The Battle for Caen (June to August 1944) was a military engagement between the British Second Army and the German Panzergruppe West in the Second World War for control of the city of Caen and its vicinity during the Battle of Normandy. Caen is about 9 mi (14 km) inland from the Calvados coast astride the Orne River and Caen Canal, at the junction of several roads and railways. The communication links made it an important operational objective for both sides. Caen and the area to its south are flatter and more open when compared to the bocage country of western Normandy, and Allied air force commanders wanted the area captured quickly in order to construct airfields to base more aircraft in France proper. The British 3rd Infantry Division was to seize Caen on D-Day or alternatively, dig in short of the city. Caen, Bayeux and Carentan were not captured on D-Day, and the Allies concentrated on linking the beachheads. British and Canadian forces captured the area of Caen north of the Orne during Operation Charnwood (8–9 July), while the suburbs south of the river were captured by the II Canadian Corps during Operation Atlantic (18–20 July). The fighting was mutually costly, and greatly deprived the Germans of the means to reinforce the western part of the invasion front. In the west, the First US Army captured Cherbourg and took Saint-Lô, about 37 mi (60 km) west of Caen, on 19 July. On 25 July the First Army began Operation Cobra, co-ordinated with the Canadian Operation Spring at Verrières (Bourguébus) ridge, south of Caen. Much of Caen had been destroyed, particularly from Allied bombing; many French civilians were killed. After the battle, little of the pre-war city remained and reconstruction lasted until 1962.
Background
=== British strategy === Britain had declared war in 1939 to maintain the balance of power in Europe; merely being on the winning side would not be enough to secure British war aims, with the rise of the USSR and the US as superpowers. British post-war influence would be limited but by playing a full part in the overthrow of Germany and the Nazi regime, the 21st Army Group would remain a factor in the post-war settlement, provided that it had not been destroyed in the process; it would also be available for Operation Downfall, the expected campaign against Japan. The British economy had been fully mobilised for war since 1942, when a severe manpower shortage had begun in the army. By avoiding casualties, the effectiveness of the army would be protected, morale among the survivors would be maintained and the army would still be of considerable size once Germany was defeated. At the reopening of the Western Front in 1944, the 21st Army Group would be constrained by a lack of reinforcements, which would also add to the burden of maintaining morale. Many British and Canadian commanders had fought as junior officers on the Western Front in the First World War and believed that an operational approach based on technology and firepower could avoid another long drawn-out bloodbath. Great care would have to be taken by the British commanders because the German army in Normandy, with several veteran divisions and many experienced commanders, could be expected to confront mostly novice Anglo-Canadian formations and leaders.
Ultra
Intelligence gained from reading German wireless messages coded by Enigma cipher machines was codenamed Ultra by the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park in England; by mid-1943, Ultra regularly was, unknown to the Germans, being read and passed on to senior Allied commanders. German measures to repel an invasion and the success of Allied deception measures could be gauged by reference to Ultra and other sources of intelligence. In March 1944, decrypts showed that invasions were expected anywhere from Norway to Spain. On 5 March, the Kriegsmarine (German navy) thought that up to six divisions would invade Norway and Fremde Heere West (FHW, Foreign Armies West), the intelligence department of Oberkommando des Heeres (German army high command) that studied the Allied order of battle put the danger zone between the Pas de Calais and the Loire valley. Rundstedt forecast a 20-division invasion in early May, probably between Boulogne and Normandy but identified accurately the concentration area between Southampton and Portsmouth. Anti-invasion practices were conducted from Bruges to the Loire and one scheme assumed an invasion 50 km (31 mi) wide from Ouistreham to Isigny; on 1 June, FHW predicted an invasion on 12 June either on the Mediterranean coast or in the Balkans.
Overlord plan
On 6 December 1943, General Dwight D. Eisenhower was appointed Supreme Allied Commander Allied Expeditionary Force. The invasion was to be conducted by the 21st Army Group (General Bernard Montgomery), which would comprise all Allied troops in France until Eisenhower established his ground forces HQ in France. Lieutenant-General Frederick Morgan, Chief of Staff, Supreme Allied Commander (COSSAC) and his staff had been preparing invasion plans since May 1943. Montgomery studied the COSSAC plan and at a conference on 21 January 1944, advocated a landing on a wider front between Quinéville in the west and Cabourg les Bains on the east side of the Orne river. Three divisions of the British Second Army (Lieutenant-General Miles Dempsey) were to come ashore on beachheads code-named (from west to east) Gold, Juno and Sword. Three divisions of the US First Army (General Omar Bradley) were to land on Omaha and Utah in the west and three airborne divisions were to land further inland on the flanks of the invasion area. The US forces in the west were to capture the port of Cherbourg and then in a second phase, the lodgement was to be expanded in the west to the Loire river and the Brittany ports. The Anglo-Canadian forces on the eastern flank of the lodgement would confront the main German force facing the invasion and reinforcements arriving from the east and south-east. In the tactical plan the invaders were quickly to gain control of the main roads in Normandy by the rapid advance of armoured forces past Caen, Bayeux and Carentan, to capture the high ground to the south-east of Caen, which dominated the hinterland, the main roads which converged on Caen and the crossings of the Odon and Orne rivers.
