Why Bridge Too Far attempt was doomed

[Ken Estes]

As for Montgomery not deserving to be a Field Marshall, he had a lot more right to it than to the US officers who got 5 stars.  Eisenhower was out of his depth as an operatational commander, Patton never commanded anything larger than an Army, and MacArthur was a self aggrandizing incompetent who should have been pensioned off in California after screwing up the defence of the Phillipines.

269621[/snapback]

The US five-star grade was artificial and largely a product of victory disease, never used since Bradley received his [1950?]. Patton was not, by the way. One was Leahy, who was merely FDR's major-domo. But he balanced out the service split.

 

To Ike's credit, he refused to believe either Patton or Monty that either could reach Berlin if given all the supplies. That's strategic direction, not operations, the realm of army level commands.

 

Dewey was elevated Admiral of the Navy and Pershing General of the Armies, in theory six star grades. The navy grade was self cancelling upon the death of its incumbent, don't know about the army one.

Edited January 12, 2006 by Ken Estes

[Geoff Winnington-Ball]

The delay in opening Antwerp was down to Eisenhower, not Montgomery.  When Roberts got to Antwerp he asked for further instructions - whether to go up the north bank of the Scheldt, help the White Army on the docks, make a run to Arnhem, or head south towards the Ruhr.  Problem was Eisenhower had just taken over land command and was incommunicado for 3 days, and hadn't actually made any plans beyond his tactically naive broadfront strategy.

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Yep, 'dolle dinsdag', Tuesday 5 September. We've touched on this before.

 

After an incredible march from the Seine, they got into Antwerp and stopped; had they continued, they would have been able to bottle up the Scheldt, rendering the clearing of same a great deal easier than it was a month hence. Ike WAS unavailable to give orders at this time, but to be fair, the troops were burnt and supplies WERE slow in catching up after that record advance, and the right flank was weak... but had they run up the coast through Bergen Op Zom towards the line Moerdijk/Dordrecht, MG would have been unnecessary. I don't know where Montgomery's head was at in that one; it would have saved a lot of lives and time.

 

MG COULD have worked, given some of the reasons cited here, but I maintain it wasn't necessary. Speed was the key in the advance from Antwerp and it just wasn't there - lost momentum cost them a hell of a lot. The paras could have been better employed in the area I mentioned, to front for that advance.

[Rickshaw]

Wasn't the "stop" at Antwerp dictated by logistics and the actual speed the advance had been undertaken? Effectively the British had outrun their supplies and because of the speed were worn out and badly in need of some rest.

 

Yes, the opening or rather failure to, was a huge mistake but people do make mistakes. The Germans were very good at quickly recovering and taking advantage of such mistkes. If, however MG had succeded, suddenly all those German forces along the Dutch coast are trapped and out of supply. If if XXX Corps couldn't get beyond Arnhem, the Germans have only a very narrow corridor to retreat through. It would have been another Falaise, all over again. The Schelde would still have to have been cleared, in all likelihood but the job would have been easier in my opinion.

 

As to what was to occur post Arnhem, I have a copy of a map from the IWM which I was given which details post MG moves as being to the Zuider Zee and from their around to the north of the Ruhr, into northern Germany.

 

While Waterloo can be remembered as a "close run thing" that got pulled off, MG is one that didn't.

[capt_starlight]

Alexander was more popular with the British and the Americans alike. But after reading that rather fine book on Anzio a couple of years back, I think he was vastly overrated.

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And Alan Brooke recognised Alexander's shortcomings (as evidenced in his diaries).

 

I wonder how Brooke would have gone in command of 21AG ? He had not had a fighting command since Dunkirk or an operational one since 1942.

 

Frank

[DKTanker]

As for Montgomery not deserving to be a Field Marshall, he had a lot more right to it than to the US officers who got 5 stars.  Eisenhower was out of his depth as an operatational commander, Patton never commanded anything larger than an Army, and MacArthur was a self aggrandizing incompetent who should have been pensioned off in California after screwing up the defence of the Phillipines.

