Comments by "Dave M A C" (@davemac1197) on "Who's to Blame for the Failure of Operation Market Garden? BattleStorm 8/8" video.

  1. The film is only about 50% accurate, because the director was politically motivated in making an "ant-war film" and the producer answered critics of historical inaccuracy by saying "I pay to make entertainment, not history." If you look into Browning's part, he can be exonerated on the popular charges levelled against him: 1. He could have objected to the compromised air plan, which was based on Bereton's three-division air plan for the previously cancelled Operation Linnet II, an operation planned in such haste that no time was available for maps to be printed and distributed, prompting Browning to threaten to resign. When he realised Brereton was going to accept his resignation in order to replace him with American Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Corps HQ, he withdrew the threat. Fortunately for everyone, Linnet II became redundant when the Liege-Maastricht objectives were overrun by ground forces. The Market planning by Brereton's staff removed the all-British Operation Comet plan to use glider coup de main attacks on the Arnrhem, Nijmegen, and Grave bridges (so successful at Pegasus Bridge in Normandy), and also scrapped the planned double airlift on D-Day. Brereton was not an experienced airborne officer as he came from from the Air Force, and the principle objections came from Williams wanting to protect his US IX Troop Carrier Command aircaft and pilot resources. It would be pointless for Browning to threaten resignation again, and the whole world should be made aware that Market's compromised air plan was not Browning's but that of an American officer intent on continuing the war of independence. 2. His intention to take his Corps HQ carried in 32 Horsa gliders and 6 WACO required 32 Stirling and 6 Albemarle tugs that could have been used to tow the second half of the South Staffords Battalion (that actually required 40 Horsas) to Arnhem on D-Day, instead of D+1. The problem with the argument they were needed at Arnhem is that the South Stafford's Phase 1 task was to protect Landing Zone 'S' until the second lift arrived, and because the zone received little attention from the Germans in the first 24 hours the two companies of Staffords, glider pilots from No.2 Wing (a light infantry battalion once on the ground) and the 21st Independent Parachute Company, all had the landing zone well in hand. Because they were not under pressure, and their Phase 2 task was Brigade reserve, Brigadier Hicks decided to order the Staffords into Arnhem to reinforce 1st Parachute Brigade before their Phase 1 task was complete, but by the time the two companies available on the morning of D+1 got into the western suburbs of Arnhem in the afternoon, the second lift had arrived and the remainder of the battalion caught up with them. In other words, if the Staffords arrived complete on D-Day and the Corps HQ went to Groesbeek on D+1 instead, it wouldn't have made any difference, except that Browning would be open to a charge of not leading his own command into combat. 3. Dismissal of the aerial photo intelligence showing German tanks near Arnhem was fully justified after the photo itself emerged from a Dutch government archive in 2015 and subjected to analysis by the RAF's Air Historical Branch. It's clear that the image (frame 4015 of the Deelerwoud taken on 12 September by a 541 Squadron Spitfire from RAF Benson) shows older model Mark IV (with the short 7.5cm/L24 gun) and Mark III tanks undergoing maintenance at a supply dump near Deelen airfield. This rules out a 1944 panzer division as the likely owner and the likelyhood was that they belonged to a training unit. Since we now know the exact dispositions of German training units in the Netherlands, we know the tanks belonged to the Reserve Panzer Kompanie of the Fallschirm-Panzer-Ersatz-und-Ausbildungs-Regiment 'Hermann Göring' from Harderwijk on the Zuider Zee coast, and we know that they were ordered south to Hechtel in Belgium on 7 September to reinforce the regiment's II.Abteilung. Only three tanks made the trip without breaking down and were destroyed by the Irish Guards in Hechtel on the same day, 12 September, that the breakdowns were being repaired at Deelen. When the landings began on 17 September, they had