Force (2TAF) was one of three tactical air forces within the Royal Air Force (RAF) during and after the Second World War. It was made up of squadrons and personnel from the RAF, other British Commonwealth air forces, ...

(2nd TAF) of the

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and ...

(RAF) was ordered immediately to attack the château with every available aircraft. At RAF Hurn in Dorset, 124 Wing, comprising 181 Squadron, 182 Squadron and 247 Squadron equipped with Hawker Typhoon fighter-bombers and at

RAF Holmsley South Royal Air Force Holmsley South or more simply RAF Holmsley South is a former Royal Air Force station in Hampshire, England. The airfield is located approximately northeast of Christchurch, Dorset; about southwest of London Opened in 1942, ...

, 245 Squadron of 121 Wing were ordered to readiness. At

RAF Dunsfold Dunsfold Aerodrome (former ICAO code EGTD) is an unlicensed airfield in Surrey, England, near the village of Cranleigh. It extends across land in the villages of Dunsfold and Alfold. It was built by the Canadian Army and civilian contractors ...

, 139 Wing, comprising 98 Squadron, 180 Squadron and 320 (Netherlands) Squadron plus 226 Squadron of 137 Wing at

RAF Hartford Bridge Royal Air Force Blackbushe or more simply RAF Blackbushe is a former Royal Air Force station in Hampshire, England, during the Second World War. It is now Blackbushe Airport. History The station was opened on 1 November 1942 as RAF Hartford Bri ...

flying North American B-25 Mitchell medium bombers were alerted. A maximum effort consisted of ten Typhoons per squadron and eighteen Mitchells from each of the medium bomber squadrons. The Typhoons were loaded with eight 60-pound RP-3 rockets each and the Mitchells were to carry their maximum bomb loads of eight bombs; four squadrons of Spitfires were to escort the bombers. The plan was to attack with the rocket-firing Typhoons at low altitude, combined with bombing by the Mitchells from medium altitude.

Preparations

The morning of 10 June was overcast and cloudy and the briefing for a raid at was postponed until the cloud cover diminished (times given are British Double Summer Time (1941–1945) two hours ahead of

Greenwich Mean Time Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is the Local mean time, mean solar time at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, counted from midnight. At different times in the past, it has been calculated in different ways, i ...

). Wing Commander Lynn the Wing Commander (Flying) was to lead the Mitchells with 180 Squadron flying at the head of the formation. With the weather still not ideal, the first Mitchell of each bomber squadron was to be an aircraft carrying G-H navigation equipment, as a precaution against cloud over the target. While waiting on the weather, the Typhoons of 124 Wing flew two raids on gun emplacements near Caen. Eighteen Mitchells of 180 Squadron took off in three flights of six at followed by seventeen Mitchells of 320 (Netherlands) Squadron (Commander H. V. B. Burgerhout). At sixteen more bombers from 98 Squadron (Squadron Leader Eager) took off, the three squadrons circling while gaining height and getting into formation, then setting course for France at Over Selsey Bill eighteen more Mitchells of 226 Squadron (Wing Commander A. D. Mitchell) joined the formation. The 33 Spitfire Mk Vs of Air Defence of Great Britain (ADGB the defensive part of Fighter Command since 17 November 1943) for close escort and the high and low cover of three Spitfire Mk IX squadrons from 84 Group 2nd TAF (the offensive part of Fighter Command since the split with ADGB) arrived soon after. A Mitchell from 226 Squadron turned back with mechanical failure and two from 180 Squadron returned before the bomb run over La Caine, one with a loss of oil pressure and one with an instrument fault. The spare aircraft from two of the four Typhoon squadrons had joined in, making 42 Typhoons, eight of which flew without rocket armament, as fighters. The Typhoons were to attack in two waves, thirty minutes apart, the first wave to attack the motor transport around the château synchronised with the bombing by the Mitchells and the second wave to attack anything left.

Attack

In the evening of 10 June, General Sigismund-Helmut von Dawans, the chief of staff of and 18 staff officers were at dinner in Château La Caine when air raid sirens went off. The officers hurried outside to see and watched the Typhoons through binoculars, not aware that they were the target until the last minute; Schweppenburg arrived by car just before the attack. The 17 Typhoons of 181 and 247 squadrons fired 136 rockets from . At the Mitchells of 139 Wing moved into

Vic formation The Vic formation is a formation devised for military aircraft and first used during the First World War. It has three or sometimes more aircraft fly in close formation with the leader at the apex and the rest of the flight ''Echelon formation, ...

with 226 Squadron at the base of the V, the squadrons remaining in flights of six. At the bombers released five-hundred pound bombs, except for one Mitchell, whose eight bombs hung up. The bombs landed with great accuracy on the château and the grounds, killing Dawans and 17 of the 18 staff officers, Schweppenburg and another officer being wounded. Four of the Typhoons not carrying rockets strafed the village of Montigny nearby and the Mitchells turned north-west, receiving some from the vicinity of Caen. The second wave of rocket-armed Typhoons arrived to find the château and the vehicles destroyed and fired their rockets at anything left standing. The Mitchells landed by and preparations began for a night operation.

Aftermath

Analysis

As the Allied crews were debriefed, they claimed a big success; most bomber crews reporting that they had hit the target; anti-aircraft fire had been sparse and no German fighters had intervened, the Germans appeared to have been surprised. The attack destroyed the only German army organisation in the western theatre capable of handling a large number of mobile divisions; the survivors of were withdrawn to Paris and were not ready to resume operations until 28 June. German command of the sector was temporarily given to Sepp Dietrich and the . In the 2009 edition of a history of the use of Ultra information, Ralph Bennett wrote that an armoured counter-attack against the Allied beachhead, planned for 10 June, was postponed for 24 hours and then cancelled. Bletchley Park decrypted German signals that had been destroyed and would have to be withdrawn to Paris to be reconstituted. The appointment of new staff under General

Heinrich Eberbach Heinrich Eberbach (24 November 1895 – 13 July 1992) was a German general during World War II who commanded the 5th Panzer Army during the Allied invasion of Normandy. He was a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves o ...

, delayed the plans for the German armoured counter-offensive by three weeks but it was overtaken by events. The destruction the HQ contributed to the loss of the initiative by the Germans. No German suspicions were aroused about Allied code breaking, because a reconnaissance aircraft had been seen before the raid. The decrypts revealing the whereabouts of were the first of a series which revealed the positions of tactically valuable targets, including the positions of fuel and ammunition dumps, which were attacked to exacerbate German shortages, also being revealed by Ultra decrypts.

Casualties

Eighteen staff officers of were known to have been killed in the raid, including the chief of staff, Dawans, interred in

La Cambe German war cemetery La Cambe is a Second World War German military war grave cemetery, located close to the American landing beach of Omaha, and north west of Bayeux in Normandy, France. It is the largest German war cemetery in Normandy and contains the remains of o ...

; Schweppenburg was wounded. The château was not badly damaged but the nearby orchard, in which the HQ vehicles were parked, was thoroughly bombed and communications equipment was destroyed.

Notes

Footnotes

References

Books * * * * * * * * *

External links

RAF Historical Society Journal: The Overlord Campaign
{{DEFAULTSORT:La Caine HQ, Raid on World War II aerial operations and battles of the Western European Theatre Aerial operations and battles of World War II involving the United Kingdom Battle for Caen History of the Royal Air Force during World War II History of cryptography Airstrikes 1944 in military history 1944 in France June 1944 events