Comments by "Dave M A C" (@davemac1197) on "TIKhistory" channel.

  1. Not bizarre if you're across all of the facts: The concern was that II.SS-Panzerkorps was known to be in northeastern Netherlands with two shattered SS-Panzer-Divisions under command - the 9.'Hohenstaufen' and the 10.'Frundsberg' Divisions. The Dutch resistance had only identified elements of the 9.SS-Panzer among the scattered troops billeted in the area between Arnhem-Apeldoorn-Deventer-Ruurlo, and they had identified a divisional headquarters at Ruurlo, but not which division it belonged to. The Allied intelligence assessment (the latest before the operation was SHAEF Weekly Intel Summary #26, dated 16 September 1944) was that these divisions were each reduced to a regimental battlegroup with few if any tanks, and that they were refitting by drawing new tanks from a depot thought to be in the Kleve area just across the German border southeast of Nijmegen. There was a fear that the Reichswald could be hiding up to 1,000 tanks - hyperbole that started a silly rumour the tanks were actually there, and Gavin was told the excellent Dutch army barracks facillites in Nijmegen may have a regiment of SS troops in them. This in turn created the concern over the Groesbeek heights - an area of woodland ridge line that was a natural defensive position between the drop zones and the city of Nijmegen with its bridges. It was for this reason the 508th PIR had to seize three initial objectives on the ridge at De Hut (2nd Battalion), De Ploeg (1st Battalion), and Berg-en-Dal (3rd Battalion), but as soon as this was achieved the 508th were expected to send 1st Battalion into the city to seize the highway bridge as soon as possible, and this is where things went wrong - the precise details of which are the answer to another question and not the one you're asking here, so that's a discussion for another comment. Browning's dismissal of the tanks photographed by reconnaissance Spitfire on 12 September in the Deelerwoud north of Arnhem, was based on his view that the tanks were obsolete models and probably not even serviceable. This story rested on Browning's Corps Intelligence Officer, Major Brian Urquhart (name changed to 'Fuller' in the film A Bridge Too Far), who connected these tanks to the Dutch resistance reports and gave his story to Cornelius Ryan in an interview for his 1974 book, A Bridge Too Far. The 1977 film is based on the book and is highly controversial, not least because Browning's widow and actor Dirk Bogarde both objected to the portrayal of Browning in the film, but Bogarde didn't opt to turn down the part and seems (in my personal opinion watching the film) to have sought to mitigate the script by playing the character as somewhat conflicted. I presume it was all he could do, or pass and have someone else play the role. By the way, Bogarde served in the war as an RAF photo interpreter working on Dempsey's 2nd Army staff, selecting bombing targets during the European campaign, including Operation Market Garden. He knew all the key personalities, including Montgomery and Browning. The problem with Major Brian Urquhart's testimony is that Browning was no longer alive to give his side of the story, and the photo in question was no longer available... until 2015. The photo (Frame 4015 taken 12 Sep 44 by 541 Sqn), along with the RAF's entire library of images, was donated to the Dutch government after the war to help with reconstruction and land use surveys, and only came to light when the Dutch government digitised their archives and put them online. The key photo frame was identified and studied by the RAF's Air Historical Branch, and under magnification the tanks can be determined to be Mark III and older Mark IV models (with the short 7.5cm gun), ruling out a 1944 panzer division as the likely owner. The study is available as a free pdf called 'Arnhem: The Air Reconnaissance Story' (2nd Ed, 2019) on the RAF MoD site. So, we now know which unit the tanks belonged to, because the only unit in the Netherlands with those vehicles at the time (before Market Garden started) was the Reserve Panzer Kompanie of Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring', the training unit for the Luftwaffe's only panzer division currently fighting the Soviets in Poland. The Regiment was based in Utrecht and the Reserve Panzer Kompanie in Harderwijk on the Zuider Zee coast. During the crisis in the west in September 1944, the 1.Fallschirm-armee was formed to plug the gap in the line in Belgium. the 'HG' Regiment transferred to it from LXXXVIII Korps (Netherlands occupation forces), and the three training Abteilungen (infanterie/panzer/artillerie) were mobilised and sent south to fight British 2nd Army on the Albert canal. The Reserve Panzer Kompanie was mobilised on 7 September and sent to Hechtel in Belgium to join II.Abteilung, but only three tanks completed the journey without breaking down, and were destroyed with much of the battalion at Hechtel by Guards Armoured Division on 12 September, the same day the remainder were photographed near Deelen undergoing maintenance (turrets were turned to allow engine hatches to be opened) at a supply dump in the woods near Fliegerhorst Deelen, the largest German airbase in the Netherlands. On 17 September, the day Market Garden was launched, these tanks were laagered at Wolfswinkel, near Son north of Eindhoven, and they attempted to fire on the drop zone of the 506th PIR (101st Airborne) during the landings, but were shot up by escorting fighter bombers. Two Mark III tanks escaped, one ran the gauntlet of 502nd troopers in St Oedenrode but was only hit by unprimed bazooka rounds, and they both by-passed the 501st at Veghel to bump the E/504th (82nd Airborne) roadblock at Grave. Some casualties were caused to troopers climbing out of their foxholes, in the belief the tanks were the British arriving early, and they then turned tail were not seen again. So, Browning's dismissal of the tanks in the photo appears to have been good judgement on his part, and history proves that he was right to be more concerned about the unknown location of 10.SS-Panzer-Division - it was not known that the Ruurlo headquarters was the 10.SS-Panzer-Division's, the 9.SS-Panzer were headquartered at Beekbergen near Apeldoorn. Your question is all part of the Arnhem mythology created by Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far, but I hope I've been able to answer this part of it at least.
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  2. Thank you for an excellent video. I have a special interest in Market Garden and have 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat histories on the 505th (Four Stars Of Valor, 2006) and 508th Parachute Infantry Regiments (Put Us Down In Hell, 2012) on my shelves as a result, so I'm familiar with their actions during the Bulge at Nordyke's forensic granular level. The conflict between Ridgway and Montgomery was enlightening, as the command problems in the 508th that led to the failure of Market Garden at Nijmegen had their origins in Normandy, and the resolution of those problems seems to have fallen between two stools as command of the 82nd passed from Ridgway (promoted to XVIII Airborne Corps in August 1944) to Assistant Divisional Commander Gavin, who failed to appoint a replacement for himself and ran himself ragged doing both jobs. I really wished Ridgway had taken the commander of the 508th (who was a gifted administrator) with him as his S-1 (Admin Officer) to XVIII Corps, as Market Garden may have succeeded with another CO in the 508th. Once again, as a deep study of Market Garden demonstrates, the Americans seem to need Montgomery as a scapegoat for their own failings. I call it Montgomery Derangement Syndrome!
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  3.  @Truthaholokz  - XXX Corps were still on schedule when they reached Nijmegen and found that the Waal bridges were still in German hands and not the 82nd Airborne's. The 36-hour delay to force a crossing of the Waal sealed the fate of 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem, who had done their job and were expecting to be relieved. What was foolish was entrusting an unreliable officer to taking a critical objective. Gavin's judgement to assign this mission to Colonel Lindquist's 508th PIR, he had not performed well in Normandy and Ridgway did not trust him. The airborne plan was already compromised by Brereton and Williams, but Gavin failed to provide for a replacement coup de main operation on the Nijmegen bridge after Brereton had deleted Browning's glider assault planned for Operation COMET. Instead, he instructed Lindquist to send his 1st Battalion immediately to the bridge and he failed to do so. That allowed 10.SS-Panzer-Division to reinforce the bridges and the city overnight and force a delay on XXX Corp's advance to Arnhem.
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  4.  @Truthaholokz  - the plan was still working except where it wasn't even being followed at Nijmegen - that was the fatal compromise. Complex operations are broken down into simple parts and not following a simple instruction undid the plan at Nijmegen on the first afternoon. I don't see anything too complex about the 508th's mission, the commander was just not a good field commander and that had been demonstrated earlier in Normandy - most notably the attack on Hill 95 (Sainte Catherine near La Haye) on 4 July 1944, over open ground instead of a recommended covered approach, resulting in unnecessary casualties. Source: Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012), chapters 8 - 10.
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  5. He actually said 3rd Infantry Division would only be able to take Caen on D-Day if the Germans did not immediately counter-attack with armour, otherwise they were instructed to hold a line north of the city to defend the beachhead. You need to check 21.Panzer-Division's movements on D-Day for your answer.
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  6. The broad front strategy took another six months, whereas montgomery's single thrust to Berlin strategy aimed to end the German war more quickly.
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  7. 17:20 - "So Gavin is admitting that he didn't follow orders by giving out pre-drop orders, and we know he really didn't give those pre-drop orders." - Actually we do, but you need a couple of books not on TIK's booklist, which dig deeper into the story and contain first hand accounts by people who were in the final divisional briefing confirming Gavin instructed Lindquist to send a battalion directly to the bridge: September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012), Chapter 3 – As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.” General Browning’s order, of course, made perfect sense. It was of paramount importance to hold the high ground. Any commander worth his salt understood that. Even so, the purpose of Market Garden was to seize the bridges in order to speedily unleash a major armored thrust into northern Germany, toward Berlin. High ground notwithstanding, the only way for the Allies to accomplish this ambitious objective was to take the bridges, and these were, after all, perishable assets, because the Germans could destroy them (and might well be likely to do so the longer it took the Allies to take the bridges). By contrast, the Groesbeek ridge spur wasn’t going anywhere. If the 82nd had trouble holding it, and German artillery or counterattacks became a problem, the Allies could always employ air strikes and artillery of their own to parry such enemy harassment. Also, ground troops from Dempsey’s Second Army could join with the paratroopers to retake Groesbeek from the Germans. So, in other words, given the unpleasant choice between the bridges and the hills, the bridges had to come first. General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance. At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote. Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion." Put Us Down In Hell – A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012), Chapter 9 - Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation." - Chet Graham was also witness to what happened when Gavin found out Lindquist was not moving on the bridge, because as liaison officer he was the messenger: Nordyke, Chapter 10 - Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' " - Based on the timelines, Gavin's intervention to get Lindquist moving, and Lindquist's orders to Warren Shields to get his 1st Battalion out of the line along the Groesbeek ridge and moving into Nijmegen, occurred at 8 PM, around the same time that Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 arrived at the Nijmegen bridge. The first clashes between the two units occured hours later, between 10 PM (when A Company of 1st Battalion moved off from the IP - Initial Point - at the Krayenhoff barracks) and midnight (when the Kanon-Zug of SS-Pz.AA.9 that Gräbner left behind in Nijmegen was withdrawn). The clash occurred at the Keiser Karelplein traffic circle, near the railway station, about 1 km from the highway bridge. The German movements are recorded in Retake Arnhem Bridge – An Illustrated History of Kampfgruppe Knaust September to October 1944, Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2010). Chapter 4 is based on the diary of SS-Untersturmführer Gernot Traupel, who was acting adjutant to SS-Sturmbannführer Leo-Hermann Reinhold (II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 and Kampfgruppe Reinhold in charge of the Nijmegen defence). My conclusion is that Lindquist was a poor field commander, and Nordyke's earlier chapters on the 508th in Normandy bear this out, so the fault is squarely on Lindquist. However, Gavin was his supervisor and was responsible for his divisional plan. He told Cornelius Ryan in his interview for A Bridge Too Far: 'Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily[?] and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight. He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler [jugular].” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.” Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east. We discussed also objectives. Gavin’s main objectives were the heights at Groesbeek and the Grave bridge; he expected and intelligence confirmed “a helluva reaction from the Reichswald area.” Therefore he had to control the Groesbeek heights. The Grave bridge was essential to the link up with the British 2nd Army. He had three days[?] to capture the Nijmegen bridge and, although he was concerned about it, he felt certain he could get it within three days. The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.' (Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 - James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University)
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  8. 3,300 was Model's estimate for German casualties in Market Garden, according to Robert Kershaw's book It Never Snows In September (1990), which has a note on German casualties in Appendix C (page 339 in the downloadable pdf version). As a British Army liasion officer to the West German Bundeswehr with access to their records, Kershaw's study of the Arnhem-Oosterbeek casualties alone comes to 2,565 with the note: "(understatement as unit records incomplete)". Most of the units listed in his Arnhem-Oosterbeek tally suffered an estimated 50% casualties quite consistently. The biggest problem with German records is that the Luftwaffe in particular were very efficient at destroying their records at the end of the war, so there are no complete 'official' figures possible and much of the Market Garden corridor was in Student's 1.Fallschirm-Armee (from which no records survived), and only from the Waal defence line northwards involved von Tettau's forces and II.SS-Panzerkorps, from which Kershaw was able to draw his Arnhem-Oosterbeek figures. 6,000-9,000 for the whole of Market Garden may still be a conservative figure. Some historians suggest it may be over 13,000 if you have a brief look on the internet. Swedish historian, Christer Bergström, is probably the most neutral author on the subject in his two volume book Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited (2019, 2020), which researched Cornelius Ryan's documents and interviews and debunks the many myths in the Hollywood film version of his book A Bridge Too Far. In volume 2 chapter VII: Results and Conclusions, he has this to say on German casualties: 'On the German side, there is no reliable compilation of losses. According to the war diary for OB West, the battle of Arnhem cost the Germans a loss of 3,300 men, about one third of whom, that is, about 1,100, were killed. However, counting soldier's graves shows that 1,725 Germans were killed in the Arnhem area between 17 and 26 September 1944. If we take a 1:3 ratio between killed and all casualties (killed, wounded and missing) as our starting point, that means that the real German losses would amount to somewhere in the region of 5,000 men. However, "Market Garden" comprised much more than just the battle of Arnhem. Cornelius Ryan estimated the German losses at Nijmegen and around "Club Route" during the same period at another 7,000 to 10,000 men, perhaps one fourth of whom were killed. This - which is of course based on very deep knowledge of the battle - still seems to hold up. 59.Infanterie-Division alone lost, on 19 September at Best - out of a force of 2,500 men - 300 killed and 1,400 captured as well as a non specified number of wounded.' So to me, a figure of 6,000 to 9,000 "in the heads of the British" would be a very conservative estimate indeed. It strikes me that you don't really understand how fair-minded the British people really are. I recall a scene in the film Battle of Britain (1969) in which Air Chief Marshal Dowding (Laurence Olivier) receives a phone call from the government minister complaining that he's having trouble with their people in Washington, they don't believe Dowding's claims on casualties, are they reliable? Dowding replies that he doesn't care about figures. If the figures are right, they (the Germans) will give up. If they're wrong, they'll be in Whitehall within a week, and he hangs up the phone. People in the UK get fed up with the continual anti-British crap in YouTube comments. If you continue with the crap, you'll continue to get pushback.