moved to Wolfswinkel near Son, where they attempted to interfere with the 506th PIR's landing on Drop Zone 'B' just across the road, but were in turn shot up by escorting USAAF fighter aircraft. Browning was right to dismiss the photo and Cornelius Ryan's version of this story rested entirely on his interview with Browning's Intelligence Officer, Major Brian Urquhart, who was sent on medical leave, later serving in the Civil Service and instrumental in setting up the useless United Nations organisation after the war. The photo was 'lost' because the RAF had donated all its aerials of the Netherlands to the Dutch government to help with reconstruction, and Browning had already passed away in 1965, two years before Ryan began his research for A Bridge Too Far. Unfortunate that a good man has been much maligned by mediocrity in military service, Ryan's newspaper journalism, and Hollywood. Close air support at Arnhem was to be provided by two teams from the USAAF 306th Fighter Control Squadron, landed in four WACO gliders and provided with Jeeps and British drivers, the teams used special VHF radio sets and these were the sets (not the British divisional networks) that were delivered with the wrong crystals. Another two teams went with Browning's HQ to Groesbeek, plus two more WACO gliders (taking Browning's HQ to 38 gliders) carried liaison officers from the 101st and 82nd Divisions. It was the 101st Division LO and his Comms team's glider that crashed near Student's HQ at Vught and documents carried by the officer fell into German hands. It also meant that Browning had no communications with 101st Division during the operation.
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  2. There are main roads north from Arnhem to Apeldoorn and the Zuider Zee (Ijsselmeer) coast plnned to be used by the Guards and 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division, and then from Apeldoorn to Deventer and Zutphen. The final dispositions of XXX Corps north of the Rijn included 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division taking the bridge sites over the Ijssel at Deventer and Zutphen with forward brigades, and the 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division the Ijssel bridge site at Doesburg. Airborne forces were not required at these locations as it was not essential for the bridges to be taken intact, they could be replaced with Bailey bridges while US 1st Army were securing their own Rhine crossing between Bonn and Cologne. These would then be the start lines for Eisenhower's planned pincer envelopment of the Ruhr with US 1st and British 2nd Armies, once Antwerp had been opened up by the Canadians and sufficient supplies built up to support both armies in Germany.
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  3.  @niekhogendoorn5156  - the evacuation of the Betuwe was caused by the Germans breaching the Winter dijk near Arnhem and flooding the polders - not simply caused by swollen rivers flooding the flood plains in Winter. These rivers can be and were routinely bridged with Bailey bridging equipment all over Europe - the details on the engineering put in place can be found in Special Bridging Force – Engineers Under XXX Corps in Operation Market Garden by John Sliz (2021). There were plenty of main roads into Germany from the Ijssel bridges - through Oldenzaal, Enschede, Winterswijk, and Zevenaar - I'm reading a German sitution map dated 17.9.44 and these are the main routes from Germany that reinforcements were sent to Arnhem. Allied forces can invade Germany just as easily in the other direction. The basic concept of MARKET GARDEN was compromised by flaws introduced during the planning process.
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  4. He had very little input into the planning process. It was done by 1st Allied Airborne Army for the air plan and British 2nd Army for the ground forces.
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  5. The 9 Shermans were knocked out by the anti-tank platoon of Kerutt's I./Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 18 armed with panzerfausts in the roadside ditches. All the anti-tank guns (I believe they were 11 x 7.5cm PaK 40) were effectively destroyed by the opening artillery preparation, because they were sited out in the open for lack of prime movers to get them away from the roadside.
