One of the greatest fears of the planners of Operation Overlord, was a counter-attack by Germany’s Panzer Divisions. On June 10th, 1944, secret messages decoded at Bletchley Park located the Headquarters of Panzer Group West at the Chateau de la Caine, near Caen. The RAF’s 2nd Tactical Air Force was ordered to carry out an attack and a force of Hawker Typhoons and B-25 Mitchells was prepared. The force took off from airfields in Southern England in the early evening and Panzer Group West’s senior staff officers were sitting down to dinner in the Chateau’s elegant dining room as seventeen Typhoons of 181 and 247 Squadrons released a total of 136 rockets. This devastating attack was followed by a saturation raid by the B-25 medium bombers and a further force of Typhoons. Panzer GroupWest had literally ceased to exist and any plans for an armoured counter-offensive were destroyed in what has become known in RAF folklore as ‘The Dinner Raid’. The Germans took days to reorganize giving Allied ground forces vital time to secure the Normandy beach-head.
