Caen 1944: Montgomery’s break-out attempt (Campaign, 143)

Concise description of battles with good maps and movements of different units of both sides.Good description of armies involved in the battles.

With Osprey's Campaign #143,Caen 1944, Ken Ford follows-up his two earlier volumes in the series on the British D-Day beachheads. As usual, Ford's narrative is solid and well supported by graphics and data. Ford covers the five frustrating British offensives in June-July 1944 that ultimately captured the vital city of Caen but failed to achieve the desired breakout from the beachheads. However, readers should keep in mind that another recent series - Pen & Sword's Battleground Europe series - has titles that cover the same ground, usually in greater detail. While it is unfair to make a direct comparison between the 96-page Osprey format and the 192-page Pen & Sword Format, readers should be aware that Ford did not incorporate some of the material that makes the P&S volumes on Epsom, Hill 112 and Goodwood more original in content. On the other hand, Ford summarizes five battles (Epsom, Windsor, Charnwood, Jupiter and Goodwood) in 96 pages that P&S did in almost 600 pages, so readers seeking an overview of the campaign would be better advised to stick to the Osprey version. The introductory sections in Caen 1944 are a bit too superficial, with little effort to provide insightful analysis on the strength and weaknesses of both sides. For example, Ford makes little comment on the limited extent of combined arms training in the British armor units prior to D-Day, but this clearly had an impact upon their early performance in Normandy. On the other hand, the desperate German shortage of decent infantry forced them to commit virtually all their armor to defensive missions, thereby robbing them of the initiative. It is noteworthy that no German army infantry divisions played any major role in the five offensives around Caen, which is a telling indictment of where the German army was going in late 1944 (a handful of powerful, high-quality divisions and a bunch of low-quality, odds-and-ends cannon fodder divisions). Ford's discussion of the operational-level issues hews to the company-line that Montgomery's intent always was to fix the German armor in the east while the Yanks broke out in the west, but ignores the facts that Montgomery failed to weight his main effort toward seizing Caen on D-Day and then dilly-dallied in the immediate 4-5 days after D-Day when the German defense around the city was still incomplete. In fact, the Caen campaign bears a lot of similarities to Montgomery's later Operation Market-Garden in that he planned an operation that required considerable risk and boldness, then executed the plan in a very slow and cautious manner that resulted in high loss and failure. Graphically, this volume is excellent. The author provides four 2-D maps (first Allied moves on Caen; Operation Epsom; Operation Charnwood and the Operation Goodwood plan), three 3-D maps (counterattack by 12th SS Panzer on 7 June; Operation Jupiter and Operation Goodwood). Osprey has improved the 3-D maps by adding 1-kilometer gridlines and moving all the text over to one side in sequence (it was always very frustrating to read the previous format, with events thrown helter-skelter all over the page), but at the cost of removing most of the 3-D effect and the elevation now seems pretty flat. The three battle scenes by Peter Dennis (the Regina Rifles street fighting in Caen; 5th Wiltshires attack on Hill 112; Luftwaffe 88mm guns engaging British armor) are excellent. Ford's account of the initial British moves on Caen in the period 7-13 June 1944 in the critical week after D-Day are surprisingly brief. While his discussion of the 12th SS Panzer counterattack that stopped the Canadians from taking Carpiquet airfield on 7 June is excellent, he gives few details and no maps to display the 7th Armored Division drive to Villers Bocage or the 51st Highland attack east of the Orne. Indeed, the two weeks after D-Day around Caen rate only a few short pages. Instead, Ford focuses most of his intention on the big set-piece battles to get around Caen, which began with Operation Epsom on 24-30 June. Ford admits Epsom achieved little, but he opines that "it did frustrate German plans to push the Allies back into the sea" but by this point everyone on the German side but Hitler realized that the best that could be hoped for was a stalemate. Ford's description of the next offensive - Operation Windsor to seize Carpiquet airfield - is very interesting; the Canadians committed a very reinforced brigade, complete with battleship support, to seize a small area held by only 150 Germans. Amazingly, the Canadians failed to seize the entire airfield and suffered 4-1 casualties. The next two battles, Jupiter and Charnwood, resulted in capture of part of Caen, but at the cost of over 5,000 casualties. The climax of the Caen campaign was Operation Goodwood, which was either intended as a breakout or a battle of attrition. Ford's account of Goodwood is marred by inadequate research; for example, he claims that "the Germans had been able to pull their panzers out of the frontline" but in fact the 22nd Panzer Regiment and other 21st Panzer units were on the FEBA. By missing this fact, Ford omits mention that the Allied carpet bombing clobbered quite a few German tanks, including several Tiger tanks. There doesn't seem to be much analysis here why Goodwood failed and the key question of whether the gains justified the losses remains unasked. However, Ford does mention that the Germans lost over 100 tanks on the first day of Goodwood (he may be counting assault guns and SP howitzers, too), which if true, means the Montgomery did succeed in whittling down some of the German armor. Overall, Ford's volume is quite good and one of the better Osprey volumes in awhile, but readers interested in greater detail would be advised to read the recent Pen & Sword volumes as well.

