After landing in Normandy on D-Day and securing and linking up the five landing beaches, the next step for the Allies was to break out of the lodgment and move deeper inland. Caen, an ancient Norman city celebrating its millennium in 2025, was an anchor of the German defenses, and something had to be done about it. After the optimistic plan of liberating Caen on D-Day failed, the city and its surroundings turned into the site of a bloody fight of attrition between Anglo-Canadian forces and the German defenders. The first part of our article described why the Allies needed to capture Caen, and how the initial attempts failed. (Capturing Caen – Part I ) This part is about General Montgomery’s (Montgomery – Part I) new strategy of slowly, gradually surrounding the city and keeping German forces busy until the U.S. First Army managed to break through further to the west in Operation Cobra. (The Cobra Strikes)
 
Advance on the west
Montgomery switched his strategy to smaller advances in an attempt to gradually encircle Caen and wear down its defenders. Operation Martlet launched on June 25 from the west: its goal was to capture a stretch of high ground west of Caen; doing so would deprive the Germans of a good lookout spot, and prevent them from enjoying the advantage of the same high ground during the follow-up operation.

British troops got underway at 4:15 a.m. after an artillery bombardment, advancing in thick ground fog that often reduced visibility to 5 yards (4.6 m); radio problems forced tank crews to signal their position by shouting. Over the following days, the British pushed forward from village to village, eventually reaching their goal and repulsing a costly German tank counterattack.

Operation Epsom, which Martlet was supporting, took off one day later, on June 26. Its goal was to secure crossing across the Odon River, one of the western (left) tributaries of the Orne, then reach high ground to the south of Caen, contributing to the city’s gradual encirclement. The fighting was costly for both sides, and the British never reached the high ground, but they did manage to cross the Odon, establish a bridgehead and beat back several German counterattacks by June 30. The advance briefly reached Hill 112, a spot of high ground to the south of Caen that offered a good view of the area, but the elevation could not be held against a German counterattack.

Operation Windsor (July 4-5) tried to capture the village of Carpiquet and the nearby airport just to the west of Caen. The village was secured and held, but several assaults on the airport were beaten back by the Germans (though the airport would fall into British hands a few days later).
 
Into Caen
Montgomery felt the time was right to capture the northern half of the city itself. Operation Charnwood (July 8-11) began with a massive aerial bombardment of Caen. The British frontline was very close to German positions, so the bombers were instructed to drop their bombs further into the city – the goal was not to suppress the German lines, but to create enough ruins and rubble that further German reinforcement could not get to the fighting in time. After the bombing, an armored column would race into the city and quickly secure the bridges crossing the river.

The old city of Caen was devastated by the bombardment; the nearby countryside was turned into wasteland. 15,000 civilians had to take refuge in medieval quarry tunnels nearby. And in the end, the operation wasn’t even an unqualified success. The German defenders quickly turned the ruins into effective defensive fortifications and put up a fierce resistance. The British eventually gained control of the northern half of the city, but not quickly enough to also secure the bridges.

The bombing remains controversial to this day. Militarily, it had little quantifiable success, mostly a reported increase in morale among some Canadian troops – and that came at the cost of tremendous material and cultural damage. Two areas were left almost untouched because the French Resistance informed the British that refugees were gathering there, but 80% of the city was still destroyed. The pre-war population of 60,000 was reduced to 17,000 by the time the fighting for Caen was over, and the rebuilding process only finished in 1962.

A follow-up operation, Jupiter, was planned to attack German units withdrawing from Caen as a result of Charnwood. Such a withdrawal, however, didn’t manifest, as the Germans in the city took up positions in its southern half instead. Nevertheless, several more villages were liberated. Once again, the British tried to capture Hill 112 outside the city, a spot Operation Epsom failed to seize, but the operation ended with the top of the hill being no-man’s-land.

One fell swoop
The bloodiest and most controversial punch in the slugging match for Caen was Operation Goodwood (July 18-20). Goodwood’s goal was the outright capture of the still German-held southern half of Caen, and of the Verrières Ridge (also called Bourguébus Ridge) to the south. 
                           
Previous attacks concentrated on the area west of Caen, and two smaller operations were launched in there to draw away German attention from the east, where Goodwood would begin. (During one of these diversionary operations, an Allied fighter strafed Rommel’s staff car (The Accomplishments and Legacy of the Desert Fox), seriously wounding the German field marshal and putting him out of action.)

British forces assembled in the north, in the bridgehead to the east of the Orne River, which was originally established after Pegasus Bridge was captured on D-Day. Roads and Bailey bridges (The Bailey Bridge) were built to speed up the advance in the critical early hours; the troops were moved into location at night, with every effort taken to hide them in the day. (Some of them, though, were still spotted by a nighttime German recon flight that dropped flares to provide light for photography.) The attack had to be carried largely by armor: earlier in the month, Montgomery was informed that manpower shortage was so bad that the pool of replacement for his infantry strength was almost exhausted. On the other side of the city, in the west, Operation Atlantic was launched by Canadian troops to add extra pressure on German lines and help liberate Caen.