==== Second Army ==== From 7 to 8 April Montgomery held Operation Thunderclap, a planning exercise in which the intention of the operation was given as simultaneous attacks north of the Carentan Estuary and between the estuary and the Orne, to capture a bridgehead that included airfield sites and the port of Cherbourg. Montgomery forecast a rapid German reinforcement of the Normandy front by D+4, from a Westheer (Western army) total of sixty divisions, ten being panzer or Panzergrenadier divisions, to conduct a counter-offensive against the landing beaches. Montgomery predicted that the German offensive would be defeated and the Germans would have to change to the defensive by D+8 to contain the Allied lodgement. The Second Army, comprising British and Canadian divisions, was to land west of the Orne, protected by an airborne division which was to land east of the river and capture the Orne bridges at Benouville and Ranville. The Anglo-Canadians were to advance south and south-east, to capture ground for airfields and guard the eastern flank of the First Army as it attacked Cherbourg. Montgomery used a map to show phase lines, a planning device inherited from the COSSAC plan, to show a first phase complete by D+20, with the battlefront along a line running from the Channel coast to east of Caen, south-west of the city, south of Vire and south of Avranches to the coast. On 15 May, Montgomery gave a final presentation of the Overlord plan to the Allied commanders and from his notes, gave the intention of the operation, to assault simultaneously,
(a) Immediately north of the Carentan estuary. (b) Between the Carentan estuary and the R. Orne with the object of securing, as a base for further operations, a lodgement area which will include airfield sites and the port of Cherbourg.... Montgomery predicted that the Germans would try to defeat the invasion on the beaches and hold Caen, Bayeux and Carentan, with Bayeux at the centre of a German counter-offensive, intended to divide the Allied lodgement. As the German counter-offensive faltered a "roping-off" policy would be substituted to hold the ground dominating the road axes around the Dives river, the high ground from the Orne at Falaise to the Vire river at Saint-Lô and along the high ground west of the Vire.
=== German strategy === Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and Rundstedt, Oberbefehlshaber West (OB West, Supreme Commander West) disagreed about the methods necessary to defeat an invasion, which led to argument about the deployment of the panzer divisions, the main part of the reserve kept in the hinterland. Rundstedt intended to keep the mobile forces back until the Allied main effort had been identified. The Allies were to be defeated beyond the invasion beaches and then pushed off the continent. General Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg, commander of Panzergruppe West, a headquarters established in November 1943 to train the armoured forces in the west, agreed with Rundstedt, based on the experience of Allied naval gunfire during counter-attacks against the Anzio beachhead (January–February 1944). Rommel had experienced the loss of Luftwaffe air superiority in North Africa and thought that the generals who had gained their experience on the Eastern Front underestimated the effect of Allied air power. Attacks on the movement of reserve forces towards the invasion area would delay them and they would fail to defeat the invasion; only a prompt counter-attack during the landing phase stood a chance of success and the panzer divisions would need to be much closer to the coast for this tactic. Rundstedt and Geyr viewed the inevitable dispersion of the panzer divisions with dismay and thought that a thin screen of panzer divisions would be destroyed by Allied naval gunfire and air attack. In April 1944, Hitler imposed a compromise in which the 21st, 2nd and 116th Panzer divisions were subordinated to Heeresgruppe B (Army Group B), the 2nd SS, 9th and 11th Panzer divisions went to Heeresgruppe G (Army Group G, Colonel-General Johannes Blaskowitz) and the 1st SS, 12th SS, 17th SS Panzergrenadier and the Panzer Lehr divisions came under his command through Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW, High Command of the Armed Forces). The compromise forced on the western commanders meant that the central reserve was too small to provide the speed and mass that Rundstedt wanted and too few panzer divisions were near the coast to enable Rommel to defeat the invasion as soon as it began. Rundstedt and Rommel lost control over the divisions taken into OKW reserve, which Rommel considered were necessary for his defensive strategy, and he had to spread the 21st, 2nd and 116th Panzer divisions from the Scheldt to the Loire. In the spring of 1944, when Hitler included Normandy as a second Allied objective, OB West had 60 divisions with about 850,000 troops and ten armoured divisions with 1,552 tanks. Heeresgruppe B had 35 of the divisions to protect a coastline 3,000 mi (4,800 km) long. Half of the infantry divisions were smaller coastal defence or training formations and only about a quarter of the infantry divisions were at full establishment in men and equipment. (The II SS Panzer Corps [SS-Obergruppenführer Paul Hausser] with the 9th SS-Panzer-Division Hohenstaufen and the 10th SS-Panzer-Division Frundsberg had been sent to Poland in April but were recalled on 12 June.)