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Well, only Marshall, Eisenhower, MacArthur, and 'Hap' Arnold wore 5 stars for the US Army during WWII, and at that weren't promoted until December 1944. This would be after the MG fiasco (Perhaps the US congress figured that if a cockup by a Field Marshall was good enough for the Brits, then tossing a few stars towards their own Generals was in order). Bradley of course was promoted in 1950 and by law the 5 star grade died with Bradley. I'm confused as to why Patton made your list, and Clarke on Stuarts list.

[Geoff Winnington-Ball]

Wasn't the "stop" at Antwerp dictated by logistics and the actual speed the advance had been undertaken?  Effectively the British had outrun their supplies and because of the speed were worn out and badly in need of some rest.

 

Partially, but the supply trains were there - they were able to supply XXX Corps, weren't they? Yes the lads were tired, but Bergen Op Zom isn't far up the road (I've driven it), and that would have at least blocked off South Beveland for starters. Any further north would have blocked more of the Scheldt, and potentially, with the confusion of the German retreat at the time, might have even taken us all the way up to the Rhine.

 

Yes, the opening or rather failure to, was a huge mistake but people do make mistakes. The Germans were very good at quickly recovering and taking advantage of such mistkes.

Agreed, the Germans capitalised on the delay - hence my assertion that the absence of delay, of that loss of momentum, might have accomplished much of what Montgomery tried to do when it was too late.

 

If XXX Corps couldn't get beyond Arnhem, the Germans have only a very narrow corridor to retreat through.  It would have been another Falaise, all over again.

 

Don't count on that. Arnhem would have won us a narrow corridor at best, with both flanks wide open.

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[philgollin]

Considering the fact that the fighting in NW Europe is so popular I am so confused regarding the number of differing views there are regarding the strategy of the campaign,

 

If you look around you can find almost any viewpoint (especially biased by nationality).

 

Is there any MODERN history that people can recommend ? Something reasonably balanced

 

Thanks

[KingSargent]

Oh Boy, and I missed the first two and a half pages!

 

1. I don't theink a "PEGASUS' op at Arnhem was doable. The gliders definitely couldn't land in the city at the north end and I think would have come to grief in the wet polder at the south end. The Poles jumped into it OK, but trying to bring a glider down in what is essentially a thickened swamp could lead to lots of crashes. They shoulda had the USMC's amphibious seaplane gliders, they shoulda... (go ahead, ask me)

 

2. If 1 Para Bde had all used one approach to the bridge and that got blocked or cut, we'd be bitching about them doing that. As it was German resistance was spread over three approaches - just how much resistance would Frost have run into if the other bns hadn't met the Germans moving south? Using three approaches both scouted out the enemy (necessary since the recce boys were lost) and the terrain and made it likely that one at least would get through - which is what happened.

 

3. Brereton may have been influenced by RAF planners, but he was the guy who made the one-drop decision. And Brereton was always concerned for his pilots, worrying that they might be too fatigued and have too many maintenance problems to continue after flying two drops on Day One. He never thought that if they got the whole job done on Day One, they wouldn't have to be capable of maximum effort on Day Two. I think everyone agrees that the primary problem was the inadequate first day lift. From everything I have read, the pilots were certainly willing to go again on Day One.

 

And if there was enough lift for everybody, drop the Poles on the NORTH side of Nijmegen bridge and see how long Nijmegen holds out.....

 

Shoulda busted Brereton to a CONUS shitshovellling command, fired Browning, and given the op to Gale, IMHO.

 

4. IMHO, the 'well-known objective' is BS. They weren't going to cross the Rhine (although they would be positioned on it), but XXX Corps was going to swing to the coast and cut off the Germans in Holland, especially those blocking the Schelde into Antwerp.

 

I have seen a map showing this plan, but I have no idea just how official it was; OTOH it strikes me as very much of a "Tidy Monty" plan. It would free up 1 Canadian Army as soon as the Germans got hungry and out of ammo, it would open Antwerp to reduce a ton of strain on logistics, and just incidentally would enable Monty to say, "Well, here I am on the Rhine with the biggest port in Europe right behind me, now doesn't it make more sense to just unload the supplies off the ships and give them to me instead of trucking them all across France to Patton?"

