Youtube comments of John Burns (@johnburns4017).
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Germany had no realistic ability to overrun the UK. The British knew what sort of chance the Germans had. The reason the Germans had no chance was that the British were ready and waiting with factories turning out the latest equipment 24/7. During the so-called Battle of Britain, the Royal Navy had a mass of ships at Gibraltar ready for offensive operations against the Italians, they took the invasion of Britain really so seriously.
The German Navy was near non-existent. The single battleship the British kept in Portsmouth was quite able to handle everything the Germans had on the surface, together with the four flotillas of destroyers. I'm not counting the Home Fleet, which had additional powerful ships. In other words, the British kept plenty of naval force at home. All they needed to deal with the Germans with a good deal to spare. Also, 55 Matilda 2 tanks, which was immune from German anti-tank guns, were sent to North Africa, the Brits took the invasion so seriously.
Admiral Raeder said he could not guarantee putting down an invasion force, even with German air superiority, when the Royal Navy was still there. General Jodl talked of his men going through a British mincing machine.
In Churchill's memoirs, he says that he was prepared to defeat tens of thousands of Germans if they invaded (take that as slaughter). Presumably even if they arrived with weapons and not half-dead from seasickness in a 24 hour sea trip in barges being attacked from sea, land and air. The British kept plenty of force at home, all they needed.
And what were the Germans supposed to do? Sortie with two or three heavy cruisers, and blast their way through the Home Fleet or the Channel defences? At that point in the war, Bismarck was still under construction, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were under repair from the Norway operation, two of six heavy cruisers sunk, two of six light cruisers sunk, and only five of those could be considered modern warships, a large number of their destroyers were sunk at Narvik. The repair status on the rest of the ships wasn't real good. The Germans never even had an effective torpedo plane. The Stuka dive bomber was predictable in that it dived vertically. It was easily shot down and suffered so many losses in the Battle of Britain it was withdrawn from the battle.
So, with the German navy whittled to almost nothing, and the army incapable of crossing with enough force to win, the only threats was the then small U-boats force and the Luftwaffe. The British were therefore sparing about sending the RAF overseas. I don't know of any significant deployment of Spitfires outside the UK until the second half of 1942, and escort vessels kept on being built. The RAF defeated the Luftwaffe over Dunkirk, so the Germans knew they were no push over.
If anyone thinks that operation Sealion was a serious attempt at an invasion they are deluded. Even German generals never took it seriously. An invasion in concrete barges towed by tugs and no navy to speak of? The Germans knew the UK had a large industry working 24/7, the same size as Germany's, and the largest navy in the world to their virtually none.
The RAF was large with a large bomber force, which the Germans could not knock out. Any invasion at the few suitable invasion beaches would be met at the beaches by all types of aircraft. These could be based out of Me 109 range. State-of-the-art fighters would still be produced 24/7. There would always be top line fighters around.
According to Guderian in "Panzer Leader", and by pretty much any historian to follow, Sealion (Zee Lowe?) could succeed only with complete air superiority over the invasion areas, and at least naval equality in the Channel. Hence the air Battle of Britain, hard fought and clearly won by Britain. Naval equality was a pipe dream for Germany, but a pipe smoked only if the Luftwaffe could attain a decisive victory. Given the failure of the prerequisite, there is really no point in debating the if Germans could invade the UK.
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Wages of Destruction by Prof Adam Tooze: page 442:
"Shipments of oil to Britain peaked at more than 20 million tons, nine times the maximum figure ever imported by Germany during the war. In January 1941, when Germany is sometimes described as being 'glutted' with oil, stocks came to barely more than 2 million tons. In London, alarm bells went off whenever stocks fell below 7 million tons. So great was the disparity that the British Ministry of Economic Warfare, charged with assessing Germany's economic situation, had difficulty believing its highly accurate estimates of German oil stocks. To the British it seemed implausible that Hitler could possibly have embarked on the war with such a small margin of fuel security, an incredulity shared by both the Soviets and the Americans, who agreed in overestimating Germany's oil stocks by at least 100 per cent."
During 1941, Italy was only able to import 600,000 tons of fuel with 163,000 tons given to the navy. At this point the monthly consumption had to be reduced to 60,000 tons. The total amount of oil fuel available at the end of the year was about 200,000 tons. During this period it was decided to remove from service the older battleships. After the November British attack in Egypt, the high command and Mussolini requested that the Italian fleet defend the Libya-bound convoys. This paid off and was only possible by the special shipment of 80,000 tons of German oil fuel delivered at the end of the year.
On January 10th, 1942 the Italians informed the Germans that their navy’s supplies of fuel had dropped to 90,000 tons. During these months, the bottom was hit with reserves down to 14,000 tons. The situation deteriorated by the shipment of 9,000 tons of German oil fuel of quality too low to use. At the end of April, it was possible to import 50,000 tons of fuel oil per month from Romania. Suspending escort and mining missions by Italian cruisers reduced consumption. These cuts and new shipments allowed for the deployment of the whole Italian fleet during the battle with the British of mid-June. The Germans supplied fuel oil of only 10,000 tons in July 1942 and 23,000 tons in September. At the end of November 1942 the oil fuel reserve was about 70,000 tons plus all which was stored aboard the ships, This was enough for one sortie of the whole fleet. At the end of December, the old battleships Cesare, Duilio and Doria were removed from service.
The allied landing in North Africa in 1943 put the Italian navy in another state of fuel crisis. New missions were made possible by the shipment of 40,000 tons of quality German fuel oil. In January 1943, the fuel oil crisis reached its climax and the three modern battleships had to be removed from service eliminating the Italian battle force. The only naval division still operating was in Sardinia. Only 3,000 tons were received in February 1943 and in March and April the modern destroyers had to be removed from escort missions. By the 10th of April, the only major naval force was annihilated when the Trieste was sunk and the Gorizia seriously damaged by allied air attack. Expecting a possible Allied invasion, the remaining destroyers were reactivated along with the battleships which had only half their bunkers filled with diesel fuel.
In April 1943, the Italian navy was partially active and destroyers were used in escort missions. But there was no reserves of fuel oil left. The Germans "loaned" 60,000 tons of fuel oil captured from the French fleet at Toulon, allowing the three battleships to be reactivated with some cruisers. When Italy surrendered on September 8th 1943, their fleet only had enough fuel to reach Malta to surrender.
Such was the effect of the Royal Navy blockade, the most effective and forgotten operation of WW2.
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After the fall of France, the Germans had access to the industry of Northern Italy, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, however were not able to use it to match either the Soviets or the British in war production. The success of the Royal Navy blockade was instrumental in starving Germany of vital resources and food both animal and human. French production of planes destined for Germany was minuscule. France was not capable to produce as pre-war the French imported coal from Britain for its power generation. With the successful Royal Navy blockade the main source of coal was from Germany. Germany could not increase its production to overcome the French shortfall.
The amount of food produced in continental Europe fell. The production of meat and dairy products in countries such as Denmark was dependant on imported grain and animal feed from the Americas. This was now not available. The level of food available from the dairy industry collapsed as did food production in general. In the rest of Europe food production had been based on chemical fertilizer. Huge levels of the chemicals used for fertilizer production were diverted to the manufacturing of explosives.
French workers were on subsistence rations. Electricity was widely not available in France. The country had been dependant on motorized transportation. With no fuel with road & rail vehicles seized by the Germans, milk was poured away in farms and other produce put back into the ground unable to reach towns or cities. Most of French oil imports came from abroad. Once France fell oil products came from Romania and synthetic oil made in Germany, and so little it made little difference to the dire situation. The oil output was not enough for the needs of the German forces alone and to keep the Italian navy operational, which threatened to suspend all operations in February 1941 unless Germany provided 250,000 tons of fuel due to the dire shortage. France reverted to a horse and cart economy. The occupied countries were a drain on the German economy.
The USSR had the natural resources that would enable Germany to out-produce Britain and America. Hitler turned to the USSR which was also a key step in his broader strategy. The invasion of the USSR was brought forward. The urgency of Hitler's aggression was also down to his awareness of the threat posed to Germany by the emergence of the USA as a global superpower. The USA has access to vast resources inside the USA, a land stolen by moving west, from indigenous people and the Mexicans. Hitler took this precedence looking east to emulate the USA, and match them economically. None of the German generals thought that the USSR could initially stand up to an invasion of over 3 million men in June 1941, however they knew they had to defeat the USSR by Christmas or they would fail as Germany had few resources and committed all reserves. This was another gamble. The USSR did stand up to the Germans and were able to marshal their industrial and military resources to last.
The British were pushing the Germans back in Operation Crusader in the North African desert in late 1941. British forces had secured Syria from the Vichy French and Iraq was secured from a German inspired revolt keeping the Germans away from the oil fields of the Middle East and ensuring the war was conducted in Europe and the strip on the southern Mediterranean coast. British and Soviet forces invaded Iran with the Soviets committing 1,000 tanks, to secure the British oil refinery at Aberdan and the railway from the Gulf to the Soviet border. The German advance was stopped dead at Moscow in December 1941, with 40% of the tanks used supplied by the British with the Soviets launching their new T-34 tank of which Germany had no answer.
With German industry being bombed by the RAF, being totally outproduced by the British & Soviets, desperately short of all resources because of the Royal Navy blockade, Germany now winning the war was a remote proposition. No more quick win gambles could be played. The gamble in France worked, the gamble in the USSR failed. The defeat at Moscow was in the same month the USA came into the war when Japan attacked the British Empire & the USA and Germany declared war on the USA. In the first year the USA entered WW2, 1942, the USSR outproduced the USA.
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Nice find from the German archives. As David Fletcher said about the Churchill, "it came back to haunt the Germans". Its design was flawed in many aspects, however its assets were outstanding. It was a vastly underrated tank, as its overall performance showed.
The Churchill was a rushed together infantry tank design. They never had a proper tank engine for it, using two joined together bus engines creating a flat boxer engine (giving an advantage of a lowered centre of gravity). The tracks ran all around the tank's body, like a WW1 tank. The Germans saw it thinking it was just that, as it looked outdated in many ways, and outdated to other British tanks. It was viewed as an old expendable tank design, probably only used for one raid. The Churchill was introduced one month before the Tiger 1. The Churchill was similarly armoured to the Tiger 1, but weighed far less at 39 to the Tiger's 50 tons.
It is clear the German assessment was poor, in getting some matters wrong and also missing some unique aspects of the tank. They never tested it fully for sure, as if they did they would have discovered its amazing climbing ability. It could even turn on its own axis. Mark Felton did a good vid on its climbing ability, with a few of them wiping out a whole German column in Tunisia by climbing big hills the Germans never expected a tank could climb. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p-izpDBZv4
The German assessment failed to full appreciate the Merrit-Brown gearbox, which was also used in the Centurion, which also climbed mountains in Korea to the amazement of the Americans. The throw away Churchill tank was also used in Korea.
No tank in WW2 had its climbing ability and none were better in beach shingle. Well over half the tanks at Dieppe got over the high beach wall, something the Germans seemed to miss. none got into the town as roads were blocked with large concrete blocks. As this vid points out, only a few were bogged down on the beach due to the shingle. The Germans tested their own tanks in beach shingle and all got bogged down. The tracks running all all around the tanks body gave the Churchill superior beach handling properties.
Only a few months after Dieppe, the Churchill was to be phased out, however it performed excellently at El Alemein, so kept on. Its unique properties came to the fore in the mountains of Tunisia. It was kept on with 400 of them being up-gunned in Tunisia.
The last version of the Churchill was a match for a Tiger 1, as the 6-pouder gun using APDS shells could knock out any Tiger 1 - and not with a lucky shot. Its armour was similar. The Tiger 1 was faster but the manoeuvrability and go anywhere nature of the Churchill gave it the edge. The Churchill could run over bridges the heavier Tiger could not. The Churchill did not need a tank transporter to get it around.
The Churchill was not used for tank v tank engagements, as its versatility and manoeuvrability were better used in other roles. The tank's ability to be adapted for various roles was seen by Hobart who developed it into many of the Funnies.
If you were a general of an army with adequate anti-tank guns to destroy enemy tanks, given the option of having 400 Tiger 1s (the tank many have a strange fascination about) or 400 Churchills, you would go for the Churchill as it was far, far, more versatile filling many roles an army needs. Bare in mind that most tanks were not knocked out by other tanks.
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Books I used: It Never Snows in September by Robert Kershaw, The Battle For The Rhine by Robin Neilands, Reflect on Things Past by Peter Carington and the best, Market Garden Then and Now by Karel Magry (a Dutchman).
The British went north to eliminate the V rocket launching sites in Holland which were aimed at London, protect the vital port of Antwerp and ensure the Soviets did not reach the North Sea coast.
One of the objects of Market Garden was to form the northern end of a pincer with British forces at the German border, with the southern end of the pincer the US forces already in Belgium. The pincer was to close on the vital Ruhr. Good plan. Strangle the Ruhr which supplies all the German coal & steel and Germany is finished quickly. The operation was to use the British XXX Corps and the 1st Allied Airborne Army.
Market Garden was deemed a 90% success. A 60 mile salient was created into enemy territory isolating a German army in Holland, eliminating V rocket launching sites and protecting the port of Antwerp, the only port taken intact in the west. XXX Corps never relinquished any territory taken. The northern end of the salient was later used to launch forces into Germany. The 10% of failure was that Allied armies did not gain a foothold over the Rhine at Arnhem.
The operation plan was that the 1st Airborne Army would parachute drop and seize bridges from the Dutch/Belgium border up to Arnhem over the Rhine, with XXX Corps thrusting through to Arnhem over the captured bridges. The most northern large bridge was to be secured by British airborne units at Arnhem, the US 82nd would seize the large Nijmegen bridge and other small bridges and the US 101st Airborne seize smaller bridges to the south.
The reason for not achieving 100% success in the operation was completely down to the failure of the 82nd Airborne in not seizing the Nijmegen bridge on the first day they dropped into Nijmegen. Their prime objective. All bridges were seized on the first day, except the Nijmegen bridge. The man responsible was General Gavin. The 101st Airborne failed to take the bridge at Son in the south of Holland. XXX Corps ran over a Bailey bridge which delayed the advance for 12 hours. XXX Corps made up the time reaching Nijmegen pretty well on schedule only being disappointed at seeing the bridge still in German hands and the 82nd still fighting in and around the town. The 82nd had made no real attempt to seize the bridge.
The 82nd had no part in the eventual seizure of the bridge at all, as it was taken in the dark by the British XXX Corps tanks and Irish Guards infantry. The Irish Guards cleared out 180 Germans from the bridge girders. Only 5 tanks crossed the bridge with two being knocked out and one got operational again. So, only four operational tanks were available on the north side of the bridge. Strangely, Gavin's plan was to take one of Europe's largest road bridges only from one end.
The film A Bridge Too Far has Robert Redford (playing Cook) as one of the 82nd men taking the vital road bridge after rowing the river in canvas boats. This never happened.
The 82nd played no part in seizing the bridge counter to what Moffat Burriss stated. The few tanks were to secure the north end of the bridge after seizing the bridge, not to run off to Arnhem in the dark leaving the bridge vulnerable to Germans counter-attack. The Irish Guards infantry advanced no further than the immediate vicinity of the bridge that night.
Sergeant Peter Robinson, of the of the Guards Armored Division who led the charge over the Nijmegen road bridge in his Firefly tank stated:
"The Nijmegen bridge wasn’t taken [by the 82nd] which was our objective.
We were being engaged all the time. Just as I got round the corner and turned right I saw these helmets duck in a ditch and run, and gave them a burst of machine gun fire. I suddenly realised they were Americans."
"Well, my orders were to collect the American colonel who was in a house a little way back, and the first thing he said to me was "I have to surrender"
"Well I said, 'I'm sorry. My orders are to hold this bridge. I've only got two tanks available but if you'd like to give me ground support for a little while until we get some more orders then we can do it. He said he couldn’t do it, so I said that he had better come back to my wireless and talk to General Horrocks because before I started the job I had freedom of the air. Everybody was off the air except myself because they wanted a running commentary about what was going on - So he came over and had a pow-wow with Horrocks. The colonel said 'Oh very well’ and I told him where I wanted the men, but of course you can't consolidate a Yank and they hadn’t been there ten minutes before they were on their way again."
The 82nd men wanted to surrender! And never gave support which was what they were there to do.
Captain Lord Carington's own autobiography entitled 'Reflect on Things Past':
"My recollection of this meeting is different. Certainly I met an American officer [Moffatt Burriss] but he was perfectly affable and agreeable. As I said the Airborne were all very glad to see us and get some support, no one suggested we press on to Arnhem. This whole allegation is bizarre, just to begin with I was a captain and second-in-command of my squadron so I was in no position either to take orders from another captain or depart from my own orders which were to take my tanks across the bridge, join up with the US Airborne and form a bridgehead. This story is simple lunacy and this exchange did not take place."
"A film representation of this incident has shown American troops as having already secured the far end of the bridge. That is mistaken - probably the error arose from the film-maker's confusion of two bridges, there was a railway bridge with planks placed between the rails and used by the Germans for [light] road traffic, to the west of the main road bridge we crossed"
The meeting of the 82nd men and the tanks was 1 km north of the bridge in the village of Lent under a small railway bridge over a road. The 82nd men did not reach the north end of the actual target, the road bridge, the Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry got there first from the south.
Historians get confused. There are two bridges at Nijmegen. a railway bridge to the west and and road bridge to the east. They are about 1km apart. The 82nd men rowed the river west of the railway bridge made their way north following the railway embankment for cover. They reached the village of Lent where the railway embankment meets the road approach to the main road bridge. There is a small railway bridge over the road at this point. This is the bridge the 82nd men seized. The railway and road bridges over the Waal were seized by British troops.
Heinz Harmel (played by Hardy Kruger in the film A Bridge Too Far), the 10th SS Panzer Division commander who was between Arnhem and Nijmegen, says it was the British tanks that raced across seizing the bridge. Harmel did not know of that three Tiger tanks that had crossed the Arnhem bridge running south, the German communications was disjointed. Harmel stated that there was little German armour between Nijmegen and Arnhem. That was not correct. The three powerful Tiger tanks would have made scrap metal out of the British Shermans. By the time the Guards tanks crossed Nijmegen bridge Johnny Frost's British paratroopers at the Arnhem bridge were being overrun because of the long delay in seizing the Nijmegen bridge.
Tanks running to Arnhem would have been sitting ducks on the raised road. The Guards tanks were split up and spread out over 20 miles, supporting the 82nd all over Nijmegen.
Nor did the 82nd take the southern end of the main road bridge in Nijmegen town. Lt Col Vandervoort of the 82nd was in the southern approaches to the bridge, alongside the Grenadier Guards tanks. Vandervoort and his men never went onto the bridge. He remained at the southern approaches to the bridge with the rest of the 82nd and the Irish Guards infantry.
After 2 days fighting, split up, spread out and disjointed, the Guards Armoured Division had to regroup, re-arm and re-fuel. It was simply not possible for them to have moved onto Arnhem that night being spread out over 20 miles. The task the five tanks were given that crossed the bridge was to defend the bridge and consolidate against enemy attacks.
The prime objective, Nijmegen bridge was not captured on the 17th because there was a foul up in communication between General Gavin and Colonel Lindquist of the 508th PIR of the 82nd Airborne. Gavin allegedly verbally told Lindquist during the pre-drop talk to take a battalion of the 508th and make a quick strike to the bridge on the 17th and to "move without delay" but Lindquist understood it that Gavin had told him that his 508th should only move for the bridge once his regiment had secured the assigned 508th's portion of the defensive perimeter for the 82nd Division. So Lindquist didn't move his battalion towards the Nijmegen bridge until after this had been done, and by that time it was too late as the Germans had reinforced the bridge and were pouring troops into Nijmegen.
Browning, joint head of the 1st Airborne Army, who parachuted into Nijmegen on day two. Seeing the bridge untaken he told General Gavin of the 82nd on the evening of 18th September that the Nijmegen bridge must be taken on the 19th, when XXX Corps were to arrive, or at the latest, very early on the 20th.
Gavin passed the buck, in an attempt to shift blame due to the fact that the 82nd totally failed to take the Nijmegen road bridge whose job it was to defend the bridge and prevent the Germans from taking it back. Gavin, and other Americans since, cast aspersions on the British tankers and XXX Corps.
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Prof Adam Tooze:
"There’s always a problem in history of determining after something’s happened what the balance of probabilities was before it happened. And the German plan is a plan which is again a spectacular gamble, and it succeeds because the forces in the German offensive are concentrated in an extraordinarily tight pack which is going to drive through the Ardennes in a single offensive move all the way across northern France to the Channel. This is an operation of unprecedented logistical risk and gives the opponents of Germany - Britain, France, Belgium and Holland - the chance, if they’re sufficiently well organised, to mount a devastating counterattack on Germany and on the pincer moving across northern France. And for this reason the Germans fully understand that if this plan fails they’ve lost the war. So it’s, rather than simply the result of a series of coincidences, more that the Germans are simply taking a very, very high risk gamble. The gamble bears the possibility of total victory, which is what they ultimately achieve over France, but also a risk of catastrophic defeat which they’re fully conscious of."
Wages of Destruction, Page 371.
"The German army that invaded France in May 1940 was far from being a carefully honed weapon of modern armoured warfare. Of Germany's 93 combat ready divisions on May 10 1940, only 9 were Panzer divisions, with a total of 2.438 tanks between them. These units faced a French army that was more heavily motorised, with 3,254 tanks in total."
....Half the German tanks that invaded the west were armed only with a machine gun!! The German Army was not on equal footing with the French when in fact it was vastly inferior.
"By May 1940 Britain had 7 regiments equipped with 28 light tanks plus 44 scout carriers each. There was also 1 regiment of armoured cars with 38 Morris light reconnaissance cars. There was also an Army Tank brigade with two regiments of infantry tanks. That gave a total of 308 tanks 23 of which had a 2pdr gun the rest had machine guns. Ist Armoured Division started to arrive in France from late May. However many of the Cruiser tanks were so recently issued that their crews had only been half trained on them and many lacked wireless sets, sighting telescopes and even armour piercing ammunition."
-Source The Great Tank Scandal, David Fletcher
Dutch, Belgian, UK & French tanks in total were 4,200 tanks.
Prof Tooze, page 371/372.
"Nor should one accept unquestioningly the popular idea that the concentration of the Germans tanks in specialised tank divisions gave them a decisive advantage. Many French tanks were scattered amongst the infantry units, but with their ample stock of vehicles the French could afford to do this. The bulk of France's best tanks were concentrated in armoured units, that, on paper at least, were every bit a match for the Panzer divisions."
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"In Nijmegen, the arrival of British armour had raised the intensity and scale of the fighting. Extensive fires had broken out, marking the progress of the XXX Corps advance. Combined Sherman and infantry attacks during the early night hours of 20 September had been halted by accurate artillery fire around the traffic circle south of the Hunner park. SS-Captain Krueger of 21 Battery had personally directed the fire. At 0130 two Shermans remained with sheared tracks after the attack had been repelled. During the course of the morning three more combined arms attacks were concentrated upon the gradually shrinking 10SS perimeter defending the southern bank of the Waal."
- It Never Snows in September, by Kershaw, page 192.
"At 1500, 40 Sherman tanks plus artillery and air support began firing to cover the advance of Cook's 3rd Battalion as they crossed the Waal in boats.
- Kershaw, P196.
But resistance inside Nijmegen continued for quite some time after the famous actions to take the bridges. Bittrich (commander of IISS Corps) reported at 2330 on September 20th that "nothing [had] been heard from the Nijmegen garrison for two hours" and that he could "only assume the German units had been destroyed".
- Kershaw, page 212.
Just because nothing had been heard for two hours at 2330, didn't mean that Nijmegen was cleared of German units. It just meant that they hadn't been in contact. Some units continued to fight on. Kampfgruppe Euling were still holding their positions at 2230, although they then made a break for it in the dark some time afterwards."
- It Never Snows in September, by Kershaw, page 213
"The Guards Armoured Coldstream Guards Group still was needed as a reserve for the Airborne division. This left but two armoured groups to go across the Waal [Nijmegen road bridge]. Even those did not make it until next day, D plus 4, 21 September, primarily because of diehard German defenders who had to be ferreted out from the superstructure and bridge underpinnings."
- The Battle for the Rhine 1944, Neillands
At the village of Ressen, less than three miles north of Nijmegen, the Germans had erected an effective screen composed of an SS battalion reinforced by eleven tanks, another infantry battalion, two batteries of 88mm guns, 20 20mm anti-aircraft guns and survivors of earlier fighting in Nijmegen.
"American readers should note that the above comments come from the US Official History, where the notion that Lord Carrington and his five tanks could have penetrated this screen and got up to Arnhem on the night of D plus 3 — even supposing such a move was ever suggested — is revealed as a delusion."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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“Patton finally began receiving adequate supplies on September 4, after a week’s pause. After that date supply was not a problem. Hurtgen Forest and Operation Queen were launched as supply was good.
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
“It was commonly believed at Third Army H.Q. that Montgomery's advance through Belgium was largely maintained by supplies diverted from Patton. (See Butcher, op. cit., p. 667.) This is not true. The amount delivered by the ' air-lift ' was sufficient to maintain only one division. No road transport was diverted to aid Montgomery until September 16th. On the other hand, three British transport companies, lent to the Americans on August 6th " for eight days," were not returned until September 4th.' “
- CHESTER WILMOT, THE STRUGGLE FOR EUROPE. Page 58.
Land supplies were not taken from Patton and given to Monty. It is a complete myth to claim otherwise. Monty didn't even have a full army for his attack at Market Garden, just a Corps and supporting elements, with much flown in from England. Half of the troop transport aircraft were taken by Bradley to take parcels, otherwise far more men would have been dropped on the 1st day of Market Garden.
Market Garden was not a very large ground operation. It was limited in size. The American attack into the Hurtgen Forest started when Market Garden was going on. The US advance on the Hurtgen Forest by First US Army 9th Infantry Division began on 14th September, 3 days before Market Garden began, and was continuing to try and advance into the Hurtgen even when Market Garden began 3 days later, but it was halted by the Germans however.
This was soon followed up by a larger advance by the US First Army towards Aachen at the start of October. Market Garden didn't make a notable dent in allied supplies seeing as the US was able to put on a larger ground attack right afterwards. According to Bradley in his own book there was parity of supplies between the three allied armies, Second British, First and Third US by mid September 1944 and according to the official US Army History as cited in Hugh Cole's book, The Lorraine Campaign page 52. "by 10th September the period of critical (gasoline) shortage had ended". This was a whole week before Market Garden took place. The gasoline drought was the end of August/beginning of September. It was over by the time of Market Garden.
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The British 2nd Tactical Air Force in the Bulge took control of the IX and XXIX Tactical Air Commands from Vandenberg’s Ninth Air Force.
The First Army’s hasty defense had been one of hole-plugging, last stands, and counterattacks to buy time. Although some were successful, these tactics had created organizational havoc within Hodges’ forces as divisional units had been committed piecemeal and badly jumbled.
Ridgway wanted St. Vith’s defenders to stay east of the Salm, but Montgomery ruled otherwise. The 7th Armored Division, its ammunition and fuel in short supply and perhaps two-thirds of its tanks destroyed, and the battered elements of the 9th Armored, 106th, and 28th Divisions could not hold the extended perimeter in the rolling and wooded terrain. Meanwhile, Dietrich’s second wave of tanks entered the fray. The II SS Panzer Corps immediately threatened the Salm River line north and west of St. Vith, as did the LVIII Panzer Corps circling to the south, adding the 2d SS Panzer Division to its drive. Ordering the St. Vith defenders to withdraw through the 82d Airborne Division line to prevent another Schnee Eifel disaster, Montgomery signaled them that “they come back with all honor.”
- Ardennes-Alsace by Roger Cirillo. US Army Center of Military History
“I find it difficult to refrain from expressing my indignation at Hodges and Ridgeway and my appreciation of Montgomery whenever I talk about St. Vith. It is my firm opinion that if it hadn't been for Montgomery, the First US Army, and especially the troops in the St. Vith salient, would have ended in a debacle that would have gone down in history.”_
“I'm sure you remember how First Army HQ fled from Spa leaving food cooking on the stoves, officers' Christmas presents from home on their beds and, worst of all, top secret maps still on the walls... First Army HQ never contacted us with their new location and I had to send an officer to find them. He did and they knew nothing about us...[Montgomery] was at First Army HQ when my officer arrived. A liaison officer from Montgomery arrived at my HQ within 24 hrs. His report to Montgomery is what saved us...”
- General Hasbrouck of 7th Armor - “Generals of the Bulge” by Jerry D. Morelock, page 298.
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In the late 50s LVT was introduced in Denmark. The results were startling:
Geoism a Proven Success
Denmark prospered under the Geoist system for three years until the vested interest of landowners dismantled the economic system. The Danes, by tradition, recognised that land is common belonging to the people. The rapid industrialisation and land enclosures of the 18th and 19th centuries began in the United Kingdom cascading into Denmark, challenging the tradition of land being common to the people. Land was turned over to industry as Denmark industrialised.
Liberals Adopt Land Value Tax
Farmers were economically pressed in the latter half of the 19th century with many supporting the ideas presented in the book "Progress and Poverty", by Henry George, the biggest selling book in the world after the Bible at the time. George recognised people needed title to land, loosely referred to ownership, however the wealth that soaks into the land giving the land its value, is commonly created and must be reclaimed to fund common services. The added benefits was that income, sales and other taxes can be abolished, making matters simple for tax collection as land cannot be moved, and business as fewer expensive tax accountants would be required. As the economic situation worsened for small farmers, a Georgist movement began with the Danish Henry George Union being founded in 1902. Some of its more active members wanted a higher profile platform for the Georgist philosophy cooperating with other philosophic groups and public leaders in forming the Liberal Party, which declared:
1) Land value taxation, LVT, (site revenue) should collect all the publicly created economic rent of land for government expenses;
2) Income Tax to be abolished accelerating the free market and enterprise;
During this era, Karl Marx was advocating that the workers unite to fight the desperate conditions of the working people while great wealth was being created through mass production. The Danes took the line of Henry George. Social Democrats were inspired by George advocating in its political manifesto the taxation of land values, known as Site Revenue.
Parties joined to create the Economic Justice Party
Over the next fifty years, not only in Denmark but around the world, there was long and intense debate about liberty and freedom amongst free traders, pacifists, humanists, philosophers and religious institutions. Many of these ideas merged. The disparate parties merged forming the Justice Party, with the aim of gaining seats in the Danish Parliament.
The economic policy of the Justice Party was simple, to collect tax only from the values of Land, abolishing all taxes on Labour and Capital. The effect was astonishing and quick for a new political party. In 1952, the Justice Party won 12 seats out of a possible 179. They influenced the appointment of a Government commission for ground rent in Denmark, who wrote a report clearly highlighting and advocating the benefits of site revenue. In 1957 three parties, the Justice Party, the Social Democrats (Labour) and the Radical Left Wing Party (Liberals) formed what was to be later known as the Ground Rent Government, overseeing the most prosperous era in Denmark. The three political parties agreed on the following:
* Collection taxes from the values of land only (using Land Value Tax);
* Liberalisation of trade;
* A tax freeze;
It was expected that after the formation of the government, some kind of Land Value Tax would be introduced. Land speculation ceased immediately in anticipation of the introduction of land value taxation. Legislation on the taxation of increased land values was prepared and passed by parliament.The economic effects of the near elimination of land speculation were astounding, arousing much attention. On the 2nd October, 1960, the New York Times headlined, "Big Lesson from a Small Nation."
Prior to the 1957 election
Denmark had: a sizable deficit on her balance of payments, was considerably in debt abroad, burdened with a relatively high interest rate, high unemployment figures and an annual rate of inflation of approximately 5%.
From 1957 to 1960, the following improvements in Denmark occurred:
* The big deficit on her balance of payments was turned into a surplus;• Denmark's total debts abroad amounting to 1,600 million kr. were reduced by one quarter to about 400 million kr;
* The rate of interest, and hence mortgage levels dropped;
* Unemployment was replaced by almost full employment;
* Considerable increases in production and wages;
* Inflation was halted;
* All wage increases were real wage increases, the highest ever in Denmark;
* Apart from one tax, no other taxes were levied during this period;
* The country was free of strikes;
* Industrial production rose 32%;
* Investment rose 135%;
* Savings greatly increased, as once again it became profitable to accumulate savings;
After three years Denmark had no foreign debt, no inflation and an unemployment rate of 1%, which was considered full employment. So why did this success not continue?
* A minor conflict developed in the use of revenues emanating form LVT. Until 1960, the Social Democrats were advocating LVT to pay for government social schemes, the Radicals and Justice Party advocated LVT for the purposes of income tax reduction.
* Prior to 1960, Georgist beliefs dictated that when a heavy tax is levied upon land values, land prices will decrease. The consequences of full employment, no inflation, no foreign debt, expanding industry and rising real wages however, brought about a great demand for homes and of course land. Enterprise flourished demanding more land. Land prices did not initially fall, as was predicted. In fact land prices rose because of the boom that was created by the introduction of LVT. Although it was predicted that when the economy settled after the transition, land prices would stabilise or even drop. This took the Justice Party by surprise, being unprepared to counter accusations on the transitional stage;
* In the late fifties, the Danish foreign debt was regarded at crisis levels. To assist in reducing the debt the Ground Rent Government levied an income tax as a temporary measure. Real incomes were reduced, due to the progressive nature of income tax on higher incomes. The self-interested wealthy landowners focusing on one temporary negative point confused the issue in the eyes of the public, ignoring the fact that overall taxes were reduced 10%. The general public believed anti-Georgist propaganda that stated that LVT was simply another tax on top of all the other taxes. The landowners had no problem in promoting the now growing belief that the socialists, who were regarded as communists during this Cold War era, wanted to confiscate your property;
The 1960 general election, the opposition had the largest budget ever in any Danish election campaign, financed by the Conservatives and self-interest groups of landowner associations. With its limited financial resources and lacking support from the national press, the Justice Party was unable to withstand the unfounded attacks. Opposition against the LVT legislation continued after the election with the new weakened government giving in. Further pressure from landowner associations influenced the repealing of LVT in 1964.
After 1964:
* The currency surplus became a currency deficit;
* The annual deficit on the balance of payments in 1972 was 3 billion kr;• Debts abroad since have risen remarkably;
* The interest rate rose substantially;
* Land prices rose sharply;
* Denmark's overall land value rose from 17 billion kr. at the assessment of 1960 to 67 billion in 1969, reaching 100 billion at the following assessment in 1973;
* Rents in new housing were six times of 1964;
* The rate of inflation immediately rose from barely 1% to 5-7% being 8.6% in 1965, the year after repeal of the land tax law in 1964;
* Taxes were five times higher;
A comparison between the three periods, before, during and after the so-called Ground Rent Government, gives a clear picture of the importance of eliminating land speculation. LVT did that painlessly with effective cascading economic effects. The Justice Party underestimated:
1) The population was not educated on what LVT was - only a few Danes understood what LVT was and its positive and stabilising effects. Most people were not aware of the positive effects enjoyed because of LVT and that the possibilities in general would improve further when the LVT levy was increased. People in general did not understand that the wealth accumulated in land, crystallising as land values, belonged to them all, with LVT being the reclaim mechanism.
2) Landowners & Self-Interest Groups Opposed - The extremely powerful opposing powers dominating the public media promoted the misunderstanding that LVT was a tax like all other taxes, not a mechanism to reclaim commonly created wealth. They promoted the notion that only landowners would pay all taxes, ignoring the fact that income and other taxes were abolished or vastly reduced. They emphasised that poor citizens having no or small incomes would see no benefit in a reduction of income taxes.
3) Land prices rose - This was unexpected, as the Justice Party predicted land prices would drop. The reason why was that Land Value Tax diverted investment from land into enterprise, expanding enterprise, creating a demand for land. The demand for homes also was a factor in rising land prices. When the economy settled after the initial boom, land prices would settle. This was not communicated to the population.
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Prof Adam Tooze, Wages of Destruction.
Page 371.
The German army that invaded France in May 1940 was far from being a carefully honed weapon of modern armoured warfare. Of Germany's 93 combat ready divisions on May 10 1940, only 9 were Panzer divisions, with a total of 2.438 tanks between them. These units faced a French army that was more heavily motorised, with 3,254 tanks in total.
....Half the German tanks that invaded the west were armed only with a machinegun!! The German Army was not on equal footing with the French when in fact it was vastly inferior.
- The Great Tank Scandal:
....By May 1940 Britain had 7 regiments equipped with 28 light tanks plus 44 scout carriers each. There was also 1 regiment of armoured cars with 38 Morris light reconnaissance cars. There was also an Army Tank brigade with two regiments of infantry tanks. That gave a total of 308 tanks of which had a 2pdr gun the rest had machine guns. Ist Armoured Division started to arrive in France from late May. However many of the Cruiser tanks were so recently issued that their crews had only been half trained on them and many lacked wireless sets, sighting telescopes and even armour piercing ammunition.
Dutch, Belgian, UK & French tanks in total was 4,200 tanks.
Tooze, page 371/372.
Nor should one accept unquestioningly the popular idea that the concentration of the Germans tanks in specialised tank divisions gave them a decisive advantage. Many French tanks were scattered amongst the infantry units, but with their ample stock of vehicles the French could afford to do this. The bulk of France's best tanks were concentrated in armoured units, that, on paper at least, were every bit a match for the Panzer divisions.
Page 377
The Germans not only committed all their tanks and planes. In strictest conformity with the Schwerpunkt principle, they committed them on an astonishingly narrow front. The Luftwaffe sacrificed no less than 347 aircraft, including virtually all its transports used in the air landings in Holland and Belgium.
Page 378
if Allied bombers had penetrated the German fighter screen over the Ardennes they could have wreaked havoc amongst the slow moving traffic with highly inflammable fuel tankers were interspersed with the fighting vehicles at the very front with the armoured fighting vehicles. The plan called for the German armoured columns to drive for three days and nights without interruption.
.....The drivers were put on speed pills.
Page 379
success would not have been possible had it not been for the particular nature of the battlefield. The Channel coastline provided the German army a natural obstacle to pin their enemies, an obstacle which could be reached within few hundred kilometres of the German border. The Germans benefited from the well made sense network of roads. In Poland in 1939 the Wehrmacht had struggled to maintain the momentum of its motorized troops when faced with far more difficult conditions. A close analysis of the of the mechanics of the Blitzkrieg reveals the astonishing degree of concentration achieved, but an enormous gamble that Hitler and the Wehrmacht were taking on May 10.
Page 380
because it involved such a concentrated use of force, Manstein's plan was a one-shot affair. If the initial assault had failed, and it could have failed in many ways, the Wehrmacht as an offensive force would have been spent. The gamble paid off. But contrary to appearances, the Germans had not discovered a patent recipe for military miracles. The overwhelming success of May 1940, resulting in the defeat of a major European military power in a matter of weeks, was not a repeatable outcome.
Tooze, page 373:
In retrospect, it suited neither the Allies nor the Germans to expose the amazingly haphazard course through which the Wehrmacht had arrived at its most brilliant military success. The myth of the Blitzkrieg suited the British and French because it provided an explanation other than military incompetence for their pitiful defeat. But whereas it suited the Allies to stress the alleged superiority of German equipment, Germany's own propaganda viewed the Blitzkrieg in less materialistic terms.
Tooze page 380.
In both campaigns [France & Barbarossa], the Germans gambled on achieving decisive success in the opening phases of the assault. Anything less spelled disaster.
...If the Blitzkrieg's belt broke the whole movement stopped. The Germans thought they had formulated a version of Blitzkrieg in France that was a sure-fire success. They used this in the USSR, just scaling up forces. They did not have the intelligence to assess properly, that the reason for their success was allied incompetence not anything brilliant they did.
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Market Garden
1. Monty approached the 1st Airborne Army, Brereton, to do a
drop on the Scheld. He said "no", saying was too risky.
Market Garden came about out of Comet, a multi crossing of the Rhine.
2. Market Garden was to run up to the Zuiderzee and just east of Arnhem.
3. Market Garden was to create a buffer between Antwerp and German forces.
4. Advantages are: the German 15th Army is fully isolated in
Holland, Antwerp is protected from German counter-attack,
V rocket launching sites are overrun, a springboard to the Ruhr.
Ardennes Offensive
1. Antwerp was a vital port in the north (the only port taken intact),
even the Germans knew that. They poured more V rockets on
Antwerp than London.
2. If the Germans were to counter-attack in force it had to be to a
point to stop allied supply - Antwerp. It would also isolate the
British to the north.
3. The German attempt to reach Antwerp needed the element
of surprise and light initial resistance. An arc from Antwerp
to the German border gives, Eindhoven, Aachen and the
Ardennes forest. Not much in distance from Antwerp to any
of them. Going through a forest would achieve surprise, not
through the fortified Market Garden salient in Holland. Forcing
through the Market Garden salient would meet up with the
German 15th army in Holland. But that would not necessarily
stop allied resupply via Antwerp. The German idea of going
straight for Antwerp was sound.
The Germans knew the British had superior armour to the USA, having their armour annihilated by the British in Normandy. US forces had performed poorly overall, as the Kasserine Pass, Hurtgen Forest and the Lorraine Campaign had clearly shown. German armour was largely wiped out in the west by the British in Normandy. The Germans would prefer to attack the Americans rather than the British - obviously. The Ardennes had light US forces in front of it - the Germans did run though the forest in 1940. The US assessed no German army would run through it. It was a perfect launch point for the German gamble.
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Logistics was the major issue in Eisenhower's mind after the Normandy breakout, so focused on Antwerp. But Antwerp wasn’t the only option. If Eisenhower had let Monty go for a Rhine crossing in late August/early September supported by US divisions, his pursuit operation Operation Comet, they could have got Rotterdam and even Amsterdam instead.
Antwerp was an awkward port, being 80 km inland reached by a winding river, with a warren of tidal inlets, islands and estuaries covering the approaches. Many armies came to grief in that part of the world, including a British army in 1809, of which Monty was aware of. Monty was all for bypassing the problems of Antwerp and its approaches, going for Rotterdam. The Germans were still in disarray. The First Allied Airborne Army were on standby and there was fuel in the British tanks. Rotterdam was possible, stopping to open up Antwerp was always going to take too much time.
Eisenhower wanted to concentrate on Antwerp as the logistical supply head before pressing on. Antwerp needed protecting from German counter-attack and artillery securing Noord Brabant. Operation Market Garden was that plan. Once Noord Brabant was secure then the approaches to Antwerp could be opened which will take time.
Antwerp would not be fully open to allied shipping until early January 1945. The first ships entered in October 1944, but the majority of supplies would come from Normandy until November. Le Havre was operational in October supplying the US armies to the east. Le Havre was not too far away in distance than Antwerp, so there was an over focus on Antwerp. That was around three months from Antwerp's capture. By that time the French railway service had been largely rebuilt and stores coming in from Normandy and Le Havre for Bradley’s 12th Army Group, and through Marseilles for Devers’ 6th Army Group.
In August 1944 Monty was for pushing on with a 40 Division thrust. Eisenhower was for caution with his broad-front. Eisenhower's caution allowed the Germans breathing space to reinforce, gifting them an opportunity to counter-attack. Eisenhower's caution only made it easier to supply those armies to force the Germans back.
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@garykullack2314
In 1945 the team from the French ATAR laboratory plus some BMW and Junkers engineers, were engaged by the French SNECMA research bureau, with the objective to built a new reliable performing axial-flow turbojet. The BMW 003/Jumo004 was considered unusable. It was tested on the first French jet aircraft, the 1946 So6000 Triton, overheating and exploding. The plane only flew with a Rolls Royce Nene centrifugal turbojet. The French were using advanced alloys after WW2, that were not available to the Germans, yet the engine still lasted only around 25 hours.
The ATAR project took 6 years to produce the first acceptable axial-flow turbojet (ATAR 101 B1), produced in 1953. So eight years research & developments by the French using the German jet engines as the base, which already had years of German R&D behind it. It was installed on the first French jet fighter, the Dassault Ouragan.
The French lost a lot of time because the German jets had poor efficiency with some concept fails. Essentially in the combustion chambers and fresh air circulation to reduce the external temperature of the engine. The BMW jet was known for overheat problems which precluded fuselage installation.
The question at the end of WW2 was what is the most efficient way to produce jet fighters. The answer is clearly not adopting the German design of engine and fuselage. The build costs for a jet engine were much higher than a piston engine, with the fuel consumption near 3x. The centrifugal compressor the British adopted in some planes was the best choice with 1944-45 technology, more compression pressure was not an advantage when the hot turbine was unable to resist higher temperatures.
The German turbojets had big overheat problems as the engine would not work in an enclosed fuselage for single engined fighters. This defect was immediately noted by the French on the 1946 "SO 6000 Triton" prototype, and by the Soviets on the 1946 Mig 9. The Soviets quickly replaced the BMW 004B2 by the centrifugal Rolls Royce Nene which worked without problems, dismissing the BMW engine for fighter planes.
Nickel alloy superalloys were first developed at the Wiggin Works in Hereford, England, as a request Whittle jet engine team. The Nazi design teams ever understood that steel was never going to work. The Nazis weren’t doing much in R&D to discover the problem. The Nazis two major production jet engines never managed to last more than a few hours.
Wiggin are still operational, doing R&D on specialist metals and producing them.
https://www.specialmetals.com/divisions/wiggin.html
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What I wrote was fact, with references. Market Garden's failure was due to the US 82nd. Look at this video, do not take my word for it.
US bashing? You were sneering the British. You have to be kidding, look at the film A Bridge Too Far. Full of lies. It made the British out to be buffoons and the Yanks a bunch of hustlers - It was made by the Americans. The British Army was the finest in the world. It took all before it from mid-1942 onwards. The buffoonery of the US in The Kassarine Pass, Lorraine, Hurtgen Forest, The Bulge, Market Garden, around Rome, etc, is well known. The US 1st & 9th armies had to be taken under British control in the Bulge.
The Market Garden salient was to be reinforced directly after - Operation Aintree. The US 7th Armoured Division was sent in to take Overloon in Holland. They failed and had to be pulled out. The British 3rd Infantry Division and 11th Armoured Division had to be sent in to take the town.
Do not go by Hollywood history.
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The state of play on the 17th, D day, was:
1) the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was largely clear;
2) there were concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally;
3) there were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen who were getting out fast;
4) a few scattered about along the road;
5) there was no armour in Arnhem.
That was it.
i) XXX Corps would deal from the Belgium border to Eindhoven;
ii) 101st from Eindhoven to Grave;
iii) 82nd from Grave to north of Nijmegen;
iv) British and Polish paras from north of Nijmegen to north of the Rhine;
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 2 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition, hanging around in the village. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured it.
Evidently expecting that Major La Prade's flanking battalion would have captured the highway bridge, these two battalions made no apparent haste in moving through Zon. They methodically cleared stray Germans from the houses, so that a full two hours had passed before they emerged from the village. Having at last overcome the enemy 88 south of the Zonsche Forest, Major LaPrade's battalion caught sight of the bridge at about the same time. Both forces were within fifty yards of the bridge when their objective went up with a roar.
- US Official History.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected. XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and towards the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up.
The road was still largely clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump. Horrocks promised the 1st Airborne at Anhem XXX Corps would reach them within 48 hours. XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820 hrs on d-day plus 2, on schedule making up for the delay at Zon, having seven hours left to travel 8 miles. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over. If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves, after the 82nd tried again and failed again. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
According to the official American Army historian, Forrest Pogue, he stated that the failure of US 82nd Airborne to assault the lightly defended Nijmegen bridge immediately upon jumping 'sounded the death knell' for the men at Arnhem.
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Patton was an average US general promoted to super star status by the US media - the US never had any exceptional generals. Montgomery said Patton would be good as a Corps commander.
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed there with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were re-fitting and rebuilt after the summer 1944 battles.
The Panzer Brigades had green crews with little time to train, did not know their tanks properly, had no recon elements and didn't even meet their unit commander until his arrival at the front. These were not elite forces.
17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, only equipped with assault guns, not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy and not up to strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the best German divisions in the west were NOT.
♦ Who did the 3rd Army engage?
♦ Who did 3rd Army defeat?
♦ Patton never once faced a full strength
Waffen SS panzer division nor a
Tiger battalion.
In The Lorraine, the 3rd Army faced a rabble. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took over in September 1944 said:
"I have never been in command of such irregularly
assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we
have been able to straighten out the situation again…
can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating
command of the Americans."
Patton was mostly facing a second rate rabble in The Lorraine. Patton was neither on the advance nor being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines.
The road from Luxembourg to Bastogne was pretty well devoid of German forces, with Bastogne being on the very southern German flank. Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great amount at all. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade wasn't one of the best German armoured units, while 26th Volks-Grenadier only had a dozen Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind only had a small number of tanks operational. Its not as if Patton had to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne, he never. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1.
Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were still engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Leading elements were engaging the Americans and British under Montgomery's command near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance and pushed them back.
In Normandy in 1944, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates.
♦ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics
Bradley's II Corps were employing
♦ He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division,
Truscott of being "afraid to fight".
♦ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the
US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps.
♦ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize
stalled he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being
"very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect".
♦ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in
reporting their losses.
After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF. Coningham, gave Patton massive ground attack plane support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall. Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault, including his subordinates. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated. Oh, and wore cowboy guns.
Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his orders, and Eisenhowers orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds
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What US historian Harry Yeide wrote of what the Germans thought of Patton:
▪️ for most of the war the Germans barely took notice [of Patton].
▪️ on March 23 at the Battle of El Guettar—the first American victory against the experienced Germans. Patton’s momentum, however, was short-lived: Axis troops held him to virtually no gain until April 7, when they withdrew under threat from British Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army.
▪️ There is no indication in the surviving German military records—which include intelligence reports at the theater, army, and division levels—that Patton’s enemies had any idea who he was at the time. Likewise, the immediate postwar accounts of the German commanders in Tunisia, written for the U.S. Army’s History Division, ignore Patton. Those reports show that ground commanders considered II Corps’s attacks under Patton to have been hesitant, and to have missed great opportunities.
▪️ In mid-June [1943], another detachment report described Patton as “an energetic and responsibility-loving command personality”—a passing comment on one of the numerous Allied commanders. Patton simply had not yet done anything particularly noteworthy in their eyes.
▪️ But his race to Palermo through country they had already abandoned left the commanders unimpressed. Major General Eberhard Rodt, who led the 15th Panzergrenadier Division against Patton’s troops during the Allied push toward Messina, thought the American Seventh Army fought hesitantly and predictably. He wrote in an immediate postwar report on Sicily, “The enemy very often conducted his movements systematically, and only attacked after a heavy artillery preparation when he believed he had broken our resistance. This kept him regularly from exploiting the weakness of our situation and gave me the opportunity to consolidate dangerous situations.” Once again, Patton finished a campaign without impressing his opponents.
▪️ General Hermann Balck, who took command of Army Group G in September, thus did not think highly of Patton—or any other opposing commanders—during this time. Balck wrote to his commander, Runstedt, on October 10, “I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans” Looking back on his battles against Patton throughout the autumn, in 1979 Balck recalled, “Within my zone, the Americans never once exploited a success. Often [General Friedrich Wilhelm von] Mellenthin, my chief of staff, and I would stand in front of the map and say, ‘Patton is helping us; he failed to exploit another success.’”
▪️ The commander of the Fifth Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel, aimed a dismissive, indirect critique at Patton’s efforts at Bastogne, writing in his memoirs that the Americans did not “strike with full élan.” The commanders who fought against Patton in his last two mobile campaigns in the Saar-Palatinate and east of the Rhine already knew they could not win; their losses from this point forward were inevitable, regardless of the commanding Allied opponent.
▪️ the Germans offered Patton faint praise during and immediately after the war.
▪️ posterity deserves fact and not myth. The Germans did not track Patton’s movements as the key to Allied intentions. Hitler does not appear to have thought often of Patton, if at all. The Germans considered Patton a hesitant commanding general in the scrum of position warfare. They never raised his name in the context of worthy strategists.
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The film you get your history from: A Bridge Too Far. The film is nothing less than the most vile British-bashing. See the unfair treatment in the film of both Field-Marshal Montgomery, who never planned the operation, and General Browning. The film has General Horrocks, portrayed as flamboyant and cocky, deliberately stopping short of relieving the British paratroopers at Arnhem. The film making slanderers had him rebuked by US 82nd Airborne Division General Gavin for having forsaken his own countrymen, while the British general remained indifferently silent. This insinuated that the Americans had more consideration for their British comrades than British generals. The final exchange between Generals Urquhart and Browning puts the final nail in the film's bias: British generals care nothing about the lives of their soldier's.
The episode of the retrieved container, that cost the life of a brave soldier, with nothing else than red berets inside, is extremely insulting. In fact, the man survived.
The two British paras who set alight the ammunition on Arnhem bridge were made out to be idiotic buffoons. All US paras were portrayed as 'hustlers', with ingenuity.
Elliot Gould says when the British tanks roll over the Bailey bridge XXX Corps erected at the Son, "36 hours behind schedule". They were not it was 12 hours - because the 101st failed to take the Son bridge.
The film shows Browning ignoring pictures of panzers at Arnhem. None were ever taken. None were ever found. The RAF records shown none at all.
Gavin, played by O'Neil, says that when the Germans tried to take Nijmegen bridge in 1940 from the Dutch they were slaughtered. No such thing occurred. On 10 May 1940 German forces invaded Holland. An SS reconnaissance unit advanced to Nijmegen only to witness both the road and railway bridges being blown by Dutch engineers as they arrived. The Germans rebuilt the bridges. They were only newly re-opened.
The film opened with the sly implication that the Montgomery-Patton rivalry (there was no rivalry as Monty was a general over generals) was a cause for the delayed victory in Western Europe is just a rehashing of anti British-American-Alliance lying propaganda. At D-Day plus 90, because of Montgomery's leadership and planning in Normandy, the allies were way ahead of schedule with the British in Belgium and the US in eastern France. They were so ahead the US were saying the war may be over by Christmas 1944. The experienced British never said any such thing.
The scene where Robert Redford and the 82nd men take the north end of Nijmegen bridge. This did not happen. The reality was that the 82nd took a small rail bridge over a road 1km north in Lent. Five of the Guards tanks took the road bridge, as the rest were supporting the 82nd all over Nijmegen, with Germans in the girders dropping hand grenades on the tanks. The Irish Guards cleared the bridge of Germans, in some cases throwing injured Germans into the river they were so aggressive (SS men would have been thrown over). In the film It appears the Germans cleared and brushed up the road leading to the bridge just for the Brits. It was lovely and clean, no obstacles or metal litter that you see after a battle.
It was an appallingly inaccurate, derogatory film towards the British. The sad part is that it had some amazing photography.
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Wages of Destruction by Prof Adam Tooze:
Tooze Page 454:
"Critical stores would be reserved above all for the main strike force of 33 tank and motorised infantry divisions. If the battle extended much beyond the first months of the attack, the fighting power of the rest of the German army would dwindle rapidly."
"Fundamentally the Wehrmacht was a poor army. The fast striking motorised element of the Germans army in 1941 consisted of only 33 divisions of 130. Three-quarters of the German army continued to rely on more traditional means of traction: foot and horse. The German army in 1941 invaded the Soviet Union with somewhere between 600,000 and 740,000 horses. The horses were not for riding. They were for moving guns, ammunition and supplies."
"The vast majority of Germany's soldiers marched into Russia, as they had in France, on foot."
"But to imagine a fully motorised Wehrmacht, poised for an attack on the Soviet Union is a fantasy of the Cold War, not a realistic vision of the possibilities of 1941. To be more specific, it is an American fantasy. The Anglo-American invasion force of 1944 was the only military force in WW2 to fully conform to the modern model of a motorised army."
Page 455:
"the chronic shortage of fuel and rubber"
"the fuel shortage of 1941 was expected to be so severe that the Wehrmacht was seriously considering demotorisation as a way of reducing its dependency on scarce oil."
"Everything therefore depended on the assumption that the Red Army would crack under the impact of the first decisive blow."
Page 456:
"a new Soviet industrial base to the east of the Urals, which had the capacity to sustain a population of at least 40 million people."
"Soviet industrial capacity was clearly very substantial."
"Franz Halder recorded Hitler's ruminations about the Soviet's immense stock of tanks and aircraft."
Reading further Tooze gives the misgivings of the German generals of the invasion. All were negative.
Page 457:
"Halder noted in his diary: Barbarossa: purpose not clear, We do not hurt the English. Our economic base is not significantly improved."
At the top of page 459 Tooze emphasises that Hitler misinterpreted Backe's comments about the Ukraine grain. A region that had little surplus and had a substantial population increase from WW1.
Page 459:
"On 22 January 1941 Thomas had informed his boss, Keitel, that he was planning to submit a report urging caution with regard to the military-economic benefits of the invasion. Now he reversed directions. As it became clear that Hitler was justifying Barbarossa first and foremost as a campaign of economic conquest, Thomas began systematically working towards the Fuehrer."
Thomas was head of the OKW economic planning staff. He modified his reports from nagative to positive, presenting the Ukraine as an economic breadbasket. Thomas was an insider and it is assumed he had heard of the misinterpreted Backe's comments to Hitler.
Page 459:
"The OKW now claimed that in the first thrust the Wehrmacht would be able to seize control of at least 70% of the Soviet Union's industrial potential."
Page 460:
"As late as the Spring of 1941, the Foreign Ministry was still opposing the coming war, preferring to continue the alliance with the Soviet Union against the British Empire."
"If the shock of the initial assault does not destroy Stalin's regime, it was evident in February 1941 that the Third Reich would find itself facing a strategic disaster."
Page 452:
"the Germans had already conscripted virtually all their prime manpower. By contrast, the Red Army could call up millions of reservists."
Why did Germany invade the USSR in a rushed ill-conceived plan?
Page 431:
"the strongest arguments for rushing to conquer the Soviet Union in 1941 were precisely the growing shortage of grain and the need to knock Britain out of the war before it could pose a serious air threat."
"Meanwhile, the rest of the German military-industrialised complex began to gird itself for the aerial confrontation with Britain and America."
Germany rushed to invade the Soviet Union, with an ill-equipped army with no reserves in anticipation of a massive air war with Britain and the USA, hoping they could win the Soviet war within weeks.
The coming air war:
Roosevelt promised 50,000 plane per year production in May 1940, of which a substantial amount would be in the RAF. Germany could not compete with the level of aircraft at the UKs disposal. Whether the planes had US and UK pilots or just UK pilots they were coming Germany's way. And the only way they could really get at each other was by air. Germany feared mass bombing, which came - the bomber in the late 1930s was perceived as a war winning weapon.
The Germans knew the lead time for aircraft was 18 months from order to delivery. That meant in late 1941/early 1942, these planes would be starting to come in service in great numbers. Germany needed the resources of the east to compete. If the population was too big they would eliminate the population - the precedence was the American move to the west expanding the USA, taking lands from the natives population and Mexican and eliminating the population.
War Production:
Keegan, World War Two, chapter War Production:
- Germany was third behind the USA, then the UK in GDP, in 1939. Germany = UK in capital goods production in 1939.
- UK economy grows 60% during WW2.
- Hitler says to Guderian, re: USSR, "had I known they had so many tanks as that, I would have thought twice before invading"
Tooze, Preface, xxiii:
Combined GDP of the UK and France exceeded Germany & Italy by 60%.
- page 454:
"It was poor because of the incomplete industrial and economic development of Germany".
Interesting:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/workingpapers/publications/twerp603.pdf
Snippets:
"Soviet exceeded German GDP in 1940"
"The Allies won the war because their economies supported a greater volume of war production and military personnel in larger numbers. This was true of the war as a whole, and it was also true on the eastern front where the Soviet economy, of a similar size to Germany's but less developed and also seriously weakened by invasion, supplied more soldiers and weapons."
"the technological key to Soviet superiority in the output of weapons was mass production. At the outbreak of war Soviet industry as a whole was not larger and not more productive than German industry. The non-industrial resources on which Soviet industry could draw were larger than Germany's in the sense of territory and population, but of considerably lower quality, more far-flung, and less well integrated. Both countries had given considerable thought to industrial mobilisation preparations, but the results were of questionable efficacy. In both countries war production was poorly organised at first and productivity in the military-industrial sector had been falling for several years. The most important difference was that Soviet industry had made real strides towards mass production, while German industry was still locked into an artisan mode of production that placed a premium on quality and assortment rather than quantity. Soviet industry produced fewer models of each type of weapon, and subjected them to less modification, but produced them in far larger quantities. Thus the Soviet Union was able to make considerably more effective use of its limited industrial resources than Germany.
"Before the war Soviet defence industry was in a state of permanent technological reorganisation as new models of aircraft, tanks, and other weapons were introduced and old ones phased out at dizzying rate."
The USSR had access to oil and more natural resources and far more men, giving them the ability to produce in far greater quantities than Germany, which actually happened.
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@bigwoody4704
Rambo, just for you..
Some facts for you. The British were the single biggest agents in the defeat of Nazi Germany. They were there from day one until the end. They never entered the war because they attacked another country or were attacked, they went in on principle. The so-called "invincible" Germans army tried and failed, with their allies, for two years in WW2 to defeat the British army in North Africa. The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein
♦ March 1943 - Medenine
♦ June 1944 - Normandy
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Montgomery moved over 1,000 km in 17 days from El Alemein to Tunisia, the fastest advance for such a distance in WW2. The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 Lorraine casualties. Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British with Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
Then the ignored British naval blockade on the Axis economy, which was so successful the substantial Italian navy could not put to sea in full strength, or even at all on some occasions, because of a lack of oil. Then the British bomber offensive on the German economy, taking the war right into German cities, wiping out Hamburg in one night.
There you go Rambo, there you go.
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@JTD472
When the Americans were under British command they were fine - Normandy, the Battle of Bulge take over, etc. When by themselves they screwed up big time: Battle of the Bulge, Market Garden, Aachen, Hurtgen Forest, Metz, Lorraine in general.
Then strategy. At times little clue. ..
Montgomery to Alan Brooke..
"If we want the war to end within any reasonable period you have to get Eisenhower’s hand taken off the land battle. I regret to say that in my opinion he just doesn’t know what he is doing.
Montgomery wrote of Eisenhower and his ridiculous broad-front strategy on 22 January 1945:
“I fear that the old snags of indecision and vacillation and refusal to consider the military problem fairly and squarely are coming to the front again . . . The real trouble is that there is no control and the three army groups are each intent on their own affairs. Patton today issued a stirring order to Third Army, saying the next step would be Cologne . . . One has to preserve a sense of humour these days, otherwise one would go mad.”
Alanbrooke wrote in his diary about buffoon Einsenhower:
“At the end of this morning's C.O.S. [Chief of Staff] meeting I put before the committee my views on the very unsatisfactory state of affairs in France, with no one running the land battle. Eisenhower, though supposed to be doing so, is on the golf links at Rheims — entirely detached and taking practically no part in running of the war. Matters got so bad lately that a deputation of Whiteley, Bedell Smith and a few others went up to tell him that he must get down to it and RUN the war, which he said he would."
"We discussed the advisability of getting Marshall to come out to discuss the matter, but we are doubtful if he would appreciate the situation. Finally decided that I am to see the P.M. to discuss the situation with him.”
"November 28th I went to see the P.M. I told him I was very worried."
Alan Brooke described in his daily diary that American generals Eisenhower and Marshall as poor strategists, when they were in jobs were strategy mattered. Brooke wrote to Montgomery about his talks with Eisenhower, “it is equally clear that Ike has the very vaguest conception of war!”
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What US historian Harry Yeide wrote of what the Germans thought of Patton:
▪ for most of the war the Germans barely took notice [of Patton].
▪ on March 23 at the Battle of El Guettar—the first American victory against the experienced Germans. Patton’s momentum, however, was short-lived: Axis troops held him to virtually no gain until April 7, when they withdrew under threat from British Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army.
▪ There is no indication in the surviving German military records—which include intelligence reports at the theater, army, and division levels—that Patton’s enemies had any idea who he was at the time. Likewise, the immediate postwar accounts of the German commanders in Tunisia, written for the U.S. Army’s History Division, ignore Patton. Those reports show that ground commanders considered II Corps’s attacks under Patton to have been hesitant, and to have missed great opportunities.
▪ In mid-June [1943], another detachment report described Patton as “an energetic and responsibility-loving command personality”—a passing comment on one of the numerous Allied commanders. Patton simply had not yet done anything particularly noteworthy in their eyes.
▪ But his race to Palermo through country they had already abandoned left the commanders unimpressed. Major General Eberhard Rodt, who led the 15th Panzergrenadier Division against Patton’s troops during the Allied push toward Messina, thought the American Seventh Army fought hesitantly and predictably. He wrote in an immediate postwar report on Sicily, “The enemy very often conducted his movements systematically, and only attacked after a heavy artillery preparation when he believed he had broken our resistance. This kept him regularly from exploiting the weakness of our situation and gave me the opportunity to consolidate dangerous situations.” Once again, Patton finished a campaign without impressing his opponents.
▪ General Hermann Balck, who took command of Army Group G in September, thus did not think highly of Patton—or any other opposing commanders—during this time. Balck wrote to his commander, Runstedt, on October 10, “I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans” Looking back on his battles against Patton throughout the autumn, in 1979 Balck recalled, “Within my zone, the Americans never once exploited a success. Often [General Friedrich Wilhelm von] Mellenthin, my chief of staff, and I would stand in front of the map and say, ‘Patton is helping us; he failed to exploit another success.’”
▪ The commander of the Fifth Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel, aimed a dismissive, indirect critique at Patton’s efforts at Bastogne, writing in his memoirs that the Americans did not “strike with full élan.” The commanders who fought against Patton in his last two mobile campaigns in the Saar-Palatinate and east of the Rhine already knew they could not win; their losses from this point forward were inevitable, regardless of the commanding Allied opponent.
▪ the Germans offered Patton faint praise during and immediately after the war.
▪ posterity deserves fact and not myth. The Germans did not track Patton’s movements as the key to Allied intentions. Hitler does not appear to have thought often of Patton, if at all. The Germans considered Patton a hesitant commanding general in the scrum of position warfare. They never raised his name in the context of worthy strategists.
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seth1422
Montgomery asked Brereton, an American, head of the First Allied Airborne Army to drop into the Scheldt, he refused.
Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust over other fronts:
"On 4 Sept, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr"
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen when he issued the directive. Montgomery wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive, devising Operation Comet to be launched on 2 Sept, being cancelled due to German resistance and poor weather.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 Sept had divisions of the US 1st Army and Montgomery's view of taking multiple bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. The British 2nd Army needed some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow). Hodges' would protect the right flank. the Canadians would protect the left flank from the German 15th army. It was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
"the evidence also suggests that certain necessary objectives on the road to Berlin, crossing the Rhine and perhaps even taking the Ruhr, were possible with the existing logistical set-up, provided the right strategy to do so was set in place. Montgomery’s popular and astute Chief of Staff, Freddie de Guingand, certainly thought so: 'If Eisenhower had not taken the steps he did to link up at an early date with Anvil and had held back Patton, and had he diverted the resources so released to the north, I think it possible we might have obtained a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter - but not more.' "
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower put the clearing of the Scheldt on hold wanting all the existing logistics to favour the Northern quick thrust over the Rhine - no waiting for Antwerp to be in action which will take far too much time. Bradley and Patton, not liking this strategy, starved the US First army of supplies, so the First Army could not join in with the British 21st Army Group in this thrust having to pull out. In effect Bradley and Patton sabotaged the northern thrust, which ended up as Market Garden, a bare bones operation, which failed to get over the Rhine.
"The task of opening up Antwerp can be divided into several phases. First of all, the Canadian Army would have to move up to the south bank of the Scheldt, capturing or masking the German-held coastal ports on the way. Then it would be necessary to clear the north bank of the Scheldt - a task that might have been tackled by Second Army had it not been otherwise engaged on Market Garden. Finally, unless it could be taken from the landward side, the heavily fortified island of Walcheren, which much resembled a cork stuffed into the neck of the Scheldt, would have to be taken by amphibious assault, and that meant launching men and craft against some of the most powerful batteries on the North Sea coast. All these tasks were fraught with difficulty, but the main source of that difficulty was the German Fifteenth Army, still strong and fighting hard on the Channel coast."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"If Eisenhower had nominated it as his prime strategic target, which it certainly was, and devoted adequate troops and supply to the task of opening it for traffic, a priority in early September, the problems of opening Antwerp later that autumn might never have arisen."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
The German 15th SS army was entrenched in the Scheldt. They destroyed dykes and water logged large areas. Some of the forts on the "Atlantic Wall" there were the most formidable of the wall. It took 2 months to clear the Scheldt. The Canadian army by itself could not do it. Assaults came in from the sea, but landing craft had been sent to the Med to assist Operation Dragoon.
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David Olie
Arnhem by-passed the Seigfreid line. Monty wanted a multiple crossing of the Rhine - Operation Comet. Objections mainly by Sosabowski scuppered it. Bradley and Patton were diverting supplies (disobeying orders) away from Hodges, who was on Monty's right flank, so Hodges could not assist Monty going north. Monty wanted a few divisions of Hodges' First Army on his right flank in Market Garden. Bradley and Patton should have been fired. US Corps commanders like Truscott and Collins were better than those two turkeys; they should have been put in those positions.
"The prospective benefits, if this operation was successful, were great. By establishing a bridgehead over the Rhine at Arnhem, the Allies would unhinge the northern flank of the Siegfried Line and gain access to the German Northern Plain. This in turn would set the conditions for a quicker defeat of Germany, either by directly attacking Berlin or by enveloping the Ruhr Valley and then attacking Berlin from the Arnhem bridgehead. It would seal off western Holland from Germany, which would in turn speed the clearing of the approaches to the much needed deep water port at Antwerp. Isolating western Holland also offered the prospect of gaining a second deep water port at Rotterdam, and of ending German V–2 rocket attacks against England."
- SCHOOL OF ADVANCED AIRPOWER STUDIES AIR UNIVERSITY MAXWELL AIR FORCE BASE, ALABAMA JUNE 1996
"upon approval of MARKET-GARDEN at Brussels on I0 September had been short-lived. Five days later, on I5 September, General Eisenhower himself reopened the wound, perhaps with a view to healing it once and for all through a process of bloodletting. Looking beyond both Arnhem and Antwerp, he named Berlin as the ultimate Allied goal"
- US Official History - THE SIEGFRIED LINE CAMPAIGN, Page 210.
Eisenhower had no proper strategy and kept changing whatever he had. Very amateurish.
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@samuel10125
The British won the Battle of Dunkirk.
The British BEF was only 9% of the total allied forces in France and the Low Countries. The German advance was halted in France as the British with a vastly inferior force stopped them at Arras. Some German soldiers turned and ran. Directive 13, issued by German Supreme Headquarters on 24 May 1940 stated specifically for the annihilation of the French, English and Belgian forces in the Dunkirk pocket. The Luftwaffe was ordered to prevent the escape of the British forces across the English Channel.
The German southern advance was stopped at Arras by the British with a numerically inferior force. The Germans never moved much further after. The Germans could not have taken Dunkirk, they would have been badly beaten in and around the town. The Luftwaffe was defeated over Dunkirk by the RAF with the first showing of the Spitfire en-mass. More German than allied planes were destroyed in the Dunkirk pocket. The first defeat of the Nazis in WW2 was in the air by the British over Dunkirk. Only six small warships were sunk at Dunkirk by the Germans as the effectiveness of the Luftwaffe blunted.
The British were retreating after the French collapsed in front of them - a programme already in motion, a programme already in motion before the Germans showed up, as General Gort saw the disjointed performance of the French forces in front of him. If the French collapsed the small BEF had no hope against the large German force heading west. The French were amongst the British when General Gort decided to take the men back to England, as he did not trust the French in a joint counter-attack. French General Wiegand held a meeting to arrange a counter-attack and never invited General Gort head of the BEF. Gort was under the command of Weigand. Gort heard of the meeting and rushed to be a part. He got there after the French and Belgians had left. He ordered the evacuation having no faith in the elderly French leaders.
All armies retreat and regroup when the need is there. There happened to be a body of water in the line of the retreat. Were they to move down the English coast and enter France further west with more men from England? The Germans did not know what was to be the next British or allied move. The Germans could not have taken Dunkirk trying for nearly a week failing in the process. The British retreat operation was carried out as planned and in orderly fashion. All bridges to Dunkirk were destroyed by the allies. The British counter-attack at Arras was with outdated Matilda 1 tanks, which only had machine guns, and a few of the brand new Matilda 2 tanks. The Germans fled in droves. In desperation the Germans turned a 88mm AA gun horizontal successful against the Matilda 2 - their conventional anti-tank weapons and tanks could not penetrate the tank. The Matilda 2 would roll over German gun emplacements killing the gunners. Rommel thought he had been hit by a force three times the size, which made them stop and rethink. The Germans countered with their superior numbers pushing back the British who fell back consolidating towards Dunkirk.