Atlantic Wall
Command of the German defences of the Western Front was conducted by Hitler through OKW. Since 1940, work had been done on the fortification of ports; the defeat of the Dieppe Raid of 19 August 1942 for a loss of only 600 casualties, demonstrated the defensive value of fortifications. In March 1942, Hitler issued Directive 40, requiring that an invasion force be defeated before it could land or on the coast; in November 1943, Hitler added Directive 51, for the reinforcement of the defences of Western Europe. Rommel was sent from Italy to inspect the coast defences and then Heeresgruppe B was transferred from Italy to command the 15th Army (General Hans von Salmuth) deployed from Antwerp to the Orne and the 7th Army (General Friedrich Dollmann) from the Orne to the Loire but was limited only to a coastal strip 6 mi (9.7 km) deep. Further south, Heeresgruppe G commanded the 1st Army and the 19th Army on the French Atlantic and the Mediterranean coasts. Command of the forces further inland was retained by Rundstedt but control of the panzer and panzergrenadier divisions was eventually split between OKW and the two army groups, Rundstedt retaining command only of the three divisions in Heeresgruppe G. The civilian workers of Organisation Todt and troops built Perlenschnur (string of pearls) of steel-and-concrete defensive positions with overlapping fields of fire based on Widerstandsnester (resistance nests) formed into Stützpunkte (strong points) and Stützpunktgruppen (strong point groups). Beach obstacles and anti-tank ditches were built and vast numbers of real and dummy mines were laid, trebling the number planted since 1941. By the end of 1943 about 8,500 fortifications had been built and another 12,247 were added in northern France by 6 June. Artillery positions were moved and false positions dug to mislead Allied air reconnaissance.
==== Normandy coast ==== The Normandy (Calvados) coast has wide beaches, small harbours and is close to the port of Cherbourg. There is an 18 mi (29 km) stretch between the mouth of the Orne north of Caen and Arromanches on which landings can easily be made, except for reefs, which prevent large ships from approaching the shore. In 1944, the 150 mi (240 km) from the Seine to Cherbourg was garrisoned by six German divisions, four being lower establishment coast defence divisions, supported by the 21st Panzer Division (Generalleutnant Edgar Feuchtinger). On Sword, 522 hedgehogs, 267 stakes, 76 wooden ramps and 46 Cointet-elements were installed by June, making one obstacle every 3 yd (2.7 m), built from 245 long tons (249 t) of steel, 124 long tons (126 t) of wood and a mass of concrete; most of the obstacles were fitted with mines or anti-aircraft shells, making about 1 lb (0.45 kg) of explosives per 1 yd (0.91 m) of beach. Beachfront properties were fortified and Stüzpunktgruppen built at Franceville and Riva Bella at the mouth of the Orne, an artillery battery was emplaced at Merville with four 75 mm guns in steel and concrete emplacements and a battery of 155 mm guns installed south of Ouistreham. On 8 mi (13 km) of the shore from Riva Bella to a Stüzpunkt at Corseulles, nine resistance nests (WN, Widerstandsnester) were built along the seawall and in the dunes. Most of the WN had a concrete emplacement, proof against bombing and heavy artillery bombardment and a gun sited to fire in enfilade along the beachfront. The nests also had machine-gun posts, mortar positions and big concrete bunkers to protect the garrisons. There was no continuous second position but field guns and anti-tank guns were dug in 2–4 mi (3.2–6.4 km) behind the coast and infantry reserves were billeted in villages, to contain a breakthrough until mobile reserves arrived. The 716th Infantry Division (Generalleutnant Wilhelm Richter), a two-regiment division increased to about 9,343 men in early 1944, supported by Artillery Regiment 1716 with five artillery batteries of French and Russian guns and an anti-tank company. By early 1944, the division garrisoned the German defences from Le Hamel to Merville-Franceville-Plage in four sectors, where 13,400 mines had been laid (about half were neutralised by corrosion in the detonators). A few weeks before the invasion, the division had 7,771 men in Grenadier regiments 726 and 736 with three battalions each, with 96 machine-guns, eleven 50 mm mortars, thirteen 80 mm mortars and with a poorly trained Ostbattaillon mainly of Poles, a second anti-tank company and several anti-aircraft batteries. The 21st Panzer Division was transferred to Caen in May, deploying its 146 tanks and 50 assault guns south of the city, two panzergrenadier battalions on either side of the Orne north of the city, and its artillery on the coast to provide more defensive depth to the 716th Infantry Division on its 8 mi (13 km) front.