 

Comments?

[KingSargent]

And Alan Brooke recognised Alexander's shortcomings (as evidenced in his diaries).

 

I wonder how Brooke would have gone in command of 21AG ?  He had not had a fighting command since Dunkirk or an operational one since 1942.

 

Frank

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Alanbrooke regarded everybody except himself as a dunce. He would have done better in every job - according to him.

 

Brookie wanted Ike's job and according to him was "promised" it by Winnie on three occasions. He sulked like a two-year old when Ike got it. I don't think he would have taken 21AG as a 'consolation prize.'

 

Nor do I think he would have done a good job. From his diary, his concept of land warfare never advanced beyond 1918. He mentions on one occasion badgering Ike who proposed a Pas de Calais landing in 1943 and cut straight for Germany (which is what Marshall - another American nincompoop - wanted)*. AB was all: "How will you protect your flanks?" There are 36 German divisions waiting for you (there weren't), you must cover your flanks!" IE, when Ike suggests a narrow thrust Britain's military genius shoots him down - and then the Brits bitch about the "Broad Front"? - which of course would have been perfectly OK if Patton had been running up the coast and Monty charging across France....

 

* Thinking about it I might be remembering AB talking to Marshall at Casablanca, not Ike. This does not change the point that AB was a very 'linear' general.

 

Brereton should have taken AB for a flight and crashed.... How tragic!!

[Rickshaw]

Alan Brooke was doing an extremely valuable job - managing Winston. Which it has to be admitted he did very ably. Whether he was up to a strategic or operation command is another matter entirely. Without him, Winston would have been wasting valuable resources on his hare-brained schemes. As it was, he just wasted his and everybody else's time on them.

[BillB]

Oh Boy, and I missed the first two and a half pages!

 

1. I don't theink a "PEGASUS' op at Arnhem was doable. The gliders definitely couldn't land in the city at the north end and I think would have come to grief in the wet polder at the south end. The Poles jumped into it OK, but  trying to bring a glider down in what is essentially a thickened swamp could lead to lots of crashes. They shoulda had the USMC's amphibious seaplane gliders, they shoulda... (go ahead, ask me)

 

Disagree, and more to the point so did Gale, Chatterton and the rest of the Glider Pilot Regiment too, who were truly the experts in this kind of thing. The two LZs at the Benouville bridges were incredibly small, and I reckon they could have put that many gliders onto the road at the south end of the Arnhem road bridge, and either end of the rail bridge too, followed by a reinforing para drop at the south end of the bridge an hour or so later; this could have been done by the RAF a/c that did it in Normandy to get around the night trainin.navigation issue. Altho as events in Normandy showed the RAF were far from faultless.

 

Ref the last line, no, I'm not going to make it easy for you....

 

2.  If 1 Para Bde had all used one approach to the bridge and that got blocked or cut, we'd be bitching about them doing that. As it was German resistance was spread over three approaches - just how much resistance would Frost have run into if the other bns hadn't met the Germans moving south? Using three approaches both scouted out the enemy (necessary since the recce boys were lost) and the terrain and made it likely that one at least would get through - which is what happened.

Sorry mate, you are off beam a bit here. There was little resistance on any of the routes to the Arnhem bridges. The northern group hit the most (which was not sufficient to stop them, just to slow them up and oblige them to sidestep) and they weren't heading for the briges, they were going for some high ground north of the town anyway. Opposition to the middle route was not across the route when they were moving, they were harrassed (nothing more) by a German force that lacked the power to stop them located to the north of the route. The middle route was clear until the early hours of D+1, and one company actually walked through with no opposition. The southern route met no opposition at all except on the way off the DZ when they ran into somr scattered Germans that didn't slow them. And from the handful of Germans at the rail bridge and in the outskirts of Arnhem, of course. And the last bit misses the essential point. If 1 Para Bde had got its act together earlier it would have beaten the Germans to the punch, and in any case none of the resistance they encountered would have been anough to stop a concentrated brigade or even two thirds of a brigade. It was, however, enought to stop piecemeal attempts from much weaker forces. If you look at that plan carefully it is obvious that it was overcomplicated and tried to do too much with far too little.