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  9.  @thevillaaston7811  - I was reading Roger Cirillo's PhD thesis on the Market Garden Campaign (available online) on the shenanigans going on with Operation Linnet II. Brereton was trying to get Browning fired so he could replace him with Ridgway. I was actually trying to find some information on the falling out between Montgomery and Bradley over Linnet II but never got to the bottom of that (I suppose you could read their memoirs and decide for yourself, but I thought it would be nice to get some objective research on it). So because Browning had already threatened to resign over Linnet II (because the timescale was too short to print and distribute maps for the troops involved) he realised Brereton would gladly accept his resignation and withdrew the threat. Thankfully, the ground troops reached the drop zones around Liege and Maastricht before the operation could be launched, so it was cancelled. Linnet II was a creation by Brereton purely on his own initiative, it was not requested by 21st Army Group (to which 1st AAA was attached and supposed to be supporting), but the Liege-Maastricht area of operations was within the US XIX Corps area of US 1st Army, and according to Roger Cirillo, Bradley didn't request it either (maybe Montgomery thought he had and that's the source of the falling out, I don't know). So within this context, I'm not really surprised that Brereton readily backed Williams' objections to certain aspects of the Comet plan being carried over into Market (glider coup de main on the Arnhem, Nijmegen and Grave bridges, and the double airlift on D-Day). In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Brereton actually put Williams up to making the objections, because although Comet was ostensibly an all-British operation planned by Browning's British I Airborne Corps staff, it did require one of William's Troop Carrier Groups and it doesn't make any sense to me why Williams would object to the glider coup de main (tugs flown by RAF bombers and release points on the same track as for the main landings zones) for Market when he hadn't objected to it for Comet. The only difference was that Market required all 14 of William's TCGs and not just one, and his argument was that he couldn't afford to lose a single aircraft. Perhaps because the 82nd Division took over the Nijmegen and Grave objectives, they were expected to provide the troops for their own coup de main, I don't know. We only know that Reuben Tucker, the highly experienced 504th PIR commander and a man you don't want to to say 'no' to, insisted on a company landing south of the Grave bridge, so he was given a special drop zone for one company of his 2nd Battalion. Market Garden was a fuster-cluck, but it was American politics and not British planning that was at fault.
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  10. They did provide flanking forces, and if you're under the impression they didn't because of Hollywood, then episode 4 of Band of Brothers 'Replacements' actually shows them doing exactly this, but not explained explicitly. The 11th Armoured Division's advance to Nuenen from Eindhoven on 19/20 September with support from the US 506th PIR was a reconnaissance in force to help open up the advance of the flanking British VIII Corps, which had a dedicated MSR (Main Supply Route) called 'Spade Route'. The XII Corps was also on the left flank, with their own MSR called 'Diamond Route'. The VIII Corps consissted of 11th Armoured and 3rd Infantry Divisions, but their start in Market Garden was delayed by the fact they had no captured bridge over the Meuse-Escaut canal in Belgium, like the central XXX Corps on the 'Club Route'. While the 3rd Infantry Division were constructing a Bailey bridge at Sint Huibrechts-Lille over the canal, 11th Armoured got permission to use the 'Club Route' bridge at Neerpelt and their MSR as far as Eindhoven in order to strike right towards Nuenen, into the rear area of German units holding the Meuse-Escaut line in the Sint Huibrechts-Lille area. They bumped Panzerbrigade 107, which was based at Nuenen for strikes against the Market Garden corridor at the Son bridge on the Wilhelmina canal, and the 11th Armoured/506th PIR patrol helped dislodge them and persuade them to withdraw. This is protrayed in Band of Brothers as a failure or retreat on the main MARKET GARADEN axis, but it's simply nonsense. Stephen Ambrose got many of his facts wrong on this episode in his book. VIII Corps' axis of advance ('Spade Route') was towards Helmond and Gennep on the river Maas. They eventually made contact with 82nd Airborne patrols in the area of Mill and Haps, if I recall, which was an area not strongly occupied by the Germans and the 82nd's Reconnaissance Platoon (using armored Jeeps) made contact with VIII Corps units - probably Inns of Court Reconnaissance Regiment (armoured cars) in this area. XII Corps' axis of advance ('Diamond Route') was from the Meuse-Escaut canal at Lommel, also having to construct a Bailey bridge, with 7th Armoured, 53rd (Welsh) and 15th (Scottish) Infantry Divisions, and was aimed at 's-Hertogenbosch. The flanking Corps' progress was also slower than XXX Corps because Montgomery did not receive the "absolute" priority of supplies promised by Eisenhower's Chief of Staff, Bedell Smith, during his 12 September visit - there seems to be a language barrier on the meaning of the word "absolute", so the priority of supplies obviously went to XXX Corps on the centre line. 11th Armoured Division also started a day late due to having to relocate from Antwerp, which it had captured on 4 September while under XXX Corps command and was switched from the 2nd Army's left flank to the right for MARKET GARDEN. Descriptions like "deep thin rapier thrust" is misleading, and it comes from some of the histories - Cornelius Ryan was the most responsible, only mentioning XII and VIII Corps just once in his book when Model struck at Veghel five days into the operation, and said the flanking Corps had only reached Son - not true - they had advanced further than that when the corridor was cut north of Veghel and the 506th were already free to have moved up to Uden at the time and helped the 501st at Veghel reopen the corridor by striking south to meet them. I've never heard the RAF said they couldn't fly twice a day (do you have a source?) - they were doing if for operation COMET, which was only cancelled at the last minute as the men were loading their aircraft at 0200 hrs on 10 September for the dawn first airlift. Montgomery and Browning's proposed upgrade operation SIXTEEN (approved by Eisenhower) retained the double airlift and dawn glider coup de main raids on the three main bridges from COMET, but because the upgrade added the two US Airborne divisions, the detailed planning was handed over to USAAF Generals Brereton and Williams of 1st Allied Airborne Army and US IX Troop Carrier Command respectively. It was Williams who decided his troop carriers could not fly twice a day, and the glider coup de main raids (RAF tugs and British glider troops) were also cancelled by Williams because he determined the raids would be too risky in broad daylight. The main reasons seem to be a lack of night-trained navigators in the USAAF Troop Carrier units, the available turnaround time between lifts required for aircraft maintenance was deemed insufficient, and concerns over flak near the bridges. The RAF had been bombing Germany at night for years, so they had night-trained navigators on every plane, including the obsolete Stirlings they were using as glider tugs in 1944. I have Dutch researcher Hans Den Brok's Market Flights volumes that cover the Arnhem and Nijmegen airlifts, and the crew rosters show that only a small number of C-47s even had five-man crews including a navigator (the four man crew is a pilot, co-pilot, radio operator and crew chief), and these were leading the serials while the other aircraft followed behind. The USAAF had far greater numbers than the RAF in 1944, but they were less capable in comparison. This was a common theme throughout the war - the US achieved a rapid expansion of its forces in order to bully its way into becoming the 'senior partner' in the alliance, but it had sacrified quality in order to achieve quantity. The US Troop Carriers were often criticised for being insufficiently trained, and Gavin lamented the fact the USAAF glider pilots were a liability once on the ground and advocated for combat training and equipment to match the doctrine of the British Army's Glider Pilot Regiment, which provided two Wings (battalions) of light infantry fighting at Arnhem.
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  11. I've just watched the first part of this video again and TIK's information is out of date, but I know his later videos on Market Garden was clearer on some of these points, particluarly his videos on Browning and Gavin at Nijmegen: 17:15 - the reason the Son and Best bridges were quickly blown by the Germans was because the Wilhelmina canal was a prepared defence line, manned by the Luftwaffe training unit, Flieger-Regiment 53 in this sector, and at the bridges were batteries of schwere Flak-Abteilung 428 repositioned from Deelen airfield. The bridges had 'sprengkommando' (demolition teams), which could blow their bridges on short notice or standing orders, so it's hardly surprising both of these bridges at Best and Son were demolished as soon as they were threatened. The bridge at Son was supported by 4 x 8.8cm guns and 3 x 2cm autocannon from 4./s.Flak.Abt 428. There was one 8.8cm each on the north canal bank west and east of the bridge, and the west gun held up 1st Battalion 506th moving through the forest, and two more 8.8cm on the main street north of the bridge that could fire directly down the street, so they turned their barrels around to fire north at the 2nd Battalion 506th troopers (I believe Dog Company was leading and Easy were at the rear of the column on this occasion, which would have made Perconte happy at least). The other two 8.8cm guns, 'E' and 'F' guns from the battery, had been detached to Klooster Dreef and Woenselsche Straat in the northern suburbs of Eindhoven, and were captured the next day by Fox Company 506th in a flanking move using the back streets. 17:45 - XXX Corps being delayed by having to build a replacement for the Son bridge is a very common perception, but John Sliz in his book, Bridging The Club Route - Guards Armoured Division's Engineers During Market Garden (2015, 2016) and part of his excellent and informative Market Garden Engineers series, makes a good point that because the Irish Guards reached the Son bridge site at 1900 hrs, and the advance party of Royal Engineers at 1930 hrs as it was getting dark, the bridging equipment arrived at 2000 hrs to begin work immediately and the Bailey bridge was built in 10 hours 15 minutes entirely during the hours of darkness, when it was doctrine not to operate tanks, so the delay was effectively zero at Son. The tanks would have stopped in the Eindhoven/Son area anyway that night. The first armoured cars of the Household Cavalry moved over the bridge at 0615 hrs on the 19 September before first light and the Grenadier Guards' tanks crossed at Dawn. Horrocks had ordered that tanks were not to advance at night, as was standard procedure. In his book Corps Commander (1977), he said he had twice risked an advance into enemy territory during his career and both times it had paid off. He thought that during Market Garden he would be pushing his luck if he risked it a third time and he was already irked by the fact the operation had started on a Sunday. In his experience, no major operation starting on a Sunday had gone well. 17:52 - the glider crash near General Kurt Student's headquarters did not carry the full operational plans for Market Garden, this was a prop used in the film A Bridge Too Far in the earlier briefing scene, giving a false impression. The glider was a US WACO (not a British Horsa - another prop built for the film for other scenes and reused for this one) carrying the US 101st Airborne's liaison officer and Comms team to Browning's Corps HQ at Groesbeek. It was the main reason Browning had no radio communications with the 101st during the operation. The officer was carrying a number of documents that Student had translated and he realised the significance of a resupply schedule for the 101st Division, as his airborne experience told him he could extrapolate the airlift schedule for all three divisions. Model was unconvinced, so Student used his own Luftwaffe chain of command to alert fighter aircraft to be over the drop zones when the airlifts were due. Fortunately, they were all delayed by weather and the fighters were back at base being refuelled when the transports finally arrived. 18:45 - the real priority was the Nijmegen bridge, but it's not correct that the 1st Battalion 508th were ordered to take the bridge, not until Gavin found out the regiment were dug-in on the heights and not moving. He had specifically ordered the regiment commander, Colonel Roy Lindquist, to "move with speed" on the bridge as soon as possible after landing and securing their initial objectives on the heights. When Gavin went to the 508th CP to get Lindquist moving, Lindquist then ordered the 1st Battalion to be prepared to move, and this came as a total surprise to battalion commander Shields Warren. This is essentially why Market Garden failed, and only recently published books have exposed the true story and overturned the conventional narrative of Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far, published in 1974, who had failed to pick this up in his research. Sources: Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011) Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012) September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) The 508th Connection, chapter 6 - Nijmegen Bridge, Zig Boroughs (2013) Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited, vols 1 and 2, Christer Bergström (2019, 2020)
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  12.  @ErikExeu  - the single road is a myth - to discuss it as such is to perpetuate the mythology. It was a main supply route and had many diversions (designated 'Heart Route') to use alternative bridge crossings. Your comment about the flanking Corps not integrated into the fighting I find odd - it was so integrated into the fighting it actually featured in an episode (4: Replcements) of Band of Brothers (2001), although the flanking Corps' advances were hampered by Bedell Smith not coming through with his 12 September promise of absolute priority on supplies. Guderian had better terrain for armoured operations in Poland and France. The perceived lack of flexibility in MARKET GARDEN is due to it not being discussed in the literature and the Hollywood film shows only four out of twenty four bridges involved in the operation.