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  6. A very thoughtful post and I agree with the points made, with the following additions or caveats: 1. While the Malburgsche Polder Drop Zone 'K' south of the Arnhem bridge was unsuitable for large scale glider landings, a small force of six gliders carrying one Company of Airlanding troops was planned to land at dawn (because it was a no-Moon period) in a coup de main raid on the flood plain closer to the bridge for operation COMET, and it was carried over into the provisional operation SIXTEEN outline that was an expansion of the COMET concept. This raid, and similar ones planned for the Nijmegen and Grave bridges, were put beyond feasibility by Brereton's decision for all flights in his final MARKET plan to be conducted in daylight with a midday delivery. The glider raids were the proposed solution to the problem of distance from suitable main landing zones at Wolfheze to the bridge objectives, and their removal was a major flaw in the final MARKET plan. 2. Gavin's main concern was the reports of German heavy armour reported by the Dutch resistance in the Reichswald and SS troops in Nijmegen, at the time he was assigned to Nijmegen for MARKET, and he had gone immediately to 1st Airborne's HQ to see their intelligence on the area and their own plans for Nijmegen for operation COMET. The German units had not been identified, but Montgomery and Dempsey were aware from 'Ultra' intelligence that II.SS-Panzerkorps were ordered to the eastern Netherlands to refit and this report prompted the cancellation of COMET and replacement with an upgraded operation adding the two American divisions. Gavin's divisional plan was predicated on the SHAEF assessment that a "regiment of SS" (the reduced condition of each of the two SS panzer divisons in the Korps) may be in Nijmegen's excellent Dutch army barracks facilities and they may be receiving new tanks from a depot thought to be near Kleve, using the Reichswald as a tank storage area. It was not until after landing that Gavin received reports from the 508th PIR the Groesbeek ridge was unoccupied (and was as "mad" as the 508th liasion officer had ever seen Gavin when told Colonel Lindquist was not moving on the bridge), and from the 505th that the Reichswald was empty and assessed too dense for tanks to operate. It was only in 1966, as Gavin was forwarding research papers from Dutch Colonel T.A. Boeree on the Hohenstaufen's movements to A Bridge Too Far author Cornelius Ryan refuting the betrayal mythology that he realised the reports of armour in the Reichswald was the Hohenstaufen division in transit to Arnhem, as Boeree had researched their route up the east bank of the Maas after concentrating at Sittard and through Nijmegen to Arnhem. Apparently they had made a stop in the Reichswald and generated the Dutch reports at the time COMET was being prepared. Gavin thought that he might have a fight on his hands if Nijmegen was occupied with combat troops that could deploy on the Groesbeek ridge, denying him access to the city. By 48 hours before the jump, and the plan seemed to be shaping up nicely in his words, he thought he could risk sending a battalion into the city to secure the highway bridge, but he instructed Lindquist to use the flat polder land to the east and not go through the city. For whatever reason, Lindquist had not taken this instruction on board, despite Gavin showing him on a map the exact route he wanted 1st Battalion to take to the bridge in the final divisional briefing on 15 September, and Lindquist stuck to his original plan of deploying all three battalions along the ridge line and sent only a recon patrol based on a reinforced platoon to go to the bridge and report on its condition. Boeree's research and Gavin's correspondence is in the Cornelius Ryan Collection online, box 101, folder 09 (Reichswald letter is on page 48), and Gavin's interview with Ryan is in folder 10, where he discusses his problems with Lindquist and the objectives.
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  7. The drop zone south of the Arnhem bridge - Drop Zone 'K' on the Malburgsche Polder, was not suitable for a landing on D-Day because it was flanked by two heavy batteries of gemischte Flak-Abteilung 591 and one and a half batteries of leichte Flak-Abteilung 845 clustered around the southern bridge access. The DZ was also crossed by two high tension lines from the Arnhem power station located southeast of the bridge. It was deemed suitable for the Poles arriving on D+2, assuming the area was under the control of 1st Parachute Brigade - the drop zone was to be cleared by 1st Parachute Battalion after completing their Phase 1 task of holding the high ground north of Arnhem until 4th Parachute Brigade arrived, and the Royal Engineers were due to rendezvous at the power station and take control after completing their own Phase 1 tasks. Because these plans to clear the drop zone had not been done, the drop for the Poles had to be re-arranged to a safer zone and the area around Driel opposite the divisional perimeter in Oosterbeek was chosen as DZ 'K1'. The drop was also delayed by bad weather to D+4 (21 September), when the area south of the bridge was being traversed by German troops moving south to Elst and reinforcing the blocking line at Oosterhout-Ressen-Bemmel.