Prelude
I Corps plan
Before dawn on D-Day, the 6th Airborne Division, with the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion attached, was to conduct Operation Tonga. The division was to capture of the Caen canal and Orne river bridges over the lower Orne by coup de main, establish a bridgehead on the east side of the river and block a possible German counter-attack. I Corps (Lieutenant-General John Crocker) was to land with the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division (Major-General Rod Keller) to the west on Juno with the 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade and advance south to cut the Caen–Bayeux road as far as Carpiquet, north-west of Caen. The 3rd Infantry Division (Major-General Tom Rennie) and the 27th Armoured Brigade were to land on Sword and advance directly on Caen. If Caen was captured at the first attempt, I Corps would take the high ground to the south on the Falaise road; if the German defenders thwarted the attempt, the corps was to consolidate a defensive front around the city. In case Caen was not captured on D-Day, Operation Smock had been planned to commence once the 51st (Highland) Division and the 4th Armoured Brigade had landed and reinforced the attackers about 3 to 4 days later. Operation Wild Oats was another plan made before the invasion, for XXX Corps and the 1st Airborne Division to cut off a possible German retirement westwards from Caen. The landings were to be supported by the bombardment of the inland defences by Allied strategic bombers, naval bombardment ships and the beaches to be "drenched" by rocket and field gun fire from landing craft.
Battle
=== D-Day, 6 June === The naval bombardment and bombing by the Allied air forces failed to have the destructive effect on German beach defences hoped for, and in many places Allied infantry, engineers and tanks had to fight their way forward. The 3rd Canadian Infantry Division landed on Juno with the 7th Canadian Infantry Brigade to capture Corseulles, but this took until the afternoon. The 8th Canadian Infantry Brigade attack on Bernières and St Aubin sur Mer met determined German resistance, and the 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade followed on as the tide rose higher and faster than usual, which narrowed the beach, making traffic jams at the beach exits much worse. On the left of the Canadians, the 8th Infantry Brigade came ashore on Sword with the 1st Special Service Brigade on its left (northern) flank, to join the 6th Airborne Division at the Orne crossings.
The unsettled weather that lulled the German commanders also pushed the tide in quicker and further than expected, which covered obstacles and reduced the beaches to a strip about 11 yd (10 m) from the water's edge to the sea wall, delaying the landing of follow-on forces; Sword was reduced to only 15 yd (14 m) instead of the usual 150 yd (140 m) of beach. Fire from un-suppressed German machine-gun nests swept the beach as the British advanced to capture the beachfront resorts and villas. A German strongpoint at La Brèche held out until about 10:00 a.m. but by 10:30 a.m. the British and Canadian divisions had landed fifteen infantry battalions, five Commando units, seven armoured regiments, two Royal Marine armoured support regiments, nine field artillery regiments and two engineer regiments, on a beachhead only 5 mi (8.0 km) wide. By noon the follow-up brigades were ashore and had inched through traffic jams at the beach exits under severe bombardment from German artillery, to begin the advance inland. The German response was slower than the Allies expected, because the decision to land on 6 June had caught the German commanders unprepared. By morning, reports received by the German 15th Army HQ led to the highest level of alert (Alert 2) being ordered, but not at the 7th Army HQ, except for possible terrorist attacks. Many senior officers were absent, and only when it was discovered that parachutists were landing was an alert called by the 7th Army; German troops went off on wild goose chases and found dummy paratroops. At 6:00 a.m., Rundstedt asked for control of the I SS Panzer Corps to counter an invasion, but it took ten hours to be granted. The German tactical reply was resolute and troops on the Calvados coast fought with determination in many places. The 3rd Infantry Division had made swift progress from Sword against the 716th Division at Hermanville, Ouistreham and Colleville but was delayed further inland at strongpoints Daimler, Hillman, Morris and Rover. Hillman dominated the road south towards Caen and had been so cleverly fortified and camouflaged, that its size and layout was a surprise. Morris surrendered at 1:00 p.m. but Hillman held out until the next morning and absorbed some of the forces intended for the dash to Caen, while other troops and tanks were still stuck in traffic at the beach exits. The fight for Hillman delayed the advance of the 8th and 185th Infantry Brigades and gave time for the infantry of the 21st Panzer Division to stop its counter-attacks against the 6th Airborne Division on either side of the Orne, to concentrate on the west side against the 3rd Infantry Division, despite being spotted and attacked from the air.