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  13.  @ErikExeu  -Best is an interesting example because it was not a bridge Dempsey requested or had a use for, probably because the road it carried was headed toward the XII Corps boundary and would cause more problems than it would solve for both Corps if XXX Corps used it as an alternative crossing. The bridge was selected by Taylor on his own initiative in case the Son bridge was blown, but in the event both were on a prepared defence line along the Wilhelmina canal and both bridges were blown on D-Day, resulting in a wasteful battle at Best for a bridge that was already lost and eventually drew in most of the 502nd Regiment with high casualties. I still don't know what you mean by the flanking Corps "not properly integrated in the fighting" - I think not properly integrated in the public consciousness would be a more accurate statement, despite appearing (although not explained) in an episode of Band of Brothers. A Better 'Heart Route' example that was actually used would be the Heumen lift bridge on the Maas-Waal canal, also on a prepared defence line and the only intact alternative to the damaged Honinghutje road bridge on the main 'Club Route' - the demolition charges failed to detonate, but the bridge was damaged by the successfully demolished rail spans directly next to it, and engineers deemed the structure too weak for the tanks and only suitable for light traffic. On the terrain aspects, it did vary over the length of the corridor - there were areas where armoured operations off the roads were possible and some sections where it was not. One of the problems with public perception is the opening breakout scene in the Hollywood film, which is almost completely wrong in creating the impression the tanks could not leave the road in that (or any) section of the advance - they could, and did. (That scene also completely misrepresented the positioning of the German anti-tank guns and the part they played). I have at least one publication showing Irish Guards Shermans moving across the fields to attack German forces in farms and woodlands on the flanks - the After The Battle magazine publication of Operation Market Garden - Then And Now edited by Karel Margry (2002) definitely has those photographs. That publication also has a sketch map showing the corridor broken down into sections with notes on the terrain - the section between Nijmegen and Arnhem being the worst, and it was planned that the advance would be led by 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division for that section and unexpected events at Nijmegen impacted that plan adversely - they were committed to mopping up operations in Nijmegen and the Irish Guards (again) had to continue the advance in terrain they were not expected to have to deal with. As for Guderian advising against using tanks in terrain which was not suitable - I'm sure his advice was not as simple as that. Model was planning his counter-offensive to recapture Antwerp from the Netherlands - the reason he didn't want to authorise demolition of the main bridges. The Germans were not averse to using armour in "unsuitable" terrain, regardless of whether it's in the Netherlands or th Ardennes. It may be difficult, but it's certainly not impossible, and having armoured support for the infantry is advantageous in any terrain. The Germans used tanks on the Nijmegen 'island' (the Betuwe) quite effectively - the blocking line based on the hedgehog positions at Oosterhout-Ressen-Bemmel involved the three StuGs from 7./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10, the tanks from Panzer Kompanie Mielke attached to Kampfgruppe Knaust, and at least two Tiger I tanks from Panzer Kompanie Hummel (based on tracks and 8.8cm shell casings found later on the line). They also later fed in at least some of the 20 Panthers Model sent directly from the factory and crewed by the SS-Panzer-Regiment 9 'alarm kompanie' - photographs of several Panther wrecks in the Elst area are testament to their deployment. The rapid advance of XXX Corps from Son to Nijmegen in just a few hours is evidence that the route and the terrain were not a total impediment, and the operation was still broadly on schedule until they reached Nijmegen, where the delay fatal to the operation occurred. The failure of MARKET to secure some bridges was the major impediment, and the cumulative compromises in the airborne planning process were the cause, not the ground advance. Criticising "the plan" is a bit moot when the fatal compromise was the failure to carry out a critical part of the plan - namely the capture of the Waal highway bridge at Nijmegen on D-Day, but the nice thing about that story is that we know the 'what-if' scenario of the 1st Battalion 508th going straight to the bridge as instructed would have worked, because three men from the battalion S-2 Section did in fact do that and captured the southern end of the bridge and seven prisoners without even firing a shot. They graphically demonstrated what the battalion could have done if they had moved "with speed" as Gavin had intended, and would in fact have replicated the position that Frost had established at the highway bridge at Arnhem.
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  14. Obviously, Sir, you're an expert on these matters, with all your medals and successful campaigns... TIK has done an excellent job of research and critical thinking, but he could have gone further and found more evidence against Gavin in his own words to the official US Army historian, his interview with Cornelius Ryan, and from other first hand witness accounts in books by American historians: Letter General Gavin to Historical Officer Captain Westover, 17 July 1945 Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
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  15.  @thevillaaston7811  - Brereton was travelling up the MARKET GARDEN corridor on 20 September, as was Matthew Ridgway a few miles behind him. George Koskimaki, who was General Taylor's radio operator, tells a story in his book Hell's Highway (1989, 2003) about Ridgway asking him if he could reach Brereton on his SCR-300 radio set and Koskimaki had to climb onto the roof of a chicken shed with the set to get a signal to Brereton's car. He had to help Ridgway onto the roof as well so he could talk to Brereton and Koskimaki also recalled Ridgway seemed annoyed with his caution about security using clear text over the air.
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  16. Nice observation.
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  17. *G-4 for supply and logistics. Eisenhower's broad front strategy was a political one and ran counter to military doctrine of concentration of forces at a point where the enemy is weak, which is what Montgomery was arguing.
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  18.  @Truthaholokz  - G-3 (and S-3 in units below Division) was the Operations staff section, so I think that may be right, G-1 was Admin and Personnel. When I did a search on G-5 I kept getting hits on a United Nations staff position, which is obviously post-war and not what I was looking for. I could only find a wartime position called G-5 in SHAEF as the Civil Affairs Division, which I had never heard of before in the US structures. In the British Army, "Civil Affairs" was a wartime staff position, but British positions are enumerated by rank rather than department, so at Divisional General Staff Officer level you would have a Lieutenant Colonel as GSO 1 Operations, GSO 1 Intelligence, etc., and their deputies would be a GSO 2 - Major, and the third officer a GSO 3 - Captain. I also have a long-time interest in UFOs and learned through the Admiral Thomas Wilson leak/memo case that the Joint Chiefs of Staff have 'J' staff positions, as he was Assistant to the J-2 Intelligence Officer and Deputy Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency at the time in 1997 under the Clinton admin. His boss in both positions was J-2 and Director DIA, and Wilson himself was promoted to those positions after being threatened with early retirement and loss of one or two stars and pension rights if he exposed a UFO reverse engineering program. He duly retired in 2002 after getting the promotion and serving in those positions, and then leaked the story of his investigation into the program to a UFO investigator.
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  19. It was Gavin's plan for capturing the Nijmegen bridge that wasn't followed by Lindquist and allowed the Germans to reinforce the city. What has Montgomery got to do with that? Blaming Montgomery is an American deflection from an American failure, which makes your comment total hypocrisy.
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  20. Well done, and thank you for doing this video. I think you covered all the major issues and certainly did a great job of picking up on points that a lot of (professional?) authors miss. I find the same problems of fighting the conventional narrative or orthodoxy whenever the Montgomery haters (it's almost like a religion) vent their spleen over Market Garden. (By the way, it was Lindquist. Gavin was just his boss, and was very angry when he found out his divisional plan was not followed at Nijmegen against zero opposition and knew this had probably compromised the entire operation - Ref: Phil Nordyke - Put Us Down In Hell, 2012). A good reference on the German 15.Armee during this period is Jack Didden and Maarten Swarts' new book - The Army That Got Away - The 15.Armee in the Summer of 1944 (2022). It's effectively a prequel to their first book, Autumn Gale (Herbststurm) - Kampfgruppe Chill, schwere Heeres Panzer-Jäger-Abteilung 559 and the German recovery in the Autumn of 1944 (2013). These books are heavy, expensive, limited print runs, and based on detailed research of primary sources, aimed at people seriously interested in these topics instead of the pulp mass-market Montgomery-hating orthodoxy.
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  21. I think Browning and Gavin both need to be given more credit for the Nijmegen highway bridge being a primary objective and too much emphasis has been given to Browning's warning to Gavin that the Groesbeek heights also needed to be secured. Because the bridge was not seized on the first day, I think people assume this was intended by the bridge not being given high enough priority. There is an argment that the bridge should have been given more consideration with a coup de main operation, but it was not de-prioritised in favour of the high ground until after the first failed attempt to seize the bridge. The fact is that the officer charged with the capture of the bridge failed to carry out Gavin's instruction, and there's plenty of evidence in the literature, some of it going back to the officer's previous performance in Normandy, to support it. First, Gavin wrote in his report to US Army Historical Officer, Captain Westover, on 17 July 1945: "About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well, I personally directed Colonel Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry, to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing, but to keep a very close watch on it in the event he needed it to protect himself against the Reichswald. So I personally directed him to commit his first battalion to this task. He was cautioned to send the battalion via the flat ground east of the city." In his interview with Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far, Ryan notes [with my square brackets]: Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily[?] and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight. He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler [jugular].” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.” Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats [polder or farm land] to the east. We discussed also objectives. Gavin’s main objectives were the heights at Groesbeek and the Grave bridge; he expected and intelligence confirmed “a helluva reaction from the Reichswald area.” Therefore he had to control the Groesbeek heights. The Grave bridge was essential to the link up with the British 2nd Army. He had three days to capture the Nijmegen bridge and, although he was concerned about it, he felt certain he could get it within three days. The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized. (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University - Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967) The British request to drop a battalion north of the bridge for a coup de main was a legacy of Browning's original operation COMET plan to use dawn glider coup de main assaults on all three main bridges - Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave - to repeat the success of operation DEADSTICK on the Orne canal and river bridges in Normandy. These elements had been removed by Brereton for the planning of operation MARKET, because he thought it too risky for a daylight assault, having already deleted COMET's double airlift for D-Day. Despite Browning having advised Dempsey (British 2nd Army) that COMET should not go ahead without the glider coup de main assaults, he could not protest their removal by Brereton for MARKET, because he had already threatened to resign over Brereton's LINNET II plan (Liege and Maastricht bridges), scheduled with too short notice to print and distribute maps. LINNET II was thankfully cancelled and the two men agreed to forget the incident, but Browning was now aware Brereton had intended to accept his resignation and replace him with Matthew Ridgway as his deputy and his US XVIII Airborne Corps HQ for the operation. Browning was now politically neutralised and it seems his only influence on the planning for MARKET was to bring forward the delivery of his Corps HQ to Groesbeek on the first lift, where he could at least influence events after the troops had landed, but at the expense of some anti-tank guns going to Urquhart's 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem. (The MARKET GARDEN Campaign: Allied operational command in northwest Europe, 1944 - Roger Cirillo PhD Thesis, 2001 Cranfield University) So everything now rested on Gavin's instruction to Colonel Lindquist and the battalion assigned to secure the Nijmegen bridge, but Lindquist failed to appreciate the urgency and importance of the primary objective and sent only a pre-planned recon patrol to the bridge. By the time Gavin found out and ordered Lindquist to get the 1st Battalion moving, it was too late, and the 10.SS-Panzer-Division had won the race to reinforce the city and its bridges. Cornelius Ryan did not explore this aspect of the operation and most historians have also followed Ryan's established narrative. Only more recent books have explored what Gavin had already indicated in 1945 letter and 1967 interview, and if you want to read in detail the drama that followed and is completely absent in A Bridge Too Far, you would have to consult some books written about 12 years ago, although I have posted extracts from these books elsewhere in the comments: September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012). Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012). The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs (2013), chapter 6 – Nijmegen Bridge.