Ken Ford has done an excellent job with Caen and Osprey now has a series of books that give a clear big picture of the allied landings in France 1944 up to the fall of Paris. Among those books Caen stands out as one of the best and I felt I got to know quite a bit about the struggle and sacrifice. Caen had been the main British D-day objective but one that would take more than a month to complete. In part it was overambitious to expect the landing forces to capture Caen and then British leadership failed by being cautious. Tactical retreats would later lead to huge sacrifices as objectives needed to be recaptured. The Birtish and Canadian forces were well trained and equipped with great air and naval support but most were inexperienced. They faced fanantical SS troops and in a series of costly and failed offensives the armies ground each other down, at a cost in men that neither could afford. Several battalions suffered 80% losses and were almost wiped out. The terrain was hard on the attacker and there was little room for maneuvers and limited offensives failed time and time again. It would need a concentrated large scale offensive to break the Germans. The book goes down to personal detail and is very easy to read. The maps are good and the colour plates add to the story. All in all a very good book and fascinating read. I recommend you read "Falaise, 1944: Death of an Army" also by Ford after Caen, it follows the events right after Caen and the victory of the allied forces in Normandy.

Mr Ford has written a number of Osprey books on Normandy and North Africa but this is my favorite and probably his best. The summary is good but could be better if the author had a few more pages to use. (Osprey's arbitrary limit of 96 pages or less is silly. There are numerous books in the series that if it had 4 or 5 more pages would have been much better. This is one of them)With that in mind the first five sections in the book, except the Chronology which was good covering June 6th to July 20th, in the traditional Osprey format are pretty good but could have been better with greater detail, a few more pages. The sections in question are Origins, Opposing Commanders, Opposing Armies and Opposing Plans. I also feel Mr Ford was not critical enough on Montgomery or his commanders in the first few days of the invasion. Their plans and execution of those plans in capturing Caen, knowing how important it was, was dismal. I know it wasn't an easy assignment but thoughts of Anzio in the recent past should have spurred them on with greater intent and resources. I also wish Mr Ford had discussed more fully the interaction of Montgomery and Eisenhower and Montgomery's reasoning (or excuse) for staying in place in the Caen sector to anchor the Germans from moving west toward Bradley.I thought the author did a good job in describing the initial attack on D-Day toward Caen and the Canal and the subsequent attacks towards or near Caen. (Operations: Epsom, Charnwood, Jupiter and Goodwood.) Mr ford devotes 59 pages to the battle action.The author includes four 2-D maps and three 3-D maps; I thought all of them were very good except the one 3-D map of the assault on Hill 112. Most of the action is right in the crease and makes following the action more difficult. The map could have been rearranged quite easily to avoid that but it didn't happen. The other maps, especially the 2-D maps are excellent. The 2-D maps include the initial Allied attacks inland after the landing, then Operations Epsom, Charnwood and Goodwood. The other two 3-D maps are the counterattack of 12th SS on June 7th and Operation Goodwood. There are illustrations and a number of good photos that add to the narrative and a Order of Battle toward the end. The author uses two precious pages on "The Battlefield Today". One page would have been sufficient, allowing another map or a little more battle action. The book is still good and I recommend it.

Ken Ford is a great writer for the Osprey campaign series books, and this one reads very well. As the title suggests it follows up on the D-Day landings and the capture of Caen, which was one of the objectives for the first day. Obviously this didn’t happen, and a long struggle would play out for the vital crossroad city. For a campaign series book it gets to the battle very early, page 27 starts off the campaign with the earlier chapters covering both sides plans, forces and commanders. This is all the better since there is so much to cover in so little space, but I still would have liked more in terms of what the German forces where resisting the allies. Even though there’s more of the book than usual covering the battles for the city, it still is rather a gloss over for much of it, offering nothing in the way of in depth report of any of the actions. It starts on D-Day itself briefly covering the pushes that the Canadian and a British forces make inland, where their front lines would pretty much sit for weekends after as they tried to push forward. Operations Epsom, Charnwood and Goodwood are all the main operations covered here as well as smaller advances, however I think Goodwood is a little unnecessary here and it’s space would be better used on the previous actions in more detail. Caen itself was basically captured with Charnwood, and I would be happier with the book covering up to that in more detail than getting into Goodwood at all, which is a large enough operation that it should have its own title, and it’s more about securing the east flank and Caen-Falaise road than Caen itself anyhow. However it’s still a good read overall, with very helpful and detailed maps, good photographs although it’s very heavily favouring the allied forces in this regard, and the artwork is top notch as well. Good read to put the greater Caen battle that was so important into context

Excellent overview of conflict well worth reading for the main facts with good quality pics.

Die Kämpfe um die Stadt Caen, letztlich also die Abfolge diverser militärischer Angriffsoperationen (z.B. Goodwood), werden in dem Heft leider nur recht oberflächlich beschrieben.

Would say exactly the same as I said in my review of Falaise 1944 in the same series by the same author.Well enough written. More detail on this part of the battle than you get in the standard books on the Normandy Campaign by Max Hastings, Anthony Beevor et al.Well illustrated with excellent pictures and maps of actions that help you understand the narrative. Superior to the standards in that way.A bit of a pain that as the maps are 2 pages vital information is buried deep in the folds.Would recommend for anyone really interested in the Normandy Campaign.

excellent