Operation Perch (10–14 June)
Operation Perch was intended to create the threat of a British break-out to the south-east of Caen by XXX Corps, with the 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division capturing the road to Tilly-sur-Seulles. The 7th Armoured Division would then spearhead the advance to Mont Pinçon. On 9 June, Montgomery ordered that Caen be taken by a pincer movement. The eastern arm of the attack would consist of I Corps with the 51st (Highland) Infantry Division, which was to cross into the Orne bridgehead and attack southwards to Cagny, 6 mi (9.7 km) south-east of Caen. XXX Corps would form the western arm of the pincer; the 7th Armoured Division would advance to the south-east and cross the Odon River, to capture Évrecy and Hill 112. XXX Corps attacked Tilly-sur-Seulles against the Panzer Lehr Division and part of the 12th SS Panzer Division, which held Tilly despite many casualties on both sides. I Corps was delayed moving into position because the state of the Channel slowed the arrival of follow-up divisions and its attack was delayed until 12 June. The 51st Highland Division attacked the 21st Panzer Division but its defence was determined, and on 13 June the offensive east of Caen was called off. On the right flank of XXX Corps, the 352nd Infantry Division had been defeated by the 50th Northumbrian Division and the 1st US Division and its remnants forced to flee southwards, leaving a 7.5 mi (12.1 km) gap in the German front. Dempsey ordered the 7th Armoured Division to exploit the opening, seize Villers-Bocage and advance into the western flank of the Panzer Lehr Division. After the Battle of Villers-Bocage, the position was judged untenable and 7th Armoured Division withdrew on 14 June. The division was reinforced by the 33rd Armoured Brigade, another follow-up formation, ready to resume the attack but on 19 June, a severe storm descended upon the English Channel, damaging the Mulberry harbours and worsening the delay in unloading of reinforcements and supplies.
Operation Epsom (26–30 June)
On 25 June, XXX Corps (49th (West Riding) Infantry Division, 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division and the 8th Armoured Brigade) launched Operation Martlet. The attack, a preliminary to the Second Army's main effort Operation Epsom, intended to take Rauray village and spur, Fontenay-le-Pesnel, Tessel-Bretteville, and Juvigny. Opposing the British, were the 3rd Battalion, 26th SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment and part of the 12th SS Panzer Regiment of the 12th SS Panzer Division on and around the spur; both had been depleted by the fighting in the preceding weeks but were well dug-in. By the end of the day, the British had reached the woods near Vendes and a line roughly south of Fontenay-le-Pesnel; the Germans had held Rauray, and about half the spur. The next day, Tessel-Bretteville was captured by the British and lost to a subsequent counter-attack. During the night, reinforcements reached the Panzer Lehr Division, on the right flank near Vendes. On 27 June, the British took Tessel-Bretteville wood and Rauray, but the fighting on the Rauray Spur continued during Operation Epsom.
Operation Epsom began on 26 June, to capture the high ground south of Caen, near Bretteville-sur-Laize with the newly arrived VIII Corps. The operation was supported by 736 guns, the Royal Navy, close air support and a preliminary bombardment by 250 RAF heavy bombers. (The bombing for the start of the operation was called off due to poor weather over Britain.) I and XXX Corps were also to support Epsom, but delays in landing equipment and reinforcements led to their role being reduced. The 15th (Scottish) Infantry Division and the 31st Tank Brigade made steady progress, and by the end of the first day had overrun much of the German outpost line with the exception of some locations along the flanks. Over the following two days, a foothold was secured across the River Odon and efforts were made to expand this, by capturing tactically valuable points around the salient and moving up the 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division. German counter-attacks, by the I SS Panzer Corps and II SS Panzer Corps, led to a withdrawal from some of the British positions across the river by 30 June. VIII Corps had advanced nearly 6 mi (9.7 km). With their last reserves, the Germans achieved a costly defensive success by containing the British offensive. A German counter-offensive by fresh forces against the Allied beachhead had been forestalled and no German armoured forces could be redeployed against the US First Army or moved into reserve. From 26 to 30 June, the operation cost the Second Army up to 4,078 casualties. VIII Corps suffered 470 men killed, 2,187 wounded and 706 men missing. During 1 July, a further 488 men were killed and wounded and 227 were reported missing. The German Army lost over 3,000 men and 126 tanks.
The airfield at Carpiquet near Caen had been a D-Day objective for the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division but the 12th SS Panzer Division arrived first and occupied the concrete shelters, machine gun towers, tunnels, 75 mm (2.95 in) anti-tank guns and 20mm anti-aircraft guns around the airfield, behind mine fields and barbed wire entanglements. A Canadian operation during Operation Epsom had been postponed because of the delays in disembarking troops. For Operation Windsor, the 8th Canadian Infantry Brigade was reinforced. The Canadians took Carpiquet village with the help of the French Resistance on 5 July and three days later, after repulsing several German counter-attacks, captured the airfield and adjacent villages during Operation Charnwood. Keller was severely criticised for not using two brigades for Operation Windsor and for delegating detailed planning to Brigadier Blackader of the 8th Brigade.