The British resolve and the new Matilda 2 made the Germans sit up and think about a street fight in Dunkirk against a consolidated force still with its weapons and the new Matilda 2 - the 88mm would be useless in Dunkirk streets while the Matilda 2 would be in its element, with the Matlida 2 easily destroying the Panzer MkIII & MkIVs. The Matilda 2 could knock out any German tank at the time, while no German tank could knock it out. The Germans were expecting the Matilda 2 to be shipped over in numbers and for all they knew many were in Dunkirk. The Germans could not stop the tanks coming as the British controlled the skies with a CAP and the waters of the Channel. Not a good prospect for the Germans. A Dunkirk street fight was a fight the German troops were untrained and unequipped for and unwise to get involved in.
Von Rundstedt and von Kluge suggested to Hitler that German forces around the Dunkirk pocket cease their advance, consolidating preventing an Allied break out from Dunkirk. Hitler agreed with the support of the Wehrmacht. German preoccupation rightly was with an expected attack from the fluid mainly French and some British forces to the south of the German line, not from dug-in Dunkirk which was too much of a formidable consolidated opponent, taking substantial resources to seize. The German column had Allied troops to each side with soft marshland to the south west of Dunkirk unsuitable for tanks. If German forces had engaged in a street battle for Dunkirk, they would be vulnerable on their weak flank from the south. In short the fast moving panzers were now static; German forces attacking Dunkirk in a battle of attrition would have been largely wiped out.
The German columns were consolidating their remaining armour and the important resupply from Germany, which was slow as it was via horses, for an expected attack by the British and French from the south - or maybe a combined attack from the south and the Dunkirk pocket. The Germans attacked on a remarkably narrow front. They had over-stretched their supply lines. The Germans had no option but to stop, being more concerned at defending from the mainly French forces in the south which were viewed as a greater threat than Dunkirk. French general Weigand implemented his creation of hedgehogs to attack German lines from the sides, with success - hedgehogs were adopted post war by NATO being a part of the tactics until the 1970s.
What were the Germans thinking? Are the British retreating to England from Dunkirk to move down the English coast and re-enter France further south with fresh forces, including Canadians and the new Matilda 2 tanks, which they feared, and join up with the French forces there? Are they going to reinforce the Dunkirk pocket supplied by the Royal Navy with a 24/7 air CAP? The British could easily do any of these as they controlled the Channel. This would create one large difficult to combat force at Dunkirk. They also saw the resolve of outnumbered British forces at Arras. German generals were trying to figure out what was happening. None thought that British troops would retreat to England and stay there. The British never did that sort of thing. The Germans could divert most of their forces south and risk a Dunkirk breakout being attacked from their rear fighting on two fronts, or stay and consolidate, which they needed to do, awaiting a French/British attack from the south and use some forces and the Luftwaffe to attack Dunkirk, which they did. *German forces resumed their attack on Dunkirk for over 6 days and failed to seize the port.
*The plan to break out of the Dunkirk Pocket using British, Belgian and French forces was abandoned as Gort had no confidence in the French. All military school studies since, knowing what the German and allied positions and situations were in 1940, have shown it would have succeeded.
The Germans were defeated at the Battle of Dunkirk. They tried militarily to seize the port but failed. Only because the British did not trust the French and moved back to England did the Germans eventually occupy the town.
The Germans did not let the British get away that is misguided myth, they tried for a week simply not able to seize Dunkirk.
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+tigerhunter77
Most Americans have never heard of the Hurtgen Forest defeat. It is conveniently forgotten. Although recently a B movie was made featuring it glorifying individuals and the likes.
A US Army report of the Lorraine Campaign - Patton.
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a211668.pdf
From the report in italics...
"Soldiers and generals alike assumed that Lorraine would fall quickly, and unless the war ended first, Patton's tanks would take the war into Germany by summer's end. But Lorraine was not to be overrun in a lightning campaign. Instead, the battle for Lorraine would drag on for more than 3 months."
The Brits never said the war would be over by Xmas.
"Despite its proximity to Germany, Lorraine was not the Allies' preferred invasion route in 1944. Except for its two principal cities, Metz and Nancy, the province contained few significant military objectives."
"Moreover, once Third Army penetrated the province and entered Germany, there would still be no first-rate military objectives within its grasp. The Saar industrial region, while significant, was of secondary importance when compared to the great Ruhr industrial complex farther north."
Another Patton chase into un-needed territory, like he did when running one third of his force into Brittany.
"With so little going for it, why did Patton bother with Lorraine at all? The reason was that Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, made up his mind to destroy as many German forces as possible west of the Rhine."
In other words a waste of time.
"Communications Zone organized the famous Red Ball Express, a non-stop conveyor belt of trucks connecting the Normandy depots with the field armies."
They were getting fuel via 6,000 trucks.
"The simple truth was that although fuel was plentiful in Normandy, there was no way to transport it in sufficient quantities to the leading elements. On 31 August , Third Army received no fuel at all."
In short, Patton overran his supply lines. What was important was to secure the Port of Antwerp's approaches. Monty approached the US leaders of the First Airborne Army and they would not drop into the Scheld.
"Few of the Germans defending Lorraine could be considered First-rate troops. Third Army encountered whole battalions made up of deaf men, others of cooks, and others consisting entirety of soldiers with stomach ulcers."
Some army the Yanks were going to fight.
"Was the Lorraine campaign an American victory? From September through November, Third Army claimed to have inflicted over 180,000 casualties on the enemy. But to capture the province of Lorraine, a problem which involved an advance of only 40 to 60 air miles, Third Army required over 3 months and suffered 50,000 casualties, approximately one-third of the total number of casualties it sustained in the entire European war."
Huge losses for taking unimportant territory, against a poor German army. How clever.
"Ironically, Third Army never used Lorraine as a springboard for an advance into Germany after all. Patton turned most of the sector over to Seventh Army during the Ardennes crisis, and when the eastward advance resumed after the Battle of the Bulge, Third Army based its operations on Luxembourg, not Lorraine. The Lorraine campaign will always remain a controversial episode in American military history."
It's getting worse. The US Third Army had one third of all its European casualties in Lorraine and never used the territory to move into Germany.
"Finally the Lorraine Campaign demonstrated that Logistics often drive operations, no matter how forceful and aggressive the commanding general may be."
"Patton violated tactical principles"
"His discovered that violating logistical principles is an unforgiving and cumulative matter."
Not flattering at all.
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Montgomery was in charge of all ground forces in Normandy. It came in ahead of schedule with less casualties than expected. Eisenhower, supreme commander, a political job with enough to do in that position, then also took on the ground forces job. He had to much on his plate. He was inexperienced for the role. All went pear shaped with his broad front, which stretched from Switzerland to the North Sea. There was not enough punch anywhere all along the line to force through. Eisenhower was out of his depth.
"Returning to his theme in a letter to Eisenhower, written on 18 September, Montgomery stated — yet again — that time was of the essence, that there was not enough logistical support to sustain such a big effort [broad front], that one route, preferably the northern one, must have priority"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Monty wanted divisions of the US First Army on his right flank at Market Garden. This was rejected. It amounted to three corps with only one above Eindhoven. An absolute disgrace.
"By the evening of 14 September, the day V and VII Corps of the US First Army opened their attacks, Patton had established half a dozen crossing points over the Moselle, and was heading east, consuming great quantities of fuel and ammunition. The outcome was that Patton did not stop until brought to a halt by the German army in front of Metz. It should be noted that this move, designed by Bradley and Patton to check Montgomery, actually had a dire effect on Bradley’s other contingent, the US First Army, which was starved of fuel and artillery ammunition at Aachen."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley and Patton were conspiring, in disobeying orders, to scupper a fellow allied commander. Unbelievable.
"On 16 September, when Eisenhower told Bradley that logistical priority must go to First Army and Patton must stop, Patton again told Bradley that the Third Army must get involved ‘at once’ and asked Bradley to ignore this order and ‘not to call me until after dark on the nineteenth."
"On 17 September, again defying his Supreme Commander and with the backing of his Army Group commander, Patton launched an all-out attack on his two prime objectives, sending XX Corps against Metz and XII Corps in a drive for the Rhine. Success can justify such actions, but neither attack succeeded."
"Bradley now faced a considerable dilemma. By favouring Patton at the expense of Hodges he had ensured that neither Army could actually achieve anything — and he had undermined Eisenhower’s current strategy at the same time. By 20 September, the Allied armies had to face the unpalatable fact that the days of rapid advances against a retreating foe were over."
-Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower should have fired Bradley and Patton. The US had excellent corps commanders like Collins and Truscot who would have done better jobs.
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DrexFactor Poi
Xerox invented the GUI and mouse, as we know today. They were the first to use it commercially with networked computers in their own offices, called the Alto. They were the first to commercially sell a computer with a GUI, not Apple. Apple requested a tour of Xerox, as some employees were ex Xerox and arranged the tour, wanting to show Apple the wizardry Xerox had produced. Xerox agreed. Apple were knocked out. Bill Gates also toured Xerox.
Apple who were making the Apple 2 in volume negotiated with Xerox that Xerox buy $1m of Apple stock and in return they reveal their technology to Apple. In effect Apple paid for the access by reduced profits, as Xerox took a cut. Zerox heads in NYC, who never understood the technology were pulling out of computing. They never understood what it would and could do wanting Apple to make the machines, as they could make them cheaper than them.
Gates just took the technology, in making Windows 2, an app sitting on top of an operating system called DOS. IFRC, it was called Windows 2 (there was no Windows 1 to make it look as if it was not the first release). How he got away with it shows something about the US legal system.
Windows 2 as an app, was on networked DOS computers I was using. No one used it, using the DOS prompt. It was regarded as something for kids. It crashed a lot. It was regarded, and rightly so, as a poor operating system, DOS, with a poor app to make it feel like and Apple but bugged to hell, so not worth using. No one trusted it. We all wanted UNIX, a proper professional operating system, and got it. BTW, Jobs used UNIX as the base for his GUI with his NeXT machines. Similar to what Gates was doing with DOS, with the GUI being an app on top, but UNIX is vastly superior to DOS. UNIX is also the base of Apple's iPhone OS and Android.
Windows was being shipped with anyone's desktop PC's, making computing easier for the 1st generation of users to use desktops en-mass. It was appalling and constantly crashed.
Apple's offer was vastly superior being a proper integrated operating system, not just an app sitting on top of an operating system. But their hardware and software were all in one expensive package. With DOS/Windows, DOS applications, of which there was a massive amount on the market, could be run by clicking a Windows app icon.
Windows was an app sitting on top of an operating system, DOS, sending commands to DOS underneath. In interface with the user who thought they were on an Zeroz/Apple type of machine.
Windows never became a proper operating system, being just an app, until DOS was fully eliminated, which took about 15 years - and in that 15 years still bugged to hell and a poor product. How Microsoft became a giant is purely marketing, as technology-wise they had little innovation, if any at all. The same could be said of Apple, but they were better engineers than Microsoft producing the hardware and a proper GUI operating system to match.
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@Martha G
The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British under Montgomery. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
▪ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa; October 1942 - El Alamein;
▪ March 1943 - Medenine;
▪ June 1944 - Normandy;
▪ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands;
▪ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge;
A list of Montgomery’s victories in WW2:
▪ Battle of Alam Halfa;
▪ Second Battle of El Alamein;
▪ Battle of El Agheila;
▪ Battle of Medenine;
▪ Battle of the Mareth Line;
▪ Battle of Wadi Akarit;
▪ Allied invasion of Sicily;
▪ Operation Overlord - the largest amphibious invasion in history;
▪ Market Garden - a 60 mile salient created into German territory;
▪ Battle of the Bulge - while taking control of two shambolic US armies;
▪ Operation Veritable;
▪ Operation Plunder.
Montgomery not once had a reverse.
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Monty's 8th Army advanced the fastest of any army in WW2. From El Alamein to El Agheila from the 4th to 23rd November 1942, 1,300 km in just 17 days. After fighting a major exhausting battle at El Alemein through half a million mines. This was an Incredible feat, unparalleled in WW2. With El Alamein costing just 13,500 casualties.
The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties, with the Lorraine campaign being a failure. Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties. Hodges, head of the US First army, fled from Spa to near Liege on the 18th, despite the Germans never getting anywhere near to Spa. Hodges did not even wait for the Germans to approach Spa. He had already fled long before the Germans were stopped. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British, with Montgomery involved in planning, with also Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
You need to give respect where it is due.
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1:4:30
I will let the Germans have a say on the Bulge:
Genral Hasso von Manteuffel:
‘The operations of the American 1st Army had developed into a series of individual holding actions. Montgomery's contribution to restoring the situation was that he turned a series of isolated actions into a coherent battle fought according to a clear and definite plan. It was his refusal to engage in premature and piecemeal counter-attacks which enabled the Americans to gather their reserves and frustrate the German attempts to extend their breakthrough’.
By November 1944, British SHEAF officer, Strong, noted that there was a possibility of a German counteroffensive in the Ardennes or the Vosges. Strong went to personally warn Bradley, who said, let 'em come.
Montgomery on hearing of the attack immediately took British forces to the Meuse to prevent any German forces from making a bridgehead, and moving west of the river, securing the rear. He was prepared to halt their advance and attack them. This was while Eisenhower and Bradley were doing nothing.
even by 19 December, three days into the offensive, no overall plan had emerged from 12th Army Group or SHAEF, other than the decision to send Patton’s forces north to Bastogne. Overall, the Ardennes battle was in urgent need of grip.
General Hodges had yet to see Bradley or receive more than the sketchiest orders from his Army Group commander.
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
On 20 December, Montgomery had sent a signal to Alanbrooke regarding the US forces:
Not good... definite lack of grip and control. I have heard -nothing_ from Ike or Bradley and had no orders or requests of any sort. My own opinion is that the American forces have been cut in half and the Germans can reach the Meuse at Namur without opposition.
Omar Bradley, commander of the 12th Army Group, did very little:
16 Dec, the first day, for 12 hours did nothing.
16 Dec, after 12 hours, he sent two armoured divisions from
the flanking Ninth and Third Armies.
17 Dec, after 24 Hours, he then called in two US airborne
divisions from Champagne.
18 Dec, he ordered Patton to halt his pending offensive in
the Saar.
18 Dec, he had still not established contact with the First Army,
while Monty had.
19 Dec, he withdrew divisions from the Aachen front to shore
up the Ardennes.
19 Dec, he had still not produced an overall defensive plan.
19 Dec, the Supreme Commander intervened directly late in the day.
20 Dec, Eisenhower telephoned Montgomery telling him to take
command of the US First and Ninth Armies
While all this dillying by Bradley was going on, German armies were pounding forward into his lines.
British SHEAF officer Whiteley and American officer Betts visited the U.S. First Army HQ seeing the shambles. Strong, Whiteley, and Betts recommended that command of the armies north of the Ardennes be transferred from Bradley to Montgomery. Unfortunately only the British officers approached Beddel Smith of their recommendations, who immediately fired the pair, claiming it was a nationalistic thing. The next morning, Beddel Smith apologized seeing the three were right, recommending to Eisenhower to bring in Monty. It was because of the shambles of the US command of the First and Ninth armies that highly professional Montgomery had to be in command.
During the Battle of the Bulge Eisenhower was stuck self imprisoned in his HQ in des-res Versailles near Paris in fear of German paratroopers wearing US uniforms with the objective to kill allied generals. He had remained locked up more than 30 days without sending a single message or order to Montgomery, and that is when he thought he was doing ground control of the campaign, when in effect Montgomery was in control as two US armies had to be put under his control after the German attack, the US First and Ninth armies. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war, just about. Coningham of the RAF had to take control of US air force units.
The only thing Eisenhower did was tell Monty to get control of two out of control US armies, tell the US 101st to go to Bastogne (who were in northern France after the buffer Market Garden was created) and men under Bradley to counter-attack. That is it.
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@winoodlesnoodles1984
What US historian Harry Yeide wrote of what the Germans thought of Patton:
♦ for most of the war the Germans barely took notice [of Patton].
♦ on March 23 at the Battle of El Guettar—the first American victory against the experienced Germans. Patton’s momentum, however, was short-lived: Axis troops held him to virtually no gain until April 7, when they withdrew under threat from British Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army.
♦ There is no indication in the surviving German military records—which include intelligence reports at the theater, army, and division levels—that Patton’s enemies had any idea who he was at the time. Likewise, the immediate postwar accounts of the German commanders in Tunisia, written for the U.S. Army’s History Division, ignore Patton. Those reports show that ground commanders considered II Corps’s attacks under Patton to have been hesitant, and to have missed great opportunities.
♦ In mid-June [1943], another detachment report described Patton as “an energetic and responsibility-loving command personality”—a passing comment on one of the numerous Allied commanders. Patton simply had not yet done anything particularly noteworthy in their eyes.
♦ But his race to Palermo through country they had already abandoned left the commanders unimpressed. Major General Eberhard Rodt, who led the 15th Panzergrenadier Division against Patton’s troops during the Allied push toward Messina, thought the American Seventh Army fought hesitantly and predictably. He wrote in an immediate postwar report on Sicily, “The enemy very often conducted his movements systematically, and only attacked after a heavy artillery preparation when he believed he had broken our resistance. This kept him regularly from exploiting the weakness of our situation and gave me the opportunity to consolidate dangerous situations.” Once again, Patton finished a campaign without impressing his opponents.
♦ General Hermann Balck, who took command of Army Group G in September, thus did not think highly of Patton—or any other opposing commanders—during this time. Balck wrote to his commander, Runstedt, on October 10, “I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans” Looking back on his battles against Patton throughout the autumn, in 1979 Balck recalled, “Within my zone, the Americans never once exploited a success. Often [General Friedrich Wilhelm von] Mellenthin, my chief of staff, and I would stand in front of the map and say, ‘Patton is helping us; he failed to exploit another success.’”
♦ The commander of the Fifth Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel, aimed a dismissive, indirect critique at Patton’s efforts at Bastogne, writing in his memoirs that the Americans did not “strike with full élan.” The commanders who fought against Patton in his last two mobile campaigns in the Saar-Palatinate and east of the Rhine already knew they could not win; their losses from this point forward were inevitable, regardless of the commanding Allied opponent.
♦ the Germans offered Patton faint praise during and immediately after the war.
♦ posterity deserves fact and not myth. The Germans did not track Patton’s movements as the key to Allied intentions. Hitler does not appear to have thought often of Patton, if at all. The Germans considered Patton a hesitant commanding general in the scrum of position warfare. They never raised his name in the context of worthy strategists.
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@1pcfred
The state of play on the 17th, D day, was:
1) the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was largely clear;
2) there were concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally;
3) there were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen who were getting out fast;
4) a few scattered about along the road;
5) there was no armour in Arnhem.
That was it.
i) XXX Corps would deal from the Belgium border to Eindhoven;
ii) 101st from Eindhoven to Grave;
iii) 82nd from Grave to north of Nijmegen;
iv) British and Polish paras from north of Nijmegen to north of the Rhine;
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 2 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition, hanging around in the village. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured it.
Evidently expecting that Major La Prade's flanking battalion would have captured the highway bridge, these two battalions made no apparent haste in moving through Zon. They methodically cleared stray Germans from the houses, so that a full two hours had passed before they emerged from the village. Having at last overcome the enemy 88 south of the Zonsche Forest, Major LaPrade's battalion caught sight of the bridge at about the same time. Both forces were within fifty yards of the bridge when their objective went up with a roar.- US Official History.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected. XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and towards the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up.
The road was still largely clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump. Horrocks promised the 1st Airborne at Anhem XXX Corps would reach them within 48 hours. XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820 hrs on d-day plus 2, on schedule making up for the delay at Zon, having seven hours left to travel 8 miles. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over. If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves, after the 82nd tried again and failed again. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
According to the official American Army historian, Forrest Pogue, he stated that the failure of US 82nd Airborne to assault the lightly defended Nijmegen bridge immediately upon jumping 'sounded the death knell' for the men at Arnhem.
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"Even more remarkable, however, was the fact that, at key points in the line, the Soviets were able to back their superiority in manpower with a similar preponderance of guns, tanks and aircraft. The fact was that despite the optimistic newsreel propaganda, Speer and Milch were losing the battle of the factories. Even leaving aside the British and Americans, who produced under far more favourable circumstances, Germany was being outdone by the embattled Soviet Union. If there was a true 'armaments miracle' in 1942 it occurred, not in Germany, but in the armaments factories in the Urals. Despite having suffered territorial losses and disruption that resulted in a 25 per cent fall in total national product, the Soviet Union in 1942 managed to out-produce Germany in virtually every category of weapons. The margin for small arms and artillery was 3:1. For tanks it was a staggering 4:1, a differential compounded by the superior quality of the T34 tank. Even in combat aircraft the margin was 2:1. It was this industrial superiority, contrary to every expectation, that allowed the Red Army, first to absorb the Wehrmacht's second great onslaught and then in November 1942 to launch a whole series of devastating counterattacks."
-Wages of Destruction by Prof Adam Tooze:. Page 588
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This is very poor.
♦ Japan thought Germany would definitely defeat the USSR.
♦ The German defeat at Moscow would ensure Germany would not defeat the USSR.
♦ The Japanese entered WW2 on a presumption they would be linking up with Germany. Transpiring they were alone fighting two massive powers with another pinning their forces down in the north, eventually fighting all three. Not what they wanted or planned.
Japan would not attack the British empire, Dutch empire and the US unless Germany declared war on the USA. If Germany said no to declaring war on the USA, Japan would never have attacked and there would be no Pacific war. The two theatres were linked.
Japan did not want to face alone the USA and the British empire. The worst case scenario. And that is what happened. The Germans attempted to get the Japanese to attack the British in the Far East to divert the British away from Europe. The UK was amassing a large air fleet and also had the world's largest navy. The British would not sit by for long only fighting in the desert. The reason Germany attacked the USSR was to get their resources to fight the coming air war with the British. The Japanese repeatedly refused to declare war. Only when the Japanese thought the USSR was about to fall they joined in. The USSR kept 40 divisions opposite the Japanese Kwantung army all though WW2. With superior armour to the Japanese.
Japan received assurances from Germany in the Spring of 1941. that they would declare war on the USA. Japan, economically could not sustain war of any length of time against any major power by itself, either the UK or the USA. Especially a war strung over a vast front. They imported most raw materials with their industry primarily artisan based, with little mass production. If going it alone, what the hell attacking the USA and British Empire was to achieve with no back up occupation force at Pearl Harbor defies belief. The Pearl Harbor attack was to fend off the US navy while they gain as much resource rich territory as possible in the south while the USSR threat is moved away from their north in China by the Germans. To Japan the key was the defeat of the USSR, which by Oct/Nov 1941 they thought was a foregone conclusion.
All through WW2 the Soviets had approx 40 divisions (most armoured) in Siberia and the Soviet Far East facing the Japanese. Without Germany fighting the USSR anticipating a quick German win, the Japanese would never had attacked the USA and the British Empire. It was madness to do so unilaterally and would entail certain defeat - even the Japanese knew that.
The Japanese were to eliminate the US Pacific fleet. The US Atlantic fleet would be occupied by the German U-Boats. The carriers got away at Pearl Harbor. If the carriers were sunk, they would not have been on the defensive by June 1942, giving them far more breathing space and lots more with the anticipated defeat of the USSR within months by the Germans. If the US carriers were sunk along with the US Pacific fleet, and the USSR defeated by summer 1942 by the Germans, Japan would be in very strong position.
The Japanese gained far more territory than they gambled on. They were one day away in Singapore from surrendering, but the British beat them to the white flag. They were expecting more protracted battles in Malaya/Burma and even maybe in the Philippines.
Using some common sense tells you the Japanese were not banking on being alone fighting the world's two largest economic powers. They were expecting at least the USSR to be neutralised or eliminated. And then some military aid from the Germans would be nice if it came. The link was enacted with 41 U-Boats operating from Penang. The Germans then would engage the British diverting them away from fighting the Japanese in Burma. Getting rid of the British and the Soviets was a major prize for Japan, and Germany could do the latter and both they thought the former. So was the notion.
Wages of Destruction by Prof Adam Tooze in quotes:
♦ The tripartite pact was signed in Sept 1940. If one is attacked the others come to their aid.
♦ "The real nightmare of German strategy was the possibility that Japan might come to terms with the United States, leaving Germany to fight Britain and maybe America alone. To forestall this possibility, Hitler had offered to declare war on the United States in conjunction with Japan already in the Spring of 1941."
♦ Germany had offered to declare war on the US before the June 1941 attack on the USSR.
♦ "But the Japanese had refused to commit themselves and instead entered into a last round of negotiations with the USA."
♦ "It was not until October and the fall of the Konoe government that Berlin could feel sure that the Japanese-USA talks were going nowhere."
♦ "When in November 1941 Tokyo began to signal that Japan was about to commit itself against the West, it was the cause of relief, bordering on euphoria in Berlin. Finally Hitler and Ribbentrop had the chance to complete the global strategic alliance they had been hoping for since 1938. And they did not hesitate."
♦ The Germans immediately started to revise the Tripartite pact, knowing of the Japanese commitment to war, at the German's insistence.
♦ "Without prior knowledge of the Japanese timetable for a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hitler pledged himself to following Japan in a declaration of war on the United States."
♦ 7 Dec 1941, Japanese attack the USA at Pearl Harbor and British territories in Malaya and Hong Kong.
♦ The amended Tripartite pact was signed by all, between the 7 Dec 1941, the attacks on the USA and British Empire, and Germany declaring war on the USA on 11 Dec 1941.
♦ 11 Dec 1941 Germany declares war on the USA.
Wages of Destruction is clear that the Germans were informed by the Japanese in November 1941 that they were to declare war. The attacks on the US and British Empire was no surprise to Hitler.
Wages of Destruction also states that Germany was repeatedly attempting to get Japan to declare war on the British empire. The Japanese knew exactly what the Germans wanted and what they would do. It all fits.
As it turned out:
♦ The USSR was not defeated and maintained a large army opposite the Japanese - the Japanese had already been mauled by the Soviets in Manchuria in 1939.
♦ Japan was facing the worst case scenario, the scenario it feared - fighting alone against the British empire and USA, the world's two largest economic superpowers.
♦ This was not in the forecasting. The German army defeated militarily superior France within weeks and since June 1941 were mauling the USSR so badly it was obvious to the Japanese in late 1941 the USSR would be defeated.
♦ The week in which the Japanese attacked the USA and British Empire, the Soviets counter attacked at Moscow with a battering ram of superior T-34 tanks pushing the Germans back taking 30,000 prisoners, ending any chance of Germany defeating the USSR in one swoop. A protracted war against the USSR would ensue. Not what Japan wanted.
♦ In Spring 1941, the Germans feared fighting the USA and the British alone - a worst case scenario for them. They were desperately worse off, fighting the British, USA and the USSR alone.
♦ If the Soviet counter attack had been one month earlier the Japanese would not have attacked the British and the USA - and almost a probability certainty signed a pact with the USA which was in ongoing talks virtually to the attack on the British, Dutch and Americans.
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The 508th also had a vital task — ‘a special destiny’, says the US Official History. The 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Shields Warren, was charged with taking the road bridge over the Waal at Nijmegen: a prime task of Operation Market was being entrusted here to just one battalion from an entire division.
According to the US Official History, there was some dispute over exactly when the 1st Battalion should go for the bridge. General Gavin was to claim later that the battalion was to ‘go for the bridge without delay’. However, Colonel Lindquist, the 508th Regimental commander, understood that Warren’s battalion was not to go for the bridge until the other regimental objectives — securing the Groesbeek Ridge and the nearby glider LZs, had been achieved: General Gavin’s operational orders confirm Warren’s version. Warren’s initial objective was ground near De Ploeg, a suburb of Nijmegen, which he was to take and organise for defence: only then was he to ‘prepare to go into Nijmegen later’ and these initial tasks took Lieutenant Colonel Warren most of the day. It was not until 1830hrs that he was able to send a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small, just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a radio — say forty men.
"Unfortunately, Company ‘B’ got lost on its way to the rendezvous so only Company ‘A’ moved on the bridge — the efforts of an entire airborne division were now reduced to just one company. It was now around 2000hrs on D-Day, H-Hour plus seven."
Company ‘A’ entered Nijmegen — a city of some 100,000 people in 1944 —and moved cautiously up the main road, the Groesbeekscheweg. After two hours they reached a traffic island near the centre of the town and immediately came under automatic fire from directly ahead. As they went to ground and deployed, a German convoy arrived in one of the side streets on their flank and they heard the clatter of boots and kit as enemy soldiers leapt from their trucks. Company ‘A’ was just a few minutes too late: the Germans were moving troops into Nijmegen from the north and the fight for the road bridge was on. The US Official History mourns this fact, pointing out that ‘the time for the easy, speedy capture of Nijmegen had passed’, which was all the more lamentable because during the afternoon, when the division had been engaged on other tasks, the Germans had ‘nothing in the town but mostly low quality troops’ — and not many of those.
- Neillands
It was clear who was to blame for Market Garden not being a 100% success. Gavin of the 82nd.
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grahamt33
Patton was a US media creation:
Patton was an average US general, like Simpson, Patch, Hodges, etc. No more.
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed there with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were re-fitting and rebuilt after the summer 1944 battles.
The Panzer Brigades had green crews with little time to train, did not know their tanks properly, had no recon elements and didn't even meet their unit commander until his arrival at the front. These were not elite forces.
17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, equipped only with assault guns not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy and not up to strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the best German divisions in the west were NOT.
♦ Who did the 3rd Army engage?
♦ Who did the 3rd Army defeat?
♦ Patton never once faced a full strength
Waffen SS panzer division nor a
Tiger battalion.
In The Lorraine, the 3rd Army faced a rabble. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said:
"I have never been in command of such irregularly
assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that
we have been able to straighten out the situation
again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating
command of the Americans."
Patton was mostly facing a second rate rabble in The Lorraine.
Patton was neither on the advance nor being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. The road from Luxembourg to Bastogne saw few German forces, with Bastogne being on the very southern German flank, their focus was west. Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was not one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, while 26th Volks-Grenadier only had about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind only had a small number of tanks operational. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1.
Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Leading elements were engaging the Americans and British under Montgomery's command near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance and pushed them back.
In Normandy in 1944, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact. This eastern dash devoid of German forces was the ride the US media claimed Patton was some sort master of fast moving armour.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates.
♦ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics
Bradley's II Corps were employing
♦ He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division,
Truscott of being "afraid to fight".
♦ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the
US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps.
♦ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize
stalled he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being
"very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect".
♦ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in
reporting their losses.
After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF. Coningham, gave Patton massive ground attack plane support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall. Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault, including his subordinates. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated. Oh, and wore cowboy guns.
Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his orders, and Eisenhowers orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds
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@garymartin1040
As in the campaign from Alamein to Tripoli, Monty’s intention was to resist opportunism and to defeat the enemy by retaining the initiative- building up his forces, and then ‘driving’ so hard that he could maintain sufficient momentum to reach his considered objective in one operation. Tripoli had fallen in this way.
Monty was in his element. It was a repetition of Alam Halfa- and just as he had then astonished his staff by planning the offensive battle of Alamein while Eighth Army prepared itself for a defensive battle at Alam Halfa, so now he gave Simpson details of his forthcoming offensive at Mareth.....The secret, as he had learned in the aftermath of Alamein and demonstrated in the battle for Tripoli, was not simply to follow up the enemy, but to prepare men, material and supplies so that, having once broken though the crust of opposition, Eight Army had sufficient momentum to smash its way through to its further objectives. In a letter of 2 January 1943 Monty had explained his tactical strategy to the CIGS, Sir Alan Brooke:
My present situation is that the further I get from Benghazi, the more difficult my administration becomes. I have now got to the point where I cannot let the enemy go on drawing me forward slowly. My solution is to stand where I am, to spend up to 14th Jan in building resources of petrol, supplies, ammunition, etc. and then to smash my way through to TRIPOLI in one big bound.This tactical strategy, so mocked later by romantic historians enamored of the pragmatic cut-and-thrust type of military manoeuvre, was Monty’s greatest contribution to the war in North Africa.
The Allies under Eisenhower had attempted to exploit the success and surprise of their ‘Torch’ landing by piecemeal advance into Tunisia. Within a month of Anderson was confessing to Eisenhower he had reached a ‘point of “diminishing power” being at the end of a long and tortuous line of supply.
-Hamilton, Nigel. Monty, Master of the Battlefield.
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Devers could have secured the line from Luxembourg to Switzerland for sure. The US Third Army should have been sent north to support the US First Army and Monty's 21st Army group in securing the Ruhr.
General Bodo Zimmermann, Chief of Operations, German Army Group D, said that had the strategy of Montgomery succeeded in the autumn of 1944, there would have been no need to fight for the Westwall, not for the central and upper Rhine, all of 24 which would have fallen automatically.
Indeed, had Monty's idea for a 40 division concentrated thrust towards the Ruhr been accepted by Eisenhower instead of messing about in the Lorraine, Alsace, Vosges etc, it would have all been over for the Germans in the west.
"The best course of the Allies would have been to concentrate a really strong striking force with which to break through past Aachen to the Ruhr area. Germany's strength is in the north. South Germany was a side issue. He who holds northern Germany holds Germany. Such a break-through, coupled with air domination, would have torn in pieces the weak German front and ended the war. Berlin and Prague would have been occupied ahead of the Russians. There were no German forces behind the Rhine, and at the end of August our front was wide open. There was the possibility of an operational break-through in the Aachen area, in September. This would have facilitated a rapid conquest of the Ruhr and a quicker advance on Berlin.
By turning the forces from the Aachen area sharply northward, the German 15th and 1st Parachute Armies could have been pinned against the estuaries of the Mass and the Rhine. They could not have escaped eastwards into Germany."
- Gunther Blumentritt in, The Other Side Of The Hill by Liddell Hart
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Pre WW2 Britain was on two paths:
1) The axial-flow air compressor by Griffiths;
2) The centrifugal air compressor by Whittle.
Griffiths' 1926 seminal paper laid down axial-flow. His paper actually outlined a turbo prop. He did not believe at the time the engines could produce enough thrust, but could turn a propeller. He got Metrovick to develop an axial-flow turbojet in 1938, who started the groundwork of the F.2 axial-flow in 1940, having an engine first spin in 1940, with a successful test bed spin in 1941. Whittle's patent was in 1930, which laid down the turbojet. All this info was available to the Germans.
Whittle went for centrifugal, as it was a simpler way of compressing air. Whittle wanted a simple air compressor to establish his turbo jet design quickly. In short, he was interested more in establishing the back end of the engine, the thrust, rather than the front. Once the back end was perfected then he could improve the front, the air compression. This was the sensible approach. The centrifugal compressor was perfectly adequate to prove the rear thrust side of the engine.
As post war engines proved the centrifugal was taken to higher limits. Axial-flow compression was a series of turbine fans on one shaft, with successive fans passing air to the next fan to increase air compression. This added complexity in many ways.
Griffiths went for the more complex axial-flow. He also laid down a contra-rotating compressor, but Metrovick did not go down that road. The more powerful F.2 was used to fly the Meteor plane but considered unreliable at that stage, so Whittle's centrifugal engine was used. The F.2 was more reliable, and powerful, than the German Jumo, but the British would never put a plane in the air with such an unreliable under-developed engine. Wiggin in Birmingham were commissioned to develop high temperature resistant alloys as the jet engines were being developed. The Germans had no such programme. The F.2 ended up as the post war Sapphire being built under licence in the USA as the J65, powering the: Douglas A-4 Skyhawk, Grumman F-11 Tiger, Martin B-57 and the Republic F-84F Thunderstreak.
It took the French a wasted eight years to get the German design reliable, which by that time they had discarded many of the German engine concepts. The French airliner the Sud Aviation Caravelle, used Rolls Royce Avon engines the French engines based on the German designs were so good.
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The Germans attacked the unprepared USSR and scythed right into them taking millions of men prisoner. The German army then met a Soviet brick wall at the end of 1941. But in 1942 the Germans still kept advancing and even got to the Caspian Sea.
So, is it correct the German Army was a better army but were stupid enough to engage a much larger less efficient force. The answer is yes. Look at the Soviet performance against the Finns the second time around. Harley inspiring was it? The Soviets even after they absorbed the initial German shock were still incompetent to the Germans. Yet the Luftwaffe trounced the poorly trained Soviets, who had some decent planes. Look at the Luftwaffe v the RAF. The RAF got the better of them most of the time: Dunkirk, Battle of Brittan, the desert, etc. With poor planes like the American Buffalo, which the US disliked and discontinued, the Finns got the better of the Soviets.
The Germans underestimate the size of the Soviet forces. One German general states that, they defeat a Soviet army then they had to face another, it was poorly led and trained but it was another army. The Germans were never expecting to face so many.
After 3 years the Germans were still way inside the USSR, with a much smaller force. The Germans did no such thing against the British in the desert. Facts help here, like a timeline and the number of men involved.
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The British won the Battle of Dunkirk. No miracles involved. The British BEF was only 9% of the total allied forces in France and the Low Countries. The huge French army collapsed in front of the British small army, which manned mainly the coastal areas. Nevertheless the German advance was halted in France as the British with a vastly inferior force stopped them at Arras. Some German soldiers turned and ran. Directive 13, issued by German Supreme Headquarters on 24 May 1940 stated specifically for the annihilation of the French, English and Belgian forces in the Dunkirk pocket. The Luftwaffe was ordered to prevent the escape of the British forces across the English Channel.
The German southern advance was stopped at Arras by the British with a numerically inferior force. The Germans never moved much further after. The Germans could not have taken Dunkirk, they would have been badly beaten in and around the town. The Luftwaffe was defeated over Dunkirk by the RAF with the first showing of the Spitfire en-mass. More German than allied planes were destroyed in the Dunkirk pocket. The first defeat of the Nazis in WW2 was by the British in the air battle over Dunkirk. Only six small warships were sunk at Dunkirk by the Germans as the effectiveness of the Luftwaffe blunted.
The British were retreating after the French collapsed in front of them - a programme already in motion, a programme already in motion before the Germans showed up, as General Gort saw the disjointed performance of the French forces in front of him, and the exceptionally poor leadership. If the French collapsed the small BEF had no hope against the large over two million strong German force heading west. French forces were amongst the British when General Gort decided to take the men back to England, as he did not trust the French in a joint counter-attack. French General Wiegand held a meeting to arrange a counter-attack not inviting General Gort head of the BEF. Gort was under the command of Weigand. Gort heard of the meeting rushing to be there. He got there after the French and Belgians had left. He ordered the evacuation, having no faith in the elderly French leaders.
All armies retreat and regroup when the need is there. There happened to be a body of water in the line of the retreat. Were the BEF to move down the English coast and enter France further west with more men from England? The Germans did not know what was to be the next British or allied move. The Germans could not have taken Dunkirk trying for nearly a week failing in the process. The British retreat operation was carried out as planned and in orderly fashion. All bridges to Dunkirk were destroyed by the allies.
The British counter-attack at Arras was with outdated Matilda 1 tanks, which only had machine guns, and a few of the brand new Matilda 2 tanks. The Germans fled in droves. In desperation the Germans turned a 88mm AA gun horizontally successfully against the Matilda 2 - their conventional anti-tank weapons and tanks could not penetrate the tank. The 88mm had hard shell shells made for it, to use against the Maginot Line's bunkers. The Matilda 2 would roll over German gun emplacements killing the gunners, not even using the guns. Rommel thought he had been hit by a force three times the size, which made them stop and rethink. The Germans countered with their superior numbers pushing back the British who fell back consolidating towards Dunkirk.
The British resolve and the new Matilda 2 tank made the Germans sit up and think about a street fight in Dunkirk against a consolidated force still with its weapons and the new Matilda 2 - the large 88mm would be useless in Dunkirk streets while the Matilda 2 would be in its element, with the Matilda 2 easily destroying the Panzer MkIII & MkIVs. The Matilda 2 could knock out any German tank at the time, while no German tank could knock it out. The Germans were expecting the Matilda 2 to be shipped over in numbers and for all they knew many were in Dunkirk, and some were. The Germans could not stop the tanks coming as the RAF controlled the skies with a CAP and the RN the waters of the Channel. Not a good prospect for the Germans. A Dunkirk street fight was a fight the German troops were untrained and unequipped for and unwise to get involved in.
Von Rundstedt and von Kluge suggested to Hitler that German forces around the Dunkirk pocket cease their advance, consolidating preventing an Allied breakout from Dunkirk. Hitler agreed with the support of the Wehrmacht. German preoccupation rightly was with an expected attack from the fluid south of the German lines, by mainly French and some British forces, not from dug-in Dunkirk which was too much of a formidable consolidated opponent, taking substantial resources to seize. The German column had Allied troops to each side with soft marshland to the south west of Dunkirk unsuitable for tanks. If German forces had engaged in a street battle for Dunkirk, they would be vulnerable on their weak flank from the south. In short the fast moving panzers were now static; German forces attacking Dunkirk in a battle of attrition would have been largely wiped out.
The German columns were consolidating their remaining armour for an expected attack by the British and French from the south, and the important resupply from Germany, which was slow as it was via horses - or maybe a combined attack from the south and the Dunkirk pocket. The Germans attacked on a remarkably narrow front. They had over-stretched their supply lines. The Germans had no option but to stop, being more concerned at defending from the mainly French forces in the south which were viewed as a greater threat than Dunkirk. French general Weigand implemented his creation of hedgehogs to attack German lines from the sides, with success - hedgehogs were adopted post war by NATO being a part of the tactics until the 1970s.
What were the Germans thinking? Are the British retreating to England from Dunkirk to move down the English coast and re-enter France further south with fresh forces, including Canadians and the new Matilda 2 tanks, which they feared, and join up with the French forces there to hit the Germans from the south? Are the British going to reinforce the Dunkirk pocket supplied by the Royal Navy with a 24/7 air CAP? The British did reinforce Dunkirk by taking over from England the 30th Tank Regiment and 20th Guards Brigade on the 25th and 26th May, with the Germans fully aware of this. Canadians landed further south. The British could easily do any of these as they controlled the Channel.
Reinforcing Dunkirk would create one large difficult to combat force. The Germans also saw the resolve of outnumbered British forces at Arras. German generals were trying to figure out what was happening. None thought that British troops would retreat to England and stay there. The British never did that sort of thing.
The Germans could divert most of their forces south to engage the French forces, then risk a Dunkirk breakout. This would mean being attacked from their rear fighting on two fronts. Or stay and consolidate, which they needed to do anyhow, awaiting a French/British attack from the south and use some forces and the Luftwaffe to attack Dunkirk. Which what they did. German forces resumed their attack on Dunkirk, after only a 36 hour delay, for over 6 days failing to seize the port.
The plan to break out of the Dunkirk Pocket using British, Belgian and French forces was abandoned as Gort had no confidence in the French. All military school studies since, knowing what the German and allied positions and situations were in 1940, have shown it would have succeeded.
The Germans were defeated at the Battle of Dunkirk. They tried militarily to seize the port but failed. Only because the British did not trust the French and moved back to England did the Germans eventually occupy the town. The Germans did not let the British get away that is misguided myth, they tried for a week simply not able to seize Dunkirk.
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@grumpyoldman-21
Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust over other fronts:
On 4 Sept, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen when he issued the directive. Montgomery wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive, devising Operation Comet to be launched on 2 Sept, being cancelled due to German resistance and poor weather.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 Sept had divisions of the US First Army and Montgomery's view of taking multiple bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. The British 2nd Army needed some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow). Hodges' would protect the right flank. the Canadians would protect the left flank from the German 15th army. It was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
"the evidence also suggests that certain necessary objectives on the road to Berlin, crossing the Rhine and perhaps even taking the Ruhr, were possible with the existing logistical set-up, provided the right strategy to do so was set in place. Montgomery’s popular and astute Chief of Staff, Freddie de Guingand, certainly thought so: 'If Eisenhower had not taken the steps he did to link up at an early date with Anvil and had held back Patton, and had he diverted the resources so released to the north, I think it possible we might have obtained a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter - but not more.' "
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944.
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again. This northern thrust over the Rhine obviously would not work with the resources starved First Army, so a lesser operation was devised by Montgomery, Market Garden, eliminating the divisions of US First Army, with only ONE crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London wanted eliminating ASAP giving a 60 mile long salient buffer between German forces and the important port of Antwerp. This would only have one corps above Eindhoven, a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time. Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance.
Montgomery, although not liking Eisenhower's broad front strategy, making that clear continuously since the Normandy breakout, being a professional soldier he always obeyed Eisenhower's orders keeping to the laid down strategy, unlike Bradley who also allowed Patton to disobey his own orders.
Montgomery after fixing the operations objectives with Eisenhower to what forces were available, gave Market Garden planning to others, mainly General Brereton, an American, of the First Allied Airborne Army. Brereton, who liked the concept, agreed to it with even direct input. Brereton ordered the drops will take place during the day and Brereton oversaw the troop carrier and supply drops schedules. A refusal by Brereton and the operation would never have gone ahead, as he earlier rejected Montgomery's initial plan of a drop into the Scheldt at Walcheren Island.
Montgomery left all the planning to his generals to plan and execute: Brereton, Williams, Browning, Urquhart, Gavin, Taylor, Horrocks, etc. Monty gave them a free run at it with their own discretion not interfering. Montgomery had no involvement whatsoever in its execution. Montgomery was an army group commander, in charge of armies. The details were left to 'competent' subordinates.
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This vid is nonsense.
The British won the decoy battle Goodwood. The Goodwood battle was at the crux of the Normandy campaign. It requires some careful study of the various elements if it is to be fully understood. The prime points are:
1) Operation Goodwood was linked with Operation Cobra, the US breakout at St-Lô, being part of the strategic policy Montgomery had been following since before D-Day. The British to hold the eastern flank and pull the German armour on to that front to destroy it - the British destroyed over 90% of German armour on the west.
2) The Americans build up their forces and brake out in the west - Operation Cobra.
This strategy was frequently misunderstood. This had always been the plan as laid down in St.Paul's school in London. Eisenhower never understood it.
‘I should think it quite likely that we should work up to a battle of about a million a side, lasting throughout June and July. We plan to have about two million there by mid-August. Eisenhower’s unfortunate obfuscation has coloured the military accounts ever since, polarizing chroniclers into nationalistic camps. This was, Monty felt, a tragedy in view of the fact that the battle for Normandy was, at all stages, an Allied battle, in which Allied soldiers gave their lives, conforming to an Allied plan to defeat the German armies in the West - not to ‘break out towards the Seine’ in some mythical Lancelot charge...Dempsey’s brief then was not to ‘break out towards the Seine’, but to play his part in a truly Allied undertaking, bringing to battle the mobile German forces that would otherwise - as Rommel wished - destroy the American assault on Cherbourg.”
-Hamilton, Nigel. Monty, Master of the Battlefield 1942–1944.
As the British Official History points out, ‘Although he, (Montgomery), had made it clear to the CIGS (Alan Brooke) and the War Office that Goodwood was not an attempt to break out eastwards, he hoped it might appear so to the German command’. ‘It will be seen later,’ the account continues dryly, ‘that not only the Germans misread his intentions.’ It is certainly possible that Eisenhower never did understand the aims of Goodwood. In his report to the Combined Chiefs a year later, in July 1945, when the European war was over, Eisenhower states that the aim of Goodwood was ‘a drive across the Orne from Caen towards the south and south-east, exploiting in the direction of the Seine basin and Paris’ ... which is light years away from Montgomery’s oft-stated intentions. Moreover, the Goodwood offensive had kept the German eyes fixed in the east while the Cobra operation geared up in the west. A greater advance would have been better, but the strategic aims of the battle had in fact been achieved. Besides this seven-mile advance by six British and Canadian divisions in two days is as far as twelve US divisions had recently advanced towards St-Lô in seventeen days. …. The emerging fact is that Eisenhower simply did not understand Montgomery’s strategy.
— The Battle of Normandy 1944: by Robin Neillands
"I have never understood why Ike said in his dispatches that, when the British failed to break out towards Paris on the eastern flank. The Americans were able [to break out], because of our flexibility, to take it on, on our western flank. I have always thought that was an unfair criticism of Dempsey and the 2nd British Army."
- Field Marshall Montgomery (1959)
So much for the Germans winning Goodwood...
"My discussion today with the commanders in the Caen sector has afforded regrettable evidence in face of the enemy's complete command of the air there is no possibility that our strategy will counter-balance its truly annihilating effect unless we give up the field of battle. In spite of our intense efforts on this front, already heavily strained, will break. And once the enemy is in open country an orderly command will be hardly practicable in view of the insufficient mobility of our troops."
- Field Marshal Von Kluge in his dispatch to Hitler on the day Goodwood ended
"The acquisition of territory on the eastern flank of the beachhead in the Caen sector was not really important. What was important there was to draw the maximum number of German divisions, and especially the armour, into that flank. The acquisition of territory was important on the western flank [the US sector]." ...."an accusation drawn at me, that I ought to have taken Caen in the programme on D-Day! And we didn't. I didn't mind about that because....The air force would get very het up because I didn't go further down towards Falaise and get the ground suitable for airfields. I didn't bother about that, it would have meant enormous casualties in doing it and it wasn't necessary."
- Field Marshall Montgomery (1959)
The US forces were hopelessly slow getting into position for their brake out. If they had captured the the St.Lo-Periers road in the first week of D Day, British forces would not have faced so many German armoured units in the east, the greatest German concentration of armour in WW2, more that at Kursk.
"I could reply to that criticism [not taking Caen in the first few days] that on the American front the line from which the breakout was finally launched, was a line, the St.Lo-Periers road, should have been captured in the initial plan by the American First Army on D-Day plus 5, that was the 11th June. But they didn't actually capture it until the 18th July. But I have never returned the charge with that accusation. ...until now"
- Field Marshall Montgomery (1959)
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@ohgosh5892
A part of the exchange was that Britain would impart technology to the USA. The USA was way behind. Look at the Tizzard Mission: a-bomb, radar, proximity fuses, penicillin, jet engines, sonar, advanced supercharging, etc, etc. All given to the USA.
It was to be two-way. But little the USA developed they gave to the Brits. They would not tell the Brits about the Norden bomb site. Which was a ruse, as it was nothing special, so probably to keep up the ruse.
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There is a myth that the Germans were way ahead of the British in jet engines and planes in WW2, when the opposite is true. The WW2 German jet engines were extremely unreliable with low performances and very high fuel consumption. The German axial-flow turbojets never worked properly being developed up to 1953 by the French to obtain a usable engine. The French lost a lot of time playing around with the German engines, instead of working with the British. The French and Soviets after WW2 attempted to improve the German axial-flow engines largely failing.
The British in order to get a usable and reliable jet engine, with the technology of the time, went for a centrifugal design rather than the troublesome axial-flow design. This design produced less thrust than an axial-flow but was quicker to develop and reliable. It took 5 months to develop, while the first reliable axial-flow engine was the 1950 Rolls Royce Avon, which took 5 years to get right.
In 1945 the French made and tested some German designed turbo jets made with quality steel unavailable to German industry in WW2. They ran for 25 hours instead of 10 hours to the Germans engines that used poor quality steel. Not much better. The German axial-flow engines failed because of heavy design faults. The centrifugal compressor used by the first British Meteor plane was fine being much more reliable, but unable to reach high compression ratios. This limited performances. Centrifugal compressors were used up to the 1960s.
In 1945 the team from the French ATAR laboratory plus some BMW and Junkers engineers, were engaged by the French SNECMA research bureau, with the objective to built a new reliable with performance axial-flow turbojet. The BMW 003/Jumo004 was considered unusable. It was tested on the first French jet aircraft, the 1946 So6000 Triton, overheating and exploding. The plane only flew with a Rolls Royce Nene centrifugal turbojet.
The ATAR project took 6 years to produce the first acceptable axial-flow turbojet (ATAR 101 B1), produced in 1953. So eight years research & developments by the French using the German jet engines as the base. It was installed on the first French jet fighter, the Dassault Ouragan.
The French lost a lot of time because the German jets had poor efficiency with some concept fails. Essentially in the combustion chambers and fresh air circulation to reduce the external temperature of the engine. The BMW jet was known for overheat problems which precluded fuselage installation.
The question at the end of WW2 was what is the most efficient way to produce jet fighters. The answer is clearly not adopting the German design of engine and fuselage. The build costs for a jet engine were much higher than a piston engine, with the fuel consumption near 3x. The centrifugal compressor the British adopted in some planes was the best choice with 1944-45 technology, more compression pressure was not an advantage when the hot turbine was unable to resist higher temperatures. The German turbojets had big overheat problems as the engine would not work in an enclosed fuselage for single engined fighters. This defect was immediately noted by the French on the 1946 "SO 6000 Triton" prototype, and by the Soviets on the 1946 Mig 9. The Soviets quickly replaced the BMW 004B2 by the centrifugal Rolls Royce Nene which worked without problems, dismissing the BMW engine for fighter planes.
The Rolls Royce Nene was copied to the last nut by the USSR being installed in the Mig 15 being used effectively in the Korean war. About 10 years ago the USSR eventually paid royalties to Rolls Royce.
The Meteor was the first proper fully developed jet plane introduced. The 262 was slightly faster than the Meteor F3, but extremely unreliable. The British would never put into the sky such an undeveloped plane as the me262. the Me262 and Meteor were leagues apart in safety and reliability. The British could have had a jet fighter operational in 1941, but it would have been as bad as the me262.
The Germans advanced R&D on jets after they interrogated captured British RAF men. They learned the British were advanced in jet technology actually flying prototype planes. Until then the Germans had no intention of mass producing jet planes.
The rushed together Me262 started claiming kills on 26 July 1944. However the supposed kill was a Mosquito reconnaissance plane that had a fuselage cap blown off in a quick fast manoeuvre, which flew on landing in Italy. The Meteor claimed its first V1 kill a few days later on the 4 August 1944. But the Meteor was a proper fully developed jet plane, not a thrown together desperate effort as the me262 was. The me262 fuselage was similar to a piston plane with the pilot over the wings obscuring downward vision, while the Meteor was a proper new design fuselage specifically for jet fighters with a forward of the wings pilot position with superior vision, as we see today. The cockpit was very quiet. The high tail was not to impede the rear jet thrust. The sweptback wings of the me262 were to move the engines further back for better weight distribution, not for aerodynamic reasons as is thought the case. The 262 balancing problem would be exasperated when firing the guns as the weight of the bullets exiting suddenly made the the air-frame unbalanced.
There were five turbojet engines in the UK under R&D in WW2:
▪ Centrifugal, by Whittle (Rover);
▪ Centrifugal, by Frank Halford (DeHaviland);
▪ Axial-flow, by Metro-Vick;
▪ Axial-flow by Griffiths (Rolls Royce);
▪ Axial flow compressor, with reverse flow combustion chambers. The ASX by Armstrong Siddley;
Metro-Vick sold their jet engine division to Armstrong Siddley. The Metro-Vick engine transpired into the post war Sapphire. Most American engines in the 1940s/50s were of UK design, many made under licence. The US licensed the J-42 (RR Nene) and J-48 (RR Tay), being virtually identical to the British engines. US aircraft used licensed British engines powering the: P-59, P-80, T-33, F9F Panther, F9F-6 Cougar, FJ Fury 3 and 4, Martin B-57 Canberra, F-94 Starfire, A4 Skyhawk and the A7 Corsair.
The US General Electric J-47 turbojet was developed by General Electric in conjunction with Metropolitan Vickers of the UK, who had already developed a 9-stage axial-flow compressor engine licensing the design to Allison in 1944 for the earlier J-35 engine first flying in May 1948. The centrifugal Rolls Royce Nene is one of the highest production jet engines in history with over 50,000 built.
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When Gavin was told at 6.00 p.m. than no attempt had been made to move to the Nijmegen bridge. He hit the ceiling. He should have ensured his men were moving to the bridge right after landing - he never, he assumed they were. Gavin ordered coln Lindquist to move some of the 508th to the bridge. By the time they move on the bridge, only about 40 of them, it was after 8.00 p.m. It was too late by then, as the 10th SS infantry had poured south over the bridge occupying the bridge and town.
If the 82nd secured the bridge immediately
they would have secured Nijmegen town. They would have fanned out to the north of the bridge maintaining a bridgehead, keeping the 10th SS at bay, until XXX Corps arrived. The 10th SS would have been isolated between the two bridges on the `island`, with any supplies coming via the slow, and small, ferry further east.
The bridge was not defended. No trenches, barbed wire,
cannons, nothing. Just 19 second rate guards on it. Even if 40 men had moved to the bridge immediately they would have walked on it. The German guards would be no match for the well trained 82nd men outnumbered 2 to 1.
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Prof Adam Tooze, Wages of Destruction
Page 371.
The German army that invaded France in May 1940 was far from being a carefully honed weapon of modern armoured warfare. Of Germany's 93 combat ready divisions on May 10 1940, only 9 were Panzer divisions, with a total of 2.438 tanks between them. These units faced a French army that was more heavily motorised, with 3,254 tanks in total.
....Half the German tanks that invaded the west were armed only with a machinegun!! The German Army was not on equal footing with the French when in fact it was vastly inferior.
Tooze, page 371/372.
Nor should one accept unquestioningly the popular idea that the concentration of the Germans tanks in specialised tank divisions gave them a decisive advantage. Many French tanks were scattered amongst the infantry units, but with their ample stock of vehicles the French could afford to do this. The bulk of France's best tanks were concentrated in armoured units, that, on paper at least, were every bit a match for the Panzer divisions.
Page 378
if Allied bombers had penetrated the German fighter screen over the Ardennes they could have wreaked havoc amongst the slow moving traffic with highly inflammable fuel tankers were interspersed with the fighting vehicles at the very front with the armoured fighting vehicles. The plan called for the German armoured columns to drive for three days and nights without interruption.
.....The drivers were put on speed pills.
Page 380
because it involved such a concentrated use of force, Manstein's plan was a one-shot affair. If the initial assault had failed, and it could have failed in many ways, the Wehrmacht as an offensive force would have been spent. The gamble paid off. But contrary to appearances, the Germans had not discovered a patent recipe for military miracles. The overwhelming success of May 1940, resulting in the defeat of a major European military power in a matter of weeks, was not a repeatable outcome.
Tooze, page 373:
In retrospect, it suited neither the Allies nor the Germans to expose the amazingly haphazard course through which the Wehrmacht had arrived at its most brilliant military success. The myth of the Blitzkrieg suited the British and French because it provided an explanation other than military incompetence for their pitiful defeat. But whereas it suited the Allies to stress the alleged superiority of German equipment, Germany's own propaganda viewed the Blitzkrieg in less materialistic terms.
Tooze page 380:
In both campaigns [France and Barbarossa], the Germans gambled on achieving decisive success in the opening phases of the assault. Anything less spelled disaster.
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@adrianseanheidmann4559
Land values are created by the surrounding community, not the land owner. Can be reclaimed by Land Value Tax, which can eliminate income tax and eliminate harmful land speculation (which caused a world-wide economic crash in 2008/09. Income tax is a a bad tax, a penalty on production: work, effort, labour.
The air over our heads can, and is, charged to use, we also have the electromagnetic spectrum, the seas and sea beds. All resources: fish, oil, gas, ores, etc, are common as they come from nature and out of our sovereign land. The proceeds should go into common coffers - they do not.
Easy when you look around. Land Value Tax would be the prime source of revenue for the Treasury.
No tax, no paperwork. Just set up business, no hounds from the Taxman pestering you.
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The service speeds of the 262 in combat was around 515 mph while RR Griffon powered Spitfires in 1944 could reach up to 480 mph, only 35 mph less. The 262 had poor maneuverability and control issues at high speeds at around 550 mph resulting in the tail surfaces locking driving the plane into the ground. The pilots were instructed not to go over 450 mph. The engines would stall if the throttles were opened too fast - a major flaw. The minor sweep of the Me 262's wing was never designed with the intention to gain high speed, it was to gain balance when fitting the engines. The inboard wings were almost straight with the outer wings swept.
The Meteor and 262 were major advances in technology at the time, but it's important to know what stood out. The Germans were facing fuel shortages in mid 1944. Their supplies of aviation fuel were cut off by the Soviets in the east. Without an adequate supply of aviation fuel the Luftwaffe's BF109, and FW190's would become useless. Germany had lots of coal mastering the manufacturing of J2 synthetic fuel which was suitable for jet engine use. The Luftwaffe invested in jet fighters and bombers from 1944 onwards as they had little option.
In the UK the advantages of jet engines were well known, yet propeller aircraft made in massive volumes were more than suitable, so the development of jet aircraft was never seen as vital to the war effort. Whittle's design was taken by the government so any other designer or company could use for their own designs leading to centrifugal flow engines by other companies like Rolls Royce, De Haviland as well as Whittle's Power Jets. Metropolitan Vickers were working on axial flow turbojets first running in 1940, with multiple types produced during the war for use in high speed launches and gensets.
There were five turbojet engines in the UK under R&D in WW2:
1) Centrifugal, by Whittle (Rover);
2) Centrifugal, by Frank Halford (DeHaviland);
3) Axial-flow, by Metro-Vick;
4) Axial-flow by Griffiths (Rolls Royce);
5) Axial flow compressor, with reverse flow combustion chambers. The ASX by Armstrong Siddeley;
The Metropolitan Vickers designs were test flown in 1942 producing more thrust than anything Germany produced with a longer service life. The axial-flow were more expensive compared to the centrifugal designs with still development problems to solve, so being funded by the government they were never selected for any aircraft with cost being one of the rejection points. Metropolitan Vickers produced the first successful turbofan engines rated double anything Germany ever produced during the war. Also the turboprop engine found large-scale use post war because of its excellent fuel consumption.
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I posted this on this thread. You missed it:
References: It Never Snows in September by Robert Kershaw, The Battle For The Rhine by Robin Neilands, Reflect on Things Past by Peter Carington and the best, Market Garden Then and Now by Karel Magry (a Dutchman).
The British went north to eliminate the V rocket launching sites in Holland which were aimed at London, protect the vital port of Antwerp and ensure the Soviets did not reach the North Sea coast.
The object of Market Garden was to form the northern end of a pincer with British forces at the German border, with the southern end of the pincer the US forces already in Belgium. The pincer was to close on the vital Ruhr. Good plan. Strangle the Ruhr which supplies all the German coal & steel and Germany is finished quickly. The operation was to use the British XXX Corps and the 1st Allied Airborne Army.
Market Garden was deemed a 90% success. A 60 mile salient was created into enemy territory isolating a German army in Holland, eliminating V rocket launching sites and protecting the port of Antwerp, the only port taken intact in the west. XXX Corps never relinquished any territory taken. The northern end of the salient was later used to launch forces into Germany. The 10% of failure was that Allied armies did not gain a foothold over the Rhine at Arnhem.
The operation plan was that the 1st Airborne Army would parachute drop and seize bridges from the Dutch/Belgium border up to Arnhem over the Rhine, with XXX Corps thrusting through to Arnhem over the captured bridges. The most northern large bridge was to be secured by British airborne units at Arnhem, the US 82nd would seize the large Nijmegen bridge and other small bridges and the US 101st Airborne seize smaller bridges to the south.
The reason for not achieving 100% success in the operation was completely down to the failure of the 82nd Airborne in not seizing the Nijmegen bridge on the first day they dropped into Nijmegen. Their prime objective. All bridges were seized on the first day, except the Nijmegen bridge. The man responsible was General Gavin. The 101st Airborne failed to take the bridge at Son in the south of Holland. XXX Corps built a Bailey bridge which delayed the advance for 12 hours. XXX Corps made up the time reaching Nijmegen pretty well ahead of schedule being disappointed at seeing the bridge still in German hands with the 82nd still fighting in and around the town. The 82nd had made no real attempt to seize the bridge.
The 82nd had no part in the eventual seizure of the bridge at all, as it was taken in the dark by the British XXX Corps tanks and Irish Guards infantry. The Irish Guards cleared out 180 Germans from the bridge girders. Initially Only 4 tanks crossed the bridge with two being damaged - one tank came latter. So, only 2 combat ready tanks were initially available on the north side of the bridge. Strangely, Gavin's plan was to take one of Europe's largest road bridges only from one end.
The film A Bridge Too Far has Robert Redford (playing Colonel Tucker) as one of the 82nd men taking the vital road bridge after rowing the river in canvas boats. This never happened. The 82nd played no part in seizing the bridge counter to what Moffat Burriss stated. The few tanks were to secure the north end of the bridge after seizing, not to run off to Arnhem in the dark leaving the bridge vulnerable to Germans counter-attack. The Irish Guards infantry advanced no further than the immediate vicinity of the bridge that night.
Sergeant Peter Robinson, of the of the Guards Armored Division led the charge over the Nijmegen road bridge in his Firefly tank, stated:
"The Nijmegen bridge wasn’t taken [by the 82nd] which was our objective.
We were being engaged all the time. Just as I got round the corner and turned right I saw these helmets duck in a ditch and run, and gave them a burst of machine gun fire. I suddenly realised they were Americans."
"Well, my orders were to collect the American colonel who was in a house a little way back, and the first thing he said to me was "I have to surrender"
"Well I said, 'I'm sorry. My orders are to hold this bridge. I've only got two tanks available but if you'd like to give me ground support for a little while until we get some more orders then we can do it. He said he couldn’t do it, so I said that he had better come back to my wireless and talk to General Horrocks because before I started the job I had freedom of the air. Everybody was off the air except myself because they wanted a running commentary about what was going on - So he came over and had a pow-wow with Horrocks. The colonel said 'Oh very well’ and I told him where I wanted the men, but of course you can't consolidate a Yank and they hadn’t been there ten minutes before they were on their way again."
Those 82nd men wanted to surrender! And never gave support which was what they were there to do.
Captain Lord Carrington's own autobiography entitled 'Reflect on Things Past':
"My recollection of this meeting is different. Certainly I met an American officer [Moffatt Burriss] but he was perfectly affable and agreeable. As I said the Airborne were all very glad to see us and get some support, no one suggested we press on to Arnhem. This whole allegation is bizarre, just to begin with I was a captain and second-in-command of my squadron so I was in no position either to take orders from another captain or depart from my own orders which were to take my tanks across the bridge, join up with the US Airborne and form a bridgehead. This story is simple lunacy and this exchange did not take place."
"A film representation of this incident has shown American troops as having already secured the far end of the bridge. That is mistaken - probably the error arose from the film-maker's confusion of two bridges, there was a railway bridge with planks placed between the rails and used by the Germans for [light] road traffic, to the west of the main road bridge we crossed"
The meeting of the 82nd men and the Guards tanks was 1 km north of the bridge in the village of Lent under a small railway bridge over a road. The 82nd men did not reach the north end of the actual target, the road bridge, the Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry got there first from the south.
Historians get confused. There are two bridges at Nijmegen, a railway bridge to the west and and road bridge to the east. They are about 1km apart. The 82nd men rowed the river west of the railway bridge made their way north following the railway embankment for cover. They reached the village of Lent where the railway embankment meets the road approach to the main road bridge. There is a small railway bridge over the road at this point. This is the bridge the 82nd men seized. The railway and road bridges over the Waal were seized by British troops.
Heinz Harmel (played by Hardy Kruger in the film A Bridge Too Far), the 10th SS Panzer Division commander who was between Arnhem and Nijmegen, says it was the British tanks that raced across seizing the bridge. Harmel did not know that three Tiger tanks that had crossed the Arnhem bridge running south, with German communications disjointed. Harmel stated that there was little German armour between Nijmegen and Arnhem. That was not correct. The three powerful Tiger tanks would have made scrap metal out of the British Shermans. As the Guards' tanks crossed Nijmegen bridge Johnny Frost's British paras at the Arnhem bridge were being overrun because of the long delay in seizing the Nijmegen bridge.
Tanks running to Arnhem would have been sitting ducks on the raised road. The Guards tanks were split up and spread out over 20 miles, supporting the 82nd all over Nijmegen.
Nor did the 82nd take the southern end of the main road bridge in Nijmegen town. Lt Col Vandervoort of the 82nd was in the southern approaches to the bridge, alongside the Grenadier Guards tanks. Vandervoort's men never ventured onto the bridge. They remained at the southern approaches to the bridge with the rest of the 82nd and the Irish Guards infantry watching the tanks speed over the bridge.
After 2 days fighting, split up, spread out and disjointed, the Guards Armoured Division had to regroup, re-arm and re-fuel. It was simply not possible for them to have moved onto Arnhem that night being spread out over 20 miles. The task the five tanks that crossed the bridge was to defend the bridge and consolidate against enemy attacks.
The prime objective, Nijmegen bridge was not captured on the 17th because there was a foul up in communication between General Gavin and Colonel Lindquist of the 508th PIR of the 82nd Airborne. Gavin allegedly verbally told Lindquist during the pre-drop talk to take a battalion of the 508th and make a quick strike to the bridge on the 17th and to "move without delay" but Lindquist understood it that Gavin had told him that his 508th should only move for the bridge once the 508th had secured the assigned 508th's portion of the defensive perimeter for the 82nd Division. So Lindquist didn't move his battalion towards the Nijmegen bridge until after this had been done, and by that time it was too late as the Germans had reinforced the bridge and were pouring troops over the bridge into Nijmegen.
Browning, joint head of the First Airborne Army, who parachuted into Nijmegen on day two, seeing the bridge untaken told General Gavin of the 82nd on the evening of 18th September that the Nijmegen bridge must be taken on the 19th, when XXX Corps were to arrive, or at the latest, very early on the 20th.
Gavin passed the buck, in an attempt to shift blame due to the fact that the 82nd totally failed to seize the Nijmegen road bridge. There task was to seize & defend the bridge preventing the Germans from taking it back. Gavin, and other Americans since, cast aspersions on the British tankers and XXX Corps.
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Midland Redux
Over 90,000 US casualties at the Bulge. Two US armies, the Ninth and the First had to be put under British command. Parts of the USAAF had to be put under Coningham of the RAF. The Anglo-American alliance was shaky, mainly because of green egotistical US generals, who were only colonels only a few years previously. Eisenhower lacked firm strategy and grip on his wayward generals. His broad-front strategy was a disaster. Only because the Germans lost a lot of men and equipment in the Bulge, allied armies would not have gotten over the Rhine until summer 1945. That is how bad Eisenhower was.
Monty, was a proven army group leader being a great success in North Africa and Normandy, which came in with 22% less than predicated casualties and ahead in territory taken at D-Day plus 90. Common sense dictates to keep Monty in charge of all ground operations, not give it to a political man like Eisenhower, who was only a colonel a few years previously and had never been in charge of any army directly, never mind three army groups. The longest advance in 1944/early 1945 was the 60 mile lightening four day advance by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem. Under Monty the allies moved 500 km in only three months from D-Day to September 1944. Under Eisenhower they barely moved 100 km in seven months from September 1944 March 1945.
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@agentmulder1019
Some facts for you. The British were the single biggest agents in the defeat of Nazi Germany. They were there from day one until the end. They did not enter because they attacked another country or were attacked. The so-called "invincible" Germans army tried and failed, with their allies, for two years in WW2 to defeat the British army in North Africa. The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery had to give the US armies an infantry role as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein
♦ March 1943 - Medenine
♦ June 1944 - Normandy
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British or US, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. The US Army were struggling in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months with over 50,000 casualties.
The Battle of the Bulge took all the US effort, with Montgomery in command of them and the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line, with nearly 100,000 casualties. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe. The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British with Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against the panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) and had to give them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn 1944/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
Then the ignored British naval blockade on the Axis economy, which was so successful the substantial Italian navy could never put to sea in full strength, or even at all on some occasions, because of a lack of oil. Then the British bomber offensive on the German economy, taking the war right into German cities, wiping out Hamburg in one night.
You need to give respect where it is due.
.
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@6handicap604
Patton was an average US general, like Simpson, Patch, Hodges, etc, no more. A study of his record shows this. He was a US media creation, elevating the average beyond their status.
"The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian First Army HQ for the same purpose.
Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation.
