[14] Possession of Caen and its environs would give the Second Army a suitable staging area for a push south to capture Falaise, which could then be used as the pivot for a swing left to advance on Argentan and then towards the Touques River.

The initial evening assault, led by the 1st Battalion, South Lancashire Regiment was repulsed but the following morning further attacks gained the objectives and destroyed several German tanks.

[34] OKW wanted an arc of defensible terrain from the English Channel to the western banks of the Orne to be held and Adolf Hitler sacked Rundstedt and replaced him with Generalfeldmarschall Günther von Kluge.

[42] To achieve the latter it was planned to send an armoured column through the city to rush the bridges;[43] it was hoped that I Corps could exploit the situation to sweep on through southern Caen towards the Verrières and Bourguébus ridges, paving the way for the British Second Army to advance towards Falaise.

[44] Historian Roger Cirillo argued the operation was designed to only clear the city of German forces; due to it being cut by both a river and a canal any attempts to make rapid progress through and beyond, were "in all probability, impossible.

[2] To maintain the maximum possible pressure on German forces in the sector,[47] VIII Corps was placed on 24 hours notice to launch further attacks to the west of Caen.

[46] In the light of lessons learned from the partial Canadian success during Operation Windsor, Charnwood was to be launched on a broad front to increase the pressure on the German defences and disperse their defensive fire.

[7] SHAEF planners had advised, on 10 June, that the best way to break a stalemate was to use air power to support an attack; this method was to be used[48] for Charnwood as Montgomery enlisted the aid of RAF Bomber Command.

[34] Due to the proximity of the target area to the Allied lines and the resulting risk of friendly casualties, the aiming point for the bombers was shifted 6,000 yards (5,500 m) to the south—beyond most of the main German defences screening the city.

[55][56] With its 61 surviving tanks[5] 12th SS Panzer was holding the northwest approaches to Caen, defending the city and Carpiquet airfield from the 3rd Canadian and 59th British Infantry Divisions.

[58] Troops from the 26th SS Panzergrenadier Regiment were holding the western flank,[5] concentrating their strength, which included mortar batteries and a few tanks, in the area around Carpiquet airfield.

[nb 5] The 1st SS Panzer Division was roughly 5 miles (8.0 km) south of Caen with a regiment of dual purpose 88 mm guns from the III Flak Corps.

[41] At 22:50, six squadrons of de Havilland Mosquito bombers attacked individual targets and ten minutes later the 636 guns of the assaulting divisions opened fire, with the battleship HMS Rodney and other ships adding their support.

[64] The airfield at Carpiquet finally fell into Allied hands during the early morning, when the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division discovered that the 26th SS Panzergrenadier Regiment had withdrawn during the night.

[nb 7] A few hours later the British and Canadians met in the centre of the city and by 18:00 the northern half of Caen was firmly under Allied control; all I Corps's objectives had been achieved.

A few of Caen's bridges were intact but these were either blocked by rubble or defended by German troops on the south bank and the 1st SS Panzer Division had by now positioned itself to oppose any further advance.

[39] The debris that choked the streets made it almost impossible for British armour to manoeuvre through the northern half of the city, preventing Second Army from exploiting I Corps's success.

[91] Carlo D'Este wrote that Charnwood did improve the Second Army's position but without the high ground to the south, Caen was useless, the capture of the city was too little too late a hollow victory.

[92] Chester Wilmot wrote that for Montgomery to maintain a threat to German-occupied Paris, Caen's southern suburbs with their factories and communications network would have been a more significant prize.

[43] Buckley and Copp note that by the time the city was captured, the Germans—weakened by the battles of late June and early July—had already established defensive positions on the high ground to the south of the Orne, which blocked the route to the Falaise plain[7][43][80] Copp also wrote that the British Second Army won an important operational victory during Charnwood and the Society for Army Historical Research recorded that the attacks were a tactical and operational success.

On 1 July, Panzer Group West commander Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg had been replaced by Heinrich Eberbach, following disagreements with Hitler over how the campaign should be conducted.

[100] The Germans had suffered heavily, leading Hitler to order Army Group B temporarily to abandon big counter-attacks and stay on the defensive until more reinforcements could arrive to bolster the front.

[101] Buckley believes Charnwood to have been a good idea but one that proved better in concept than in execution, influenced as it was by the mounting political pressure on 21st Army Group to produce results.

He further notes that from the German perspective, the Anglo-Canadian forces apparently lacked the desire or ability to press home their advantages, citing Kurt Meyer's opinion that during the battle the Allies allowed the opportunity to destroy his 12th SS Panzer Division to elude them.

[7] With Caen north of the River Orne in Allied hands, mine-clearance operations were launched, bulldozers were set to work to clear the streets and a convoy of trucks carrying supplies for the civilian population was brought in.

[91] Rommel and Eberbach consolidated defensive positions in and around southern Caen, the 1st, 9th and 12th SS Panzer Divisions turning the Bourguébus and Verrières Ridges into formidable barriers.

[124] L. F. Ellis, the British Official Historian, Trew and Badsey all wrote that the raid was intended to cut off German reinforcements from the battlefield and hinder an attempt to withdraw south of the Orne river.

Examination of the second aiming point, "Northern Caen", failed to reveal a 90 percent zone but it was noted that the obstructive effect of bombing a suburb was significant and had caused substantial delays to vehicles of both sides, by cratering and blocking roads.

[126] The British initially announced that around 6,000 civilians had been killed during the air-raid and a Soviet war correspondent attached to the 21st Army Group, Lieutenant-Colonel Kraminov, put the figure as high as 22,000, a claim that was used by French communists in post-war anti-British propaganda.

[81] Preceded by a two-day bombardment that included support from naval vessels and Hawker Typhoons, the assault was designed to threaten Caen from the west and push back the 10th SS Panzer Division, securing an avenue for future offensives.