Operation Charnwood (8–11 July)
Three infantry divisions and three armoured brigades of I Corps were to attack southwards through Caen to the Orne river and capture bridgeheads in the districts of Caen south of the river. An armoured column was prepared to advance through the city to rush the bridges to exploit the victory and sweep on through southern Caen toward the Verrières and Bourguébus ridges, opening the way for the Second Army to advance toward Falaise. New tactics were tried, including a preparatory bombardment by Allied strategic bombers to assist the Anglo-Canadian advance and to prevent German reinforcements from reaching the battle or retreating. Suppression of the German defences was a secondary consideration; close support aircraft and 656 guns supported the attack. On the evening of 7 July, bombers dropped over 2,000 short tons (1,800 t) of bombs on the city. Cautious planning to avoid attacking their own troops meant the bombs landed more on the city than German defences. The ground attack began at 4:30 a.m. on 8 July supported by a creeping barrage. By evening, the I Corps had reached the outskirts of Caen and the Germans began to withdraw their heavy weapons and the remnants of the 16th Luftwaffe Field Division to the southern side of Caen. The remnants of the 12th SS Panzer Division fought a rearguard action and then retired over the Orne.
The 12th SS Panzer Division withdrew during the night; early on 9 July, British and Canadian patrols entered the city and Canadians occupied Carpiquet airfield. The 3rd Infantry Division made swift progress and by noon had reached the north bank of the Orne, inflicting severe casualties on the 16th Luftwaffe Field Division. Soon afterwards they meet the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division in the town centre. Some bridges were left intact but were blocked by rubble and covered by German troops on the south bank poised for a counter-attack. Following the battle "In the houses that were still standing there slowly came life, as the French civilians realized that we had taken the city. They came running out of their houses with glasses and bottles of wine."
Operation Jupiter, a VIII Corps attack by the 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division and the 4th Armoured Brigade began on 10 July, to follow up a possible German retreat after Charnwood. The Germans had five infantry battalions, two Tiger detachments, two Sturmgeschütz companies and Nebelwerfer, most from the 10th SS-Panzer Division, with elements of the 9th SS-Panzer Division and the 12th SS-Panzer Division Hitlerjugend in reserve. The attack was intended to capture the villages of Baron-sur-Odon, Fontaine-Étoupefour, Château de Fontaine and recapture the top of Hill 112 by 9:00 a.m. After the first phase, positions on Hill 112 were to cover an advance on Éterville, Maltot and the ground up to the River Orne. A bombardment of mortars and over 100 field guns was to precede the attack. The attack began after a naval bombardment, air attack and artillery-fire but the Tiger tanks of the schwere SS-Panzer Abteilung 102 (Heavy SS Tank Detachment 102) out-ranged British Churchill and Sherman tanks. Neither side could hold Hill 112, the top of which was left in no-man's-land. Several villages nearby were taken and the 9th SS-Panzer Division was sent from reserve to contain the attack, that achieved the Allied operational objective.
Operation Goodwood
On 18 July, VIII Corps began Operation Goodwood, an attack by three armoured divisions towards the German-held Bourguébus Ridge, along with the area between Bretteville-sur-Laize and Vimont, to force the Germans to commit their armoured reserves in costly counter-attacks. Goodwood was preceded further west by the Second Battle of the Odon, attacks by XXX Corps and XII Corps, to inflict casualties and concentrate the attention of Panzergruppe West on the east end of the bridgehead. On 18 July, I Corps conducted an advance to secure villages and the eastern flank of VIII Corps. On the western flank, II Canadian Corps conducted Operation Atlantic to capture the remaining German positions in Caen south of the Orne. The Germans were able to stop the British advance short of Bourguébus Ridge but had been shocked by the weight of the attack and preliminary aerial bombardment. The Germans had only the resources to hold ground in great depth south of Caen. The south bank suburbs had been captured by the Canadians in Operation Atlantic and the British had advanced 7 mi (11 km) east of Caen and took about 12,000 yd (11,000 m) of ground to the south of the city. The attack reinforced the German view that the Allied threat on the eastern flank was the most dangerous and more units were transferred eastwards, including the remaining mobile elements of the 2nd Panzer Division near Caumont. Blumenson wrote that the British force suffered over 4,000 casualties and almost 500 tank losses, about 36 percent of the British tanks in France. Buckley wrote in 2004 that "Goodwood was a flawed plan, poorly executed and with little chance of success", that the Goodwood plan "demonstrated a poor understanding of the employment of armour in terms of manoeuvring space" and that "the tactical considerations for British armour in Goodwood were considerable and quite alarming". Buckley wrote in 2014 that in Goodwood and Atlantic the Anglo-Canadians had 5,500 casualties and about 400 tanks knocked out, but that the German armoured units remained pinned down around Caen as planned. By 25 July, there were 600 panzers (including all the Tiger units) opposite the Second Army and 150 facing the US First Army. The Germans had not been destroyed but the German commanders became fatalistic.