"This advance duly began at 0630hrs on August 18 which, as the Canadian Official History remarks, ‘was a day and a half after Montgomery had issued the order for the Canadians to close the gap at Trun, and four and a half days after Patton had been stopped at the Third Army boundary’. During that time, says the Canadian History, the Canadians had been ‘fighting down from the north with painful slowness’ and the Germans had been making their way east through the Falaise gap. They were not, however, unimpeded; the tactical air forces and Allied artillery were already taking a fearful toll of the German columns on the roads heading east past Falaise.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise – Operation Tractable – which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed there with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were re-fitting and rebuilt after the summer 1944 battles. The Panzer Brigades had green crews with little time to train, did not know their tanks properly, had no recon elements and didn't even meet their unit commander until his arrival at the front. These were not elite forces.
The 17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, equipped only with assault guns not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy and not up to strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the best German divisions in the west were NOT.
♦ Who did the 3rd Army engage?
♦ Who did the 3rd Army defeat?
♦ Patton never once faced a full strength Waffen SS panzer division nor a Tiger battalion.
In The Lorraine, the 3rd Army faced a rabble. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said:
"I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Patton was mostly facing a second rate rabble in The Lorraine.
Patton was neither on the advance nor being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. The road from Luxembourg to Bastogne saw few German forces, with Bastogne being on the very southern German flank, their focus was west. Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was not one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, while 26th Volks-Grenadier only had about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind only had a small number of tanks operational. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1.
Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Leading elements were engaging the Americans and British under Montgomery's command near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance and pushed them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons opened up with the American attack stopping and pulling back. The next day fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B retreating once again. It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. Patton's forces arrived at Chaumont late on the 22nd December. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day, the 25th! Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, just 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne.
In Normandy in 1944, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact. This eastern dash devoid of German forces was the ride the US media claimed Patton was some sort master of fast moving armour.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates.
♦ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics Bradley's II Corps were employing
♦ He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division, Truscott of being "afraid to fight".
♦ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps.
♦ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize stalled he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being "very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect".
♦ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in reporting their losses.
After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF. Coningham, gave Patton massive ground attack plane support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall. Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault, including his subordinates. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated. Oh, and wore cowboy guns.
Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his orders, and Eisenhower's orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read:
Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds and
Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies by Harry Yeide
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@6handicap604
1985 US Army report on the Lorraine Campaign.
Patton does not come out well.
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a211668.pdf
Combat Studies Institute. The Lorraine Campaign: An Overview, September-December 1944. by Dr. Christopher R. Gabel February, 1985
From the document is in italics:
Soldiers and generals alike assumed that Lorraine would fall quickly, and unless the war ended first, Patton's tanks would take the war into Germany by summer's end. But Lorraine was not to be overrun in a lightning campaign. Instead, the battle for Lorraine would drag on for more than 3 months." "Despite its proximity to Germany, Lorraine was not the Allies' preferred invasion route in 1944. Except for its two principal cities, Metz and Nancy, the province contained few significant military objectives." "Moreover, once Third Army penetrated the province and entered Germany, there would still be no first-rate military objectives within its grasp.
The Saar industrial region, while significant, was of secondary importance when compared to the great Ruhr industrial complex farther north."
Another Patton chase into un-needed territory, full of vineyards like he did when running his troops into Brittany.
"With so little going for it, why did Patton bother with Lorraine at all? The reason was that Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, made up his mind to destroy as many German forces as possible west of the Rhine."
In other words a waste of time.
"Communications Zone organized the famous Red Ball Express, a non-stop conveyor belt of trucks connecting the Normandy depots with the field armies."
They were getting fuel via 6,000 trucks.
"The simple truth was that although fuel was plentiful in Normandy, there was no way to transport it in sufficient quantities to the leading elements. On 31 August , Third Army received no fuel at all."
In short, Patton overran his supply lines. What was important was to secure the Port of Antwerp's approaches, which Eisenhower deprioritised. Montgomery approached the US leaders of the First Airborne Army who would not drop into the Scheldt.
"Few of the Germans defending Lorraine could be considered First-rate troops. Third Army encountered whole battalions made up of deaf men, others of cooks, and others consisting entirety of soldiers with stomach ulcers."
Some army the Americans were going to fight
"Was the Lorraine campaign an American victory? From September through November, Third Army claimed to have inflicted over 180,000 casualties on the enemy. But to capture the province of Lorraine, a problem which involved an advance of only 40 to 60 air miles, Third Army required over 3 months and suffered 50,000 casualties, approximately one-third of the total number of casualties it sustained in the entire European war."
The US Army does not think it was a victory. Huge losses for taking unimportant territory, against a poor German army.
"Ironically, Third Army never used Lorraine as a springboard for an advance into Germany after all. Patton turned most of the sector over to Seventh Army during the Ardennes crisis, and when the eastward advance resumed after the Battle of the Bulge, Third Army based its operations on Luxembourg, not Lorraine. The Lorraine campaign will always remain a controversial episode in American military history."
It's getting worse. One third of all European casualties in Lorraine and never used the territory to move into Germany.
"Finally the Lorraine Campaign demonstrated that Logistics often drive operations, no matter how forceful and aggressive the commanding general may be." "Patton violated tactical principles" "His discovered that violating logistical principles is an unforgiving and cumulative matter."
Not flattering at all. And Americans state Patton was the best general they had. Bradley stated later:
“Patton was developing as an unpopular guy. He steamed about with great convoys of cars and great squads of cameramen … To George, tactics was simply a process of bulling ahead. Never seemed to think out a campaign. Seldom made a careful estimate of the situation. I thought him a shallow commander … I disliked the way he worked, upset tactical plans, interfered in my orders. His stubbornness on amphibious operations, parade plans into Messina sickened me and soured me on Patton. We learned how not to behave from Patton’s Seventh Army.”
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@Robert53area
Oh no! Another one get s his history from Hollywood. Monty moved over 1,000 km in 17 days from El Alemein to Tunisia taking a quarter of a million POWs - more than at Stalingrad. How slow do you want it?
The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans at every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein
♦ March 1943 - Medenine
♦ June 1944 - Normandy
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Montgomery moved over 1,000 km in 17 days from El Alemein to Tunisia, the fastest advance for such a distance in WW2. The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 Lorraine casualties. Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
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@knightblade0188
The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British under Montgomery. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa;
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein;
♦ March 1943 - Medenine;
♦ June 1944 - Normandy;
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands;
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge;
A list of Montgomery’s victories in WW2:
♦ Battle of Alam Halfa;
♦ Second Battle of El Alamein;
♦ Battle of El Agheila;
♦ Battle of Medenine;
♦ Battle of the Mareth Line;
♦ Battle of Wadi Akarit;
♦ Allied invasion of Sicily;
♦ Operation Overlord - the largest amphibious invasion in history;
♦ Market Garden - a 60 mile salient created into German territory;
♦ Battle of the Bulge - while taking control of two shambolic US armies;
♦ Operation Veritable;
♦ Operation Plunder.
Montgomery not once had a reverse.
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Monty's 8th Army advanced the fastest of any army in WW2. From El Alamein to El Agheila from the 4th to 23rd November 1942, 1,300 km in just 17 days. After fighting a major exhausting battle at El Alemein through half a million mines. This was an Incredible feat, unparalleled in WW2. With El Alamein costing just 13,500 casualties.
The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties, with the Lorraine campaign being a failure.
Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties. Hodges, head of the US First army, fled from Spa to near Liege on the 18th, despite the Germans never getting anywhere near to Spa. Hodges did not even wait for the Germans to approach Spa. He had already fled long before the Germans were stopped. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British, with Montgomery involved in planning, with also Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
You need to give some respect where it is due.
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@standriggs2420
The Mustang was basically a British plane made by an American manufacturer for them. The British Air Ministry directed a six year old inexperienced company, North American Aviation, to the design points they wanted for their plane. British engineers assisted North American who drew it up, as a university lecturer would do in directing students to research various points in a project. The students run off do the research with the lecturer assessing what they did and how it fits into the project as a whole. The Mustang was a British plane made by an American company for them. There was no US forces involvement in the concept, specifications or design. Many Americans lose sight of these fundamental points.
The Rolls Royce Merlin engine made the Mustang perform superbly. The plane initially used an Allison engine, which was only good at low level, as RR could not meet the supply of Merlins at the time, so the Alison it had to be. The US were behind the British in engine supercharging with the Tizard Mission giving the USA details of advanced super charging. Also the cylinder head design of the Alison was not good enough for full supercharging. Stanley Hooker of RR developed the auto controlled twin-speed twin-charger supercharging technology which was given free to the USA. The first use of the Mustang by the US military was for ground attack because of the poor high level performance of the Allison engine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by4lH2whhjk
In the early stages of WW2, the U.S. government allowed the British & French to by-pass them, allowing direct approaches to U.S. aircraft makers, as would the British government approach say Hawker. The British needed all types of planes urgently, even the P-40 which was inferior to their own front line planes. But warplanes they were, being useful in certain theatres and for training.
In early February 1940 the British asked North American Aviation's President Dutch Kindelberger to supply P-40s made under licence from Curtiss, as Curtiss could not supply demand. Unlike Curtiss, North American's factory was far from operating at capacity. Kindelberger told the British, "I can build you a better airplane, and I can get it built fast". Contrary to popular belief in the USA, North American did not have a prototype ready design which the Brits just happened to have snapped up under the noses of the US military. The design was developed over many months with British engineers at the British Air MInistry's office in New York.
North American were first approached in Feb 1940, who had no "detailed drawings or plans". The British gave this young inexperienced company a chance but they would have to hold their hands. In May 1940 as France was falling, North American still never presented any detailed plans, mailing a design concept drawings to the British delegation in New York. This never had the famed laminar flow wings. After back and forth, the Air Ministry accepted the design starting the Mustang project. The British Air Ministry accepted the inferior Allison engine as Rolls Royce were working flat out 24/7 unable to meet demand for Merlins. New Merlin factories were being set up but not yet fully on-line.
In the interim from Feb to May, three months, the British Air Ministry were forming the fundamentals of the design concepts directing North American to Curtiss and NACA the developer of the laminar flow wings, to ensure a fighter with some leading edge design points, not produce another P-40 fly-alike wasting valuable time. The Air Ministry directed NAA to the Curtiss XP-46 experimental plane with all the leading edge design points of top European designs, with a few of their own, rolled into one.
NAA were ordered by the British Air Ministry to buy the plans and test results of the XP-46 plane from Curtiss and study them as they had never built a fighter, if they wanted the job, at a whopping $56,000, a lot of money at the time. Curtiss engineers always said the Mustang was their design. Not quite as the British Air Ministry had a lot to say in the leading design points - they were paying and calling the shots as it was their plane. There was a danger the Mustang may end up the same way as the XP-46 - a plane with leading edge points that never performed as expected in one package. The British Air Ministry took a major gamble with NAA so were active in approving the emerging design points.
The Ministry wanted something better than the poor P-40, being prepared to wait, but realistically never expected Spitfire performance. Initially that was the case with the first deliveries using the Allison engine - better than a P-40 but no Spitfire. The initial Allison engined Mustangs filled an RAF niche, so no problems for the British at that point. A niche the plane filled was that the RAF needed a long range reconnaissance plane that could also perform ground attack being able as a low level fighter if the need was there. The Spitfire was a short range fast interceptor. With the fall of France the RAF needed a plane with range to penetrate over the German border from English air bases.
Reading many US books on the Mustang you would think the concept of the plane was to escort US bombers. That is fanciful. The last thing the British Air Ministry were thinking of when laying down the points of the plane was US bomber doctrine. The US were not even in the war. Initially the US military overall didn't want to know the plane. The Mustang was not even in U.S. service when it was shooting down FW-190s by the RAF over France. The Air Ministry gave the U.S. military two planes which were left in the corner of a hangar for a long period, initially not assessing it. Quite amazing, as the USA never had a decent front line fighter at the time.
The excuse not to take up the plane by U.S. forces was that it was liquid cooled and vulnerable in frontal attack. This was a poor excuse to reject the plane because it wasn't theirs. What went over their heads was that the world's two best fighters locked horns in the Battle of Britain, both with liquid cooled engines. With British support, the Mustang finally was noticed by the U.S. Army Air Force. The US military had to go to England to fully assess the plane as it was finished off in Liverpool being flow by the RAF. They did eventually adopt the Mustang calling it the Apache and P-51 when in U.S. service.
UK and U.S. Mustangs for the European war theatre were finished off in Liverpool. They were test flown then delivered to the units by young English girls, many of them teenagers. The Mustang was built to British specification and design guidance without a doubt. They specified and paid for it. It never performed at all like the short range interceptor the Spitfire, not having the manoeuvrability of the Spitfire. It was 'fine' and reasonably fast at low altitude with the Allison engine. It could operate over France and even Germany at a push, escorting bombers because of the longer range that the British Air Ministry specified. The Mustang filled a niche role for the British. continued......
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The Guards tanks seized the Nijmegen road bridge. Not one US soldier was on the bridge when seized.
U.S. 82nd Division records state that the first troop of British tanks, four of them, crossed the Waal road bridge at 1830 hours. Two tanks were hit with the crews taken POW bar one, Sgt Knight. The tanks charged across at full speed approaching 30 mph firing against German guns all the way, with a few hundred high in the girders. Gunner Leslie Johnson in the lead tank said: “They were falling like nine-pins. The incoming fire was so heavy that I swear to this day that Jesus Christ rode on the front of our tank. The Germans were so close that I didn’t bother to look through my sights. We could feel the tracks going over them as we shot them down, and there was blood and gore all over the tank.”
Once the two leading tanks of Pacey and Robinson got past the bridge obstacles at the northern end, Pacey stopped. The War Office report states: “At this point, Pacey stopped, he was not sure where to go as no Americans were seen, so Sergeant Robinson passed him and led on. Much to their surprise, they could not see any Americans so having passed through the concrete chicane they pushed on. Having crossed the road bridge, the four tanks moved down the northern embankment, where they destroyed another anti tank gun. Robinson and Pacey found themselves in a running battle against more guns, and against German infantry who poured out of the church in Lent, and then 1,500 yards further down the road from the bridge, where the main road goes under the railway line, contact was at last made with some Americans, both were very happy to see each other."
The 82nd men at Lent reached Lent following the railway embankment from the riverbank using it for cover. The first American troops that arrived at the bridge approaches/waterside after moving along the riverbank from their river landing point with Burriss’ company of about sixteen men, was at 1915 hours. 45 minutes. after the first tanks had already crossed. This was not the main bridge span, just the raised approach road over land. Official U.S. records confirm that 82nd troops from the 504th arrived at the northern road bridge approaches at 1938 hours. This would be the time they arrived in any real strength to consolidate, one hour 8 mins after the first tank crossed. The records state at 1938 hours:
“All seemed quiet at this point, with the enemy disorganised and in great confusion, suffering heavy losses. Prior to the physical occupation of the northern end of the bridge by 504th PIR, eight British light tanks had [already] crossed. Two of these were destroyed just north of the bridge”. The second troop of tanks crossed at least half an hour after the first. Capt Burris of the 82nd was there under the approach road when the second troop rolled over, thinking they were the first tanks over. Lord Carington's tank was one of them. Five rolled over the bridge, with two hit, being there to consolidate the bridgehead and ensure the Germans did not take the bridge back.
Horrock of XXX Corps in his plan had the 43 Wessex infantry to seize the ground from Nijmegen bridge to Arnhem, destroying anti-tank weapons. It was not tank country. The tanks were to follow behind the infantry. The tanks would have been sitting ducks if they went first. The 43rd Wessex were to do the river crossing in two columns. There was a contingency planned if the bridge was blown. The Wessex were to use dedicated assault boats, which they had in Nijmegen, and DUKW and Buffalo amphibious craft. But to save face as they failed to seize the bridge, Gavin of the 82nd pestered Horrocks for his men to do the crossing, Horrocks agreed. It appears that the 82nd did not know of the Buffalo amphibious craft using collapsible bridge engineers boats to cross the Waal. Or the Wessex did not want to give them fearing the valuable craft would be lost with an 82nd river assault failure - that needs more research.
Not one 82nd man was on the bridge when the first troop of four tanks crossed at 1830, or at 1915 when the second troop of four went over. Official XXX Corps records from the War Office highlight that the successful tank attack on the road bridge was at 1830 hours.
Thirty-four machine guns, an 88mm gun, and two 20mm cannons were found to be on the road bridge itself, and at least six anti-tank guns and a few 88mm guns were situated around the northern end.
All this nonsense of drinking tea by the British tankers disinterested in the battle seems to have started as an American diversion, after inquiries by the Official US historian Charles MacDonald into why the Nijmegen bridges were not taken on the first day.
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@winoodlesnoodles1984
1985 US Army report on the Lorraine Campaign.
Patton does not come out well at all.
Combat Studies Institute.
The Lorraine Campaign: An Overview, September-December 1944.
by Dr. Christopher R. Gabel
February, 1985
From the document is in italics:
Soldiers and generals alike assumed that Lorraine would fall quickly, and unless the war ended first, Patton's tanks would take the war into Germany by summer's end. But Lorraine was not to be overrun in a lightning campaign. Instead, the battle for Lorraine would drag on for more than 3 months."
"Despite its proximity to Germany, Lorraine was not the Allies' preferred invasion route in 1944. Except for its two principal cities, Metz and Nancy, the province contained few significant military objectives." "Moreover, once Third Army penetrated the province and entered Germany, there would still be no first-rate military objectives within its grasp.
The Saar industrial region, while significant, was of secondary importance when compared to the great Ruhr industrial complex farther north."
Another Patton chase into un-needed territory, full of vineyards like he did when running his troops into Brittany.
"With so little going for it, why did Patton bother with Lorraine at all?
In other words a waste of time.
"Communications Zone organized the famous Red Ball Express, a non-stop conveyor belt of trucks connecting the Normandy depots with the field armies."
They were getting fuel via 6,000 trucks.
"The simple truth was that although fuel was plentiful in Normandy, there was no way to transport it in sufficient quantities to the leading elements. On 31 August , Third Army received no fuel at all."
In short, Patton overran his supply lines. What was important was to secure the Port of Antwerp's approaches, which Eisenhower deprioritised. Montgomery approached the US leaders of the First Airborne Army who would not drop into the Scheldt.
"Few of the Germans defending Lorraine could be considered First-rate troops. Third Army encountered whole battalions made up of deaf men, others of cooks, and others consisting entirety of soldiers with stomach ulcers."
Some army Patton wasere going to fight
"Was the Lorraine campaign an American victory? From September through November, Third Army claimed to have inflicted over 180,000 casualties on the enemy. But to capture the province of Lorraine, a problem which involved an advance of only 40 to 60 air miles, Third Army required over 3 months and suffered 50,000 casualties, approximately one-third of the total number of casualties it sustained in the entire European war."
The US Army does not think it was a victory. Huge losses for taking unimportant territory, against a poor German army.
"Ironically, Third Army never used Lorraine as a springboard for an advance into Germany after all. Patton turned most of the sector over to Seventh Army during the Ardennes crisis, and when the eastward advance resumed after the Battle of the Bulge, Third Army based its operations on Luxembourg, not Lorraine. The Lorraine campaign will always remain a controversial episode in American military history."
It's getting worse. One third of all European casualties in Lorraine and never used the territory to move into Germany.
Not flattering at all. And many Americans state Patton was the best general they had. Bradley stated later:
“Patton was developing as an unpopular guy. He steamed about with great convoys of cars and great squads of cameramen … To George, tactics was simply a process of bulling ahead. Never seemed to think out a campaign. Seldom made a careful estimate of the situation. I thought him a shallow commander … I disliked the way he worked, upset tactical plans, interfered in my orders. His stubbornness on amphibious operations, parade plans into Messina sickened me and soured me on Patton. We learned how not to behave from Patton’s Seventh Army.”
Patton was not advancing or being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. Bastogne was on the very southern German flank, their left flank, their focus being west. The strategic significance of the stand at Bastogne is over exaggerated. The 18,000 inside of artillery, armour and infantry, did not change the course of the battle. The German's bypassed Bastogne, placing a containment force around the town. It was not worth them tying up men for the place.
Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory, with the road from Luxembourg to Bastogne having few German forces. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was far from being one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, 26th Volks-Grenadier having about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind with a small number of operational tanks. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1. Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance pushing them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons stopped the American attack who pulled back. The next day, fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B again retreating. It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day. Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne. After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF, who gave Patton massive ground attack support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall. US historian Roger Cirillo said, "Patton launched attack, after attack, after attack, after attack, that failed. Because he never waited to concentrate".
The 18,000 men in Bastogne pretty well walked out, even the commander of the US 101st stated that. The Germans had vacated the area heading west.
Decades later, Eisenhower recalled how Patton would telephone with frustrating progress reports, saying: “General, I apologize for my slowness. This snow is God-awful. I’m sorry.”
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Pre WW2 Britain was on two paths:
1) The axial-flow air compressor by Griffiths;
2) The centrifugal air compressor by Whittle.
Griffiths' 1926 seminal paper laid down axial-flow. His paper actually outlined a turbo prop. He did not believe at the time the engines could produce enough thrust, but could turn a propeller. He got Metrovick to develop an axial-flow turbojet in 1938, who started the groundwork of the F.2 axial-flow in 1940, having an engine first spin in 1940, with a successful test bed spin in 1941. Whittle's patent was in 1930, which laid down the turbojet. All this info was available to the Germans.
Whittle went for centrifugal, as it was a simpler way of compressing air. Whittle wanted a simple air compressor to establish his turbo jet design quickly. In short, he was interested more in establishing the back end of the engine, the thrust, rather than the front. Once the back end was perfected then he could improve the front, the air compression. This was the sensible approach. The centrifugal compressor was perfectly adequate to prove the rear thrust side of the engine.
As post war engines proved, the centrifugal was taken to higher limits. Axial-flow compression was a series of turbine fans on one shaft, with successive fans passing air to the next fan to increase air compression as air went along the compressor. This added complexity in many ways.
Griffiths went for the more complex axial-flow. He also laid down a contra-rotating compressor, but Metrovick did not go down that path. The more powerful F.2 was used to fly the Meteor plane but considered unreliable at that stage, so Whittle's centrifugal engine was used. The F.2 was more reliable than the German Jumo, but the British would never put a plane in the air with such an unreliable under-developed engine. Wiggin in Birmingham were commissioned to develop high temperature resistant alloys as the jet engines were being developed. The Germans had no such programme. The F.2 ended up as the post war Sapphire being built under licence in the USA as the J65, powering the: Douglas A-4 Skyhawk, Grumman F-11 Tiger, Martin B-57 and the Republic F-84F Thunderstreak.
It took the French a wasted eight years to get the German design reliable, which by that time they had discarded many of the German engine concepts. The French airliner, the Sud Aviation Caravelle, used Rolls Royce Avon engines the French engines, based on German designs, were so good.
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Hale Hardy
Caen was a nice to have objective, not essential. Operation Goodwood's focus was not specifically tanks, as the Germans had five lines of defence with dug in 88mm's and heavy Tiger and fast Panther tanks for mobility. Goodwood was mostly 'not' bocage but open ground more suitable for tank battles, where the German long range 88mm's would be at an advantage.
Monty's plan was not for British forces to take territory. He specifically wanted to draw in German armour onto British forces to grind them up to keeping them away from the US forces for them to break out (Operation Cobra). That was even stated at St.Paul's school in Fulham in the D-Day planning. To do that he was confident British armour could match German armour - US armour would struggle or most likely be overwhelmed, why the US forces were assigned a primarily infantry role by Montgomery. A 12 mile sector around Caen saw more concentrated German armour in all of WW2, the same as Kursk in around 12 miles, while Kursk was spread over 50 miles. British armour had to run straight at the German armoured lines. On the right flank was US forces and the left flank a canal. Right through them with no flanking actions was the only way. Goodwood was not British forces taking territory, as Monty's plan was for the US forces to do that, Monty specifically states this here in this link in an interview with Edward R Murrow. Transcript....
"The acquisition of territory on the eastern flank of the beachhead in the Caen sector was not really important. What was important there was to draw the maximum number of German divisions, and especially the armour, into that flank. The acquisition of territory was important on the western flank [the US sector]." ...."an accusation drawn at me, that I ought to have taken Caen in the programme on D-Day! And we didn't. I didn't mind about that because....The air force would get very het up because I didn't go further down towards Falaise and get the ground suitable for airfields. I didn't bother about that, it would have meant enormous casualties in doing it and it wasn't necessary."
"I could reply to that criticism that on the American front the line from which the breakout was finally launched was a line the St.Lo-Periers road, should have been captured in the initial plan by the American 1st Army on D-Day plus 5, that was the 11th June. But they didn't actually capture it until the 18th July. But I have never returned the charge with that accusation. ...until now"
"I have never understood why Ike said in his dispatches that, when the British failed to break out towards Paris on the eastern flank. The Americans were able [to break out], because of our flexibility, to take it on, on our western flank. I have always thought that was an unfair criticism of Dempsey and the 2nd British Army."
- Field Marshall Montgomery (1959)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_TB9wHRRSw
The RAF chief Tedder, wanted Monty fired as he wanted open territory to the south towards Falaise to setup his airfields saying Monty was not pursing territory aggressively enough. Monty would have none of it. Operation Goodwood was engaging the massed armoured German defences head on drawing them in to British lines, grinding them up moving slowly. Here is a 1970s objective British Army Sandhurst internal video analysing Operation Goodwood, with even German commanders who were there taking part. At the beginning it specifically states Monty told Generals O'Connor and Dempsey not to run south to Falaise, not to take territory. Look at 6 mins:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udW1UvSHXfY
Monty was not too concerned with Caen as it would consume too many resources to take. He was more concerned with grinding up German armour in the field. Although by the time of Goodwood only the southern suburbs were in German hands.
Monty was in charge of all of Operation Overlord. He wanted the German armour away from US forces, to allow them to break out. It worked. That is what he wanted and planned. Monty never saw Caen as important but never criticised US forces..... until 1959 when they were at him about Caen, he criticised them for taking St.Lo a month late - with little German armour around for a month. The Germans did send some armour to St.Lo with the US forces making it worse for themselves to capture the place.
Even Bradley agreed with Monty. Bradley wrote that:
"The British and Canadian armies were to decoy the enemy reserves and draw them to their front on the extreme eastern edge of the Allied beachhead. Thus, while Monty taunted the enemy at Caen, we (the Americans) were to make our break on the long roundabout road to Paris. When reckoned in terms of national pride, this British decoy mission became a sacrificial one, for while we tramped around the outside flank, the British were to sit in place and pin down the Germans. Yet strategically it fitted into a logical division of labors, for it was towards Caen that the enemy reserves would race once the alarm was sounded".
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@brucenadeau2172
Monty's 40 Division Thrust
General Bodo Zimmermann, Chief of Operations, German Army Group D, said that had the strategy of Montgomery succeeded in the autumn of 1944, there would have been no need to fight for the West Wall, not for the central and upper Rhine, all of 24 which would have fallen automatically.
Indeed, had Monty's idea for a 40 division concentrated thrust towards the Ruhr been accepted by Eisenhower instead of messing about in the Lorraine, Alsace, Vosges etc, it would have all been over for the Germans in the west.
"The best course of the Allies would have been to concentrate a really strong striking force with which to break through past Aachen to the Ruhr area. Germany's strength is in the north. South Germany was a side issue. He who holds northern Germany holds Germany. Such a break-through, coupled with air domination, would have torn in pieces the weak German front and ended the war. Berlin and Prague would have been occupied ahead of the Russians. There were no German forces behind the Rhine, and at the end of August our front was wide open. There was the possibility of an operational break-through in the Aachen area, in September. This would have facilitated a rapid conquest of the Ruhr and a quicker advance on Berlin.
By turning the forces from the Aachen area sharply northward, the German 15th and1st Parachute Armies could have been pinned against the estuaries of the Mass and the Rhine. They could not have escaped eastwards into Germany."
- Gunther Blumentritt in, The Other Side Of The Hill by Liddell Hart
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@bdleo300
The British won the Battle of Dunkirk.
The British BEF was only 9% of the total allied forces in France and the Low Countries. The German advance was halted in France as the British with a vastly inferior force in numbers stopped them at Arras. Some German soldiers turned and ran. Directive 13, issued by German Supreme Headquarters on 24 May 1940 stated specifically for the annihilation of the French, English and Belgian forces in the Dunkirk pocket. The Luftwaffe was ordered to prevent the retreat of the British forces across the English Channel.
The German southern advance was stopped at Arras by the British with a numerically inferior force. The Germans never moved much further after. The Germans could not have taken Dunkirk, they would have been badly beaten in and around the town. The Luftwaffe was defeated over Dunkirk by the RAF with the first showing of the Spitfire en-mass. More German than allied planes were destroyed in the Dunkirk pocket. The first defeat of the Nazis in WW2 was by the British in the air battle over Dunkirk. Only six small warships were sunk at Dunkirk by the Germans as the effectiveness of the Luftwaffe blunted.
The British were retreating after the French collapsed in front of them - a programme already in motion, a programme already in motion before the Germans showed up in force, as General Gort saw the disjointed performance of the French forces in front of him, and the exceptionally poor leadership. If the French collapsed the small BEF had no hope against the large German force heading west.
The French were amongst the British when General Gort decided to take the men back to England, as he did not trust the French in a joint counter-attack. French General Wiegand held a meeting to arrange a counter-attack not inviting General Gort head of the BEF. Gort was under the command of Weigand. Gort heard of the meeting rushing to be there. He got there after the French and Belgians had left. He ordered the evacuation having no faith in the elderly French leaders.
All armies retreat and regroup when the need is there. There happened to be a body of water in the line of the retreat. Were the BEF to move down the English coast and enter France further west with more men from England? The Germans did not know what was to be the next British or allied move. The Germans could not have taken Dunkirk trying for nearly a week failing in the process. The British retreat operation was carried out as planned and in orderly fashion. All bridges to Dunkirk were destroyed by the allies.
The British counter-attack at Arras was with outdated Matilda 1 tanks, which only had machine guns, and a few of the brand new Matilda 2 tanks. The Germans fled in droves. In desperation the Germans turned a 88mm AA gun horizontal successfully against the Matilda 2 - their conventional anti-tank weapons and tanks could not penetrate the tank. The Matilda 2 would roll over German gun emplacements killing the gunners.
Rommel thought he had been hit by a force three times the size, which made them stop and rethink. The Germans countered with their superior numbers pushing back the British who fell back consolidating towards Dunkirk. The British resolve and the new Matilda 2 made the Germans sit up and think about a street fight in Dunkirk against a consolidated force still with its weapons and the new Matilda 2 - the large 88mm would be useless in Dunkirk streets while the small and chunky Matilda 2 would be in its element, with the Matilda 2 easily destroying the Panzer MkIII & MkIVs. The Matilda 2 could knock out any German tank at the time, while no German tank could knock it out. The Germans were expecting the Matilda 2 to be shipped over in numbers and for all they knew many were in Dunkirk.
The Germans could not stop the tanks coming as the RAF controlled the skies with a CAP and the RN the waters of the Channel. Not a good prospect for the Germans. A Dunkirk street fight was a fight the German troops were untrained and unequipped for and unwise to get involved in. Von Rundstedt and von Kluge suggested to Hitler that German forces around the Dunkirk pocket cease their advance, consolidating, preventing an Allied break out from Dunkirk. Hitler agreed with the support of the Wehrmacht. German preoccupation rightly was with an expected attack from the fluid south of the German lines, by mainly French and some British forces, not from dug-in Dunkirk which was too much of a formidable consolidated opponent, taking substantial resources to seize.
The German column had Allied troops to each side with soft marshland to the south west of Dunkirk unsuitable for tanks. If German forces had engaged in a street battle for Dunkirk, they would be vulnerable on their weak flank from the south. In short the fast moving panzers were now static; German forces attacking Dunkirk in a battle of attrition would have been largely wiped out. The German columns were consolidating their remaining armour for an expected attack by the British and French from the south, and the important resupply from Germany, which was slow as it was via horses - or maybe a combined attack from the south and the Dunkirk pocket. The Germans attacked on a remarkably narrow front. They had over-stretched their supply lines. The Germans had no option but to stop, being more concerned at defending from the mainly French forces in the south which were viewed as a greater threat than Dunkirk.
French general Weigand implemented his creation of hedgehogs to attack German lines from the sides, with success - hedgehogs were adopted post war by NATO being a part of the tactics until the 1970s. What were the Germans thinking? Are the British retreating to England from Dunkirk to move down the English coast and re-enter France further south with fresh forces, including Canadians and the new Matilda 2 tanks, which they feared, and join up with the French forces there? Are they going to reinforce the Dunkirk pocket supplied by the Royal Navy with a 24/7 air CAP? The British could easily do any of these as they controlled the Channel. This would create one large difficult to combat force at Dunkirk. They also saw the resolve of outnumbered British forces at Arras. German generals were trying to figure out what was happening. None thought that British troops would retreat to England and stay there. The British never did that sort of thing.
The Germans could divert most of their forces south and risk a Dunkirk breakout being attacked from their rear fighting on two fronts, or stay and consolidate, which they needed to do, awaiting a French/British attack from the south and use some forces and the Luftwaffe to attack Dunkirk, which they did. German forces resumed their attack on Dunkirk for over 6 days and failed to seize the port. The plan to break out of the Dunkirk Pocket using British, Belgian and French forces was abandoned as Gort had no confidence in the French. All military school studies since, knowing what the German and allied positions and situations were in 1940, have shown it would have succeeded. The Germans were defeated at the Battle of Dunkirk. They tried militarily to seize the port but failed. Only because the British did not trust the French and moved back to England did the Germans eventually occupy the town.
The Germans did not let the British get away that is misguided myth, they tried for a week simply not able to seize Dunkirk.
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The British drew in German armour at Caen to grind it up, to allow the Americans to break out - Operation Cobra. General Omar Bradley...
While Collins was hoisting his VII Corps flag over Cherbourg, Montgomery was spending his reputation in a bitter siege against the old university city of Caen. For three weeks he had rammed his troops against those panzer divisions he had deliberately drawn towards that city as part of our Allied strategy of diversion in the Normandy Campaign. Although Caen contained an important road junction that Montgomery would eventually need, for the moment the capture of that city was only incidental to his mission. For Monty’s primary task was to attract German troops to the British front that we might more easily secure Cherbourg and get into position for the breakout.
In this diversionary mission Monty was more than successful, for the harder he hammered towards Caen, the more German troops he drew into that sector. Too many correspondents, however, had overrated the importance of Caen itself, and when Monty failed to take it, they blamed him for the delay. But had we attempted to exonerate Montgomery by explaining how successfully he had hoodwinked the German by diverting him toward Caen from the Cotentin, we would have also given our strategy away. We desperately wanted the German to believe this attack on Caen was the main Allied effort.
But while this diversion of Monty’s was brilliantly achieved, he never the less left himself open to criticism by overemphasizing the importance of his thrust toward Caen. Had he limited himself simply to the containment without making Caen a symbol of it, he would have been credited with success instead of being charged, as he was, with failure at Caen.
For Monty’s success should have been measured in the panzer divisions the enemy rushed against him whilst Collins sped on toward Cherbourg. Instead, the Allied newspaper readers clammered for a place name called Caen which Monty had once promised but failed to win for them.
The containment mission that had been assigned Monty in the Overlord plan was not calculated to burnish British pride in the accomplishments of their troops. For in the minds of most people, success in battle is measured in the rate and length of advance. They found it difficult to realise that the more successful Monty was in stirring up German resistance, the less likely he was to advance. For another four weeks it fell to the British to pin down superior enemy forces in that sector while we maneuvered into position for the US breakout. With the Allied world crying for blitzkrieg the first week after we landed, the British endured their passive role with patience and forbearing.
Brdaley wrote>>
"Allied newspaper readers clammered for a place name called Caen which Monty had once promised but failed to win for them."
Monty never promised 2nd tier target Caen at all.
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@sean640307
The reality is that Hodges, Bradley and even Eisenhower should have been sacked over the Bulge. Only the British could sack Monty. Monty saved the US's rear ends at the Bulge, then jealous and sniping US generals wanted him out because he made them look like they were - amateurs. Monty insisted on all ground forces given back to him, after they were transferred to Eisenhower after Normandy was won by Monty.
If Eisenhower tried to sack Monty he would have found he would be in line to be sacked from high up political pressure.
"The next day, 29th December, I sent Eisenhower the following letter:
“My dear Ike,
1. It was very pleasant to see you again yesterday and to have a talk on the battle situation.
2. I would like to refer to the matter of operational control of all forces engaged in the northern thrust towards the Ruhr, i.e. 12 and 21 Army Groups. I think we want to be careful, because we have had one very definite failure when we tried to produce a formula that would meet this case; that was the formula produced in SHAEF FWD 15510 dated 23-9-44, which formula very definitely did not work.
3. When you and Bradley and myself met at Maastricht on 7 December, it was very clear to me that Bradley opposed any idea that I should have operational control over his Army Group; so I did not then pursue the subject. I therefore consider that it will be necessary for you to be very firm on the subject, and any loosely worded statement will be quite useless.
4. I consider that if you merely use the word ‘co-ordination’ it will not work. The person designated by you must have powers of operational direction and control of the operations that will follow on your directive.
5. I would say that your directive will assign tasks and objectives to the two Army Groups, allot boundaries, and so on. Thereafter preparations are made and battle is joined. It is then that one commander must have powers to direct and control the operations; you cannot possibly do it yourself, and so you would have to nominate someone else.
6. I suggest that your directive should finish with this sentence: ‘12 and 21 Army Groups will develop operations in accordance with the above instructions. From now onwards full operational direction, control, and co-ordination of these operations is vested in the C.-in-C. 21 Army Group, subject to such instructions as may be issued by the Supreme Commander from time to time’
7. I put this matter up to you again only because I am so anxious not to have another failure. I am absolutely convinced that the key to success lies in:
(a) all available offensive power being assigned to the northern line of advance to the Ruhr;
(b) a sound set-up for command, and this implies one man directing and controlling the whole tactical battle on the northern thrust.
I am certain that if we do not comply with these two basic conditions, then we will fail again.
8. I would be grateful if you would not mention to Bradley the point I have referred to in para. 3. I would not like him to think that I remembered that point and had brought it up.
Yours always, and your very devoted friend Monty"
- Memoirs of Field-Marshal Montgomery, Montgomery of Alamein.
The letter infuriated US generals because Monty pointed out they had a big failure, and that he should rightly be given back control of all ground armies as he saved the day at the Bulge, having to take control of two US armies. Monty wanted to be in control of all ground forces dropping the failing broad-front. The letter clearly states that.
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The small city of Caen was strategically unimportant, ports were important. At the 11th hour Montgomery switched a US 82nd parachute drop into Caen to the Cotentin peninsula to aid US forces in seizing the port of Cherbourg. Montgomery's plan was to draw in then destroy the German army, not gain territory.
Caen had more German tanks per mile than Kursk. In just a dozen miles or so right Panzer divisions in a very small area of front. Caen had the highest concentration density of German tanks ever seen in WW2, pitted against British armour. At Kursk the panzer divisions were spread out over a much wider area and were not concentrated as densely as around Caen. Caen saw the densest concentration of German armour ever seen in WW2. At Kursk the Germans were attacking over a near 50 mile front. There were certainly not right panzer divisions within 12 miles.
There were EIGHT Panzer Divisions in the Caen area by end of June 1944 and FIVE lines of anti-tank guns. The Germans kept sending more and more panzer divisions around the Caen area as June went on and into July. These were the panzer divisions deployed to the Caen area.
♦ 21st Panzer Division (117 Panzer IVs).
♦ Panzer Lehr Division ( 101 Panzer IVs, 89 Panthers).
♦ 2nd Panzer Division (89 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers).
♦ 116th Panzer Division (73 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers). In reserve just behind the front.
♦ 1st SS Panzer Division (98 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers).
♦ 9th SS Panzer Division (40 Stugs, 46 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers).
♦ 10th SS Panzer Division (38 Stugs, 39 Panzer IVs)
♦ 12th SS Panzer Division (98 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers).
♦ Tiger Battalion SS101 (45 Tigers).
♦ Tiger Battalion SS102 (45 Tigers).
♦ Tiger Battalion 503 (45 Tigers)
Source:
- Bernages Panzers and the Battle For Normandy.
- Zetterling's Normandy 1944: German Military Organization, Combat Power and Organizational Effectiveness.
On 12th June 1944 the British had no room to sidestep any German divisions before Caen because the Germans totally blocked them. This is why a wide right hook on Caen was attempted. To the south of Panzer Lehr's sector in the vicinity of Villers Bocage there was thought to be an area devoid of German forces, and so this wide right hook was attempted on the morning of 13th June (any wider and it would have overrun into the American lines). Unfortunately, unknown to the British, Schwere SS Panzer Abteilung 101 turned up into this area on the night of the 12/13th June and blocked this right hook with their Tigers and closed the door on Caen.
There was no other room to manoeuvre onto Caen. All attempts had to go right through the German panzer divisions through the rest of June and early July, with the Germans having excellent defensive country (fields broken up by hedgerows everywhere) with which to utilise to their advantage.
The Germans had over 1,500 tanks and assault guns in the British/Canadian sector, including Tiger and Panthers. Even the King Tiger and Jagdpanther made their WW2 combat débuts around Caen in July.
The Americans who were not equipped, or experienced, to face massed German armour, were given primarily an infantry role by Montgomery - the Americans met very little armour in WW2. The US forces didn't face any German armour until June 13th, and that was only a mere battalion of assault guns. The British destroyed about 90% of German armour in the west.
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@jasonwiggins6137
Patton was an average US general, no more. A US media creation, elevating the average beyond their status.
"The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian First Army HQ for the same purpose. Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
In Normandy, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton who came in late in Normandy, faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact. This eastern dash devoid of German forces was the ride the US media claimed Patton was some sort master of fast moving armour.
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed in The Lorraine with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were re-fitting and rebuilt after the Normandy battles. The Panzer Brigades had green crews with little time to train, unfamiliar with their tanks, had no recon elements only meeting their unit commander on his arrival at the front. These were not elite forces. The 17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, equipped only with assault guns not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy being below strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine.
In The Lorraine, the Third Army faced a rabble full of eyes and ears units. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said: "I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Patton failed to reach the Westwall.
Patton was not advancing or being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. Bastogne was on the very southern German flank, their focus being west. The strategic significance of the stand at Bastogne, is over exaggerated. The 18,000 did not change the course of the battle. The German's bypassed Bastogne, placing a containment force around the town.
Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory, with the road from Luxembourg to Bastogne having few German forces. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was far from being one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, 26th Volks-Grenadier having about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind with a small number of operational tanks. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1. Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance pushing them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons stopped the American attack who pulled back. The next day, fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B again retreating. It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day. Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne. After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF, who gave Patton massive ground attack support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the weakest German divisions in the west where.
♦ Who did the 3rd Army engage?
♦ Who did the 3rd Army defeat?
♦ Patton never once faced a full strength premier Waffen SS panzer division nor a Tiger battalion.
♦ Patton was not at E Alamein, D-Day or the main area of the Bulge.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates:
♦ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics Bradley's II Corps were employing;
♦ He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division, Truscott of being "afraid to fight";
♦ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps;
♦ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize stalled, he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being "very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect";
♦ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in reporting their losses;
Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated, had incestual relationships and wore cowboy guns. Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his and Eisenhower's orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read:
Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds and_Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies_ by Harry Yeide
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Ray Barata
First of all the operation was a success, in creating a 60 mile salient (protection buffer) into German territory protecting the vital port of Antwerp and eliminating V rocket sites which were firing at London. And they did use the north of the salient to turn east into Germany. They just never got over the Rhine.
The operation needed all the bridges secured immediately. All were secured at the end of the 1st day except Nijmegen. TIK in his 1st video blamed Gavin of the 82nd for not immediately moving towards the Nijmegen bridge. I agreed with that conclusion and still do.
Browning did not drop into the zone with the troops near the bridge. He was way east on the German border, unlike Gavin who was near the bridge. Gavin was supposed to move on the bridge immediately, specifically Colonel Lindquist of the 508th who were to "move without delay", as ordered by Gavin. Gavin was not monitoring progress close enough as Lindquist dawdled. When Browning saw that the bridge was not secured he told Gavin to move to the bridge.
Browning was no angel for sure. But! He had no part in the delay in not securing the vital Nijmegen bridge immediately on dropping. That falls 100% on General Gavin. If that bridge was seized immediately, XXX Corps would have run over it and onto Arnhem.
Another point is that despite a delay in running over a Bailey bridge at Son, as the US 101st did not seize the bridge with the Germans destroying it, XXX Corps made up the time and got to Nijmegen ahead of schedule only to see the bridge in German hands. As TIK states, XXX Corps had to take the town and the bridge. That vital initial delay, by Gavin (Lindquist), allowed German troops to pour south over the bridge into Nijmegen. There was only about 18 German troops on the bridge when the 82nd dropped. A 82nd 508 patrol took the guards, and their gun, prisoner on the south of the bridge for an hour, then left letting them go when no reinforcements arrived. When Lindquist's main bridge force, led by Colonel Warren, did get to the bridge it was swarming with Germans who had also set up shop in the park south of the bridge and were all over Nijmegen.
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seth1422
Most of what you wrote was drivelous. In the 7.5 hours between ready to march and the first attack on the bridge the 82nd met no tanks in Nijmegen, because none were there. Although General Gavin in his fantasy world thought there was 1,000 of them in the forest. Three 20mm and an 88mm at the bridge? That is sweet nothing to a well trained outfit like the 82nd.
Eisenhower put off clearing the Scheldt, which would not be a short job, to ensure the supplies went to the northern thrust, which was pursuing a defeated enemy and getting a foothold over the Rhine. There was enough supplies for this. Then after under resourced Market Garden was concluded Eisenhower focused on the Scheldt, well about three weeks after. Instead of feeding supplies to the lost cause of the US Third Army and concentrating on the northern thrust and clearing the Scheldt, Antwerp would have been operational much earlier and the Rhine crossed. Eisenhower didn't have much of clue what he was doing, allowing Bradley and Patton to run rings around him, and openly disobey his orders, to the detriment of the total war effort. It was clear Bradley and Patton were attempting to sabotage the northern thrust.
"It should also be remembered that Montgomery was no longer the Allied Ground Force Commander, directly concerned with the implementation of strategy. He was concerned with the progress of events in 21st Army Group. The man responsible for strategy, for the selection of tasks in order of priority, was Dwight Eisenhower. It would not do to pass the buck for strategic decisions to one of his Army Group commanders. However, Eisenhower was currently obsessed with the various moves necessary to implement his broad front policy"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
I mentioned Poulisson and Magry. Did you notice? Selective amnesia. Neillands is a well respected author who is meticulous in research. You don't like the truth.
Market Garden was under resourced for sure, but failed by a whisker. The failure point was the US 82nd not seizing Nijmegen bridge immediately after landing. That is as clear as day.
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seth1422
Most of what you write is opinionated clap-trap. You mean Poulisson (Dutch), Karl Magry (Dutch) and Neillands do not perpetuate the American move to change history. The facts on the ground are that the US 82nd were far too slow in making an attack on the bridge. It is that simple.
The 101st failed to seize the Son bridge delaying XXX Corps by 12 hours, which they made up. XXX Corps reached Nijmegen on time and instead of rolling over the bridge and onto Arnhem, found the 9th SS infantry in the town and on the bridge fighting the 82nd. Something seriously had gone wrong. XXX Corps took command and flushed out the Germans and seized the bridge themselves. This now put them 36 hours late. Too late to save the British paras at Arnhem.
The 82nd who jumped "unopposed" met no German tanks moving to the Nijmegen bridge.
All from the US Official History:
The European Theater of Operations
THE SIEGFRIED LINE CAMPAIGN
by Charles B. MacDonald
CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY
UNITED STATES ARMY
WASHINGTON, D.C., 1993
Page 185.
Page 161:
Colonel Lindquist's 508th Parachute Infantry and of Colonel Ekman's 505th Parachute Infantry had assembled within an hour after the D-Day drop.
Page 162:
General Gavin's understanding, as recalled later, was that Warren's battalion was to move "without delay after landing." On the other hand, Colonel Lindquist's understanding, also as recalled later, was that no battalion was to go for the bridge until the regiment had secured its other objectives, that is to say, not until he had established defenses protecting his assigned portion of the high ground and the northern part of the division glider landing zone. Instead of moving immediately toward the Nijmegen bridge, Colonel Warren's battalion was to take an "assigned initial objective" in the vicinity of De Ploeg, a suburb of Nijmegen a mile and a quarter southeast of the city astride the Nijmegen-Groesbeek highway.
Page 163:
Colonel Warren about 1830 sent into Nijmegen a patrol consisting of a rifle platoon and the battalion intelligence section. This patrol was to make an aggressive reconnaissance, investigate reports from Dutch civilians that only eighteen Germans guarded the big bridge, and, if possible, capture the south end of the bridge.
Colonel Warren directed Companies A and B to rendezvous at a point just south of Nijmegen at I900
As the scouts neared a traffic circle surrounding a landscaped circular park near the center of Nijmegen, the Keizer Karel Plein, from which a mall-like park led northeast toward the Nijmegen bridge, a burst of automatic weapons fire came from the circle. The time was about two hours before midnight. (2200 hrs)
Page 164:
the chance for an easy, speedy capture of the Nijmegen bridge had passed. This was all the more lamentable because in Nijmegen during the afternoon the Germans had had nothing more than the same kind of "mostly low quality" troops encountered at most other places on D Day.
- page 185
For all the concern that must have existed about getting to Arnhem, only a small part of the British armor was freed late on D plus 4, 21 September, to start the northward drive. As the attack began, British commanders saw every apprehension confirmed. The ground off the main roads was low-lying, soggy bottomland, denying employment of tanks. A few determined enemy bolstered with antitank guns might delay even a large force. Contrary to the information that had been received, Colonel Frost and his men had been driven away from the north end of the Arnhem bridge the afternoon before, so that since the preceding night the bridge had been open to German traffic. At the village of Ressen, less than three miles north of Nijmegen, the Germans had erected an effective screen composed of an SS battalion reinforced with I I tanks, another infantry battalion, 2 batteries of 88-mm. guns, 20 20-mm. antiaircraft guns, and survivors of earlier fighting at Nijmegen, all operating under General Bittrich's II SS Panzer Corps.20 Arnhem lay seven miles north of this screen. The British could not pass.
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The Germans had advanced beyond their widest dreams. The panzers were supplied by slow horses behind, unable to keep up supplies. They had overstretched their supply lines. Rommel's Panzer column had been stopped by the British at Arras, using the new Matilda 2 tank, which the German standard anti-tank guns could not knock out. Rommel stated that he thought he had been hit by a force three times the size.
German crews were tired. The truck drivers supporting the tanks were put on speed pills to keep them awake. They lacked sleep, fuel, ammunition, water, food, and maintenance of the vehicles (vehicles then were not like they are today).
In front of them were the British, and French, consolidating at Dunkirk, with the new small, nibble and heavily armoured Matilda 2 tank, which could knock out any German tank, but they could not knock it out unless they levelled an AA gun firing a solid shell. A gun useless in Dunkirk's streets. Added to this, the terrain south of Dunkirk was soft and marshy, not tank country. The fast moving panzers, now pretty well static, were now ineffective in a war of attrition. A form of fighting the Germans were not used to. Faced with this situation they had no option but to stop, consolidate, or be mauled. They stopped for only 24 hours.
Hitler issued Directive 13, which stated, to annihilate the forces inside the Dunkirk pocket. Aided by the Luftwaffe, the German troops and tanks continued the fight. A battle ensued called the Battle of Dunkirk. The British won the battle in the air and on the ground.
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@agentmulder1019
Caen was strategically unimportant.
Caen had more German tanks per mile than Kursk. In just a dozen miles or so right Panzer divisions in a very small area of front. Caen had the highest concentration density of German tanks ever seen in WW2, pitted against British armour. At Kursk the panzer divisions were spread out over a much wider area and were not concentrated as densely as around Caen. Caen saw the densest concentration of German armour ever seen in WW2. At Kursk the Germans were attacking over a near 50 mile front. There were certainly not right panzer divisions within 12 miles.
There were EIGHT Panzer Divisions in the Caen area by end of June 1944 and FIVE lines of anti-tank guns. The Germans kept sending more and more panzer divisions around the Caen area as June went on and into July. These were the panzer divisions deployed to the Caen area.
♦ 21st Panzer Division (117 Panzer IVs).
♦ Panzer Lehr Division ( 101 Panzer IVs, 89 Panthers).
♦ 2nd Panzer Division (89 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers).
♦ 116th Panzer Division (73 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers). In reserve just behind the front.
♦ 1st SS Panzer Division (98 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers).
♦ 9th SS Panzer Division (40 Stugs, 46 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers).
♦ 10th SS Panzer Division (38 Stugs, 39 Panzer IVs)
♦ 12th SS Panzer Division (98 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers).
♦ Tiger Battalion SS101 (45 Tigers).
♦ Tiger Battalion SS102 (45 Tigers).
♦ Tiger Battalion 503 (45 Tigers)
Source. Bernages Panzers and the Battle For Normandy and Zetterling's Normandy 1944: German Military Organization, Combat Power and Organizational Effectiveness.
On 12th June 1944 the British had no room to sidestep any German divisions before Caen because the Germans totally blocked them. This is why a wide right hook on Caen was attempted. To the south of Panzer Lehr's sector in the vicinity of Villers Bocage there was thought to be an area devoid of German forces, and so this wide right hook was attempted on the morning of 13th June (any wider and it would have overrun into the American lines). Unfortunately, unknown to the British, Schwere SS Panzer Abteilung 101 turned up into this area on the night of the 12/13th June and blocked this right hook with their Tigers and closed the door on Caen.
There was no other room to manoeuvre onto Caen. All attempts had to go right through the German panzer divisions through the rest of June and early July, with the Germans having excellent defensive country (fields broken up by hedgerows everywhere) with which to utilise to their advantage.
The Germans had over 1,500 tanks and assault guns in the British/Canadian sector, including Tiger and Panthers. Even the King Tiger and Jagdpanther made their WW2 combat débuts around Caen in July.
The Americans, who were not equipped, or experienced to face massed German armour, were given primarily an infantry role by Montgomery - the Americans met very little armour in WW2. The US forces didn't face any German armour until June 13th, and that was only a mere battalion of assault guns. The British destroyed about 90% of German armour in the west.
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+Dave Inportland
"It wasn't Churchills idea to appoint an American Supreme Commander."
It was Churchill's idea to appoint an American, to get them to adopt Germany First. I think it was at Casablanca. In hindsight a dumb thing to do. Eisenhower was clearly not up to the job. He was a colonel only in mid 1942. Most US generals would never make it in the British army. Alan Brooke chief of the British Imperial General Staff wrote: "Ike knows nothing about strategy and is quite unsuited to the post of Supreme Commander. It is no wonder that Monty's real high ability is not always realised"
The US never supplied all the men and materials. The USA supplied 11% of total UK needs, mainly raw materials and food and machine tools, and 5% of the USSR's. 400 tons per day (enough to feed only Bradford). The British had to heavily contribute to feeding and housing the millions of Americans that came over. For Normandy the UK provided the vast majority of the naval forces and air forces and more Brits landed on D-Day than Yanks. Monty in Normandy was in charge of all armies, US and British.
The US was taking heavy losses after Eisenhower took US forces from Monty after Normandy on 2 Sept 1944. 52,000 casualties in the Lorraine when Patton moved 10 miles in three months. 33,000 at the Hurtgen Forest defeat. 100,000 at the Bulge. The USA started to pour men in as their losses were horrendous due to naive and incompetent generals. At this time the British were building up a 2.6 million man army to march into Burma. The US were sending men who were allocated for the Far East to Europe, because of their horrendous losses. The British never suffered such losses, apart from Normandy where the British did most of the heavy fighting.
At May 1945 US manpower in Europe outnumbered British as the US was fearful of further large losses of men. It was envisaged that more British would be in Europe and more US men in the Far East. The the reverse occurred.
After the Germans scythed into the US armies at the Bulge, Monty had to take control of two US armies to stop the advance and turn it back, the 1st and 9th. He had control of the 9th until the end of the war.
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@rcwagon
Market Garden failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. The failure point was not seizing the Nijmegen bridge immediately. At the end of D-Day all crossings were denied to the Germans, except one - the Nijmegen bridge.
General Gavin of the US 82nd was tasked to seize the Nijmegen bridge as soon as landing. Gavin never, he failed with only a few German guards on the bridge. He failed because his 82nd did not seize the Nijmegen bridge immediately. Gavin even de-prioritised the bridge the prime target and focus. The 82nd were ready at 2 pm on the jump day and never moved to the bridge. The gigantic bridge was guarded by only 19 guards. The Germans occupied the bridge at 1900 hrs. Six hours after the 82nd were ready to march.
Events on the 1st day:
♦ "At 1328, the 665 men of US 82nd 1st Battalion began to fall from the sky."
- Poulussen, R. Lost at Nijmegen.
♦ "Forty minutes after the drop, around 1410, _the 1st Battalion marched off towards their objective, De Ploeg, three miles away."
_ Poulussen,
♦ "The 82nd were digging in and performing recon in the area looking for 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald
- Neillands, R. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
♦ The 82nd were dug in and preparing to defend their newly constructed regimental command post, which they established at 1825. Then Colonel Lindquist "was told by General Gavin, around 1900, to move into Nijmegen."
-Poulussen
Events on the evening of the 1st day:
♦ Having dug in at De Ploeg, Warren's battalion wasn't prepared to move towards Nijmegen at all.
-Poulussen,
♦ Once Lindquist told Lieutenant Colonel Warren that his battalion was to move, Warren decided to visit the HQ of the Nijmegen Underground first - to see what info the underground had on the Germans at the Nijmegen bridge.
- Poulussen,
♦ It was not until 1830hrs that he [Warren] was able to send a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small, just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a radio — say forty men.
- Neillands. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
♦ This was not a direct route to the bridge from Warren's original position, and placed him in the middle of the town. It was also around 2100 when "A" Company left to attempt to capture the Nijmegen road bridge.
♦ "B" Company was not with them because they'd split up due to it being dark with "visibility was less than ten yards".
- Poulussen,
♦ The 82nd attacks were resisted by the Germans until the next day.
Events of the 2nd day:
♦ Gavin drove up in a jeep the next morning and was told by Warren that although they didn't have the bridge yet, another attack was about to go in.
♦ Gavin then told Warren to hold because the Germans were attacking in the southeast portion of the 82nd perimeter.
♦ At around 1100, Warren was ordered to withdraw from Nijmegen completely.
- Poulussen
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In 1941 the British were concurrently fighting in all theatres of war, in all corners of the globe and against better prepared forces of greater numbers. Germany’s war was regional, extending from their borders - all logistics went directly over land back to Germany, apart from North Africa where the Italians provided the sea transport back to nearby Italy. The British were fighting Italy and Vichy France too. Japan’s war was confined to a radius around Japan.
Taking on all these countries and securing wins for the free World was pure brilliance.
As well as achieving the first three victories against the ‘unstoppable’ German military war machine, Britain achieved that which no other nation in the world could even possibly dream of accomplishing in the early 1940.
Britain fought a global war in the:
♦ Middle East;
♦ Far East;
♦ Indian subcontinent;
♦ Pacific;
♦ North Africa;
♦ West Africa;
♦ East Africa;
♦ North Atlantic;
♦ South Atlantic;
♦ North Sea;
♦ Barents Sea;
♦ Arctic Sea;
♦ Mediterranean;
♦ Adriatic;
♦ Mainland Western Europe;
♦ Eastern Europe;
♦ Scandinavia.
The British were the only military power in human history to fight in such globally spread theatres of conflict.
For the third year running, Britain was propping up an ally - France, USSR, then the USA. The incompetence of US Navy to provide convoy protection on its east coast almost lost the allies the Battle of the Atlantic. Six hundred ships off the US eastern seaboard were lost in the first six months of 1942. Shipping losses climbed to a level that undermined British ability to supply themselves, keep the Soviets in the war, and keep reinforcements flowing to the Middle East and Asia. The British quickly deployed 60 escort vessels to cover the US coast.
In 1942 the USA was a liability. For most of 1942 the British Commonwealth held the line, kept back the combined efforts of Germany, Italy and Japan, with minimal input from the USA compared to her potential power, keeping the Atlantic and Indian oceans open with supplies flowing to the vital armies in the Middle East and Asia, and to the USSR. No other empire in the history of the world has been capable of such a sustained multi-continent and multi-ocean operation.
In 1942 the British Commonwealth was fighting a three continent, four ocean campaign, against three major powers and keeping the USSR supplied The thousands of tanks and aircraft sent to the USSR would have saved Singapore.
The total British losses of territory and people in the early war were:
♦ One third of the territory the Soviets lost;
♦ Half of the people the Americans lost - mainly Philippines;
Yet those nations were fighting only on one front and only against one of the three powers.
The British Commonwealth had far more ground troops in action against the Japanese than the Americans. Also the British were maintaining sea control over the North Atlantic, South Atlantic, Mediterranean and Indian Ocean. And then provided aircraft carriers and cruisers to help in the Pacific - while the USA concentrated on just one of those theatres.
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David Himmelsbach
Not this nut again...
1985 US Army report on the Lorraine Campaign.
Patton does not come out well.
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a211668.pdf
From the document is in italics:
"Soldiers and generals alike assumed that Lorraine would fall quickly, and unless the war ended first, Patton's tanks would take the war into Germany by summer's end. But Lorraine was not to be overrun in a lightning campaign. Instead, the battle for Lorraine would drag on for more than 3 months."
"Despite its proximity to Germany, Lorraine was not the Allies' preferred invasion route in 1944_._ Except for its two principal cities, Metz and Nancy, the province_ contained few significant military objectives." "Moreover, once Third Army penetrated the province and entered Germany, there would still be no first-rate military objectives within its grasp. The Saar industrial region, while significant, was of secondary importance when compared to the great Ruhr industrial complex farther north."
Another Patton chase into un-needed territory, like
he did when running his troops into Brittany.
"With so little going for it, why did Patton bother with Lorraine at all? The reason was that Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, made up his mind to destroy as many German forces as possible west of the Rhine."
In other words a waste of time.
"Communications Zone organized the famous Red Ball Express, a non-stop conveyor belt of trucks connecting the Normandy depots with the field armies."
They were getting fuel via 6,000 trucks.
"The simple truth was that although fuel was plentiful in Normandy, there was no way to transport it in sufficient quantities to the leading elements. On 31 August , Third Army received no fuel at all."
In short, Patton overran his supply lines. What was
important was to secure the Port of Antwerp's
approaches. Montgomery approached the US leaders
of the First Airborne Army and they would not drop into
the Scheldt.
"Few of the Germans defending Lorraine could be considered First-rate troops. Third Army encountered whole battalions made up of deaf men, others of cooks, and others consisting entirety of soldiers with stomach ulcers."
Some army the Americans were going to fight
"Was the Lorraine campaign an American victory' From September through November, Third Army claimed to have inflicted over 180,000 casualties on the enemy. But to capture the province of Lorraine, a problem which involved an advance of only 40 to 60 air miles, Third Army required over 3 months and suffered 50,000 casualties, approximately one-third of the total number of casualties it sustained in the entire European war."
Huge losses for taking unimportant territory,
against a poor German army.
"Ironically, Third Army never used Lorraine as a springboard for an advance into Germany after all. Patton turned most of the sector over to Seventh Army during the Ardennes crisis, and when the eastward advance resumed after the Battle of the Bulge, Third Army based its operations on Luxembourg, not Lorraine. The Lorraine campaign will always remain a controversial episode in American military history."
It's getting worse. One third of all European casualties
in Lorraine and never used the territory to move into Germany.
"Finally the Lorraine Campaign demonstrated that Logistics often drive operations, no matter how forceful and aggressive the commanding general may be." "Patton violated tactical principles" "His discovered that violating logistical principles is an unforgiving and cumulative matter."
Not flattering at all. And Americans state Patton
was the best general they had.
Bradley stated later:
“Patton was developing as an unpopular guy. He steamed about with great convoys of cars and great squads of cameramen … To George, tactics was simply a process of bulling ahead. Never seemed to think out a campaign. Seldom made a careful estimate of the situation. I thought him a shallow commander … I disliked the way he worked, upset tactical plans, interfered in my orders. His stubbornness on amphibious operations, parade plans into Messina sickened me and soured me on Patton. We learned how not to behave from Patton’s Seventh Army.”
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@davidrendall7195
The first thing Monty did was praise the US soldier. Montgomery held a press conference at Zonhoven. Montgomery started by giving credit to the "courage and good fighting quality" of the American soldier, describing him as a "very brave fighting man who has that tenacity in battle which makes a great soldier". He praised Eisenhower, stating, "teamwork wins battles and battle victories win wars. On our team, the captain is General Ike." He also said "The battle has been the most interesting, I think possibly one of the most interesting and tricky battles I have ever handled." The full transcript is in his memoirs with bragging or derogatory comments towards Americans.
Three buffoon US generals: Eisenhower, Bradley and Hodges, who should have been fired, for the Bulge debacle, as Monty saved two US armies from annihilation, to defend their own asses went on the attack, slandering Monty. Cheeky b*****s.
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@skibbideeskitch9894
What US historian Harry Yeide wrote of what the Germans thought of Patton:
♦ for most of the war the Germans barely took notice [of Patton].
♦ on March 23 at the Battle of El Guettar—the first American victory against the experienced Germans. Patton’s momentum, however, was short-lived: Axis troops held him to virtually no gain until April 7, when they withdrew under threat from British Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army.
♦ There is no indication in the surviving German military records—which include intelligence reports at the theater, army, and division levels—that Patton’s enemies had any idea who he was at the time. Likewise, the immediate postwar accounts of the German commanders in Tunisia, written for the U.S. Army’s History Division, ignore Patton. Those reports show that ground commanders considered II Corps’s attacks under Patton to have been hesitant, and to have missed great opportunities.
♦ In mid-June [1943], another detachment report described Patton as “an energetic and responsibility-loving command personality”—a passing comment on one of the numerous Allied commanders. Patton simply had not yet done anything particularly noteworthy in their eyes.
♦ But his race to Palermo through country they had already abandoned left the commanders unimpressed. Major General Eberhard Rodt, who led the 15th Panzergrenadier Division against Patton’s troops during the Allied push toward Messina, thought the American Seventh Army fought hesitantly and predictably. He wrote in an immediate postwar report on Sicily, “The enemy very often conducted his movements systematically, and only attacked after a heavy artillery preparation when he believed he had broken our resistance. This kept him regularly from exploiting the weakness of our situation and gave me the opportunity to consolidate dangerous situations.” Once again, Patton finished a campaign without impressing his opponents.
♦ General Hermann Balck, who took command of Army Group G in September, thus did not think highly of Patton—or any other opposing commanders—during this time. Balck wrote to his commander, Runstedt, on October 10, “I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans” Looking back on his battles against Patton throughout the autumn, in 1979 Balck recalled, “Within my zone, the Americans never once exploited a success. Often [General Friedrich Wilhelm von] Mellenthin, my chief of staff, and I would stand in front of the map and say, ‘Patton is helping us; he failed to exploit another success.’”
♦ The commander of the Fifth Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel, aimed a dismissive, indirect critique at Patton’s efforts at Bastogne, writing in his memoirs that the Americans did not “strike with full élan.” The commanders who fought against Patton in his last two mobile campaigns in the Saar-Palatinate and east of the Rhine already knew they could not win; their losses from this point forward were inevitable, regardless of the commanding Allied opponent.
♦ the Germans offered Patton faint praise during and immediately after the war.
♦ posterity deserves fact and not myth. The Germans did not track Patton’s movements as the key to Allied intentions. Hitler does not appear to have thought often of Patton, if at all. The Germans considered Patton a hesitant commanding general in the scrum of position warfare. They never raised his name in the context of worthy strategists.
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Shandwen
Some facts for you. The British were the single biggest agents in the defeat of Nazi Germany. They were there from day one until the end. The so-called "invincible" Germans army tried and failed, with their allies, for two years in WW2 to defeat the British army in North Africa. The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British. From El Alemein it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery had to give the US armies an infantry role as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein
♦ March 1943 - Medenine
♦ June 1944 - Normandy
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge
Not on one occasion were Monty's ground armies pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. The US Army were struggling in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months with over 50,000 casualties. The Battle of the Bulge took all the US effort, and vital help from Montgomery and the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe. The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US 1st and 9th armies. The 9th stayed under his control until the end of the war just about.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British with Montgomery leading, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against the panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) and had to give them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped to fight tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
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Montgomery immediately assessed what the Germans were doing and their aims. This would have been passed to US high command. Bradley saying he never knew the Germans ultimate aim until after WW2 is hogwash.
Bastogne was on the German's extreme left flank. They bypassed the town leaving a light containment force at Bastogne, with focus towards the west where bigger fish were to fry, being stopped by Montgomery's 21st Army Group at Dinant.
The 18,000 inside Bastogne said themselves they were not relieved by Patton. They just walked out. The German commander of the containment force was scared stiff of the 18,000 attacking him, as he would have been overwhelmed. The 18,000 made no attempt to break out. The 18,000 in the town did not effect the course of the battle or its outcome, as they just stayed inside in warm buildings, while the smaller German containment force were outside in sub zero temperatures.
Bastogne had 18,000 inside, with artillery and armoured units. Bastogne was a crossroads to where? Bastogne was on the extreme left flank of the German advance. Much further left then you are in US lines. The Germans by-passed the town once they found resistance, as it was not worth holding up troops over. The Germans were going west. West was were their objectives where. The Meuse and Antwerp.
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As to the massive gamble of the German army in 1940, I will let others say it for me. Attacking France...
Wages of Destruction, Prof Adam Tooze:
"There’s always a problem in history of determining after something’s happened what the balance of probabilities was before it happened. And the German plan is a plan which is again a spectacular gamble, and it succeeds because the forces in the German offensive are concentrated in an extraordinarily tight pack which is going to drive through the Ardennes in a single offensive move all the way across northern France to the Channel. This is an operation of unprecedented logistical risk and gives the opponents of Germany - Britain, France, Belgium and Holland - the chance, if they’re sufficiently well organised, to mount a devastating counterattack on Germany and on the pincer moving across northern France. And for this reason the Germans fully understand that if this plan fails they’ve lost the war. So it’s, rather than simply the result of a series of coincidences, more that the Germans are simply taking a very, very high risk gamble. The gamble bears the possibility of total victory, which is what they ultimately achieve over France, but also a risk of catastrophic defeat which they’re fully conscious of."
Wages of Destruction, Page 371.
"The German army that invaded France in May 1940 was far from being a carefully honed weapon of modern armoured warfare. Of Germany's 93 combat ready divisions on May 10 1940, only 9 were Panzer divisions, with a total of 2.438 tanks between them. These units faced a French army that was more heavily motorised, with 3,254 tanks in total."
....Half the German tanks that invaded the west were armed only with a machine gun!! The German Army was not on equal footing with the French when in fact it was vastly inferior.
"By May 1940 Britain had 7 regiments equipped with 28 light tanks plus 44 scout carriers each. There was also 1 regiment of armoured cars with 38 Morris light reconnaissance cars. There was also an Army Tank brigade with two regiments of infantry tanks. That gave a total of 308 tanks 23 of which had a 2pdr gun the rest had machine guns. Ist Armoured Division started to arrive in France from late May. However many of the Cruiser tanks were so recently issued that their crews had only been half trained on them and many lacked wireless sets, sighting telescopes and even armour piercing ammunition."
-Source The Great Tank Scandal, David Fletcher
Dutch, Belgian, UK & French tanks in total were 4,200 tanks.
Prof Tooze, page 371/372.
"Nor should one accept unquestioningly the popular idea that the concentration of the Germans tanks in specialised tank divisions gave them a decisive advantage. Many French tanks were scattered amongst the infantry units, but with their ample stock of vehicles the French could afford to do this. The bulk of France's best tanks were concentrated in armoured units, that, on paper at least, were every bit a match for the Panzer divisions."
Page 377
"The Germans not only committed "all" their tanks and planes. In strictest conformity with the Schwerpunkt principle, they committed them on an astonishingly narrow front"
"the Luftwaffe sacrificed no less than 347 aircraft, including virtually all its transports used in the air landings in Holland and Belgium".
Page 378
"if Allied bombers had penetrated the German fighter screen over the Ardennes they could have wreaked havoc amongst the slow moving traffic"
"highly inflammable fuel tankers were interspersed with the fihting vehicles at the very front with the armoured fighting vehicles"
"The plan called for the German armoured columns to drive for three days and nights without interruption".
....The drivers were put on "speed" pills.
Page 379
"success would not have been possible had it not been for the particular nature of the battlefield. The Channel coastline provided the German army with a natural obstacle to pin their enemies, an obstacle which could be reached within few hundred kilometres of the German border."
