Operation Totalize - Offensive Plan

Offensive Plan

The German defensive positions on Verrières Ridge remained very strong. The forward infantry positions were well dug-in, with wide fields of fire. The main concentration of one hundred 75 mm and 88 mm anti-tank guns was deployed around the villages of Cramesnil and Saint-Aignan-de-Cramesnil 3 miles (4.8 km) behind the forward positions to halt any breakthrough by tanks along the Caen-Falaise road. The front line and defences in depth were held by the 89th Infantry Division, 85th Infantry Division (recently arrived from Rouen) and the remnants of the 272nd Grenadier Infantry Division (which had been decimated by the Canadians during Operation Atlantic). The 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend with an attached heavy tank battalion, with fifty tanks in total, was in reserve a further 3 miles (4.8 km) back. Some of the infantry were commanded by the German LXXXVI Korps, but most of the sector (and 12th SS Panzer Division) was under the command of the I SS Panzer Corps, which had arrived in the area during Operation Goodwood.

Simonds knew that infantry assaults supported by massed artillery had failed to overcome the German forward lines in Operation Atlantic and Operation Spring. During Operation Goodwood, a bombardment by aircraft of RAF Bomber Command had allowed British tanks to break through the German front, but they had then suffered heavy casualties from the intact German defences in depth. Infantry had been unable to follow up quickly enough to support the leading tanks or to secure ground behind them (so that follow-up units were also slowed). To solve the tactical problem presented by the terrain and the deep defences, Simonds proposed a radical solution; in effect, the world's first large-scale mechanized infantry attack.

Some Canadian and British infantry divisions had been temporarily equipped with M7 Priest self-propelled guns for the D-Day landings. These had since been withdrawn and replaced by towed Ordnance QF 25 pounders. Simonds had the Priests converted into Kangaroo Armoured Personnel Carriers, which would allow infantry to follow the tanks closely on any terrain. Permission was first requested from the Americans, from whom the M7s had been borrowed, to convert them into APCs.

Simonds made air power an essential component in his plan for breaking through the German tactical zones. The preliminary aerial bombardment before the ground attack called for RAF Bombers to saturate the German defences on both flanks of a four mile-wide corridor along the axis of the Caen-Falaise road during the night of August 7. During the early hours of August 8, two attacking forces of tanks and armoured personnel carriers would advance along this corridor. West of the road under the Canadian 2nd Division were the 4th Canadian Infantry Brigade and 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade. East of the road, under the British 51st Division were the 154th (Highland) Brigade and British 33rd Armoured Brigade. These two columns would bypass the front-line defenders, and capture the main German anti-tank defences around Cramesnil and Saint-Aignan de Cramesnil at dawn.

The second phase would follow immediately. While the remaining four infantry brigades of the 2nd Canadian and 51st British divisions cleared up the isolated German forward defences, and 3rd Canadian Division and British 49th Division (from British I Corps) began subsidiary attacks to widen the base of salient captured in the first phase, the 4th Canadian Armoured Division and Polish 1st Armoured Division would move up the corridor to Cramesnil, and prepare to advance further south. To prepare for their attack, bombers of the United States Eighth Air Force would bombard the German reserve positions at Hautmesnil. The ultimate objective was the high ground north of Falaise, 15 miles (24 km) beyond the start line.