Operation Atlantic
During the battle, the I SS Panzer Corps had turned the 90 ft (27 m) high Verrières Ridge into their primary fortification, defending it with hundreds of guns, tanks, Nebelwerfers, mortars, and infantry from up to three divisions. On 18 July, Operation Atlantic began 45 minutes after Goodwood and the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division with tank support, captured Giberville and the Caen industrial suburbs of Colombelles and Vaucelles south the Orne. By mid-afternoon, two companies of the Black Watch had crossed the river and the 5th Canadian Infantry Brigade managed to push southward to Saint-André-sur-Orne. With the south bank secured, the 4th and 6th Canadian Infantry Brigades moved into position for the second phase, an assault on Verrières Ridge (Bourguébus Ridge to the British). On 19 July, Cormelles was captured with the 7th Armoured Division and the 5th Canadian Brigade took the east slope of Point 67 (the village of Ifs). The 1st SS Panzer Division and the 272nd Infantry Division counter-attacked but were repulsed. On 20 July, The South Saskatchewan Regiment, The Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders of Canada and the 27th Armoured Regiment (The Sherbrooke Fusilier Regiment), supported by Hawker Typhoons, assaulted the ridge. The Cameron Highlanders attacked Saint-André-sur-Orne but were repulsed. Torrential rain immobilised tanks and infantry and grounded aircraft and the South Saskatchewans lost 282 casualties. Battlegroups from four panzer divisions counter-attacked and forced the Canadians back beyond their start lines. The Essex Scottish lost c. 300 casualties. On 21 July, Simonds ordered The Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) of Canada and The Calgary Highlanders to stabilise the front along Verrières Ridge. The two battalions and the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division defeated more counter-attacks by the two SS Panzer divisions in costly defensive fighting.
Operation Spring
On 25 July, II Canadian Corps conducted Operation Spring on Verrières (Bourguébus) Ridge simultaneously with the American Operation Cobra in the west. The operation was to capture the ridge and villages on the south slope. The German defences on the ridge and armoured counter-attacks inflicted heavy casualties on the Canadian infantry and tanks, and the attack "fizzled out fairly quickly" later in the day.
Aftermath
=== Analysis === Terry Copp wrote in 2004, that the 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade had worked through traffic jams and had captured Villons les Buissons, when Dempsey ordered the invasion divisions to dig in on an intermediate objective, as the 21st Panzer Division counter-attack against the 3rd Division. The panzers were repulsed by the 185th Infantry Brigade and then penetrated between Sword and Juno; the attack cost the Germans 33 percent of their tanks. The German panzer force was still formidable when it was ordered to retire, as another Allied aerial armada appeared overhead; both sides had been given orders which were cautious and events possibly made them premature. Copp called the Allied achievement "extraordinary" but one which failed to impress writers like Chester Wilmot and Charles Stacey, the Canadian official historian. Copp wrote that the Anglo-Canadians had advanced inland by bounds from one secured objective to the next, according to their training, a cautious but sensible tactic. The stop order has been criticised on the assumption that the 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade would not have been overrun on the final objectives, something which happened to some Canadian units the next day. Had the Germans waited to prepare a proper co-ordinated counter-attack, instead of conducting piecemeal attacks on 6 June, it could have been a greater threat but it was impossible to know the effect of hypothetical decisions. In a 2004 academic study, Robert Citino criticised the British on D-Day, at Villers-Bocage, Epsom and Goodwood, for failing to use mobile warfare tactics and in 2009, Antony Beevor wrote that the British had not been sufficiently ruthless. Buckley wrote that these critics concentrated on British failings; only a few hours after the landings began on 6 June, the British army was "supposedly fluffing its lines"; in 1962 the historian Alexander McKee described the D-Day rush on Caen degenerating into a "plodding advance by a few hundred riflemen", a failure which condemned the British to costly battles of attrition. Buckley wrote that critics had it that the British "bungled matters again" at Villers Bocage a week after D-Day, when the 7th Armoured Division was "stopped dead in its tracks, apparently by the action of a single Tiger tank". For the next few weeks, despite plentiful resources, the British attacks on Caen "seemingly made little headway", while the US First Army captured Cherbourg and the Cotentin Peninsula. After the capture of the Cotentin, the Americans pushed south and were poised for Operation Cobra by 25 July. The British Operation Goodwood, which had taken place east of Caen the week before, was written off as a "humiliating failure", with 400 tanks knocked out. When the Germans were finally driven from Normandy, the British "seemingly made a hash of the pursuit" by not trapping German forces west of Antwerp. Buckley wrote that criticism of the performance of the British army came to a head in the 1980s and was reflected in popular films, television programmes, board and computer games. The view of the British army as "triumphant and successful" had been replaced by one of an "unimaginative force which only prevailed...through sheer weight of resources and...outmoded attritional methods". Artillery was the main infantry-killer of the war and it was Allied, especially British artillery, which was the most feared by the Germans after 1942; British guns dominated the battlefield and prevented concentration and manoeuvre. The British also emphasised support for the infantry and tanks by all arms and provided plenty of equipment and ammunition, while the Germans had to improvise and lurch from crisis to crisis. In Normandy, the Anglo-Canadians had experienced casualty rates similar to those of the Third Battle of Ypres in 1917 and by the end of August, each of the seven British infantry divisions in France had suffered about 75 percent casualties. Riflemen amounted to 15 percent of the army and bore 70 percent of the losses, yet the human cost of the Battle of Normandy, much of which was fought by the Anglo-Canadians against Panzergruppe West for possession of Caen, came within War Office expectations. The Anglo-Canadians played a crucial role in Normandy but managed to avoid a bloodbath like those of the First World War and the Eastern Front from 1941 to 1945.