"the Germans benefited from the well made network of roads"
"In Poland in 1939 the Wehrmacht had struggled to maintain the momentum of its motorized troops when faced with far more difficult conditions."
"a close analysis of the of the mechanics of the Blitzkrieg reveals the astonishing degree of concentration achieved, but an enormous gamble that Hitler and the Wehrmacht were taking on May 10."
Page 380
"because it involved such a concentrated use of force, Manstein's plan was a "one-shot affair". If the initial assault had failed, and it could have failed in many ways, the Wehrmacht as an offensive force would have been spent. The gamble paid off. But contrary to appearances, the Germans had not discovered a patent recipe for military miracles. The overwhelming success of May 1940, resulting in the defeat of a major European military power in a matter of weeks, was not a repeatable outcome"
Tooze, page 373:
"In retrospect, it suited neither the Allies nor the Germans to expose the amazingly haphazard course through which the Wehrmacht had arrived at its most brilliant military success. The myth of the Blitzkrieg suited the British and French because it provided an explanation other than military incompetence for their pitiful defeat. But whereas it suited the Allies to stress the alleged superiority of German equipment, Germany's own propaganda viewed the Blitzkrieg in less materialistic terms."
Tooze page 380.
"In both campaigns [France & Barbarossa], the Germans gambled on achieving decisive success in the opening phases of the assault. Anything less spelled disaster".
....If the belt broke the whole movement stopped. The Germans thought they had formulated a version of Blitzkrieg in France that was a sure-fire success. They used this in the USSR, just scaling up forces. They did not have the intelligence to assess properly, that the reason for their success was allied incompetence not anything brilliant they did.
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Narred Darr
whist market Garden? uh?
After the Normandy breakout both British and US armies had little in front of them and sped across France.
A 1985 US Army report on the Lorraine Campaign. The US 2nd Armour were in Patton's army. Patton does not come out well at all.
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a211668.pdf
From the document is in italics.
"Soldiers and generals alike assumed that Lorraine would fall quickly, and unless the war ended first, Patton's tanks would take the war into Germany by summer's end. But Lorraine was not to be overrun in a lightning campaign. Instead, the battle for Lorraine would drag on for more than 3 months."
The British never said the war would be over by Xmas.
"Despite its proximity to Germany, Lorraine was not the Allies' preferred invasion route in 1944. Except for its two principal cities, Metz and Nancy, the province *contained few significant military objectives.*"
"Moreover, once Third Army penetrated the province and entered Germany, there would still be no first-rate military objectives within its grasp. The Saar industrial region, while significant, was of secondary importance when compared to the great Ruhr industrial complex farther north."
Another Patton chase into un-needed territory, like he did when running his troops into Brittany.
"With so little going for it, why did Patton bother with Lorraine at all? The reason was that Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, made up his mind to destroy as many German forces as possible west of the Rhine."
In other words a waste of time, not getting at the heart of the German war machine.
"Communications Zone organized the famous Red Ball Express, a non-stop conveyor belt of trucks connecting the Normandy depots with the field armies."
They were getting fuel via 6,000 trucks.
"The simple truth was that although fuel was plentiful in Normandy, there was no way to transport it in sufficient quantities to the leading elements. On 31 August , Third Army received no fuel at all."
In short, Patton overran his supply lines. What was important was to secure the Port of Antwerp's approaches. Monty approached the US leaders of the First Airborne Army and they would not drop into the Scheld.
"Few of the Germans defending Lorraine could be considered First-rate troops. Third Army encountered whole battalions made up of deaf men, others of cooks, and others consisting entirety of soldiers with stomach ulcers."
Some army the Americans were going to fight
"Was the Lorraine campaign an American victory? From September through November, Third Army claimed to have inflicted over 180,000 casualties on the enemy. But to capture the province of Lorraine, a problem which involved an advance of only 40 to 60 air miles, Third Army required over 3 months and suffered 50,000 casualties, approximately one-third of the total number of casualties it sustained in the entire European war."
Huge losses for taking unimportant territory, against a poor German army. How clever.
"Ironically, Third Army never used Lorraine as a springboard for an advance into Germany after all. Patton turned most of the sector over to Seventh Army during the Ardennes crisis, and when the eastward advance resumed after the Battle of the Bulge, Third Army based its operations on Luxembourg, not Lorraine. The Lorraine campaign will always remain a controversial episode in American military history."
It's getting worse. The Americans had one third of all their European casualties in Lorraine and never used the territory to move into Germany.
"Finally the Lorraine Campaign demonstrated that Logistics often drive operations, no matter how forceful and aggressive the commanding general may be."
"Patton violated tactical principles"
"His discovered that violating logistical principles is an unforgiving and cumulative matter."
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On page 47 of Max Hasting's, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944-45, he makes the point that confusion in the orders from German General Bittrich saved it for the Germans. Bittrich wanted the 9th SS to secure the north and south sides of Arnhem bridge, as he saw this bridge as vital as it was over the Rhine. But, the part of the 9th SS that were supposed to stay on the south side of the Arnhem bridge, by mistake went south to Nijmegen bridge preventing the US 82nd, who dawdled, from seizing that bridge. If the 9th SS did stay at Arnhem on the south side to Bittrich's orders, it would have been probable that XXX Corps would have wiped them out on the south side of the Rhine at Arnhem on the 19th - D-Day plus 2.
After the 9th SS had moved to Nijmegen with the Arnhem bridge pretty well uncontested on the south side, the Germans were pointing fingers at each other.
A screw up won it for the Germans, while a screw up for the allies lost it (Gavin not moving onto Nijmegen bridge immediately). This German error proved decisive in the allies not winning 100%. Nevertheless this German error does not detract from the point that the allies should have won, if Gavin had done his job properly. If Gavin had seized Nijmegen bridge immediately, the allies would have won irrespective of what the 9th SS did.
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Caen, the full Order No 1 transcript:
(I Corps Operations Order No. 1, WO 171/258)
3 British Division
a) The task of 3 British Division is to capture CAEN and secure a bridgehead over the R ORNE at that place.
b) The enemy may develop his counter-attack--
i) Through CAEN
ii) Across R ORNE at RANVILLE - BENOUVILLE having established himself in the area East of R ORNE from which he can dominate the beaches West of OUISTREHAM and the Northern approaches to CAEN.
iii) West of Caen, between R MUE and the CAEN Canal
iv) Any combination of the above
In cases (ii) and (iii) using CAEN as a pivot, if he succeeds in forestalling us there.
c) To counter these enemy measure 3 British Division should, before dark on D-Day, have captured or effectively masked CAEN and be disposed in depth with brigade localities firmly established.
i) North-West of BENOUVILLE, in support of 6 Airborne Division operating East of R ORNE (having relieved the airborne troops West of the canal and taken over the defence of the BENOUVILLE-RANVILLE crossings.
ii) North-West of CAEN, tied up with the LEFT forward brigade locality of 3 Canadian Division.
Should the enemy forestall us at CAEN and the defences prove to be strongly organised thus causing us the fail to capture it on D-Day, further direct frontal assaults which may prove costly will not be undertaken without reference to I Corps. In such an event 3 British Division will contain the enemy in CAEN and retain the bulk of its forces disposed for mobile operations inside the covering position. CAEN will be subjected to heavy air bombardment to limit its usefulness and to make its retention a costly business."
- Richard Anderson - "Cracking Hitler's Atlantic Wall: the 1st Assault Brigade Royal Engineers on D-Day"
So the intention in the Order is quite clear. Take Caen if possible, but if German resistance ensure that the enemy doesn't use it as a means of counter-attacking. Mask it off then let the RAF deal with Caen. Caen was not the prime aim. It was to draw the German Armour reserves onto the Second Army then grind them down, with also an aim to prevent them from interfering in Bradley's breakout into Brittany and the seizing Cherbourg. The Germans kept approximately 90% of their armour on Monty's left flank against the British and Canadians including ALL the elite Panzer Divisions, and kept all the heavy armour away from the US armies.
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@Michael Basford
You need to do some reading.
In an interview with General Browning in the NY Times he said he gave equal priority to the bridge and the Groesbeek heights. The heights near De Ploeg, which are really pretty flat being a wooded area but high for Holland, are pretty well between the DZ and bridge. Browning and Gavin did not want German troops between the DZ and the bridge, so the heights had to be occupied and secure. Gavin understood the priorities of sending the 508th to the bridge and heights immediately, with Coln Warren's battalion of the 508th assigned the bridge. To get to the bridge from the DZ you have to go through the heights, so any enemy at the heights naturally had to be subdued, then secure the area, then send Warren's battalion to the bridge.
It took the 508th a painfully slow 3.5 hours to march a few miles from the DZ to the heights, reaching the heights at 1730. There were no Germans at the heights as a forward scouts relayed back, so Coln Lindquist could send Warren's battalion to the bridge immediately, without any delay, while men stayed back setting up defences at De Ploeg on the heights. Dutch resistance men informed the 508th that the Germans had largely cleared out of the town with only 19 guards on the bridge.
Lindquist of the 508th was not moving at all, staying static at De Ploeg. Lindquist was waiting for a Divisional Order from Gavin that the "DZ" was secure then move Warren's battalion to the bridge. When Gavin found out via a liaison officer he was livid, running over to De Ploeg in a Jeep telling Lindquist to get moving to the bridge. Three stray men from a patrol sent to the bridge by Warren to confirm what the Dutch Underground told them, took the guards on the south end of the bridge prisoner. They left when no one turned up. When leaving they saw the Germans pour hundreds of men onto the bridge. Some of Warren's men got lost when they eventually moved to the bridge. By the time the 508th did get to the bridge in force, the Germans had come south reinforcing the bridge with hundreds of men. Too late.
The 82nd were expecting German resistance from the east, however it came from the north via the Nijmegen bridge. Gavin was expecting Lindquist to secure the heights, which were devoid of enemy forces, then move to the bridge, which meant sending Warren's battalion immediately. Lindquist was expecting Gavin to notify him that the DZ was clear, Gavin was expecting Lindquist to go to the bridge when it was obvious the heights, on the way to bridge, were secure. As no Germans were about, the heights were naturally secure.
Regarding Lindquist's expecting clearing of the DZ before moving from DePloeg. Lindquist did write a Field Order for the 508th on 13 September copied to Gavin, stating that once the heights were secure he would wait for a Divisional Order [from Gavin] to move. Two days later at the jump briefing Gavin verbally told Lindquist, using a map, that he should move to the bridge "without delay". Poor command communications by Gavin. Poulussen, in Lost at Nijmegen discovered that the 508th jumped without any written offensive orders from Gavin. All was verbal from Gavin to Lindquist. Chester Graham, the 82nd liaison officer, was at the pre jump meeting in England. He said there was no ambiguity amongst anyone that the bridge was the prime target.
In 1945 Historical Officer, Capt. John Westover of the US Army Centre of Military History, was wanting confirmation if the capture of the Nijmegen bridge had been part of the objectives. In response, dated 25 July 1945, General Gavin was clear: "About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping well, I personally directed Col Lindquist, Commanding the 508 PIR to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen Bridge without delay after landing but to keep a close watch on it in the event he needed to protect himself against the Reichswald and he was cautioned to send the battalion via the east of the city."
Browning never knew men were static at De Ploeg. Like Gavin he was expecting men to be seizing the bridge. Being corps commander, he was busy trying to communicate with all three para divisions. The 82nd launched a few failed attacks on the bridge. In the afternoon of the next day, 18th, Gavin asked permission to launch another attack. Browning, seeing the bridge was well defended, and the failed attacks, refused, opting to wait for XXX Corps to arrive to seize the bridge. Inexplicably Gavin moved all his men out of Nijmegen town completely to the heights and DZ, giving the town back to the Germans. This made matters worse when XXX Corps arrived who had expend vital time, and ammunition, in flushing them out.
On page 162 of the U.S. Official History:
"many documents regarding the extensive combat interviews were conducted with personnel of the 508th Parachute Infantry, they are inexplicably missing from Department of the Army files."
Read:
Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History Of The 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment In World War II by Phil Nordyke.
Arnhem 1944 by Christer Bergström.
Market Garden, Then and Now by Karl Magry.
Lost at Nijmegen by R Poulusson
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You are so eager to assert that German tech was superior to the British, that you forget to read what they actually made, and how useful it actually was.
The first jet engine to run, and to fly in a plane, was von Ohain's project at Heinkel. He had massive funding from a major industrialist. Von Ohain himself admitted that he looked very closely indeed at Whittle's jet engine patents before starting work on his own jet engine. That engine had a centrifugal compressor and turbine. It was not the axial jet at all. It was unreliable, inefficient, low power, low life, despite having massive funding from Heinkel - a failure, Tat was not continued.
Whittle chose to concentrate his very limited funding on the centrifugal compressor because it was well-understood. He was focused on making a war-usable, reliable and powerful engine - quickly - which would outperform the best piston engine planes of the day. All of these qualities the Jumo and BMW axial jet engines lacked. On limited funding, Whittle developed a reliable engine which was combat-ready just before war-end. Within months, production engines were also more powerful (Gloster Meteor's top speed of 600mph in late 1945, 650mph in mid '46) than any of the total garbage engines turned out by the rushed German programs to the enormous detriment of actual combat. You can not claim that an engine with a service life of 10-12 hours, which can not be rapidly throttled up or down otherwise it stalls, is prone to flame-out, and generally terrifies its pilots, is combat ready. They were unproven, and problematic for the day, axial jet engines, being garbage.
The problems with German jets engines were not caused by the scarcity of metals in Germany during WW2, as they had access to enough rare metals. To make a useful jet engine you need high-strength alloys which will resist high temperature. No iron-based alloy is suitable. Germany had no programme to develop such alloys. The British did, developing the nimonic series alloys, making use of them in the WW2 jet engine programme. That is one, just one, of the reasons why the British jet program had combat potential, with the German program doomed to failure.
The Me262 airframe had many serious faults:
♦ high landing speed:
♦ difficult to maneuver;
♦ no air brakes;
♦ centre of gravity too far back;
♦ Poor downwards pilot visibility;
Those faults made attacking other aircraft far more difficult - at a time when they were desperately short of pilots, particularly pilots with sufficient skill and experience to fly what was a very difficult plane to fly and fight in.
The sweep-back of the wing of the Me262 was minimal, only in the leading edge, with a part of the trailing edge of the wing being straight. The swept wing was an insufficient correction for the plane's centre of gravity problem, not aerodynamics, that prompted the slight wing sweep. It was not until years later that properly designed swept-back wings were introduced in combat planes. By contrast the Gloster Meteor was:
♦ handleable;
♦ maneuverable;
♦ a balanced combat plane.
While the Meteor was being developed, the British were also working on the supersonic Miles 52 plane - the project was dropped with the plans given over to the USA, which resulted in Bell X-1. No one copied the Me262 in the post war rush to get fast jet planes into service. The British also produced new planes - the world's most advanced, in engine and airframe.
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I will let the Germans have the first say on the Bulge:
General Hasso von Manteuffel:
‘The operations of the American First Army had developed into a series of individual holding actions. Montgomery's contribution to restoring the situation was that he turned a series of isolated actions into a coherent battle fought according to a clear and definite plan. It was his refusal to engage in premature and piecemeal counter-attacks which enabled the Americans to gather their reserves and frustrate the German attempts to extend their breakthrough’.
By November 1944, British SHEAF officer, Strong, noted that there was a possibility of a German counter-offensive in the Ardennes or the Vosges. Strong went to personally warn Bradley at his HQ, who said, "let 'em come".
Montgomery on hearing of the attack immediately, without consulting Eisenhower, took British forces to the Meuse to prevent any German forces from making a bridgehead, securing the rear. He was prepared to halt their advance and attack them. This was while Eisenhower and Bradley were doing nothing.
even by 19 December, three days into the offensive, no overall plan had emerged from 12th Army Group or SHAEF, other than the decision to send Patton’s forces north to Bastogne. Overall, the Ardennes battle was in urgent need of grip. General Hodges had yet to see Bradley or receive more than the sketchiest orders from his Army Group commander.
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
On 20 December, Montgomery had sent a signal to Alanbrooke regarding the US forces:
"Not good... definite lack of grip and control. I have heard nothing from Ike or Bradley and had no orders or requests of any sort. My own opinion is that the American forces have been cut in half and the Germans can reach the Meuse at Namur without opposition."
Omar Bradley, commander of the 12th Army Group, did very little:
16 Dec, the first day, for 12 hours did nothing.
16 Dec, after 12 hours, he sent two armoured divisions from the flanking Ninth and Third Armies.
17 Dec, after 24 Hours, he then called in two US airborne divisions from Champagne.
18 Dec, he ordered Patton to halt his pending offensive in the Saar.
18 Dec, he had still not established contact with the First Army, while Monty had.
19 Dec, he withdrew divisions from the Aachen front to shore up the Ardennes.
19 Dec, he had still not produced an overall defensive plan.
19 Dec, the Supreme Commander intervened directly late in the day.
20 Dec, Eisenhower telephoned Montgomery telling him to take command of the US First and Ninth Armies
While all this dillying by Bradley was going on, German armies were pounding forward into his lines. Bradley should have been fired. Hodges ran away from his command post.
British officer Whiteley & American officer Betts of SHEAF visited the U.S. First Army HQ after the German attack, seeing the shambles. Strong, Whiteley, and Betts recommended that command of the armies north of the Ardennes be transferred from Bradley to Montgomery. Unfortunately only the two British officers approached Bedell Smith of their recommendations, who immediately fired the pair, claiming it was a nationalistic thing. The next morning, Beddel Smith apologized seeing the three were right, recommending to Eisenhower to bring in Monty.
During the Battle of the Bulge Eisenhower was stuck self imprisoned in his HQ in des-res Versailles near Paris in fear of German paratroopers wearing US uniforms with the objective to kill allied generals. He had remained locked up more than 30 days communicating little with Montgomery, and that is when he thought he was doing ground control of the campaign, when in effect Montgomery was in control as two shambolic US armies had to be put under his control after the German attack, the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF had to take control of US air force units. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war, just about.
And yet biased American authors such as Stephen Ambrose said that Eisenhower took control of the Bulge and made the battle his veneering it as an all American victory. Ambrose completely falsified history. The only thing Eisenhower did was tell Monty to get control of two out of control US armies, tell the US 101st to go to Bastogne (who were in northern France after the buffer Market Garden was created) and men under Bradley to counterattack. That is it.
At the end of the Bulge would you believe it, Eisenhower gave Bradley an award.
Read:
Battle of the Bulge by Charles Whiting
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Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower approved, under resourcing the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak".
The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed.XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem.
Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself.XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time Monty had the Canadians cleared it, or were investing in many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@michaelkenny8540
“Patton finally began receiving adequate supplies on September 4, after a week’s excruciating pause”
- Harry Yeide
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp. In thinking this Ike was wrong."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
“It was commonly believed at Third Army H.Q. that Montgomery's advance through Belgium was largely maintained by supplies diverted from Patton. (See Butcher, op. cit., p. 667.) This is not true. The amount delivered by the ' air-lift ' was sufficient to maintain only one division. No road transport was diverted to aid Montgomery until September16th. On the other hand, three British transport companies, lent to the Americans on August 6th " for eight days," were not returned until September 4th.' “
- CHESTER WILMOT
THE STRUGGLE FOR EUROPE. 1954
P 589
"Despite objections raised to Montgomery's plan of an assault on a 40 division front, it was more sensible than Eisenhower's insistence on the entire front being in motion at all times, for no better reason than he could not abide the thought that the two American army groups would not participate as entities in the anticipated victory. Not only did Eisenhower fail to heed Montgomery's suggestions, but also he never seemed to understand the possible benefits. He was evidently unable to understand that to supply 40 divisions attacking on one front would have been an easier task than to supply first one army and then the other as each in turn went over to the offensive. It was this concentration of effort which Eisenhower failed to understand and to implement"
- Eisenhower at the Art of Warfare
by DJ Haycock, page 182.
Land supplies were not taken from Patton and given to Monty. It is a complete myth to claim otherwise. Monty didn't even have a full army for his attack at Market Garden, just a Corps and supporting elements, with much flow in from England.
Market Garden was not a very large ground operation. It was limited in size. The American attack into the Hurtgen Forest started when Market Garden was going on. The US advance on the Hurtgen Forest by First US Army 9th Infantry Division began on 14th September, 3 days before Market Garden began, and was continuing to try and advance into the Hurtgen even when Market Garden began 3 days later, but it was halted by the Germans however.
This was soon followed up by a larger advance by US First Army towards Aachen at the start of October. Market Garden didn't make a notable dent in allied supplies seeing as the US was able to put on a LARGER ground attack right afterwards. According to Bradley in his own book there was parity of supplies between the three allied armies, Second British, First and Third US by mid September 1944 and according to the official US Army History as cited in Hugh Cole's book, The Lorraine Campaign page 52... "by 10th September the period of critical (gasoline) shortage had ended". This was a whole week before Market Garden took place. The gasoline drought was the end of August/beginning of September. It was over by the time of Market Garden.
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....Continued...
North American were not working on installing a Merlin engine before Rolls Royce. Rolls engineers under Ron Harker went to North American to advise on what to do. They also gave advice from their work with the RR Mustang X. Rolls-Royce made the first proposal to North American about a Merlin 45 engine Mustang in 1940, after Stanley Hooker improved the power by 30%. This was before the plane was operational an still in the R&D stage. The RR Merlin now was greatly superior to the Alison engine, to what it was in February 1940 when North American were approached by the Air Ministry. The later Merlin 61 had the two-stage auto controlled supercharging developed again by Stanley Hooker. This gave an extra 70 mph and 15,000 feet of operation to the Merlin. A quantum leap. The pilot just went where he liked without degradation in performance.
RR sent three engineers led by James Ellor to supervise the adaption and manufacture of a Packard built Merlin 61, the same type that was already being considered for the Rolls Royce Mustang X experimental series. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Mustang_Mk.X
On 9 June 1942, the first memos from W/C I.R. Campell-Orde of the RAF Air Fighting Development Unit at Duxford, reveal that an effort was being made to convince North American to adopt a Merlin-powered Mustang. Work in the US was setback due to an initial lack of interest and also to mechanical failures of the first Merlin engines built under licence by Packard. Both projects commenced at nearly the same time with the first Mustang X in the air about a month earlier than the North American XP-51B.
The RR Mustang-X programme was 5 or 6 airframes each with different experimentation. RR attempted to have North American accept British Merlin 61s (the two-stage superchargers) in American airframes, it is clear that the prime contractor (NAA) wanted to control the project as control was looking like it was to move over to the UK. NAA was essentially building production-standard aircraft rather than the experimental series that saw each of the RR Mustang Xs trying out new variations of design. An offshoot was the mid-engine RR Griffon engined Mustang that actually made it to the mock-up stage, albeit with a Merlin installed amidships. On the success of the RR Mustang-X built in Nottingham, the Air Ministry ordered hundreds from RR, who declined wanting to remain specialising in engines. NAA remained the prime contractor.
Rolls Royce mass produced Merlins in Crewe, Manchester and Glasgow, licensing Packard in the USA to make them supplying the Canadian aircraft factories - to avoid a two-way trans-Atlantic trip using idle US industry. An agreement was reached in September 1940, with the first Packard built Merlin engine running in August 1941.
Early in 1944 the P-38, P-51B Mustang and P-47C, were dived by the British for compressibility testing at the RAE Farnborough, England at the request of the USAAF. They had trouble when these planes dived onto attacking German fighters when providing top cover for the bombers. The results were that the Mach numbers, the manoeuvring limits, were Mach 0.68 for the P-38, Mach 0.71 for the P-47, and Mach 0.78 for the Mustang. The corresponding figures for the FW-190 and Me109 was Mach 0.75. The tests resulted in the Mustang being chosen for all escort duties.
- Page 70, Wings On My Sleeve by Eric Brown, who did the test.
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@renaisabitch
Cain? Do you mean Caen?
He certainly did at Caen.
The Germans had over 1,500 tanks in the British/Canadian Caen sector, including Tigers and Panthers. Even the King Tiger and Jagdpanther made their WW2 combat debuts around Caen in July.
Caen had more German tanks per mile than Kursk. In just a few miles 8 Panzer divisions in a very small area of front. Caen had the highest concentration density of German tanks ever seen in WW2. These were pitted against British armour. At Kursk the Panzer divisions were spread out over a much wider area and were not concentrated as densely as around Caen. At Kursk the Germans were attacking over a near 50 mile front.
There were EIGHT Panzer Divisors in the Caen area by the end of June 1944 and FIVE lines of anti tank-guns. The Germans kept sending more and more Panzer divisions around the Caen area as June went on and into July.
Panzer divisions deployed to the Caen area:
♦ 21st Panzer Division (117 Panzer IVs)
♦ Panzer Lehr Division (101 Panzer IVs, 89 Panthers)
♦ 2nd Panzer Division (89 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers)
♦ 116th Panzer Division (73 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers). In reserve just behind the front
♦ 1st SS Panzer Division (98 Panzer IVs, 79 panthers)
♦ 9th SS Panzer Division (40 Stugs, 46 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers)
♦ 10th SS Panzer Division (38 Stugs, 29 Panzer IVs)
♦ 12th SS Panzer Division (38 Stugs, 29 Panzer IVs)
♦ Tiger Battalion SS101 (45 Tigers)
♦ Tiger Battalion SS102 (45 Tigers)
♦ Tiger Battalion 503 (45 Tigers)
Source:
- Bernages Panzers and Battle for Normandy;
- Zetterling’s Normandy 1944: German Military Organization, Combat Power and Organizational Effectiveness.
The Americans who were not equipped or experienced to face massed German armour, were given primarily an infantry role by Montgomery. the Americans met very little armour in WW2. The US forces didn’t face any German armour until June 13th, and that was only a mere battalion of assault guns. The British destroyed about 90% of German armour in the west.
‘Montgomery’s tactical handling of the British and Canadians on the Eastward flank and his co-ordination of these operations with those of the Americans to the westward involved the kind of work in which he excelled.'
- CRUSADE IN EUROPE, EISENHOWER, 1948, Page 288
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Patton was an average US general, like Simpson, Patch, Hodges, etc. No more. A US media creation for home hero consumption, elevating the average beyond their status.
"The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian First Army HQ for the same purpose.
Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation.
"This advance duly began at 0630hrs on August 18 which, as the Canadian Official History remarks, ‘was a day and a half after Montgomery had issued the order for the Canadians to close the gap at Trun, and four and a half days after Patton had been stopped at the Third Army boundary’. During that time, says the Canadian History, the Canadians had been ‘fighting down from the north with painful slowness’ and the Germans had been making their way east through the Falaise gap. They were not, however, unimpeded; the tactical air forces and Allied artillery were already taking a fearful toll of the German columns on the roads heading east past Falaise.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise – Operation Tractable – which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed there with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were re-fitting and rebuilt after the summer 1944 battles. The Panzer Brigades had green crews with little time to train, did not know their tanks properly, had no recon elements and didn't even meet their unit commander until his arrival at the front. These were not elite forces.
The 17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, equipped only with assault guns not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy and not up to strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the best German divisions in the west were NOT.
♦ Who did the 3rd Army engage?
♦ Who did the 3rd Army defeat?
♦ Patton never once faced a full strength Waffen SS panzer division nor a Tiger battalion.
In The Lorraine, the 3rd Army faced a rabble. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said:
"I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Patton was mostly facing a second rate rabble in The Lorraine.
Patton was neither on the advance nor being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. The road from Luxembourg to Bastogne saw few German forces, with Bastogne being on the very southern German flank, their focus was west. Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was not one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, while 26th Volks-Grenadier only had about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind only had a small number of tanks operational. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1.
Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Leading elements were engaging the Americans and British under Montgomery's command near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance and pushed them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons opened up with the American attack stopping and pulling back. The next day fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B retreating once again. It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. Patton's forces arrived at Chaumont late on the 22nd December. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day, the 25th! Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, just 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne.
In Normandy in 1944, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact. This eastern dash devoid of German forces was the ride the US media claimed Patton was some sort master of fast moving armour.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates:
♦ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics Bradley's II Corps were employing
♦ He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division, Truscott of being "afraid to fight".
♦ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps.
♦ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize stalled he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being "very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect".
♦ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in reporting their losses.
After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF. Coningham, gave Patton massive ground attack plane support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall. Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault, including his subordinates. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated. Oh, and wore cowboy guns.
Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his orders, and Eisenhower's orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read:
Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds and
Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies
by Harry Yeide
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@myrtistaylor5759
He does not go into great detail. That is the idea, it is an overview. He does explain that a transistor can be:
1) An amplifier of a signal - making the signal stronger as it passes through. An example is that a weak radio signal can be made stronger to power a speaker.
2) A gate. A gate is just that, it stops the signal, as a light switch does, or allows the signal to go through, as a light switch does. Using it as a gate it is a relay. One circuit switches on and off another.
As the gate is either on or off, it is ideal for the binary numbering system which is 0 and 1 (base 2). We use in our everyday use base 10 because we have 10 fingers. This is a cumbersome way of using an electronic component as a device is switching on and off a signal, not having it continuous and moving all the way fast as in an analogue form - electricity moves at approx' 1,860 miles per second. It is inefficiently stopping and starting.
But here is what makes it feasible. Having 60 billion transistors in a device that can carry out two billion on and off switches per second, binary calculations can be performed amazingly quickly.
How does that make a modern digital electronic device work? A computer, computes, constantly calculating. That is what it is doing underneath. The so-called computer devices we use, the function is not computing for the end user - using a web browser on a smart phone is not adding up numbers. To achieve what the end user wants, an amazing level of calculations are performed underneath using the binary, base 2 system. All performed by the Central Processor Unit (CPU) and other components that contain transistors used as gates.
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A prime strategic problem for SHAEF in September 1944 was opening up the approaches to Antwerp and keeping it from German counter-attack - the logistics problem to supply all allied armies. It was:
1) Take Noord Brabant, the land to the north and northeast of Antwerp, or;
2) Take the Schedlt.
Noord Branant had to be taken first, as it was essential. It was taken with limited forces also sent to take the Schedlt. Market Garden had to go ahead regardless of any threat, actually being a success. To use Antwerp and control the approaches, the Scheldt, everything up to the south bank of the lower Rhine at Nijmegen needed to be under allied control.
The low-lying lands, boggy ground, rivers and canals between Arnhem and Nijmegen is perfect geography as a barrier against a German counter-attack towards Antwerp. Without control of Noord Brabant German forces would have been in artillery range of Antwerp, and with a build up of forces directly back to Germany in perfect country for a counter-attack. Market Garden was the offensive SHEAF wanted to secure Antwerp, a prime port for logistics for all allied armies. It made sense as the Germans were in disarray, so should be easy enough to gain.
Monty added Arnhem to form a bridgehead over the Rhine. It made complete sense in establishing a bridgehead over the Rhine as an extra to the operation. You needed Arnhem for a jump into Germany. Everything up to Nijmegen was needed if you wanted to do anything at all - that is protect Antwerp and have a staging point to move into Germany. Gaining Noord Brabant, was vital, and was successfully seized. Fighting in the low lying mud and waterways of the Schedlt, which will take time, while the Germans are still holding Noord Brabant made no sense at all.
SHEAF got what they wanted from a strategic point of view.
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The British 1st Airborne made it to Arnhem bridge, taking the north end of the bridge, denying its use to the Germans.
The other two airborne units, both US, failed to seize their assigned bridges immediately. If they had XXX Corps would have been in Arnhem on d-day+1, before any armour came in from Germany. Game set and match.
The Germans would not have known what had hit them.
The 12 hour delay caused by the 101st not seizing the Zon bridge, meant the Germans for 12 hours had a critical time window to pour in troops and get armour moving towards Arnhem.
The 36 hour delay, on top of the 12 hour delay, caused by the 82nd not seizing their bridge at Nijmegen (XXX Corps had to take it for them), meant another longer time window for the Germans to keep up the reinforcing. The 36 hour delay created by the 82nd, meant a bridgehead over the Rhine was precluded, as the two day time window given to the
Germans was far too long.
The British paras did their part in securing a crossing over its assigned waterway, the Rhine. The two US para units failed in theirs. XXX Corps never put a foot wrong.
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After the German Bulge attack, the US First and Third armies had to be put under Montgomery's control, as were parts of the USAAF put under RAF control. Patton stopped during his advance towards Bastogne in the Ardennes after the Germans pounded through US lines, but was unsuccessful. On the night of the 22nd December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night, but a small number of German troops with anti tank weapons opened up stopping the American attack with the US forces having to pull back.
The next day, the 23rd, Conigham of the RAF gave Patton US fighter bomber support which strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders being the only reason why the attack resumed the next afternoon. However a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B retreating once again. It took Patton almost 3 days just to get through the village of Chaumont. Patton's forces arrived at Chaumont late on the 22nd December. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day, the 25th! Hardly racing at breakneck speed. to stop the Germans at the Battle of the Bulge.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the Germans. Patton's start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, just 15km south west of Bastogne and yet he still took 5 days to get through to Bastogne.
Patton is the most overrated general in history. An average to low general who is regarded by the US media as a superstar.
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seth1422 (or Rambo),
The 9th SS infantry poured south over the bridge at 1930, 5.5 hours after the 82nd was ready to march. The 82nd should have secured the bridge by then. The 82nd, as it says in the US Official History, only started to move to the bridge at 1830 hrs with forty men. The Germans occupied the bridge and town. The first 82nd attack was at 2200 hrs, which is near 8 hours, after being ready to march. An appalling performance when jumping with no opposition and few German low grade troops hanging around Nijmegen. At 1400 hrs on D-Day only 18 to 19 low grade soldiers were on the bridge, with some 20mm guns and one 88mm gun around the bridge. No tanks traps or barbed wire. A walk over. The 82nd met no armour on the way to any of the bridges.
By the time XXX Corps seized the bridge, unlike what that daft film shows, no 82nd men were involved in taking the bridge, the Germans had tanks between Nijmegen and Arnhem. When XXX Corps rolled up at about 0800 hrs on D-Day+2, there was pretty well nothing between Nijmegen and Arnhem. The tanks could have rolled up to Arnhem bridge by about noon on D-Day+2. The British paras denied the use of the Arnhem bridge to the Germans. The Germans were quite populous around Arnhem, but with no armour until D-Day+1 late in the evening.
Events on the 1st day:
♦ "At 1328, the 665 men of US 82nd 1st Battalion began
to fall from the sky."
- Poulussen, R. Lost at Nijmegen.
♦ "Forty minutes after the drop, around 1410, the
1st Battalion marched off towards their objective,
De Ploeg, three miles away."
- Poulussen,
♦ The 82nd were digging in and performing recon
in the area looking for 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald
- Neillands, R. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
♦ The 82nd were dug in and preparing to defend their
newly constructed regimental command post, which
they established at 1825. Then Colonel Lindquist
"was told by General Gavin, around 1900, to move
into Nijmegen."
- Poulussen
Events on the evening of the first day:
♦ Having dug in at De Ploeg, Warren's battalion wasn't prepared
to move towards the Nijmegen at all.
- Poulussen,
♦ Once Lindquist told Lieutenant Colonel Warren that his
Battalion was to move, Warren decided to visit the HQ
of the Nijmegen Underground first - to see what info the
underground had on the Germans at the Nijmegen bridge.
- Poulussen,
♦ This was not a direct route to the bridge from Warren's
original position, and placed him in the middle of the town.
It was also around 2100 when "A" Company left to attempt
to capture the Nijmegen road bridge.
♦ "B" Company was not with them because they'd split up
due to it being dark with "visibility was less than ten yards".
- Poulussen,
♦ The 82nd attacks were resisted by the Germans until the
next day.
Events of the 2nd day:
♦ Gavin drove up in a Jeep the next morning and
was told by Warren that although they didn't have the bridge
yet, another attack was about to go in.
♦ Gavin then told Warren to hold because the Germans were
attacking in the southeast portion of the 82nd perimeter.
♦ At around 1100, Warren was ordered to withdraw from
Nijmegen completely.
- Poulussen
Poulessen's info comes from Major Delamater, Executive Officer of 1st Battalion 508th - who "wrote a coherent and technical account" of the actions of 1st Battalion 508th in 1947. It is the most detailed account of the 82nd's actions at Nijmegen.
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@davidtuttle7556
Falaise?
"The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian First Army HQ for the same purpose.
Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation.
"This advance duly began at 0630hrs on August 18 which, as the Canadian Official History remarks,16 ‘was a day and a half after Montgomery had issued the order for the Canadians to close the gap at Trun, and four and a half days after Patton had been stopped at the Third Army boundary’. During that time, says the Canadian History, the Canadians had been ‘fighting down from the north with painful slowness’ and the Germans had been making their way east through the Falaise gap. They were not, however, unimpeded; the tactical air forces and Allied artillery were already taking a fearful toll of the German columns on the roads heading east past Falaise.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise – Operation Tractable – which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
Read George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies_ by Harry Yeide
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MakeMeThinkAgain
Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust over other fronts:
On 4 September, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr
- Robin Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen when he issued the directive. Montgomery also wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive. He devised Operation Comet to be launched on 2 September 1944. It was cancelled due to German resistance and poor weather.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 September incorporating divisions of the US 1st Army, incorporated Montgomery's view of a thrust taking the bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. To do this the British 2nd Army, some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow) would clearly be needed. Hodges' would protect the right flank. The Canadians would be on the coast of Belgium and Holland protecting the left flank from the German 15th army. The idea was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy, preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
Neillands on this point...
"the evidence also suggests that certain necessary objectives on the road to Berlin, crossing the Rhine and perhaps even taking the Ruhr, were possible with the existing logistical set-up, provided the right strategy to do so was set in place. Montgomery’s popular and astute Chief of Staff, Freddie de Guingand, certainly thought so: 'If Eisenhower had not taken the steps he did to link up at an early date with Anvil and had held back Patton, and had he diverted the resources so released to the north, I think it possible we might have obtained a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter - but not more.' "
- Robin Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944.
- Robin Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again. This northern thrust over the Rhine obviously would not work with the resources starved First Army, so a lesser operation was devised by Montgomery, Market Garden, eliminating the divisions of US First Army, with only one crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London wanted eliminating ASAP, and give a 60 mile long salient buffer between German forces and the important port of Antwerp. This would only have one corps above Eindhoven. This was a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time. Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance.
Montgomery, although not liking Eisenhower's broad front strategy, making that clear continuously since the Normandy breakout, being a professional soldier he always obeyed Eisenhower's orders keeping to the laid down strategy, unlike Bradley who also allowed Patton to disobey his own orders.
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In an interview with Maj Gen G. E. Prier-Palmer, British Joint Services Mission in Washington, in 1955, General Browning said the Grave and Nijmegen Bridges must be seized "as soon as possible", although the wooded Groesbeek Heights on the route to the bridge must be held.
Field Order 11 of 13 Sept is clear in section 2 a), putting the bridges first in the writing, that they were to be seized, then the high ground secured and then the roads. Order 1, of 13 September, written by Lindquist of the 508th, states he will wait at the high ground for a Division Order to move from the Heights to the bridge. In short, wait for an Order from Gavin to move.
The heights near De Ploeg, which are really pretty flat being a wooded area but high for Holland, are pretty well between the Drop Zone (DZ) and bridge. The 508th would go through the Heights to reach the bridge. Browning and Gavin naturally did not want German troops between the LZ and the bridge, so the Heights had to be occupied and secure. The 508th CP would be established at the Heights.
Gavin understood the priorities in sending the 508th to the bridge and Groesbeek heights immediately, with Coln Warren's battalion of the 508th assigned the bridge. To get to the bridge from the DZ you have to pass the Groesbeek Heights, so any enemy at the Heights naturally had to be subdued, then secure the area, which could take time, then send Warren's battalion to the bridge.
It took the 665 men of 508th a painfully slow 3.5 hours to march a few miles from the DZ to the heights, reaching the Groesbeek heights at 1730. They encountered only a few Labour troops in opposition. There were no Germans at the Groesbeek Heights as forward scouts relayed back the situation. So, on route Coln Lindquist the head of the 508th could have sent Warren's A and B companies directly to the bridge, bypassing the Groesbeek Heights, immediately via the riverbank as instructed by Gavin. The rest of the battalion could move to the empty Groesbeek Heights setting up defences at De Ploeg on the heights. Dutch resistance men informed the 508th that the Germans had largely cleared out of Nijmegen with only 19 guards on the bridge. So all was easy and fine, so the two companies assigned the bridge could move immediately to their objective without a diversion via the Groesbeek Heights.
Despite hearing the good news from the Dutch Underground, Lindquist in command of the 508th was not moving at all, keeping all his men static at De Ploeg. Lindquist was waiting for a Divisional Order from Gavin informing him that the DZ was secure, then send Warren's battalion to the bridge. When Gavin found out Lindquist was static via a liaison officer he was livid, running over to De Ploeg in a Jeep telling Lindquist to get moving to the bridge. Even then, took Lindquist another two hours to send men in force to the bridge.
Three stray men from a forty man patrol sent to the bridge immediately by Warren to confirm what the Dutch Underground told them on reaching DePloeg, took the guards on the south end of the bridge prisoner. They left when no one turned up. When leaving they saw hundreds of Germans pour from the north onto the previously lightly guarded bridge. Later, a company of Warren's main force became lost when they eventually moved towards the bridge. By the time Warren's two companies did reach the bridge in force, the Germans had reinforcing the bridge with hundreds of men. Too late. The first attack on the bridge was just before midnight, 10.5 hours after landing.
* The 82nd were expecting German resistance from the east, however it came from the north via the Nijmegen bridge.
* Gavin was expecting Lindquist to secure the Groesbeek heights, which were devoid of enemy forces, then immediately move to the bridge, which meant sending Warren's battalion immediately.
* Lindquist was expecting Gavin to notify him that the DZ was clear.
Gavin was expecting Lindquist to go to the bridge when it was obvious the Groesbeek heights, on the way to the bridge, were secure. As no Germans were about, the heights were naturally secure. Regarding Lindquist's expected clearing of the LZ before moving from DePloeg. Lindquist did write a Field Order for the 508th on 13 September copied to Gavin, stating that once the heights were secure he would wait for a Divisional Order [from Gavin] to move. Two days later at the jump briefing Gavin verbally overruled Lindquist's Field Order, using a map he told him that he should move to the bridge "without delay". Poor command communications by Gavin.
Poulussen, in Lost at Nijmegen discovered that the 508th jumped without any written offensive orders from Gavin. All was verbal from Gavin to Lindquist of the 508. Chester Graham, the 82nd liaison officer, was at the pre jump meeting in England. He said there was no ambiguity amongst anyone there that the bridge was the prime target.
In 1945 Historical Officer, Capt. John Westover of the US Army Centre of Military History, was wanting confirmation that if the capture of the Nijmegen bridge had been part of the objectives. In response, dated 25 July 1945, General Gavin was clear: "About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping well, I personally directed Col Lindquist, commanding the 508 PIR to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen Bridge without delay _after landing but to keep a close watch on it in the event he needed to protect himself against the Reichswald and he was cautioned to send the battalion via the east of the city.
"_General Browning never knew men were static at De Ploeg. Like Gavin he was expecting men to be seizing the bridge. Being corps commander, he was busy attempting to communicate with all three parachute divisions. The 82nd did launch a few failed attacks on the bridge. In the afternoon of the next day, 18th, Gavin asked permission to launch another attack. Browning, seeing the bridge was well defended, and the failed attacks, refused, opting to wait for XXX Corps to arrive to seize the bridge. Inexplicably Gavin moved all his men out of Nijmegen town completely to the heights and DZ, giving the town back to the Germans. This made matters worse when XXX Corps arrived who had expended vital time, and ammunition, in flushing them out.
On page 162 of the U.S. Official History: "many documents regarding the extensive combat interviews were conducted with personnel of the 508th Parachute Infantry, they are inexplicably missing from Department of the Army files."
Read:
1) Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History Of The 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment In World War II by Phil Nordyke.
2) Arnhem 1944 by Christer Bergström.
3) Market Garden, Then and Now by Karl Magry.
4) Lost at Nijmegen by R Poulusson
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The state of play on the 17th, D day, was:
1) the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was largely clear;
2) there were concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally;
3) there were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen;
4) a few scattered about along the road;
5) there was no armour in Arnhem.
That was it.
i) XXX Corps would deal from the Belgium border to Eindhoven;
ii) 101st from Eindhoven to Grave;
iii) 82nd from Grave to north of Nijmegen;
iv) British and Polish paras from north of Nijmegen to north of the Rhine;
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 2 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured it.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected. XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and towards the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up.
The road was still largely clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump. XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, making up the delay at Zon. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over. If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves, after the 82nd tried again and failed again. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
According to the official AMERICAN Army historian, Forrest Pogue, he stated that the failure of US 82nd Airborne to assault the lightly defended Nijmegen bridge immediately upon jumping 'sounded the death knell' for the men at Arnhem.
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One problem that has bedevilled any objective study of Anglo-US military history in the post-war decades is the tendency of some US commanders and many US historians to play the ‘British’ or ‘Montgomery’ card in order to conceal some glaring American blunder. Omar Bradley’s disastrous failure to provide adequate armoured support for the US divisions landing on Omaha on D-Day, with the terrible losses thus caused to the infantry companies of the 1st and 29th Divisions, have been largely expunged from the public mind — at least in the United States — by constant harping about the British or ‘Montgomery’s failure to take Caen on D-Day — a failure that turned out to have no strategic significance whatsoever.
Nor is Omaha the only example. As we have seen in earlier chapters, harping on about the ‘slowness’ of XXX Corps or the ‘flawed’ plan of General Urquhart at Arnhem, has successfully diverted critical minds from the cock-up in command that prevented the 82nd Division from either taking the Nijmegen bridge on the first day of the attack or avoiding a frontal attack across the Waal in borrowed boats three days later.
It appears that all that was necessary to avoid critical press comment in the USA and any unwelcome Congressional interest in the competence of any American commander, was to murmur ‘the British’ or — better still — ‘Montgomery’, and critical comment in the USA either subsided or went unvoiced.
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
The fact is, that XXX Corps were not slow, reaching Nijmegen ahead of schedule. Urquart's paras took one end of the Arnhem bridge preventing its use by the Germans. If the US 82nd had taken the Nijmegen bridge immediately XXX Corps would have been in Arnhem on time relieving the paras and fully securing the bridge.
Caen was a nice to have objective, but Monty saw no need to tie up vital resources on a strategically unimportant target. As Neillands stated it was of "no strategic significance whatsoever."
Neillands highlights the glaring unthruths of the US press and historians.
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@Ivan Karaschuk
All you wrote are drivel, especially this..... "Patton’s forces who turned back the Ardennes offensive."
Patton was neither on the advance nor being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. The road from Luxembourg to Bastogne saw few German forces, with Bastogne being on the very southern German flank, their focus being west. Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory.
The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was not one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, while 26th Volks-Grenadier only had about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind only had a small number of tanks operational. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1.
Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left, leaving Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Leading elements were engaging the Americans and British under Montgomery's command near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance and pushed them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons opened up with the American attack stopping and pulling back. The next day fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B retreating once again. It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. Patton's forces arrived at Chaumont late on the 22nd December. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day, the 25th! Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, just 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne.
Look at who stopped the German advance, preventing them crossing the Meuse:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvcJfXtkCW8
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The Colonel
The Japanese gained a foothold on Singapore island through an Australian troop line, the Eighth Division. They abandoned their posts and went on a drunken binge in Singapore.
Colin Smith in Singapore Burning writes about the Diggers. He highlights the disgraceful behaviour of the Australian Eighth Division and its commander, Major General Gordon Bennett.
"The British did their best in Singapore. We actually sent in an entire division of territorials, citizen soldiers, the 18th Division, simply because we felt we couldn't let the Australians down. But it was the Australians who let us down,"
"The Australian Eighth Division was committed into battle very late in the Malayan campaign and started off very well. But it collapsed in Singapore, and left a gaping hole in Percival's defences which proved impossible to patch up and led to the precipitate fall of Singapore long before it should have taken place."
"Thousands of Australian deserters – about 7000 – flocked into Singapore town itself from the north-west of the island they were supposed to be holding."
"Some of them fought their way onto ships, some of them were shot by British soldiers as they tried to run away."
Smith discovered that Australian Prime Minister John Curtin had sent a message to the British Commander-in-Chief, General Wavell, that he was not to execute any Australian soldiers for cowardice without Curtin's permission. The Australian Eighth Division were involved in drunkenness, womanising, rape, and desertion.
Smith wrote that the Australian Sixth and Ninth Divisions had a good reputation in other theatres. Gordon Bennett was never again given a command after he escaped from the Japanese.
The Australian conduct was so poor the files were only released about 10 years ago.
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@oldedwardian1778
The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British under Montgomery. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
▪️ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa; October 1942 - El Alamein;
▪️ March 1943 - Medenine;
▪️ June 1944 - Normandy;
▪️ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands;
▪️ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge;
A list of Montgomery’s victories in WW2:
▪️ Battle of Alam Halfa;
▪️ Second Battle of El Alamein;
▪️ Battle of El Agheila;
▪️ Battle of Medenine;
▪️ Battle of the Mareth Line;
▪️ Battle of Wadi Akarit;
▪️Allied invasion of Sicily;
▪️Operation Overlord - the largest amphibious invasion in history;
▪️ Market Garden - a 60 mile salient created into German territory;
▪️ Battle of the Bulge - while taking control of two shambolic US armies;
▪️ Operation Veritable;
▪️ Operation Plunder.
Montgomery not once had a reverse.
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Monty's 8th Army advanced the fastest of any army in WW2. From El Alamein to El Agheila from the 4th to 23rd November 1942, 1,300 km in just 17 days. After fighting a major exhausting battle at El Alemein through half a million mines. This was an Incredible feat, unparalleled in WW2. With El Alamein costing just 13,500 casualties.
The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties, with the Lorraine campaign being a failure. Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties.
Hodges, head of the US First army, fled from Spa to near Liege on the 18th, leaving the maps on the walls. Despite the Germans never getting anywhere near to Spa. Hodges did not even wait for the Germans to approach Spa. He had already fled long before the Germans were stopped. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British, with Montgomery involved in planning, with also Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces.
The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
People need to give respect where it is due.
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@archiedavis1079
The US contribution, although huge at the very end, is overrated. Britain was clearly key in WW2. Britain fought on every front, being in the war on the first day up to the last - the only country at the surrender of Japan in September 1945 to do so - Britain’s war actually ended in 1946 staying on in Viet Nam using Japanese troops alongside British troops to defeat the Viet Minh, but that is another story.
Britain was not attacked or attacked anyone, going into WW2 on principle. The Turkish ambassador to the UK stated that the UK can raise 40 million troops from its empire so it will win the war. This was noted by Franco who indirectly said to Hitler he would not win, fearing British occupation of Spanish islands and territory if Spain joined the war. Spain and Turkey stayed out of the war. The Turkish ambassador’s point was given credence when an army of 2.6 million was assembled in India that moved into Burma to wipe out the Japanese.
From day one the Royal Navy formed a ring around the Axis positioning ships from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Arctic off Norway, blockading the international trade of the Axis. This deprived the Axis of vital human and animal food, oil, rubber, metals, and other vital resources. By 1941 the successful Royal Navy blockade had confined the Italian navy to port due to lack of oil.
By the autumn of 1941 Germany's surface fleet was confined to harbour, by the British fleet and the chronic lack of fuel. A potential German invasion from the USSR in the north into the oil rich Middle East entailed expanded British troop deployment to keep the Germans away from the oil fields, until they were defeated at Stalingrad.
Throughout 1942 British Commonwealth troops were fighting, or seriously expecting to be attacked, in:
♦ French North Africa;
♦ Libya;
♦ Egypt;
♦ Cyprus;
♦ Syria: where an airborne assault was expected, with preparations to reinforce Turkey if they were attacked;
♦ Madagascar: fighting the Vichy French to prevent them from inviting the Japanese in as they had done in Indochina;
♦ Iraq;
♦ Iran: the British & Soviets invaded Iran in August 1941.
Those spread-out covering troops were more in combined numbers than were facing Japan and Rommel in North Africa. The British Commonwealth fielded over 100 divisions in 1942 alone, compared to the US total of 88 by the end of the war. The Americans and Soviets were Johnny-come-late in WW2, moreso the Americans. Before the USSR entered the conflict the Royal Navy’s blockade had reduced the Italian and German surface navies to the occasional sorties because of a lack of oil, with the British attacking the Germans and Italians in North Africa, also securing Syria, Iraq, the Levant and ridding the Italians from East Africa.
The Germans were on the run by the time the USA had boots on the ground against the Axis.
The Germans had been stopped:
♦ in the west at the Battle of Britain in 1940;
♦ in the east at the Battle of Moscow in 1941. In which Britain provided 40% of the Soviet tanks.
The Germans were on the run after the simultaneous battles in late 1942 of:
♦ El Alemein;
♦ Stalingrad;
The Battle of El Alemein culminated in a quarter of a million Axis prisoners taken in Tunisia - more than taken at Stalingrad. Apart from the US Filipino forces that surrendered in early 1942, the US had a couple of divisions in Gaudalcanal after August 1942, and one in New Guinea by November 1942. In 1943 the US managed to get up to six divisions in the Pacific, but still not matching the British or British Indian armies respectively. Until late 1943 the Australian Army alone deployed more ground fighting troops against the Japanese than the USA.
The Americans never put more ground troops into combat against the Japanese at any point than just the British Indian Army alone, which was 2.6 million strong. The US had nowhere near 2.6 million men on the ground against the Japanese. The Soviets fielded about a million against the Japanese. Most Japanese troops were put out of action by the British and Soviets, not the USA. At the hand to hand battles of Khohima and Imphal the Japanese suffered their worst defeat in their history up to that point. They took in 80,000 leaving with 20,000 retreating all the way from then on. Then the British set the Eastern and Pacific fleets against the Japanese, combined it was not far off in numbers to the US fleet.
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The American post war version of events is one that attempts to whitewash their failure at Nijmegen to capture the bridge on the first day. The film A bridge Too Far, made when Browning had already died, only cemented the false narrative in the minds of the public. Since then many researchers have uncovered the real facts.
The 508th did launch some patrols into Nijmegen. A patrol from the 3rd Battalion almost reached the bridge - but only after being delayed by the enemy with the bridge being reinforced in company strength by the time they reached it.
Warren's 1st Bn had launched a patrol or two patrols, yes, just patrols. Nordyke notes two versions from Warren and his exec' officer. It, or they, were led by the Bn S-2 Intelligence Section, then joined by Lt. Weaver's 3rd Platoon of the Bn reserve C Company, plus two squads from the HQ Company LMG Platoon and C Company's SCR-300 radio set and operator, for communication back to the Battalion. Weaver's patrol met German resistance, withdrawing when they heard the Bn were sending A and B companies to take the bridge. They only went to the bridge because Gavin ran to Lindquist's CP at De Ploeg in a Jeep, screaming at him to get moving when he found, after many hours, he was not moving to the bridge.
"I knew all of the division staff and the other regimental commanders, and was included in the planning of operations and briefings. I was ‘bigoted.’ [This is a WWII military term for being read into/briefed on missions.]
Prior to the Holland jump, I sat in 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.
After we were dropped in Holland, 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 (drop zone) is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.” So I went cross-country through Indian country [slang military term for enemy territory] 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 to, “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.”
- by Chester E Graham, liaison officer between the 508th and the 82nd Division Headquarters.
Three stray men of an 82nd patrol, were separated reaching the Nijmegen bridge. They captured about the German bridge guards and their small artillery weapon on the south end of the bridge. They waited an hour until dark at around 7:30 pm, withdrawing as no one turned up. They could hear heavy equipment approaching from Arnhem, being the SS-Panzer Recon Battalion 9, who crossed the bridge at Arnhem just missing Frost's men at 7pm.
- Demolition Platoon, 508th by Zig Burroughs.
Look at Frost's progress in Arnhem, where his whole battalion following A Company moved away from the Germans, through people's houses, over walls and back yards, carrying all their equipment, by-passing German positions, reaching the Arnhem bridge. The British First Airborne landed half an hours after the 508. They had an extra 4 or 5 miles march, met more resistance, yet reached the Arnhem bridge before the US 82nd reached the Nijmegen bridge.
General Gavin gained promotion, 505th PIR command to Assistant Divisional commander for Normandy. He was promoted again to Divisional commander for Holland. Gavin inherited Lindquist as commander of the 508th, who were the least experienced regiment in the Division. Yet Gavin gave the least experienced regiment the prime task. Gavin says that in England he told Lindquist to go for the bridge "without delay." Lindquist denied Gavin said this.
Gavin chose the most experienced regiment, the 504th, who had just returned from Anzio, to secure the Grave bridge, because it was on the Division's supply line. Without the Grave bridge secured, the 82nd would be in trouble. The next most experienced regiment was Gavin's old unit the 505th, giving them the defensive task of securing the landing zones from counter-attack from the Reichswald.
The intelligence picture by SHAEF, on 16 September, suspected II.SS-Panzerkorps was drawing new tanks from a depot in the Kleve area of Germany. Gavin had this mythical 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald, so he gave the least experienced 508th the task of securing Nijmegen and its bridges. This was a unit, better suited to a defensive role. The 508th, and Lindquist, were well dug-in on the Groesbeek ridge at De Ploeg when Gavin was informed they were not moving on the bridges in Nijmegen. They were not following Gavin's divisional plan, Lindquist was waiting for a division order from HQ before moving into Nijmegen. This was a clear communications failure between Gavin and Lindquist.
Ridgway had no role to play in Market Garden as his two divisions of XVIII Corps were attached to the British First Airborne Corps for the operation, under Browning. Ridgway got into a Jeep riding up from Belgium, when XXX Corps made contact with the the 82nd, paying a visit to Gavin's CP to see why they had not secured the bridge. Gavin entered to find Ridgway in the CP studying a map. Gavin ignored him and immediately left without even acknowledging Ridgway's presence.
The fact is there were no German combat troops in Nijmegen on the jump day. None. The low grade aged troops were scared stiff of meeting well armed aggressive paras. The German HQs moved out immediately. Dutch Resistance men informed Linquists at De Ploeg that the bridge had 19 guards with most Germans evacuating Nijmegen.
Regarding Harmel, the German commander who was in command of the 'island' between Nijmegen and Arnhem, when interviewed by Kershaw in the 1970s, he said there was no German armour between the Nijmegen and Arnhem bridge when XXX Corps secured the Nijmegen bridge. This was incorrect as German records show German tanks, inc' Tigers, were already crossing south on the Arnhem bridge to form a line at Elst - the British First had capitulated on the Arnhem bridge running out of ammunition, at the same time XXX Corps crossed the Nijmegen bridge. Harmel never knew this, as communications was skant in a fluid situation. After, the last thing they were thinking of was where and what time, as they saw the allied in a few days had punched a 60 mile salient right into their lines on the German border, taking the largest road bridge in Europe at the time.
▪ Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History Of The 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment In World War II by Phil Nordyke.
▪ Arnhem 1944 by Christer Bergström
▪ Market Garden, Then and Now by Karl Magry.
▪ Lost at Nijmegen by R Poulusson
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@kebabtank
Firstly bare in mind the overall plan. The British 1st Airborne made it to Arnhem bridge, taking the north end of the bridge, denying its use to the Germans. The other two airborne units, both US, failed to seize their assigned bridges immediately. If they had, XXX Corps would have been in Arnhem on d-day+1, before any armour came in from Germany. Game set and match. The Germans would not have known what had hit them.
The 12 hour delay caused by the 101st not seizing the Zon bridge, meant the Germans for 12 hours had a critical time window to pour in troops and get armour moving towards Arnhem. The longer the time delay the more Germans poured in, hence more resistance, hence a slower XXX Corps. Obvious.
On top of the 12 hour delay, the 82nd not seizing their bridge at Nijmegen (XXX Corps had to take it for them), caused an additional 36 hour delay. This meant another longer time window for the Germans to keep up the reinforcing. The extra 36 hour delay created by the 82nd, meant a bridgehead over the Rhine was precluded, as the two day time window in total given to the Germans was far too long.
The British paras did their part in securing a crossing over its assigned waterway, the Rhine. The two US para units failed in theirs. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
Now, the 101st failing to seize the Zon bridge put XXX Corps back 12 hours. XXX Corps errected a Bailey bridge then raced up to Nijmegen unopposed. The Britsh 1st Airborne still held the north of the Arnhem bridge seven miles away. If they had raced over the Nijmegen bridge 1st Airborne would have been relieved. Operation complete.
101st could fail and the 82nd succeed, the operation is a success.
If the 101st succeed with 82nd failing, it is then touch and go if XXX Corps could relieve the 1st Airborne.
As it turned out, both failed.
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Al generals were against the USSR attack. One moved towards Hitler's whims skewing matters.
Wages of Destruction, by Prof Adam Tooze:
Page 454:
"Critical stores would be reserved above all for the main strike force of 33 tank and motorised infantry divisions. If the battle extended much beyond the first months of the attack, the fighting power of the rest of the German army would dwindle rapidly."
"Fundamentally the Wehrmacht was a "poor army". The fast striking motorised element of the Germans army in 1941 consisted of only 33 divisions of 130. Three-quarters of the German army continued to rely on more traditional means of traction: foot and horse. The German army in 1941 invaded the Soviet Union with somewhere between 600,000 and 740,000 horses. The horses were not for riding. They were for moving guns, ammunition and supplies."
"The vast majority of Germany's soldiers marched into Russia, as they had in France, on foot."
"But to imagine a fully motorised Wehrmacht, poised for an attack on the Soviet Union is a fantasy of the Cold War, not a realistic vision of the possibilities of 1941. To be more specific, it is an American fantasy. The Anglo-American invasion force of 1944 was the only military force in WW2 to fully conform to the modern model of a motorised army."
Page 455:
"the chronic shortage of fuel and rubber" "the fuel shortage of 1941 was so expected to be so severe that the Wehrmacht was seriously considering demotorisation as a way of reducing its dependency on scarce oil." "Everything therefore depended on the assumption that the Red Army would crack under the impact of the first decisive blow."
Page 456:
"a new Soviet industrial base to the east of the Urals, which had the capacity to sustain a population of at least 40 million people." "Soviet industrial capacity was clearly very substantial."
"Franz Halder recorded Hitler's ruminations about the Soviets' immense stock of tanks and aircraft."
Reading further Tooze gives the misgivings of the German generals of the invasion. All were negative.
Page 457:
"Halder noted in his diary: Barbarossa: purpose not clear, We do not hurt the English. Our economic base is not significantly improved."
At the top of page 459 Tooze emphasises that Hitler misinterpreted Backe's comments about the Ukraine grain. A region that had little surplus and had a substantial population increase from WW1.
Page 459:
"On 22 January 1941 Thomas had informed his boss, Keitel, that he was planning to submit a report urging caution with regard to the military-economic benefits of the invasion. Now he reversed directions. As it became clear that Hitler was justifying Barbarossa first and foremost as a campaign of economic conquest, Thomas began systematically working towards the Fuehrer."
Thomas was head of the OKW economic planning staff. He modified his reports from negative to positive, presenting the Ukraine as an economic breadbasket. Thomas was an insider and it is assumed he had heard of the misinterpreted Backe's comments to Hitler.
Page 459:
"The OKW now claimed that in the first thrust the Wehrmacht would be able to seize control of at least 70% of the Soviet Union's industrial potential."
Page 460:
"As late as the Spring of 1941, the Foreign Ministry was still opposing the coming war, preferring to continue the alliance with the Soviet Union against the British Empire." "If the shock of the initial assault does not destroy Stalin's regime, it was evident in February 1941 that the Third Reich would find itself facing a strategic disaster."
Page 452:
"the Germans had already conscripted virtually all their prime manpower. By contrast, the Red Army could call up millions of reservists."
Why did Germany invade the USSR in a rushed ill-conceived plan?
Page 431:
"the strongest arguments for rushing to conquer the Soviet Union in 1941 were precisely the growing shortage of grain and the need to knock Britain out of the war before it could pose a serious air threat."
"Meanwhile, the rest of the German military-industrialised complex began to gird itself for the aerial confrontation with Britain and America."
Germany rushed to invade the Soviet Union, with an ill-equipped army with no reserves in anticipation of a massive air war with Britain and the USA, hoping they could win the Soviet war within weeks.
The coming air war:
Roosevelt promised 50,000 plane per year production in May 1940, of which a substantial amount would be in the RAF. Germany could not compete with the level of aircraft at the UKs disposal. Whether the planes had US and UK pilots or just UK pilots they were coming Germany's way. And the only way they could really get at each other was by air. Germany feared mass bombing, which came - the bomber in the late 1930s was perceived as a war winning weapon.
The Germans knew the lead time for aircraft was 18 months from order to delivery. That meant in late 1941/early 1942, these planes would be starting to come in service in great numbers. Germany needed the resources of the east to compete. If the population was too big they would eliminate the population - the precedence was the American move to the west expanding the USA, taking lands from the natives population and Mexican and eliminating the population.
War Production:
Keegan, World War Two, chapter War Production:
1) Germany was third behind the USA, then the UK in GDP, in 1939. Germany = UK in capital goods production in 1939.
2) UK economy grows 60% during WW2.
3) Hitler says to Guderian, re: USSR, "had I known they had so many tanks as that, I would have thought twice before invading"
Wages of Destruction, Prof Tooze, Preface, xxiii:
Combined GDP of the UK and France exceeded Germany & Italy by 60%.
page 454:
"It was poor because of the incomplete industrial and economic development of Germany".
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It is best you pour in the viscosity the makers state and make sure it is "fully" synthetic and conforms to the latest API which is now SN I believe. Thinner oils have to be "fully synthetic", as they are the only oils that can handle it. Thinner oils are meant for less resistance and better fuel consumption. Thinner oils also get to the bearings quicker on start up, when the oil has drained down after the car is standing for a while. Thick oils are a big problem on starting especially in winter. The problem is getting oil to the bearings fast enough as the oil is very thick at low temperatures. That is where fully synthetics shine. They do not become too thick in very cold temperatures starving the bearing of oil on start up. In place like northern Canada using a 0W oil is near essential as the oil can get so thick when the engine is cold.
Fully synthetics also have far greater "shear", that is the resistance to be compressed, keeping metal surfaces apart. Fully synthetics last longer as they break down far slower. A mineral oil can be broken down substantially after 1,000 miles.
Fully synthetics resist and are stable at great heat. They were developed for jet aircraft. Mobil 1 had an advert in the 1990s of two frying pans on a stove, one with fully synthetic in the pan and one mineral oil. They left the burners on. The mineral oil ended up black, burned, dry, hard and caked up. The fully synthetic was still as it was after igniting the burner. This is relevant as all engines have hot spots which will burn mineral oil, hence caked oil forms in parts of the engine. When engines idle and oil and coolant are not being pumped around fast enough it can cause engine hot spots and burning of mineral oil.
Avoid semi-synthetics as many are con. The synthetic part may only be 5-10% of the oil. Only drop from a fully synthetic to a semi when the engine is using oil.
So in short, Get the viscosity your engine needs and pour in a high quality "fully synthetic" and have the latest API number. The highest API numbers are always "fully synthetic" oils. Do not go on old wives tales and the comments here is full of them.
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+oldtanker2
Most of what you have written is pure opinionated ramblings with little fact. You are going on about Patton v Montgomery, Americans do as the propaganda of the USA since WW2 said Patton was a wonderful general, when the reality was that he was some average general amongst other average generals, and lacking on many points. He constantly overran his supply lines. Monty told his staff officers that Patton was 'a foul-mouthed lover of war'. US propaganda constantly went on about Montgomery being inept, and egotist, etc, when no such evidence is there. From mid-1942 onward he never suffered a reverse.
Montgomery was a general over generals. He planned Scilly and Normandy. In Normandy Patton was two levels beneath Montgomery. After WW2 the British interviewed all the German generals and most had never even heard of Patton. Why would they know this creation of US media, they never watched US newsreels.
The reality was that the US never had any top class generals. Many were inept and far too many were buffoons: MacArthur, Clark, Bradley, Admiral King. Look at the debacles at Hurtgen Forest with 33,000 casualties (Bradley) and the Lorraine 52,000 casualties (Patton) which served little whatsoever in a strategic sense and suffered horrendous casualties against inferior numbers. The US had no one like O'Connor. Many US generals would not make the grade in the British Army. The token British buffoon was Percival at Singapore who raised the white flag one day before the Japanese were to raise theirs.
From mid-1942 onwards the British Army was the best in the world. It took all before it never suffering a reverse. It's doctrine was superior to the US Army and discipline much harder. It was well equipped. The US army was an OK army but well equipped.
The US media for propaganda purposes at home elevated their own (Patton is an example), and when they failed blamed the British. The USA was embarrassed that Montgomery had to take control of two US armies to retrieve the situation when the Germans steamrolled them at the Bulge. They were openly hostile towards Montgomery.
Any analysis can see that it is just plain insulting to the British to be slurred over 70 years in such a manner, who had some top quality men and some of them just plain exceptional.
Churchill suggested an American take the top job in the European Campaign. This was to lever the Americans to get Germany First. It worked. If Alan Brooke had been in the job from the start, there is no doubt that there would not have been a Battle of the Bulge and debacles like the Lorraine Campaign and Hurtgen Forest. An experienced, strong central command was needed. From 1 September 1944 when Eisenhower took command from Montgomery he failed dismally with allied forces not having a strong focus.
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The Turning point of WW2 was the Battle of Moscow in Dec 1941. That was when Germany and Japan were doomed.
♦ Japan thought Germany would definitely win the battle defeating the
USSR soon after. The German defeat at Moscow would ensure
Germany would not defeat the USSR.
♦ The Japanese entered WW2 on a presumption they would be linking
up with Germany, transpiring they were alone fighting two massive
powers with another pinning their forces down in China and ongoing
fighting with China, and eventually fighting all three big powers and
China. Not what they wanted.
Japan would not attack the British empire, Dutch empire and the US unless Germany declared war on the USA. If Germany said no to declaring war on the USA, Japan would never have attacked and there would be no Pacific war. The two theatres were linked.
Japan did not want to face alone the USA and the British empire. the worst case scenario. And that is what happened. The Germans attempted to get the Japanese to attack the British in the Far East to divert the British away from Europe. The UK was amassing a large air fleet and also had the world's largest navy. They would not sit by for long only fighting in the desert. The reason Germany attacked the USSR was to get their resources to fight the coming air war with the British. The Japanese repeatedly refused to declare war. Only when the Japanese thought the USSR was about to fall they joined in. The USSR kept 40 divisions opposite the Japanese Kwantung army all though WW2. With superior armour to the Japanese.
Japan received assurances from Germany in the Spring of 1941. that they would declare war on the USA. Japan, economically could not sustain war of any length of time against any major power by itself, either the UK or the USA. Especially a war strung over a vast front. They imported most raw materials with their industry primarily artisan based, with little mass production. If going it alone, what the hell attacking the USA and British Empire was to achieve with no back up occupation force at Pearl Harbor defies belief. The Pearl Harbor attack was to fend off the US navy while they gain as much resource rich territory as possible in the south while the USSR threat is moved away from their north in China by the Germans. To Japan the key was the defeat of the USSR, which by Oct/Nov 1941 they thought was a foregone conclusion.
All through WW2 the Soviets had approx 40 divisions (most armoured) in Siberia and the Soviet Far East facing the Japanese. Without Germany fighting the USSR anticipating a quick German win, the Japanese would never had attacked the USA and the British Empire. It was madness to do so unilaterally and would entail certain defeat - even the Japanese knew that.
The Japanese were to eliminate the US Pacific fleet. The US Atlantic fleet would be occupied by the German U-Boats. The carriers got away at Pearl Harbor. If the carriers were sunk, they would not have been on the defensive by June 1942, giving them far more breathing space and lots more with the anticipated defeat of the USSR within months by the Germans. If the US carriers were sunk along with the US Pacific fleet, and the USSR defeated by summer 1942 by the Germans, Japan would be in very strong position.
The Japanese gained far more territory than they gambled on. They were one day away in Singapore from surrendering, but the British beat them to the white flag. They were expecting more protracted battles in Malaya/Burma and even maybe in the Philippines.
Using some common sense tells you the Japanese were not banking on being alone fighting the world's two largest economic powers. They were expecting at least the USSR to be neutralised or eliminated. And then some military aid from the Germans would be nice if it came. The link was enacted with 41 U-Boats operating from Penang. The Germans then would engage the British diverting them away from fighting the Japanese in Burma. Getting rid of the British and the Soviets was a major prize for Japan, and Germany could do the latter and both they thought the former. So was the notion.