3. Brereton may have been influenced by RAF planners, but he was the guy who made the one-drop decision. And Brereton was always concerned for his pilots, worrying that they might be too fatigued and have too many maintenance problems to continue after flying two drops on Day One. He never thought that if they got the whole job done on Day One, they wouldn't have to be capable of maximum effort on Day Two. I think everyone agrees that the primary problem was the inadequate first day lift. From everything I have read, the pilots were certainly willing to go again on Day One.

As I said above, the one drop thing is a separate issue to the RAF planning thing, which is specific to the selection of the DZs at Arnhem. The Americans were aqble to ovverride the RAF planners when they needed to. Another point no-one has acknowledged if the night flying business. Most of the Arnhem lift was US, and they were deficient in night flying training and practice and trained navigators. The results of this can clearly be seen in Normandy, where many serials had only one navigator and the confusion when formation was lost. I doubt the siuation had improved much by September. To go twice on Day One would have meant forming up in the dark and returning in the dark (with no moon remember) so given the Normandy experience I can understand why they were a bit wary of hobnobbing about in the dark. I also wonder what the German early warning and night fighter units would have made of an armada of unarmed transports and gliders coming across their ballpark...

 

And if there was enough lift for everybody, drop the Poles on the NORTH side of Nijmegen bridge and see how long Nijmegen holds out.....

 

Shoulda busted Brereton to a CONUS shitshovellling command, fired Browning, and given the op to Gale, IMHO.

Can't argue with either of those, although that would have meant handing the Poles over to the 82nd Airborne and I can't see empire-builder Browing going for that in any sircumstances.

4. IMHO, the 'well-known objective' is BS. They weren't going to cross the Rhine (although they would be positioned on it), but XXX Corps was going to swing to the coast and cut off the Germans in Holland, especially those blocking the Schelde into Antwerp.

 

I have seen a map showing this plan, but I have no idea just how official it was; OTOH it strikes me as very much of a "Tidy Monty" plan.  It would free up 1 Canadian Army as soon as the Germans got hungry and out of ammo, it would open Antwerp to reduce a ton of strain on logistics, and just incidentally would enable Monty to say, "Well, here I am on the Rhine with the biggest port in Europe right behind me, now doesn't it make more sense to just unload the supplies off the ships and give them to me instead of trucking them all across France to Patton?"

 

Comments?

270040[/snapback]

Makes sense. I have also had my doubts about all that "war over by Xmas" nonsense too, which I suspect was more for political and public consumption than a realistic intent.

 

all the best

 

BillB

[KingSargent]

Alan Brooke was doing an extremely valuable job - managing Winston.  Which it has to be admitted he did very ably.  Whether he was up to a strategic or operation command is another matter entirely.  Without him, Winston would have been wasting valuable resources on his hare-brained schemes.  As it was, he just wasted his and everybody else's time on them.

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Alanbrooke claims this anyway.

 

Not all of WSC's ideas were so harebrained. He wasn't PM when Norway was launched, so that can't be considered all his fault.

 

Greece was a boner, but I think it was necessary to at least make an effort (which was made with two battalions of English tanks and a whole lot of Colonial infantry) or lose all credit in the diplomatic arena. In any case, AB wasn't CIGS at the time so I don't see how he could have "restrained Winston." He also wasn't CIGS during the Wavell-Churchill feud.

 

AB ridicules WSC's desire for an amphibious op to take the northwest end of Sumatra in 1944-5. IMHO, it had great possibilities. The area was not heavily defended, and CW forces based there could stop Japanese coastal traffic up the west side of the Malay peninsula - which was the prime supply route for the Japanese in Burma. There would be no more sorties of IJN ships and subs into the IO unless they made a detour all around Sumatra (not that there were a lot of sorties, but the Allies worried about them). Heavy bomber bases could have made Singapore much less tenable as a Japanese base.