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  22.  @valiskuk  - I'm glad you didn't delete the comment, I think you're on the right track - and too few people are because the conventional narrative has become so widely accepted for so long. Antwerp is a common diversion - a lot of people think it should have been the priority over a Rhine crossing, but mostly they're the people who think Patton should have crossed the Rhine first. The logic was that a Rhine crossing at Arnhem would be easier sooner rather than later, before the Germans had reinforced their river and canal defence lines. Eisenhower saw that logic and that's why he endorsed the operation. Montgomery was already going to Arnhem with COMET, he only needed Eisenhower's endorsement to expand the operation into MARKET to include the American divisions. Antwerp was needed for Eisenhower's broad front advances into Germany, not for getting to the Rhine, so the argument that Antwerp should have come first is completely beside the point. Opening Antwerp doesn't cut the V-2 supply lines, it doesn't even trap the 15.Armee at Antwerp (only one of Montgomery's wider encirclements could do that after a smaller one fails), and it certainly wouldn't make a later Rhine crossing any easier. So Antwerp is a diversion from the real debate. The thing about Browning is that his judgement seems to have been spot on. He was right about holding the Arnhem bridge for four days (and perhaps it being "a bridge too far"). He was right to dismiss the aerial photo of German tanks in the Arnhem area - now that the photo has been found it does indeed show obsolete vehicles and not a 1944 panzer division. And he took his Corps HQ to Groesbeek on the first lift at the expense of not more infantry as I had first assumed (38 glider tugs could have taken the second half of the South Staffords battalion) but actually disrupted the original anti-tank gun delivery schedule. I've recently finished reading a new series of books on the Anti-Tank Batteries at Arnhem by Nigel Simpson et al (2019-2023). It's clear from them that heavy armoured counter-attacks were expected and briefed to the AT units, but the fact the German armoured response took several days to build up is a question of judgement, so the guns were not all needed on the first lift, and indeed some that were delivered on the 1st lift barely fired any rounds throughout the whole battle, such was German wariness of British AT guns. His attitude towards the Americans has one of being totally supportive - he won't hear a word against them. I think he took the view of "by their deeds shall they be known" (which is a biblical expression and I've probably butchered it). Maybe he didn't anticipate Cornelius Ryan and Hollywood, I don't know. I think Gavin does bear a great deal of responsibility for the failure of the operation, but not because he didn't try to get the Nijmegen bridge. Clearly he did, but he was let down by a subordinate and when he found out it was a scene that would have been truly worthy of Ryan O'Neal's soap opera scenery chewing acting, but of course America would never accept the true circumstances being filmed. The internal politics within 82nd Airborne were hinted at by Gavin in his interview with Cornelius Ryan, but how much he appreciated the problems at the time is an open question. In 1967 he told Ryan that Ridgway didn't trust Lindquist and wouldn't promote him. In fact, Ridgway had a problem in that he couldn't promote another colonel from the division over him because Lindquist had seniority. Gavin may have had the same problem because he didn't replace himself as Assistant Division Commander when he inherited the division from Ridgway, so throughout MARKET GARDEN's planning and execution Gavin was running himself ragged doing both jobs (and carrying a jump injury sustained on 17 September). Best book on the overall operation is Swedish historian Christer Bergström's Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2 (2019, 2020). They use unpublished documents and interviews in the Cornelius Ryan Collection and specifically debunk the myths in the Hollywood film version of A Bridge Too Far. Dutch researcher RG Poulussen's Lost At Nijmegen (2011) and his factbook on the whole operation, Little Sense Of Urgency (2014), are also recommended. A free download on the aerial photo story is an interesting read and can be found on the RAF's MoD site, called 'Arnhem: The Air Reconnaissance Story', Air Historical Branch (Royal Air Force 2016, 2nd Ed 2019), it's written by Sebastian Ritchie, whose book Arnhem: Myth And Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden (2011, revised 2019) is a study of the air planning aspects if you want to go further into that side of it. Best wishes and happy reading.
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  23.  @Radiusthethird  - no worries. I've been exploring this rabbit hole since reading Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far in 1977, just before the film opened in the UK, and I'm convinced I still haven't got to the bottom of it! The best overall update on Ryan's research (he had terminal cancer and rushed the book to publication unfinished) is Swedish historian Christer Bergström's two volume book, Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2, (2019, 2020). He used unpublished documents and interviews from the Cornelius Ryan Collection held at Ohio State University and is accessible online, and he also debunks the many myths in the Hollywood film. If you have any specific questions, there are many specialist publictions, such as Canadian author John Sliz and his series of booklets on Market Garden engineers if you have a question on the engineering aspects of the operation for example, so I can point you in the right direction from my own collection of books.
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  24.  @johnburns4017  - technically, they weren't amateur, but I think Martin Brundle has the best turn of phrase when he's commentating on the first F1 race of the season - "it looks like first day at school, doesn't it?"
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  25. I have the same reaction when people ask this question: do you expect an Army Group commander to be in the lead tank? Seriously? The other aspect is that as 21st Army Group commander, Montgomery was responsible for strategic planning, not tactical, so once the target of Arnhem for the Rhine crossing was selected over Wesel by Montgomery with Browning's assistance for Operation Comet, Miles Dempsey (British 2nd Army) was informed of the decision and then his staff would carry the detailed planning for the 2nd Army ground forces and Browning's (British I Airborne Corps) staff for the 1st Airborne Division and Polish Brigade element.. When Comet was cancelled by Montgomery, because he became aware of the increased German build-up in the Netherlands (from 'Ultra' and other sources), he proposed an upgraded operation with three divisions by adding the two American units, and with Eisenhower's approval, it was turned over to Brereton's (1st Allied Airborne Army) staff to adapt the cancelled three division Linnet II (Liege-Maastricht bridges) air plan to the Comet drop zones at Arnhem-Nijmegen), and it was there that some of the compromises were made on the air plan, such as removing the glider coup de main attacks on the big bridges and the double airlifts on D-Day. None of these details are "Monty's plan". They are Brereton's and Dempsey's plans at Army Level. Browning and Horrocks at Corps level, and for the Airborne it was Urquhart, Gavin, and Taylor, responsible for their own divisional plans. Do people really think Monty stayed up late in his caravan every night for a week plotting Johnny Frost's route march to the bridge on a map of Arnhem? Montgomery's comment that Market Garden was "90% successful" can be interpreted in a number of ways. It may refer to the road mileage from Neerpelt to Arnhem, or it may refer to the fact that 24 bridges were involved in the airborne element and because of multiple redundancy a minimum of 10 bridges on the main supply 'Club Route' are required to get XXX Corps across the Rijn at Arnhem. So, the operation did not depend on 100% success at all, there was flexibility in the plan and the numerous alternative crossings were on route diversions coded 'Heart Route'. Operation Market missed a bridge at Nijmegen, allowing the Germans to reinforce both bridges and hold the operation up on the River Waal for 36 vital hours, so Market was 90% successful. After the tanks of Guards Armoured Division arrived, Operation Garden eventually secured the Nijmegen highway bridge, but could not get to the Arnhem bridge before it was retaken by the Germans, so Garden was 90% successful in the final reckoning as well. But to assume that's how Montgomery measured the success of the operation as a simple percentage may be missing the point. The point may have been more subtle, like Churchill's House of Commons speech after Dunkirk, with the famous passage beginning "we shall fight them on beaches..." and ending with "... we shall never surrender." Most people listening to that speech over the radio or even in the House of Commons chamber itself were not aware that every word in that passage was carefully chosen using only words derived from Old English, except for the very last word which is derived from the Old French 'sur rendre' (to give up). It was a subtle dig at the French, who had capitulated to Germany, but only the intended recipients of the message would get it.