Wages of Destruction by Prof Adam Tooze in quotes:
• The tripartite pact was signed in Sept 1940. If one is attacked the
others come to their aid.
• "The real nightmare of German strategy was the possibility that
Japan might come to terms with the United States, leaving Germany
to fight Britain and maybe America alone. To forestall this possibility,
Hitler had offered to declare war on the United States in conjunction
with Japan already in the Spring of 1941."
• Germany had offered to declare war on the US before the June 1941
attack on the USSR.
• "But the Japanese had refused to commit themselves and instead
entered into a last round of negotiations with the USA."
• "It was not until October and the fall of the Konoe government that
Berlin could feel sure that the Japanese-USA talks were going nowhere."
• "When in November 1941 Tokyo began to signal that Japan was about
to commit itself against the West, it was the cause of relief, bordering
on euphoria in Berlin. Finally Hitler and Ribbentrop had the chance to
complete the global strategic alliance they had been hoping for since
1938. And they did not hesitate."
• The Germans immediately started to revise the Tripartite pact, knowing
of the Japanese commitment to war, at the German's insistence.
• "Without prior knowledge of the Japanese timetable for a surprise attack
on Pearl Harbor, Hitler pledged himself to following Japan in a declaration
of war on the United States."
• 7 Dec 1941, Japanese attack the USA at Pearl Harbor and British territories
in Malaya and Hong Kong.
• The amended Tripartite pact was signed by all, between the 7 Dec 1941,
the attacks on the USA and British Empire, and Germany declaring war
on the USA on 11 Dec 1941.
• 11 Dec 1941 Germany declares war on the USA.
Wages of Destruction is clear that the Germans were informed by the Japanese in November 1941 that they were to declare war. The attacks on the US and British Empire was no surprise to Hitler.
Wages of Destruction also states that Germany was repeatedly attempting to get Japan to declare war on the British empire. The Japanese knew exactly what the Germans wanted and what they would do. It all fits.
As it turned out:
♦ The USSR was not defeated and maintained a large army opposite the
Japanese - the Japanese had already been mauled by the Soviets in
Manchuria in 1939.
♦ Japan was facing the worst case scenario, the scenario it feared - fighting
alone against the British empire and USA, the world's two largest economic
superpowers.
♦ This was not in the forecasting. The German army defeated militarily superior
France within weeks and since June 1941 were mauling the USSR so badly it
was obvious to the Japanese in late 1941 the USSR would be defeated.
♦ The week in which the Japanese attacked the USA and British Empire, the
Soviets counter attacked at Moscow with a battering ram of superior T-34
tanks pushing the Germans back taking 30,000 prisoners, so ending any
chance of Germany defeating the USSR in one swoop. A protracted war
against the USSR would ensue.
♦ In Spring 1941, the Germans feared fighting the USA & the British alone - a
worst case scenario for them. They were desperately worse off, fighting the
British, USA and the USSR alone.
♦ If the Soviet counter attack had been one month earlier the Japanese would
not have attacked the British and the USA - and most probably signed a pact
with the USA which was in ongoing talks virtually to the attack on the British,
Dutch and Americans.
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@papajohnloki
"Montgomery was a competent , if cautious, commander."
More US propaganda. Competent he was indeed! Cautious? He never outstripped his supply you mean.
"it would have meant [taking Caen] enormous casualties in doing it and it wasn't necessary."
- Field Marshall Montgomery (1959)
That nonsense about Caen. Caen was a second tier objective being an inland city. If it was easily taken then take it, if strong resistance, then leave it and let the RAF sort it out - which they did with 500 bomber raid. Ports were important.
Montgomery was very clear in his briefings to allied leaders at St Pauls School in London on the 7th April and again on 15th May 1944 (St Paul's School is in West London - that is in England). Caen was a 2nd tier D-Day target, not a must have. The most important objective in the first phase of the invasion was Cherbourg - which was not taken by US forces until 30th June. Taking Caen, at great expense, without taking Cherbourg would have been of little help to the allies, only depleting vital men and materials.
Montgomery's handling of this phase met the approval of Eisenhower:
CRUSADE IN EUROPE,
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER,
CHAPTER 14. D-DAY AND LODGMENT
Page, 282
‘Knowing that his old antagonist of the desert, Rommel, was to be in charge of the defending forces, Montgomery predicted that enemy action would be characterized by constant assaults carried out with any force immediately available from division down to a battalion or even company size. He discounted the possibility that the enemy under Rommel would ever select a naturally strong defensive line and calmly and patiently go about the business of building up the greatest possible amount of force in order to launch one full-out offensive into our beach position. Montgomery’s predictions were fulfilled to the letter.’
Page, 288
‘Montgomery’s tactical handling of the British and Canadians on the Eastward flank and his co-ordination of these operations with those of the Americans to the westward involved the kind of work in which he excelled.'
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@flyoptimum
Browning did not prioritize the Heights over the bridge. He gave them equal priority. Gavin de-prioritized the bridge after he failed to seize it, ordering all his men out of Nijmegen town.
"I personally gave an order to Jim Gavin that, although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen Bridges as soon as possible, it was essential that he should capture the Groesbeek Ridge and hold it—for … painfully obvious reasons …. If this ground had been lost to the enemy the operations of the 2nd Army would have been dangerously prejudiced as its advance across the Waal and Neder Rhein would have been immediately outflanked. Even the initial advance of the Guards Armoured Division would have been prejudiced and on them the final outcome of the battle had to depend."
- Lt Gen Browning to Maj Gen G. E. Prier-Palmer, British Joint Services Mission, Washington, D.C., 25 Jan 55, excerpt in OCMH.
The American post war version of events is one that attempts to whitewash their failure at Nijmegen, to capture the bridge on the first day. The film A bridge Too Far, made when Browning had already died, only cemented the false narrative in the minds of the public. Since then many researchers have uncovered the real facts.
The 508th did launch some patrols into Nijmegen. A patrol from the 3rd Battalion almost reached the bridge. Three stragglers from the patrol of 40 men took prisoner seven of the 18 guards prisoner, including their cannon guarding the southern end of the bridge. If the 82nd had bothered to turn up at the bridge two hours earlier rather than hanging around DePloeg they would have hopped and skipped onto the bridge whistling Dixie.
When Gavin found out the 508th were not moving to the bridge, he was livid, expecting them to be moving to the bridge, if there was no opposition. The 508th did send a recon patrol. According to Phil Nordyke’s Put Us Down In Hell (2012) three lead scouts of the troop of 40, were separated making it to the vicinity of south end of the road bridge approaches, not the main steel span. They captured seven Germans and also their small artillery gun. They waited about an hour for reinforcements that never arrived, having to withdraw then observed the 9.SS-Panzer recon battalion arriving from Arnhem.
These few scouts that reached the southern end of the Nijmegen bridge just before the 9th SS recon, reached the bridge about an hour before the 9th SS. Joe Atkins in The 508th said, "at the bridge, only a few German soldiers were standing around a small artillery weapon... The Germans were so surprised; the six or seven defenders of the bridge gave up without resisting. We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark and none of our other troops showed up. We decided to pull away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge." That was the 9th SS arriving.
US Official History, page 163:
Colonel Warren about 1830 sent into Nijmegen a patrol
After around 4.5 hours after landing a patrol of 40 men were sent.
Colonel Warren directed Companies A and B to rendezvous at a point just south of Nijmegen at 1900 and move with the Dutch guide to the bridge. Company C, a platoon of which already had gone into the city as a patrol, was withheld in regimental reserve. Although Company A reached the rendezvous point on time, Company B "got lost en route." After waiting until about 2000, Colonel Warren left a guide for Company B and moved through the darkness with Company A toward the edge of the city. Some seven hours after H-Hour, the first real move against the Nijmegen bridge began.
As the scouts neared a traffic circle surrounding a landscaped circular park near the center of Nijmegen, the Keizer Karel Plein, from which a mall-like park led northeast toward the Nijmegen bridge, a burst of automatic weapons fire came from the circle. The time was about two hours before midnight.
As Company A formed to attack, the men heard the noise of an approaching motor convoy emanating from a side street on the other side of the traffic circle. Enemy soldiers noisily dismounted (the 9th SS now in the town)
No one could have said so with any finality at the time, but the chance for an easy, speedy capture of the Nijmegen bridge had passed. This was all the more lamentable because in Nijmegen during the afternoon the Germans had had nothing more than the same kind of mostly low quality troops encountered at most other places on D Day.
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The gains from MARKET GARDEN have been noted by: Eisenhower:
'The attack began well and unquestionably would have been successful except for the intervention of bad weather. This prevented the adequate reinforcement of the northern spearhead and resulted in finally in the decimation of the British airborne division and only a partial success in the entire operation. We did not get our bridgehead but our lines had been carried well out to defend the Antwerp base.'
Major-General Sir Francis De Guingand:
‘It is interesting to consider how far we failed in this operation. It should be remembered that the Arnhem bridgehead was only a part of the whole. We had gained a great deal in spite of this local set-back. The Nijmegen bridge was ours, and it proved of immense value later on. And the brilliant advance by 30th Corps led the way to the liberation of a large part of Holland, not to speak of providing a stepping stone to the successful battles of the Rhineland.
MONTY The Field-Marshal, NIGEL HAMILTON:
‘General Student, in a statement after the war, considered the ‘Market Garden’ operation to have ‘proved a great success. At one stroke it brought the British 2nd Army into the possession of vital bridges and valuable territory. The conquest of the Nijmegen area meant that the creation of a good jumping board for the offensive which contributed to the end of war.’ Student was expressing the professional admiration of an airborne commander - ‘those who had planned and inaugurated with complete the first airborne operations of military history, had not now even thought of such a possible action by the enemy…the Allied Airborne action completely surprised us. The operation hit my army nearly in the centre and split it into two parts…In spite of all precautions, all bridges fell intact into the hands of the Allied airborne forces—another proof of the paralysing effect of surprise by airborne forces!’ As for hindsight, the only part of that would interest me would be to judge the actions of those people at that time in the situation that they found themselves in. As far as MARKET GARDEN was concerned, the German V-2 rockets on London alone justified the attempt, even without the other, good reasons for making the attempt.
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@knightblade0188
General Bodo Zimmermann, Chief of Operations, German Army Group D, said that had the strategy of Montgomery succeeded in the autumn of 1944, there would have been no need to fight for the West Wall, not for the central and upper Rhine, all of 24 which would have fallen automatically.
Indeed, had Monty's idea for a 40 division concentrated thrust towards the Ruhr been accepted by Eisenhower instead of messing about in the Lorraine, Alsace, Vosges etc, it would have all been over for the Germans in the west.
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Islamic attacks:
2005: Central London bombings, 52 dead. No, riots, only outrage, no change.
2013: Lee Rigby hacked to death by two terrorists. No riots, only outrage, no change.
2017: Westminster attack, five dead. No riots, only outrage, no change.
2017: Manchester Arena bombing, twenty dead. No riots, only outrage, no change.
2017: London Bridge attack, two dead. No riots, only outrage. no change.
2019: London Bridge stabbing, two dead. No riots, only outrage, no change.
2020: Reading multiple stabbings, three dead. No riots, only outrage, no change.
2021: Liverpool Women's hospital bombing. No riots, only outrage, no change.
2021: Murder of David Amess MP. No riots, only outrage, no change.
2024: Southport. Three children butchered to death.
The people have had enough of the ineptitude and total disregard for its people by those in charge over the past 14 years, taking to the streets wanting change. Outgoing Sunak must be rubbing his hands with delight, saying about Starmer who has been in office for a matter of a few days, "he has to sort this out, not me".
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@andym9571
The state of play on the 17th was that the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was clear. There was concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally. There were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen. Then a few scattered about along the road. There was no armour in Arnhem. That was it.
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 3 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured the bridge.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected.
XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up. The road was still clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump.
XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, at the planned expected time, making up the delay at Zon. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over.
If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
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@jajsamurai
Supercharging is as old as the internal combustion engine. The British took supercharging to another level. After Stanley Hooker, a pilot just took his plane anywhere in the sky, with all flaps, supercharging speeds, etc, all done automatically. Before, a pilot had to open air flaps at various heights, etc. A massive difference. Hooker put another 15,000 feet and 70mph on the Merlin 61.
The first time FW-190s met the Spitfire Mk 9, with the Hooker supercharging, they were salaughtered.
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@nickdanger3802
Patton was not advancing or being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. Bastogne was on the very southern German flank, their focus being west. The strategic significance of the stand at Bastogne, is over exaggerated. The 18,000 did not change the course of the battle. The German's bypassed Bastogne, placing a containment force around the town.
Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory, with the road from Luxembourg to Bastogne having few German forces. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was far from being one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, 26th Volks-Grenadier having about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind with a small number of operational tanks.
Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1. Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance pushing them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons stopped the American attack who pulled back. The next day, fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B again retreating.
It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day. Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne.
After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF, who gave Patton massive ground attack support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall.
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@Will More
Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower approved, under resourcing the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak".
The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed. XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem.
Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself. XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time Monty had the Canadians cleared it, or were investing in many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@brucewallace6282
The small city of Caen was strategically unimportant, ports were important. At the 11th hour Montgomery switched a US 82nd parachute drop into Caen to the Cotentin peninsula to aid US forces in seizing the port of Cherbourg. Montgomery's plan was to draw in then destroy the German army, not gain territory.
The Caen sector had more German tanks per mile than Kursk. In just a dozen miles or so right Panzer divisions in a very small area of front. Caen had the highest concentration density of German tanks ever seen in WW2, pitted against British armour. At Kursk the panzer divisions were spread out over a much wider area and were not concentrated as densely as around Caen. Caen saw the densest concentration of German armour ever seen in WW2. At Kursk the Germans were attacking over a near 50 mile front. There were certainly not right panzer divisions within 12 miles.
There were EIGHT Panzer Divisions in the Caen area by end of June 1944 and FIVE lines of anti-tank guns. The Germans kept sending more and more panzer divisions around the Caen area as June went on and into July. These were the panzer divisions deployed to the Caen area.
♦ 21st Panzer Division (117 Panzer IVs).
♦ Panzer Lehr Division ( 101 Panzer IVs, 89 Panthers).
♦ 2nd Panzer Division (89 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers).
♦ 116th Panzer Division (73 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers). In reserve just behind the front.
♦ 1st SS Panzer Division (98 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers).
♦ 9th SS Panzer Division (40 Stugs, 46 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers).
♦ 10th SS Panzer Division (38 Stugs, 39 Panzer IVs)
♦ 12th SS Panzer Division (98 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers).
♦ Tiger Battalion SS101 (45 Tigers).
♦ Tiger Battalion SS102 (45 Tigers).
♦ Tiger Battalion 503 (45 Tigers)
Source. Bernages Panzers and the Battle For Normandy and Zetterling's Normandy 1944: German Military Organization, Combat Power and Organizational Effectiveness.
On 12th June 1944 the British had no room to sidestep any German divisions before Caen because the Germans totally blocked them. This is why a wide right hook on Caen was attempted. To the south of Panzer Lehr's sector in the vicinity of Villers Bocage there was thought to be an area devoid of German forces, and so this wide right hook was attempted on the morning of 13th June (any wider and it would have overrun into the American lines). Unfortunately, unknown to the British, Schwere SS Panzer Abteilung 101 turned up into this area on the night of the 12/13th June and blocked this right hook with their Tigers and closed the door on Caen.
There was no other room to manoeuvre onto Caen. All attempts had to go right through the German panzer divisions through the rest of June and early July, with the Germans having excellent defensive country (fields broken up by hedgerows everywhere) with which to utilise to their advantage.
The Germans had over 1,500 tanks and assault guns in the British/Canadian sector, including Tiger and Panthers. Even the King Tiger and Jagdpanther made their WW2 combat débuts around Caen in July.
The Americans who were not equipped, or experienced, to face massed German armour, were given primarily an infantry role by Montgomery - the Americans met very little armour in WW2. The US forces didn't face any German armour until June 13th, and that was only a mere battalion of assault guns. The British destroyed about 90% of German armour in the west.
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@ToolTimeTabor
The 508th were assigned the Waal road bridge. They have to pretty well go through the Heights to get to the bridge from their landing zone. Browning and Gavin did not want troops on the bridge and at the LZ with Germans between. Gavin put his CP on the Heights. Browning followed. Read what I wrote about the 508th advance.
Gavin did pull all his men out of Nijmegen.
Captain Millsaps:
One of the saddest, most touching experiences for me up to that time was that pull back from Nijmegen. The natives of the town, undoubtedly thinking the town was being liberated from German rule, came out in the streets shouting and dancing, kissing soldiers, and giving us fruit and handfuls of flowers. We dared not tell them, even if we could have spoken their language, that we were giving the city back to the Germans and moving back to start all over again.
- Lost at Nigmegen by Poulusson
I advise you to read this book, written by a Dutchman. He covers Nijmegen to Zon only with detail. He did get the odd thing wrong, which I gave him note on. One was that no US troops were on the Waal bridge when the British tanks seized it. One tank even stopped looking around for any 82nd men, not seeing any so rode on.
The tanks met some 82nd men 1km north at Lent. One group of 82nd was looking to surrender even after meeting Sgt Robinson's lead tank. Robinson wanted them to given them support but they slunk off - after Robinson allowed him to speak to top man Horrocks.
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@ThePalaeontologist
Inland Caen was not prime target. ports were. Pre Orders were that if Ceen had stiff resistance the RAF would deal with it. In the early days it was vital to secure the beachhead not get bogged down in fighting for a non-port small city.
"The Battle of the Generals" by General Blumenson makes it clear that Bradley, not Montgomery, ordered Patton to stop at Falaise;
▪ Bradley, on his own initiative, ordered Patton to stop on August 12 (page. 206-207);
▪ Bradley's post-war effort to blame this on Montgomery was "dishonest and anti-British" (page. 211);
▪ Despite Bradley stating he ordered it. Patton was running off to Paris, but Bradley failed to stop him from making a long hook encirclement of the Germans towards Dreux at the Sein (page. 223);
▪ This was in clear contradiction to Montgomery's suggestion that he do so (page. 218).
The U.S. Army Official History - Martin Blumenson's Breakout and Pursuit - attributes the decision not to close the gap to Bradley. Thus the title of the section is BRADLEY'S DECISION (pages 506-509). He states directly: "Montgomery did not prohibit American advance beyond the boundary." And on page 509: "Bradley himself made the decision to halt."
The British Official History - L. F. Ellis, Victory in the West, Vol. 1 - attributes the decision to Bradley on page 429.
In Bradley's memoir A Soldier's Story he says on page 377, "Monty had never prohibited and I never proposed that U.S. forces close the gap from Argentan to Falaise." He gives a number of reasons for not pushing north from Argentan, but Monty forbidding it is not one of them.
Nigel Hamilton, Monty's official biographer, states in The War Years that the decision was Bradley's. "Dempsey's diary record of his meeting with Monty and Bradley proves there was certainly no plot to deny Patton glory, since Dempsey specifically recorded: `So long as the Northward move of Third Army meets little opposition, the two leading Corps will disregard inter-Army boundaries'" (page. 788).
There are plenty of secondary sources that pin the blame on Bradley.
▪ Russell Weigley, Eisenhower's Lieutenants" page. 216: "Bradley, having set the stage by urging Eisenhower and Montgomery to grasp the opportunity of a short envelopment at Falaise-Argentan, failed to persist in completing his own design. He abandoned the short envelopment before its potential was achieved, and meanwhile he had delayed the long envelopment at the Seine.";
▪ Peter Mansoor, The GI Offensive in Europe page. 171: "Bradley was slow to concentrate sufficient force to close the Falaise Gap from the south when he had the opportunity to do so.";
▪ Robin Neillands, The Battle of Normandy 1944 page. 358: "Bradley's memoirs and the British Official History make it abundantly clear this decision was Bradley's."
There are many more sources where these came from.
Carlo D'Este states on page 444, "When Dempsey met Bradley and Montgomery there was apparently no restraint placed on further northward movement by XV Corps... the fact that the Third Army did not move north of Argentan appears to have been Bradley's choice rather than a prohibition by Montgomery." On page 448 he writes, "The assertion that Montgomery made no effort to close the gap is without foundation." D'Este also dismisses the view of Strafford on page 451. No reasonable reading of D'Este on Falaise could possibly support blaming Montgomery. The US Official History, the British Official History, BRADLEY HIMSELF (twice!) and a multitude of secondary sources say Monty did not order Patton to halt. Neither Bradley himself, nor Montgomery, nor the senior British Army commander, nor the British or American official historians think Montgomery ordered Bradley to stop. THERE WAS NO HALT ORDER by Monty.
Chester Hanson and Ralph Ingersoll promoted that Monty halted Patton at Falaise were Anglophobes. Ingersoll had Communist leanings who wrote in order to convince people to trust the Russians and hate the British "imperialists".
Bradley himself said it was his decision. In A General's Life Bradley writes:
"Montgomery had no part in the decision; it was mine and mine alone. Some writers have suggested that I appealed to Monty to move the boundary north to Falaise and he refused, but, of course, that is not true... I was determined to hold Patton at Argentan and had no cause to ask Monty to shift the boundary."
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@iemjgf
A prime strategic problem for SHAEF in September 1944 was opening up the approaches to Antwerp and keeping it from German counter-attack - the logistics problem to supply all allied armies. It was:
1) Take Noord Brabant, the land to the north and northeast of Antwerp, or;
2) Take the Schedlt.
Noord Branant had to be taken first, as it was essential. It was taken with limited forces also sent to take the Schedlt. Market Garden had to go ahead regardless of any threat, actually being a success. To use Antwerp and control the approaches, the Scheldt, everything up to the south bank of the lower Rhine at Nijmegen needed to be under allied control.
The low-lying lands, boggy ground, rivers and canals between Arnhem and Nijmegen is perfect geography as a barrier against a German counter-attack towards Antwerp. Without control of Noord Brabant German forces would have been in artillery range of Antwerp, and with a build up of forces directly back to Germany in perfect country for a counter-attack. Market Garden was the offensive SHEAF wanted to secure Antwerp, a prime port for logistics for all allied armies. It made sense as the Germans were in disarray, so should be easy enough to gain.
Monty added Arnhem to form a bridgehead over the Rhine. It made complete sense in establishing a bridgehead over the Rhine as an extra to the operation. You needed Arnhem for a jump into Germany. Everything up to Nijmegen was needed if you wanted to do anything at all - that is protect Antwerp and have a staging point to move into Germany. Gaining Noord Brabant, was vital, and was successfully seized. Fighting in the low lying mud and waterways of the Schedlt, which will take time, while the Germans are still holding Noord Brabant made no sense at all.
SHEAF got what they wanted from a strategic point of view.
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Patton was an average US general, like Simpson, Patch, Hodges, etc. No more. A US media creation for home hero consumption, elevating the average beyond their status.
"The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian First Army HQ for the same purpose.
Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation.
"This advance duly began at 0630hrs on August 18 which, as the Canadian Official History remarks, ‘was a day and a half after Montgomery had issued the order for the Canadians to close the gap at Trun, and four and a half days after Patton had been stopped at the Third Army boundary’. During that time, says the Canadian History, the Canadians had been ‘fighting down from the north with painful slowness’ and the Germans had been making their way east through the Falaise gap. They were not, however, unimpeded; the tactical air forces and Allied artillery were already taking a fearful toll of the German columns on the roads heading east past Falaise.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise – Operation Tractable – which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed there with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were re-fitting and rebuilt after the summer 1944 battles. The Panzer Brigades had green crews with little time to train, did not know their tanks properly, had no recon elements and didn't even meet their unit commander until his arrival at the front. These were not elite forces.
The 17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, equipped only with assault guns not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy and not up to strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the best German divisions in the west were NOT.
♦ Who did the 3rd Army engage?
♦ Who did the 3rd Army defeat?
♦ Patton never once faced a full strength Waffen SS panzer division nor a Tiger battalion.
In The Lorraine, the 3rd Army faced a rabble. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said:
"I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Patton was mostly facing a second rate rabble in The Lorraine.
Patton was neither on the advance nor being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. The road from Luxembourg to Bastogne saw few German forces, with Bastogne being on the very southern German flank, their focus was west. Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was not one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, while 26th Volks-Grenadier only had about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind only had a small number of tanks operational. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1.
Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Leading elements were engaging the Americans and British under Montgomery's command near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance and pushed them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons opened up with the American attack stopping and pulling back. The next day fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B retreating once again. It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. Patton's forces arrived at Chaumont late on the 22nd December. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day, the 25th! Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, just 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne.
In Normandy in 1944, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact. This eastern dash devoid of German forces was the ride the US media claimed Patton was some sort master of fast moving armour.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates.
♦ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics Bradley's II Corps were employing
♦ He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division, Truscott of being "afraid to fight".
♦ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps.
♦ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize stalled he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being "very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect".
♦ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in reporting their losses.
After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF. Coningham, gave Patton massive ground attack plane support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall. Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault, including his subordinates. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated. Oh, and wore cowboy guns.
Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his orders, and Eisenhower's orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read:
Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds and
Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies by Harry Yeide
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ORDER
508- P-rcht Infantry will:
(a) Land on DZ "T"
(b) Seize, organise and hold key terrain features in area of responsibility, and be prepared to seize Waal River crossing at NIJMEGEN (714633) on order of Div Comdr.
Let us assume pre-jump in England Gavin did not verbally tell Lindquist to go for the Waal bridge overriding the Order, which Gavin and witnesses claim he did. So we have to go by the written Order which is freely available and a section copied above.
Regimental Liaison Officer of the 508th was Chester Graham: "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.'
Two battalions of the 508th were marching for just under three hours from the DZ to the empty Heights, arriving at 5 pm. One battalion remained at the DZ securing it. The DZ was secure when they left. As soon as they were in the Heights with no Germans in sight the Heights were secure. All secure. Lindquist should have had his two companies prepared which was written in the Order.
Lindquist should have contacted Gavin 'immediately', by radio or messenger, to get the Divisional Order to go to the bridge on reaching the vacant and secure Heights. Lindquist could not move to the bridge without it.
Lindquist:
1) was way too late in obtaining the Order to proceed by radio or messenger;
2) none of the two companies prepared to move to the bridge.
When informed Lindquist was not moving to the bridge, Gavin sped personally to Lindquist screaming at him to move to the bridge at 7 pm, two hours after the 508 arrived at the Heights. Half an hour later the Germans reinforced the bridge. It took another two hours to muster the two companies spread over the Heights under Cnl Warren before they started to march at 9 pm. Far too late.
Lindquist failed on two important points.
Again, this is all assuming Gavin never gave verbal orders to Lindquist in England, only going by the written Order.
Whichever way you cut it, Lindquist was amateurish and to blame. Gavin also takes blame as he never had Lindquist trained and alert enough.
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Initially there was four Baltic states: Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. These were regarded as eastern countries. Finland is not in Scandinavia. Its language and history come from modern day Russia - the language is Uralic emanating from the Urals. The Finnish language has no relationship whatsoever with the other Scandinavian languages, which are more allied to the English and German languages.
Finland was made a part of Russia in the early 1800s. Mannerheim, the Finnish leader, was in the Russian army most of his life, needing an interpreter to communicate in Finnish. After the Russian revolution Finland managed to gain her independence in the confusion of revolution, which many in Russia viewed as a crass act. A vicious civil war followed in Finland, with 12,000 dying in captivity and firing squads. Finland lobbied to join the Nordic Council, making it a Nordic state, looking west not east, giving the impression the country was in Scandinavia. Finland managed to wrench itself from being viewed as a small Russian satellite Baltic state, with heavy Russian influences due to proximity and culture.
The Soviet German pact gave the Soviets eastern Poland and the four Baltic states merging Finland back into Russia. After the USSR occupied the eastern third of Poland, after the Germans crushed the country in late 1939, the Soviets moved into Finland to take back its old territory which a part of Russia only 20 years previously, merging it with the now USSR.
The Finns fought back killing a large amount of poorly led and trained Soviet troops. The shear manpower and massed tanks of the USSR eventually overran Finland. The USSR allowed Finland to exist, recognising the country. However the Soviets wanted the borders taken back taking Finnish land back into Russia, as Leningrad was within artillery gun range from Finland. To the Soviets this was sensible - they could have taken the whole country back but never. Finland accepted the new borders, relieved they were not taken back into Russia. They both signed a peace agreement recognising the new borders and that Finland remained an independent country.
When the opportunity arose for Finland to attack the USSR, with German assistance, to retake the territory ceded to the USSR in 1940, they committed an unprovoked act of aggression, as the two countries were at peace with each other. Finland was not being threatened by the USSR. Finland was not allied to Germany, however fought alongside Germany against the USSR. Britain viewed Finland as a co-belligerent declaring war on Finland, which was in contrast to attempting to get arms to Finland when the Soviets invaded in 1939. It is one of the few occasions a democratic country declared war on another, although Finland to many was not a democracy with certain political parties banned.
Was it worth Finland fighting alongside the Germans? In my opinion, in 1941 it was not. It was a high risk gamble, as Germany could have been defeated, which it was, and Finland then being re-merged with Russia. Luckily for the Finns the Soviets left the country alone, apart from a base on the Gulf of Finland, which the Soviets gave back in 1956. This was a strange move by the USSR as they seized many eastern European countries after WW2 ended, with Finland attacking the USSR when not under any threat from the USSR, causing many Soviets deaths, prolonging the war.
The Finns were lucky they were not taken back into Russia, being made a part of the USSR. To this day the Finns try not to provoke the Russians, not even joining NATO when all the other Baltic states did.
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The Japanese carriers were superior to the British carriers? Not quite. The British carrier were smaller, designed for a different theatre. They would operate near land being subject to land based planes, so were armoured. The British Pacific Fleet protected the US marines on Okinawa operating off the east coast. Kamikazes bounced off the armoured decks. Strikes which put US carriers with their wooden decks out of action. The British carriers were designed to be at sea for around 12 days, as the British Empire was so large they would always be near a friendly port. A constraint in carrier size was also the size of dry docks in places like Malta, Gibraltar, Singapore, etc.
In contrast the Japanese and US carriers were larger with longer range, as they were designed to operate in the vast Pacific. They also had vulnerable wooden flight decks, except for the later Essex class which adopted the steel decks and many of the attributes of the British carriers. All the major attributes of the modern carrier were introduced by the British: angled flight decks, mirror landing, steam catapult, hurricane bows, armoured decks, ski-jump flight decks, land & sea aircraft control rooms, etc.
The post war Midway class was based on the British armoured carriers.
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@davemac1197
Groesbooek Height were between the landing zone and the Waal bridge.
In an interview with Maj Gen G. E. Prier-Palmer, British Joint Services Mission in Washington, in 1955, General Browning said the Grave and Nijmegen Bridges must be seized "as soon as possible", although the wooded Groesbeek Heights on the route to the bridge must be held. Browning did not say prioritize one over the other.
Field Order 11 of 13 Sept is clear in section 2 a), putting the bridges first in the writing, that they were to be seized, then the high ground secured and then the roads. Order 1, of 13 September, written by Lindquist of the 508th, states he will wait at the high ground for a Division Order to move from the Heights to the bridge. In short, wait for an Order from Gavin to move.
The heights near De Ploeg, which are really pretty flat being a wooded area but high for Holland, are pretty well between the Drop Zone (DZ) and bridge. The 508th would go through the Heights to reach the bridge. They could not help take the Heights which they did with zero resistance. In an interview with Maj Gen G. E. Prier-Palmer, British Joint Services Mission in Washington, in 1955, General Browning said the Grave and Nijmegen Bridges must be seized "as soon as possible", although the wooded Groesbeek Heights on the route to the Waal bridge must be held. Browning is saying to Gavin do not allow the Germans to be established between your men on the bridge and landing zones. Common sense.
Field Order 11 of 13 Sept is clear in section 2 a), putting the bridges first in the writing, that they were to be seized, then the high ground secured and then the roads.
Browning did not deprioritise the Waal bridge - that was Gavin of the 82nd after the failure to seize the bridge on d day.
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Browning did not prioritize the Heights over the bridge. He gave them equal priority. Gavin de-prioritized the bridge after he failed to seize it, ordering all his men out of Nijmegen town.
"I personally gave an order to Jim Gavin that, although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen Bridges as soon as possible, it was essential that he should capture the Groesbeek Ridge and hold it—for … painfully obvious reasons …. If this ground had been lost to the enemy the operations of the 2nd Army would have been dangerously prejudiced as its advance across the Waal and Neder Rhein would have been immediately outflanked. Even the initial advance of the Guards Armoured Division would have been prejudiced and on them the final outcome of the battle had to depend."
- Lt Gen Browning to Maj Gen G. E. Prier-Palmer, British Joint Services Mission, Washington, D.C., 25 Jan 55, excerpt in OCMH.
The American post war version of events is one that attempts to whitewash their failure at Nijmegen, to capture the bridge on the first day. The film A bridge Too Far, made when Browning had already died, only cemented the false narrative in the minds of the public. Since then many researchers have uncovered the real facts.
The 508th did launch some patrols into Nijmegen. A patrol from the 3rd Battalion almost reached the bridge. Three stragglers from the patrol of 40 men took prisoner seven of the 18 guards prisoner, including their cannon guarding the southern end of the bridge. If the 82nd had bothered to turn up at the bridge two hours earlier rather than hanging around DePloeg they would have hopped and skipped onto the bridge whistling Dixie.
When Gavin found out the 508th were not moving to the bridge, he was livid, expecting them to be moving to the bridge, if there was no opposition. The 508th did send a recon patrol. According to Phil Nordyke’s Put Us Down In Hell (2012) three lead scouts of the troop of 40, were separated making it to the vicinity of south end of the road bridge approaches, not the main steel span. They captured seven Germans and also their small artillery gun. They waited about an hour for reinforcements that never arrived, having to withdraw then observed the 9.SS-Panzer recon battalion arriving from Arnhem.
These few scouts that reached the southern end of the Nijmegen bridge just before the 9th SS recon, reached the bridge about an hour before the 9th SS. Joe Atkins in The 508th said, "at the bridge, only a few German soldiers were standing around a small artillery weapon... The Germans were so surprised; the six or seven defenders of the bridge gave up without resisting. We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark and none of our other troops showed up. We decided to pull away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge." That was the 9th SS arriving.
US Official History, page 163:
Colonel Warren about 1830 sent into Nijmegen a patrol
After around 4.5 hours after landing a patrol of 40 men were sent.
Colonel Warren directed Companies A and B to rendezvous at a point just south of Nijmegen at 1900 and move with the Dutch guide to the bridge. Company C, a platoon of which already had gone into the city as a patrol, was withheld in regimental reserve. Although Company A reached the rendezvous point on time, Company B "got lost en route." After waiting until about 2000, Colonel Warren left a guide for Company B and moved through the darkness with Company A toward the edge of the city. Some seven hours after H-Hour, the first real move against the Nijmegen bridge began.
As the scouts neared a traffic circle surrounding a landscaped circular park near the center of Nijmegen, the Keizer Karel Plein, from which a mall-like park led northeast toward the Nijmegen bridge, a burst of automatic weapons fire came from the circle. The time was about two hours before midnight.
As Company A formed to attack, the men heard the noise of an approaching motor convoy emanating from a side street on the other side of the traffic circle. Enemy soldiers noisily dismounted (the 9th SS now in the town)
No one could have said so with any finality at the time, but the chance for an easy, speedy capture of the Nijmegen bridge had passed. This was all the more lamentable because in Nijmegen during the afternoon the Germans had had nothing more than the same kind of mostly low quality troops encountered at most other places on D Day.
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Eisenhower stated this a communication to Monty on 5 Sept. I have always given priority to the Ruhr - rpt Ruhr - and the northern route of advance, as indicated in my directive of yesterday, Eisenhower was deluded. "My intention is initially to occupy the Saar and the Ruhr and by the time we have done this Havre and Antwerp should both be available to maintain one or both of the thrusts".
Antwerp had not been taken when he wrote the above. He had no idea of logistics, thinking he had enough supplies to support two main thrusts over a broad front.
"On 10 Sept Eisenhower met Monty in Brussels and said that his broad front policy would continue despite Monty objecting.
Montgomery was urged to press on with his plan to use the Allied Airborne Army in one powerful, full-blooded thrust to the Lower Rhine at _Arnhem — a thrust that just a week later would become Operation Market Garden.
- Neillands.
"Therefore, since the air planners — specifically [American] Brereton and Major-General Paul L. Williams of the IX US Troop Carrier Command — had the casting vote over the air element in Market, the decision was made for Arnhem"
- Neillands
Horrocks’ orders to XXX Corps for Garden were quite specific:
"XXX Corps will break out of the existing bridgehead on 17 September and pass through the airborne carpet which has been laid down in front of us, in order to seize the area Nunspeet-Arnhem and exploit north to the Zuider Zee... the Corps will advance and be supplied down one road - the only major road available - 20,000 vehicles will be involved. Tough opposition must be expected at the break out and the country is very difficult. Speed is absolutely vital as we must reach the lightly equipped 1st Airborne Division, if possible in forty-eight hours."
"The orders of the Airborne Army commander, American Lieutenant General Brereton specify, these bridges were to be taken ‘with thunderclap surprise’. That meant on D-Day, 17 September, for after D-Day the vital element of surprise would be lost. The bridges must be taken on D-Day — not when the various airborne divisional commanders got around to it."
- Neillands
Gavin moved on the Nijmegen bridge when he got around to it, ignoring his orders of "thunderclap surprise". The bridge was actually taken by the British.
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What US historian Harry Yeide wrote of what the Germans thought of Patton:
▪ for most of the war the Germans barely took notice [of Patton].
▪ on March 23 at the Battle of El Guettar—the first American victory against the experienced Germans. Patton’s momentum, however, was short-lived: Axis troops held him to virtually no gain until April 7, when they withdrew under threat from British Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army.
▪ There is no indication in the surviving German military records—which include intelligence reports at the theater, army, and division levels—that Patton’s enemies had any idea who he was at the time. Likewise, the immediate postwar accounts of the German commanders in Tunisia, written for the U.S. Army’s History Division, ignore Patton. Those reports show that ground commanders considered II Corps’s attacks under Patton to have been hesitant, and to have missed great opportunities.
▪ In mid-June [1943], another detachment report described Patton as “an energetic and responsibility-loving command personality”—a passing comment on one of the numerous Allied commanders. Patton simply had not yet done anything particularly noteworthy in their eyes.
▪ But his race to Palermo through country they had already abandoned left the commanders unimpressed. Major General Eberhard Rodt, who led the 15th Panzergrenadier Division against Patton’s troops during the Allied push toward Messina, thought the American Seventh Army fought hesitantly and predictably. He wrote in an immediate postwar report on Sicily, “The enemy very often conducted his movements systematically, and only attacked after a heavy artillery preparation when he believed he had broken our resistance. This kept him regularly from exploiting the weakness of our situation and gave me the opportunity to consolidate dangerous situations.” Once again, Patton finished a campaign without impressing his opponents.
▪ General Hermann Balck, who took command of Army Group G in September, thus did not think highly of Patton—or any other opposing commanders—during this time. Balck wrote to his commander, Runstedt, on October 10, “I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans” Looking back on his battles against Patton throughout the autumn, in 1979 Balck recalled, “Within my zone, the Americans never once exploited a success. Often [General Friedrich Wilhelm von] Mellenthin, my chief of staff, and I would stand in front of the map and say, ‘Patton is helping us; he failed to exploit another success.’”
▪ The commander of the Fifth Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel, aimed a dismissive, indirect critique at Patton’s efforts at Bastogne, writing in his memoirs that the Americans did not “strike with full élan.” The commanders who fought against Patton in his last two mobile campaigns in the Saar-Palatinate and east of the Rhine already knew they could not win; their losses from this point forward were inevitable, regardless of the commanding Allied opponent.
▪ the Germans offered Patton faint praise during and immediately after the war.
▪ posterity deserves fact and not myth. The Germans did not track Patton’s movements as the key to Allied intentions. Hitler does not appear to have thought often of Patton, if at all. The Germans considered Patton a hesitant commanding general in the scrum of position warfare. They never raised his name in the context of worthy strategists.
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There is a myth that the Germans were way ahead of the British in jet engines and planes in WW2, when the opposite is true. The WW2 German jet engines were extremely unreliable with low performances and very high fuel consumption. The German axial-flow turbojets never worked properly being developed up to 1953 by the French to obtain a usable engine. The French lost a lot of time playing around with the German engines, instead of working with the British. The French and Soviets after WW2 attempted to improve the German axial-flow engines largely failing.
The British in order to get a usable and reliable jet engine quickly into service that was superior to the best piston planes, with the technology of the time, went for a centrifugal design rather than the troublesome axial-flow design. This design produced less thrust than an axial-flow but was quicker to develop and reliable. It took 5 months to develop, while the first reliable axial-flow engine was the 1950 Rolls Royce Avon, which took 5 years to get right.
In 1945 the French made and tested some German designed turbo jets made with quality steel unavailable to German industry in WW2. They ran for 25 hours instead of 10 hours to the German engines that used poor quality steel. Not much better. The German axial-flow engines failed because of heavy design faults. The centrifugal compressor used by the first British Meteor plane was fine being much more reliable, but unable to reach high compression ratios. This limited performances. Centrifugal compressors were used up to the 1960s.
In 1945 the team from the French ATAR laboratory plus some BMW and Junkers engineers, were engaged by the French SNECMA research bureau, with the objective to built a new reliable with performance axial-flow turbojet. The BMW 003/Jumo004 was considered unusable. It was tested on the first French jet aircraft, the 1946 So6000 Triton, overheating and exploding. The plane only flew with a Rolls Royce Nene centrifugal turbojet.
The ATAR project took 6 years to produce the first acceptable axial-flow turbojet (ATAR 101 B1), produced in 1953. So eight years research & developments by the French using the German jet engines as the base. It was installed on the first French jet fighter, the Dassault Ouragan.
The French lost a lot of time because the German jets had poor efficiency with some concept fails. Essentially in the combustion chambers and fresh air circulation to reduce the external temperature of the engine. The BMW jet was known for overheat problems which precluded fuselage installation.
The question at the end of WW2 was what is the most efficient way to produce jet fighters. The answer is clearly not adopting the German design of engine and fuselage. The build costs for a jet engine were much higher than a piston engine, with the fuel consumption near 3x. The centrifugal compressor the British adopted in some planes was the best choice with 1944-45 technology, more compression pressure was not an advantage when the hot turbine was unable to resist higher temperatures. The German turbojets had big overheat problems as the engine would not work in an enclosed fuselage for single engined fighters. This defect was immediately noted by the French on the 1946 "SO 6000 Triton" prototype, and by the Soviets on the 1946 Mig 9. The Soviets quickly replaced the BMW 004B2 by the centrifugal Rolls Royce Nene which worked without problems, dismissing the BMW engine for fighter planes.
The Rolls Royce Nene was copied to the last nut by the USSR being installed in the Mig 15 being used effectively in the Korean war. About 10 years ago the USSR eventually paid royalties to Rolls Royce.
The Meteor was the first proper fully developed jet plane introduced. The 262 was slightly faster than the Meteor F3, but extremely unreliable. The British would never put into the sky such an undeveloped plane as the me262. the Me262 and Meteor were leagues apart in safety and reliability. The British could have had a jet fighter operational in 1941, but it would have been as bad as the me262.
The Germans advanced R&D on jets after they interrogated captured British RAF men. They learned the British were advanced in jet technology actually flying prototype planes. Until then the Germans had no intention of mass producing jet planes.
The rushed together Me262 started claiming kills on 26 July 1944. However the supposed kill was a Mosquito reconnaissance plane that had a fuselage cap blown off in a sharp fast manoeuvre, which flew on landing in Italy. The Meteor claimed its first V1 kill a few days later on the 4 August 1944. But the Meteor was a proper fully developed jet plane, not a thrown together desperate effort as the me262 was. The me262 fuselage was similar to a piston plane with the pilot over the wings obscuring downward vision, while the Meteor was a proper new design fuselage specifically for jet fighters with a forward of the wings pilot position with superior vision, as we see today. The cockpit was very quiet. The high tail was not to impede the rear jet thrust. The partial sweptback wings of the me262 were to move the engines further back for better weight distribution, not for aerodynamic reasons as is thought the case. The 262 balancing problem would be exasperated when firing the guns as the weight of the bullets exiting suddenly made the the air-frame unbalanced.
There were five turbojet engines in the UK under R&D in WW2:
♦ Centrifugal, by Whittle (Rover);
♦ Centrifugal, by Frank Halford (DeHaviland);
♦ Axial-flow, by Metro-Vick;
♦ Axial-flow by Griffiths (Rolls Royce);
♦ Axial flow compressor, with reverse flow combustion chambers. The ASX by Armstrong Siddley;
Metro-Vick sold their jet engine division to Armstrong Siddley. The Metro-Vick engine transpired into the post war Sapphire. Most American engines in the 1940s/50s were of UK design, many made under licence. The US licensed the J-42 (RR Nene) and J-48 (RR Tay), being virtually identical to the British engines. US aircraft used licensed British engines powering the: P-59, P-80, T-33, F9F Panther, F9F-6 Cougar, FJ Fury 3 and 4, Martin B-57 Canberra, F-94 Starfire, A4 Skyhawk and the A7 Corsair.
The US General Electric J-47 turbojet was developed by General Electric in conjunction with Metropolitan Vickers of the UK, who had already developed a nine-stage axial-flow compressor engine licensing the design to Allison in 1944 for the earlier J-35 engine, first flying in May 1948. The centrifugal Rolls Royce Nene is one of the highest production jet engines in history with over 50,000 built.
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The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British under Montgomery. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
1) August 1942 - Alem el Halfa
2) October 1942 - El Alamein;
3) March 1943 - Medenine;
4) June 1944 - Normandy;
5) Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands;
6) December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge;
A list of Montgomery’s victories in WW2:
a) Battle of Alam Halfa;
b) Second Battle of El Alamein;
c) Battle of El Agheila;
d) Battle of Medenine;
e) Battle of the Mareth Line;
f) Battle of Wadi Akarit;
g) Allied invasion of Sicily;
h) Operation Overlord - the largest amphibious invasion in history;
i) Market Garden - a 60 mile salient created into German territory;
j) Battle of the Bulge - while taking control of two shambolic US armies;
k) Operation Veritable;
l) Operation Plunder.
Montgomery not once had a reverse.
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Monty's 8th Army advanced the fastest of any army in WW2. From El Alamein to El Agheila from the 4th to 23rd November 1942, 1,300 km in just 17 days. After fighting a major exhausting battle at El Alemein through half a million mines. This was an Incredible feat, unparalleled in WW2. With El Alamein costing just 13,500 casualties.
The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties, with the Lorraine campaign being a failure. Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties. Hodges, head of the US First army, fled from Spa to near Liege on the 18th, despite the Germans never getting anywhere near to Spa. Hodges did not even wait for the Germans to approach Spa. He had already fled long before the Germans were stopped. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British, with Montgomery involved in planning, with also Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
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@11B Retired
Patton was an average US general, like Simpson, Patch, Hodges, etc. No more. "The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian First Army HQ for the same purpose.
Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation.
"This advance duly began at 0630hrs on August 18 which, as the Canadian Official History remarks, ‘was a day and a half after Montgomery had issued the order for the Canadians to close the gap at Trun, and four and a half days after Patton had been stopped at the Third Army boundary’. During that time, says the Canadian History, the Canadians had been ‘fighting down from the north with painful slowness’ and the Germans had been making their way east through the Falaise gap. They were not, however, unimpeded; the tactical air forces and Allied artillery were already taking a fearful toll of the German columns on the roads heading east past Falaise.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise – Operation Tractable – which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed there with green German troops.
The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were re-fitting and rebuilt after the summer 1944 battles.The Panzer Brigades had green crews with little time to train, did not know their tanks properly, had no recon elements and didn't even meet their unit commander until his arrival at the front. These were not elite forces.
17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, equipped only with assault guns not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy and not up to strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the best German divisions in the west were NOT.
♦ Who did the 3rd Army engage?
♦ Who did the 3rd Army defeat?
♦ Patton never once faced a full strength Waffen SS panzer division nor a Tiger battalion.
In The Lorraine, the 3rd Army faced a rabble. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said:
"I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Patton was mostly facing a second rate rabble in The Lorraine.
Patton was neither on the advance nor being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. The road from Luxembourg to Bastogne saw few German forces, with Bastogne being on the very southern German flank, their focus was west. Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was not one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, while 26th Volks-Grenadier only had about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind only had a small number of tanks operational. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1.
Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Leading elements were engaging the Americans and British under Montgomery's command near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance and pushed them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons opened up with the American attack stopping and pulling back. The next day fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B retreating once again. It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. Patton's forces arrived at Chaumont late on the 22nd December. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day, the 25th! Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, just 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne.
In Normandy in 1944, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact. This eastern dash devoid of German forces was the ride the US media claimed Patton was some sort master of fast moving armour.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates.
♦ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics Bradley's II Corps were employing
♦ He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division, Truscott of being "afraid to fight".
♦ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps.
♦ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize stalled he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being "very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect".
♦ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in reporting their losses.
After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF. Coningham, gave Patton massive ground attack plane support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall. Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault, including his subordinates. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated. Oh, and wore cowboy guns.
Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his orders, and Eisenhower's orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read: Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds and_Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies_ by Harry Yeide
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1985 US Army report on the Lorraine Campaign.
Patton does not come out well.
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a211668.pdf
Combat Studies Institute. The Lorraine Campaign: An Overview, September-December 1944. by Dr. Christopher R. Gabel February, 1985
From the document is in italics:
Soldiers and generals alike assumed that Lorraine would fall quickly, and unless the war ended first, Patton's tanks would take the war into Germany by summer's end. But Lorraine was not to be overrun in a lightning campaign. Instead, the battle for Lorraine would drag on for more than 3 months." "Despite its proximity to Germany, Lorraine was not the Allies' preferred invasion route in 1944. Except for its two principal cities, Metz and Nancy, the province contained few significant military objectives." "Moreover, once Third Army penetrated the province and entered Germany, there would still be no first-rate military objectives within its grasp.
The Saar industrial region, while significant, was of secondary importance when compared to the great Ruhr industrial complex farther north."
Another Patton chase into un-needed territory, full of vineyards like he did when running his troops into Brittany.
"With so little going for it, why did Patton bother with Lorraine at all? The reason was that Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, made up his mind to destroy as many German forces as possible west of the Rhine."
In other words a waste of time.
"Communications Zone organized the famous Red Ball Express, a non-stop conveyor belt of trucks connecting the Normandy depots with the field armies."
They were getting fuel via 6,000 trucks.
"The simple truth was that although fuel was plentiful in Normandy, there was no way to transport it in sufficient quantities to the leading elements. On 31 August , Third Army received no fuel at all."
In short, Patton overran his supply lines. What was important was to secure the Port of Antwerp's approaches, which Eisenhower deprioritised. Montgomery approached the US leaders of the First Airborne Army who would not drop into the Scheldt.
"Few of the Germans defending Lorraine could be considered First-rate troops. Third Army encountered whole battalions made up of deaf men, others of cooks, and others consisting entirety of soldiers with stomach ulcers."
Some army the Americans were going to fight
"Was the Lorraine campaign an American victory? From September through November, Third Army claimed to have inflicted over 180,000 casualties on the enemy. But to capture the province of Lorraine, a problem which involved an advance of only 40 to 60 air miles, Third Army required over 3 months and suffered 50,000 casualties, approximately one-third of the total number of casualties it sustained in the entire European war."
The US Army does not think it was a victory. Huge losses for taking unimportant territory, against a poor German army.
"Ironically, Third Army never used Lorraine as a springboard for an advance into Germany after all. Patton turned most of the sector over to Seventh Army during the Ardennes crisis, and when the eastward advance resumed after the Battle of the Bulge, Third Army based its operations on Luxembourg, not Lorraine. The Lorraine campaign will always remain a controversial episode in American military history."
It's getting worse. One third of all European casualties in Lorraine and never used the territory to move into Germany.
"Finally the Lorraine Campaign demonstrated that Logistics often drive operations, no matter how forceful and aggressive the commanding general may be." "Patton violated tactical principles" "His discovered that violating logistical principles is an unforgiving and cumulative matter."
Not flattering at all. And Americans state Patton was the best general they had. Bradley stated later:
“Patton was developing as an unpopular guy. He steamed about with great convoys of cars and great squads of cameramen … To George, tactics was simply a process of bulling ahead. Never seemed to think out a campaign. Seldom made a careful estimate of the situation. I thought him a shallow commander … I disliked the way he worked, upset tactical plans, interfered in my orders. His stubbornness on amphibious operations, parade plans into Messina sickened me and soured me on Patton. We learned how not to behave from Patton’s Seventh Army.”
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@DC9622
The Tiger tanks programme was accelerated after the Germans were out-tanked by the French Char B and British Matilda 2. Mid-war the British lost it, relegating the tank concentrating on anti-tank weapons, with tank production dropping. Something David Fletcher rightly makes a big thing about.
The Churchill, a rushed design, ended up being a superb all round tank, filling a gap - it could go where no other tank could go. The mas produced and lacklustre US Sherman did fill the mid-war gap until the Comet & Centurion arrived. And not forgetting the APDS ammunition which made a 6-pounder gun a Tiger killer. APDS made the humble, later, heavily armoured Churchills rub shoulders with a Tiger, as it could knock one out from any angle. It was slow but could go where no Tiger would dare go.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p-izpDBZv4
Early war
The British and French had the best tanks. Not forgetting the Soviet KV1, although not used until mid-war..
Mid war
The Germans and Soviets had the best tanks. Tiger, Mk IV, T-34.
Late war
The British again took the lead, with the Soviets not far behind; with the Comet & Centurion and Soviet IS2.
The Americans will say where is the Sherman. The Sherman went through many adaptations. The ultimate Sherman the E8, adapted to British suggestions, was only introduced post war. It was so far removed from the first Sherman it should have been given a new name. It even looked very different - all squared off. The only point notable about the Sherman was that it was made in vast numbers.
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Burlats de Montaigne
Montgomery, having been a general since 1917, knew about soldiers and how they thought and reacted. He understood them and cared about all the men under him, British, US, Canadian, Auss, NZ, Indian, etc. He knew in time of battle their morale was essential. He observed in WW1 that men seeing their own men being killed in large numbers would demoralise quite quickly, reducing their fighting capability. Preserving their lives was essential to Monty on many levels. This was paramount in his mind. If Monty could muster all available forces and push forwards minimising casualties, he would - only a fool would not.
The Canadians had the same view. They invented the modern armoured personnel carrier during the Battle of Normandy. They asked the British to convert a Churchill tank by removing its turret and fitting a door. They did and the Canadians called it the Kangaroo because it could jump men to the place where they should be, rather than go across open ground and half of them get killed. The British took this up.
The British and Canadians were far more efficient than the over-bloated green US armies. The did not need as many men for the same punch. In fact far less.
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There is a myth that the Germans were way ahead of the British in jet engines and planes in WW2, when the opposite is true. The WW2 German jet engines were extremely unreliable with low performances and very high fuel consumption. The German axial-flow turbojets never worked as they wanted, being developed up to 1953 by the French to obtain a usable engine. The French lost a lot of time playing around with the German engines, instead of working with the British. The French and Soviets after WW2 tried to improve the German axial-flow engines and largely failed.
The Germans did not invent the axial-flow turbojet, they based everything on Frank Whittle's patents. The British Metropolitan-Vickers F.1 axial-flow engine was running on a test bed in 1941. The F.2 was an axial-flow being an extremely advanced design using a nine-stage axial compressor, annular combustor, and a two-stage turbine. It powered a Meteor in November 1943. It was considered unreliable and never saw use during the war, hence why the British went for the reliability, controllability and quick development of the centrifugal turbojets.
The Metro-Vick F.3 was the first ever turbofan in 1943. Metro-Vick developed the F.9 Sapphire, however left the jet business in 1947 giving all their designs to Armstrong Siddeley, who commercially produced the Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire engine, which was licence built in the US as the J-65.
The British in order to get a usable and reliable jet engine, with the technology of the time, went for a centrifugal design rather than the troublesome axial-flow design. This design produce more thrust than an axial-flow in WW2 as the Ne e dud in 2944. Centrifugal was quicker to develop and reliable outperforming the best piston engines planes at the time. It took 5 months to develop, while the first reliable axial-flow engine was the 1950 Rolls Royce Avon, which took 5 years to get right. The Avon is still in production as a ground based gas turbine, with the aero version in production for 30 years.
In 1945 the French made and tested some German designed turbo jets made with quality alloys unavailable to German industry in WW2. They ran for 25 hours instead of the 10 hours of the Germans engines that used poorer quality steel. Not much better. The German axial-flow engines failed because of heavy design flaws. The centrifugal compressor used by the first British Meteor plane was fine and much more reliable, but unable to reach high compression ratios. This limited performances. Centrifugal compressors were used up to the 1960s.
In 1945 the team from the French ATAR laboratory plus some BMW and Junkers engineers, were engaged by the French SNECMA research bureau, with the objective to build a new reliable and performing axial-flow turbojet. The BMW 003/Jumo004 was considered unusable. It was tested on the first French jet aircraft, the 1946 So6000 Triton, overheating and exploding. The plane only flew with a Rolls Royce Nene centrifugal turbojet.
The ATAR project took 6 years to produce the first acceptable axial-flow turbojet (ATAR 101 B1), produced in 1953. So 8 years research and developments by the French using the German jet engines as the base. It was installed on the first French jet fighter, the Dassault Ouragan.
The French lost a lot of time because the German jets had poor efficiency and some concept failures. The failures were essentially in the combustion chambers and fresh air circulation to reduce the external temperature of the engine. The BMW jet was known for overheating problems which precluded fuselage installation.
The question at the end of WW2 was: what is the most efficient way to produce jet fighters? The answer was clearly not adopting the German design of engine and fuselage. The build costs for a jet engine were much higher than a piston engine at the time with the fuel consumption near 3x. The centrifugal compressor the British adopted in some planes was the best choice with 1944-45 technology, more compression pressure was not an advantage when the hot turbine was unable to resist higher temperatures.
The German turbojets had big overheat problems as the engine would not work in an enclosed fuselage for single-engined fighters. This defect was immediately noted by the French on the 1946 "SO 6000 Triton" prototype, and by the Soviets on the 1946 Mig 9. The Soviets quickly replaced the BMW 004B2 by the centrifugal Rolls Royce Nene which worked without problems, dismissing the BMW engine for fighter planes. The Rolls Royce Nene was copied to the last nut by the USSR being installed in the Mig 15 being used effectively in the Korean war.
The Meteor was the first proper fully developed jet plane in squadron service. The 262 was slightly faster than the Meteor F3, but extremely unreliable. The British would never put into the sky such an undeveloped plane as the me262. The British could have had a jet fighter operational in 1941, but it may have been as bad as the me262. The Germans advanced R&D on jets after they interrogated captured British RAF men. They learned the British were advanced in jet technology and flying prototype planes. Until then the Germans had no intention of mass producing jet planes.
The rushed together Me262 started claiming kills on 26 July 1944, the Meteor claimed its first V1 kill a few days later on the 4 August 1944. But the Meteor was a proper fully developed jet plane, not a thrown together desperate effort as the me262 was. The me262 fuselage was similar to a piston plane with the pilot over the wings obscuring downward vision, while the Meteor was a proper new design fuselage specifically for jet fighters with a forward of the wings pilot position giving superior pilot vision, as we see in planes today. The cockpit was very quiet. The sweptback wings of the me262 were to move the engines further back for better weight distribution, not for aerodynamic reasons as is thought the case. The me262's airframe was based on piston engine planes, even with an initial rear tail wheel. The tricycle landing gear was only introduced when it was found the thrust of the jet engines would scorch the runway surface as the exhaust faced downwards. The nosewheel was unreliable. The Meteor's airframe was designed purely for jet propulsion even with a high tail to prevent thrust interfering with the tail which could affect control.
Centrifugal compressors are still used in turboprops. Between a turbo jet and a turboprop, the only difference is the turbine, not the compressor. The last centrifugal compressor jet engine still in service on a handful of commercial aircraft like the Fokker 27, is the Rolls Royce Dart turboprop. A very reliable engine made in 27 versions, but with high fuel consumption to modern engines. The Rolls Royce Dart Turboprop turbo jet engine was produced the longest, being a comparable design turbojet to the likes the Rolls Royce Nene. The rugged engine was produced from 1946 up to 1987.
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The state of play on the 17th, D day, was:
1) the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was largely clear;
2) there were concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally;
3) there were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen;
4) a few scattered about along the road;
5) there was no armour in Arnhem.
That was it.
i) XXX Corps would deal from the Belgium border to Eindhoven;
ii) 101st from Eindhoven to Grave;
iii) 82nd from Grave to north of Nijmegen;
iv) British and Polish paras from north of Nijmegen to north of the Rhine;
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 2 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition, hanging around in the village. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured it.
Evidently expecting that Major La Prade's flanking battalion would have captured the highway bridge, these two battalions made no apparent haste in moving through Zon. They methodically cleared stray Germans from the houses, so that a full two hours had passed before they emerged from the village. Having at last overcome the enemy 88 south of the Zonsche Forest, Major LaPrade's battalion caught sight of the bridge at about the same time. Both forces were within fifty yards of the bridge when their objective went up with a roar.
- US Official History.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected. XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and towards the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up. The road was still largely clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump.
XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, making up for the delay at Zon. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over. If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves, after the 82nd tried again and failed again. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem. XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
According to the official American Army historian, Forrest Pogue, he stated that the failure of US 82nd Airborne to assault the lightly defended Nijmegen bridge immediately upon jumping 'sounded the death knell' for the men at Arnhem.
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@johnlucas8479
All you do is go around in circles in an attempt to obfuscate.
The state of play on the morning of the 17th:
1) There was condensed German resistance on the Dutch-Belgian border. There would be as it was the front line.
2) The road from Zon, north of Eindhoven, was clear all the way to Arnhem.
3) The bridges were largely undefended. No ditches, barbed wires and the likes. The large Nijmegen bridge had 19 guards on it.
4) About 750 men in the Nijmegen area, who were older men of a training unit, no match for the highly trained and experienced 82nd men.
5) There was no German armour anywhere along the road from Zon to Arnhem.
How it went
If the airborne units seized their assigned bridges, The ground troops, XXX Corps would breeze through to the Arnhem, the prime objective.
The British 1st Airborne made it to Arnhem bridge, taking the north end of the bridge, denying its use to the Germans. The other two airborne units, both US, failed to seize their assigned bridges immediately. If they had XXX Corps would have been in Arnhem on d-day+1, before any armour came in from Germany. Game set and match. The Germans would not have known what had hit them.
XXX Corps dealt with the initial German resistance making excellent progress. The US Official History states about XXX Corps, "progress was remarkable". The 12 hour delay caused by the 101st not seizing the Zon bridge, meant the Germans for 12 hours had a critical time window to pour in troops and get armour moving towards Arnhem. The longer the time delay the more Germans poured in, hence more resistance. Obvious.
On top of the 12 hour delay, the 82nd failing to seizing their bridge at Nijmegen (XXX Corps had to take it for them), caused an additional 36 hour delay. This meant another longer time window for the Germans to keep up the reinforcing. The extra 36 hour delay created by the 82nd, meant a bridgehead over the Rhine was precluded, as the two day time window in total given to the Germans was far too long.
The British paras did their part in securing a crossing over its assigned waterway, the Rhine - the crossing was denied to the Germans. The two US para units failed in theirs. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
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@johnlucas8479
From US Offcial history....
As night came the British stopped in Valkenswaard, their "formal" objective. The objective of Eindhoven, which General Horrocks had indicated he hoped to reach on D-Day, lay six miles to the north.
So, XXX Corps was on schedule meeting their objective. XXX Corps reached Eindhoven at 1230 hrs, [d-day+1] running through without stopping, only to stop at the Zon bridge which the US 101st failed to seize.
US Official history...
at 0645 (D plus 2, 19 September) the armor rumbled across [the Zon bridge].
That is about 19 hours delay - OK knock off an hour for getting through Eindhoven, say 18 hours. An 18 hours delay because the US 101st failed to seize their objective.
US Official history....
Spearheading the 30 Corps ground column, reconnaissance troops of the Guards Armoured Division linked with Colonel Tucker's S04th Parachute Infantry at Grave at 0820 the morning of D plus 2, 19 September. Major formations of the British armor were not far behind.
XXX Corps covered over 26 miles in 2 hr 45 mins, averaging about 7 mph. They got to Zon at about 1330hrs d-day+1, So they would have reached the 82nd at 1615hrs d-day+1, at the latest. More like an hour earlier, or as fast as the vehicles could go.If the 82nd had secured the Nijmegen bridge XXX Corps would have linked up with the British paras early evening d-day+1.
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@Trebor74
“The British and Canadian armies were to decoy the enemy reserves and draw them into their front on the extreme eastern edge of the Allied beachhead. Thus while Monty taunted the enemy at Caen we were to make our break on the long roundabout road to a Paris. When reckoned in terms of national pride this British decoy mission became a sacrificial one, for which while we trampled around the outside flank, the British were to sit in place and pin down the Germans.Yet strategically it fitted into a logical division of labors, for it was towards Caen that enemy reserves would race once the alarm was sounded.”
- General Bradley
Monty’s alacrity in accepting the disappointing results of ‘Goodwood’ caused consternation at Eisenhower’s headquarters- and particularly among the Air Force commanders. ‘In order to get proper air support for the attack, de Guingard had to exaggerate the importance of the attack,’ Dempsey later explained in an effort to make clear the real purpose of ‘Goodwood’ to the American Official Historian. ‘He kept telling the air people this attack is absolutely essential to the war and will be the turning point. Because of this statement, it has been difficult to convince people that we had not intended to do more than strengthen our line. Monty realised that this attack was open to exaggeration and for this reason gave me one of the first written orders I ever received, in which the limited nature of the attack was made clear.’
Not only had Monty to deceive the reluctant barons of the Allied air forces; it was essential that the Germans be made to believe that ‘Goodwood’ was serious, and that unless all reserves were committed to the eastern flank, a British break-out towards Paris would result. ‘Both Bradley and I agreed we could not possibly tell the Press the true strategy which formed the basis of all our plans,’ Monty recalled; he therefore gave a press conference, in the midst of the ‘Goodwood’ battle, to give the impression that the decisive moment in the Normandy campaign had come. As Chester Wilmington, the BBC correspondent, noted in his diary after the true break-out in the west ‘the military offensive did not fail, but the propaganda offensive did’…
- Monty Master of the Battlefield by Nigel Hamilton
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@sirfinleygaming9490
The Americans lost so many men in bodged and poorly planned offensives, like 52,000 casualties in the failed Lorraine offensive, 33,000 at the Hurtgen Forest defeat, 12,000 operation Queen, 100,000 in the Bulge retreat, etc. They panicked sending a huge level of troops to Europe, that by the end they had half the allied troops. Most came in at the very end , being green, never seeing the enemy or fired a shot. Most went straight back home being readied for Japan.
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@scaleyback217
The state of play on the 17th, d-day, was that the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was clear. There was concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally. There were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen. Then a few scattered about along the road. There was no armour in Arnhem. That was it. If the bridges are secured by paras forming an airborne carpet then just a cruise up the road.
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 3 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured the bridge.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected.
XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up. The road was still clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump.
XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, at the planned expected time, making up the delay at Zon. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over.
If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
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John Signs
Oh the ignorance of the man! It is bad enough having Rambo about. The US supplied about 10-11% of British supplies, which was mainly raw materials and machine tools, with 5% Soviet. Read British War Production by Postan 1951. Not earth shattering from the USA.
Monty used mostly BRITISH built trucks and vehicles for his 1,000km advance in 17 days in November 1942. The British produced over one million trucks in WW2. Britain was one of the largest industrial producers in the world. The US had three times the population of Britain but only out produced Britain by two.
Britain produced over 150,000 planes, planes which were the most advanced of any nation, like jets, the Mosquito, Spitfire, Tempest, Lancaster, etc. In 1941 the British were building more aircraft than Germany, Japan and Italy combined, 5,000 more than the USSR and 5,000 less than the USA.
The British built 50,000 tanks (about the same as the USA, but better tanks than the Sherman), over one million trucks, over one million machine guns and a quarter of a million artillery pieces. Even the British empire: the Canadians built more wheeled vehicles than the Germans, also building Lancasters, Mosquitos and Valentine tanks. https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/articles/how-the-motor-industry-helped-win-the-second-world-war/
The USAAF in the UK was getting something like 70% of its supplies locally until 1943 (its in the USAAF history), with around 30% overall. In 1942 the US was a liability, when Britain was waging full war.
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@thevillaaston7811
Since WW2 and up to the wildly inaccurate film A Bridge Too Far, the way Market Garden was portrayed was that XXX Corps were too slow, the US paras took all their bridges, the British after seizing Nijmegen bridge stopped for tea not wanting to move to Arnhem, the British planned the operation, etc, etc. This was US propaganda backed up by Hollywood, and poor US authors. US blame shifting. Since the film, many have researched the operation in depth collectively concluding another rather accurate story. The conclusion was that Market Garden was an American failure.
Americans:
1) Failed to seize two bridges immediately, putting the operation back 42 hours in total;
2) Primarily planned the operation;
3) Gave the operation the go ahead, despite British reservations expressed over its viability;
4) Under resourced the operation - only one corps above Eindhoven;
5) Had the final say over air operations;
6) Prevented fighter-bombers from operating;
7) Prevented two air drops in one day.
The British XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong getting to Nijmegen on schedule. Instead of rolling over the bridge onto Arnhem six miles away, they then had to seize a bridge themselves which they were not tasked for.
The British paras held one end of a bridge denying its use to the Germans, until they ran out of ammunition - the Germans said they were the best soldiers they had met in WW2.
Brereton after WW2, on film stated XXX Corps were too slow. He lied knowing they were not. All facts prove they were not slow. Since WW2 Americans have lied through their back teeth over Market Garden, constantly blaming Montgomery who had little involvement, with the OK given by ground forces commander Eisenhower.
This vid TIK on Gavin shows the lies that have been put in place by the US over the operation since WW2. Contrast the British.
1) Browning was corps commander saying I take responsibility, not casting any on the three divisional generals under him, of which one was clearly to blame;
2) It was Montgomery's 21st Army Group, so he said the buck stops with him;
3) Brereton, head of the First Allied Airborne Army, said nothing - except lies after WW2;
4) Gavin all though attempted to defect blame - even onto Lindquist, as this vid proves;
The British were gentlemen, the Americans chose the blame game pointing at anyone except themselves. A culture difference.
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@donupton5246
What drivel!
Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the reason why the Market Garden plan was flawed. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak".
The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends. General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 20 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 8 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men in the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself. XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge.
If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A failure responsible by General Gavin. Even the US Official War record confirms this.
Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm
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@donupton5246
Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust over other fronts:
"On 4 Sept, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr"
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen when he issued the directive. Montgomery wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive, devising Operation Comet to be launched on 2 Sept, being cancelled due to German resistance and poor weather.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 Sept had divisions of the US 1st Army and Montgomery's view of taking multiple bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. The British 2nd Army needed some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow). Hodges' would protect the right flank. the Canadians would protect the left flank from the German 15th army. It was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
"the evidence also suggests that certain necessary objectives on the road to Berlin, crossing the Rhine and perhaps even taking the Ruhr, were possible with the existing logistical set-up, provided the right strategy to do so was set in place. Montgomery’s popular and astute Chief of Staff, Freddie de Guingand, certainly thought so: 'If Eisenhower had not taken the steps he did to link up at an early date with Anvil and had held back Patton, and had he diverted the resources so released to the north, I think it possible we might have obtained a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter - but not more.' "
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944."- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again. This northern thrust over the Rhine obviously would not work with the resources starved First Army, so a lesser operation was devised by Montgomery, Market Garden, eliminating the divisions of US First Army, with only ONE crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London wanted eliminating ASAP giving a 60 mile long salient buffer between German forces and the important port of Antwerp. This would only have one corps above Eindhoven, a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time. Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance.
Montgomery, although not liking Eisenhower's broad front strategy, making that clear continuously since the Normandy breakout, being a professional soldier he always obeyed Eisenhower's orders keeping to the laid down strategy, unlike Bradley who also allowed Patton to disobey his own orders.
Montgomery after fixing the operations objectives with Eisenhower to what forces were available, gave Market Garden planning to others, mainly General Brereton, an American, of the First Allied Airborne Army. Brereton, who liked the concept, agreed to it with even direct input. Brereton ordered the drops will take place during the day and Brereton oversaw the troop carrier and supply drops schedules. A refusal by Brereton and the operation would never have gone ahead, as he earlier rejected Montgomery's initial plan of a drop into the Scheldt at Walcheren Island.
