The RAF raid on La Caine was an attack in Normandy by the Second Tactical Air Force of the Royal Air Force on 10 June 1944. The attack was made on the château at La Caine, about to the south-west of the city of Caen, north of Thury-Harcourt. The château had recently been occupied by 5th Panzer Army, the command organisation for the German Panzer divisions in France and Belgium. Eighteen staff officers were killed in the attack and the commander, General der PanzertruppenLeo Geyr von Schweppenburg was wounded. A counter-offensive being prepared against the Allied beachhead by the Panzergruppe was postponed and then cancelled; command was transferred to the headquarters of the I SS Panzer Corps. Panzergruppe West was withdrawn to Paris and remained out of action until 28 June.
Background
Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt, OB West established 5th Panzer Army, as a headquarters for the administration and training of the seven Panzer divisions 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, the invasion of France by the Western Allies, Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel, the commander of Army Group B with responsibility for the defence of northern France drove to the HQ of Panzergruppe West and gave orders for a counter-offensive against the Allied landings in Normandy.
The Government Code and Cypher School code-breaking organisation at Bletchley Park 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 decrypts on 11 and 18 March 1944 established the existence of Panzergruppe West and that its headquarters was in Paris. A big increase in wireless traffic from Panzergruppe West was detected by the British Monitoring Section on 8 June 1944, when the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division came under the command of the Panzergruppe. The site of the source was identified by High-frequency direction finding at the château in the commune of La Caine, about to the south-west of the city of Caen. The information was forwarded to Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force and other headquarters in Normandy in signals and.Panzergruppe West had taken up residence at the château and left its vehicles in the orchard with no other camouflage.
The morning of 10 June was overcast and cloudy and the briefing was postponed until the cloud cover diminished. Wing Commander Lynn the Wing Commander 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 led by 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 took off in three flights of six at followed by seventeen Mitchells of 320 Squadron. At sixteen more bombers from 98 Squadron 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 joined the formation. The 33 Spitfire Mk Vs of Air Defence of Great Britain for close escort and the high and low cover of three Spitfire Mk IX squadrons from 84 Group 2nd TAF 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 joined in, making 42 Typhoons, eight of which flew as fighters, without rocket armament. 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, chief of staff of Panzergruppe West 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 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 Anti-aircraft warfare from the vicinity of Caen. The second wave of rocket-armed Typhoons arrived to find the château and the Panzergruppe West vehicles destroyed and fired their rockets at anything still 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 Panzergruppe West were withdrawn to Paris and were not ready to resume operations until 28 June. German command of the sector was temporarily given to SS-Obergruppenführer Sepp Dietrich and the I SS Panzer Corps. 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 Panzergruppe West had been destroyed and would have to be withdrawn to Paris to be reconstituted. The appointment of new staff under General Heinrich Eberbach, delayed the plans for the German armoured counter-offensive by three weeks but it was overtaken by events. The destruction the Panzergruppe 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 Panzergruppe West 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 Panzergruppe West were known to have been killed in the raid, including the chief of staff, Dawans, interred in La Cambe German war cemetery and 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.