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  8.  @marcel-y8c  - as a matter of fact I have been corresponding with author Scott Revell (Retake Arnhem Bridge 2010 and A Few Vital Hours 2013) about Flak and in the middle of writing an email reply today on the subject of gemischte Flak-Abteilung 591 at Arnhem. He's working on a new book on Flak Kampfbrigade Svoboda this year and another more general book on the Flak at Arnhem, so we're trying to get all of our ducks in a row and agree on what exactly the Flak situation was at Arnhem at the start of MARKET GARDEN. One of the things I had speculated on in trying to identify Flak-Abteilung '19' in Flak Brigade Svoboda from Robert Kershaw's order of battle (It Never Snows In September, 1990), is that these batteries with odd numbers of guns in them (3 x 88mm + 2 x 88mm + 6 x 3.7cm) may have been guns in situ that had been hit by the preliminary bombings on 17 September and the survivors with operational guns incorporated into Svoboda's Kampfgruppe after he arrived, since the text does say he took control of all Flak in the area under his command. I believe the heavy guns may have actually been captured French 75mm Schneider Mle 36 - known as 7.5cm M.36(f) in German service as used by gemischte (mixed) Flak-Abteilung 591 at Arnhem - and Kershaw simply assumed all heavy Flak guns in German service were their own 88mm design. The 6 x 3.7cm is a halb-Batterie or half battery of 2 Zuge (platoons), which matches the testimony of Major Hans Lange, commander of leichte Flak-Abteilung 845 based at Leeuwarden airfield in the northern Netherlands, who was ordered to detach one and a half batteries to the southern access of the Arnhem highway bridge a few days before the battle. I requested the Ohio State University librarian add his folder in the Cornelius Ryan Collection to the digital archive, so it can be read online, and it is now available (box 132, folder 05: Hans Lange). My speculation is that Flak-Abteilung '19' was an ad hoc designation named after the local Flak Brigade XIX (19) headquartered in Arnhem under Oberst Werner Huck (CRC box 132 folder 03). The Germans did a similar thing with the Marine Kampfgruppe 642 sent to Arnhem from the Marine Auffanglager (collection centre) in Zwolle, and I think simply named the kampfgruppe '642' after the late Generalmajor Friedrich Kussin's Feldkommandantur 642 that was the military district command for Gelderland and Overijssel provinces. I put this to Scott and he thinks I may have resolved a real headache for him as well in trying to identify what Flak-Abteilung '19' was, or where it came from. We had both been trying to research this Abteilung and given up, and then I came across Werner Huck's interview in the CRC and as soon as I realised his brigade was based in Arnhem it suddenly all made sense. To answer your question about the effectiveness of the RAF attacks on the Flak in the Arnhem area, I also believe there were 2 x 2cm Flak guns on towers constructed over the toll booths at the northern end of the highway bridge. The toll booths were never used to collect tolls as alternative funding for the bridge was found by the town by the time the bridge was completed in 1935, but the Germans reinforced the glass booths with sandbags to create machine-gun bunkers and the Flak towers were constructed from wood on top of each toll booth roof. I believe the RAF scored a direct hit on the east tower destroying the gun and possibly also the bunker. The west tower and bunker remained intact and this had to be dealt with by Frost using a 6-pounder anti-tank gun to engage the bunker, but it could not elevate sufficiently to engage the Flak gun, so a PIAT was used from a nearby building. The bunker was then attacked with a flamethrower. According to historian Frank van Lunteren (Radboud Nijmegen University), at least one of the 3.7cm platoons south of the bridge was untouched in the air attacks. With the heavy batteries in the area down to 3 and 2 guns each, it looks like the air attacks on 17 September were about 50% successful, which makes sense because it would be remarkable if they hit everything or hit nothing! I think the main means of preventing reinforcements reaching Arnhem was to request the Dutch Government-in-Exile based in London to organise a rail strike for 17 September. A lot of troop movements out of the Netherlands (the last parts of the Hohenstaufen SS Division were due to leave for Siegen in Germany) were stuck because they were loaded on trains, but no locomotives were available because of the strike. The trains had to be taken over by the German Reichsbahn (state rail service). In my research on Nijmegen, the 82nd Airborne took a lot of Reichsbahn prisoners (over 120 listed in the G-2 Intel Section documents), because the Germans had a training Abteilung based in Nijmegen, and although officially listed as combatants with about half the personnel issued with rifles, the Germans attempted to evacuate them rather than incorporate them into the defence of Nijmegen. A train passed through the 505th Regiment lines at Groesbeek without being challenged and escaped to Kranenburg, so a very angry Gavin ordered the line mined and a bazooka team positioned in time to intercept a second train. About 200 troops jumped off this train and many were rounded up and put in the POW cage - the walled garden of the Mookerheide hunting lodge - with security provided by USAAF glider pilots. It's a lot of detail, but I hope it helps build a better picture.
