Undercover:Jack Nissenthall - February ‘98 World War II Feature

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The man who knew too much risked death at the hands of the Germans and his ownbodyguards at Dieppe.

By Wil Deac

On the night of February 27, 1942, British parachutists raided St. Bruneval on France’s northwest coast. They came away with the key parts of a German Würzburg radar set, one of a chain that directed anti-aircraft fire and controlled night fighters intercepting Allied bombers flying to inland targets. The coup enabled the British to develop countermeasures.

Another British attempt to steal German radar secrets was made nearly six months later. Overshadowed by the larger operation of which it was a part, it remains a lesser-known episode in World War II history. The second raid also proved a success, despite the fact that stubborn German resistance prevented the raiders from lifting any of the radar hardware. The target this time was Germany’s basic radar equipment–the Freya early-warning device.

Whereas Würzburg, operating at an ultrashort wavelength, had a range of only 18 1/2 miles, the larger but less precise Freya, using a longer wavelength, had a range of up to 125 miles. It could pick up Allied aircraft almost as soon as they became airborne. Working in tandem, the two radars posed a serious threat to the aerial offensive against Adolf Hitler’s Germany. To make matters worse for the Allies, they learned that the enemy had improved its Freya radar and intended to use it as the primary German radar defense network. This, of course, made the British more anxious than ever to confirm what they had learned and to discover what made Freya tick so that it could be neutralized.

As early as 1941, British listening posts had detected signals emitted by a new, high-powered Freya installed atop a cliff between the seaport of Dieppe and Pourville, two miles farther west. The site was marked as a potential target, one of the most convenient locations for a future raid. The St. Bruneval success made it unlikely that a similar foray against the Freya would succeed, however, since the Germans had significantly beefed up their radar station defenses after the earlier raid.

The opportunity to examine the instrument and remove its innards came with an operation known as Jubilee, a rejuvenated version of an earlier discarded plan. There were a number of reasons for Jubilee, not the least being American and Soviet pressure to open a second front against the Germans, an invasion of Western Europe that would help relieve the hard-pressed Soviets to the east. The immediate overall purpose of Jubilee, according to an official British history, was to “test the enemy’s coast defenses and discover what resistance would be met in seizing a port; it also hoped to inflict wastage on the GAF (German Air Force), thereby giving some relief to Russia.” Even though Allied capabilities precluded a full-scale invasion in 1942–as realistic planners fully recognized–a hit-and-run raid larger than the earlier Commando stabs would prove beneficial for planning the real invasion at some future date.

Jubilee’s target had to be a medium-sized and moderately defended port well within range of air cover. Dieppe was selected. Located only 67 miles from England, the city had hosted the Norman fleet that crossed the English Channel to land near Hastings in 1066. It had been occupied by the Germans once before, during the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War.

As often happens during military operations, a simple and feasible plan was transmuted into an oversized scheme with proportionately greater risks. The final decision, based on incomplete intelligence, was for a mainly frontal assault on a well-defended gravel and pebble beach without preliminary air bombardment and with minimal naval fire support.

The operation would include Canadian (the main contingent), British, French and American elements. Fifty U.S. Army Rangers who participated in Jubilee would be the first American troops to land in Europe since World War I. Jubilee’s objectives were to destroy enemy installations (including the inland airfield at St. Aubin), capture Germans for interrogation, steal documents, bring back moored enemy invasion barges, release French prisoners, and tackle the Freya site atop its 300-foot-high cliff. The biggest such operation of the war, Jubilee received final approval only a week before it was launched.

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