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  26. Oh my gosh, are you having a total meltdown? You're coming across as a two year old that's just had his ice cream taken away from them! 1. "90% success" - was probably Montgomery's coded dig at Eisenhower. Operation MARKET involved 24 bridge targets, and a minimum of 10 were needed to get XXX Corps to Arnhem. The 82nd Airborne missing one at Nijmegen on the first day meant that MARKET had 10% failed. That's how I interpret it. 2. This idea the Poles were blamed for the failure of the operation has no basis in fact. If you have a reference that suggests this, please provide it. I've asked many people for a reference and not a single one has come up with anything. It's a disgusting slur. Sosabowski was criticised by Browning for being difficult to work with and insubordinate to Horrocks at the Valburg conference on 24 September, and the Polish troops lacked discipline when they had a chance to fight the Germans - perhaps understandably - and even the SS complained that Polish troops fired on their medics trying to retrieve wounded from the battlefield (this is in Rob Kershaw's It Never Snows In September, 1990). Montgomery initially wrote to Sosabowski to thank him and his brigade for their efforts and to ask for recommendations for awards. He then changed his tune after receiving reports from Browning and Horrocks and wrote to Alan Brooke (the CIGS) to ask that they be removed from Browning's command. Nowhere in any of that is a suggestion they caused the operation to fail - perhaps because they arrived too late to have a negative impact on an operation that was already compromised. Again - any reference that says otherwise, I would like to see it. People need to put up or shut up about this. 3. Eisenhower approved Browning and Montgomery's outline proposal for operation SIXTEEN as an upgrade to COMET by adding the two US Airborne divisions. USAAF Generals Brereton and Williams at 1st Allied Airborne Army compromised the key features of COMET/SIXTEEN by removing the double airlifts on the first day and deleting the dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges. Browning was unable to object to the changes after he had already threatened to resign over Brereton's LINNET II operation that was scheduled with too short notice to print and distribute maps, and Brereton had planned to accept his resignation and replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps for the operation. LINNET II was thankfully cancelled and both men agreed to forget the incident, so Browning withdrew his resignation letter, but his position was now neutralised by American politics. 4. Those four tanks had just fought a major battle and were in no condition to go haring off into the night (tanks in WW2 could not fight at night except for an experimental infra-red system used on some German Panthers). One tank was knocked out on the bridge, one had its crew captured, and of the two that reached the rail overpass in Lent the lead tank was stopped by an American anti-tank mine. The rest of Guards Armoured Division was fully committed to assisting 82nd Airborne's battles in and around Nijmegen. 5. The performance of Urquhart's division was remarkable. Only a reinforced battalion battlegroup held the Arnhem bridge for four days, fulfilling Browning's promise to Montgomery. While a British airborne division was supposed to be able function independently for eight days if properly supplied by air - 1st Airborne at Arnhem held out nine days while most of its resupply fell to the Germans. 6. Urquhart's division did their job, but they quite rightfully ask did everybody else? 1st Airborne's job was not to cover 82nd Airborne's failures by holding out until April 1945 (when Arnhem was finally liberated). TIK's research and presentation is impeccable, and he could have gone a lot further if he had dug deeper into the 508th PIR's regimental history - it was not just Gavin that had made mistakes, but he was responsible for his divisional plan and the compromises he made. According to his 1967 interview with Cornelius Ryan for A Bridge Too Far, he received "a British request" (probably from Browning) to drop a battalion on the north end of the Nijmegen bridge to seize it by coup de main, and while he toyed with the idea, he said he eventually dismissed it because of his experience with a scattered drop in Sicily. He then instructed Colonel Lindquist of the 508th to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge after landing, and this Lindquist failed to do. Lindquist had not performed well in Normandy and Gavin told Cornelius Ryan neither he nor Ridgway (82nd CO in Normandy) trusted Lindquist in a fight. TIK himself in a video responding to criticism of his Antony Beevor Arnhem book review said history is not a competition. It's about getting to the truth. If you're not on the side of the truth, where does that leave you? Sources (none are British, they are Irish, American, Dutch, American, American, and Swedish authors): Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) The MARKET GARDEN Campaign: Allied operational command in northwest Europe, 1944 (Roger Cirillo PhD Thesis, 2001 Cranfield University, College of Defence Technology, Department of Defence Management and Security Analysis) Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011) September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012) Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2, Christer Bergström (2019, 2020)
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  27. I find Captain T. Moffatt Burriss to be an unreliable witness. He actually mentions in his own account of 'taking' the Nijmegen highway bridge that he passed an abandoned German anti-tank gun on the riverbank between the two bridges before reaching the highway bridge, just as the 'lead' tanks of the Grenadier Guards crossed over. The anti-tank gun was also mentioned in Grenadier Guards Sergeants Robinson and Pacey's accounts, as it was Pacey's gunner that scored a hit on the gun as he crossed the bridge and forced the crew to abandon it. This was some 45 minutes before Burriss' paratroopers arrived and Carrington's tank crossed over. When Burriss arrived, Robinson and Pacey had gone half a mile up the road into the village of Lent, stopped by an American roadblock (Robinson's tank was hit by an American mine) in the railway embankment underpass. There was also a German StuG III covering the exit of the underpass, preventing any further movement. Neither the tanks or the paratroopers from G Company 504th (who were out of bazooka rounds) were in no position to do anything about the StuG, and it was also well after dark - contrary to the completely false scene of daylight tranquility presented in the Hollywood film that also lacked a burning village, Germans running around everywhere, and mopping up operations. Carrington's role, as commander of the operation to take the bridge, was to stop at the far end and act as a radio relay between Robinson in Lent and his squadron commander back in Nijmegen. He had no orders to move and had a good technical reason for stopping where he did. Burriss was understandably emotional after just losing half his men (from I Company 504th) in the river assault crossing, but his lack of dicipline in either threatening Carrington with his Tommy gun or making the story up (it doesn't really make much difference which) does him no credit. Both the Grenadier Guards and the 504th had their orders, and that was to secure the Nijmegen bridgehead, not go to Arnhem. The whole operation MARKET was already compromised on the first day, when the 508th PIR failed to secure the Nijmegen highway bridge while it was still defended by just 18 German guards, and by the time the bridge reinforced with SS panzer troops was finally taken, the Germans had already retaken the Arnhem bridge back from Frost.
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  28. The Scheldt and the German 15.Armee did occupy much of 21st Army Group's time and effort, but this is a period that hasn't been written about very much. I'm currently reading a book that attempts to fill in the gap and that is The Army That Got Away - The 15.Armee in the Summer of 1944, by Jack Didden and Maarten Swarts (2022). It's a prequel to their first book, Autumn Gale (Herbststurm) - Kampfgruppe Chill, schwere Heeres Panzer-Jäger-Abteilung 559, and the German recovery in the Autumn of 1944 (2013). These are specialist limited print run books and based on a huge amount of detailed scholarship by the authors. You're right about the prejudice in the American Army, and it seems to have infected most historians as well. I have very little faith in the mass market authors who just seem to recycle the same old mythology just to make a quick buck from their books.
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  29.  @jbjones1957  - the Oxford dictionary definition of "imperative" is "of vital importance; crucial." I still think this all came out of Browning's planning for COMET and not Montgomery. Montgomery did often involve himself in Dempsey's 2nd Army operations planning, but down to divisional level I don't think he was involved at all. My understanding of military command structures - and I'm fully prepared to be corrected by serving or veteran officers - is that commanders concerned themselves no more than two levels below their own command, so for Montgomery as an Army Group commander he would be working with Dempsey's 2nd Army staff to plan the Corps operations of XXX, VIII and XII Corps, and for the I Airborne Corps component he had meetings directly with Browning. There's plenty of documented evidence Browning had the view the Groesbeek heights were critical but not a word from Montgomery on this. I wouldn't expect there to be, but it doesn't really make much difference because Browning and Gavin seem to have been in agreement and there was no apparent discord on this point. The heights were an operational concern for 82nd Airborne (and previously 1st Airborne Division for COMET). With regard to what went wrong at Nijmegen, the issues are the planning compromises - the removal of COMET's dawn glider coup de main assault, the British request (Cornelius Ryan's interview notes with Gavin does not state who specifically) to drop a parachute battalion north of the bridge as an alternative, and the assignment of the 508th PIR to the Nijmegen mission instead of the more experienced and aggressive 505th. The issue on the ground was then the command failure at the top of the 508th in not following Gavin's pre-flight instruction, the instruction is again well-documented, and more recently backed by witnesses to the briefing published in books by John McManus and Phil Nordyke. The bridge was not de-prioritised until after the first belated attempt to secure the bridge in the evening of D-Day, 17 September, had already failed. Browning then overruled Gavin on trying again until the tanks of XXX Corps arrived.
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  30. You might get that impression from A Bridge Too Far - book and film, but both are flawed. The book is incomplete and both versions are heavily biased against the British commanders involved. The "single road" in any literal meaning is a myth. The ground Operation GARDEN involved not a single armoured division but all three Army Corps of British 2nd Army. Their main supply routes were code named after card suites since the Normandy breakout and used all the way to the end of the war terminating in Germany, and were nothing unique to MARKET GARDEN. The flanking VIII and XII Corps were advancing on 'Spade Route' and 'Diamond Route' respectively, while the centre line XXX Corps were on the more famous Guards Armoured Division's traditional 'Club Route', which had many planned diversions named 'Heart Route' if an alternative bridge crossing was needed. The 'Heart Route' was actually used in a couple of instances, one between Grave and Nijmegen via the Heumen lock bridge, because the Honinghutje bridge over the Maas-Waal canal on the main highway 'Club Route' was damaged in a German attempt at demolition and engineers deemed it too weak for the tanks. You'll appreciate that none of this is explained in the Hollywood film, which only features three bridges in any detail, and a fourth (at Grave) shown for just ten seconds. The Airborne Operation MARKET involved the capture of about 24 bridges in total, so the attention is on just a handful and assumed connected by a "single road". Even if a "single road" were true, it doesn't explain the failure of the operation, when the tanks of the Guards Armoured Division reached Nijmegen still on time to get to Arnhem in 2-3 days as intended, but then had to stop there because the River Waal bridges were still in German hands - not part of the MARKET plan at all - and this is where TIK has a point in focusing on Gavin and the 82nd Airborne. The "single road" is simple misdirection - nice try, but people shouldn't fall for it.
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  31. That's Hollywood history, not real history.
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  32. Montgomery and Eisenhower were agreed on the need to prioritise a Rhine crossing before opening up Antwerp, because Antwerp's port capacity was only needed to supply Eisenhower's broad front advance into Germany, not for an advance to the Rhine. Eisenhower stated after the war - “I not only approved Market-Garden, I insisted upon it. We needed a bridgehead over the Rhine. If that could be accomplished I was quite willing to wait on all other operations.” The Ijssel bridges were indeed targets for Operation GARDEN, but because they were not required to be crossed for operations into Germany until later, they were not needed for the airborne Opertion MARKET. It was intended for 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division to seize a brigade bridgehead each at Deventer and Zutphen, while 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division did the same at Doesburg and Westervoort. The infantry divisions each had one battalion in two of their brigades fully mobilised in amphibious DUKW trucks for river crossings, and there was an engineering plan with a dedicated bridging column to replace the bridges for further operations if they were blown by the Germans.
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  33. Perhaps you could have read my comment that preceeded yours by just a couple of days, because timing is the missing element in this issue. I'll deal with the "1,000 tanks" first because that figure was just a ridiculous rumour started by an observation that the Reichswald could hide a thousand tanks, but realistically Allied intelligence estimated Model had less than 100 operational tanks in his entire Heeresgruppe B (Army Group B) front from the North Sea coast to Aachen, and he was facing Montgomery with 2,400 and the US 1st Army at Aachen with another 1,500. We now know that he had 84 listed as operational in the September returns, so the Allied estimate was accurate, and by a stunning coincidence 84 is the exact number of anti-tank guns in the combined establishments of 1st Airborne Division and the attached Polish Parachute Brigade's Anti-Tank Squadron. The main issue I want to address is the timeline and sequencing. Montgomery cancelled the original Arnhem operation called COMET in the early hours of 10 September, because he had just received reports II.SS-Panzerkorps with 9.'Hohenstaufen', and presumably 10.SS-Panzer-Division 'Frundsberg' under command, had arrived in the Arnhem target area for refit and realised COMET was not strong enough to deal with them. Montgomery and Browning then devised an upgraded replacement operation provisionally called SIXTEEN (COMET had been operation FIFTEEN), by adding the two American divisions, which would allow the 1st Airborne and the Poles to concentrate at Arnhem, or wherever the armoured threat was deemed greatest. The outline proposal was put to Eisenhower by Montgomery at their scheduled meeting at Brussels airport later the same day, and then Browning took the approved outline back to 1st Allied Airborne Army in England, where Brereton and Williams were primarily involved in the detailed planning for the operation now officially named MARKET. My previous comment posted two days ago relates to finding a letter in the Cornelius Ryan Collection, which was a covering letter dated November 18, 1966 from Gavin to Ryan enclosing some papers by Dutch researcher Colonel T.A. Boeree, and how in reviewing these Gavin had just realised the route march of the 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen' had taken it through Nijmegen and Arnhem on its way to the Veluwe region north of Arnhem, where it dispersed to its various billets. This now tied in with Gavin's recollection that on 10 September he was advised 82nd Airborne were now assigned to Nijmegen, so he went to the British 1st Airborne HQ, where they had been studying the Nijmegen area for COMET. Their intel was that there was "a regiment of SS" in Nijmegen (sanitised intel of the reduced condition of the SS divisions) and "very heavy German armoured forces" in the Reichswald, and the British had been preparing their plans accordingly to deal with them. Gavin had just now realised in 1966 these armoured forces in the Reichswald were in fact the Hohenstaufen in transit, which explains why nothing was there on 17 September when MARKET was finally launched. So the SS divisions were not missed, they formed the reason COMET was cancelled and MARKET was an upgrade to deal with them, but the Dutch intelligence on the SS troops in the Veluwe and Achterhoek regions (west and east bank of the river Ijssel) had only identified the Hohenstaufen from 'H' vehicle insignia and the Frundsberg had not been positively located. It was feared the Frundsberg may still be in the Nijmegen area. Another factor to take into account is that the 'Ultra' code intelligence was only known to exist down to Army HQ level - that would be Eisenhower, Montgomery and Dempsey. No one in the Airborne (Army) was privvy to the existence of Ultra and any intelligence from this source passed down to the divisions had to be 'sanitised' by stripping out the unit identifications and source, so it appeared to be vague reports from resistance or other sources. The anti-tank batteries sent to Arnhem were given briefings to expect heavy armoured counter-attacks from the first day, and this may include Panther and Tiger tanks - a steer that a 1944 panzer division and a corps heavy tank battalion may be involved, but no unit IDs. The paratroopers were surprised by the presence of Bittrich's SS troops, because of the santised nature of the Ultra handling. Ultra was only declassified in 1974 with F.W. Winterbotham's book The Ultra Secret, published the same year as Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far, so Ryan was obviously not aware of Ultra, or that the SS divisions were known to be in the area, and the same still applied to most of the people he interviewed. Final point - the reported armour near the landing zones in the infamous aerial photograph taken by reconnaissance Spitfire on 12 September, showing tanks in the Deelerwoud near Deelen airfield, were 10 km (6.2 miles) from the nearest landing zone. These are the tanks dismissed by Browning as obsolete and probably unserviceable vehicles, regarded as a scandal by Cornelius Ryan because he only had Major Brian Urquhart's incredulous account to go on. Browning had passed away in 1965 and unable to defend himself, and the photo could not be located. Until 2014 that is, when it was found in a Dutch government archive, and then studied by the Air Historical Branch of the RAF. It was found to indeed show older tanks, ruling out a 1944 panzer division as the likely owner, and we now know that not only the owners were the Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring' - the training unit for the Luftwaffe's only panzer division - but we also know that on 17 September they were located at Wolfswinkel near Son, where they attempted to interfere with the drop of the 506th PIR (101st Airborne Division) and were duly shot up by escorting aircraft. The nearest unit of II.SS-Panzerkorps was SS-Panzer-Regiment 9, with an 'alarm kompanie' of 100 Panther crewmen acting as infantry and the Werkstatt (Workshop) Kompanie based at the Saksen-Weimar barracks in northern Arnhem, and they had dispersed three Panthers and two Flakpanzer IV 'Möbelwagen' that survived Normandy and hidden them under trees on Heijenoordseweg in the western suburbs. II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 at Kranenburg monastery near Vorden, 33 Km (19 miles) northeast of Arnhem, had 16 Mark IV tanks in the 5.Kompanie and 4 StuG IIIG assault guns in the 7.Kompanie. Of more immediate trouble to 1st Airborne Division was the unfortunate fact a known SS training battalion, Sepp Krafft's SS-Panzergrenadier-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Bataillon 16, had been moved out of their barracks in Arnhem before they were bombed and were camped in the woods north of Model's headquarters in Oosterbeek as additional security. Krafft had attended a dinner in which Model was warned by Luftwaffe General Walter Grabmann from Deelen airfield that the fields to the west of his HQ around Wolfheze were ideal landing grounds for airborne troops, but while Model dismissed these concerns, Krafft was the only officer present who took the warning seriously and had his two training companies moved out of their barracks, in an ideal position to counter the first British movements off the drop zones.
