Goodwood splutters to a halt

The 7th Armoured Division tried its luck again against Peiper's tanks during the morning of 20 July and fared little better, with the County of London Yeomanry losing dozens more tanks to Panthers and Tigers. In the afternoon it was the turn of the Canadians to join Operation Goodwood from their bridgehead in southern Caen. With heavy fighter-bomber support, the Canadian 3rd Division hit the Leibstandarte panzergrenadiers and reconnaissance troops holding the division's extreme left flank. Typhoons weaved over the battlefield, strafing German tanks and gun positions with impunity. At first the air support proved decisive, and they drove back the Waffen-SS men from several villages. Then, at around 17:00 hours, a massive thunderstorm broke over the battlefield, at a stroke denying the Canadians their advantage. A Leibstandarte panzergrenadier battalion, backed by a company of StuG IIIs, was launched on a counterattack. The Saskatchewan Regiment was overrun and 208 men killed or captured. Then the kampfgruppe moved against the Essex Scottish Regiment, sending it back in considerable disorder. Leibstandarte panzergrenadiers fought on through the night, pushing the Canadians back, to restore the German line, despite the almost constant heavy rain.

By dawn on 21 July, I SS Panzer Corps was holding firm. Operation Goodwood had failed spectacularly to achieve its stated objective: to capture the Bourguebus ridge and break open the German front east of Caen. Montgomery did not give up his ambitions to destroy the German defenders southeast of Caen. He now planned a rolling series of offensives to keep Hausser and Bittrich's Waffen-SS panzer reserves occupied while the Americans launched their long-awaited decisive attack in the West.

The Leibstandarte holds firm

The first of these offensives fell to the Canadians, and it would see them attacking the Leibstandarte on the Bourguebus ridge. They would be sent into attack over almost the same ground on which O'Connor's VIII Corps had been butchered six days before.

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