Comparison Of World War I and II
...aid of Dieppe”. In 1942 the Dieppe Raid was a military disaster for Canada. 5000 Canadian soldiers, 1000 British commandos, and a small force of Americans landed on France’s Northern shores on the 19th of August. There were several reasons for the attack against the Germans at Dieppe. Over half of the Canadians involved were killed or captured. At the end of the 9-hour raid, 907 Canadians were dead and the Germans took a total 1874 prisoners. However the Canadian sacrifice was not in vain. Canada’s mistakes at Dieppe taught the Allies a valuable military lesson. . Clearly World War I did not teach Canadians a lesson on land warfare. These two occurrences show that Canada made similar mistakes resulting in similar disasters, or large amounts of dead and captured Canadian soldiers. In conclusion land warfare in both World War I and II were catastrophic for Canadian forces. In addition to the catastrophes of land warfare, naval warfare served different but similar casualties. In World War I some Canadians fought in the British navy but most of them served in the Royal Canadian Navy, which was set up in 1910. When the First World War broke out in 1914, Canada only had two ships the Niobe and the Rainbow. There was one ship on each coast of Canada. They only had 350 men to serve on these ships and they were set up to protect Canada’s Atlantic and Pacific Coasts by the Laurier government. During the war the Royal Canadian navy expanded greatly. They began building patrol ships and had to recruit men to serve on them. There were 112 war vessels and 5000 officers and enlisted men, totally 10 000 by the end of the First World War in 1918. In World War II the number of ships increased even more than in World War I. The war at sea was more widespread in World War II and Canada was committed to this. At the beginning of World War II the Canadian navy had 13 ships and 3000 sailors but by the end of the war they had increased their numbers to include 370 ships and approximately 100 000 sailors. The Royal Canadian Navy had a variety of missions in World War II. Their activities ranged from submarine warfare in the North Atlantic to protecting the West Coast for fear of a Japanese invasion. Canadian ships were active in the St. Lawrence River as well. They sank at least 21 ships there. Canadian warships played an important part in the D-day landing on the Normandy coast. About 100 Canadian ships cleared enemy nines carried troops and provided protective fire. The three Canadian destroyers that played the biggest part during D-day were the Haida, the Huron, and the Iroquois. In 1942, Canadian ships were sent to the Aleutian Islands of Attu and Kiska to help the Americans regain these islands from the Japanese. Although the Canadian Navy was involved in Both World War I and World War II it was involved to a greater extent in World War II Finally the last front in which Canadians fought in both World War I and II was the air. RCAF or Royal Canadian Air Force was a small squadron of 4000 created to aid the warfare amongst the land. One of the most noted pilots in World War I was Billy Bishop. He became a Canadian hero and received the Victoria Cross from Britain. Billy was born in Owen Sound, Ottawa and as a young boy practiced shooting at moving targets with his rifle i...