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  34.  @Bullet-Tooth-Tony-  - I have seen OTD and had quite the argument with him - he's another one with a huge Montgomery-shaped 'bug up his ass' and doesn't believe in evidence unless you rub his nose in it. He was completely unaware that the secondary objective of MARKET GARDEN was to cut off all German forces in the western Netherlands by terminating the advance at the Ijsselmeer (Zuider Zee) coast, so I managed to locate the 21st Army Group orders that outlined this intent and giving the intended deployment locations for Guards and Wessex divisions, etc. It's surprising how much common knowledge that so-called 'historians' don't actually have, presumably because it's not in the conventional narrative established by Cornelius Ryan and regurgitated by hacks like Beevor and Hastings... The pertinent documents can be found online with a bit of digging and read by anyone - even people with blinkers on!
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  35.  @Bullet-Tooth-Tony-  - that's very nice of him. Perhaps it's because the Canadians were involved in the fighting around Caen? I wonder if he's similarly forgiving of Montgomery not closing the gap at Falaise because it was the Canadians (and the attached Polish Armoured Division) that were getting a battering from SS panzer units holding open the gap?
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  36.  @ErikExeu  - what a ridiculous thing to say in the face of overwhelming evidence. Just Google maps of the invasion. For example, I'm looking at the Normandy1944 site and the map 'The Invasion and Operations, 6-12 June 1944'. The American beaches only have one armoured unit arriving in their sector, the 17.SS-Panzergrenadier-Division 'Götz von Berlichingen' between the two beaches at Carentan (11-12 June). The division was a motorised infantry unit with 42 Sturmgeschütz IV assault guns in its panzer-abteilung, but no tanks, and two of the six infantry battalions were only on bicycles. In the British and Canadian beach sectors, east of the US 1st Army and British 2nd Army junction, from west to east we have: 2.Panzer-Division (10-11 June) Panzer-Lehr-Division (10 June) 12.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hitlerjugend' (7-8 June) 21.Panzer-Division (in situ at Caen 6 June) Another map showing 'The Capture of Cherbourg and Operations, 13-30 June 1944' shows three additional panzer divisions have joined the sector around the British and Canadian beaches: 2.SS-Panzer-Division 'Das Reich' 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen' 1.SS-Panzer-Division 'Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler' These are the seven panzer divisions Montgomery has drawn around Caen, preventing it's capture for many weeks, and not a single panzer division is in the American sector, apart from 2.Panzer-Division which has moved west to try to exploit the US 1st/British 2nd Army junction at Caumont. The 10.SS-Panzer-Division 'Frundsberg' was in a reserve position at Argentan but would also join the battles around Caen. The I and II.SS-Panzerkorps also had their heavy panzer-abteilungen (101 and 102.SS-Panzer-Abteilungen) equipped with Tiger I tanks. There was also an army heavy Tiger abteilung, 503, in the area equipped with Tiger II. This is history. It's the Americans that are taught fairy tales in their schools and in Hollywood films. You need to stop the ridiculous "USA! USA!" chest-beating BS and do a bit of proper homework.
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  37.  @theijaegers8981  - I understand completely. I can only say that the orders and operational instructions from the original documents in 1944 from both Montgomery's 21st Army Group and Browning's 1st Airborne Corps also refer to "Zuider Zee", so this is evidence the name was still in common use, at least in the British Army in 1944, probably because of the maps and possibly just inertia of the new name not catching on yet. There may also be a slight language barrier, since "Zuider Zee" is easier to say in English than guessing the pronunciation for "Ijsselmeer", as we don't get many 'I's followed by 'J's in English - in fact, I can't think of one example at all.
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  38. There's a lot of false mythology surrounding the bridge vs ridge debate and as far as I can see the origin is Browning's warning to Gavin that the heights should also be secured in addition to every effort being made to secure the Grave and Nijmegen bridges. This is further conflated by Browning rejecting Gavin's proposed second attempt to secure the Nijmegen bridge on D+1, as Browning thought it would be better to wait until the armour of XXX Corps arrived to assist. This was not the pre-flight priority, but a decision made only after the first failed attempt to secure the bridge. McManus (2012) has the best analysis on the whole bridge vs ridge issue in the planning process. The opportunity to secure the Nijmegen bridge was missed on the first afternoon, when the 508th failed to carry out Gavin's instruction to send their 1st Battalion directy to the bridge after landing. The Colonel commanding the regiment, Roy Lindquist, did send a recon patrol based on a reinforced platoon, which lost contact with its point team and got lost in the back streets of Nijmegen. The three-man point team reached the bridge, surprised seven guards at the southern end of the bridge and waited an hour until dark for reinforcements that never arrived. As they decided to withdraw, they heard "heavy equipment" (SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9) arriving at the other end of the bridge, but the point was proven that the bridge was theirs for the taking if the battalion had been sent as Gavin had instructed. So Gavin is responsible for selecting the poorly led 508th for the Nijmegen mission after already compromising his divisional plan by dismissing a British request to drop a battalion at the north end of the Nijmegen bridge to take it by coup de main. That request was obviously a backstop after Brereton had removed Browning's original Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave dawn glider coup de main assaults for COMET on the grounds of Flak. Although Gavin told Cornelius Ryan he toyed with the idea, his final decision was based on his experience in Sicily, where the US Troop Carriers were spooked by Flak and scattered his men over a huge area. Gavin landed with just four or five men to command and the whole division was disorganised for days. For MARKET Gavin decided to drop his three parachute regiments close together in a "power center", and then have the battalions radiate outwards toward their objectives. The only exception was the 504th PIR at Grave, where the experienced Colonel Reuben Tucker insisted on a special drop zone for one company south of the bridge to take it from both ends, and he got it. By the way, the flat nature of the Netherlands does have exceptions in the east of the country, with glacial moraine deposits rising to 109.9 m (360 feet) north of Arnhem in a region known as the Veluwe, and also south of Nijmegen near the German border. At the village of Berg-en-Dal (objective of 3rd Battalion 508th PIR) the heights rise to 95.6 m (314 feet), overlooking a polder just 10 m above sea level only a km away. Nijmegen is the oldest city in the Netherlands, because it was originally a Roman outpost established on the edge of the solid ground that is now mostly Germany, and overlooked the lakes and marshes that is now reclaimed by the Dutch. Sources: Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 (James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012) The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs (2013), chapter 6 – Nijmegen Bridge Allied Map Service (A.M.S.) M831 (G.S.G.S. 4427) GINKEL 388 and GROESBEEK 12 N.W.
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  39. I think you're right in that Gavin was a very quiet, thoughtful man, and was not flattered by Ryan O'Neal's daytime soap scenery-chewing performance in the Hollywood version of A Bridge Too Far. In fact, the one scene where O'Neal's performance would probably have been spot on was a scene that wasn't filmed: As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.” General Browning’s order, of course, made perfect sense. It was of paramount importance to hold the high ground. Any commander worth his salt understood that. Even so, the purpose of Market Garden was to seize the bridges in order to speedily unleash a major armored thrust into northern Germany, toward Berlin. High ground notwithstanding, the only way for the Allies to accomplish this ambitious objective was to take the bridges, and these were, after all, perishable assets, because the Germans could destroy them (and might well be likely to do so the longer it took the Allies to take the bridges). By contrast, the Groesbeek ridge spur wasn’t going anywhere. If the 82nd had trouble holding it, and German artillery or counterattacks became a problem, the Allies could always employ air strikes and artillery of their own to parry such enemy harassment. Also, ground troops from Dempsey’s Second Army could join with the paratroopers to retake Groesbeek from the Germans. So, in other words, given the unpleasant choice between the bridges and the hills, the bridges had to come first. General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance. At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote. Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion." (Chapter 3, September Hope – The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus, 2012) Captain Chet Graham was assigned as the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters. "I sat in on a high level briefing at division headquarters. Colonel Lindquist was told by General Gavin to move to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as Lindquist thought practical after the jump. Gavin stressed that speed was important. He was also told to stay out of the city and to avoid city streets. He told Lindquist to use the west farm area to get to the bridge as quickly as possible as the bridge was the key to the division's contribution to the success of the operation." (Chapter 9, Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke, 2012) Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liaison officer with division headquarters, decided to obtain a status of the progress toward the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge. "I went to the 508th regimental CP and asked Colonel Lindquist when he planned to send the 3rd Battalion to the bridge. His answer was, 'As soon as the DZ is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.' So I went through Indian country to the division CP and relayed Lindquist's message to Gavin. I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his Jeep, he told me, 'come with me - let's get him moving.' On arriving at the 508th regimental CP, Gavin told Lindquist, 'I told you to move with speed.' " (Chapter 10, Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke, 2012) I think TIK is on the right track, but he hasn't gone as far as reading these books, judging by his published booklist. I highly recommend them. Nordyke's earlier chapters on Normandy are also important backstory for Lindquist's performance during the 508th's first combat operation, and the way the command problems in the 508th were (partially) dealt with by Matthew Ridgway at the time. The fact these problems were not fully resolved when Gavin took over the division in August 1944 before MARKET GARDEN was unfortunate, but also now his responsibility.
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  40.  @Truthaholokz  - the G-5 Staff Division at SHAEF was the Civil Affairs Division, which was concerned with civilian government in liberated territories.
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  41. Sorry, but the United States Army Air Corps existed only between 1926 and 1941. At the time of Market Garden in 1944, it was called the United States Army Air Force, and became a separate service from the Army as the United States Air Force in 1947. The RAF was the first independent air force in the world, formed in 1918 at the end of the First World War by combining the Royal Flying Corps of the Army and the Royal Naval Air Service. There is an Army Air Corps in the British military, formed in 1942 to combine the airborne forces, initially the Glider Pilot Regiment, the Parachute Regiment, and the Airlanding Regiments (infantry battalions delivered by glider). In 1944 the SAS Regiment was added. This formation was reformed in 1957 with the advent of rotary winged aircraft - so the GPR was disbanded and the Parachute Regiment removed as a separate formation. American glider pilots in WW2 were part of the USAAF Troop Carrier Squadrons that also flew the C-47 transport aircraft, and were not trained and equipped to be light infantry once on the ground like their British counterparts.
