Battle of Caen

From June to July 1944, the Battle of Caen pitted Marshal Montgomery's British and Canadian forces against German 12th SS Panzer and Panzer Lehr troops. Montgomery had promised to take Caen on D-Day; the city fell only after six weeks of urban fighting and two major operations (Epsom, Charnwood, Goodwood).

Caen was a communications hub and the gateway to the Seine and Paris; the plains around it suited armour and the building of airfields. The Allies had meant to take it on the evening of 6 June: it would cost them six weeks and four major offensives. Montgomery committed the British Second Army — some 150,000 men and three armoured divisions — against about 100,000 Germans and seven armoured divisions of Panzergruppe West, among them the 12th SS Hitlerjugend, which contested every hedgerow.

Six operations followed one another. Perch, 7-15 June, failed to envelop the city, blocked by German armour at Villers-Bocage. Epsom, 25 June-1 July, aimed at the Odon and ran into the SS divisions. Windsor, 4-5 July, gave the Canadians Carpiquet but not its airfield. Charnwood, 7-9 July, opened northern Caen after a massive bombardment. Goodwood and Atlantic, 18-20 July, sent 1,500 tanks towards Bourguébus — the attack stalled against the anti-tank guns, but the city was fully liberated on 20 July after house-to-house fighting.

On 7 July, 460 RAF bombers dropped more than 2,500 tons of explosives in forty minutes; the 16th Luftwaffe Field Division lost 75 per cent of its strength, and between 300 and 400 civilians were killed in that raid alone. In all, two to three thousand inhabitants died, the population fell from 60,000 to 17,000, and some 35,000 people were left homeless. Pinning the German armoured reserves in front of Caen allowed the Americans to prepare and launch Cobra in the west. The battle remains the textbook case of fighting in bocage and built-up areas against a determined armoured defence.