[BillB]

Bill,

    I was under the impression that, over the course of the War (OVERLORD, MARKET-GARDEN, VARSITY),  Glider units took heavy casualties just landing.  Crashes, etc.  Much higher than the Parchute units, statistically.  Was this in fact the case?

 

Falken

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Couldn't say form a statistical comparison perspective, but the other evidence suggests no, this was not the case. We've shown it wasn't the case at Arnhem, and it wasn't in Normandy either. I'd exclude the landings at Benouville bridges because they were a special op (although their landing casualties were very light) and the first glider lift into Normandy which carried atts and dets for the parachute units (which also went ok IIRC). The 6th Airlanding Brigade landing on the afternoon of 6 June suffered minmal landing casualties. I don't have any detailed info about VARSITY to hand, but AFAIK the losses may have been higher due to smoke and haze over the LZ and some opposition on the ground, but all objectives were attained within 90 minutes of the landing and the formation carried on operations seamlessly thereafter, which suggests landing casualties were wihtin acceptable bounds.

 

I suspect this idea of gliding being more dangerous and costly may be an urban myth from the time, not least because of the steep learning curve and OTJ development. It may also be a holdover from the first British glider op to seize the Ponte Grande at Syracuse in Sicily, which was extremely costly. Out of 144 gliders despatched, 78 came down in the sea, 10 aborted and returned to base and two more fetched up in Malta and Tunisia. 42 made it to Sicily, only 12 of which landed on or near the LZ. The pilot casualty ratio was one in three, the glider soldiers one in four. All this was due to circumstaces other than the suitability of the method, however. The glider pilots had no night flying experience and very little to nil experience flying the type of glider used, and the LZ they were given was covered in rocky outcrops and stone walls. They were dragooned into it (when the glider pilot CO objected he was told to comply or be sacked) by the CO of 1st Airborne Div who was on a mission to prove the viability of glider ops and did the opposite while getting a lot of good men killed.

 

Hope this answers your query,

 

BillB

[BillB]

Alan Brooke was doing an extremely valuable job - managing Winston.  Which it has to be admitted he did very ably.  Whether he was up to a strategic or operation command is another matter entirely.  Without him, Winston would have been wasting valuable resources on his hare-brained schemes.  As it was, he just wasted his and everybody else's time on them.

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Fair comment, I agree Alan Brooke was pivotal in sorting out the Army after Dunkirk, but I also agree in part with what King said. Without Churchill there would have been no commando and airborne forces, and without airborne forces and the other technical projects (like MULBERRY for example) Churchill either dreamed up or supported there would have been no D-Day.

 

all the best

 

BillB

[larrikin]

Wasn't the "stop" at Antwerp dictated by logistics and the actual speed the advance had been undertaken?  Effectively the British had outrun their supplies and because of the speed were worn out and badly in need of some rest.

 

<snip>

269808[/snapback]

 

Roberts had enough logistics left to do one thing, but had about 5 options, because he had outrun his orders as well as his logistics. He was then left with the subordinate commander's nightmare scenario - surfiet of "war-winning" options, so he did the right and natural thing, he laid them out and sent them upstairs, to Corps, who sent them to Army, who sent them to AG, who sent them to SHAEF who said - absolutley nothing for 3 days.

 

MG was as much about cutting off 15th Army as breaking into the north German plain.

[Conall]

Fair comment, but I dunno. There is nowhere for blokes to hid on the south side of the bridge, and putting folk there would surely have exposed them to the same stuff that destroyed the bits of the Oosterbeek pocket not anchored in buildings in short order. Plus Frost et al showed nobody was coming across that bridge from the south even if they didn't have the other end. I also still thing that all or most of 1st Para Brigadewith all its atts and dets and especially the AT guns would have been able to put up a lot more than marginally longer resistance. Ref the resupply etc, I think you are assuming that the battle would have run for the same 9 day span with the above, but I'm not so sure that would have been the case. If not then there would have been less need for air resupply. Also, if the bridge had been held for another day the situation would have been very different, as the Germans would not have been able to push over reinforcements to face the advance from NIjmegen or the Polish drop at Driel.