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  42.  @thevillaaston7811  - a bit more from the same folder - page 95, letter Ryan to Gavin agreeing that the 'King Kong' Lindemans betrayal story is nonsense, but Ryan says he was under a lot of presure from (prince) Bernhard (of the Netherlands) to put it all in his book. Ryan says he had a burr under the saddle about the whole thing (nice turn of phrase). Most interesting point is about the documents that fell into Student's lap - Ryan didn't know until Gavin told him it was a 101st officer and it was only a resupply schedule not a list of all the objectives, but Student guessed it was Arnhem. Ryan had interviewed Student and said he was quite sore about not being able to communicate the information for 48 hours, so it was that long before Model heard about the document, by which time Runstedt, Model, Bittrich, Harmel and Harzer already knew what all the objectives were. Gavin also had an artillery officer that took orders into the air because they captured one of their own musette bags from the Germans with the orders still in it, apparently unread, but Gavin had charges proferred over the incident. Letter also contains Ryan's belief Browning did not listen to his own intelligence officer who is now with the UN (Brian Urquhart), so this is decades before the photo emerged in 2014. Ryan thinks both Brereton and Browning were at fault and although won't commit it to print believes Urquhart (Roy) should not have been in command of an airborne division. In second guessing the decisions made at Arnhem, Ryan says he wondered what would Jim Gavin have done? Gavin replies that he was amazed by Urquhart's divisional plan and turned to Jack Norton (his G-3) and said "My God, he can't mean it", and thought he should have dropped a 'regiment' south of the bridge. Gavin wondered why Browning did not question Urquhart's plan and assumed it was Browning's lack of airborne operational experience! Obviously Gavin had not studied the terrain and flak in that area and was not aware Browning had proposed glider coup de main assaults on all three main bridges and had them deleted by Brereton and Williams. And this was the same Jim Gavin that rejected the British request to drop a battalion north of the Nijmegen bridge!
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  43.  @johnburns4017  - do you know where you got that account of Horrock's visit from? I have heard references to British reconnaissance (I'm assuming the armoured cars of Household Cavalry) were able to observe "the bridge" and were amazed to see German troops crossing over the bridge unopposed. I had thought it might refer to a point west of the rail bridge (which had one track converted to a roadway with wooden planks between the rails) which was used for light traffic, or it could have been a location east of the highway bridge as you describe. The only other detail I got is that they (the observers) were at an abandoned Flak position where the guns had been removed. That would correspond to a heavy Flak position on the polder east of the highway bridge that had 4 x 8.8cm and a neaby 3 x 2cm light position to protect it. I believe these were the guns that Reinhold had repositioned to protect the bridge - one 88 was on the Keiser Lodwijkplein traffic circle still on its trailer wheels, and two were positioned on the north bank in Lent and were taken out by Sergeant Robinson's tanks on 20 September. This looks like a solid story and not just rumours, so if you have a source reference that would be great. Some people dismiss the idea that three scouts from 1/508th could have seized the southern end of the bridge and take seven guards prisoner without firing a shot on the first evening, as there was a couple of Flak batteries in the area, but since there was no Flak on the bridge itself and the nearest guns were on the river bank down on the polder some distance away - the bridge itself is 640 metres (2,100 feet) long between each embankment - so it's a huge area, soldiers at that distance cannot be distinguished for their uniforms. I also have an even more remarkable story from one of the 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery At Arnhem volumes - 'A Lost Opportunity' - Battery Z Troop, by Nigel Simpson, Philip Reinders, Peter Vrolijk and Marcel Zwarts (2022). The title quote comes from Lieutenent Eustace McNaught, the commander of Z Troop. As part of 1st AT Battery, his troop of 4 x 6-pounders were due to go to Arnhem on the 1st lift to protect Division HQ (Z Troop were originally part of the Light Regiment and used for AT protection of the gun positions, but was transferred to 1st Battery). Due to Browning deciding to take his Corps HQ to Groesbeek on the 1st lift, some last minute changes were made to the chalk numbers which were not recorded in the official records, so Simpson et al found researching the Z Troop story very difficult. It appears Z Troop got bumped to the 2nd lift on D+1, but McNaught's Troop HQ glider - CN 1005 - seems to have gone on the 1st lift from reading this account. The reason I think that is because McNaught said his glider released short of the LZ and came down near Zetten on the 'island' (they certainly failed to arrive as far as the Troop were concerned). He had seven gunners of his Troop with him, plus the two glider pilots, a Jeep with the radio and a trailer full of 6-pounder ammunition. He decided to take the Jeep with his driver, radio operator and one other without the trailer to be able to move faster, and told the others to stay put until he could arrange transport for them. He thought if he went for the Arnhem bridge, the main objective of the Division, he could hopefully meet the Reconnaissance Squadron at the bridge and arrange transport to pick up the rest of his men from the glider. He reached the main Nijmegen-Arnhem highway and turned north, but as he approached the Arnhem bridge he could see a large armoured column coming south towards him, so he turned the Jeep around and headed south to Nijmegen, thinking the Americans were there and he could link up with them. They reached Nijmegen as it was getting dark and carefully drove over the bridge, but McNaught was surprised they were not challenged until they got into the city and were stopped by some civilians. They told him the Germans were on their way into the city and offered to hide them and the Jeep in a nearby monastery. There, they waited out the battle for Nijmegen, keeping track of troops movements in the immediate area. As soon as he deemed it safe to venture out on Thursday 21 September, one of the first people he bumped into was Lieutenant Howe of the 1st Battery seaborne element. Howe had suffered a road traffic accident in his Jeep and was being attended to at the side of the road when McNaught drove up. McNaught told Howe his story and said he wasn't going to wait around and left his three men with Howe, while he went off in the Jeep alone to look for the nearest SAS section to join. That was the last Howe saw of him until he heard after the war McNaught had indeed joined the SAS and after the war was with MI6 as a military attaché. Lieutenant Howe is unfortunately the only source for this story, although it was corroborated by the three gunners from McNaught's Troop that were with him. What happened to the party left with the glider is unknown, but CN 1001 also landed near Zetten and the occupants were hidden by the Dutch until the area was secured - these two stories have been often conflated because the two gliders both landed in the same area, but this is the first I've heard of someone landing on the 'island' and being able to drive over the Nijmegen bridge unchallenged and I think it could not have been possible on D+1, so it must be D-Day if true.
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  44.  @johnburns4017  - there's no timings on McNaught's movements except that he sees Gräbner's column passing over the Arnhem bridge moving towards him and he reaches the Nijmegen bridge as it's getting dark, so that pins that part of the story between 1930 and 2000 hrs aproximately. Seems he spent quite a bit of time unloading the glider and working out what to do, possibly if there were problems unloading the Jeep and trailer, establishing their location on the map, talking to local civilians, etc..
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  45.  @johnburns4017  - nice idea but probably completely impossible. As Troop leader his No.22 set on the Jeep would be on the 1st AT Battery net frequency, although he may have spent some time after the glider landing trying to contact the Battery HQ that would moving from the LZ 'Z' towards the Arnhem bridge with 1st Parachute Brigade HQ. If he was not able to contact them due to the reduced ranges suffered by the 22's on the operation, then it would be hopeless trying to contact any station that would recognise his call sign in the Nijmegen area. Remember the problem that 1st Airborne Royal Artillery had trying to break in on 64th Medium Regiment's frequency without the proper call signs? Only because the two officers knew each other they were able to convince 64th that they were genuine. Nice idea though, it had occurred to me as well, but unless they had procedures established for that scenario I think it would be difficult to impossible to improvise one.
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  46.  @johnburns4017  - would love to hear a first hand account from McNaught, but since he apparently joined the SAS and then MI6, he seems to have disappeared into the shadows. Just done a quick search and found him mentioned in a school photo album where he was in a Rugby XV listed as "Eustace McNaught (New Coll Ox, WW Lt Airborne RA, Diplomat, MI6)" - so there you go. Appears he was born in 1922 and passed away 1992. McNaught is also mentioned a few times in David Truesdale's book Arnhem Bridge Target MIKE ONE - an Illustrated History of the 1st Airlanding Light Regiment (2015), as he joined the 1st Airborne Light Regiment Royal Artillery from 123 OCTU and initially assigned to 2 Battery before taking command of Z Troop (6-pounder AT), and Z Troop were later transferred to 1st Anti-Tank Battery. In Chapter 6: Market Garden, it does mention his adventures briefly, but in the passages relating to the second lift, and I suspect Z Troop was actually split between 1st and 2nd lifts as the only explanation for McNaught's story. (Editor) Karel Margry's Operation Market Garden Then And Now (2002) does suggest in the glider schedules that Z Troop elements were in both lifts. Anyway, Truesdale has this - 'Z Troop did not have a wholly successful flight. Flying the southern route, the Troop lost its commander when Lieutenant Eustace McNaught's glider came down some twenty miles to the west of Nijmegen. Local Dutch people sheltered the officer and his men until they were later able to linkup with elements of the US 82nd Airborne. From here McNaught and his men made their way to the headquarters of I Airborne Corps. McNaught did not rejoin the Division, transferring to the Special Air Service at the end of November.' I think this is an example of the stories of McNaught's glider (CN 1005) getting conflated with another landing in the same area near Zetten (CN 1001) where the passengers were sheltered by the Dutch. According to McNaught, his party was split between the four taking the Jeep and the remainder ordered to stay with the glider. At least it confirms his joining the SAS.