Montgomery left all the planning to his generals to plan and execute: Brereton, Williams, Browning, Urquhart, Gavin, Taylor, Horrocks, etc. Monty gave them a free run at it with their own discretion not interfering. Montgomery had no involvement whatsoever in its execution. Montgomery was an army group commander, in charge of armies. The details were left to 'competent' subordinates.
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@ErikExeu
The state of play on the 17th, D day, was:
1) the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was largely clear;
2) there were concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally;
3) there were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen who were getting out fast;
4) a few scattered about along the road;
5) there was no armour in Arnhem.
That was it.
i) XXX Corps would deal from the Belgium border to Eindhoven;
ii) 101st from Eindhoven to Grave;
iii) 82nd from Grave to north of Nijmegen;
iv) British and Polish paras from north of Nijmegen to north of the Rhine;
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 2 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition, hanging around in the village. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured it.
Evidently expecting that Major La Prade's flanking battalion would have captured the highway bridge, these two battalions made no apparent haste in moving through Zon. They methodically cleared stray Germans from the houses, so that a full two hours had passed before they emerged from the village. Having at last overcome the enemy 88 south of the Zonsche Forest, Major LaPrade's battalion caught sight of the bridge at about the same time. Both forces were within fifty yards of the bridge when their objective went up with a roar.- US Official History.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected. XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and towards the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up.
The road was still largely clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump. Horrocks promised the 1st Airborne at Anhem XXX Corps would reach them within 48 hours. XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820 hrs on d-day plus 2, on schedule making up for the delay at Zon, having seven hours left to travel 8 miles. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over. If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves, after the 82nd tried again and failed again. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
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@Sharon Whiteley
Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower approved, under resourcing the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
1) Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
2) Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
3) Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
4) Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
5) Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
6) Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
7) Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak".
The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgment or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed. XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem.
Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself. XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin. Even the US Official War record confirms this. The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
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“Patton finally began receiving adequate supplies on September 4"
- Harry Yeide
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
“ It was commonly believed at Third Army H.Q. that Montgomery's advance through Belgium was largely maintained by supplies diverted from Patton. (See Butcher, op. cit., p. 667.) This is not true. The amount delivered by the ' air-lift ' was sufficient to maintain only one division. No road transport was diverted to aid Montgomery until September 16th. On the other hand, three British transport companies, lent to the Americans on August 6th " for eight days," were not returned until September 4th.' “
- CHESTER WILMOT
THE STRUGGLE FOR EUROPE.
Page 589
"Despite objections raised to Montgomery's plan of an assault on a 40 division front, it was more sensible than Eisenhower's insistence on the entire front being in motion at all times, for no better reason than he could not abide the thought that the two American army groups would not participate as entities in the anticipated victory. Not only did Eisenhower fail to heed Montgomery's suggestions, but also he never seemed to understand the possible benefits. He was evidently unable to understand that to supply 40 divisions attacking on one front would have been an easier task than to supply first one army and then the other as each in turn went over to the offensive. It was this concentration of effort which Eisenhower failed to understand and to implement"
- Eisenhower at the Art of Warfare
by DJ Haycock, page 182.
Land supplies were not taken from Patton and given to Monty. It is a complete myth to claim otherwise. Monty didn't even have a full army for his attack at Market Garden, just a Corps and supporting elements, with much flow in from England.
Market Garden was not a very large ground operation. It was limited in size. The American attack into the Hurtgen Forest started when Market Garden was going on. The US advance on the Hurtgen Forest by the First US Army's 9th Infantry Division began on 14th September, 3 days before Market Garden began, and was continuing to try and advance into the Hurtgen even when Market Garden began 3 days later, but it was halted by the Germans however.
This was soon followed up by a larger advance by US First Army towards Aachen at the start of October. Market Garden didn't make a notable dent in allied supplies seeing as the US was able to put on a LARGER ground attack right afterwards. According to Bradley in his own book there was parity of supplies between the three allied armies, Second British, First and Third US by mid September 1944 and according to the official US Army History as cited in Hugh Cole's book, The Lorraine Campaign page 52..."by 10th September the period of critical (gasoline) shortage had ended". This was a whole week before Market Garden took place. The gasoline drought was the end of August/beginning of September. It was over by the time of Market Garden.
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▪The alignments are Victorian, not the rail infrastructure. The Victorians had the sense to run lines from places people wanted to go to.
▪The is NO capacity problem in the UK that the current network, or opening closed lines, cannot solve.
▪The current network can be much faster, near HS2 times, if bottlenecks are removed and faster trains used.
▪The link to the continent for provincial cities was dropped.
▪The link to the country's leading airport, Heathrow, was dropped.
▪HS2 is SLOW. it is exactly 100 miles from Euston in London to Curzon St in Birmingham, yet this 100 miles is covered at 113mph. On a 250mph railway. The many green tunnels on the line means it will never be fast.
▪It is only 2-track from Birmingham to London, the most used section. This precludes cities like Chester using HS2. Chester currently has an inter-city service like all other cities.
▪HS2 trains running onto existing tracks run slower as they do not tilt. So they run fast on HS2 then very slow on existing classic rail.
▪HS2 serves only three cities directly.
▪London to Edinburgh on the East Coast Main Line currently is only 12 minutes slower than the proposed HS2. The ECML is scheduled for upgrading, meaning the train journey time will be about equal to HS2.
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"It is worth repeating that the first and most important duty of a commander in battle is the selection and maintenance of the aim or, to put it in layman’s terms, to answer the prime question: what are we trying to do here? What the airborne divisions were trying to do was to lay an airborne carpet from the Meuse-Escaut Canal to the north bank of the Neder Rijn, and that aim had to be achieved — or maintained — whatever difficulties arose on the Groesbeek heights or anywhere else. Major-General Maxwell Taylor of the US 101st Airborne also had trouble, a great deal of trouble, with strong German attacks along Hell’s Highway, but he handled those — and took the bridges first, on D-Day. It appears that at Nijmegen Gavin and Browning either forgot or elected to ignore one of the principles of war. Their prime task was to take the bridges, including the Nijmegen road bridge, as quickly as possible and hold it until XXX Corps arrived and advanced across it. This they failed to do and the effect on the entire operation was disastrous, creating a delay of some thirty-six hours after the Guards Armoured Division arrived in Nijmegen, a mere eight miles from Arnhem, on the morning of D plus 2."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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Many are so eager to assert that German technological advances were superior to the British, that they forget to read what the Germans actually made, and how useful it actually was.
The first jet engine to fly in a plane was von Ohain's project at Heinkel. He had substantial funding from a major industrialist. Von Ohain himself admitted that he studied very closely Whittle's jet engine patents before starting work on his own jet engine. His engine had a centrifugal compressor and turbine. It was not the axial-flow turbojet. It was unreliable, inefficient, low power and low life, despite having massive funding from Heinkel - a failure that was not continued. The German jet programme was dropped until they knew the British had prototype jet planes in the air, then it was revived.
Whittle concentrated his very limited funding on the centrifugal compressor because it was well-understood and less problematic than axial-flow designs. He was focused on making a war-usable, reliable and powerful engine - quickly - which would outperform the best piston engine planes of the day. All of these qualities the Jumo and BMW axial jet engines lacked. With limited funding, Whittle developed a reliable engine which was combat-ready near the end of the war. Within months of the first operational flight, production engines were also more powerful than any of the poor engines turned out by the rushed German programs to the enormous detriment of actual combat - Gloster Meteor's top speed of 600 mph in late 1945, 650mph in mid 1946.
No one can claim that an engine is combat ready with a service life of 10-12 hours, which cannot be rapidly throttled up or down otherwise it stalls, is prone to flame-out and terrifies its pilots. They were underdeveloped and unproven axial-flow jet engines, being near garbage. The British installed axial-flow engines in a Meteor, however dropping them as they were too problematic at the time, requiring years to put right. A war was on, with years in development they could not afford.
The problems with German jet engines were not caused by the scarcity of metals in Germany during WW2, as they had access to enough rare metals. To produce a high performing jet engine high-strength alloys are required resisting high temperature. No iron-based alloy is suitable. Germany had no programme to develop such alloys. The British did, developing the nimonic series of alloys, making use of them in the WW2 jet engine programme. That is one, just one, of the reasons why the British jet program had combat potential, with the German program doomed to failure.
The Me262 airframe had many serious faults:
▪ high landing speed:
▪ difficult to maneuver;
▪ no air brakes;
▪ centre of gravity too far back;
▪ Poor downwards pilot visibility;
Those faults made attacking other aircraft far more difficult - at a time when they were desperately short of pilots, particularly pilots with sufficient skill and experience to fly what was a very difficult plane to fly and fight in.
The sweep-back of the wing of the Me262 was minimal, only in the leading edge, with a part of the trailing edge of the wing being straight. The swept wing was an insufficient correction for the plane's centre of gravity problem, not aerodynamics, that prompted the slight wing sweep. It was not until years later that properly designed swept-back wings were introduced in combat planes. By contrast the Gloster Meteor was:
▪ handleable;
▪ maneuverable;
▪ a balanced combat plane.
The Meteor was deliberately designed to an airframe of known traditional qualities, as it had a new type of engine. If there was problems in handling they knew it would be the engine, not the airframe. Having an advanced airframe and new type of engine may give confusion and delays in R&D, delaying the final plane.
While the Meteor was being developed, the British were also working on the supersonic Miles 52 plane - the project was dropped with the plans given over to the USA, which resulted in Bell X-1. No one copied the Me262 in the post war rush to get fast jet planes into service. The British also produced new planes - the world's most advanced, in engine and airframe.
After WW2 the leading German plane designer Kurt Tank, and 62 other German engineers, went to Argentina to design and build the FMA IAe 33 Pulqui II jet plane. They used a RR Nene engine. The plane was a flop.
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Deus Vult
You must stop making things up.
Some facts for you. The British were the single biggest agents in the defeat of Nazi Germany. They were there from day one until the end. The so-called "invincible" Germans army tried and failed, with their allies, for two years in WW2 to defeat the British army in North Africa. The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British. From El Alemein it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery had to give the US armies an infantry role as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein
♦ March 1943 - Medenine
♦ June 1944 - Normandy
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge
Not on one occasion were Monty's ground armies pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. The US Army were struggling in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months with over 50,000 casualties. The Battle of the Bulge took all the US effort, and vital help from Montgomery and the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe. The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US 1st and 9th armies and parts of the US air force put under RAF command. The 9th stayed under his control until the end of the war just about.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British with Montgomery leading, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against the panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) and had to give them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped to fight tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
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@jasonwiggins6137 wrote: " but Eisenhower as Supreme Commander clearly made the right decisions overall."
Montgomery to Alan Brooke..
"If we want the war to end within any reasonable period you have to get Eisenhower’s hand taken off the land battle. I regret to say that in my opinion he just doesn’t know what he is doing.
Montgomery wrote of Eisenhower and his ridiculous broad-front strategy
on 22 January 1945:
“I fear that the old snags of indecision and vacillation and refusal to consider the military problem fairly and squarely are coming to the front again . . . The real trouble is that there is no control and the three army groups are each intent on their own affairs. Patton today issued a stirring order to Third Army, saying the next step would be Cologne . . . One has to preserve a sense of humour these days, otherwise one would go mad.”
Alanbrooke wrote in his diary about buffoon Eisenhower:
“At the end of this morning's C.O.S. [Chief of Staff] meeting I put before the committee my views on the very unsatisfactory state of affairs in France, with no one running the land battle. Eisenhower, though supposed to be doing so, is on the golf links at Rheims — entirely detached and taking practically no part in running of the war. Matters got so bad lately that a deputation of Whiteley, Bedell Smith and a few others went up to tell him that he must get down to it and RUN the war, which he said he would."
"We discussed the advisability of getting Marshall to come out to discuss the matter, but we are doubtful if he would appreciate the situation. Finally decided that I am to see the P.M. to discuss the situation with him.”
"November 28th I went to see the P.M. I told him I was very worried."
Alan Brooke described in his daily diary that American generals Eisenhower and Marshall as poor strategists, when they were in jobs were strategy mattered. Brooke wrote to Montgomery about his talks with Eisenhower, “it is equally clear that Ike has the very vaguest conception of war!”
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To say Churchill did all this to cajole/impress the USA is fanciful.
This Syria invasion was in June 1941. The situation in May/June was:
♦ There was legitimate concerns at protecting the oil in the Middle East, as the Axis was desperate for oil.
♦ In May 1941 the Italian fleet could not put to sea as they had no oil.
♦ What remained of the German surface fleet was quietly retired to port through lack of oil.
♦ The Germans held all of Greece.
♦ A pro-Axis coup in Iraq was in April 1941. British forces suppressed it, securing the oil in Iraq.
♦ Turkey showed no sign of joining in on the Axis side - they initially assessed Germany would be beaten unable to match the troop numbers from the British Empire.
♦ Were the Axis to invade Turkey as a springboard into the Middle East? To invade Syria they needed a large naval invasion force which they never had. Turkey would be via land, or short water hops.
♦ The British knew of the German build up for the invasion of the USSR in June 1941. The Germans would go for the Soviet oil fields near Iran/Turkey/Iraq.
♦ Operation Crusader was being planned to gain Libya - with troop and armour build ups.
♦ The British had an oil refinery in Iran.
♦ The British had an oil refinery in Haifa, Palestine (Italians bombed it in 1940), in easy bombing range from Syria.
♦ An oil pipeline from the Gulf to the Med at Palestine was being built.
That the Axis would make a lunge for the Middle East was a legitimate concern - they were involved in the coup in Iraq. They were already trying to get there via Egypt. Pro Nazi Vichy controlled Syria. Securing the countries south of Turkey/USSR was essential. There was a possibility that Vichy France would collaborate closer with the Axis, allowing the Axis a firm hold in the Middle East in Syria. Vichy was not to be trusted, as they allowed the Japanese into Indochina near to British Malay/Burma, also breaking an agreement in making a separate peace with Germans in France. As the securing of Syria started the Germans invaded the USSR. Only a matter of weeks after the conclusion in Syria the British and Soviets invaded Iran to secure the refinery and oil pipeline into the USSR. This secured oil for British forces in the North Africa/Middle East and the USSR.
All this securing the Middle East paid dividends. At the end of 1941 the British controlled all the Middle East and all the coast from Turkey to Libya. The Axis had been driven back 500km in North Africa in Operation Crusader, with the British expecting to rid them from North Africa quite soon controlling all the southern Med coast. The Germans had been stopped and pushed back at the Battle of Moscow. 40% of the tanks used were supplied under British lend lease. The British were planning an invasion of Sicily in 1942. Once North Africa and the Middle East were secure, with British convoys using the Med, the British could concentrate in aiding the Soviets 100%. The British and Soviets were expecting to defeat the Germans.
In Dec 1941 the Japanese attacked the British, Dutch and Americans. The Royal Navy moved many ships to the Indian Ocean from the Mediterranean. Ground troops to face the Japanese were moved from the theatre. This was bad timing as the British were expecting to rid the Axis from North Africa and gain control of all the southern Med coast. This seriously weakened British forces against the Axis. The Axis took advantage to counter-attack the weakened British. The British took another year or so to defeat the Axis in North Africa.
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@cavscout888
Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the reason why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak".
The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 8 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men in the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself. XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge.
If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin. Even the US Official War record confirms this.
Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm
The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
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@cavscout888
Some facts for you. The British were the single biggest agents in the defeat of Nazi Germany. They were there from day one until the end. They never entered the war because they attacked another country or were attacked, they went in on principle. The so-called "invincible" Germans army tried and failed, with their allies, for two years in WW2 to defeat the British army in North Africa. The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein
♦ March 1943 - Medenine
♦ June 1944 - Normandy
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Montgomery moved over 1,000 km in 17 days from El Alemein to Tunisia, the fastest advance for such a distance in WW2. The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 Lorraine casualties. Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British with Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
Then the ignored British naval blockade on the Axis economy, which was so successful the substantial Italian navy could not put to sea in full strength, or even at all on some occasions, because of a lack of oil. Then the British bomber offensive on the German economy, taking the war right into German cities, wiping out Hamburg in one night.
You need to give respect where it is due.
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@bigwoody4704
Rambo, the smell of that gun polish has gone to your head.
Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the reason why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak". The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 8 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men in the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself.
XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.
Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm
The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
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“Patton finally began receiving adequate supplies on September 4, after a week’s excruciating pause”
- Harry Yeide
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp. In thinking this Ike was wrong."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
“ It was commonly believed at Third Army H.Q. that Montgomery's advance through Belgium was largely maintained by supplies diverted from Patton. (See Butcher, op. cit., p. 667.) This is not true. The amount delivered by the ' air-lift ' was sufficient to maintain only one division. No road transport was diverted to aid Montgomery until September 16th. On the other hand, three British transport companies, lent to the Americans on August 6th " for eight days," were not returned until September 4th.' “
- CHESTER WILMOT
THE STRUGGLE FOR EUROPE. 1954
P 589
"Despite objections raised to Montgomery's plan of an assault on a 40 division front, it was more sensible than Eisenhower's insistence on the entire front being in motion at all times, for no better reason than he could not abide the thought that the two American army groups would not participate as entities in the anticipated victory. Not only did Eisenhower fail to heed Montgomery's suggestions, but also he never seemed to understand the possible benefits. He was evidently unable to understand that to supply 40 divisions attacking on one front would have been an easier task than to supply first one army and then the other as each in turn went over to the offensive. It was this concentration of effort which Eisenhower failed to understand and to implement"
- Eisenhower at the Art of Warfare
by DJ Haycock, page 182.
Land supplies were not taken from Patton and given to Monty. It is a complete myth to claim otherwise. Monty didn't even have a full army for his attack at Market Garden, just a Corps and supporting elements, with much flown in from England.
Market Garden was not a very large ground operation. It was limited in size. The US advance on the Hurtgen Forest by First US Army 9th Infantry Division began on 14th September, 3 days before Market Garden began, and was continuing to try and advance into the Hurtgen even when Market Garden began 3 days later, but it was halted by the Germans.
This was soon followed up by a larger advance by the US First Army towards Aachen at the start of October. Market Garden didn't make a notable dent in allied supplies seeing as the US was able to put on a LARGER ground attack right afterwards. According to Bradley in his own book there was parity of supplies between the three allied armies, Second British, First and Third US by mid September 1944 and according to the official US Army History as cited in Hugh Cole's book, The Lorraine Campaign page 52..."by 10th September the period of critical (gasoline) shortage had ended". This was a whole week before Market Garden took place. The gasoline drought was the end of August/beginning of September. It was over by the time of Market Garden.
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@iemjgf
A prime strategic problem for SHAEF in September 1944 was opening up the approaches to Antwerp and keeping it from German counter-attack - the logistics problem to supply all allied armies. It was:
1) Take Noord Brabant, the land to the north and northeast of Antwerp, or;
2) Take the Schedlt.
Noord Branant had to be taken first, as it was essential. It was taken with limited forces also sent to take the Schedlt. Market Garden had to go ahead regardless of any threat, actually being a success. To use Antwerp and control the approaches, the Scheldt, everything up to the south bank of the lower Rhine at Nijmegen needed to be under allied control.
The low-lying lands, boggy ground between Arnhem and Nijmegen with land strewn with rivers and canals, is perfect geography as a barrier against a German counter-attack towards Antwerp. Without control of Noord Brabant German forces would have been in artillery range of Antwerp, and with a build up of forces and supply directly back to Germany in perfect position for a counter-attack. Market Garden was the offensive SHEAF wanted to secure Antwerp, a prime port for logistics for all allied armies. It made sense as the Germans were in disarray, so should be easy enough to gain.
Monty added Arnhem to form a bridgehead over the Rhine. It made complete sense in establishing a bridgehead over the Rhine as an extra to concept of the operation. You needed Arnhem for a jump into Germany. Everything up to Nijmegen was needed if you wanted to do anything at all - that is protect Antwerp and have a staging point to move into Germany. Gaining Noord Brabant, was vital, and was successfully seized. Fighting in the low lying mud and waterways of the Schedlt, which will take time, while the Germans are still holding Noord Brabant made no sense at all.
SHEAF got what they wanted from a strategic point of view.
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@Current Batches
“Patton finally began receiving adequate supplies on September 4”
- Harry Yeide
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp. In thinking this Ike was wrong."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
“It was commonly believed at Third Army H.Q. that Montgomery's advance through Belgium was largely maintained by supplies diverted from Patton. (See Butcher, op. cit., p. 667.) This is not true. The amount delivered by the 'air-lift ' was sufficient to maintain only one division. No road transport was diverted to aid Montgomery until September 16th. On the other hand, three British transport companies, lent to the Americans on August 6th "for eight days," were not returned until September 4th.' “
- CHESTER WILMOT
THE STRUGGLE FOR EUROPE. 1954
Page 589
"Despite objections raised to Montgomery's plan of an assault on a 40 division front, it was more sensible than Eisenhower's insistence on the entire front being in motion at all times, for no better reason than he could not abide the thought that the two American army groups would not participate as entities in the anticipated victory. Not only did Eisenhower fail to heed Montgomery's suggestions, but also he never seemed to understand the possible benefits. He was evidently unable to understand that to supply 40 divisions attacking on one front would have been an easier task than to supply first one army and then the other as each in turn went over to the offensive. It was this concentration of effort which Eisenhower failed to understand and to implement"
- Eisenhower at the Art of Warfare
by DJ Haycock, page 182.
Land supplies were not taken from Patton and given to Monty. It is a complete myth to claim otherwise. Monty didn't even have a full army for his attack at Market Garden, just a Corps and supporting elements, with much flown in from England.
Market Garden was not a very large ground operation. It was limited in size. The American attack into the Hurtgen Forest started when Market Garden was going on. The US advance on the Hurtgen Forest by First US Army 9th Infantry Division began on 14th September, 3 days before Market Garden began, and was continuing to try and advance into the Hurtgen even when Market Garden began 3 days later, but it was halted by the Germans.
This was soon followed up by a larger advance by US First Army towards Aachen at the start of October. Market Garden didn't make a notable dent in allied supplies seeing as the US was able to put on a LARGER ground attack right afterwards. According to Bradley in his own book there was parity of supplies between the three allied armies, Second British, First and Third US by mid September 1944 and according to the official US Army History as cited in Hugh Cole's book, The Lorraine Campaign page 52... "by 10th September the period of critical (gasoline) shortage had ended". This was a whole week before Market Garden took place. The gasoline drought was the end of August/beginning of September. It was over by the time of Market Garden.
As far as Montgomery, Patton and all, your media has sold you a pup and their version of events continues to unravel as time goes by. It is not like Ronald Reagan, Steven Spielberg and John Wayne told it.
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111,000 British troops were involved. Two shambolic US armies had to be given to a proven competent commander - there was only one, Montgomery. British officer Whiteley & American officer Betts of SHEAF visited the U.S. First Army HQ after the German attack, seeing the shambles. Strong, Whiteley, and Betts recommended that command of the armies north of the Ardennes be transferred from Bradley to Montgomery. Unfortunately only the two British officers approached Beddel Smith of their recommendations, who immediately fired the pair, claiming it was a nationalistic thing called the two "sons of b****s". The next morning, Beddel Smith apologized after seeing the gravity of the situation, saw the three officers were right, recommending to Eisenhower to bring in Monty.
After the Bulge debacle, the British were told to shut up about their involvement, allowing the Americans to claim it was all their victory. An official hush order was given. The idea was to keep the Americans quiet and happy and get on with the war. Dr Mark Felton covers this well enough.
The reality was that Eisenhower, Hodges and Bradley should have been fired from their positions. After the battle Eisenhower gave Bradley an award. No kidding.
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@TheImperatorKnight
Hodges, fled his HQ from Spa to near Liege on the 18th, despite the Germans never getting anywhere near to Spa. Hodges did not even wait for the Germans to approach Spa. He had already fled long before the Germans were stopped. Monty's liaison officers went to Spa but found the HQ empty. They had to ask civilians in the village where they had gone. They pointed up a road to Liege. So they raced up trying to find them. You couldn't make this up.
The USA retreat at the Bulge was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements.
The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south, who never relieved Bastogne - even the US commanders of the 18,000 inside emphatically say so. They pretty well walked out. Patton, this so-called master of lightning armoured warfare, was so slow. Decades later, Eisenhower recalled how Patton would telephone with frustrating progress reports, saying: “General, I apologize for my slowness. This snow is God-awful. I’m sorry.” It took Patton three days to get thru one village and totally outnumbering the enemy.
The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about, and under Monty performed very well. The commander of the Ninth, General Simpson, has near been written out of US military history, as he went hand in hand with Monty for the common good. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship. The Ninth never suffered such attrition rates.
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@TheImperatorKnight
Eisenhower should have been given just the political role, dealing with Chiefs of Staff, presidents, PMs, other forces leaders, etc. The ground control should have stayed with Monty.
Hodges and Bradley should have been fired for sure.
I will let the Germans have the first say on the Bulge:
General Hasso von Manteuffel:
‘The operations of the American First Army had developed into a series of individual holding actions. Montgomery's contribution to restoring the situation was that he turned a series of isolated actions into a coherent battle fought according to a clear and definite plan. It was his refusal to engage in premature and piecemeal counter-attacks which enabled the Americans to gather their reserves and frustrate the German attempts to extend their breakthrough’.
Montgomery on hearing of the attack immediately, without consulting Eisenhower, took British forces to the Meuse to prevent any German forces from making a bridgehead, securing the rear. He was prepared to halt their advance and attack them. This was while Eisenhower and Bradley were doing nothing.
On 20 December, Montgomery had sent a signal to Alanbrooke regarding the US forces:
"Not good... definite lack of grip and control. I have heard nothing from Ike or Bradley and had no orders or requests of any sort. My own opinion is that the American forces have been cut in half and the Germans can reach the Meuse at Namur without opposition."
Bradley, commander of the 12th Army Group, did very little:
16 Dec, the first day, for 12 hours did nothing.
16 Dec, after 12 hours, he sent two armoured divisions from the flanking Ninth and Third Armies.
17 Dec, after 24 Hours, he then called in two US airborne divisions from Champagne.
18 Dec, he ordered Patton to halt his pending offensive in the Saar.
18 Dec, he had still not established contact with the First Army, while Monty had.
19 Dec, he withdrew divisions from the Aachen front to shore up the Ardennes.
19 Dec, he had still not produced an overall defensive plan.
19 Dec, the Supreme Commander intervened directly late in the day.
20 Dec, Eisenhower telephoned Montgomery telling him to take command of the US First and Ninth Armies
While all this dillying by Bradley was going on, German armies were pounding forward into his lines. Bradley should have been fired immediately. Hodges ran away from his command post.
During the Battle of the Bulge Eisenhower was stuck self imprisoned in his HQ in des-res Versailles near Paris in fear of German paratroopers wearing US uniforms with the objective to kill allied generals. He had remained locked up more than 30 days communicating little with Montgomery, and that is when he thought he was doing ground control of the campaign, when in effect Montgomery was in control as two US shambolic US armies had to be put under his control after the German attack, the US First and Ninth armies.
And yet biased American authors said that Eisenhower took control of the Bulge and made the battle his veneering it as an all American victory. Ambrose completely falsified history. The only thing Eisenhower did was tell Monty to get control of two out of control US armies, tell the US 101st to go to Bastogne (who were in northern France after the buffer Market Garden was created) and men under Bradley to counterattack. That is it.
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@Federer935
Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower approved, under resourcing the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans, that failed, while Garden mainly the British, which succeed. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak". The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed. XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem.
Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself. XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin. Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time Monty had the Canadians cleared it, or were investing in many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@brucenadeau1280
1985 US Army report on the Lorraine Campaign.
Patton does not come out well.
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a211668.pdf
Combat Studies Institute. The Lorraine Campaign: An Overview, September-December 1944. by Dr. Christopher R. Gabel February, 1985
From the document is in italics:
Soldiers and generals alike assumed that Lorraine would fall quickly, and unless the war ended first, Patton's tanks would take the war into Germany by summer's end. But Lorraine was not to be overrun in a lightning campaign. Instead, the battle for Lorraine would drag on for more than 3 months." "Despite its proximity to Germany, Lorraine was not the Allies' preferred invasion route in 1944. Except for its two principal cities, Metz and Nancy, the province contained few significant military objectives." "Moreover, once Third Army penetrated the province and entered Germany, there would still be no first-rate military objectives within its grasp.
The Saar industrial region, while significant, was of secondary importance when compared to the great Ruhr industrial complex farther north."
Another Patton chase into un-needed territory, full of vineyards like he did when running his troops into Brittany.
"With so little going for it, why did Patton bother with Lorraine at all? The reason was that Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, made up his mind to destroy as many German forces as possible west of the Rhine."
In other words a waste of time.
"Communications Zone organized the famous Red Ball Express, a non-stop conveyor belt of trucks connecting the Normandy depots with the field armies."
They were getting fuel via 6,000 trucks.
"The simple truth was that although fuel was plentiful in Normandy, there was no way to transport it in sufficient quantities to the leading elements. On 31 August , Third Army received no fuel at all."
In short, Patton overran his supply lines. What was important was to secure the Port of Antwerp's approaches, which Eisenhower deprioritised. Montgomery approached the US leaders of the First Airborne Army who would not drop into the Scheldt.
"Few of the Germans defending Lorraine could be considered First-rate troops. Third Army encountered whole battalions made up of deaf men, others of cooks, and others consisting entirety of soldiers with stomach ulcers."
Some army the Americans were going to fight
"Was the Lorraine campaign an American victory? From September through November, Third Army claimed to have inflicted over 180,000 casualties on the enemy. But to capture the province of Lorraine, a problem which involved an advance of only 40 to 60 air miles, Third Army required over 3 months and suffered 50,000 casualties, approximately one-third of the total number of casualties it sustained in the entire European war."
The US Army does not think it was a victory. Huge losses for taking unimportant territory, against a poor German army.
"Ironically, Third Army never used Lorraine as a springboard for an advance into Germany after all. Patton turned most of the sector over to Seventh Army during the Ardennes crisis, and when the eastward advance resumed after the Battle of the Bulge, Third Army based its operations on Luxembourg, not Lorraine. The Lorraine campaign will always remain a controversial episode in American military history."
It's getting worse. One third of all European casualties in Lorraine and never used the territory to move into Germany.
"Finally the Lorraine Campaign demonstrated that Logistics often drive operations, no matter how forceful and aggressive the commanding general may be." "Patton violated tactical principles" "His discovered that violating logistical principles is an unforgiving and cumulative matter."
Not flattering at all. And Americans state Patton was the best general they had. Bradley stated later:
“Patton was developing as an unpopular guy. He steamed about with great convoys of cars and great squads of cameramen … To George, tactics was simply a process of bulling ahead. Never seemed to think out a campaign. Seldom made a careful estimate of the situation. I thought him a shallow commander … I disliked the way he worked, upset tactical plans, interfered in my orders. His stubbornness on amphibious operations, parade plans into Messina sickened me and soured me on Patton. We learned how not to behave from Patton’s Seventh Army.”
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Nice one TIK. I have quoted Tooze who I think you are not keen on..
The German army attacking the USSR......
The Germans thought they had formulated a version of Blitzkrieg in France that was a sure-fire success. If the belt broke the whole movement stopped. They used this in the USSR, just scaling up forces. They did not have the intelligence to assess properly, that the reason for their success in France was allied incompetence not anything brilliant they did.
The Germans vastly underestimated the quality of design and make of Soviet weapons. The T-34 took them by surprise and they knew they were fighting an army they had hopelessly underestimated in all aspects. The Germans did not take into account the British supplying the USSR - 40% of the tanks used at the vital battle of Moscow were British supplied. The USSR had more tanks than the rest of the world combined in 1940.
The Germans underestimated the Soviets so much they decided to attack them with no reserves, all the German forces were involved in Barbarossa, lack of proper logistics to re-supply, short of steel, rubber, oil, an industry that could not re-supply at the rate required, short of fuel for industry and the forces, etc, etc. The Germans were so inept at assessing the Soviets they did not envisage fighting in the Russian winter in 1942/1942 thinking they would have overcome the USSR in three months. When they did not break the USSRs back they did not have enough winter clothes and equipment designed for such low temperatures. It was not just the logistics of getting to the troops, they just did not have the equipment. The Germans thought the Soviets could field 360 divisions, they fielded over 600.
Soviet industry was large and had moved to the east. Much was in the east anyhow. This was working 24/7 to re-supply. The T-34 tank by Dec 1941 was well established and available in numbers. The Germans first faced The T-34 in October 41, reducing a German division to a few tanks. The Soviet counter-attack in Dec 1941 was well supplied, and heavily with T-34s. There was still 1,400 Soviet aircraft available in Dec 1941. Glantz is a little out. Lend-Lease only really became "significant" in 1943 onwards. In 1942, the critical year, the USSR outproduced the USA.
A Soviet mistake after Moscow was counter attacking on a broad front and not aiming at the the weakest point and pushing them right back, nevertheless they mauled the Germans. By Dec 1941 the Germans were exhausted in fuel, men and equipment. They could do no more. As early as In July 1941, many German armies were at the end of their effective supply lines. As Prof Tooze emphasises, most say the Germans failed to take Moscow, the reality was that they could not as they were on their last legs. The large Soviet air force was still attacking German supply lines as well, exasperating the situation. The Germans foolishly thought most supplies could be taken along three very long rail tracks, which were easily ripped up by the Soviets and bombed via the air. Thousands of German rail men worked to get lines partially operation. The Soviets evacuated lots of rail trucks.
Prof Tooze: Wages of Destruction, page 453:
'Halder wrote, Barbarossa needed speed and motorized transport for supply. No waiting for railways. The Germans planned for three rail lines and 740,000 horses.'
...the Germans never had enough motorised transport to supply all the fast moving armies. Pre June 1941, they were considering de-motorising because of a shortage of rubber inflicted by the Royal Navy blockade.
Tooze: page 454:
'Three rail lines were used. The existing Soviet rail network was not even good enough to supply the German army if taken intact. It was also of a narrower gauge too. The retreating Soviets took most wagons with them and destroyed the rail infrastructure on retreating.
The Soviets had taken massive losses, but being so big they could absorb so many losses. The Soviets also had inflicted great losses on the Germans by Dec 1941. The only large power Germany conquered was France. This gave them a sense of superiority - their technique was now known, so succeeding twice was unlikely.'
They largely dropped the blitzkrieg of coordinated air and ground attacks.
Tooze: page 487.
'In July, all three German Army groups had reached the limit of resupply and stopped. The Soviets had taken devastating losses but not defeated. The Soviets saw the halt of the German armies and the re-supply problem and launched 17 armies against them forcing the Germans to dig in and defend.'
The UK & US can be forgiven in underestimating the Red Army, which they did, not so the Germans as they would have to assess this force in detail as they were to fight it, unlike the UK & US. Soviet industry was turning out the arms and to advanced designs. I don't want to go into what ifs, but if the T-34 was in place in summer 1941 the Germans would never have had such initial spectacular progress. Stalin knew what was being produced. They knew once the weaponry was in place, they could defeat the Germans who would be operating over 1000kms along a few supply lines they could not fully supply.
Apart from Stalingrad, which the Germans and the Soviets had an obsession with, the Soviets became less reckless as the UK and USA were in the fight and arms, and some well advanced arms, were building up. The Germans would not win, and the Soviets knew that. Once a western second front was in place on the ground, it was clear the Germans would quickly crumble, and they did. On D-Day 1944, the Germans were still way inside the USSR. The end came quickly once the German army was hit from both sides. It can be argued that the Soviets should have pushed the Germans out of the USSR by 1943 or even 1942, however they did display ineptness in most levels after reorganisation from 1942 onwards. But the Soviets knew in a war of attrition the Germans were doomed. As Stalin said, "quantity has a quality all of its own."
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@garynash7594
The US media, of which the US high command was very conscious of, needed a hero. They personify a lot. For e.g., they would call a TV sit-com by the leading actors name - the Dick Van Dyke show. Something that would never happen in the UK. A lacklustre US general in Sicily became infamous for hitting two sick men in hospital beds. So the US public knew his 'name'. Top US generals were of film star status in the USA at the time.
In Normandy nothing much was happening as the allied forces stayed pretty static, with the British drawing onto themselves German armour to grind it up, while keeping it away from the US forces. The British destroyed 90% of German armour in the west. The US media needed a hero and movement as that creates good stories to sell newspapers and newsreels.
Patton was late into Normandy. He was first to breakout after in Cobra, of which he had no part, after the US First Army did the work, so the US media hailed him as some sort of armoured warfare genius as territory was being gained after many weeks of no movement. As we know the British enabled the breakout, as part of MOnty's plan, but that is not how the US media portrayed it.
They now had movement and a name, which people knew, to hang it on. It was easy to laud this man as he accommodated the media gladly, looking after them. Bradley criticized Patton for having teams of cameramen following him, of which he encouraged, of which Cornelius Ryan was one.
So the US media had a hero - a goodie. The hero in typical Hollywood fashion could only be seen to be doing good. He even wore cowboy guns and a chrome tin hat to fill the hero role, so the visuals were good. They also needed a 'baddie', so they made one up as well. The evil Monty. Everything fell into place. The US media had all the ingredients they wanted and some they made up. Anything bad about the goodie was spun the other way.
The leading US media hero who happened to be in a position in Monty's plan to gain ground was kept a hero come what may. It was all of the goodies doing, not Monty's. No other US general did anything of note, so Patton stayed the hero, even though he failed to breach the Westwall, suffering horrendous casualties against 2nd to 3rd rate German opposition. Patton also moved 10 miles in three months at Metz. But he took north east France in a matter of days - the fact no Germans were there was not emphasized and it was more a triumphal procession than a military advance. When facing German opposition at the German border matters were different.
Patton was wayward in Sicily slowing down the operation, so Monty thought how do I play to this guys ego and get him back in the battle, which was letting him to Messina first. Patton was too slow reaching Bastogne, not relieving the 18,000 men inside - even the US 101st commander inside said so. He apologized to Eisenhower for being too slow. But Patton was fast and relieved them according to the US media.
OK, in wartime for home propaganda and morale purposes a hero was created. A government does not like its people to know it was telling them lies and never admits to doing so. The British spun it so a few Oxbridge RAF pilots won the Battle of Britain with it being a close thing. Backs to the wall and all. The reality was what they spun was wrong on both counts. So post war the governments just forget it.
The people post war still believe the war propaganda angle spun to them. The film industry and book publishers saw there was money to be made in WW2, so they pick up the propaganda then run with it. The US people were led to believe they won the war, well without them the Axis would have won. And also they supplied most of it. Which is all false. All totally wrong but telling them what they want to believe, and believed since children, sells.
So we are in a situation where a few historians are actually stating history as it was by looking at archives and actual accounts. They do not make much money though. If you are a writer, then the huge US market is where the money is. British authors Hastings and Beevor are guilty of towing the US WW2 propaganda media line, to make huge sums.
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@garynash7594
What US historian Harry Yeide wrote of what the Germans thought of Patton:
▪ for most of the war the Germans barely took notice [of Patton].
▪ on March 23 at the Battle of El Guettar—the first American victory against the experienced Germans. Patton’s momentum, however, was short-lived: Axis troops held him to virtually no gain until April 7, when they withdrew under threat from British Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army.
▪ There is no indication in the surviving German military records—which include intelligence reports at the theater, army, and division levels—that Patton’s enemies had any idea who he was at the time. Likewise, the immediate postwar accounts of the German commanders in Tunisia, written for the U.S. Army’s History Division, ignore Patton. Those reports show that ground commanders considered II Corps’s attacks under Patton to have been hesitant, and to have missed great opportunities.
▪ In mid-June [1943], another detachment report described Patton as “an energetic and responsibility-loving command personality”—a passing comment on one of the numerous Allied commanders. Patton simply had not yet done anything particularly noteworthy in their eyes.
▪ But his race to Palermo through country they had already abandoned left the commanders unimpressed. Major General Eberhard Rodt, who led the 15th Panzergrenadier Division against Patton’s troops during the Allied push toward Messina, thought the American Seventh Army fought hesitantly and predictably. He wrote in an immediate postwar report on Sicily, “The enemy very often conducted his movements systematically, and only attacked after a heavy artillery preparation when he believed he had broken our resistance. This kept him regularly from exploiting the weakness of our situation and gave me the opportunity to consolidate dangerous situations.” Once again, Patton finished a campaign without impressing his opponents.
▪ General Hermann Balck, who took command of Army Group G in September, thus did not think highly of Patton—or any other opposing commanders—during this time. Balck wrote to his commander, Runstedt, on October 10, “I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans” Looking back on his battles against Patton throughout the autumn, in 1979 Balck recalled, “Within my zone, the Americans never once exploited a success. Often [General Friedrich Wilhelm von] Mellenthin, my chief of staff, and I would stand in front of the map and say, ‘Patton is helping us; he failed to exploit another success.’”
▪ The commander of the Fifth Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel, aimed a dismissive, indirect critique at Patton’s efforts at Bastogne, writing in his memoirs that the Americans did not “strike with full élan.” The commanders who fought against Patton in his last two mobile campaigns in the Saar-Palatinate and east of the Rhine already knew they could not win; their losses from this point forward were inevitable, regardless of the commanding Allied opponent.
▪ the Germans offered Patton faint praise during and immediately after the war.
▪ posterity deserves fact and not myth. The Germans did not track Patton’s movements as the key to Allied intentions. Hitler does not appear to have thought often of Patton, if at all. The Germans considered Patton a hesitant commanding general in the scrum of position warfare. They never raised his name in the context of worthy strategists.
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seth1422
Read Poulisson and Magry on Market Garden. The 82nd took all its bridges with ease, as few Germans were around. The 82nd should have taken the largest bridge, the Nijmegen bridge, but took 7.5 hours after being ready to march to launch an attack. In those 7.5 hours the Germans came south reinforcing the bridge and town. If the 82nd had gone to the bridge immediately, they could have walked onto it as it only had 18 guards. There was no barbed wire, tank traps or any defences set up around the bridge.
The 82nd fought no panzers. XXX Corps secured the town and seized the bridge, not the 82nd. Once XXX Corps entered Nijmegen they were in command.
"The 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Shields Warren, was charged with taking the road bridge over the Waal at Nijmegen: a prime task of Operation Market was being entrusted here to just one battalion from an entire division. According to the US Official History, there was some dispute over exactly when the 1st Battalion should go for the bridge. General Gavin was to claim later that the battalion was to ‘go for the bridge without delay’. However, Colonel Lindquist, the 508th Regimental commander, understood that Warren’s battalion was not to go for the bridge until the other regimental objectives — securing the Groesbeek Ridge and the nearby glider LZs, had been achieved: General Gavin’s operational orders confirm Warren’s version. Warren’s initial objective was ground near De Ploeg, a suburb of Nijmegen, which he was to take and organise for defence: only then was he to ‘prepare to go into Nijmegen later’ and these initial tasks took Lieutenant Colonel Warren most of the day. It was not until 1830hrs that he was able to send a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small, just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a radio — say forty men."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@davidtuttle7556
The Schedlt?
Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust over other fronts and even seizing Antwerp and clearing the Schedlt. Clearing the Scheldt would take time as the German 15th SS army, highly experienced from the Russian front, had set up shop in the Scheldt and not retreated back into Germany, under Hitler's orders. All available supplies would be directed to this northern thrust.
"Since Eisenhower — the Supreme Commander and Ground Force Commander — approved the Arnhem operation rather than a push to clear the Scheldt, then surely he was right, as well as noble, to accept the responsibility and any resulting blame? The choice in early September was the Rhine or Antwerp: to continue the pursuit or secure the necessary facilities to solve the logistical problem? The decision was made to go for the Rhine, and that decision was Eisenhower’s."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"On 4 Sept, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr"
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen to British troops when he issued the northern thrust directive. Montgomery wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive, devising Operation Comet, multiple crossings of the Rhine, to be launched on 2 Sept, being cancelled due to German resistance and poor weather. Operation Comet was not presented to Eisenhower for his approval. Montgomery asked Brereton, an American, of the First Allied Airborne Army, to drop into the Scheldt in early September - he refused.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 Sept had divisions of the US 1st Army and Montgomery's view of taking multiple bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. The British 2nd Army needed some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow). Hodges' would protect the right flank. the Canadians would protect the left flank from the German 15th army.
"the narrow thrust was reduced to the Second Army and two US corps, the XIX and VII of Hodges’ First Army, a total of around eighteen Allied divisions"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
The northern thrust was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944."
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower’s reply of 5 September to Montgomery deserves analysis, not least the part that concerns logistics. The interesting point is that Eisenhower apparently believes that it is possible to cross the Rhine and take both the Ruhr and the Saar — and open the Scheldt — using the existing logistical resources."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp. In thinking this Ike was wrong."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Post-Normandy Bradley seemed unable to control Patton, who persistently flouted Eisenhower’s directives and went his own way, aided and abetted by Bradley. This part of their relationship quickly revealed itself in matters of supply, where Hodges, the commander of the US First Army, was continually starved of fuel and ammunition in order to keep Patton’s divisions rolling, even when Eisenhower’s strategy required First Army to play the major role in 12th Army Group’s activities."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again, and being bogged down - again. The resources starved First Army could not be a part of northern thrust as Bradley and Patton, against Eisenhower's orders, were syphoning off supplies destined for the First army. This northern thrust over the Rhine, as Eisenhower envisaged, obviously would not work as he thought. A lesser operation was devised by Montgomery, Market Garden, eliminating the divisions of US First Army, with only ONE crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London wanted eliminating ASAP, giving a 60 mile long salient buffer between German forces and the important port of Antwerp. This would only have one corps above Eindhoven, a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time. Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance. Eisenhower should have fired Bradley and Patton for sabotaging the Northern Thrust operation.
Montgomery did not plan or was in involved in Market Garden's execution. Montgomery, after fixing the operations objectives with Eisenhower to the measly forces available, gave Market Garden planning to others, mainly USAAF generals, Brereton and Williams. General Brereton, who liked the plan, agreed to it with even direct input. Brereton ordered the drops will take place during the day and Brereton oversaw the troop carrier and supply drops schedules. Williams forbid fighter-bombers to be used. A refusal by Brereton and the operation would never have gone ahead; he earlier rejected Montgomery's initial plan of a drop into the Scheldt at Walcheren Island.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time the Canadians had cleared, or were investing, many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@Dysfunctional_Reprint
The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British under Montgomery. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
◾ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa; October 1942 - El Alamein;
◾ March 1943 - Medenine;
◾ June 1944 - Normandy;
◾ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands;
◾ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge;
A list of Montgomery’s victories in WW2:
◾ Battle of Alam Halfa;
◾ Second Battle of El Alamein;
◾ Battle of El Agheila;
◾ Battle of Medenine;
◾ Battle of the Mareth Line;
◾ Battle of Wadi Akarit;
◾ Allied invasion of Sicily;
◾ Operation Overlord - the largest amphibious invasion in history;
◾ Market Garden - a 60 mile salient created into German territory;
◾ Battle of the Bulge - while taking control of two shambolic US armies;
◾ Operation Veritable;
◾ Operation Plunder.
Montgomery not once had a reverse.
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Monty's 8th Army advanced the fastest of any army in WW2. From El Alamein to El Agheila from the 4th to 23rd November 1942, 1,300 km in just 17 days. After fighting a major exhausting battle at El Alemein through half a million mines. This was an Incredible feat, unparalleled in WW2. With El Alamein costing just 13,500 casualties.
The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties, with his Lorraine campaign being a failure. Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies saving them from annihilation, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties.
Hodges, commander of the US First army, fled from Spa to near Liege on the 18th, despite the Germans never getting anywhere near to Spa. Hodges did not even wait for the Germans to approach Spa. He had already fled long before the Germans were stopped. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of the Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British, with Montgomery involved in planning, with also Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
You need to give respect where it is due.
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@sandervanderkammen9230
There is a myth that the Germans were way ahead of the British in jet engines and planes in WW2, when the opposite is true. The WW2 German jet engines were extremely unreliable with low performances with very high fuel consumption. The German axial-flow turbojets never worked properly being developed up to 1953 by the French to obtain a usable engine. The French lost a lot of time playing around with the German engines, instead of working with the British. The French and Soviets after WW2 attempted to improve the German axial-flow engines largely failing.
The British in order to get a usable and reliable jet engine, with the technology of the time, went for a centrifugal design rather than the troublesome axial-flow design. This design produced less thrust than an axial-flow but was quicker to develop and reliable. It took 5 months to develop, while the first reliable axial-flow engine was the 1950 Rolls Royce Avon, which took 5 years to get right.
In 1945 the French made and tested some German designed turbo jets made with quality steel unavailable to German industry in WW2. They ran for 25 hours instead of 10 hours to the Germans engines that used poor quality steel. Not much better. The German axial-flow engines failed because of heavy design faults. The centrifugal compressor used by the first British Meteor plane was fine being much more reliable, but unable to reach high compression ratios. This limited performances. Centrifugal compressors were used up to the 1960s.
In 1945 the team from the French ATAR laboratory plus some BMW and Junkers engineers, were engaged by the French SNECMA research bureau, with the objective to built a new reliable with performance axial-flow turbojet. The BMW 003/Jumo004 was considered unusable. It was tested on the first French jet aircraft, the 1946 So6000 Triton, overheating and exploding. The plane only flew with a Rolls Royce Nene centrifugal turbojet.
The ATAR project took 6 years to produce the first acceptable axial-flow turbojet (ATAR 101 B1), produced in 1953. So eight years research & developments by the French using the German jet engines as the base. It was installed on the first French jet fighter, the Dassault Ouragan.
The French lost a lot of time because the German jets had poor efficiency with some concept fails. Essentially in the combustion chambers and fresh air circulation to reduce the external temperature of the engine. The BMW jet was known for overheat problems which precluded fuselage installation.
The question at the end of WW2 was what is the most efficient way to produce jet fighters. The answer is clearly not adopting the German design of engine and fuselage. The build costs for a jet engine were much higher than a piston engine, with the fuel consumption near 3x. The centrifugal compressor the British adopted in some planes was the best choice with 1944-45 technology, more compression pressure was not an advantage when the hot turbine was unable to resist higher temperatures. The German turbojets had big overheat problems as the engine would not work in an enclosed fuselage for single engined fighters. This defect was immediately noted by the French on the 1946 "SO 6000 Triton" prototype, and by the Soviets on the 1946 Mig 9. The Soviets quickly replaced the BMW 004B2 by the centrifugal Rolls Royce Nene which worked without problems, dismissing the BMW engine for fighter planes.
The Rolls Royce Nene was copied to the last nut by the USSR being installed in the Mig 15 being used effectively in the Korean war. About 10 years ago the USSR eventually paid royalties to Rolls Royce.
The Meteor was the first proper fully developed jet plane introduced. The 262 was slightly faster than the Meteor F3, but extremely unreliable. The British would never put into the sky such an undeveloped plane as the me262. The me262 and Meteor were leagues apart in safety and reliability. The British could have had a jet fighter operational in 1941, but it would have been as bad as the me262. The Germans advanced R&D on jets after interrogating captured British RAF men. They learned the British were advanced in jet technology actually flying prototype planes. Until then the Germans had no intention of mass producing jet planes.
The rushed together Me262 started claiming kills on 26 July 1944. However the supposed kill was a Mosquito reconnaissance plane that had a fuselage cap blown off in a quick fast maneuver, which flew on landing in Italy. The Meteor claimed its first V1 kill a few days later on the 4 August 1944. But the Meteor was a proper fully developed jet plane, not a thrown together desperate effort as the me262 was. The me262 fuselage was similar to a piston plane with the pilot over the wings obscuring downward vision, while the Meteor was a proper new design fuselage specifically for jet fighters with a forward of the wings pilot position with superior vision, as we see today. The cockpit was very quiet. The sweptback wings of the me262 were to move the engines further back for better weight distribution, not for aerodynamic reasons as is thought the case.
Centrifugal compressors were not obsolete being used in turboprops. Between a turbo jet and a turboprop, the only difference is the turbine, not the compressor. The last centrifugal compressor jet engine still in service on a handful of commercial aircraft like the Fokker 27, is the Rolls Royce Dart turboprop. A very reliable engine made in 27 versions, but with high fuel consumption to modern engines. The Rolls Royce Dart Turboprop turbo jet engine was produced the longest, being a comparable design turbojet to the likes the Rolls Royce Nene. The rugged engine was produced from 1946 up to 1987.
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Monty was forwarding the 40 Division Thrust to forward his "own personal ambition and ego"? Pure opinion.
Monty's observations.
Monty had dealt with Americans in North Africa where they were dire, and in Sicily with a wayward general who would run into empty territory with bands leading. In Normandy Monty gave them the infantry role as in no way could they cope with massed German armour.
Monty's right flank (US armies) broke out in Cobra. Eventually...
"on the American front the line from which the breakout was finally launched was a line the St.Lo-Periers road, should have been captured in the initial plan by the American First Army on D-Day plus 5, that was the 11th June. But they didn't actually capture it until the 18th July."
- Montgomery
That is six weeks late. OK a week late, no problem, but six. Monty obviously never thought too much of US forces and their command for good reason.
Now look at Eisenhower
Montgomery to Alan Brooke..
"If we want the war to end within any reasonable period you have to get Eisenhower’s hand taken off the land battle. I regret to say that in my opinion he just doesn’t know what he is doing.
Alanbrooke wrote in his diary about Einsenhower:
“At the end of this morning's C.O.S. [Chief of Staff] meeting I put before the committee my views on the very unsatisfactory state of affairs in France, with no one running the land battle. Eisenhower, though supposed to be doing so, is on the golf links at Rheims - entirely detached and taking practically no part in running of the war. Matters got so bad lately that a deputation of Whiteley, Bedell Smith and a few others went up to tell him that he must get down to it and RUN the war, which he said he would."
"We discussed the advisability of getting Marshall to come out to discuss the matter, but we are doubtful if he would appreciate the situation. Finally decided that I am to see the P.M. to discuss the situation with him.”
"November 28th I went to see the P.M. I told him I was very worried."
Alan Brooke described in his daily diary that American generals Eisenhower and Marshall as poor strategists, when they were in jobs were strategy mattered. Brooke wrote to Montgomery about his talks with Eisenhower, “*it is equally clear that Ike has the very vaguest conception of war!”*
Monty and Brooke assess
So Monty and Brooke never though too much of US armies and their command, basing their assessments on factual observation and results. Monty had come from Egypt and was now in his 5th country defeating the Germans all the way without suffering a reverse. Each time they attacked him he beat them.
Monty was totally correct in wanting him to stay in command of all ground forces. That was reinforced when two shambolic US armies had to be put under his command when the Germans pounded into them in the Bulge attack.
Then after the Bulge, Montgomery wrote of Eisenhower and his broad-front strategy on 22 January 1945:
“I fear that the old snags of indecision and vacillation and refusal to consider the military problem fairly and squarely are coming to the front again . . . The real trouble is that there is no control and the three army groups are each intent on their own affairs. Patton today issued a stirring order to Third Army, saying the next step would be Cologne . . . One has to preserve a sense of humour these days, otherwise one would go mad.”
Nothing had changed.
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About the Sten gun. The best hand machine gun of of WW2 must go to the British Sten gun. Simple, light, quick and cheap to make and stamped out to the tune of 2.5 million. It was a piece of pipe with a bed spring. Even the Germans (the MP 3008) and French copied the gun. It was crude but effective - it even had little recoil. It could be made in garden sheds with minimum machine tools and parts (48 in total including standard screws available in any hardware shop). Plans on how to make them were sent to resistance movements.
The Sten had initial defects which were ironed out quickly to the point it was very reliable. It was made in Resistance workshops in Denmark, Norway, France, Poland etc. And by Israel where the Arabs had them too. Quite a remarkable weapon that lacked recognition, despite a rush design. The later models were more simpler, and reliable, with less parts.
The US evaluated the Sten to copy it. The British Sten gun was trialled along with several other US designs. The Sten gun was the winner of the evaluation, finding it more reliable than the M1. However the US strangely did not copy it mainly due to internal differences.
The Sten was ideal for WW2, as long rifles were cumbersome and difficult in street fighting.
The Sten was super cheap to make and did exactly what it was supposed to do. You could make a weapon that costed 10 times more to make, took 10 times more in resources and time to make, lasted 10 times longer as well and in function did exactly the same - but what is the point? The Sten was a highly disposable weapon designed to win a war and forgotten. It was stamped out in the millions by the Triang toy factory.
The Sterling was a derivative of the Sten.
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A prime strategic problem for SHAEF in September 1944 was opening up the approaches to Antwerp and keeping it from German counter-attack - the logistics problem to supply all allied armies. It was:
1) Take Noord Brabant, the land to the north and northeast of Antwerp, or;
2) Take the Schedlt.
Eisenhower had a Northern Thrust strategy, a push to the north on his stretched broad front lines. Taking Noord Babant fell in line with the desires for both SHEAF and Eisenhower.Noord Brabant had to be taken before the Scheldt, as it was essential. It was taken with limited forces, with forces also sent to take the Schedlt.
Market Garden had to go ahead regardless of any threat or Northern Thrust strategy, and was actually a success. To use Antwerp and control the approaches, the Scheldt, everything up to the south bank of the lower Rhine at Nijmegen needed to be under allied control. The low-lying lands, boggy ground between Arnhem and Nijmegen with land strewn with rivers and canals, is perfect geography as a barrier against a German counter-attack towards Antwerp. Without control of Noord Brabant German forces would have been in artillery range of Antwerp, and with a build up of forces and supply directly back to Germany in perfect position for a counter-attack.
Market Garden was the offensive SHEAF wanted to secure Antwerp, a prime port for logistics for all allied armies. It made sense as the Germans were in disarray, so should be easy enough to gain. Monty added Arnhem to form a bridgehead over the Rhine to fall in line with Eisenhower's priority Northern Thrust strategy at the time. It made complete sense in establishing a bridgehead over the Rhine as an extra to the operation.
You needed Arnhem for an easier jump into Germany. Everything up to Nijmegen was needed if you wanted to do anything at all - that is, protect Antwerp and have a staging point to move into Germany. Gaining Noord Brabant, was vital, and was successfully seized. Fighting in the low lying mud and waterways of the Schedlt, which will take time, while the Germans a few miles away and still holding Noord Brabant made no sense at all.SHEAF got what they wanted from a strategic point of view.
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A prime strategic problem for SHAEF in September 1944 was opening up the approaches to Antwerp and keeping it from German counter-attack - the logistics problem to supply all allied armies. It was:
1) Take Noord Brabant, the land to the north and northeast of Antwerp, or;
2) Take the Schedlt.
Eisenhower had a Northern Thrust strategy, a push to the north on his stretched broad front lines. Taking Noord Babant fell in line with the desires for both SHEAF and Eisenhower. Noord Brabant had to be taken before the Scheldt, as it was essential. It was taken with limited forces, with forces also sent to take the Schedlt.
Market Garden had to go ahead regardless of any threat or Northern Thrust strategy, and was actually a success. To use Antwerp and control the approaches, the Scheldt, everything up to the south bank of the lower Rhine at Nijmegen needed to be under allied control. The low-lying lands, boggy ground between Arnhem and Nijmegen with land strewn with rivers and canals, is perfect geography as a barrier against a German counter-attack towards Antwerp. Without control of Noord Brabant German forces would have been in artillery range of Antwerp, and with a build up of forces and supply directly back to Germany in perfect position for a counter-attack.
Market Garden was the offensive SHEAF wanted to secure Antwerp, a prime port for logistics for all allied armies. It made sense as the Germans were in disarray, so should be easy enough to gain. Monty added Arnhem to form a bridgehead over the Rhine to fall in line with Eisenhower's priority Northern Thrust strategy at the time. It made complete sense in establishing a bridgehead over the Rhine as an extra to the operation.
You needed Arnhem for an easier jump into Germany. Everything up to Nijmegen was needed if you wanted to do anything at all - that is, protect Antwerp and have a staging point to move into Germany. Gaining Noord Brabant, was vital, and was successfully seized. Fighting in the low lying mud and waterways of the Schedlt, which will take time, while the Germans a few miles away and still holding Noord Brabant made no sense at all. SHEAF got what they wanted from a strategic point of view.
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Market Garden? Oh no! How wrong. There was no Panzer armour in the Arnhem area on the jump day
The state of play on the 17th, D day, was:
1) the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was largely clear;
2) there were concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally;
3) there were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen;
4) a few scattered about along the road;
5) there was no armour in Arnhem.
That was it.
i) XXX Corps would deal from the Belgium border to Eindhoven;
ii) 101st from Eindhoven to Grave;
iii) 82nd from Grave to north of Nijmegen;
iv) British and Polish paras from north of Nijmegen to north of the Rhine;
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 2 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured it.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected. XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and towards the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up.
The road was still largely clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump. XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, making up the delay at Zon. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over. If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves, after the 82nd tried again and failed again. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
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The state of play on the 17th was that the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was clear. There was concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally. There were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen. Then a few scattered about along the road. There was no armour in Arnhem. That was it.
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 3 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured the bridge.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected.
XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up. The road was still clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump.
XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, at the planned expected time, making up the delay at Zon. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over.
If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
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@g8ymw
The British won the Battle of Dunkirk.
The British BEF was only 9% of the total allied forces in France and the Low Countries. The German advance was halted in France as the British with a vastly inferior force stopped them at Arras. Some German soldiers turned and ran. Directive 13, issued by German Supreme Headquarters on 24 May 1940 stated specifically for the annihilation of the French, English and Belgian forces in the Dunkirk pocket. The Luftwaffe was ordered to prevent the retreat of the British forces across the English Channel. It failed.
The German southern advance was stopped at Arras by the British with a numerically inferior force. The Germans never moved much further after. The Germans could not have taken Dunkirk, they would have been badly beaten in and around the town. The Luftwaffe was defeated over Dunkirk by the RAF with the first showing of the Spitfire en-mass. More German than allied planes were destroyed in the Dunkirk pocket. The first defeat of the Nazis in WW2 was by the British in the air battle over Dunkirk. Only six small warships were sunk at Dunkirk by the Germans as the effectiveness of the Luftwaffe blunted.
The British were retreating after the French collapsed in front of them, as General Gort saw the disjointed performance of the French forces in front of him, and the exceptionally poor leadership. If the French collapsed the small BEF had no hope against the large German force heading west. The French were amongst the British when General Gort decided to take the men back to England, as he did not trust the French in a joint counter-attack. French General Wiegand held a meeting to arrange a counter-attack not inviting General Gort head of the BEF. Gort was under the command of Weigand. Gort heard of the meeting rushing to be there. He got there after the French and Belgians had left. He ordered the evacuation having no faith in the elderly French leaders.
All armies retreat and regroup when the need is there. There happened to be a body of water in the line of the retreat. Were the BEF to move down the English coast and enter France further west with more men from England? The Germans did not know what was to be the next British or allied move. The Germans could not have taken Dunkirk trying for nearly a week failing in the process.
The British retreat operation was carried out as planned in orderly fashion. All bridges to Dunkirk were destroyed by the allies. The British counter-attack at Arras was with outdated Matilda 1 tanks, which only had machine guns, and a few of the brand new Matilda 2 tanks. The Germans fled in droves. In desperation the Germans successfully turned a 88mm AA gun horizontal against the Matilda 2 - their conventional anti-tank weapons and tanks could not penetrate the tank. The Matilda 2 rolled over German gun emplacements killing the gunners.
Rommel thought he had been hit by a force three times the size, which made them stop and rethink. The Germans countered with their superior numbers pushing back the British who fell back consolidating at Dunkirk.The British resolve and the new Matilda 2 made the Germans sit up and think about a street fight in Dunkirk against a consolidated force still with its weapons and the new Matilda 2 - the large 88mm gun would be useless in Dunkirk streets while the compact Matilda 2 would be in its element, with the ability to easily destroy the Panzers. The Matilda 2 could knock out any German tank at the time, while no German tank could knock it out. The Germans were expecting the Matilda 2 to be shipped over in numbers and for all they knew many were in Dunkirk.
The Germans could not stop the tanks coming over from England as the RAF controlled the skies with a CAP and the RN the waters of the Channel. Not a good prospect for the Germans. A Dunkirk street fight was a fight the German troops were untrained and unequipped for and unwise to get involved in.Von Rundstedt and von Kluge suggested to Hitler that German forces around the Dunkirk pocket cease their advance, consolidating, preventing an Allied break out from Dunkirk. Hitler agreed with the support of the Wehrmacht. German preoccupation rightly was with an expected attack from the fluid south of the German lines, by mainly French and some British forces, not from dug-in Dunkirk which was too much of a formidable consolidated opponent, taking substantial resources to attempt to seize.
The German column had Allied troops to each side with soft marshland to the south west of Dunkirk unsuitable for tanks. If German forces had engaged in a street battle for Dunkirk, they would be vulnerable on their weak flank from the south. In short the fast moving panzers were now static; German forces attacking Dunkirk in a battle of attrition would have been largely wiped out. The German columns were consolidating their remaining armour for an expected attack by the British and French from the south, and the important resupply from Germany, which was slow as it was via horses - or maybe a combined attack from the south and the Dunkirk pocket. The Germans attacked on a remarkably narrow front. They had over-stretched their supply lines. The Germans had no option but to stop, being more concerned at defending from the mainly French forces in the south which were viewed as a greater threat than Dunkirk.
French general Weigand implemented his creation of hedgehogs to attack German lines from the sides, with success - hedgehogs were adopted post war by NATO being a part of the tactics until the 1970s. What were the Germans thinking? Are the British retreating to England from Dunkirk to move down the English coast and re-enter France further south with fresh forces, including Canadians and the new Matilda 2 tanks, which they feared for sure, and join up with the French forces there? Are they going to reinforce the Dunkirk pocket supplied by the Royal Navy with a 24/7 air CAP? The British could easily do any of these as they controlled the Channel. This would create one large difficult to combat force at Dunkirk. They also saw the resolve of outnumbered British forces at Arras. German generals were trying to figure out what was happening. None thought that British troops would retreat to England and stay there. The British never did that sort of thing.
The Germans could divert most of their forces south and risk a Dunkirk breakout being attacked from their rear fighting on two fronts, or stay and consolidate, which they needed to do, awaiting a French/British attack from the south and use some forces and the Luftwaffe to attack Dunkirk, which they did. German forces resumed their attack on Dunkirk for over 6 days and failed to seize the port. The plan to break out of the Dunkirk Pocket using British, Belgian and French forces was abandoned as Gort had no confidence in the French. All military school studies since, knowing what the German and allied positions and situations were in 1940, have shown it would have succeeded.
The Germans were defeated at the Battle of Dunkirk. They tried militarily to seize the port but failed. Only because the British did not trust the French and moved back to England did the Germans eventually occupy the town. The Germans did not let the British get away that is misguided myth, they tried for a week simply not able to seize Dunkirk.
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@lordrexus
Wrong! For you.......
The state of play on the 17th, D-day, was:
1) the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was largely clear;
2) there were concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally;
3) there were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen;
4) 18 musicians of a German 'band' were guarding the Waal bridge;
5) a few Germans scattered about along the road;
6) there was no armour in Arnhem.
That was it.
i) XXX Corps would deal from the Belgium border to Eindhoven;
ii) 101st from Eindhoven to Grave;
iii) 82nd from Grave to north of Nijmegen;
iv) British and Polish paras from north of Nijmegen to north of the Rhine;
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 2 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition, spending over 2 hours in the village instead of moving to the bridge. The Germans blew the bridge when they finally reached it. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would most likely have secured it.
Evidently expecting that Major La Prade's flanking battalion would have captured the highway bridge, these two battalions made no apparent haste in moving through Zon. They methodically cleared stray Germans from the houses, so that a full two hours had passed before they emerged from the village. Having at last overcome the enemy 88mm south of the Zonsche Forest, Major LaPrade's battalion caught sight of the bridge at about the same time. Both forces were within fifty yards of the bridge when their objective went up with a roar.
- US Official History.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected. XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In a time critical operation, in this gift of a time window for the Germans they were running armour towards Arnhem, and towards the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up. The road was still largely clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump.
XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, making up the delay at Zon, being right on time. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the Waal bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over. If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves, after the 82nd tried again and failed again. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British 1st AB at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
The Waal bridge as the critical bridge The failure of US 82nd Airborne to assault the lightly defended Waal bridge at Nijmegen immediately upon jumping precluded a bridgehead across the Rhine. A bridge they could have walked on whistling Dixie. The bridge was so undefended, a lost British Jeep with four men in it rode over the Waal bridge unopposed.
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Mocsk
War Production:
• Germany was third behind the USA, then the
UK in GDP, in 1939.
• Germany = UK in capital goods production in 1939.
• UK economy grows 60% during WW2.
• Hitler says to Guderian, re: USSR, "had I known they
had so many tanks as that, I would have thought
twice before invading"
- World War Two, chapter War Production by Keegan.
"Combined GDP of the UK and France exceeded Germany & Italy by 60%."
- Wages of Destruction by Prof Adam Tooze, Preface, xxiii:
"It was poor because of the incomplete industrial and economic development of Germany".
- Wages of Destruction by Prof Adam Tooze, page 454.
"Soviet exceeded German GDP in 1940"
"The Allies won the war because their economies supported a greater volume of war production and military personnel in larger numbers. This was true of the war as a whole, and it was also true on the eastern front where the Soviet economy, of a similar size to Germany's but less developed and also seriously weakened by invasion, supplied more soldiers and weapons."
"the technological key to Soviet superiority in the output of weapons was mass production. At the outbreak of war Soviet industry as a whole was not larger and not more productive than German industry. The non-industrial resources on which Soviet industry could draw were larger than Germany's in the sense of territory and population, but of considerably lower quality, more far-flung, and less well integrated. Both countries had given considerable thought to industrial mobilisation preparations, but the results were of questionable efficacy. In both countries war production was poorly organised at first and productivity in the military-industrial sector had been falling for several years. The most important difference was that Soviet industry had made real strides towards mass production, while German industry was still locked into an artisan mode of production that placed a premium on quality and assortment rather than quantity. Soviet industry produced fewer models of each type of weapon, and subjected them to less modification, but produced them in far larger quantities. Thus the Soviet Union was able to make considerably more effective use of its limited industrial resources than Germany.
"Before the war Soviet defence industry was in a state of permanent technological reorganisation as new models of aircraft, tanks, and other weapons were introduced and old ones phased out at dizzying rate."
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/workingpapers/publications/twerp603.pdf
The USSR had access to oil, more natural resources, and far more men. Giving them the ability to produce far greater than Germany, which actually happened.
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Bastogne was not critical at all. It was so critical for the Germans they bypassed it rather than expend men on it. It was on their extreme left flank. The Germans slowed Patton down. He was very slow. Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne.
After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF, who gave Patton massive ground attack support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall. US historian Roger Cirillo said, "Patton launched attack, after attack, after attack, after attack, that failed. Because he never waited to concentrate".
The 18,000 men in Bastogne pretty well walked out, even the commander of the US 101st stated that. The Germans had vacated the area heading west.
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@hillsane9262
Yes, Frosts men were largely unopposed as they went along the riverbank to the bridge, jumping, with their equipment, in and out of backyards and gardens to keep away from the Germans.
Comet called for the 1st Airborne Division and Sosabowski’s 1st Polish to seize the Grave, Nijmegen and Arnhem bridges, using gliders for coup de main attacks, landing close to the bridges, as at Pegasus Bridge at Benouville had been taken by the 6th Airborne Division on D-Day.
Monty could be overruled by the air men - and was. Beyond the initial broad outline from a previously planned operation, Monty didn’t plan the operation and nor did he have any jurisdiction over the air forces. He can consult and discuss but he cannot give them orders. Monty’s aides tried to persuade Brereton to fly double missions on the 17th but Brereton refused. The RAF offered that RAF men man and service the transport planes for second mission, again he refused.
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@Soldiereasy
Despite being a bad plan by Brereton and Williams, the operation only failed by a whisker.
The situation on the 17th at H hour, d-day, was:
♦ Heavy German forces on the Dutch-Belgian border - naturally as it was their front line
♦ A few German infantry north of Eindhoven.
♦ About 600 older men of a training unit, and HQs, at Nijmegen, who were moving north to safety on hearing of the para drops.
♦ Some scattered German infantry at Arnhem.
♦ The road from north of Eindhoven to Arnhem was pretty well totally free.
♦ The bridges were not heavily defended with no barbed wire or anti-tank ditches.