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  9. It would be better for Gavin, but that wouldn't be honest.
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  10. Blaming Montgomery doesn't make any sense. His only input to the planning process was to decide on Arnhem over Wesel as the target for Operation Comet on 3/4 September, with the help of Browning, who looked for suitable landing zones. The detailed planning was then carried out by Browning's (British I Airborne Corps) and Dempsey's (British 2nd Army) staffs. When Montgomery cancelled Comet on 10 September because of the worsening intelligence picture in the Netherlands, he proposed Market Garden to Eisenhower as an upgrade with three airborne divisions instead of one. The planning for the air plan was then turned over to Brereton (1st Allied Airborne Army) and Williams (US IX Troop Carrier Command) who used the three-division air plan for the cancelled Linnet II, but compromised the Comet plan by removing the glider coup de main attacks on the Arnhem, Nijmegen and Grave bridges and also deleted the second airlift on the first day. These compromises were initiated by Williams and backed by Brereton, who was not an experienced airborne commander but an air force officer. Comet and Market had about a week each to plan and Garden was in the works for the two weeks. Brereton's Operation Linnet II (Maas bridges between Maastricht and Liege) was planned on his own initiative as an alternative if Linnet in Belgium was cancelled. Neither Montgomery's 21st Army Group, to which the 1stAAA was attached, or Bradley's 12th Army Group in whose area Linnet II would have operated, actually requested such an operation to be planned. It was Brereton's own scheme to have Ridgway's US XVIII Airborne Corps utilised instead of Browning's British Corps, as Browning objected to the short notice for Linnet II due to lack of time to print and distribute maps and threatened to resign over the issue as Brereton had hoped. Browning withdrew the threat when the drop zones were overrun and operation cancelled anyway. Browning could hardly threaten resignation a second time over Williams and Bereton's compromised Comet plan for Market, so you can't blame Browning or MOntgomery for American's bullying and throwing their weight around. Market was then compromised on the ground when the 508th PIR failed to move quickly on the Nijmegen highway bridge on the first afternoon, per Gavin's instructions in the divisional briefing the previous day. The failure was Colonel Lindquist's, but Gavin effectively covered for him by conflating the relative priority between the bridge and Groesbeek heights (the 508th's initial objective) post-war, with it seems the help of Browning, who backed him up. I can understand your father's comments about conflicting orders, and perhaps the best breakdown on this is in American historian John C McManus' book September Hope, chapter 3, and 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th PIR - Put Us Down In Hell (2012) chapters 9 and 10 on the planning and execution of Market. It's clear from Nordyke's earlier chapters on Normandy that Lindquist was not a good field commander and problems with the command of the 508th, partly resolved by Ridgway court-martialling the regiment XO, were not fully resolved for Market with Lindquist still in place. Aside from these two American authors, Dutch researcher RG Poulussen's Lost At Nijmegen (2011) on TIK's booklist is another reference worth reading. I don't see what Montgomery has to do with any politics internal to American formations and these sorts of arguments blaming Browning or Montgomery seem more intent on continuing the American revolutionary war than dealing with the job in hand of combating Naziism.