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  47. I can help out with some of your questions. 1. I wholeheartedly agree with you, and that's why it was attempted and not cancelled like all the post-war armchair tacticians suggest. 2. The RAF were happy with the original Operation Comet plan to conduct two airlifts on the first day - one at dawn and the second in the afternoon. They were also happy with the proposed glider coup de main attacks on the Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave highway bridges, with 6 gliders each, carrying one company from each of the three Airlanding battalions in 1st Airlanding Brigade. These were modelled on the highly successful Pegasus Bridge coup de main in Normandy on D-Day and Staff Sergeant Jm Wallwork, who flew the lead glider on that mission, was due to lead the Nijmegen bridge attack. After weather delayed Comet from 8 to 10 September, Montgomery cancelled Comet on the morning of 10 September, because of the worsening intelligence picture, and met with Eisenhower later that afternoon to propose an upgrade called Market Garden with the two American Airborne divisions added, so 1st Airborne could concentrate at Arnhem. The detailed planning, which basically combined the ground plan for Comet with the three-division air plan from the cancelled Linnet II operation, would have to be undertaken by 1st Allied Airborne Army instead of being an all-British Airborne Corps affair. Because the larger air plan depended on every aircraft being available and losses kept to an absolute minimum, General Paul Williams of US IX Troop Carrier Command objected to the double airlift and also the glider coup de main attacks for fear of losses due to Flak. General Lewis Brereton of 1st AAA backed him up and so the RAF's approval of the Comet plan was moot, despite it being their aircrews that towed the gliders and the release points were on the ground tracks for the main drop zones and 6 Km from the bridges. The weather requirement was for two days of clear weather, which was enough to get three airlifts in on the Comet plan. When Market was scheduled for 17 September, they had two days forecast as clear and then unpredictable (mixed) thereafter. 3. This is where the conventional narrative on Market Garden has been wrong for decades. Since Cornelius Ryan published A Bridge Too Far, it has been believed the Groesbeek heights were prioritised before the Nijmegen highway bridge, or given equal priority and there was a communications breakdown within the 82nd Airborne. Recent research has brought to light that Gavin actually instructed the commander of the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment to send one battalion straight to the bridge as soon as practical after landing, and if there was little or no resistance on his initial Groesbeek ridge objectives. This he failed to do, believing he had to wait for a divisional order to move on the bridge, and by the time Gavin found out and go him moving, it was too late and they lost the race to elements of the 10.SS-Panzer-Division coming down from Arnhem on the first evening. The regiment had similar command problems in Normandy and I recommend 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012) - for both the Normandy and Nijmegen stories. After the war, it seems that Gavin was reluctant to throw a subordinate officer under the bus and took much of the responsibility on his own shoulders, even co-opting the help of Browning in correspondence to muddy the waters with regards to the bridge vs high ground priorities. The Nijmegen highway bridge was not prepared for demolition on the first day, although the explosive charges were stored in rooms inside the bridge piers and a local 'Schutzgruppe' of ethnic German NSDAP militia were drilled every month to wire up the bridge charges under the supervision of an engineer officer from von Tettau's Pionier staff at the WBN (occupation forces Netherlands). On 17 September, the NSDAP Shutzgruppe failed to show up and the officer could do nothing alone until 1./SS-Panzer-Pionier-Abteilung 10 arrived the next day as part of Kampfgruppe Reinhold and started immediately to work. The charges probably failed to go off on 20 September due to artillery fire cutting the lines, but it's not known for certain. The Dutch believe a local resistance hero cut the wires, and this seems quite possible, but engineers usually test firing circuits at regular intervals and any breaks repaired. 4. The original Polish Drop Zone 'K' near the Arnhem highway bridge was not suitable for the first day because it was flanked by two of the four heavy batteries of gemischte Flak-Abteilung 591 that surrounded Arnhem on four sides. The zone was also crossed by high tension lines (!) from the Arnhem power station just southeast of the bridge. It was assumed in the planning that 1st Parachute Brigade would control the area by D+2 when the Poles were due, and so the Flak would be neutralised and the HT lines cut. The power station was also the RV for all four squadrons and companies of the Royal Engineers after their initial tasks were completed, and they would be in control of the power station. The intended role of the Polish Brigade was to pass over the bridge and take up their allotted eastern sector of the planned divisional perimeter around Arnhem. 5. There are no anti-tank guns seen at Arnhem in the Hollywood film, perhaps because they were not available for filming, but more likely because they wouldn't help Richard Attenborough's deliberate intention to portray the 1st Airborne Division as ill-equipped and the planners incompetent in his "anti-war film". Neither was actually true. The Division took 52 x 6-pounder and 16 x 17-pounder anti-tank guns to Arnhem. The Polish Brigade also had their own Anti-Tank Squadron with 4 Troops of 4 x 6-pounder guns, but they elected to reorganise them as 3 Troops of 5 guns taken by air, and the spare gun was probably in the Brigade 'sea tail' arriving by road (9 men are documented on the Squadron sea tail roster). That gives you a total of 83 anti-tank guns taken by air, or 84 if you count the Polish spare gun. By a stunning coincidence, Generalfeldmarshal Model had exactly 84 operational tanks in his entire Heeresgruppe B front in September, facing Montgomery's 21st Army Group with 2,400 tanks in Belgium and Hodges' US 1st Army with I don't know how many tanks at Aachen. The Allies' optimism going in to Market Garden was well founded. 6. There are myths associated with the radios as well. The 'wrong cystals' only affected two VHF radio sets sent to Arnhem and they belonged to the two teams from the USAAF 306th Fighter Control Squadron for contacting aircraft. All the British sets were working properly, but at much reduced ranges, and this was not understood at the time. The reason was the high iron content in the glacial moraine of the Veluwe high ground, and I believe this still affects police radios and TV/radio reception today. The worst affected were the battalion communications net as the distances involved were marginal for even the normal working ranges, but although the more powerful Royal Artillery sets were also affected they were still working over the ranges required to contact the gun batteries, so the pack howitzer batteries in Oosterbeek were able to support the 1st Parachute Brigade at the bridge - something also not shown in the film, of course. Both the British and US Airborne forces used the American made hand-held SCR-536 (actually called the "handie-talkie") in platoon communications and found it to be virtually useless unless you were almost in line of sight and were not popular. One of the reasons why Frost used a hunting horn! Probably the best recent work that debunks the many myths in the film is Swedish historian Christer Bergström's Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2 (2019, 2020), using unpublished documents and interviews in the Cornelius Ryan Collection held at Ohio State university. Hope this has been helpful.
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  48.  @jacobgorman3145  - yes, I agree with your point, but this was imposed on Market Garden By 1st Allied Airborne Army when Comet was expanded to Market. Paul Williams of US IX Troop Carrier Command objected to Comet's glider coup de main attacks on the Arnhem, Nijmegen and Grave bridges, and he also objected to two lifts on the first day, apparently on the grounds of flak near the bridges and the lack of night navigation skills in the IX TCC aircrews. The first lift for Comet was timed to arrive at dawn and the second late in the afternoon, so both flights required a departure or a return at night. The glider release points for the coup de main attacks were 6 Km from the bridges and on the planned ground tracks for the main landing zones, so the tugs were 6,000 metres from the bridge flak positions and not flying over them - so I find this decision nonsensical. There was also a question of the turnaround time between the two lifts being insufficient for maintenance of the aircraft, which is something else that would nat have impressed the RAF. Brereton (1st AAA) backed Williams up, so the original all-British plan for Comet was already compromised and there was nothing that could be done about it. Browning had already threatened to resign over Linnet II and had to back down when it was clear he didn't intend to carry out the threat. He couldn't very well do it again. I'm afraid it's all tied up in Anglo-American politics, when the real issue should have been winning the war as quickly as possible, because that's what really saves the most lives. There were not enough transport aircraft in the allied fleet to carry three divisions in one lift, but multiple lifts are not a problem unless the reinforcement delivery rate falls behind that of the opposing Germans on the ground, which is what happened from D+2 onwards due to the weather delaying the 3rd lift. When the 2nd lift for Market arrived on D+1, it had a demoralising effect on the Germans because the initiative had gone back to the Airborne again, but once lost on D+2 it had swung back to the Germans for the rest of the operation. Best work on these aspects is Sebastian Ritchie's book Arnhem: Myth And Reality: Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden (2011, revised 2019). It does what it says on the cover, looking at airborne operations conducted by both sides to incorporate lessons learned from them - none were very successful on their own terms, but were often rescued by quick reinforcement on the ground, such as in Normandy. Ritchie explains why the air plan for Market was done the way it was, and the choice of landing zones, and I've brought some of that out in response to some of the armchair tacticians on YouTube. By the way, big woody (aka Para Dave and several fake accounts using other people's handles) is a troll with a huge Montgomery-sized 'bug up his ass' about Market Garden and has no interest in actually learning anything from the books he claims to have read. He's even quoted from Sebastian Ritchie, but doesn't seem to have understood it. I just ignore him, but I'm happy to engage with anyone interested in digging deeper than most of these videos go and I can see you've attempted to do that in your own responses to him.
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  49. XXX Corps stopped at Valkenswaard because they realised they would not reach Eindhoven before it got dark, and it was doctrine not to advance tanks at night - they could not fight in the dark during WW2. COrps commander Brian Horrocks said in his book Corps Commander (1977) that he had gambled twice in his career by advancing with tanks at night and on both occasions it had paid off, but he felt for MARKET GARDEN it would be pushing his luck to try it a third time. So he gave strict instructions for no movement at night except in friendly held territory. With that in mind, Browning had originally selected drop zones for the 101st Airborne south of the Wilhelmina canal at Son and south of Eindhoven near Aalst to assist the capture of the Son bridge - the canal was the main German defence line in the area and the remaining bridges were all prepared for demolition with standing orders to detonate if threatened - the four bridges in the centre of Eindhoven, and a small bridge over the river Dommel at Aalst. The idea was to create an airborne 'carpet' over which XXX Corps could pass, and securing these southern targets would assist the XXX Corps breakout and reduce the distance to the first airborne linkup, hopefully on the first day. Unfortunately, General Paul Williams of the US IX Troop Carrier Command objected to the drop zones because of the flak around Eindhoven and General Lewis Brereton of 1st Allied Airborne Army removed them from the plan. Browning could not object to any of the changes Brereton made to his his operation SIXTEEN outline to create MARKET, because he had already threatened to resign over a previous Brereton plan for LINNET II (Liege-Maastricht bridges), and knew if he did it again his resignation would be accepted and he would be replaced by Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps for the operation. At Aalst there was a pair of 8.8cm heavy flak guns positioned in a concrete revetment in the anti-tank role covering the bridge over the Dommel, and on 18 September after the XXX Corps advance resumed from Valkenswaard they also spotted a Jagdpanther tank destroyer and two StuG assault guns in the area, and dealing with these resulted in a delay for much of the day that could have been avoided if paratroopers had secured the area. Eindhoven itself was evacuated by the Germans and apart from two 8.8cm guns in the northern suburbs detached from the battery at the Son bridge, the city was liberated without incident by the 506th PIR on D+1. The Son bridge was known to be demolished thanks to telephone connections made by Dutch civilian switchboard operators and US Airborne engineers were able to pass information on the bridge site to Royal Engineers in Guards Armoured Division. On his own initiative, the Guards CRE (Commander Royal Engineers) had the necessary bridging equipment brought up to Valkenswaard overnight, so that when the Irish Guards reached the Son bridge site at 1900 hrs on 18 September the bridge column was driven up the road in 30 minutes and work commenced on the Bailey bridge at 2000 hrs, with an estimated 10 hours for construction. It was completed at 0615 hrs (just 15 minutes over the estimate) before dawn, when the first armoured cars of Household Cavalry crossed over, and the Grenadier Guards tanks followed at first light. John Sliz in his book, Bridging The Club Route – Guards Armoured Division’s Engineers During Operation Market Garden (2015, 2016), makes a good point that the delay at Son was effectively zero hours, because the bridging operation was conducted entirely during the hours of darkness when it was doctrine not to advance tanks. So the implication is that they would have had to stop somewhere in the 101st Airborne area between Eindhoven and Veghel anyway. There was a gap between the 501st PIR (101st Airborne) at Veghel and the 504th (82nd Airborne) at Grave that was effectively 'Indian country' that could contain a German ambush, so the delay to XXX Corps' linkup to the 82nd at Grave was unavoidable without the bridges at Aalst and Eindhoven in American hands on the first day, otherwise the tanks might have been passed through to Veghel on the first night instead of stopping at Valkenswaard.
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  50.  @johnlucas8479  - 1) You may well be right in saying Williams didn't make the decision to cancel drop zones south of the Wilhelmina canal as he seemed happy with his one Troop Carrier Group's involvement in the otherwise all-British/Polish COMET plan, but seemed to change his tune in MARKET - I suspect because Brereton had his hands on the reins, but I said what I did because Taylor told Dempsey it was Williams, so what are we supposed to believe? My source is RG Poulussen's Little Sense of Urgency (2014), page 55 reproduces the relevant part of the cable (so this is a primary source) that Taylor sent to Dempsey - 14 September, Annex 1, Employment of 101st Airborne Division, Operation "Market": "1. The agreed mission of 101st Airborne Division in operation "MARKET" includes the securing of the canal and stream crossings at EINDHOVEN. Since this mission was received, Major General P. L. Williams, Commanding General of Troop Carrier Command, has determined that it is not possible to drop parachute troops south of WILHELMINA CANAL because of the flak about EINDHOVEN. Consequently, the nearest drop zone for the EINDHOVEN mission will be about eight miles from this objective. Allowing two hours to assemble the regiment and three hours for the approach march it is estimated that five hours will elapse before Airborne troops can reach EINDHOVEN. The present tentative drop schedule places the troops on the ground about 1500 on D Day. Hence Airborne troops will not be able to reach the brdges at EINDHOVEN until about 2000." Karel Margry's (Ed) Operation Market Garden Then and Now (2002), may have picked up that Dempsey received notification from Taylor, but Taylor says in the cable it was Williams' decision. Taylor did, I believe, reject a drop zone near Uden, which Browning had selected to close the gap between the two US Airborne divisions, and this was on the grounds his division would be overstretched over such a long sector of the corridor. 2) Because if the US Airborne had the route between the Aalst and Son bridges in their hands there would be nothing to stop XXX Corps moving the tanks up, even at night. It's just 4km between Valkenswaard and Aalst, they could just as easily reached that point as Valkenswaard itself. Page 87 of Poulessen (op cit): 'At 1815 IRISH GUARDS GROUP had reached the Stenen Brug - the bridge over the Dommel River - just before Valkenswaard. At 1910 - whilst not in contact with the enemy and darkness at 2003 - it was decided to harbour in Valkenswaard.' So, they could have reached Aalst before dark if they knew the Americans were due to be there holding the bridge over the Tongel reep - a stream tributary of the Dommel (apologies if I said this was the Dommel itself at Aalst).
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