Operation Charnwood - Preliminary Attacks

Preliminary Attacks

On the night of 7 July, 467 Lancaster and Halifax heavy bombers of the Royal Air Force—half of Bomber Command's available strength at that time—attacked Caen, dropping over 2,000 tons of bombs on the city. Although intended mainly to facilitate the Anglo-Canadian advance and to prevent German reinforcements from reaching the battle or retreating through Caen, a secondary consideration was the suppression of the German defences. In this the bombing largely failed; the main German armour and infantry positions to the north of Caen remained intact. Several tanks were hit and temporarily disabled, but only two Panzer IVs of the 12th SS Panzer Division were destroyed. However, General Miles Dempsey, in command of the British Second Army, was more concerned with the bombing's morale-boosting effect on his troops than any material losses it might inflict on the Germans.

The pathfinders of No. 625 Squadron RAF, dropping the target markers for the bombers, were instructed not to allow the target zone to "drift back" towards the Allied lines as had been the tendency in earlier operations. Together with the cautious shifting of the target zone during the planning stage, the effect was that in many cases the markers were dropped too far forward, pushing the bombed zone well into Caen itself and further away from the German defences. By 22:00 on 7 July the bombers had departed, leaving 80% of the city's northern sector destroyed. Caen University was particularly hard hit, starting chemical fires that soon spread.

At 22:50, six squadrons of fast Mosquito bombers attacked individual targets, and ten minutes later the 636 guns of the assaulting divisions opened fire, with the battleship Rodney and other ships adding their support. This prolonged bombardment was intensified by the artillery of VIII Corps, which targeted the villages north of Caen in an effort to eliminate German strongpoints before the infantry assault began.