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  11. Not really. The book I've just started reading on the 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery at Arnhem has in its introduction - "contrary to what is often suggested, a heavy German counter attack was expected and with substantial armoured vehicles" (Kept My Eyes Peeled For The Enemy - Battery P Troop, Nigel Simpson, Secander Raisani, Philip Reinders, Marcel Swarts). After D-Day, Allied progress was behind the planned notional phase line schedule until after the breakout, and by the liberation of Paris and pursuit into Belgium and the Netherlands, was ahead of the schedule. Some people look to excuses when the real fault lies elsewhere.
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  12. It was Lindquist commanding the 508th PIR failing to follow Gavin's divisional plan and final briefing the previous day. You can argue that Gavin had honourable motives in not throwing a subordinate officer under the bus and took responsibility for his plan not being followed, but he did this by suggesting (with some support from Browning in their postwar correspondence) the Groesbeek heights were the higher priority. That's not what he said in the briefing and he was as "mad" as Chet Graham (508th liaison officer to Division HQ) had ever seen him when he found out Lindquist wasn't sending a battalion to the bridge. This doesn't help historians get the story right until after all the key players in the drama had passed and more junior officers like Captain Chet Graham could freely speak. All Gavin would say to Cornelius Ryan in his 1967 interview for A Bridge Too Far (1974) was that Ridgway (82nd Division CO in Normandy) did not trust Lindquist and would not promote him. Even that didn't make it into the book. Sources: 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)
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  13. 1. 82nd Airborne Drop Zone for the 508th was 10 Km (6 miles) from the Nijmegen highway bridge (7 Km to intitial objective at De PLoeg, then 3 Km to the bridge). Taylor objected to a drop zone south of Nijmegen because of Flak positions around the city and the 506th had to march 10 Km to secure the Eindhoven bridges, and another 4 Km to the bridge at Aalst, assuming XXX Corps were not already there. 2. The original all-British Operation Comet plan included glider coup de main attacks like Pegasus Bridge in Normandy for the Arnhem, Nijmegen and Grave bridges, using a Company detached from each of the three Airlanding Battalions in 1st Airlanding Brigade, as well as two lifts on D-Day. Both of these elements of Comet were removed by Brereton of 1st Allied Airborne Army after Williams of US IX Troops Carrier Command objected to the coup de main on the grounds of Flak at the bridges and two lifts per day involved night flying for which he had insifficient navigators, and turn around times between the lifts were insuficient for his ground crews. 3. The delay at Son is arguably zero hours, a point made by Canadian author John Sliz in the volume Bridging The Club Route - Guards Armoured Division Engineers During Market Garden (2015, 2016) in his Market Garden Engineers series, on the basis that the Bailey bridge was constructed in 10 hours 15 minutes entirely in the hours of darkness when it was doctrine not to advance tanks. XXX COrps reached the bridge site at 1900 hours and the Royaal Engineers' reconnaisance unit 30 minutes later, and the bridging material was brought up the previous night to Valkenswaard in anticipation so it could be brought up in 30 minutes to begin worrk at 2000 hrs after dark. The bridge was open at 0615 hrs, before dawn, releasing the Household Cavalry, and the Grenadier Guards started at first light. 4. The flanking VIII and XII Corps were advancing on their respective Spade and Diamond Routes, towards Helmond-Gennep on the right and 's-Hertogenbosch area on the left. They made late starts due to assembly delays and having to bridge the Meuse-Escaut canal, and slower progress because Montgomery did not get the "absolute priority" in supplies Bedell Smith (Eisenhower's Chief of Staff) had promised. Apparently they had different interpretations of "absolute" despite claiming to speak the same language. Bradley's 12th Army Group continued to receive supplies, albeit at a reduced rate, during this period. 5. Air support at Arnhem was to be provided by two teams from the USAAF 306th Fighter Control Squadron, delivered in 4 WACO gliders and Jeeps with British drivers. Their special VHF sets for communicating with aircraft were the ones delivered with the wrong crystals - not the British Army sets as often suggested. The British communications were functioning, but at significantly reduced ranges due to the high iron content in the sandy glacial moraine of the Veluwe region, not understood at the time.