XXX Corps brushed aside the heavy German resistance on the Dutch-Belgian border, with "remarkable" progress as the US Official history states. They now have a clear road to run up.
The longer the delay, the more time for the Germans to pour in troops and armour. Time was vital to a successful operation. All it needed was the three para units to secure their assigned bridges immediately, then XXX would have run up the empty road to Arnhem, crossing the Rhine on d-day plus 1 with a successful operation.
The British First Airborne secured their crossing in denying it to the Germans, the other two US units failed. The 82nd in particular failed miserably.
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The state of play on the 17th, D day, was:
1) the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was clear;
2) there were concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally;
3) there were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen;
4) then a few scattered about along the road;
5) there was no armour in Arnhem.
That was it.
i) XXX Corps would deal from the Belgium border to Eindhoven;
ii) 101st from Eindhoven to Grave;
iii) 82nd from Grave to north of Nijmegen;
iv) British and Polish paras from north of Nijmegen to north of the Rhine;
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 2 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured the bridge.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected.
XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and towards the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up. The road was still clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump.
XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, making up the delay at Zon. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over.
If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves, after the 82nd tried again and failed again. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
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@Joseph Kretschmer
Hans von Ohain, the leading German jet engineer, wrote a very comprehensive foreword in the 'Elements of Propulsion, Gas turbines and Rockets'. In that foreword he states:
"The first patent of a turbojet engine, which was later developed and produced, was that of Frank Whittle, now Sir Frank. His patent was applied for in January 1930. This patent shows a multistage, axial-flow compressor followed by a radial compressor stage, a combustor, an axial-flow turbine driving the compressor, and an exhaust nozzle. Such configurations are still used today..." and "From the beginning of his jet propulsion activities, Frank Whittle had been seeking means for improving the propulsive efficiency of turbojet engines. He conceived novel ideas for which he filed a patent application in 1936, which can be called a bypass engine or turbofan. To avoid a complete new design, Whittle sought an interim solution that could be merely "tacked on" to a jet engine. This configuration was later known as the aft fan. Whittle's work on fan jets or bypass engines and aft fans was way ahead of his time. It was of greatest importance for the future or turbopropulsion." and "In April 1937, Whittle had his bench-test jet engine ready for the first test run. It ran excellently; however, it ran out of control because liquid fuel had collected inside the engine and started to vaporize as the engine became hot, thereby adding uncontrolled fuel quantities to the combustion process. The problem was easily overcome. This first test run was the world's first run of a bench-test jet engine operating with liquid fuel.".
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@ErikExeu
U.S. 82nd Division records state that the first troop of four Guards tanks crossed the Waal road bridge at 1830 hours. Two tanks were hit with the crews taken POW bar one, Sgt Knight. The tanks charged across at full speed approaching 30 mph firing against German guns all the way, with a few hundred Germans high in the girders. Gunner Leslie Johnson in the lead tank said: “They were falling like nine-pins. The incoming fire was so heavy that I swear to this day that Jesus Christ rode on the front of our tank. The Germans were so close that I didn’t bother to look through my sights. We could feel the tracks going over them as we shot them down, and there was blood and gore all over the tank.”
Once the two leading tanks of Pacey and Robinson got past the bridge obstacles at the northern end, Pacey stopped. The War Office report:
“At this point, Pacey stopped, he was not sure where to go as no Americans were seen, so Sergeant Robinson passed him and led on. Much to their surprise, they could not see any Americans so having passed through the concrete chicane they pushed on. Having crossed the road bridge, the four tanks moved down the northern embankment, where they destroyed another anti tank gun. Robinson and Pacey found themselves in a running battle against more guns, and against German infantry who poured out of the church in Lent, and then 1,500 yards further down the road from the bridge, where the main road goes under the railway line, contact was at last made with some Americans, both were very happy to see each other."
The 82nd men at Lent reached Lent following the railway embankment from the riverbank using it for cover. The first American troops that arrived at the bridge approaches/waterside after moving along the riverbank from their river landing point with Burriss’ company of about sixteen men, was at 1915 hours. 45 minutes. after the first tanks had already crossed. This was not the main bridge span, just the raised approach road over land. Official U.S. records confirm that 82nd troops from the 504th arrived at the northern road bridge approaches at 1938 hours. This would be the time they arrived in any real strength to consolidate, one hour 8 mins after the first tank crossed. The records state at 1938 hours:
Not one 82nd man was on the bridge when the first troop of four tanks crossed at 1830, or at 1915 when the second troop of four went over. Official XXX Corps records from the War Office highlight that the successful tank attack on the road bridge was at 1830 hours.
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*****
I am not saying the 82nd did nothing while on the far bank. The 82nd did killing number of Germans fleeing the rail bridge as they were under fire from the British from the south. I would not deny that the odd one or two 82nd men were 'near' the north bank of the bridge, but none of them were on the bridge at all. A lot of them were 1km north in Lent.
Sergeant Peter Robinson, of the of the Guards Armored Division who led the charge over the Nijmegen bridge clears it up, stated:
"The Nijmegen bridge wasn’t taken [by the 82nd] which was our objective. We reached the far end of the bridge and immediately there was a roadblock. So the troop sergeant covered me through and then I got to the other side and covered the rest of the troop through. We were still being engaged; there was a gun in front of the church three or four hundred yards in front of us. We knocked him out. We got down the road to the railway bridge; we cruised round there very steady. We were being engaged all the time. Just as I got round the corner and turned right I saw these helmets duck in a ditch and run, and gave them a burst of machine gun fire. I suddenly realised they were Americans. They had already thrown a gammon grenade at me so dust and dirt and smoke were flying everywhere. They jumped out of the ditch; they kissed the tank; they kissed the guns because they’d lost a lot of men. They had had a very bad crossing."
Sgt Robinson again....
"Well, my orders were to collect the American colonel who was in a house a little way back, and the first thing he said to me was "I have to surrender"
"Well I said, 'I'm sorry. My orders are to hold this bridge. I've only got two tanks available but if you'd like to give me ground support for a little while until we get some more orders then we can do it. He said he couldn’t do it, so I said that he had better come back to my wireless and talk to General Horrocks because before I started the job I had freedom of the air. Everybody was off the air except myself because they wanted a running commentary about what was going on - So he came over and had a pow-wow with Horrocks. The colonel said 'Oh very well’ and I told him where I wanted the men, but of course you can't consolidate a Yank and they hadn’t been there ten minutes before they were on their way again."
The 82nd men wanted to surrender! And never gave support which was what they were there to do.
Captain Lord Carrington's own autobiography entitled 'Reflect on Things Past':
"At that stage my job - I was second-in-command of a squadron - was to take a half-squadron of tanks across the bridge. Since everybody supposed the Germans would blow this immense contraption we were to be accompanied by an intrepid Royal Engineer officer to cut the wires and cleanse the demolition chambers under each span. Our little force was led by an excellent Grenadier, Sergeant Robinson, who was rightly awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his action. Two of our tanks were hit not lethally - by anti-tank fire, and we found a number of Germans perched in the girders who tried to drop things on us but without great effect. Sergeant Robinson and the leading tank troop sprayed the opposite bank and we lost nobody, When I arrived at the far end my sense of relief was considerable: the bridge had not been blown, we had not been plunged into the Waal"
Carington again..
"*A film representation of this incident has shown American troops as having already secured the far end of the bridge. That is mistaken* - probably the error arose from the film-maker's confusion of two bridges, there was a railway bridge with planks placed between the rails and used by the Germans for [light] road traffic, to the west of the main road bridge we crossed; and the gallant American Airborne men: reached it. When Sergeant Robinson and his little command crossed our main road bridge, however, only Germans were there to welcome him; and they didn't stay."
The meeting of the 82nd men and the tanks was 1 km north of the bridge at the village of Lent where the railway embankment from the railway bridge met the north running road running off the main road bridge. The 82nd men did not reach the north end of the actual road bridge, the Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry got there first from the south.
Nijmegen: U. S. 82nd Airborne Division - 1944. Chapter Nine
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=wfsFWW86mzUC&pg=PT187&dq=Nijmegen:+U.+S.+82Nd+Airborne+Division+-+1944+Lent&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj45eLh2a3PAhWoAMAKHS-_Ay8Q6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&q=Nijmegen%3A%20U.%20S.%2082Nd%20Airborne%20Division%20-%201944%20Lent&f=false
This goes on about Moffat Burris and the likes, which Carington says never happened
*Shrinking Perimeter
By Martin Bowman*
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2JTwAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA37&dq=Nijmegen+bridge+lent&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi9sbed1K3PAhWLKcAKHZqSAesQ6AEIMDAC#v=onepage&q=Nijmegen%20bridge%20lent&f=false
Bowman says three 82nd men were at the north end (that would be where the bridge ramp meets the ground) and the rest of them up in Lent. What three of them were doing by themselves in an area full of Germans God only knows.
It is clear that no 82nd men were on the Nijmegen road bridge at all and only three of them at the north end which was a long way from the main structures over the Waal.
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General Eisenhower had agreed at the conference with his commanders in Brussels on 10 September to defer the Antwerp operation while awaiting the outcome of Operation MARKET-GARDEN. "The attractive possibility of quickly turning the German north flank led me to approve the temporary delay in freeing the vital port of Antwerp . . .," the Supreme Commander wrote later.
- US Official History, BREACHING THE SIEGFRIED LINE
(Page 209).
Antwerp is way inland - 35-40 miles up a narrow, dredged and winding river that needed mine-sweeping and maybe dredging. Ships navigating the river are open to air attack being pretty static targets. If one or two ships are sunk in the river channels, the whole port of Antwerp is out of action. Monty stated that he needed three Pas de Calais ports, right on the coast to supply the armies. The prime aim was to get the ports directly on the coast for obvious reasons.
On September 9, the 2nd Canadian Infantry occupied the port of Ostend. Although fortified, was not defended by the Germans. The harbour installations, had been partly demolished which delayed its opening. On September 28, stores and bulk petrol began flowing through the port.
The damage to the port of Boulogne, taken by the Canadians, was severe and the facilities were not available until November, after Antwerp had been opened.
The Canadians, Czechs and Poles failed to take Dunkirk. It was decided not to pursue Dunkirk as the port installations were too far destroyed. The German garrison was left isolated at Dunkirk until the war's end.
So to get the awkward to access port of Antwerp operational, the Scheldt had to be taken to allow ships up the 40 miles of narrow river. Rail lines were being brought into use from Normandy.
Only when enough Channel ports could not be secured was full attention focused on clearing the Scheldt to gain access to Antwerp. Montgomery as a part of Operation Comet, requested Brereton, an American who was head of the First Allied Airborne Army, to drop into the Scheldt. He refused. Operation Comet morphed into Market Garden with the aim of creating a buffer between Antwerp and German forces who may attempt to retake the port, and also to overrun V weapon sites which were being aimed at London.
Those who say Monty was too slow in not clearing the Scheldt need to look deeper.
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Slippery Storm
OH no!
The US 1st and 9th armies were put under Montgomery's command at the Bulge. The 9th Army was under British control until the end of the war. In effect in the early stages of the Bulge Montgomery was commanding, as Ike was AWOL not even communicating with Montgomery for about 30 days. Part of the US air force were put under RAF command.
On Paton's ride up to the Bulge, the road from Luxembourg to Bastogne was largely devoid of German forces, as Bastogne was on the very southern German periphery. Only when Patton got near to Bastogne did he face 'some' German armour. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade wasn't one of the best armoured units, while 26th Volks-Grenadier only had a dozen Hetzers, and the tiny element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind had only a small number of tanks operational. Its not as if Patton had to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1.
Patton faced little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear and moved westwards to the River Meuse, where they were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Leading elements were engaging the Americans and British under Montgomery's command near Dinant by the Meuse.
It was Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his own decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance that were the reasons for his stall. After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under the command of Coningham of the RAF. Coningham, gave Patton massive ground attack plane support and he still stalled. Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault, including his subordinates.
In the Lorraine, Patton only moved 10 miles in 3 months.
Read Monty and Patton:Two Paths to Victory
by Michael Reynolds
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William Smith
Some facts for you. The British were the single biggest agents in the defeat of Nazi Germany. They were there from day one until the end. The so-called "invincible" Germans army tried and failed, with their allies, for two years in WW2 to defeat the British army in North Africa. The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British. From El Alemein it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery had to give the US armies an infantry role as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein
♦ March 1943 - Medenine
♦ June 1944 - Normandy
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - Holland
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge
Not on one occasion were Monty's ground armies pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. The US Army were struggling in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform all that great east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months with over 50,000 casualties. The Battle of the Bulge took all the US effort, and vital help from Montgomery and the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe. The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US 1st and 9th armies. The 9th stayed under his control until the end of the war just about.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The German armour in the west was wiped out by the primarily British - the US forces were impotent against the panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) and had to give them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped to fight tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
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William Smith
Monty's plan in Normandy was not for British forces to take territory. He specifically wanted to draw in German armour onto British forces to grind them up to keeping them away from the US forces for them to break out (Operation Cobra). That was even stated at St.Paul's school in Fulham in the planning, but low key so as not to lower British soldiers morale. To do that Monty was confident British armour could match German armour - US armour would struggle or most likely be overwhelmed. A 12 mile sector around Caen saw more concentrated German armour in all of WW2. Goodwood was not British forces taking territory, as the plan was for the US forces to do that, Monty specifically states this here in this link in an interview with Edward R Murrow. Transcript....
"The acquisition of territory on the eastern flank of the beachhead in the Caen sector was not really important. What was important there was to draw the maximum number of German divisions, and especially the armour, into that flank. The acquisition of territory was important on the western flank [the US sector]." ...."an accusation drawn at me, that I ought to have taken Caen in the programme on D-Day! And we didn't. I didn't mind about that because....The air force would get very het up because I didn't go further down towards Falaise and get the ground suitable for airfields. I didn't bother about that, it would have meant enormous casualties in doing it and it wasn't necessary."
"I could reply to that criticism that on the American front the line from which the breakout was finally launched was a line the St.Lo-Periers road, should have been captured in the initial plan by the American 1st Army on D-Day plus 5, that was the 11th June. But they didn't actually capture it until the 18th July. But I have never returned the charge with that accusation. ...until now"
"I have never understood why Ike said in his dispatches that, when the British failed to break out towards Paris on the eastern flank. The Americans were able [to break out], because of our flexibility, to take it on, on our western flank. I have always thought that was an unfair criticism of Dempsey and the 2nd British Army."
- Field Marshall Montgomery (1959)
The RAF chief Tedder, wanted Monty fired as he wanted open territory to the south towards Falaise to setup his airfields saying Monty was not pursing territory aggressively enough. Monty would have none of it. Operation Goodwood was engaging the massed armoured German defences drawing them in to British lines, grinding them up moving slowly. Here is a 1970s objective British Army Sandhurst internal video analysing Operation Goodwood, with even German commanders who were there taking part. At the beginning it specifically states Monty told Generals O'Connor and Dempsey not to run south to Falaise, not to take territory. Look at 6 mins:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udW1UvSHXfY
Monty was not too concerned with Caen as it would consume too many resources to take. He was more concerned with grinding up German armour in the field and acting as a decoy for the American armies to break out. Although by the time of Goodwood only the southern suburbs of Caen were in German hands.
Monty was in charge of all of Operation Overlord. He wanted the German armour away from US forces, to allow them to break out. It worked. That is what he wanted and planned. Monty never saw Caen as important but never criticised US forces..... until 1959 when they were at him about Caen, he criticised them for taking St.Lo a month late - with little German armour around for a month. The Germans did eventually send some armour to St.Lo with the US forces making it worse for themselves to capture the place.
Even Bradley agreed with Monty. Bradley wrote that:
"The British and Canadian armies were to decoy the enemy reserves and draw them to their front on the extreme eastern edge of the Allied beachhead. Thus, while Monty taunted the enemy at Caen, we [the Americans] were to make our break on the long roundabout road to Paris. When reckoned in terms of national pride, this British decoy mission became a sacrificial one, for while we tramped around the outside flank, the British were to sit in place and pin down the Germans. Yet strategically it fitted into a logical division of labors, for it was towards Caen that the enemy reserves would race once the alarm was sounded".
At Goodwood's the Germans had five lines of dug-in anti-tank defence and heavy Tiger and fast Panther tanks for mobility. Goodwood was mostly 'not' bocage but open ground more suitable for tank battles, where the German long range 88mm's would be at an advantage. Caen saw the densest concentration of German armour ever seen in WW2. At Kursk the Germans were attacking over a near 50 mile front. There was not 8 panzer divisions within 12 miles.
There were EIGHT Panzer Divisions in the Caen sector by end of June 1944. Monty had no option but to engage them head on and also draw in their reserves. The Germans kept sending more and more panzer divisions around the Caen area as June progressed and into July. The panzer divisions deployed to the Caen area:
• 21st Panzer Division - 117 Panzer IVs.
• Panzer Lehr Division - 101 Panzer IVs, 89 Panthers.
• 2nd Panzer Division - 89 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers.
• 116th Panzer Division - 73 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers. (In reserve just behind the front).
• 1st SS Panzer Division - 98 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers.
• 9th SS Panzer Division - 40 Stugs, 46 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers.
• 10th SS Panzer Division - 38 Stugs, 39 Panzer IVs.
• 12th SS Panzer Division - 98 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers.
• Tiger Battalion SS101 - 45 Tigers.
• Tiger Battalion SS102 - 45 Tigers.
• Tiger Battalion 503 - 45 Tigers.
Source. Bernages Panzers and the Battle For Normandy and Zetterling's Normandy 1944: German Military Organization, Combat Power and Organizational Effectiveness.
Subsequently the US forces hardly met German armour in Normandy, performing mainly an infantry role, with most German armour being eliminated by British forces.
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@danwelch8547
♦ North Africa was vital. If the Germans got to the Middle East and the oil it would have been all over. The Germans wanted to link up with the Japanese in India or Iran. Mesopotamia plan.
♦ Only the Yanks criticise Monty, in a veiled attempt to disguise their inept performance in Europe. Monty never retreated, not once.
♦ From mid-1942 onwards the British Army was the finest in the world, taking all in its path.
♦ Bradley felt humiliated having 2 of his 3 armies taken from him and giving to Monty in the Bulge.
♦ The depleted and demoralised US armies at the Bulge should have been pushed to the rear of the British 21st Army Group. Monty never humiliated them. He kept them at the front.
♦ Monty filled the losses of the two US armies with British troops. British troops under US command with the US command under British command. It worked.
♦ The Yanks always criticise Monty for not being aggressive. Which is a way of saying he was not stupid overrunning his supply lines as Rommel always did along with some British generals in North Africa, and as did US Patton.
♦ A US report in the 1980s criticised Patton heavily in the Lorraine. One point was that he constantly overran supplies.
When the US First and Ninth armies were given to Monty at the Bulge, Monty chose the right option. Instead of joining a grindmeat where the Americans lost almost 100,000 and the Germans around 75,000, Monty decided to choose his own ground, not fighting in the Ardennes. The result was that more than 100,000 Germans were made casualties in Operation Veritable and Grenade, British (and American) casualties were less than 20.000.
In Operation Plunder the British went further to make 30,000 German casualties, for an remarkable number of only 4,000 allied casualties. Monty's operations were on the offensive, and yet the Germans suffered a gigantic number of casualties compared to the minimum of the British. Of the three main powers, the British managed the most cost effective advances in the war, while still keeping up the pace, and even facing the majority of the Germans in Normandy, while advancing faster than everyone else after the break out, to Belgium.
Patton was stuck in Metz for three months suffering 50.000 casualties, Bradley had 42.000 in the Hurtgen Forest defeat. The Americans were having manpower troubles after the Bulge. - mostly because of their head on tactics and lack of interest in keeping their soldiers alive. They counterattacked in the Bulge not because it was the most sane thing to do, but just to try make Bradley and the Americans at large less humiliated.
Monty in the Bulge had the same thinking as in Operation Luttich. Let the Germans go as far as west as possible while minimizing casualties.
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@danwelch8547
I will let the Germans have the first say on the Bulge:
General Hasso von Manteuffel:
‘The operations of the American First Army had developed into a series of individual holding actions. Montgomery's contribution to restoring the situation was that he turned a series of isolated actions into a coherent battle fought according to a clear and definite plan. It was his refusal to engage in premature and piecemeal counter-attacks which enabled the Americans to gather their reserves and frustrate the German attempts to extend their breakthrough’.
By November 1944, British SHEAF officer, Strong, noted that there was a possibility of a German counter-offensive in the Ardennes or the Vosges. Strong went to personally warn Bradley at his HQ, who said, "let 'em come".
Montgomery on hearing of the attack immediately, without consulting Eisenhower, took British forces to the Meuse to prevent any German forces from making a bridgehead, securing the rear. He was prepared to halt their advance and attack them. This was while Eisenhower and Bradley were doing nothing.
even by 19 December, three days into the offensive, no overall plan had emerged from 12th Army Group or SHAEF, other than the decision to send Patton’s forces north to Bastogne. Overall, the Ardennes battle was in urgent need of grip. General Hodges had yet to see Bradley or receive more than the sketchiest orders from his Army Group commander.
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
On 20 December, Montgomery had sent a signal to Alanbrooke regarding the US forces:
"Not good... definite lack of grip and control. I have heard nothing from Ike or Bradley and had no orders or requests of any sort. My own opinion is that the American forces have been cut in half and the Germans can reach the Meuse at Namur without opposition."
Omar Bradley, commander of the 12th Army Group, did very little:
16 Dec, the first day, for 12 hours did nothing.
16 Dec, after 12 hours, he sent two armoured divisions from the flanking Ninth and Third Armies.
17 Dec, after 24 Hours, he then called in two US airborne divisions from Champagne.
18 Dec, he ordered Patton to halt his pending offensive in the Saar.
18 Dec, he had still not established contact with the First Army, while Monty had.
19 Dec, he withdrew divisions from the Aachen front to shore up the Ardennes.
19 Dec, he had still not produced an overall defensive plan.
19 Dec, the Supreme Commander intervened directly late in the day.
20 Dec, Eisenhower telephoned Montgomery telling him to take command of the US First and Ninth Armies
While all this dillying by Bradley was going on, German armies were pounding forward into his lines. Bradley should have been fired. Hodges ran away from his command post.
British officer Whiteley & American officer Betts of SHEAF visited the U.S. First Army HQ after the German attack, seeing the shambles. Strong, Whiteley, and Betts recommended that command of the armies north of the Ardennes be transferred from Bradley to Montgomery. Unfortunately only the two British officers approached Beddel Smith of their recommendations, who immediately fired the pair, claiming it was a nationalistic thing. The next morning, Beddel Smith apologized seeing the three were right, recommending to Eisenhower to bring in Monty.
During the Battle of the Bulge Eisenhower was stuck self imprisoned in his HQ in des-res Versailles near Paris in fear of German paratroopers wearing US uniforms with the objective to kill allied generals. He had remained locked up more than 30 days without sending a single message or order to Montgomery, and that is when he thought he was doing ground control of the campaign, when in effect Montgomery was in control as two US armies had to be put under his control after the German attack, the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF had to take control of US air force units. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war, just about.
Biased American authors such as Stephen Ambrose wrote that Eisenhower took control of the Bulge and made the battle his veneering it as an all American victory. Ambrose completely falsified history. The only thing Eisenhower did was tell Monty to get control of two out of control US armies, tell the US 101st to go to Bastogne (who were in northern France after the buffer Market Garden was created) and men under Bradley to counterattack. That is it.
At the end of the Bulge would you believe it, Eisenhower gave Bradley an award.
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@danwelch8547
Some facts for you. The British were the single biggest agents in the defeat of Nazi Germany. They were there from day one until the end. They did not enter because they attacked another country or were attacked. The so-called "invincible" Germans army tried and failed, with their allies, for two years in WW2 to defeat the British army in North Africa. The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery had to give the US armies an infantry role as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein
♦ March 1943 - Medenine
♦ June 1944 - Normandy
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British or US, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. The US Army were struggling in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months with over 50,000 casualties.
The Battle of the Bulge took all the US effort, with Montgomery in command and the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line, with nearly 100,000 casualties. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe. The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British with Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces with the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against the panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) and had to give them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
Then the ignored British naval blockade on the Axis economy, which was so successful the substantial Italian navy could not put to sea in full strength, or even at all on some occasions, because of a lack of oil. Then the British bomber offensive on the German economy, taking the war right into German cities, wiping out Hamburg in one night.
You need to give respect where it is due.
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*****
"the fact that they had intel saying there were German panzer divisions there and was ignored."
"the composition of the German forces at Arnhem was far more complex than most published histories of Market Garden had tended to suggest. The two SS panzer divisions had been operating far below their full strength on the eve of the operation and, while 1st Airborne was ultimately confronted by armour in considerable strength, hardly any tanks were actually present in the Arnhem area on 17 September. The vast majority deployed from Germany or other battle fronts after the airborne landings".
- ARNHEM - THE AIR RECONNAISSANCE STORY by the RAF
"Urquhart’s account is therefore somewhat perplexing. Further problems arise if we seek to document the events he described. Several extensive searches for the photographs have failed to locate them. Ostensibly, this might not seem surprising, as most tactical reconnaissance material was destroyed after the war, but Urquhart insisted that the Arnhem sortie was flown by a Spitfire squadron based at Benson; this would almost certainly mean 541 Squadron. Far more imagery from the Benson squadrons survived within the UK archives, but no oblique photographs showing tanks at Arnhem. In addition, although the Benson missions were systematically recorded at squadron and group level, not one record matches the sortie Urquhart described."
"The low-level missions targeting the bridges on 6 September were scrupulously noted down, but all other recorded reconnaissance sorties over Arnhem were flown at higher altitudes and captured vertical imagery. Equally, it has proved impossible as yet to locate an interpretation report derived from a low-level mission that photographed German armour near Arnhem before Market Garden."
"As for Brian Urquhart’s famous account of how a low-level Spitfire sortie took photographs of tanks assumed to belong to II SS Panzer Corps, the reality was rather different. In all probability, the low-level mission that Urquhart recalled photographed the bridges and not the tanks"
- ARNHEM - THE AIR RECONNAISSANCE STORY by the RAF
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+oldtanker2
As to your obsession with Caen. Caen was not strategic. Ports were important cities were not. Caen was a second tier objective. Valuable resources would not be engaged on secondary targets, as the priority was to secure the beachhead and set a massive supply dump, and get troops ashore ASAP. If Monty could go around a city and leave it he would. The British destroyed over 90% of German armour in Normandy. The British had superior armour than the US. Montgomery, the overall commander of Normandy, planned to draw in German armour onto the British who would grind it up. This released the Americans to swing around and form a pincer. This did happen.
Caen had more German tanks per mile than Kursk. In just a dozen miles or so 8 Panzer divisions in a very small area of front. Caen had the highest concentration density of German tanks ever seen in WW2. At Kursk the panzer divisions were spread out over a much wider area and were not concentrated as densely as around Caen. At Kursk the Germans were attacking over a near 50 mile front. There were not 8 panzer divisions within 12 miles.
There were eight panzer divisions in the Caen sector by end of June 1944. The Germans kept sending more and more panzer divisions around the Caen area during June and into July.
The panzer divisions deployed to the Caen sector:
▪️ 21st Panzer Division (117 Panzer IVs).
▪️ Panzer Lehr Division ( 101 Panzer IVs, 89 Panthers).
▪️ 2nd Panzer Division (89 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers).
▪️ 116th Panzer Division (73 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers). In reserve just behind the front.
▪️ 1st SS Panzer Division (98 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers).
▪️ 9th SS Panzer Division (40 Stugs, 46 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers).
▪️ 10th SS Panzer Division (38 Stugs, 39 Panzer IVs)
▪️ 12th SS Panzer Division (98 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers).
▪️ Tiger Battalion SS101 (45 Tigers).
▪️ Tiger Battalion SS102 (45 Tigers).
▪️ Tiger Battalion 503 (45 Tigers).
Sources.
Bernages Panzers and the Battle For Normandy
Zetterling's Normandy 1944
German Military Organization, Combat Power and Organizational Effectiveness.
On 12th June 1944 the British had no room to sidestep any German divisions before Caen because the Germans totally blocked them. This is why a wide right hook on Caen was attempted. To the south of Panzer Lehr's sector in the vicinity of Villers Bocage there was thought to be an area devoid of German forces. So this wide right hook was attempted on the morning of 13th June. If it was any wider and it would have overrun into the American lines. Unknown to the British, Schwere SS Panzer Abteilung 101 turned up into this area on the night of the 12/13th June and blocked this right hook with their Tigers closing the door on Caen.
There was no other room to manoeuvre onto Caen. All attempts had to go right through the German panzer divisions throughout the rest of June and early July. The Germans had excellent defensive country with fields broken up by hedgerows everywhere to utilise to their advantage. They also had superior tanks for the most part.
*The Americans didn't even face any German armour until June 13th, and that was only a battalion of assault guns*. The Americans were behind schedule taking Carentan and St Lo facing little to no German armour. The Americans moved no faster inland to the south than the British did, yet they never met any masses of German armour. The US forces couldn't get anywhere near to St Lo until 18 July, an objective they were planned to capture on the 11 June.
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nfd1960 US industry DID expand greatly. Many new shipyards opened up to make the Liberty ships. Brand new aircraft factories were built. Similar in the UK. Companies that made furniture were now assembling planes. A standard set airfield design was laid down and teams of men and vehicles were laying hundreds out complete with standard hangars and pre-fabbed buildings. Teams would go from site to site laying them out zipping them up in super-fast time. The same with the USSR who also had to take their factories from the west to the Urals, which was a greater achievement.
In the last year of the war the US produced 98,000 aircraft, displaying the rapid expanse of US industry. British aircraft production was relaxed in some areas, like aircraft, as the USA was pouring them out, so no need to overproduce. The British during WW2 produced more aircraft, and better aircraft, than the Germans. In hindsight, the British put too much resources into shipbuilding, maybe the US put too much into planes. Army logistics support: oil, supplies and transport could have been much better. Also better armour, especially from the US side.
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+TIK
The stupidity of the Americans was that they didn't know it was coming in the Bulge. Like the French in 1940, the US didn't know there was a massive build up of armour on the other side of the line. Well reports did tell them but they ignored many of them - like the French. The US could not hold the German forces as their armies were not equipped to deal with massed German armour, having only one infantry tank and a doctrine that tanks do not engage tanks. They had to bring up a self-propelled gun to deal with a tank. If one was around of course, which they never are when you need one.
If British forces were at that location, they would not have been so lax and they would have stopped the advance quicker having superior armour and greater experience of dealing with German armour. BTW, Monty did warn them of a bulge.
In 1940 the massed German armour ran at the French through the Ardennes not the British. The British were way behind the French with only a small force. When the French collapsed the British had to retreat facing a massive army in front of them. Nevertheless, the British did stop the blitzkrieg advance at Arras. Rommel thought he had been hit by a force that was three times the size. The new Matilda 2 tank scared them.
"John, in fairness, the British never had to face an attack the size that US forces had to face during the Battle of the Bulge."
At Caen the most concentrated German armour in WW2 faced the British. 1,358 German tanks in June alone with 135 of them Tigers and 405 Panthers. That is 40% of the German tanks were Tigers and Panthers. Over 1,500 overall - in June the US faced only 40 assault guns and a handful of obsolete French tanks. At the Bulge there was 1,500 German tanks and not all of them were pitted against US forces, they could not all get through the Ardennes forest at once. As US historian Steven Zaloga wrote, there was only three incidences where US forces met Tigers in the whole of WW2, so few of the tanks at the Bulge were Tigers.
Monty wanted a buffer between Antwerp and German forces, hence Market Garden. One its prime aims, probably its prime aim. It came in useful. I don't think you mentioned that in the video. Or did you?
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ODDBALL SOK
You are getting it. The British won the Battle of Dunkirk retreating as the large ally capitulated and left the BEF in the face of an enemy vastly superior in numbers. The small BEF was only 9% of all allied forces in France. The British were to primarily control the Channel, impose a naval blockade on Germany and assist with the air forces. The British were retreating after the French collapsed - a programme already in motion. All armies retreat and regroup when the need is there. There happened to be a body of water in the line of the retreat. The Germans could not have taken Dunkirk if they attacked as it was too well defended.
The RAF formed a CAP over the Dunkirk pocket. The first showing in force of the Spitfire was over Dunkirk. The first defeat of the Luftwaffe was over Dunkirk. More German panes were lost than British. The British won the air battle.
Six British destroyers sunk and 19 damaged (most repaired), out of the RN's fleet is an insignificant amount of ships out of the over 3,000 vessels in the RN. The Luftwaffe was generally kept away from Dunkirk, so much a third of a million men got away. The retreat operation was being carried out as planned. All bridges to Dunkirk were destroyed by the allies. Germany was consolidating their remaining armour and the important resupply from Germany for an expected attack by the British and French from the south. The Germans had no option but to halt in front of Dunkirk.
The British counter-attack at Arras was with outdated Matilda 1 tanks, which only had machine guns, and a few of the new Matilda 2 tanks. The Germans fled in droves. The Germans countered with superior numbers then pushed back the British. In desperation the Germans turned a 88mm AA gun horizontal and it worked against the Matilda 2 - their conventional anti-tank weapons and tanks could not penetrate the tank. Rommel thought he had been hit by a force three times the size, which made them stop and rethink. The German panzers also needed resupply and maintenance having overstretched their supply lines.
The British resolve and the new Matilda 2 tank made the Germans sit up and think about a street fight in Dunkirk against a consolidated force still with its weapons and the new Matilda 2 - the long, heavy, towed 88mm gun would be useless in Dunkirk streets while the Matilda 2 with its short 2pdr gun would be in its element. The Matilda 2 could knock out any German tank at the time. No German tank could knock it out. Half of German tanks were equipped with only machine guns. The Matilda 2's slam-dunk introduction was similar to the Soviet introduction of the T-34. The Germans were expecting the Matilda 2 to be shipped over from England in numbers. A Dunkirk street fight was a fight the German troops were untrained and unequipped for and unwise to get involved in.
German preoccupation rightly was with an expected attack from the French and British forces in the south not from Dunkirk which was too much of a formidable dug-in opponent. The German column had Allied troops to each side with soft marshland to the south west of Dunkirk unsuitable for tanks. If German forces had moved onto Dunkirk, first they had to get into the town through the outer dug in defences, and then engage in a street battle. They would also be vulnerable on their weak flank from the south. In short, any German forces attacking Dunkirk would have a good chance of being wiped out.
Von Runstedt assessed that the British and French forces moving back to England would move down the English coast and sail over to southern France, re-equipped, forming another front - his main concern. He thought he had a better chance of defeating them, with less German casualties, in an open battle rather than attack now a fortress at Dunkirk which had a CAP.
There was an abandoned British plan to break out of the Dunkirk Pocket using British and French forces. All military school studies since have show it would have been a success. The British did not have confidence in the French, so retreated.
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RED S7VN
Some facts for you. The British were the single biggest agents in the defeat of Nazi Germany. They were there from day one until the end. The so-called "invincible" Germans army tried and failed, with their allies, for two years in WW2 to defeat the British army in North Africa. The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British. From El Alemein it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery had to give the US armies an infantry role as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein
♦ March 1943 - Medenine
♦ June 1944 - Normandy
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge
Not on one occasion were Monty's ground armies pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. The US Army were struggling in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties. The Battle of the Bulge took all the US effort, and vital help from Montgomery and the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe. The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US 1st and 9th armies. The 9th stayed under his control until the end of the war just about. Parts of the USAAF had to be put under RAF control.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British with Montgomery leading, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against the panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) and had to give them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped to fight tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
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"the composition of the German forces at Arnhem was far more complex than most published histories of Market Garden had tended to suggest. The two SS panzer divisions had been operating far below their full strength on the eve of the operation and, while 1st Airborne was ultimately confronted by armour in considerable strength, hardly any tanks were actually present in the Arnhem area on 17 September. The vast majority deployed from Germany or other battle fronts after the airborne landings"
- ARNHEM - THE AIR RECONNAISSANCE STORY by the RAF
Some low level pictures of a few Panzer IIIs and IVs were taken in early September for operation Comet. Ryan on speaking to Urquhart got it wrong.
"Urquhart’s account is therefore somewhat perplexing. Further problems arise if we seek to document the events he described. Several extensive searches for the photographs have failed to locate them. Ostensibly, this might not seem surprising, as most tactical reconnaissance material was destroyed after the war, but Urquhart insisted that the Arnhem sortie was flown by a Spitfire squadron based at Benson; this would almost certainly mean 541 Squadron. Far more imagery from the Benson squadrons survived within the UK archives, but no oblique photographs showing tanks at Arnhem. In addition, although the Benson missions were systematically recorded at squadron and group level, not one record matches the sortie Urquhart described."
"The low-level missions targeting the bridges on 6 September were scrupulously noted down, but all other recorded reconnaissance sorties over Arnhem were flown at higher altitudes and captured vertical imagery. Equally, it has proved impossible as yet to locate an interpretation report derived from a low-level mission that photographed German armour near Arnhem before Market Garden."
"As for Brian Urquhart’s famous account of how a low-level Spitfire sortie took photographs of tanks assumed to belong to II SS Panzer Corps, the reality was rather different. In all probability, the low-level mission that Urquhart recalled photographed the bridges and not the tanks"
- ARNHEM - THE AIR RECONNAISSANCE STORY written by the Royal Air Force
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@sumivescent
A prime strategic problem for SHAEF in September 1944 was opening up the approaches to Antwerp, as they had to implement the broad-front strategy. And keeping it from German counter-attack. They had a logistical problem to supply all the thinly spread out allied armies for this broad-front. They had to:
1) Take Noord Brabant, the land to the north and northeast of Antwerp to Nijmegen, or;
2) Take the Scheldt.
Eisenhower had a Northern Thrust strategy, a push to the north on his stretched broad-front lines. Taking Noord Babant fell in line with the desires for both SHEAF and Eisenhower. Noord Brabant had to be taken before the Scheldt, as it was essential It was taken with limited forces, with forces also sent to the Schedlt.
Market Garden had to go ahead regardless Being actually a success. To use Antwerp and control the approaches, everything up to the south bank of the lower Rhine at Nijmegen needed to be under allied control. The low-lying lands, boggy ground between Arnhem and Nijmegen with land strewn with rivers and canals, is perfect geography as a barrier against a German counter-attack towards Antwerp. Without control of Noord Brabant German forces would have been in artillery range of Antwerp, and with a build up of forces and supply directly back to Germany in perfect position for a counter-attack.
Market Garden was the offensive SHEAF wanted to secure Antwerp, a prime port for logistics for all allied armies. It made sense as the Germans were in disarray, so should be easy enough to gain. Monty added Arnhem to form a bridgehead over the Rhine to fall in line with Eisenhower's priority Northern Thrust strategy at the time. It made complete sense in establishing a bridgehead over the Rhine as an extra to the operation.
You needed Arnhem for an easier jump into Germany. Everything up to Nijmegen was needed if you wanted to do anything at all - that is, protect Antwerp and have a staging point to move into Germany. Gaining Noord Brabant was vital, and was successfully seized.
Fighting in the low lying mud and waterways of the Schedlt, which will take time, while the Germans a few miles away and still holding Noord Brabant made no sense at all. SHEAF got what they wanted from a strategic point of view.
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The British 1st Airborne made it to Arnhem bridge, taking the north end of the bridge, denying its use to the Germans. The other two airborne units, both US, failed to seize their assigned bridges immediately. If they had XXX Corps would have been in Arnhem on d-day+1, before any armour came in from Germany. Game set and match. The Germans would not have known what had hit them.
The 12 hour delay caused by the 101st not seizing the Zon bridge, meant the Germans for 12 hours had a critical time window to pour in troops and get armour moving towards Arnhem. The longer the time delay the more Germans poured in, hence more resistance, hence a slower XXX Corps. Obvious.
On top of the 12 hour delay, the 82nd not seizing their bridge at Nijmegen (XXX Corps had to take it for them), caused an additional 36 hour delay. This meant another longer time window for the Germans to keep up the reinforcing. The extra 36 hour delay created by the 82nd, meant a bridgehead over the Rhine was precluded, as the two day time window in total given to the Germans was far too long.
The British paras did their part in securing a crossing over its assigned waterway, the Rhine. The two US para units failed in theirs. XXX Corps hardley put a foot wrong.
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Browning did not prioritize the Heights over the bridge. He gave them equal priority. Gavin de-prioritized the bridge after he failed to seize it, ordering all his men out of Nijmegen town. When XXX Corps turned up they had a job to remove the Germans out of the town. These German troops came in mainly via the ferry to the island.
"I personally gave an order to Jim Gavin that, although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen Bridges as soon as possible, it was essential that he should capture the Groesbeek Ridge and hold it—for … painfully obvious reasons …. If this ground had been lost to the enemy the operations of the 2nd Army would have been dangerously prejudiced as its advance across the Waal and Neder Rhein would have been immediately outflanked. Even the initial advance of the Guards Armoured Division would have been prejudiced and on them the final outcome of the battle had to depend."
- Lt Gen Browning to Maj Gen G. E. Prier-Palmer, British Joint Services Mission, Washington, D.C., 25 Jan 55, excerpt in OCMH.
The American post war version of events is one that attempts to whitewash their failure at Nijmegen and Zon - failures to capture the bridges on the first day. The film A bridge Too Far, made when Browning had already died, only cemented the false narrative in the minds of the public. Since then many researchers have uncovered the real facts.
The 508th did launch some patrols into Nijmegen. A patrol from the 3rd Battalion almost reached the bridge. Three straggler from the patrol of 40 men took prisoner the guards on the south end of the bridge - seven of the 18 guards, including their cannon. If the 82nd had bothered to turn up at the bridge two hours earlier rather than hanging around DePloeg they would have hopped and skipped onto the bridge whistling Dixie.
When Gavin found out the 508th were not moving to the bridge, he was livid, expecting them to be moving to the bridge, if there was no opposition. The 508th did send a recon patrol. According to Phil Nordyke’s Put Us Down In Hell (2012) three lead scouts of the troop of 40, were separated making it to the vicinity of south end of the road bridge approaches, not the main steel span. They captured seven Germans and also their small artillery gun. They waited about an hour for reinforcements that never arrived, having to withdraw then observed the 9.SS-Panzer recon battalion arriving from Arnhem.
These few scouts that reached the southern end of the Nijmegen bridge just before the 9th SS recon, reached the bridge about an hour before the 9th SS. Joe Atkins in The 508th said, "at the bridge, only a few German soldiers were standing around a small artillery weapon... The Germans were so surprised; the six or seven defenders of the bridge gave up without resisting. We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark and none of our other troops showed up. We decided to pull away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge." That was the 9th SS.
US Official History, page 163:
Colonel Warren about 1830 sent into Nijmegen a patrol
After around 4.5 hours after landing a patrol of 40 men were sent.
Colonel Warren directed Companies A and B to rendezvous at a point just south of Nijmegen at 1900 and move with the Dutch guide to the bridge. Company C, a platoon of which already had gone into the city as a patrol, was withheld in regimental reserve. Although Company A reached the rendezvous point on time, Company B "got lost en route." After waiting until about 2000, Colonel Warren left a guide for Company B and moved through the darkness with Company A toward the edge of the city. Some seven hours after H-Hour, the first real move against the Nijmegen bridge began.
As the scouts neared a traffic circle surrounding a landscaped circular park near the center of Nijmegen, the Keizer Karel Plein, from which a mall-like park led northeast toward the Nijmegen bridge, a burst of automatic weapons fire came from the circle. The time was about two hours before midnight.
As Company A formed to attack, the men heard the noise of an approaching motor convoy emanating from a side street on the other side of the traffic circle. Enemy soldiers noisily dismounted (the 9th SS now in the town)
No one could have said so with any finality at the time, but the chance for an easy, speedy capture of the Nijmegen bridge had passed. This was all the more lamentable because in Nijmegen during the afternoon the Germans had had nothing more than the same kind of "mostly low quality" troops encountered at most other places on D Day.
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There is a myth that the Germans were way ahead of the British in jet engines and planes in WW2, when the opposite is true. The WW2 German jet engines were extremely unreliable with low performances and very high fuel consumption. The German axial-flow turbojets never worked as they wanted, being developed up to 1953 by the French to obtain a usable engine. The French lost a lot of time playing around with the German engines, instead of working with the British. The French and Soviets after WW2 tried to improve the German axial-flow engines and largely failed.
The Germans did not invent the axial-flow turbojet, they based everything on Frank Whittle's patents. The British Metropolitan-Vickers F.1 axial-flow engine was running on a test bed in 1941. The F.2 was an axial-flow being an extremely advanced design using a nine-stage axial compressor, annular combustor, and a two-stage turbine. It powered a Meteor in November 1943. It was considered unreliable and never saw use during the war, hence why the British went for the reliability, controllability and quick development of the centrifugal turbojets. The Metro-Vick F.3 was the first ever turbofan in 1943. Metro-Vick developed the F.9 Sapphire, however left the jet business in 1947 giving all their designs to Armstrong Siddeley, who commercially produced the Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire engine, which was licence built in the US as the J-65.
The British in order to get a usable and reliable jet engine, with the technology of the time, went for a centrifugal design rather than the troublesome axial-flow design. This design produced less thrust than an axial-flow but was quicker to develop and reliable outperforming the best piston engines planes at the time. It took 5 months to develop, while the first reliable axial-flow engine was the 1950 Rolls Royce Avon, which took 5 years to get right. The Avon is still in production as a ground based gas turbine, with the aero version in production for 30 years.
In 1945 the French made and tested some German designed turbo jets made with quality alloys unavailable to German industry in WW2. They ran for 25 hours instead of the 10 hours of the Germans engines that used poorer quality steel. Not much better. The German axial-flow engines failed because of heavy design flaws. The centrifugal compressor used by the first British Meteor plane was fine and much more reliable, but unable to reach high compression ratios. This limited performances. Centrifugal compressors were used up to the 1960s.
In 1945 the team from the French ATAR laboratory plus some BMW and Junkers engineers, were engaged by the French SNECMA research bureau, with the objective to build a new reliable and performing axial-flow turbojet. The BMW 003/Jumo004 was considered unusable. It was tested on the first French jet aircraft, the 1946 So6000 Triton, overheating and exploding. The plane only flew with a Rolls Royce Nene centrifugal turbojet.
The ATAR project took 6 years to produce the first acceptable axial-flow turbojet (ATAR 101 B1), produced in 1953. So 8 years research and developments by the French using the German jet engines as the base. It was installed on the first French jet fighter, the Dassault Ouragan.
The French lost a lot of time because the German jets had poor efficiency and some concept failures. The failures were essentially in the combustion chambers and fresh air circulation to reduce the external temperature of the engine. The BMW jet was known for overheating problems which precluded fuselage installation.
The question at the end of WW2 was: what is the most efficient way to produce jet fighters? The answer was clearly not adopting the German design of engine and fuselage. The build costs for a jet engine were much higher than a piston engine, with the fuel consumption near 3x. The centrifugal compressor the British adopted in some planes was the best choice with 1944-45 technology, more compression pressure was not an advantage when the hot turbine was unable to resist higher temperatures. The German turbojets had big overheat problems as the engine would not work in an enclosed fuselage for single-engined fighters. This defect was immediately noted by the French on the 1946 "SO 6000 Triton" prototype, and by the Soviets on the 1946 Mig 9. The Soviets quickly replaced the BMW 004B2 by the centrifugal Rolls Royce Nene which worked without problems, dismissing the BMW engine for fighter planes. The Rolls Royce Nene was copied to the last nut by the USSR being installed in the Mig 15 being used effectively in the Korean war.
The Meteor was the first proper fully developed jet plane introduced operationally. The 262 was slightly faster than the Meteor F3, but extremely unreliable. The British would never put into the sky such an undeveloped plane as the me262. The British could have had a jet fighter operational in 1941, but it may have been as bad as the me262. The Germans advanced R&D on jets after they interrogated captured British RAF men. They learned the British were advanced in jet technology and flying prototype planes. Until then the Germans had no intention of mass producing jet planes.
The rushed together Me262 started claiming kills on 26 July 1944, the Meteor claimed its first V1 kill a few days later on the 4 August 1944. But the Meteor was a proper fully developed jet plane, not a thrown together desperate effort as the me262 was. The me262 fuselage was similar to a piston plane with the pilot over the wings obscuring downward vision, while the Meteor was a proper new design fuselage specifically for jet fighters with a forward of the wings pilot position giving superior pilot vision, as we see in planes today. The cockpit was very quiet.
The sweptback wings of the me262 were to move the engines further back for better weight distribution, not for aerodynamic reasons as is thought the case. The me262's airframe was based on piston engine planes, even with an initial rear tail wheel. The tricycle landing gear was only introduced when it was found the thrust of the jet engines would scorch the runway surface as the exhaust faced downwards. The Meteor's airframe was designed purely for jet propulsion even with a high tail to prevent thrust interfering with the tail which could affect control.
Centrifugal compressors were not obsolete once axial-flow engines were reliably made, being used in turboprops. Between a turbo jet and a turboprop, the only difference is the turbine, not the compressor. The last centrifugal compressor jet engine still in service on a handful of commercial aircraft like the Fokker 27, is the Rolls Royce Dart turboprop. A very reliable engine made in 27 versions, but with high fuel consumption to modern engines. The Rolls Royce Dart Turboprop turbo jet engine was produced the longest, being a comparable design turbojet to the likes the Rolls Royce Nene. The rugged engine was produced from 1946 up to 1987.
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Market Garden failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. The failure point was not seizing the Nijmegen bridge immediately. At the end of D-Day all crossings were denied to the Germans, except one - the Nijmegen bridge.
General Gavin of the US 82nd was tasked to seize the Nijmegen bridge as soon as landing. Gavin never, he failed with only a few German guards on the bridge. He failed because his 82nd did not seize the Nijmegen bridge immediately. Gavin even de-prioritised the bridge the prime target and focus. The 82nd were ready at 2 pm on the jump day and never moved to the bridge. The gigantic bridge was guarded by only 19 guards. The Germans occupied the bridge at 1900 hrs. Six hours after the 82nd were ready to march.
Events on the 1st day:
♦ "At 1328, the 665 men of US 82nd 1st Battalion began to fall from the sky."
- Poulussen, R. Lost at Nijmegen.
♦ "Forty minutes after the drop, around 1410, the 1st Battalion marched off towards their objective, De Ploeg, three miles away."
-Poulussen,
♦ "The 82nd were digging in and performing recon in the area looking for 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald
- Neillands, R. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
♦ The 82nd were dug in and preparing to defend their newly constructed regimental command post, which they established at 1825. Then Colonel Lindquist "was told by General Gavin, around 1900, to move into Nijmegen."
-Poulussen
Events on the evening of the 1st day:
♦ Having dug in at De Ploeg, Warren's battalion wasn't prepared to move towards Nijmegen at all.
-Poulussen,
♦ Once Lindquist told Lieutenant Colonel Warren that his battalion was to move, Warren decided to visit the HQ of the Nijmegen Underground first - to see what info the underground had on the Germans at the Nijmegen bridge.
- Poulussen,
♦ It was not until 1830hrs that he [Warren] was able to send a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small, just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a radio — say forty men.
- Neillands. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
♦ This was not a direct route to the bridge from Warren's original position, and placed him in the middle of the town. It was also around 2100 when "A" Company left to attempt to capture the Nijmegen road bridge.
♦ "B" Company was not with them because they'd split up due to it being dark with "visibility was less than ten yards".
- Poulussen,
♦ The 82nd attacks were resisted by the Germans until the next day.
Events of the 2nd day:
♦ Gavin drove up in a jeep the next morning and was told by Warren that although they didn't have the bridge yet, another attack was about to go in.
♦ Gavin then told Warren to hold because the Germans were attacking in the southeast portion of the 82nd perimeter.
♦ At around 1100, Warren was ordered to withdraw from Nijmegen completely.
- Poulussen
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One problem that has bedevilled any objective study of Anglo-US military history in the post-war decades is the tendency of some US commanders and many US historians to play the ‘British’ or ‘Montgomery’ card in order to conceal some glaring American blunder. Omar Bradley’s disastrous failure to provide adequate armoured support for the US divisions landing on Omaha on D-Day, with the terrible losses thus caused to the infantry companies of the 1st and 29th Divisions, have been largely expunged from the public mind — at least in the United States — by constant harping about the British or ‘Montgomery’s failure to take Caen on D-Day — a failure that turned out to have no strategic significance whatsoever.
Nor is Omaha the only example. As we have seen in earlier chapters, harping on about the ‘slowness’ of XXX Corps or the ‘flawed’ plan of General Urquhart at Arnhem, has successfully diverted critical minds from the cock-up in command that prevented the 82nd Division from either taking the Nijmegen bridge on the first day of the attack or avoiding a frontal attack across the Waal in borrowed boats three days later.
It appears that all that was necessary to avoid critical press comment in the USA and any unwelcome Congressional interest in the competence of any American commander, was to murmur ‘the British’ or — better still — ‘Montgomery’, and critical comment in the USA either subsided or went unvoiced.
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
The fact is, that XXX Corps were not slow, reaching Nijmegen ahead of schedule. Urquart's paras took one end of the Arnhem bridge preventing its use by the Germans. If the US 82nd had taken the Nijmegen bridge immediately XXX Corps would have been in Arnhem on time relieving the paras and fully securing the bridge.
Caen was a nice to have objective, but Monty saw no need to tie up vital resources on a strategically unimportant target. As Neillands stated it was of "no strategic significance whatsoever."
Neillands highlights the glaring unthruths of the US press and historians.
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Patton was an average US general, like Simpson, Patch, Hodges, etc. No more. A US media creation, elevating the average beyond their status.
"The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian 1st Army HQ for the same purpose.
Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the 1st Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to 3rd Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian 1st Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation.
"This advance duly began at 0630hrs on August 18 which, as the Canadian Official History remarks, ‘was a day and a half after Montgomery had issued the order for the Canadians to close the gap at Trun, and four and a half days after Patton had been stopped at the 3rd Army boundary’. During that time, says the Canadian History, the Canadians had been ‘fighting down from the north with painful slowness’ and the Germans had been making their way east through the Falaise gap. They were not, however, unimpeded; the tactical air forces and Allied artillery were already taking a fearful toll of the German columns on the roads heading east past Falaise.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise – Operation Tractable – which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The Panzer Brigade concept was deployed there with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper Panzer divisions were rebuilt after the summer battles. The Panzer brigades had green crews with little time to train, did not know their tanks properly, had no recon elements and didn't even meet their unit commander until at the front. These were not elite forces.
The 17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, equipped only with assault guns not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy and not up to strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine.
Patton's Army was almost always where the best German divisions in the west were NOT.
♦ Who did the 3rd Army engage?
♦ Who did the 3rd Army defeat?
♦ Patton never once faced a full strength Waffen SS panzer division nor a Tiger battalion.
In The Lorraine, the US 3rd Army faced a rabble, with the German commander of Army Group G, Hermann Balck, taking command in September 1944 saying:
"I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Patton was mostly facing a second rate rabble in The Lorraine.
Patton was not advancing or being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. The road from Luxembourg to Bastogne saw few German forces, with Bastogne being on the very southern German flank, their focus being west. The strategic significance of the stand at Bastogne, is over exaggerated. The men in the town were brave and tenacious, however their stand did not change the course of the battle. The German's bypassed Bastogne, placing a containment force around the town.
Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was far from a top German armoured unit with about 80 tanks, while 26th Volks-Grenadier had about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) only had a small number of tanks operational. Patton did not have to smash through full Panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armour outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1.
Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne as the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving west to the River Meuse the target. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Leading elements were engaging the Americans and British under Montgomery's command near Dinant on the Meuse, at the furthest German advance referred to as the "tip". Monty's armies halted the German advance and pushed them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons opened up with the American attack stopping and pulling back. The next day fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B retreating once again. It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. Patton's forces arrived at Chaumont late on the 22nd December. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day. Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual "attack" towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move through American held lines. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, 15km southwest of Bastogne, yet he still took five days to reach Bastogne. With 18,000 US troops in Bastogne. They were going to break out anyhow as the Germans had largely moved on.
In Normandy in 1944, the Panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The 1st US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra, coming in at the end of Cobra, performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact. This eastern dash devoid of German forces was the ride the US media claimed Patton was some sort master of fast moving armour.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates.
♦ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics Bradley's II Corps were employing
♦ He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division, Truscott of being "afraid to fight".
♦ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps.
♦ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize stalled he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being "very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect".
♦ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in reporting their losses.
After the German attack in the Ardennes, all US tactical air force units in the Bulge were put under Coningham of the RAF, who gave Patton massive ground attack plane support yet he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall.
Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault, including his subordinates. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated. Oh, and wore cowboy guns.
Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his and Eisenhower's orders. He also hated Monty. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read:
Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds
Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies by Harry Yeide
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@robert goodman
Chip on the shoulder I see.
The British were the single biggest agents in the defeat of Nazi Germany. They were there from day one until the end. They never entered the war because they attacked another country or were attacked. The so-called "invincible" Germans army tried and failed, with their allies, for two years in WW2 to defeat the British army in North Africa. The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery had to give the US armies an infantry role as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
After France 1940 Germany never had a significant campaign victory over the British Commonwealth ever again in WW2. The Germans FAILED:
♦ To win the Battle of Britain in 1940;
♦ To win the Battle of the Atlantic in 1940/41;
♦ To control the eastern Atlantic ;
♦ To control the Mediterranean in 1940/41;
♦ To control North Africa and the Middle East in 1940/41
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein
♦ March 1943 - Medenine
♦ June 1944 - Normandy
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge
Not on one occasion were Monty's ground armies pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. The US Army in 1944/45 was retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 34,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months with over 50,000 casualties. The Battle of the Bulge took all the US effort, with Montgomery having to be put in command of the US First and Ninth armies, adding the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe. The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. The Ninth stayed under his control until the end of the war just about. Parts of the USAAF had to be under the control of the RAF.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British with Montgomery leading all armies, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and 22% less casualties than predicted. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against the panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) and had to give them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped to fight tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
Then the ignored British naval blockade on the Axis economy, which was so successful the substantial Italian navy could not put to sea in full strength, or even at all on some occasions, because of a lack of oil. Then the British bomber offensive on the German economy, taking the war right into German cities, wiping out Hamburg in one night. First 1,000 bomber raid was just after the USA were in the war.
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@novelistgrandiose8281
Some facts for you. The British were the single biggest agents in the defeat of Nazi Germany. They were there from day one until the end. They never did not enter because they attacked another country or were attacked. The so-called "invincible" Germans army tried and failed, with their allies, for two years in WW2 to defeat the British army in North Africa. The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery had to give the US armies an infantry role as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein
♦ March 1943 - Medenine
♦ June 1944 - Normandy
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British or US, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. The US Army were struggling in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months with over 50,000 casualties. The Battle of the Bulge took all the US effort, with Montgomery in command and the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line, with nearly 100,000 casualties. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe. The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British with Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against the panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) and had to give them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
Then the ignored British naval blockade on the Axis economy, which was so successful the substantial Italian navy could not put to sea in full strength, or even at all on some occasions, because of a lack of oil. Then the British bomber offensive on the German economy, taking the war right into German cities, wiping out Hamburg in one night.
You need to give respect where it is due.
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General Bodo Zimmermann, Chief of Operations, German Army Group D, said that had the strategy of Montgomery succeeded in the autumn of 1944, there would have been no need to fight for the West Wall, not for the central and upper Rhine, all of 24 which would have fallen automatically.
Indeed, had Monty's idea for a 40 division concentrated thrust towards the Ruhr been accepted by Eisenhower instead of messing about in the Lorraine, Alsace, Vosges etc, it would have all been over for the Germans in the west.
"The best course of the Allies would have been to concentrate a really strong striking force with which to break through past Aachen to the Ruhr area. Germany's strength is in the north. South Germany was a side issue. He who holds northern Germany holds Germany. Such a break-through, coupled with air domination, would have torn in pieces the weak German front and ended the war. Berlin and Prague would have been occupied ahead of the Russians. There were no German forces behind the Rhine, and at the end of August our front was wide open. There was the possibility of an operational break-through in the Aachen area, in September. This would have facilitated a rapid conquest of the Ruhr and a quicker advance on Berlin.
By turning the forces from the Aachen area sharply northward, the German 15th and 1st Parachute Armies could have been pinned against the estuaries of the Mass and the Rhine. They could not have escaped eastwards into Germany."
- Gunther Blumentritt in, The Other Side Of The Hill by Liddell Hart
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There is a myth that the Germans were way ahead of the British in jet engines and planes in WW2, when the opposite is true. The WW2 German jet engines were extremely unreliable with low performances with very high fuel consumption. The German axial-flow turbojets never worked properly being developed up to 1953 by the French to obtain a usable engine. The French lost a lot of time playing around with the German engines, instead of working with the British. The French and Soviets after WW2 attempted to improve the German axial-flow engines largely failing.
The British in order to get a usable and reliable jet engine, with the technology of the time, went for a centrifugal design rather than the troublesome axial-flow design. This design produced less thrust than an axial-flow but was quicker to develop and reliable. It took 5 months to develop, while the first reliable axial-flow engine was the 1950 Rolls Royce Avon, which took 5 years to get right.
In 1945 the French made and tested some German designed turbo jets made with quality steel unavailable to German industry in WW2. They ran for 25 hours instead of 10 hours to the Germans engines that used poor quality steel. Not much better. The German axial-flow engines failed because of heavy design faults. The centrifugal compressor used by the first British Meteor plane was fine being much more reliable, but unable to reach high compression ratios. This limited performances. Centrifugal compressors were used up to the 1960s.
In 1945 the team from the French ATAR laboratory plus some BMW and Junkers engineers, were engaged by the French SNECMA research bureau, with the objective to built a new reliable with performance axial-flow turbojet. The BMW 003/Jumo004 was considered unusable. It was tested on the first French jet aircraft, the 1946 So6000 Triton, overheating and exploding. The plane only flew with a Rolls Royce Nene centrifugal turbojet.
The ATAR project took 6 years to produce the first acceptable axial-flow turbojet (ATAR 101 B1), produced in 1953. So eight years research & developments by the French using the German jet engines as the base. It was installed on the first French jet fighter, the Dassault Ouragan.
The French lost a lot of time because the German jets had poor efficiency with some concept fails. Essentially in the combustion chambers and fresh air circulation to reduce the external temperature of the engine. The BMW jet was known for overheat problems which precluded fuselage installation.
The question at the end of WW2 was what is the most efficient way to produce jet fighters. The answer is clearly not adopting the German design of engine and fuselage. The build costs for a jet engine were much higher than a piston engine, with the fuel consumption near 3x. The centrifugal compressor the British adopted in some planes was the best choice with 1944-45 technology, more compression pressure was not an advantage when the hot turbine was unable to resist higher temperatures. The German turbojets had big overheat problems as the engine would not work in an enclosed fuselage for single engined fighters. This defect was immediately noted by the French on the 1946 "SO 6000 Triton" prototype, and by the Soviets on the 1946 Mig 9. The Soviets quickly replaced the BMW 004B2 by the centrifugal Rolls Royce Nene which worked without problems, dismissing the BMW engine for fighter planes.
The Rolls Royce Nene was copied to the last nut by the USSR being installed in the Mig 15 being used effectively in the Korean war. About 10 years ago the USSR eventually paid royalties to Rolls Royce.
The Meteor was the first proper fully developed jet plane introduced. The 262 was slightly faster than the Meteor F3, but extremely unreliable. The British would never put into the sky such an undeveloped plane as the me262. The me262 and Meteor were leagues apart in safety and reliability. The British could have had a jet fighter operational in 1941, but it would have been as bad as the me262. The Germans advanced R&D on jets after interrogating captured British RAF men. They learned the British were advanced in jet technology actually flying prototype planes. Until then the Germans had no intention of mass producing jet planes.
The rushed together Me262 started claiming kills on 26 July 1944. However the supposed kill was a Mosquito reconnaissance plane that had a fuselage cap blown off in a quick fast maneuver, which flew on landing in Italy. The Meteor claimed its first V1 kill a few days later on the 4 August 1944. But the Meteor was a proper fully developed jet plane, not a thrown together desperate effort as the me262 was. The me262 fuselage was similar to a piston plane with the pilot over the wings obscuring downward vision, while the Meteor was a proper new design fuselage specifically for jet fighters with a forward of the wings pilot position with superior vision, as we see today. The cockpit was very quiet. The sweptback wings of the me262 were to move the engines further back for better weight distribution, not for aerodynamic reasons as is thought the case.
Centrifugal compressors were not obsolete being used in turboprops. Between a turbo jet and a turboprop, the only difference is the turbine, not the compressor. The last centrifugal compressor jet engine still in service on a handful of commercial aircraft like the Fokker 27, is the Rolls Royce Dart turboprop. A very reliable engine made in 27 versions, but with high fuel consumption to modern engines. The Rolls Royce Dart Turboprop turbo jet engine was produced the longest, being a comparable design turbojet to the likes the Rolls Royce Nene. The rugged engine was produced from 1946 up to 1987.
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@snonsig2688
The first patent for using a gas turbine to power an aircraft using an air flow compressor was filed in 1921 by Maxime Guillaume. His engine was an axial-flow turbojet but this wasn’t practical at the time with many conceptual flaws. The practical theory of gas flow through passages was developed into the more formal theory of gas flow past airfoils by A. A. Griffith. He wrote An Aerodynamic Theory of Turbine Design in 1926. This was the basic theory of the jet engine. The first running model was produced and tested by Frank Whittle, five months before Ohain in Germany. It was the first turbojet engine in the World to be built and run, having a centrifugal compressor and an axial flow turbine.
Ohain did not design a reverse flow engine, with his engine having a centrifugal compressor and a radial inflow centrifugal turbine. A design never used in any production engine. Based on a patent filed by Whittle. Ohain even commented on Whittle's unusual design when he read his patent prior to filing his own. From Ohain's biography:
"When I saw Whittle’s patent I was almost convinced that it had something to do with boundary layer suction combinations. It had a two-flow, dual entrance flow radial flow compressor that looked monstrous from an engine point of view. Its flow reversal looked to us to be an undesirable thing, but it turned out that it wasn't so bad after all though it gave some minor instability problems."
The axial compressor was first demonstrated in Britain, however the British used centrifugal compressors because they were more reliable and better understood at the time. The aim was to produce a better performing plane than the piston p0lanes of the time. The me262 's axial-flow engine needed entirely new engines every few hours as axial jet technology wasn’t perfected.
The father the turbo jet was Frank Whittle. The British defence ministry rejected Frank Whittle’s design because reviewing engineers at Armstrong-Whitworth asserted that a turbo jet engine at that time would be inefficient. Whittle patented the design himself, and with it not being top secret, it was open to the Nazi design team led by Ohain.
In 1935, Hans von Ohain started work on a similar design in Germany. It is often claimed that he was unaware of Whittle's work. Ohain said that he had not read Whittle's patent, and Whittle believed him. Whittle patent was in German libraries. Whittle's son had suspicions that Ohain had read or heard of it, not believing the coincidence. Years later von Ohain in his biography that he did read Whittle's patent. Author Margaret Conner states ″Ohain's patent attorney happened upon a Whittle patent in the years that the von Ohain patents were being formulated". Von Ohain himself is quoted as saying "We felt that it looked like a patent of an idea" "We thought that it was not seriously being worked on." Ohain's patent was not filed until 1935. Clear evidence that Ohain had read Whittle's patent, and had even critiqued it in prior to filing his own patent two years before his own engine ran.
Armstrong-Whitworth, basing their work upon their criticism of the Whittle concept, began development of the first axial-flow turbojets turboprops. The forerunner of today's turbofan jet engine. The Whittle design proceeded privately as Powerjets, then taken over by Rolls-Royce. By 1944, the Armstrong-Whitworth design was developing higher thrust with superior throttle control. The Rolls- Royce centrifugal flow turbojet was proven to be far more reliable than the Nazi jet projects, the Jumo 004 and the BMW 003.
A major problem was the “creep” in the structural makeup of steel that is induced by high temperatures. Steel is not the ideal material from which to build jet engines failing because the iron in the steel sublimates out of the alloy, turning the metal to Swiss cheese on a microscopic level. In the 1940’s, it was unknown that steel would inevitably fail exposed to the temperatures and pressures in jet engines. The lack of cobalt for high-temperature steel alloys meant the German designs were always at risk of overheating and damaging their turbines. The low-grade alloy production versions of the Junkers Jumo 004 powered the me262. The engines would typically last only 10–12 hours before burning out. If it was accelerated too quickly the compressor would stall with instant loss of power. More exploded on their first startup. Over 200 German pilots were killed during training.
Nickel alloy was developed by research teams at the Wiggin Works in Hereford in England, which still exists today. The R&D was requested by the Whittle jet engine development team. The Nazi design teams ever understood that steel was never going to work. The Nazis two major production jet engines never managed to last more than a few hours.
♦ Whittle's reverse flow design is the basis for almost all turboprop engines in production.
♦ Britain had axial-flow engines running in 1941 - the same time that Franz had his Jumo running. The Metrovick F.2 flew in a Meteor in 1943. The F.2 transpired into the Sapphire which the US built under licence as the J-65 and then modified it as the J-47.
♦ Westinghouse in the US was given a Whittle engine, and plans for improvements. They made such a hash of it that Whittle had to go to the US to assist. The US government gave the project to GE who made the I-16 which transpired into the first US built jet engine. The US licensed the Ghost for the P-80/T-33 and the RR Nene. The Nene was used by the Soviets in the MIG 15.
♦ Ohain's engine was not produced, being shelved by 1943. No engine was built using his design.
♦ Whittle also R&D'd axial-flow engines. The metallurgy was not advanced enough at the time. Whittle's engines produced far more thrust than the German axial-flows and far more reliable.
♦ The PT-6, PWC 100/150 are derivatives of Whittle's designs being still produced.
♦ Whittle's centrifugal-flow engines were built under licence in the US after WW2 - the J-33, J-42 and J-48.
♦ The Olympus was the world's first 2 shaft turbojet and the first to exceed 10,000 pounds of thrust.
♦ The Avon is the longest produced gas turbine in history being still in production as a land based generator.
♦ The RR Conway was the world's first turbofan.
♦ The RB-211 was the worlds first 3 shaft turbofan.
♦ The Rolls Royce Trent was the world's first turboprop to fly.
♦ British axial-flows led the post war world in technology and power.
♦ The Sapphire was built in the US as the J-65.
♦ The GE J-47 was based on the Sapphire.
Frank Whittle invented the modern turbojet.
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Nice try. But.....
A Political Railway
HS2 is a political railway. A flawed design originally to serve only four chosen cities directly, FAST. These cities were chosen by the Tory government to be some sort of regional economic centres, although at the time one city clearly was not. Instead of allowing the free market to decide which cities are economic centres, they were engineering it. The other cities, not a part of the chosen four, will have a half-cocked cut down service, with bits running on and off HS2 tracks. When HS2 trains run on existing tracks they run slower, as they do not tilt.
Capacity fails
At first they boasted speed. Then after valid castigation by the media, they changed stance and said it was for capacity. From day one all slots on HS2 are full. So much that the Liverpool to Birmingham and Chester to London services are omitted from HS2 entirely. HS2 was supposed to take all inter-city services. About capacity? Sure! Pull the other one. If it was about capacity, it would have been 4-track from London to the vital Crewe junction. But no such thing, it is two track. You couldn't make this up.
No link to the Continent
One of HS2s prime points was that it would connect British regional cities directly to the Continent. The Continental link was omitted. No kidding.
No link to major airport Heathrow
The link to Heathrow was dropped. The UKs major airport, yet two provincial airports get HS2 stations. NO kidding.
Liverpool City Region omitted
The whole of the Liverpool City Region, of over two million people, was omitted from a direct service, with the centre being only 16 miles from a HS2 line, and the city region border one mile. No consideration was taken to relieve existing lines for the new large, additional, Post Panmax container terminal that has just opened. I doubt they knew of this massive privately funded port construction. If HMG want to encourage private investment they have to play their part, otherwise they will go elsewhere. Also, HMG is wanting to move freight onto rail.
No rail connection at Curzon St, Birmingham
Curzon St station is stand alone, that is there are no connection to other rail services from the station,. Only HS2 trains will use the station. After a fast ride from London, passengers will have to drag cases down streets (in the rain an cold) to other stations. No kidding.
