During the early months of 1942, there was much pressure on the Western Allies – especially from the Russians - to ‘do something – anything!’ to relieve the unrelenting bad news on all fronts. The British were struggling in North Africa and the Far East, Japan was running roughshod over the US in the Pacific while the Canadian Government was under pressure at home. The result of these pressures was to lead to one of the most ill-conceived operations of WWII – Operation Jubilee, the raid on the northern French port of Dieppe, which had been heavily fortified by the occupying German armed forces. The resulting operation in August 1942 was an unmitigated disaster, costing the lives of thousands of Canadian and British troops, sailors and airmen with very little to show.

This volume in the Images of War series is a little different to the norm, in that it features a lot more text that is regularly seen in these books. This is not a bad thing, as this book serves as an excellent one-stop volume on the raid.

The authors begin by outlining the reasons behind Jubliee, then go into depth on the preparations and execution of the operation, outlining each of the landing beaches in turn. They then conclude the book with chapters on the withdrawal and aftermath.

While it may be text-heavy, the book still features a large selection of photos, many of which are from German sources and taken in the aftermath. The quality of these images of course varies, but overall, they give a good overview. The photos and text are accompanied by a few maps, though I would have liked to have seen more – at least one per chapter for each beach would have been helpful in placing the events in context.

Overall however, this is an excellent primer on the raid – more complete volumes are available on Jubilee, but they are much more expensive and less heavily illustrated, so this is ideal for those wanting a detailed text with many photos in an unexpensive package. My thanks for Casemate and Pen & Sword for the review sample.