Comments by "Nick Danger" (@nickdanger3802) on "The BAD BOY of Operation Market Garden | General 'Boy' Browning" video.

  1. 23.30 the Battle of the Bulge or Ardennes Offensive was launched exactly three months after MG. German armor:  557 tanks, 667 tank destroyers and assault guns 1,261 other AFVs
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  2. The Battle of the Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Counteroffensive was launched exactly three months after Market Garden was launched. German forces: 557 tanks, 667 tank destroyers and assault guns and 1,261 other AFVs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge
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  3. 21.55 "..eight miles away …" According to page 26 of OPERATION MARKET GARDEN 1944 (2) the landings zone farthest from the road bridge was 8 miles. The rail bridge was about 3 miles away. The landing zone near Wolfheze was 4 miles from Arnhem. It does not state how far it was from the bridges. The 82nd took the bridge at Grave, one of the longest bridges in Europe, within the first few hours. The River Waal bridge and the Heights are ten miles from there. It also captured a bridge over the Maas Wall canal and repelled an attack by 2,300 second echelon Germans with armored cars on the Heights on the morning of day two, which had to be held for the follow on gliders because Nijmegen is between two river valleys. map Arnhem day one http://www.pegasusarchive.org/arnhem/Photos/Map1ParaPlan.gif
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  4. 27.00 Heer (army) and Luftwaffe forces at River Waal bridges PRIOR to the arrival of 9th SS on the 17th. "... a weak company strength NCO training school, some three companies of Landesschutzen (older soldiers employed as guards) from 6/Erzatz Battalion, 406th Division, railway guard and police reserve companies. The first additions were a company of infantry from the Hermann Goering Training Regiment which happened to be passing through Nijmegen ..." "... 88mm (4th Company , 572 Heavy Flak Battalion) and 20mm anti-aircraft guns ..." A 1944 Heer security PLATOON had forty six men and four MG's pages 131-132 NIJMEGEN US 82nd Airborne & Guards Armoured Division, Pen & Sword Books Limited, South Yorkshire.
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  5. General Browning remained convinced that Market Garden was a sound plan which had been thwarted by bad luck. The incessant reference to the operation as a "failure" was a continual annoyance to him as the parts played by the two American airborne divisions had been a great success, and it angered him that they were never, in his lifetime, given due credit. In private correspondence he wrote "People don't seem to have been told that it [Arnhem] was only rather less than a third of the Airborne effort and the whole thing was 80% successful. The two US Airborne Divisions which I have the honour to command have done marvellously and if it hadn't been for the atrocious weather and sheer bad luck the whole thing would have been 100% successful which in war would have been phenomenal." He also said "I only wish that the exploits of the two American divisions and everyone else during those hectic days when we were holding the corridor open, fighting the battle against the Germans in the Reichswald and struggling to force a corridor to the 1st Division, might be more fully appreciated." Browning received no British recognition for the part that he played in the Battle, but he was, ironically considering his relations with both countries, honoured by the United States who awarded him the Legion of Merit, and by the Poles who gave him the Order of Polonia Restituta. Pegasus Archive Browning page
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  6. Vain Browning lost 1944 Arnhem battle in Nijmegen: Col. Robert Kershaw & Dr Adriaan Groeneweg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJrSRwv7EEk&t=1s
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  7. Vain Browning lost 1944 Arnhem battle in Nijmegen: Col. Robert Kershaw & Dr Adriaan Groeneweg - YouTube
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  8. By this time the Germans were well versed in anti airborne operations. With three divisions landing on the same road the objectives were obvious. They knew the open areas held by the first wave would be the LZ's for the next wave and the weather would dictate when it took place. It is stated the person was an American, but the only people with access or need of the "complete plans" were Brownings HQ, a few of whom were Americans. The HQ would be redundant after XXX Corps made contact. "The area assigned to Student would eventually become the main axis of advance of Operation Market-Garden. The man who led the airborne assault into Holland in 1940 would now be responsible for defending against an Allied airborne assault against the same area." page 61 https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a406861.pdf
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  9. Browning took 38 of 1st AB's gliders to lift his HQ to Nijmegen to justify inserting himself into the mission. 32 Horsa's plus 6 Waco's with capacity for over 900 men not including glider pilots.