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  14. Author of Bridging The Club Route – Guards Armoured Division’s Engineers During Operation Market Garden, John Sliz (2015, 2016), makes a valid argument that the delay at Son was zero, since the replacement Bailey bridge was constructed entirely during the hours of darkness when it was doctrine not to advance tanks.
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  15.  @61st-highland-anti-tank  - well, I think the main delays were the result of compromises in the planning changes made between the outline proposal called SIXTEEN and the final MARKET plan. So the glider coup de main raids and 'airborne carpet' ideas probably would have helped a lot. There was virtually a wasted day on D+1 (18 September) between Valkswaard and Eindhoven when they were held up by two 8.8cm Flak guns and a StuG, both found to be abandoned when they realised Dutch civilians were milling about the guns. The Germans fled when they heard that Eindhoven was liberated, which is a common story when fighting the Germans. They would be absolutely resolute in defence and then morale would suddenly collapse if they knew the enemy was behind them and cut off their supply line. Brits and Americans have no qualms about being surrounded - it's a different psychology. No delay from Son to Nijmegen, but 36 hours to take the Waal bridges was the fatal delay, by which time it was too late to relieve Frost at Arnhem.
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  16. Nonsense. The facts do not bear that out. The plan was still succeeding even where it was not working perfectly, but the fatal compromise was the one point of failure to even follow the plan, and that was at Nijmegen on the first afternoon. That was an unforced command failure that had nothing to do with planning, intelligence, weather, or Germans. If your argument relies on people who were there and fighting the war for five years already being "stupid", then it's time to re-appraise your argument.
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  17. Nonsense. 1. Things always go wrong in military operations, but an unforced error in the plan not even being followed at Nijmegen on the first afternoon was the fatal mistake that compromised the whole operation. 2. Lightly armed paratroopers may be, but the anti-tank batteries at Arnhem had plenty of 6-pounder and 17-pounder anti-tank guns. In fact, the 1st Airborne Division and attached Polish Brigade had exactly the same number of anti-tank guns (84) as Model had operational tanks in his entire Heeresgruppe B from Aachen to the North Sea in September. Just a stunning coincidence, or the universe's way of telling you that you're wrong? 3. What other blows were fatal? The Division at Arnhem held its bridge objective for 80 hours, nearly twice as long as should have been needed.
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  18. That didn't help. The 'plans' were no more than a resupply schedule for 101st Airborne (it was their liaison officer that crashed on his way to Browning's HQ at Groesbeek). Student, an airborne commander himself with his headquarters nearby, had the documents translated and realised he could extrapolate the airlift schedule for all three divisions. Model was not convinced (the Hollywood film got that bit right), but Student went ahead and alerted his own Luftwaffe chain of command and had fighter aircraft over the drop zones at the right time. Fortunately the weather in England delayed the airlifts and the fighters were back at their bases in Germany being refuelled when the transports arrived.
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  19. It was hoped the Netherlands would be able to remain neutral as they were during WW1. That was why the young Audrey Hepburn was removed from her school in England and brought back to her home in Arnhem at the outbreak of war in 1939. When the Germans invaded the low countries in May 1940, their family home at Kasteel Zypendaal was confiscated by the German town commandant and the family had to stay with friends in nearby Velp. Hepburn was offered the role of Kate ter Horst in A Bridge Too Far, but turned it down as it was "too close to home."
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