 

Sorry if the above in unintelligible, in a hurry and gotta go. To all, I will address all your points as best I can as soon as i get time.

 

all the best

 

BillB

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Bill,

 

I think you have to assume that the battle runs for 9 nine days (or 4 at the bridge) for two reasons:

1. Nothing has changed at Nijmegen, so XXX Corps can't get to Arnhem any faster

2. The historical principle of what-ifs is that as little should be changed as possible.

 

Also I think re your thesis of having more troops at the bridge is flawed logistically. More troops defending a presumably larger perimeter (albeit one better suited to defense) would have consumed ammunition at the same rate as the historical defenders. Without either more ammunition per soldier getting through initially or the ability to resupply then you get the same rate of expenditure and arguably the same result in a similar time. It is notable that the Germans didn't seriously begin to try to reduce the Oosterbeck perimeter until after the Arnhem bridge was recaptured and again it took a remarkably similar period of time to reduce (despite some marginal resupply to 1st Airborne Division, plus reinforcements from the Poles and D&Ds and artillery support from XXX Corps).

 

Personally I think a better plan would have been as follows:

1. Seize the Arnhem bridge by glider coup-de-main

2. Drop 1 Para Bde on Ginkel Heath and march to bridge securing Arnhem as a secondary objective.

3. Land 1st Airlanding Bde on the Driel DZ/polder to the south of Arnhem Bridge to secure the area for aerial resupply and to reinforce control of the Arnhem Bridge.

4. If possible to bring 4 Para Bde into the southern DZ on the first day, if not then on the second day along with the Poles. These should be used to secure the bridge, act as divisional reserves and secure the ferry near Oosterbeck (can't remember the name).

 

Obviously all this is written assuming the RAF/US Airforce agree to the DZs & if possible two drops on day 1. It is also written with the benefit of hindsight. It does, however, achieve the main aim - to secure Arnhem bridge and secure a viable resupply area next to the bridge (not 8 miles away requiring at least a brigade to defend it).

 

Best regards

 

Tom

[Conall]

Roberts had enough logistics left to do one thing, but had about 5 options, because he had outrun his orders as well as his logistics.  He was then left with the subordinate commander's nightmare scenario - surfiet of "war-winning" options, so he did the right and natural thing, he laid them out and sent them upstairs, to Corps, who sent them to Army, who sent them to AG, who sent them to SHAEF who said - absolutley nothing for 3 days.

 

MG was as much about cutting off 15th Army as breaking into the north German plain.

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Larrikin,

 

IIRC from Roberts' post-war memoirs he acknowledges that he made a mistake not securing the Scheldt - it simply didn't occur to him and that his primary aim was to head towards the Rhine asap.

 

Again Montgomery in his memoirs acknowledges the same mistake, in that he assumed that 1st Canadian Army would be sufficient to complete the job.

 

The real culprit and one who must bear ultimate responsibility, as you have previously pointed out, is Eisenhower. On the 4th Sept he set Montgomery three objectives: Cross the Rhine, capture the Ruhr, and to secure the Scheldt. Of these the focus was most clearly on capturing the Ruhr, which must therefore be taken as his primary aim (assuming he had one - arguable). He then went incommunicado for three days.

 

Incidentally have you read Robin Neillands' "The battle for the Rhine, 1944"? If not I would strongly recommend it as an excellent read, if a little biased against Eisenhower and Patton and very pro-Montgomery.

 

Best regards

 

Tom

[Conall]

just read the book

 

  Armageddon: the Battle for Germany, 1944-1945

by Max Hastings (Author) (Paperback - October 18, 2005)

Covers the the topic nicely.

 

First point that even if the Op had succeeded it was a strategic dead end - road network in Holland wouldn't support a Corp let alone an Army or Army Group.

 

Montgomery needs to be fingered - his ego got in the way of his judgement.  He had taken so much heat over Normandy & the Gap, he was trying to prove what a great Filed Marshal he was - he should never have made FM, he didn't have the capability asociated with that rank - it was Churchill who did it to appease Monty & the British jingoistic press after Ike took over . . .