In 2006, Stephen Badsey wrote that the 6th Airborne Division achieved its objectives on 6 June but the scattering of the US airborne divisions on the western flank, led the Germans to believe that the Allied schwerpunkt (point of main effort) was close to the Cotentin Peninsula. Even as Kampfgruppe von Luck was counter-attacking the British paratroops east of the Orne, LXXXIV Corps was sending reinforcements westwards against the Americans. Only when confronted with the advance of the 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division inland from Gold, was Kampfgruppe Meyer re-directed towards Bayeux. Badsey wrote that had the kampfgruppe counter-attack succeeded along with those of the 21st Panzer Division, the arrival of the 12th SS Panzer Division on 7 June, might have led to the Second Army being surrounded. Badsey wrote that after D-Day, historians and writers concentrate on the defence of Caen by the 12th SS and the 21st Panzer divisions but that the Germans also conducted many pincer attacks against the invasion beaches which were devastated by Allied air and naval bombardment, which made it impossible to manoeuvre north of the Caen–Cherbourg road, just as Rommel had predicted. The Germans persisted with counter-attacks after 6 June and Kampfgruppe Meyer and Mobile Brigade 30 were smashed north of Bayeux. The attacks of the 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division, combined with those of the 1st US Division on the western flank, destroyed five kampfgruppen of the 352nd Infantry Division, creating the Caumont Gap on 8 June, the remnants breaking out during the night. Despite the danger to Caen, Heeresgruppe B and the 7th Army HQs thought that the main Allied effort was still in the west. On 9 June, German forces from the Orne to the Vire were ordered onto the defensive, to send reinforcements to Cherbourg and the Panzer-Lehr Division was ordered to recapture Isigny-sur-Mer, until the British advances south of Bayeux forced Rommel to divert the division to the east. Badsey wrote that contrary to the scepticism of US staff officers at Montgomery for calling Caen the "key to Cherbourg", Heeresgruppe B planned on 11 June to swap the panzer divisions in the east for infantry divisions and transfer the panzers to the Carentan–Montebourg area, to protect Cherbourg from the First Army. The plan was abandoned because of the risk of an Anglo-Canadian breakout and the directive from Hitler to roll up the beachheads from the east.
Badsey wrote that the invasion could only have been defeated by a fundamental change in the German defensive scheme, implemented several months before the invasion. By 14 June, the arrival of the 12th SS Panzer Division and the Panzer-Lehr Division opposite the Anglo-Canadians and the reinforcement of the defenders opposite the US troops in the west, created the impression of equality in the number of divisions. Reinforcements enabled the Germans to obstruct the Allied advance inland, prompting Tedder to remark that the situation had the "makings of a dangerous crisis". Badsey described the stalemate as an illusion, because counting divisions was a false comparison, not representative of the massive Allied superiority over the Germans. On 10 June, Allied planners at SHAEF recommended that strategic bombers be used to prepare ground attacks. On 14 June, a period of Anglo-Canadian set-piece attacks and wider-front US attacks began, after which Allied attacks were delayed or weakened only by the weather; Badsey wrote that the German commanders admitted defeat on 17 June but Hitler refused Rommel and Rundstedt permission to retreat. Hitler ordered the generals to hold Cherbourg instead, which condemned the Germans to a series of defeats in "hard-fought" battles that were never "close run"; Dollmann, the 7th Army commander, killed himself the next day. The German commanders interpreted apparent Allied caution according to their military ethos, which took little notice of French civilian and German army casualties, in contrast to the Allied duty to protect French civilians and use tactics which conserved manpower.