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  10. Interview with Brian Urquhart, chief intelligence officer of the 1st Airborne Division. At 3.11 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfuJ4W-wqI4
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  11. 27.30 XXX Corps arrived at GRAVE at around 0800 and it is twenty miles from Arnhem. XXX Corps had averaged just over one mile per hour to that point. If they had continued at that pace they would have arrived at Arnhem bridge at around 0400 on day four, the day Frosts' men ran out of ammo.
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  12.  @T.S.Birkby  Well, it is short, maybe too short. I just checked the distance again. From Joes bridge at the canal in Belgium to the south side of bridge at Arnhem is 72 miles. The only Operation distance I have seen is 64 miles. Could it be the maps they had and XXX Corps averaging just over one mile and hour to Grave is what doomed the operation? FYI I did not get a notification of your last comment.
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  13. The exploit was supposed to win him a field decoration directly from the hands of Field Marshall Montgomery, but Pte. Major couldn't bring himself to accept. "He had made an awful mistake. I didn't like him at all." Leo Major, the most decorated Canadian soldier of WWII. pages 2 and 3 https://web.archive.org/web/20150204042341/http://www2.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=fbcc446c-231f-4781-940a-3ebc3dee9f94&p=2
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  14.  @davemac1197  "Browning and Brigadier-General Gavin, the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, were in agreement that the priorities around Nijmegen were first the vast area of high ground known as the Groesbeek Heights, followed by the bridge at Grave, the three smaller bridges over the Maas-Waal Canal, and finally the very large bridge at Nijmegen." Pegasus Archive Browning page
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  15.  @bigwoody4704  Check out the haters on this vid 6 Reasons Operation Market Garden FAILED https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33JA4Uk-WKM&lc=Ugwkor5lVjcs767k99V4AaABAg.AGVDZ8azNBJAGVdhEqqlmt
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  16.  @davemac1197  Because 1st AB captured three bridges on day one and held them and the landing and resupply drop zones for the entire time. "The location of these zones, however, was a matter for the Royal Air Force and not the 1st Airborne Division, and Air Vice Marshal Hollinghurst, the commander of 38 Group, one of the air force formations which was to transport the Division into battle and supply it thereafter, refused to drop paratroopers any closer to Arnhem. His reasoning was that after the troops had been dropped, his aircraft could only begin the return to their bases by banking left, in a northerly direction; to have banked right would have led them into the path of the 82nd Airborne Division's aircraft returning from Nijmegen. If the aircraft approached too close to Arnhem, their return flight path would lead them directly over the top of a very large flak installation on the nearby Deelen Airfield, and to fly over this would result in severe losses which Transport Command could not afford. For this reason, the air force insisted on dropping all of the 1st Airborne Division roughly eight miles from Arnhem." Pegasus Archive 3. Recipe for Disaster "This would enable 1st Airborne and the Polish Brigade with their superior anti-tank gun resources to be concentrated where the armoured threat was considered to be greatest, eventually determined to be at Arnhem." How did that work out ? I watched a real documentary on Deadstick long before the internut. Prior to D Day a PR aircraft filmed the flight path the gliders were to use and glider pilots watched it until they had it memorized. That was not possible for MG. Distance over occupied territory was no more than five miles and distance was not much more than 20 miles from England. Arnhem is 74 miles from the coast and the area was regularly flown over by RAF and 8th AF heavies to bomb Krupp Werks in Essen, 72 miles southeast of Arnhem. Almost by accident the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire were trained for that mission. By MG most of those men were not in the unit. The rest of 6th AB was on the other side of the bridges. Only Germans on the other side of the bridge for MG and no guarantee the bridge would not be blown up as happened at Arnhem rail bridge, Mook, Son and all but one of the Maas Waal canal bridges in Nijmegen. Fuk wit Limey fan boys like to parade Deadstick as one of those "the Yanks never did anything like that". It was almost the same as the capture of Fort Eben-Emael with the exceptions of being done in darkness and not attacking a fort. Opposing Forces 50 men "The unit was poorly equipped with a mixture of foreign weapons and manned by conscripts from Poland, the Soviet Union, and France under a German officer and senior non-commissioned officers (NCOs). Schmidt's soldiers had orders to blow up the two bridges if they were in danger of capture." wiki Even with those odds a case has been made that if not for a "golden BB" PIAT hit on the first tank on the scene the whole thing could have gone sideways.
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