Op MG delayed the opening of Antwerp and gave the Germans six + weeks to fortify the Scheldt, Waklchern & Northern Holland.

 

The late opening of Antwerp was a hugge strategic mistake -and it was 100% Monty's

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Pongo,

 

I read this about a year ago after it came out and was, I have to admit, very disappointed. It contained almost no primary research relying instead heavily on post-war memoirs (notably the US generals' accounts) and continued his theme of the manifest superiority of the German Army. In addition he continues to espouse an overly critical view of Montgomery, essentially parotting the much better earlier work of Carlo D'Este. Altogether I was very unimpressed.

 

Specific to your point about Antwerp and the Scheldt the bulk of the blame there lies with Eisenhower and not Montgomery alone - see Larrikin's posts above for a more detailed explanation and chronology.

 

Best regards

 

Tom

[Old Tanker]

The real culprit and one who must bear ultimate responsibility, as you have previously pointed out, is Eisenhower.  On the 4th Sept he set Montgomery three objectives:  Cross the Rhine, capture the Ruhr, and to secure the Scheldt.  Of these the focus was most clearly on capturing the Ruhr, which must therefore be taken as his primary aim (assuming he had one - arguable).  He then went incommunicado for three days.

 

Tom

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I guess but I was under the impression that Monty's staff put together the plan on their own under Monty's directions not Ikes. Monty then met with Ike to sell the idea.

Ike did approve it so ultimately he is responsible but the whole operation was a Monty thing with Ike giving him the O.K. .

In other words Ike didn't go to Monty and say I want you to this. Monty went to Ike saying I can do this.

[larrikin]

I guess but I was under the impression that Monty's staff put together the plan on their own under Monty's directions not Ikes. Monty then met with Ike to sell the idea.

Ike did approve it so ultimately he is responsible but the whole operation was a Monty thing with Ike giving him the O.K. .

In other words Ike didn't go to Monty and say I want you to this. Monty went to Ike saying I can do this.

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The problem lies earlier than that. It lies with the failure of Eisenhower to provide command and direction at the critical moment because he was incommunicado, i.e. when Roberts was screaming for it while sitting in front of a smorgasbord of options in Antwerp. The failure to exploit the Brits armoured drive into Belgium lies not with Roborts, Horrocks, Dempsey, or Montgomery, but squarely with Eisenhower.

 

As for the clearing of the Scheldt when Roberts' opportunity was let slip, nothing that went into MG would have been of any use. Unfortunately for the poor bloody Canadians who had to do it it was and infantry slog of the first water.

 

The idea for MG did come from Montgomery's headquarters - that slow moving, risk averse, conservative HQ. So you would have to say that if they thought it was doable it probably was. But when the detailed planning went over to Brereton and Browning they screwed up the airborne component very badly. And it was still a very near run thing.

[Guest uberdave]

From what I read, the planners did not want to drop the Paras in a large field suitable for a drop zone immediately south of the bridge. The thinking at the time was that it was too heavily defended. I think if they had planned massive close air support for that drop zone, the Brits could have dropped a sufficiently large force to hold the bridge until the armor arrived. It doesn't make sense to drop airborne troops that far from the objective when they knew there were at least some heavier German units in the vicinity.

[KingSargent]

It doesn't make sense to drop airborne troops that far from the objective when they knew there were at least some heavier German units in the vicinity.

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It also doesn't make sense to drop paratroops on top of flak. The planners thought they had a flak risk, they didn't think they had a risk of heavy units in the area. Whether or not they "should" have known is another issue.

 

We should also not forget that the specifics of where the drop went didn't seem important at the time, because - based on recent experience with planning airborne ops - it wasn't going to happen anyway. Just how many ops were scrubbed between Falaise and Arnhem? ISTR nine.

 

Also, I think MG was the acme of German performance in the west. After having gotten ashore in Normandy while Hitler was asleep and the Panzers stayed put and the long run up the coast (essentially unopposed after Falaise), who would have thought the Germans could react so swiftly and ferociously?

 

As for the pilot training issues, 1st Allied Airborne Army was set up specifically to be a combined force of airborne units and transports that trained together. Not to mention it gave them a chance to get Brereton out of the TacAir business. Brereton was told to put together a unit and train it, but the practice of siphoning off transports for other tasks continued, and there wasn't time to put it all together. I don't recall exactly when 1AABnA was formed, but it wasn't too long before MG.

[PONGO_7409]

I personally have always regarded Patton. Despite his ego (and that appalling prison raid that destroyed a battlegroup for no good reason other than to free his son in law) he seemed to make very few mistakes, and was perhaps as good as his ego said he was. Too bad he didnt live, he was have made a facinating postwar president.

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Patton was superbe in the pursuit . . . however when he cam up against fixed defences he proved to be less the average.

 

His Metz attacks were just bloody awful. Crappy logistics, crappy tactics and a huge ego killed a lot of GI's

[Colin Williams]

Wasn't the "stop" at Antwerp dictated by logistics and the actual speed the advance had been undertaken?  Effectively the British had outrun their supplies and because of the speed were worn out and badly in need of some rest.

 

Yes, the opening or rather failure to, was a huge mistake but people do make mistakes. The Germans were very good at quickly recovering and taking advantage of such mistkes. If, however MG had succeded, suddenly all those German forces along the Dutch coast are trapped and out of supply. If if XXX Corps couldn't get beyond Arnhem, the Germans have only a very narrow corridor to retreat through.  It would have been another Falaise, all over again.    The Schelde would still have to have been cleared, in all likelihood but the job would have been easier in my opinion.

 

As to what was to occur post Arnhem, I have a copy of a map from the IWM which I was given which details post MG moves as being to the Zuider Zee and from their around to the north of the Ruhr, into northern Germany.

 

While Waterloo can be remembered as a "close run thing" that got pulled off, MG is one that didn't.

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As Geoff indicated, the British (and the Americans for that matter) were near the end of their tether but not yet at the end, provided resistance continued to be light. One of the problems is that while Antwerp was a recognized priority from Eisenhower on down, no one at 21st AG or 2nd Army had looked in detail at what was required to open the port, let alone cut-off an as-yet-unrecognized path of retreat for 15th Army. In the ideal case Roberts could have pushed up to Bergen-Op-Zoom, but he would have been forced to pause soon thereafter. Much of XXX Corps was strung out through Belgium, and many other elements of 2nd Army were stranded around the Seine. Still, this would have made the mid-September alternate Market-Garden that much easier, as some of the German forces that opposed Market-Garden would have been stranded in Walcheren or the Breskens pocket.

[Rickshaw]

Alanbrooke claims this anyway.

 

Not all of WSC's ideas were so harebrained. He wasn't PM when Norway was launched, so that can't be considered all his fault.

 

Greece was a boner, but I think it was necessary to at least make an effort (which was made with two battalions of English tanks and a whole lot of Colonial infantry) or lose all credit in the diplomatic arena. In any case, AB wasn't CIGS at the time so I don't see how he could have "restrained Winston." He also wasn't CIGS during the Wavell-Churchill feud.

 

AB ridicules WSC's desire for an amphibious op to take the northwest end of Sumatra in 1944-5. IMHO, it had great possibilities. The area was not heavily defended, and CW forces based there could stop Japanese coastal traffic up the west side of the Malay peninsula - which was the prime supply route for the Japanese in Burma. There would be no more sorties of IJN ships and subs into the IO unless they made a detour all around Sumatra (not that there were a lot of sorties, but the Allies worried about them). Heavy bomber bases could have made Singapore much less tenable as a Japanese base.

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You're only talking about the operations that occurred. There were many that WSC proposed but which Allan Brooke managed to prevent even reaching the planning stage. Then there were the ones that even he couldn't stop, of which Kos is the main example of. Wingate's swans are another. Winston's problem was that he while he was willing to back innovative schemes and methods, he often couldn't sort the wheat from the chaff and didn't understand what was logistically and administratively impossible, as against what was only difficult.

 

BTW, what British "colonial" infantry served in Greece?

Edited January 13, 2006 by Baron Samedi