No rail connection at Manchester airport
Manchester airport already has a rail station. It is not connected with the HS2 station at all being about a mile away, and also a way from the terminal, needing a bus. The HS2 station will be accessed from Birmingham or London, who have their own airports, as Manchester is too near already served by the existing station. It will be the least used station in the UK. No kidding.
Big bend slows down trains
High speed trains need straight tracks to keep speeds up - if new track is not straight it is not worth building. So in their wisdom HS2 does an S bend around Tatton slowing trains from over 200mph to about 100mph. It just so happened George Osborne's seat was Tatton. Osborne had a lot to do with the initial layout of HS2. So billions is spent to keep him in his political seat (he has since resigned). Then the track runs into a gold plated 7.5 mile dead end tunnel into Manchester, a provincial city not some mega city, into a station facing the wrong way. Manchester already has a straight direct line to the Crewe junction where it could pick up HS2, with little time penalty if uprated here and there.
Billions will be spent moving the northbound HS2 track over to Manchester, when entering the city via the Mersey corridor is more direct and cheaper and would also accommodate Liverpool accessing HS2. No kidding. Billions for one man - Osborne.
Birmingham airport station remote
The Birmingham airport HS2 station is not in the terminal, again it needs secondary transport to get to the plane. So you go fast to the airport then trundle all over to get to the plane. No kidding.
Just a taster. I could go on and on and on.....on
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Germany's biggest mistake was declaring war in the first place. Once they waged war when was the point they could not win? That was when the British refused to make peace after Dunkirk. With Britain still in the war the Royal Navy blockade starved Germany, and the Axis, of vital resources, including food (animal & human) and oil. The Royal Navy controlled the eastern Atlantic, the Atlantic entrance to the Mediterranean, and the eastern Med. The Royal Navy ensured the conflict with Germany would continue. Britain was even buying up rare metals from Turkey to ensure the Germans did not have them. Germany could not win from this point onwards. Germany could not remove Britain from the war having pretty well no surface fleet to Britain having the largest navy in the world.
Britain's approach was that every operation was to bleed Germany of resources, especially oil. Operations in Norway and Greece forced the Germans not only to deploy troops to these areas but also its surface fleet, which mainly was destroyed in Norway. The German occupied countries were also under the blockade, which were also a drain of German resources.
The British, because of its armed forces structure of massive navy, large air force and small highly mobile army were unable to engage the Germans on the European land mass, on which Germany had a massive army. Britain war was partially an economic war. Every German operation versus the UK had to be decisive whereas the British could lose to the Germans while still asserting economic pressure in its favour. This was the British way of war and they were very good at it. Britain used similar tactics against Germany in WW1 to devastating effects. This approach was used against the French on multiple occasions over 200 years. Smaller nations in Europe would follow Pax Britannica due British naval dominance. Britain could dictate any war's outcome by blocking trade and resources to one side or another.
The Germans like most of Europe relied on imported oil, raw materials and food (animal & human). For the Germans these resources came from two regions - the USSR or the rest of the world. By removing the rest of the world from the Axis, the British forced the Germans to acquire Soviet oil - Romania did not produce enough. Hitler had no choice but to invade the Soviet Union in June 1941 because of the resources situation. He needed the resources of the USSR to fight the coming air war with Britain. In May 1940 Roosevelt stated the USA would produce 50,000 planes per year. Most of these would be directed towards Germany with British production on top. Germany greatly expanded its U-Boat fleet. The popular view as that this fleet was to starve Britain into submission. That was valid, however, it was also to divert and lock up Royal Navy resources in convoy protection and U-Boat hunting, allowing merchant ships to enter Germany and the occupied countries more freely.
Germany had been forced into a situation by the British that they knew they could not escape from. Even if Germany had seized Caucuses' oil fields intact (the Soviets sabotaged them to the point new bore holes would need to be drilled) the British would have focused them for their bombing campaign operating from the Middle East - there were plans to bomb them as Britain held nearby Iraq and occupied Iran. This was to drain Germany of vital oil. Every British victory in Africa was decisive and every German victory was not, even if Germany won an operation, they were still being bled. Unless Germany could seize the Suez Canal and beyond, the British could just come back year after year and counter attack with new tanks and new men, with resources not being a problem for them.
Germany knew that they could not invade Britain as the royal Navy was just too powerful. The RAF could replace losses far quicker than they could, as they found out in the air Battle of Britain. Germany could not put their large army on British soil.
After June 1940 Germany has an enemy it can’t defeat not entertaining peace, throttling the Germans every day of the war. Germany never had time, the British did. The invasion of the USSR may have quickened the war's end for Germany, however it was not the point that Germany was doomed. Germany had already lost the war it was just a matter of who won it and when Germany collapsed.
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@jimclark6256
Britain was key in WW2. Britain fought on every front, being in the war on the first day up to the last - the only country at the surrender of Japan in September 1945 to do so - Britain’s war actually ended in 1946 staying on in Viet Nam using Japanese troops alongside British troops to defeat the Viet Minh, but that is another story. Britain was not attacked or attacked anyone, going into WW2 on principle.
The Turkish ambassador to the UK stated that the UK can raise 40 million troops from its empire so will win the war. This was noted by Franco who indirectly said to Hitler he would not win, fearing British occupation of Spanish islands and territory if Spain joined the war. Spain and Turkey stayed out of the war. The Turkish ambassador’s point was given credence when an army of 2.6 million was assembled in India that moved into Burma to wipe out the Japanese.
From day one the Royal Navy formed a ring around the Axis positioning ships from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Arctic off Norway, blockading the international trade of the Axis. This deprived the Axis of vital human and animal food, oil, rubber, metals, and other vital resources. By 1941 the successful Royal Navy blockade had confined the Italian navy to port due to lack of oil. By the autumn of 1941 Germany's surface fleet was confined to harbour, by the British fleet and the chronic lack of fuel.
A potential German invasion from the the USSR in the north into the oil rich Middle East entailed expanded British troop deployment to keep the Germans away from the oil fields, until they were defeated at Stalingrad. Throughout 1942 British Commonwealth troops were fighting, or seriously expecting to be attacked, in:
♦ French North Africa;
♦ Libya;
♦ Egypt;
♦ Cyprus;
♦ Syria: where an airborne assault was expected, with preparations to reinforce Turkey if they were attacked;
♦ Madagascar: fighting the Vichy French to prevent them from inviting the Japanese in as they had done in Indochina;
♦ Iraq;
♦ Iran: the British & Soviets invaded Iran in August 1941.
Those spread-out covering troops were more in combined numbers than were facing Japan and Rommel in North Africa. The British Commonwealth fielded over 100 divisions in 1942 alone, compared to the US total of 88 by the end of the war. The Americans and Soviets were Johnny-come-late in WW2, moreso the Americans.
Before the USSR entered the conflict the Royal Navy’s blockade had reduced the Italian and German surface navies to the occasional sorties because of a lack of oil, with the British attacking the Germans and Italians in North Africa, also securing Syria, Iraq, the Levant and ridding the Italians from East Africa. The Germans were on the run by the time the USA had boots on the ground against the Axis. The Germans had been stopped:
♦ in the west at the Battle of Britain in 1940;
♦ in the east at the Battle of Moscow in 1941. In which Britain provided 40% of the Soviet tanks. The Germans were on the run after the simultaneous battles in late 1942 of:
♦ El Alemein;
♦ Stalingrad;
The Battle of El Alemein culminated in a quarter of a million Axis prisoners taken in Tunisia - more than taken at Stalingrad. Apart from the US Filipino forces that surrendered in early 1942, the US had a couple of divisions in Gaudalcanal after August 1942, and one in New Guinea by November 1942.
In 1943 the US managed to get up to six divisions in the Pacific, but still not matching the British or British Indian armies respectively. Until late 1943 the Australian Army alone deployed more ground fighting troops against the Japanese than the USA. The Americans never put more ground troops into combat against the Japanese at any point than just the British Indian Army alone, which was 2.6 million strong. The US had nowhere near 2.6 million men on the ground against the Japanese. The Soviets fielded about a million against the Japanese.
Most Japanese troops were put out of action by the British and Soviets, not the USA. At the battles of Khohima and Imphal the Japanese suffered their worst defeat in their history up to that point. Then the British set the Eastern and Pacific fleets against the Japanese, not far off in numbers to the US fleet.
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Germany's biggest mistake was declaring war in the first place. Once they waged war when was the point they could not win? That was when the British refused to make peace in June 1940. With Britain still in the war the Royal Navy blockade starved Germany, and the Axis, of vital resources, including food (animal & human) and oil. Britain was even buying up rare metals from Turkey to ensure the Germans did not have them.
The Royal Navy controlled and freely sailed the eastern Atlantic and the eastern Mediterranean, controlling both entrances to the Mediterranean. They even had Malta all through WW2, on the doorstep of Axis Italy. Britain's land forces were from Turkey to Libya. Essentially the British surrounded Europe, controlling the sea lanes.
The Royal Navy ensured the conflict with Germany would continue. Germany could not win from June 1940 onwards. Being a largely landlocked country, Germany's forces were heavily based on its army, while Britain's was heavily based on its navy and air force with a small highly mobile army. Geography dictated the forces makeup of each country. Germany could not remove Britain from the war having pretty well no surface fleet to Britain having the largest navy in the world. However, Britain could remove Germany from the war.
Britain's approach was that every operation was to bleed Germany of resources, especially oil. Operations in Norway and Greece forced the Germans to deploy troops to these areas but also its surface fleet, which mainly was destroyed in Norway. The German occupied countries were also under the blockade, which were also a drain of German resources.
The British, because of its armed forces structure of massive navy, large air force and small highly mobile army were unable to engage the Germans on the European land mass, on which Germany had a massive army. Apart from the air, the two countries could not get at each other directly. Britain's war then was partially an economic war. Every German operation against the British had to be decisive whereas the British could lose to the Germans while still asserting economic pressure in its favour. This was the British way of war being very good at it. Britain used similar tactics against Germany in WW1 to devastating effects. This approach was used against the French on multiple occasions over 200 years. Smaller nations in Europe would follow Pax Britannica due British naval dominance. Britain could dictate any war's outcome by blocking trade and resources to one side or another.
The Germans like most of Europe relied on imported oil, raw materials and food (animal & human). For the Germans these resources can only come from two regions - the USSR or the rest of the world. By removing the rest of the world from the grasp of the Axis, the British forced the Germans to acquire Soviet oil - Romania did not produce enough. Hitler had no choice but to invade the Soviet Union in June 1941 because of the resources situation. He needed the resources of the USSR to fight the coming air war with Britain. In May 1940 Roosevelt stated the USA would produce 50,000 planes per year. Most of these would be directed towards Germany with British production on top.
Germany greatly expanded its U-Boat fleet to reciprocate, also launching a partial economic war on Britain. The popular view was that this fleet was to starve Britain into submission. That was partly valid but a high hope given the naval resources of the two nations. It was also to divert and lock up Royal Navy resources in a defensive role of convoy protection and U-Boat hunting, allowing merchant ships to enter Germany and the occupied countries more freely.
Germany had been forced into a situation by the British that they knew they could not escape from. Even if Germany had seized the Caucuses' oil fields intact (the Soviets sabotaged them to the point new deep bore holes would need to be drilled) the British would have focused them for their bombing campaign operating from the Middle East - there were plans to bomb them as Britain held nearby Iraq and occupied Iran. This was to drain Germany of vital oil. Every British victory in Africa was decisive and every German victory was not, even if Germany won an operation, they were still being bled. Unless Germany could seize the Suez Canal and beyond, the British could just come back year after year and counter attack with new tanks and new men, with resources not being a problem for them.
Germany knew that they could not invade Britain as the royal Navy was just too powerful. The RAF could replace losses far quicker than they could, as they found out in the air Battle of Britain. Germany could not put their large army on British soil.
After June 1940 Germany had an enemy it couldn't defeat, not entertaining peace, and economically throttling them every day of the war. Germany never had time, the British did. The German invasion of the USSR with an army short of resources due to the Royal Navy blockade and RAF bombing of Germany, may have quickened the war's end for Germany, however it was not the point that Germany was doomed. Germany had already lost the war, it was just a matter of time when Germany collapsed.
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@knightblade0188
Eisenhower's strategy never worked.
Montgomery to Alan Brooke..
"If we want the war to end within any reasonable period you have to get Eisenhower’s hand taken off the land battle. I regret to say that in my opinion he just doesn’t know what he is doing.
Montgomery wrote of Eisenhower and his ridiculous broad-front strategy on 22 January 1945:
“I fear that the old snags of indecision and vacillation and refusal to consider the military problem fairly and squarely are coming to the front again . . . The real trouble is that there is no control and the three army groups are each intent on their own affairs. Patton today issued a stirring order to Third Army, saying the next step would be Cologne . . . One has to preserve a sense of humour these days, otherwise one would go mad.”
Alanbrooke wrote in his diary about buffoon Eisenhower:
“At the end of this morning's C.O.S. [Chief of Staff] meeting I put before the committee my views on the very unsatisfactory state of affairs in France, with no one running the land battle. Eisenhower, though supposed to be doing so, is on the golf links at Rheims - entirely detached and taking practically no part in running of the war. Matters got so bad lately that a deputation of Whiteley, Bedell Smith and a few others went up to tell him that he must get down to it and RUN the war, which he said he would."
"We discussed the advisability of getting Marshall to come out to discuss the matter, but we are doubtful if he would appreciate the situation. Finally decided that I am to see the P.M. to discuss the situation with him.”
"November 28th I went to see the P.M. I told him I was very worried."
Alan Brooke described in his daily diary that American generals Eisenhower and Marshall as poor strategists, when they were in jobs were strategy mattered. Brooke wrote to Montgomery about his talks with Eisenhower, “it is equally clear that Ike has the very vaguest conception of war!”
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@knightblade0188
You obviously had selective amnesia over this recent post:
Montgomery to Alan Brooke..
"If we want the war to end within any reasonable period you have to get Eisenhower’s hand taken off the land battle. I regret to say that in my opinion he just doesn’t know what he is doing.
Montgomery wrote of Eisenhower and his ridiculous broad-front strategy on 22 January 1945:
“I fear that the old snags of indecision and vacillation and refusal to consider the military problem fairly and squarely are coming to the front again . . . The real trouble is that there is no control and the three army groups are each intent on their own affairs. Patton today issued a stirring order to Third Army, saying the next step would be Cologne . . . One has to preserve a sense of humour these days, otherwise one would go mad.”
Alanbrooke wrote in his diary about buffoon Eisenhower:
“At the end of this morning's C.O.S. [Chief of Staff] meeting I put before the committee my views on the very unsatisfactory state of affairs in France, with no one running the land battle. Eisenhower, though supposed to be doing so, is on the golf links at Rheims - entirely detached and taking practically no part in running of the war. Matters got so bad lately that a deputation of Whiteley, Bedell Smith and a few others went up to tell him that he must get down to it and RUN the war, which he said he would."
"We discussed the advisability of getting Marshall to come out to discuss the matter, but we are doubtful if he would appreciate the situation. Finally decided that I am to see the P.M. to discuss the situation with him.”
"November 28th I went to see the P.M. I told him I was very worried."
Alan Brooke described in his daily diary that American generals Eisenhower and Marshall as poor strategists, when they were in jobs were strategy mattered. Brooke wrote to Montgomery about his talks with Eisenhower, “it is equally clear that Ike has the very vaguest conception of war!”
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Bob Finkenbiner
Only one blame as that goes to Gavin who never went for the bridge immediately.
Gavin was supposed to get to the bridge as soon as landing. He failed too. Market Garden failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. Because the 82nd did not seize the Nijmegen bridge immediately. They were ready at 2 pm on the jump day and never moved to the bridge. The gigantic bridge was guarded by 19 guards. Germans occupied the bridge at 1900 hrs. Six hours after the 82nd were ready to march.
Events on the 1st day:
♦ "At 1328, the 665 men of US 82nd 1st Battalion began
to fall from the sky." Poulussen, R. Lost at Nijmegen.
♦ "Forty minutes after the drop, around 1410, _the
1st Battalion marched off towards their objective,
De Ploeg, three miles away." Poulussen,
♦ "The 82nd were digging in and performing recon
in the area looking for 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald
- Neillands, R. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
♦ The 82nd were dug in and preparing to defend their
newly constructed regimental command post, which
they established at 1825. Then Colonel Lindquist
"was told by General Gavin, around 1900, to move
into Nijmegen." Poulussen
Events on the evening of the 1st day:
♦ Having dug in at De Ploeg, Warren's battalion wasn't prepared
to move towards Nijmegen at all. Poulussen,
♦ Once Lindquist told Lieutenant Colonel Warren that his
Battalion was to move, Warren decided to visit the HQ
of the Nijmegen Underground first - to see what info the
underground had on the Germans at the Nijmegen bridge.
- Poulussen,
♦ It was not until 1830hrs that he [Warren] was able to send
a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small,
just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a
radio — say forty men.
- Neillands. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
♦ This was not a direct route to the bridge from Warren's
original position, and placed him in the middle of the town.
It was also around 2100 when "A" Company left to attempt
to capture the Nijmegen road bridge.
♦ "B" Company was not with them because they'd split up
due to it being dark with "visibility was less than ten yards".
- Poulussen,
♦ The 82nd attacks were resisted by the Germans until the
next day.
Events of the 2nd day:
♦ Gavin drove up in a jeep the next morning and
was told by Warren that although they didn't have the bridge
yet, another attack was about to go in.
♦ Gavin then told Warren to hold because the Germans were
attacking in the southeast portion of the 82nd perimeter.
♦ At around 1100, Warren was ordered to withdraw from
Nijmegen completely. - Poulussen
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...Continued... Rolls Royce. Rolls engineers under Ron Harker went to North American to advise on how to install a Merlin engine in the Mustang. They also gave advice from their work with the RR Mustang X. Rolls-Royce made the first proposal to North American regarding a Merlin 45 engine Mustang in 1940, after Stanley Hooker improved the power by 30%. This was before the plane was operational an still in the R&D stage. The RR Merlin was superior to the Alison engine, also to what it was in February 1940 when North American were first approached by the Air Ministry. The later Merlin 61 had the two-stage auto controlled superchanging developed by again by Stanley Hooker. This gave an extra 70 mph and 15,000 feet of operation to the Merlin. A quantum leap. The pilot just went where he liked without degradation in performance.
RR sent three engineers led by James Ellor to supervise the adaption and manufacture of a Merlin 61, built under licence by Packard, the same type that was already being considered for the Rolls Royce Mustang X experimental series. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Mustang_Mk.X
On 9 June 1942, the first memos from W/C I.R. Campell-Orde of the RAF Air Fighting Development Unit at Duxford, revealed that an effort was being made to convince North American to adopt a Merlin-powered Mustang. Work in the US was setback due to an initial lack of interest and also to mechanical failures of the first Merlin engines built under licence by Packard. Both projects commenced at nearly the same time with the first Mustang X in the air about a month earlier than the North American XP-51B.
The RR Mustang-X programme was 5 or 6 airframes each with different experimentation. RR attempted to have North American accept British Merlin 61s (the two-stage superchargers) in American airframes, it is clear that the prime contractor (NAA) wanted to control the project as control was looking like it was to move over to the UK. NAA was essentially building production-standard aircraft rather than the experimental series that saw each of the RR Mustang Xs trying out new variations of design. An offshoot was the mid-engine RR Griffon engined Mustang that actually made it to the mock-up stage, albeit with a Merlin installed amidships. On the success of the RR Mustang-X built in Nottingham, the Air Ministry ordered hundreds from RR, who declined wanting to remain specialising in engines. NAA remained the prime contractor.
Rolls Royce mass produced Merlins in Crewe, Manchester and Glasgow, also licensing Packard in the USA, using idle US industry. The US made Merlins were to supply the Canadian aircraft factories - to avoid a two-way trans-Atlantic trip and give extra manufacturing when the engine proved very popular with many airframe makers. An agreement was reached in September 1940, with the first Packard built Merlin engine running in August 1941.
Early in 1944 the P-38, P-51B Mustang and P-47C, were dived by the British for compressibility testing at the RAE Farnborough, England at the request of the USAAF. They had trouble when these planes dived onto attacking German fighters when providing top cover for the bombers. The results were that the Mach numbers, the manoeuvring limits, were Mach 0.68 for the P-38, Mach 0.71 for the P-47, and Mach 0.78 for the Mustang. The corresponding figures for the FW-190 and Me109 was Mach 0.75. The tests resulted in the Mustang being chosen for all escort duties. - Page 70, Wings On My Sleeve by Eric Brown, who did the test.
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"on 16 November, Patton’s attack, from which so much had been expected — and been promised — had already stalled. Since the end of August Patton had been promising that he would have Metz, the Saar, the West Wall, and probably the Rhine in a matter of days. Two and a half months later none of these objectives had been taken or were in any danger of being taken."
"The reasons for this failure are much the same as those given for the failure of other parts of Eisenhower’s broad front strategy: Eisenhower’s constant vacillation; logistics; the weather; failure to concentrate; the enemy’s resistance; the lack of a strategic plan. The point here is that, in spite of all his bluster, Patton had done no better than anyone else — and weakened Eisenhower’s strategy in the process. This is not chauvinism. The Lorraine campaign is widely regarded as a disaster, even among US historians. Patton’s biographer, Carlo d’ Este, writes that Patton:
"... had failed to concentrate his forces for
a decisive attack that might have taken Metz,
then refused to accept that he had anything to
do with that setback. A series of piecemeal attacks
were nothing more than a return to the penny-packet
warfare that had fared so badly in North Africa. In short,
instead of the hoped for triumph, Lorraine became
Patton’s bloodiest and least successful campaign."
Nor were the Germans any more charitable. When Metz finally fell on 22 November, after heavy fighting in the streets of the town and the tunnels of the fortifications, the commander of the defenders, Lieutenant General Hermann Balck of Army Group G declared that the German success in defending the city for so many weeks was due to ‘the bad and timid leadership of the Americans’, a comment that would have cut Patton to the bone. There was also the cost; the three-month Lorraine campaign cost the Third Army no fewer than 50,000 casualties, about one third of all the casualties Third Army sustained in the entire European war."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@drinksnapple8997
Although it was widely believed from 1941–2 that British tanks in North Africa were inferior to German in quantity and quality, this view was shown to be incorrect by an official history published in the 1950s, by Sir Basil Liddell Hart’s history of the Royal Tank Regiment published in 1959, and in his later work.
Throughout the North African campaign between 1940 and early 1943, British forces had a two to threefold tank advantage in medium and heavy tanks over the German forces, a figure which would be reduced somewhat by including Italian tanks, but was still overwhelming. For the November 1941 offensive (Operation Crusader) British and imperial forces in North Africa had over 300 cruisers (mostly Crusaders) and 200 infantry tanks (Matildas and Valentines), together with large numbers of light tanks, and large reserves of all types. By contrast the Germans had fewer than 174 of the comparable Panzer IIIs and IVs, and the Italians 146 13/40s, with no reserves. Crusader was a success.
......
British tank forces were better equipped than US ones.
- Britain's War Machine by David Edgerton
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@brucewallace6282
It is clear you did not understand what was written. Read it again. Move your lips when reading, it will make it better for you.
Patton what a laugh! What US historian Harry Yeide wrote of what the Germans thought of Patton:
♦ for most of the war the Germans barely took notice [of Patton].
♦ on March 23 at the Battle of El Guettar—the first American victory against the experienced Germans. Patton’s momentum, however, was short-lived: Axis troops held him to virtually no gain until April 7, when they withdrew under threat from British Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army.
♦ There is no indication in the surviving German military records—which include intelligence reports at the theater, army, and division levels—that Patton’s enemies had any idea who he was at the time. Likewise, the immediate postwar accounts of the German commanders in Tunisia, written for the U.S. Army’s History Division, ignore Patton. Those reports show that ground commanders considered II Corps’s attacks under Patton to have been hesitant, and to have missed great opportunities.
♦ In mid-June [1943], another detachment report described Patton as “an energetic and responsibility-loving command personality”—a passing comment on one of the numerous Allied commanders. Patton simply had not yet done anything particularly noteworthy in their eyes.
♦ But his race to Palermo through country they had already abandoned left the commanders unimpressed. Major General Eberhard Rodt, who led the 15th Panzergrenadier Division against Patton’s troops during the Allied push toward Messina, thought the American Seventh Army fought hesitantly and predictably. He wrote in an immediate postwar report on Sicily, “The enemy very often conducted his movements systematically, and only attacked after a heavy artillery preparation when he believed he had broken our resistance. This kept him regularly from exploiting the weakness of our situation and gave me the opportunity to consolidate dangerous situations.” Once again, Patton finished a campaign without impressing his opponents.
♦ General Hermann Balck, who took command of Army Group G in September, thus did not think highly of Patton—or any other opposing commanders—during this time. Balck wrote to his commander, Runstedt, on October 10, “I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans” Looking back on his battles against Patton throughout the autumn, in 1979 Balck recalled, “Within my zone, the Americans never once exploited a success. Often [General Friedrich Wilhelm von] Mellenthin, my chief of staff, and I would stand in front of the map and say, ‘Patton is helping us; he failed to exploit another success.’”
♦ The commander of the Fifth Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel, aimed a dismissive, indirect critique at Patton’s efforts at Bastogne, writing in his memoirs that the Americans did not “strike with full élan.” The commanders who fought against Patton in his last two mobile campaigns in the Saar-Palatinate and east of the Rhine already knew they could not win; their losses from this point forward were inevitable, regardless of the commanding Allied opponent.
♦ the Germans offered Patton faint praise during and immediately after the war.
♦ posterity deserves fact and not myth. The Germans did not track Patton’s movements as the key to Allied intentions. Hitler does not appear to have thought often of Patton, if at all. The Germans considered Patton a hesitant commanding general in the scrum of position warfare. They never raised his name in the context of worthy strategists.
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@brucewallace6282
Patton was an average US general, no more, after WW2 most German generals had never heard of him. A US media creation, elevating the average beyond their status.
"The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian First Army HQ for the same purpose.__Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
In Normandy, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton who came in late in Normandy, faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact.This eastern dash devoid of German forces was the ride the US media claimed Patton was some sort of master of fast moving armour.
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed in The Lorraine with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were re-fitting and rebuilt after the Normandy battles. The Panzer Brigades had green crews with little time to train, unfamiliar with their tanks, had no recon elements only meeting their unit commander on his arrival at the front. These were not elite forces. The 17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, equipped only with assault guns not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy being below strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine. In The Lorraine, the Third Army faced a rabble full of eyes and ears units. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said:_"I have never been in command of such irregularly_ assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Patton failed to reach the Westwall.
Patton was not advancing or being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. Bastogne was on the very southern German flank, their focus being west. The strategic significance of the stand at Bastogne, is over exaggerated. The 18,000 did not change the course of the battle. The German's bypassed Bastogne, placing a containment force around the town.
Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory, with the road from Luxembourg to Bastogne having few German forces. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was far from being one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, 26th Volks-Grenadier having about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind with a small number of operational tanks. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1. Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance pushing them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons stopped the American attack who pulled back. The next day, fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B again retreating. It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day. Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne. After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF, who gave Patton massive ground attack support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall.
The 18,000 men in Bastogne pretty well walked out, even the commander of the US 101st stated that. The Germans had vacated the area heading west.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the weakest German divisions in the west where.
♦ Who did the 3rd Army engage?
♦ Who did the 3rd Army defeat?
♦ Patton never once faced a full strength premier Waffen SS panzer division nor a Tiger battalion.
♦ Patton was not at E Alamein, D-Day or the main area of the Bulge.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates:
♦ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics Bradley's II Corps were employing;
♦ He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division, Truscott of being "afraid to fight";
♦ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps;
♦ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize stalled, he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being "very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect";
♦ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in reporting their losses;
Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated, had incestual relationships and wore cowboy guns. Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his and Eisenhower's orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read:
Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds and_Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies_ by Harry Yeide
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Monty did not plan Market Garden, coming up with the idea and broad outline only. Montgomery was largely excluded from the planning process. It was planned mainly by the Air Force commanders, Brereton and Williams of the USAAF.
The failure points that two US para units, the 101st and the 82nd, failed to seize their bridges. It was Bereton and Williams who:
▪ decided that there would be drops spread over three days, defeating the object of para jumps by losing all surprise, which is their major asset;
▪ rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-day on the Pegasus Bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet; chose the drop and and landing zones so far from the Bridges;
▪ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to take on the flak positions and attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports, thereby allowing them to bring in reinforcements with impunity;
▪ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of “possible flak.“;
The state of play on the 17th, D day, was:
1) the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was largely clear;
2) there were concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally;
3) there were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen;
4) a few scattered about along the road;
5) there was no armour in Arnhem.
That was it.
i) XXX Corps would deal from the Belgium border to Eindhoven;
ii) 101st from Eindhoven to Grave;
iii) 82nd from Grave to north of Nijmegen;
iv) British and Polish paras from north of Nijmegen to north of the Rhine;
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made "remarkable" progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 2 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition, hanging around, spending 2 hours in the village. The Germans blew the bridge when they finally reached it. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured it.
Evidently expecting that Major La Prade's flanking battalion would have captured the highway bridge, these two battalions made no apparent haste in moving through Zon. They methodically cleared stray Germans from the houses, so that a full two hours had passed before they emerged from the village. Having at last overcome the enemy 88 south of the Zonsche Forest, Major LaPrade's battalion caught sight of the bridge at about the same time. Both forces were within fifty yards of the bridge when their objective went up with a roar.
- US Official History.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected. XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and towards the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up.
The road was still largely clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump. XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, making up the delay at Zon, being right on time. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over. If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves, after the 82nd tried again and failed again. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem. XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
According to the official American Army historian, Forrest Pogue, he stated that the failure of US 82nd Airborne to assault the lightly defended Nijmegen bridge immediately upon jumping 'sounded the death knell' for the men at Arnhem.
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In an interview with Maj Gen G. E. Prier-Palmer, British Joint Services Mission in Washington, in 1955, General Browning said the Grave and Nijmegen Bridges must be seized "as soon as possible", although the wooded Groesbeek Heights on the route to the bridge must be held.
Field Order 11 of 13 Sept is clear in section 2 a), putting the bridges first in the writing, that they were to be seized, then the high ground secured and then the roads. Order 1, of 13 September, written by Lindquist of the 508th, states he will wait at the high ground for a Division Order to move from the Heights to the bridge. In short, wait for an Order from Gavin to move.
The heights near De Ploeg, which are really pretty flat being a wooded area but high for Holland, are pretty well between the Drop Zone (DZ) and bridge. The 508th would go through the Heights to reach the bridge. Browning and Gavin naturally did not want German troops between the LZ and the bridge, so the Heights had to be occupied and secure. The 508th CP would be established at the Heights.
Gavin understood the priorities in sending the 508th to the bridge and Groesbeek heights immediately, with Coln Warren's battalion of the 508th assigned the bridge. To get to the bridge from the DZ you have to pass the Groesbeek Heights, so any enemy at the Heights naturally had to be subdued, then secure the area, then send Warren's battalion to the bridge.
It took the 665 men of 508th a painfully slow 3.5 hours to march a few miles from the DZ to the heights, reaching the Groesbeek heights at 1730. They encountered only a few Labour troops in opposition. There were no Germans at the Groesbeek Heights as forward scouts relayed back the situation. Instantly, the Wall bridge became the priority. So, on route Coln Lindquist the head of the 508th could have sent Warren's A and B companies directly to the priority, the Waal bridge, bypassing the Groesbeek Heights, immediately via the riverbank as instructed by Gavin. The rest of the battalion could move to the empty Groesbeek Heights setting up defences at De Ploeg on the Heights. Dutch resistance men informed the 508th that the Germans had largely cleared out of Nijmegen with only 19 guards on the bridge. So all was easy and fine, so the two companies assigned the bridge could move immediately to their objective without a diversion in setting up shop on the Groesbeek Heights.
Despite hearing the good news from the Dutch Underground, Lindquist in command of the 508th was not moving at all, keeping all his men static at De Ploeg. Lindquist was waiting for a Divisional Order from Gavin informing him that the DZ was secure, then send Warren's battalion to the bridge. When Gavin found out Lindquist was static via a liaison officer he was livid, running over to De Ploeg in a Jeep telling Lindquist to get moving to the bridge. Even then, took Lindquist another two hours to send men in force to the bridge.
Three stray men from a forty man patrol sent to the bridge immediately by Warren to confirm what the Dutch Underground told them on reaching DePloeg, took the guards on the south end of the bridge prisoner. They left when no one turned up. When leaving they saw hundreds of Germans pour from the north onto the previously lightly guarded bridge. Later, a company of Warren's main force became lost when they eventually moved towards the bridge. By the time Warren's two companies did reach the bridge in force, the Germans had reinforcing the bridge with hundreds of men. Too late. The first attack on the bridge was just before midnight, 10.5 hours after landing.
▪ The 82nd were expecting German resistance from the east, however it came from the north via the Nijmegen bridge.
▪ Gavin was expecting Lindquist to secure the Groesbeek heights, which were devoid of enemy forces, then immediately move to the bridge, which meant sending Warren's battalion immediately.
▪ Lindquist was expecting Gavin to notify him that the DZ was clear.
Gavin was expecting Lindquist to go to the bridge when it was obvious the Groesbeek heights, on the way to the bridge, were secure. As no Germans were about, the heights were naturally secure. Regarding Lindquist's expected clearing of the LZ before moving from DePloeg. Lindquist did write a Field Order for the 508th on 13 September copied to Gavin, stating that once the heights were secure he would wait for a Divisional Order [from Gavin] to move. Two days later at the jump briefing Gavin verbally overruled Lindquist's Field Order, using a map he told him that he should move to the bridge "without delay". Poor command communications by Gavin.
Poulussen, in Lost at Nijmegen discovered that the 508th jumped without any written offensive orders from Gavin. All was verbal from Gavin to Lindquist of the 508. Chester Graham, the 82nd liaison officer, was at the pre jump meeting in England. He said there was no ambiguity amongst anyone there that the Waal road bridge was the prime target.
In 1945 Historical Officer, Capt. John Westover of the US Army Centre of Military History, was wanting confirmation that if the capture of the Nijmegen bridge had been part of the objectives. In response, dated 25 July 1945, General Gavin was clear: "About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping well, I personally directed Col Lindquist, commanding the 508 PIR to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen Bridge without delay after landing but to keep a close watch on it in the event he needed to protect himself against the Reichswald and he was cautioned to send the battalion via the east of the city.
General Browning never knew men were static at De Ploeg. Like Gavin he was expecting men to be seizing the bridge. Being corps commander, he was busy attempting to communicate with all three parachute divisions. The 82nd did launch a few failed attacks on the bridge. In the afternoon of the next day, 18th, Gavin asked permission to launch another attack. Browning, seeing the bridge was well defended, and the failed attacks, refused, opting to wait for XXX Corps to arrive to seize the bridge. Inexplicably Gavin moved all his men out of Nijmegen town completely to the heights and DZ, giving the town back to the Germans. This made matters worse when XXX Corps arrived who had expended vital time, and ammunition, in flushing them out.
On page 162 of the U.S. Official History:
"many documents regarding the extensive combat interviews were conducted with personnel of the 508th Parachute Infantry, they are inexplicably missing from Department of the Army files."
Read:
1) Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History Of The 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment In World War II by Phil Nordyke.
2) Arnhem 1944 by Christer Bergström.
3) Market Garden, Then and Now by Karl Magry.
4) Lost at Nijmegen by R Poulusson
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@flyoptimum
I prefer facts. In the official US History written by Charles MacDonald in 1963 noticed conflicting statements. Capt. Westover, a US Army historical officer, who had access to all the 82nd Divisional records could find no record of these orders. Official US history determined that Col Lindquist of 508 PIR, Lt Col Stanley of 508 PIR, Lt Col Warren of 1/508 PIR and Capt. Bestebreurtje, a Dutch Liaison officer were not aware of any pre jump orders. It noted the only guidance for the men of 508 PIR was Field Order No 1 which was defensive.
Regarding the shift in priorities from the bridge to Groebeeke Heights, Capt. Westover while preparing the official US history of the US divisions taking part in Market Garden, and who was in possession of after action reports, unit diaries and official reports, still found inexplicable discrepancies. Capt. Westover asked Gen Gavin: "What person, staff or headquarters made the decision to apportion the weight of the 82nd AD to the high ground rather than the bridge at Nijmegen?" Gavin’s reply: "This decision was made by myself and approved by my Corps Commander.". There is no record of the conversation on this matter. Gavin then wrote to Westover saying: "Even if we were driven off the low ground, around the bridges, if the high ground could be held, ultimately the Second Army could accomplish the mission."
Gavin assumed the Germans would not reinforce their troops around Arnhem and Nijmegen, and the British paras in Arnhem could hold on indefinitely. Gavin had chosen this course of action. No concentrated attempt to capture Nijmegen town or the bridge was made until XXX Corps arrived in Nijmegen. XXX Corps successfully seized the bridge, albeit too late to save the British paras holding out on the Arnhem bridge.
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@allangibson8494
The Mustang was basically a British plane made by an the American manufacturer for them. The British Air Ministry directed a six year old inexperienced company, North American Aviation, to the design points they wanted for their plane. They assisted North American who drew it up, as a university lecturer would do in directing students to research various points in a project. The students run off do the research with the lecturer assessing what they did and how it fits into the project as a whole. The Mustang was a British plane made by an American company for them. There was no US forces involvement in the concept, specifications or design. Many Americans lose sight of these fundamental points.
The Rolls Royce Merlin engine made the Mustang perform superbly. The plane initially used an Allison engine, which was only good at low level, as RR could not meet the supply of Merlins at the time, so the Alison it had to be. The US were behind the British in engine supercharging with the Tizard Mission giving the USA details of advanced super charging. Also the cylinder head design of the Alison was not good enough for full supercharging. Stanley Hooker of RR developed the auto controlled twin-speed twin-charger supercharging technology which was given free to the USA. The first use of the Mustang by the US military was for ground attack because of the poor high level performance of the Allison engine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by4lH2whhjk
In the early stages of WW2, the U.S. government allowed the British & French to by-pass them allowing direct approaches to U.S. aircraft makers, as would the British government approach say Hawker. The British needed all types of planes urgently, even the P-40 which was inferior to their own front line planes. But warplanes they were being useful in certain theatres and for training.
In early February 1940 the British asked North American Aviation's President Dutch Kindelberger to supply P-40s made under licence from Curtiss, as Curtiss could not supply demand. Unlike Curtiss North American were far from near full capacity. Kindelberger told the British, without any detailed drawings or plans, "I can build you a better airplane, and I can get it built fast". Contrary to popular belief in the USA, North American did not have a prototype ready design which the Brits just happened to have snapped up under the noses of the US military.
North American were first approached in Feb 1940, who had no "detailed drawings or plans". The British gave this young inexperienced company a chance but they would have to hold their hands. In May 1940 as France was falling, North American still never presented any detailed plans, mailing a "design concept" to the British delegation in New York. This never had the famed laminar flow wings. The British Air Ministry accepted the inferior Allison engine as Rolls Royce were working flat out 24/7 unable to meet demand for Merlins. New Merlin factories were being set up but not yet fully on-line.
In the interim from Feb to May, three months, the British Air Ministry were forming the fundamentals of the design concepts directing North American to Curtiss and NACA the developer of the laminar flow wings, to ensure a fighter with some leading edge design points, not produce another P-40 fly-alike wasting valuable time. The Air Ministry directed NAA to the Curtiss XP-46 experimental plane with all the leading edge design points of top European designs, with a few of their own, rolled into one. It never worked as the individual points never complimented each other when merged into one complete whole.
NAA were ordered by the British Air Ministry to buy the plans and test results of the XP-46 plane from Curtiss if they wanted the job, at a whopping $52,000, a lot of money at the time. Curtiss engineers always said the Mustang was their design. Not quite as the British Air Ministry had a lot to say in the leading design points - they were paying and calling the shots as it was their plane. There was a danger the Mustang may end up the same way as the XP-46 - a plane with leading edge points that never performed as expected. The British Air Ministry took a major gamble with NAA so were active in approving the emerging design points.
The Ministry wanted something better than the poor P-40, being prepared to wait, but realistically never expected Spitfire performance. Initially that was the case with the first deliveries using the Allison engine - better than a P-40 but no Spitfire. The initial Allison engined Mustangs filled an RAF niche, so no problems for the British at that point. A niche the plane filled was that the RAF needed a long range reconnaissance plane that could also perform ground attack being able as a low level fighter if the need was there. The Spitfire was a short range fast interceptor. With the fall of France the RAF needed a plane with range to penetrate over the German border from English air bases.
Reading many US books on the Mustang you would think the concept of the plane was to escort US bombers. That is way off from the truth. The last thing the British Air Ministry were thinking of when laying down the points of the plane was US bomber doctrine. The US were not even in the war. Initially the US military overall didn't want to know the plane. The Mustang was not even in U.S. service when it was shooting down FW-190s by the RAF over France. The Air Ministry gave the U.S. military two planes which were left in the corner of a hangar for a long period. They initially never assessed it. Quite amazing, as the USA never had a decent front line fighter at the time.
The excuse not to take up the plane by U.S. forces was that it was liquid cooled and vulnerable in frontal attack. This was a poor excuse to reject the plane because it wasn't theirs. What went over their heads was that the world's two best fighters locked horns in the Battle of Britain, both with liquid cooled engines. With British support, the Mustang finally was noticed by the U.S. Army Air Force. The US military had to go to England to fully assess the plane as it was finished off in Liverpool being flow by the RAF. They did eventually adopt the plane calling it the Apache and P-51 when in U.S. service.
UK and U.S. Mustangs for the European war theatre were finished off in Liverpool. They were test flown then delivered to the units by young English girls, many of them teenagers. The Mustang was built to British specification and design guidance without a doubt. They specified and paid for it. It never performed at all like the short range interceptor the Spitfire, not having the manoeuvrability of the Spitfire. It was 'fine' and reasonably fast at low altitude with the Allison engine. It could operate over France and even Germany at a push escorting bombers because of the longer range that the British Air Ministry specified. The Mustang filled a niche role for the British. continued......
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...Continued... Rolls Royce. Rolls engineers under Ron Harker went to North American to advise on how to install a Merlin engine in the Mustang. They also gave advice from their work with the RR Mustang X. Rolls-Royce made the first proposal to North American regarding a Merlin 45 engine Mustang in 1940, after Stanley Hooker improved the power by 30%. This was before the plane was operational an still in the R&D stage. The RR Merlin was superior to the Alison engine, also to what it was in February 1940 when North American were first approached by the Air Ministry. The later Merlin 61 had the two-stage auto controlled superchanging developed by again by Stanley Hooker. This gave an extra 70 mph and 15,000 feet of operation to the Merlin. A quantum leap. The pilot just went where he liked without degradation in performance.
RR sent three engineers led by James Ellor to supervise the adaption and manufacture of a Merlin 61, built under licence by Packard, the same type that was already being considered for the Rolls Royce Mustang X experimental series. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Mustang_Mk.X
On 9 June 1942, the first memos from W/C I.R. Campell-Orde of the RAF Air Fighting Development Unit at Duxford, revealed that an effort was being made to convince North American to adopt a Merlin-powered Mustang. Work in the US was setback due to an initial lack of interest and also to mechanical failures of the first Merlin engines built under licence by Packard. Both projects commenced at nearly the same time with the first Mustang X in the air about a month earlier than the North American XP-51B.
The RR Mustang-X programme was 5 or 6 airframes each with different experimentation. RR attempted to have North American accept British Merlin 61s (the two-stage superchargers) in American airframes, it is clear that the prime contractor (NAA) wanted to control the project as control was looking like it was to move over to the UK. NAA was essentially building production-standard aircraft rather than the experimental series that saw each of the RR Mustang Xs trying out new variations of design. An offshoot was the mid-engine RR Griffon engined Mustang that actually made it to the mock-up stage, albeit with a Merlin installed amidships. On the success of the RR Mustang-X built in Nottingham, the Air Ministry ordered hundreds from RR, who declined wanting to remain specialising in engines. NAA remained the prime contractor.
Rolls Royce mass produced Merlins in Crewe, Manchester and Glasgow, also licensing Packard in the USA, using idle US industry. The US made Merlins were to supply the Canadian aircraft factories - to avoid a two-way trans-Atlantic trip and give extra manufacturing when the engine proved very popular with many airframe makers. An agreement was reached in September 1940, with the first Packard built Merlin engine running in August 1941.
Early in 1944 the P-38, P-51B Mustang and P-47C, were dived by the British for compressibility testing at the RAE Farnborough, England at the request of the USAAF. They had trouble when these planes dived onto attacking German fighters when providing top cover for the bombers. The results were that the Mach numbers, the manoeuvring limits, were Mach 0.68 for the P-38, Mach 0.71 for the P-47, and Mach 0.78 for the Mustang. The corresponding figures for the FW-190 and Me109 was Mach 0.75. The tests resulted in the Mustang being chosen for all escort duties. - Page 70, Wings On My Sleeve by Eric Brown, who did the test.
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@DC9622
The British and Canadians took on 90% of the German armour in Normandy. Eight Panzer Divisions and 3 Tiger battalions:
21st Panzer Division (117 Panzer IVs).
Panzer Lehr Division ( 101 Panzer IVs, 89 Panthers).
2nd Panzer Division (89 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers).
116th Panzer Division (73 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers). In reserve just behind the front.
1st SS Panzer Division (98 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers).
9th SS Panzer Division (40 Stugs, 46 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers).
10th SS Panzer Division (38 Stugs, 39 Panzer IVs)
.
12th SS Panzer Division (98 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers).
Tiger Battalion SS101 (45 Tigers).
Tiger Battalion SS102 (45 Tigers).
Tiger Battalion 503 (45 Tigers).
Sources:
Panzers and the Battle For Normandy by Georges Bernage.
Normandy 1944: German Military Organization, Combat Power and Organizational Effectiveness by Niklas Zetterling.
In Normandy the Americans only faced one battalion of 40 assault gun in June (Stugs of 17th SS), apart from a few insignificant early war obsolete French tanks, and only one panzer divisions (2nd SS) in July.
The only time the Americans faced tanks in any numbers in Normandy was during the August Mortain counter-attack. Even then, the panzer divisions had been reduced in strength after engaging British forces around Caen being nowhere near the strength they were when fighting around Caen.
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The state of play on the 17th, D day, was:
1) the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was largely clear;
2) there were concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally;
3) there were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen;
4) a few scattered about along the road;
5) there was no armour in Arnhem.
That was it.
i) XXX Corps would deal from the Belgium border to Eindhoven;
ii) 101st from Eindhoven to Grave;
iii) 82nd from Grave to north of Nijmegen;
iv) British and Polish paras from north of Nijmegen to north of the Rhine;
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 2 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured it.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected. XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and towards the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up.
The road was still largely clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump. XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, making up the delay at Zon. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over. If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves, after the 82nd tried again and failed again. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
According to the official AMERICAN Army historian, Forrest Pogue, he stated that the failure of US 82nd Airborne to assault the lightly defended Nijmegen bridge immediately upon jumping 'sounded the death knell' for the men at Arnhem.
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@flyoptimum
Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower approved, under resourcing the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak". The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself.
XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.
Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time Monty had the Canadians cleared it, or were investing in many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@flyoptimum
The British 1st Airborne made it to Arnhem bridge, taking the north end of the bridge, denying its use to the Germans. The other two airborne units, both US, failed to seize their assigned bridges immediately. If they had, XXX Corps would have been in Arnhem on d-day+1, before any armour came in from Germany. Game set and match. The Germans would not have known what had hit them.
The 12 hour delay caused by the 101st not seizing the Zon bridge, meant the Germans for 12 hours had a critical time window to pour in troops and get armour moving towards Arnhem. The longer the time delay the more Germans poured in, hence more resistance, hence a slower XXX Corps. Obvious.
On top of the 12 hour delay, the 82nd not seizing their bridge at Nijmegen (XXX Corps had to take it for them), caused an additional 36 hour delay. This meant another longer time window for the Germans to keep up the reinforcing. The extra 36 hour delay created by the 82nd, meant a bridgehead over the Rhine was precluded, as the two day time window in total given to the Germans was far too long.
The British paras did their part in securing a crossing over its assigned waterway, the Rhine. The two US para units failed in theirs. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
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@sean640307
Brian Urquart was wrong on just about everything. He had a chip as he was sacked. His great nephew David Rendall occasionally is on Youtube giving some excellent info he got from his gt uncle. One was that SHAEF pushed for Market Garden to protect Antwerp from German counter-attack and artillery fire wanting Noord Brabant, which is the territory up to Nijmegen. Arnhem was added on as it was just a jump over the Rhine. SHAEF got what they wanted. A buffer up to Nijmegen. Brian Urquart died at 101 earlier this year.
He wrote:
It’s also worth pointing out the inaccuracies in his portrayal in many of the books and films. He didn’t get into an argument with Lt General Browning about tanks at Arnhem - Majors don't argue with Lt Generals he told me - he informed the chief of staff- a brigadier - and a few of the brigade majors, that he believed German panzer units had been positioned nearby.
Brian got this information from Enigma code breaking, he was the only ULTRA* cleared officer on the Airborne staff - the main reason he didn’t fly in with Corps headquarters. That information probably included how few tanks there were - but also how many veteran troops and battle-hardened commanders were stationed nearby.
In 1944 he couldn't tell the brigadier, his colleagues or Browning even, where he got his information or its provenance. It’s possible he exaggerated resistance reports and tertiary aerial photos to make his case. Photos like we see in the films have never been found. So it wasn’t quite as clear cut.
When he was interviewed by historians after the war, he had to continue the cover story for ULTRA. When Corneilius Ryan interviewed him for a Bridge too Far in the late 50s, ULTRA was still top secret. Ryan printed Brian’s cover story of aerial photos and Attenborough conflated them with the Tiger II’s - that turned up days later from the Czech border.
The final assessment, that these panzer divisions weren’t fully operational, and the tanks, if any, were junk, was actually the correct one. 1st Airborne would only meet one SP Gun on Day 1, a few partially armed training tanks, armoured cars and half tracks before day 3. They destroyed most of them.
There was no armour in the Arnhem area. The first tanks came from Germany on d-day + 1 in the evening - knocked out by the paras. Records back that up. The RAF state they saw no armour in the area:
Google:
ARNHEM - THE AIR RECONNAISSANCE STORY
It states:
"hardly any tanks were actually present in the Arnhem area on 17 September. The vast majority deployed from Germany or other battle fronts after the airborne landings."
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@sean640307
In hindsight, in my view, Browning should not have gone. Brereton should have told him to stay in England. But Browning was a man who led from the front. Those generals inspired men. Browning was well respected by the US and British paras.
If you wanted to speak to Monty, you went through his troops to his caravan. If you wanted to see a US general you went to the nearest 5 star châteaux. Who got the most respect from their men!
But Browning was not at fault at all. With him being there, he ordered Gavin to take the bridge once he saw the failure, when Gavin's mind was all over the place. Gavin pulled his men completely out of Nijmegen, when they were actually at the southern approaches to the bridge - with Browning not knowing the level of his instability. Then Gavin's men had to fight to get back into the town, not reaching the bridge until XXX Corps came along, who then decided they would take the bridge themselves.
I knew four men who were at Market Garden. Two in the 1st Airborne, and two in XXX Corps, one being my uncle.
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@sean640307
Gen Gavin:
"Just before take-off, I discussed the situation with Col Lindquist and directed him to commit not more than one battalion to the seizure of the Nijmegen Bridge as soon as possible after landing, so as to take advantage of surprise and darkness"
By writing as ‘soon as possible’, Gavin created the illusion that it had been the responsibility of Col Lindquist to decide when to send troops to the Nijmegen Bridge. Gavin successfully created the myth that the failure to immediately attack the bridge was a misunderstanding. That had fallen into history absolving Gavin of the defeat of the British 1st at Arnhem.
The Official US History written by Charles MacDonald in 1963 noticed conflicting statements. Capt. Westover, a US Army Historical officer, who had access to all the 82nd Divisional records could not find any record of these orders. Official US history determined that Col Lindquist (Com 508 PIR), Lt Col Stanley (Exec officer 508 PIR), Lt Col Warren (Com 1/508 PIR) and Capt. Bestebreurtje (Dutch Liaison Off) were not aware of any pre jump orders and in fact the only guidance for the men of 508 PIR was Field Order No 1 which was entirely defensive.
When assessing the shift in priorities from the bridge to Groebeeken Heights, Capt. Westover whilst preparing the Official US history of the US divisions partaking in Market Garden, and in possession of after action reports, unit diaries and official reports etc., still found discrepancies, that could not be explained. Capt. Westover asked Gen Gavin:
"What person, staff or headquarters made the decision to apportion the weight of the 82nd AD to the high ground rather than the bridge at Nijmegen?" Gavin replied: "This decision was made by myself and approved by my Corps Commander."
There is no record of Gavin and Browning's conversation on this matter. An unproven conversation was sufficient for Anglo phobe US historians to suggest that the decision could have been made by Browning. In the US Gavin was absolved of any responsibility.
Gavin wrote to Westover saying:
"Even if we were driven off the low ground, around the bridges, if the high ground could be held, ultimately the Second Army could accomplish the mission"
The Second Army did accomplish the mission - a mission they were not tasked to do. A mission that delayed the time critical operation to preclude a foothold over the Rhine.
Charles Whiting a friend of Gavin’s states in his book ‘’Bloody Bremen’ that Gavin told him in conversation that there was a Soviet spy in Ike’s headquarters, who was passing information to the USSR, who in turn passed it onto Germany in an attempt to slow down the Allied advance. Gavin also said to have admitted in his diary that his actions caused the failure of gaining of a foothold over the Rhine. The Soviets passing on info to Germany is highly fanciful.
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Victor.....
‘At the September 10 conference in Brussels Field-Marshall Montgomery was therefore authorized to defer the clearing out of the Antwerp approaches in an effort to seize the Bridgehead I wanted.'
- Eisenhower. Crusade in Europe: page 336
"Eisenhower approved the operation with certain conditions. Market Garden would commence on 17 September. Securing the approaches to the port at Antwerp would be delayed until Montgomery seized bridgeheads over the Rhine. His priority after seizing the bridgeheads would be gaining the much needed deep water port. He would not continue the attack to Berlin as he had proposed."
- James V. Schultz. A Framework for Military Decision Making Under Risks
A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the School of Advanced Airpower Studies,
SCHOOL OF ADVANCED AIRPOWER STUDIES AIR UNIVERSITY,
Maxwell Air Force Base,
Alabama,
There was actually parity of supplies between all armies in September 1944. Market Garden didn't even involve a ground army, only a corps and some supporting elements. Much of the supplies were dropped by transport planes. The US First Army put on a much larger and more well supplied ground offensive with their twin pronged Hurtgen Forest and Aachen advances which commenced soon after Market Garden, that fared worse than Market Garden for sure. Not one inch of the Market Garden salient was retaken, in fact it was fleshed out. Despite considerably more men and supplies, Hurtgen Forest was a defeat.
Patton himself received four fresh newly equipped divisions in September 1944 for his Lorraine efforts and again he didn't do any better than Market Garden, continuously floundering against Metz for months.
Monty opened Antwerp quicker than Patton took Metz.....and when Monty did that supplies poured through for the next three weeks. Well supplied Americans forces somehow fell asleep in the Ardennes and got their front lines booted in, forcing them into a retreat.
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A prime strategic problem for SHAEF in September 1944 was opening up the approaches to Antwerp and keeping it from German counter-attack - the logistics problem to supply all allied armies. It was:
1) Take Noord Brabant, the land to the north and northeast of Antwerp, or;
2) Take the Schedlt.
Noord Branant had to be taken first, as it was essential. It was taken with limited forces also sent to take the Schedlt. Market Garden had to go ahead regardless of any threat, actually being a success. To use Antwerp and control the approaches, the Scheldt, everything up to the south bank of the lower Rhine at Nijmegen needed to be under allied control.
The low-lying lands, boggy ground between Arnhem and Nijmegen with land strewn with rivers and canals, is perfect geography as a barrier against a German counter-attack towards Antwerp. Without control of Noord Brabant German forces would have been in artillery range of Antwerp, and with a build up of forces and supply directly back to Germany in perfect position for a counter-attack. Market Garden was the offensive SHEAF wanted to secure Antwerp, a prime port for logistics for all allied armies. It made sense as the Germans were in disarray, so should be easy enough to gain.
Monty added Arnhem to form a bridgehead over the Rhine. It made complete sense in establishing a bridgehead over the Rhine as an extra to the operation. You needed Arnhem for a jump into Germany. Everything up to Nijmegen was needed if you wanted to do anything at all - that is protect Antwerp and have a staging point to move into Germany. Gaining Noord Brabant, was vital, and was successfully seized. Fighting in the low lying mud and waterways of the Schedlt, which will take time, while the Germans are still holding Noord Brabant made no sense at all.
SHEAF got what they wanted from a strategic point of view.
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In 1945 Historical Officer, Capt. John Westover of the US Army Centre of Military History, wanting confirmed if the capture of the Nijmegen bridge had been part of the prime objectives. In response – dated 25 July 1945 – Gen Gavin was clear:
"About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping well, I personally directed Col Lindquist, Commanding the 508 PIR to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen Bridge without delay after landing but to keep a close watch on it in the event he needed to protect himself against the Reichswald and he was cautioned to send the battalion via the east of the city."
A straight verbal order to immediately capture the bridge with one battalion. The rest of the regiment were to defend against a possible attack from the Reichswald and clear the LZ. They were to approach the bridge via the flat ground east of the city. Two companies went into Nijmegen with one disobeying orders getting completely lost. Two hours later when they finally rendezvoused, the attack was called off and the battalion called back into defence. In 1947 in his book ‘Airborne Warfare’ Gavin was vague regarding the failure:
"Just before take-off, I discussed the situation with Col Lindquist and directed him to commit not more than one battalion to the seizure of the Nijmegen Bridge as soon as possible after landing, so as to take advantage of surprise and darkness"
Gavin created the illusion that it had been the responsibility of the cautious Col Lindquist to decide when to send troops to the Nijmegen bridge, by writing as ‘soon as possible’. Gavin successfully created the myth that the failure to immediately attack the bridge was a misunderstanding. Gavin failed to issue written offensive orders to Lindquist.
In the official US History written by Charles MacDonald in 1963 he also noticed the conflicting statements. Capt. Westover had access to all the 82nd Divisional records could find no record of these orders. Official US history determined that Col Lindquist of 508 PIR, Lt Col Stanley of 508 PIR, Lt Col Warren of 1/508 PIR and Capt. Bestebreurtje, a Dutch Liaison officer were not aware of any pre jump orders. It noted the only guidance for the men of 508 PIR was Field Order No 1 which was defensive. This was written by Col Lindquist.
Regarding the shift in priorities from the bridge to Groebeeke Heights, Capt. Westover while preparing the official US history of the US divisions taking part in Market Garden, and who was in possession of after action reports, unit diaries and official reports, still found inexplicable discrepancies. Capt. Westover asked Gen Gavin: "What person, staff or headquarters made the decision to apportion the weight of the 82nd AD to the high ground rather than the bridge at Nijmegen?" Gavin’s reply: "This decision was made by myself and approved by my Corps Commander.". There is no record of the conversation on this matter. Gavin then wrote to Westover saying: "Even if we were driven off the low ground, around the bridges, if the high ground could be held, ultimately the Second Army could accomplish the mission."
Gavin assumed the Germans would not reinforce their troops around Arnhem and Nijmegen, and the British paras in Arnhem could hold on indefinitely, it seems that Gavin had chosen this course of action. No real concerted attempt to capture Nijmegen bridge was made until XXX Corps arrived in Nijmegen. XXX Corps successfully seized the bridge, delayed 36 hours, too late to save the British paras holding out on the Arnhem bridge.
Note: From US Official History:
"Although extensive combat interviews were conducted with personnel of the 508th Parachute Infantry, they are inexplicably missing from Department of the Army files. The story has been reconstructed from unit records; Gavin's letters to Westover and OCMH; letters to OCMH from Colonel Warren, 3 July 1955, Colonel Lindquist, 9 September 1955, Col. Thomas J. B. Shanley formerly Executive Officer, 508th Parachute Infantry, 2 Sep 55, and Rev. Bestebreurtje, 25 Oct 56; a postwar interview with Colonel Lindquist by Westover, 14 Sep 45, copy in 82d Airborne Division Combat Interview file; and Westover, The American Divisions in Operation MARKET, a preliminary narrative written in the European theater shortly after the war, copy in OCMH. Captain Westover had access to all the combat interviews when writing his narrative."
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@mgt2010fla
"The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian First Army HQ for the same purpose.
Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation.
"This advance duly began at 0630hrs on August 18 which, as the Canadian Official History remarks, ‘was a day and a half after Montgomery had issued the order for the Canadians to close the gap at Trun, and four and a half days after Patton had been stopped at the Third Army boundary’. During that time, says the Canadian History, the Canadians had been ‘fighting down from the north with painful slowness’ and the Germans had been making their way east through the Falaise gap. They were not, however, unimpeded; the tactical air forces and Allied artillery were already taking a fearful toll of the German columns on the roads heading east past Falaise.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise – Operation Tractable – which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
Read: Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds and_Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies_ by Harry Yeide
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@mgt2010fla
There has been a tradition in the world of downgrading Britain's contribution to WW2, especially in the USA. The British fought a highly technological and industrial war and did so very efficiently. Britain used not only her vast empire but her even larger trading empire to great effect - an army of 2.6 million marched into Burma - the US had nowhere near that many ground troops against the Japanese. The British, with its massive navy, surrounded the Axis, from the Med (cutting off both entrances to the the Med) to the Eastern Atlantic, starving them of food, natural resources and oil, and ensuring where the battles would be fought.
Steel not flesh was the slogan. The British assessed that having massive armies is highly inefficient. The larger the army the higher the casualties. Britain deliberately chose to keep numbers of front line troops as low as possible building machines and using technology advances instead - the BEF in France was the first army were men never marched - fully motorised. The Kangaroo was the first armoured personnel carrier developed in WW2 from adapted tanks, saving many lives, in contrast to the horrendous US casualties. The policy worked, despite fighting for the duration, the only major country to do so, and all around the globe, the country had only lost around 440,000, which is half the British dead of the 1914-1918 war, which lasted two years less. Germany and the USSR lost considerably more troops than they had in WW1.
From the war came amazing British inventions: the cavity magnetron, electronic computer, the world’s most advanced jet engines, anti-submarine electronics, the proximity fuse, as well as the Liberty ship (a Sunderland design), to name but a few. Massive developments in manufacturing, with a staggering 132,500 aircraft and over one million military vehicles. Canada alone produced more wheeled vehicles than Germany.
From the first American servicemen arriving in Britain in 1942, until VE Day, the British provided the USA with 31% of all their supplies in the European Theatre of Operations. Britain's war effort was astonishing – backed by their insistence in continuing the fight in 1940. The British made an enormous contribution to winning the war, being the key agents. This had a positive effect on the future of the world. The declinist view of Britain in the war must be dispelled for good.
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@thevillaaston7811
Montgomery gave the end time of Normandy, which came in ahead of schedule, the bits between were put in by his planners, who needed something to fill in. Monty allowed them to puts some in. Caen was strategically unimportant.
"the timings, when all this was going to happen. The answer is again found in the strategic plan, which states that the Allied armies would have driven the Germans back to the Seine on or about D plus 90, say September 1. Various intermediate targets – phase lines – were introduced into the plan but these were largely, as stated above, for administrative reasons, to give the logistical planners some time frame. Indeed, when Lt Colonel C. P. Dawnay, Monty’s military assistant, was helping his chief prepare for the first presentation of plans on April 7, 1944, eight weeks before D-Day, he asked Montgomery where the phase lines should be drawn between D-Day and D plus 90?
Monty replied, ‘Well, it doesn’t matter, Kit – draw
them where you like’. ‘Shall I draw them equally, Sir?’,
asked Dawnay. ‘Yes, that’ll do’, replied Montgomery.
Montgomery knew that whatever was intended two months before the landing would be altered the minute the troops went ashore. Even so, two other points need explaining. The first is that changes in plan in the course of the battle were only to be expected – and hardly matter if the overall aim of the campaign is kept broadly on track.
-Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
"The ground force plan for Overlord had been drawn up by Montgomery – and approved by Eisenhower and the Combined Chiefs-of-Staff – and in that plan the city of Caen was to be taken – or effectively masked – on D-Day"
-Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
"The Second Army plan states ‘The capture and retention of Caen is vital to the Army plan.’ This intention is confirmed when the final Army plan for D-Day – Order No. 1, was issued on April 21. ‘I Corps will capture Caen’.
Then matters grow cloudy. The orders issued by I Corps do indeed restate that the capture of Caen is vital to the Army plan and confirm that ‘the task of 3 British Division is to capture Caen and secure a bridgehead over the river Orne at that place’, which could hardly be more definite. However, the detailed order goes on to state that, ‘3 Brit Inf Div should, by the evening of D-Day, have captured or effectively masked Caen, and be disposed in depth with brigade locations firmly established, north-east of Bénouville in support of 6th Airborne Division ... having taken over the Bénouville–Ranville crossing ... and north-west of Caen, tied up with the left forward brigade locality of 3 Cdn Inf Div’.
So far so good, but the order goes on: ‘Should the enemy forestall us at Caen and the defences prove to be strongly organised, thus causing us to fail to capture it on D-Day, further direct frontal assaults which may prove costly will not be undertaken without reference to I Corps. In such an event, 3 Brit Inf Div will contain the enemy in Caen and retain the bulk of its forces disposed for mobile operations outside the covering position. Caen will be subjected to heavy air bombardment to limit its usefulness to the enemy and make its retention a costly business.’
This is, in fact, what actually happened and it is interesting that this counterproposal was made well before 3rd Infantry Division went ashore. It therefore appears that the major unit most directly concerned with the capture of Caen on D-Day – Lieutenant-General Crocker’s I Corps – already had an alternative strategy in place to that of the Allied Commanders, Eisenhower and Montgomery but only should the defences prove too strong. This again seems sensible – no plan survives the first contact with the enemy etc."
-Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
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@mgt2010fla
Of the 46 antiquated, leaking, rusting and hardly operational WW1 destroyers supplied to Britain by the USA, few were ever used being scrapped. The few used, taking valuable and considerable shipyard time to get into use antiquated junk, were given to the USSR, France, Poland and Norway. They were given to the UK as a political ploy, to hide the that the US was demanding, and getting, territory to help the British. For which the British were paying.
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@vandeheyeric
Tooze looks at the war from an economic stance. He was right, Germany's economy was far too small. Tooze says that in 1939, Germany taking on just the British empire would mean German defeat. Looking at the state of play then, he was right.
Germany's victory in France was a shock, even to the Germans. A gamble that paid off. As Tooze points out, a gamble that could have easily gone the other way meaning the end of Germany. That put them in an artificial position of superiority. After France, the Germans never had a campaign victory over the British (the British were minor players in France having only 9% of allied forces).
Germany had spectacular gains, but nothing conclusive, however were continually being pushed back - in short, they were always losing but putting up a good fight. Geography played to their advantage, in that the British could not get at them on the Continent, apart from the air. The time they did lock horns on the ground was in the desert which the Germans, despite being with their allies, lost.
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The British 1st Airborne made it to Arnhem bridge, taking the north end of the bridge, denying its use to the Germans. The other two airborne units, both US, failed to seize their assigned bridges immediately. If they had XXX Corps would have been in Arnhem on d-day+1, before any armour came in from Germany. Game set and match. The Germans would not have known what had hit them.
The 12 hour delay caused by the 101st not seizing the Zon bridge, meant the Germans for 12 hours had a critical time window to pour in troops and get armour moving towards Arnhem. The longer the time delay the more Germans poured in, hence more resistance, hence a slower XXX Corps. Obvious.
On top of the 12 hour delay, the 82nd not seizing their bridge at Nijmegen (XXX Corps had to take it for them), caused an additional 36 hour delay. This meant another longer time window for the Germans to keep up the reinforcing. The extra 36 hour delay created by the 82nd, meant a bridgehead over the Rhine was precluded, as the two day time window in total given to the Germans was far too long.
The British paras did their part in securing a crossing over its assigned waterway, the Rhine. The two US para units failed in theirs. XXX Corps hardley put a foot wrong.
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What US historian Harry Yeide wrote of what the Germans thought of Patton:
♦ for most of the war the Germans barely took notice [of Patton].
♦ on March 23 at the Battle of El Guettar—the first American victory against the experienced Germans. Patton’s momentum, however, was short-lived: Axis troops held him to virtually no gain until April 7, when they withdrew under threat from British Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army.
♦ There is no indication in the surviving German military records—which include intelligence reports at the theater, army, and division levels—that Patton’s enemies had any idea who he was at the time. Likewise, the immediate postwar accounts of the German commanders in Tunisia, written for the U.S. Army’s History Division, ignore Patton. Those reports show that ground commanders considered II Corps’s attacks under Patton to have been hesitant, and to have missed great opportunities.
♦ In mid-June [1943], another detachment report described Patton as “an energetic and responsibility-loving command personality”—a passing comment on one of the numerous Allied commanders. Patton simply had not yet done anything particularly noteworthy in their eyes.
♦ But his race to Palermo through country they had already abandoned left the commanders unimpressed. Major General Eberhard Rodt, who led the 15th Panzergrenadier Division against Patton’s troops during the Allied push toward Messina, thought the American Seventh Army fought hesitantly and predictably. He wrote in an immediate postwar report on Sicily, “The enemy very often conducted his movements systematically, and only attacked after a heavy artillery preparation when he believed he had broken our resistance. This kept him regularly from exploiting the weakness of our situation and gave me the opportunity to consolidate dangerous situations.” Once again, Patton finished a campaign without impressing his opponents.
♦ General Hermann Balck, who took command of Army Group G in September, thus did not think highly of Patton—or any other opposing commanders—during this time. Balck wrote to his commander, Runstedt, on October 10, “I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans” Looking back on his battles against Patton throughout the autumn, in 1979 Balck recalled, “Within my zone, the Americans never once exploited a success. Often [General Friedrich Wilhelm von] Mellenthin, my chief of staff, and I would stand in front of the map and say, ‘Patton is helping us; he failed to exploit another success.’”
♦ The commander of the Fifth Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel, aimed a dismissive, indirect critique at Patton’s efforts at Bastogne, writing in his memoirs that the Americans did not “strike with full élan.” The commanders who fought against Patton in his last two mobile campaigns in the Saar-Palatinate and east of the Rhine already knew they could not win; their losses from this point forward were inevitable, regardless of the commanding Allied opponent.
♦ the Germans offered Patton faint praise during and immediately after the war.
♦ posterity deserves fact and not myth. The Germans did not track Patton’s movements as the key to Allied intentions. Hitler does not appear to have thought often of Patton, if at all. The Germans considered Patton a hesitant commanding general in the scrum of position warfare. They never raised his name in the context of worthy strategists.
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@davemac1197
The time stamps state 82nd 504 got to the north end of the bridge, not on it under it, a few minutes before the tanks crossed the bridge. The US official history state that what must have been three lost stragglers, detached from their unit got to it. They were of no use at all in seizing the bridge, if they put their heads up they would have been gunned down from Germans in the bridge girders.
US Official History:
In Nijmegen, as the British tankers approached the south end of the highway bridge, they spotted an American flag floating atop what they took to be the north end of the bridge. This the British assumed to be an American signal that the tanks could cross. In reality, the paratroopers still were a few steps from the highway bridge; [they were in Lent nearly a mile from the prime target, the road bridge] the flag was flying from the north end of the railroad span. Spraying shells and machine gun bullets into the girders, the British tankers nevertheless raced onto the bridge. Three tanks reached the far end. Three privates from Companies H and I, 504th Parachute Infantry, got on the north end of the bridge at almost the same moment. The time was 19I0.
The times on the map and official history do not correlate. The map say the tanks crossed at 1830, 45 minutes before the three lost stragglers reached the bridge.
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@davemac1197
From US Official history....
As night came the British stopped in Valkenswaard, their "formal" objective. The objective of Eindhoven, which General Horrocks had indicated he hoped to reach on D-Day, lay six miles to the north.
So, XXX Corps was on schedule meeting their objective. XXX Corps reached Eindhoven at 1230 hrs, [d-day+1] running through without stopping through the night, only to stop at the Zon bridge which the US 101st failed to seize.
US Official history...
at 0645 (D plus 2, 19 September) the armor rumbled across [the Zon bridge].
That is about a 19 hours delay - OK knock off an hour for getting through Eindhoven, say 18 hours. An 18 hours delay because the US 101st failed to seize their objective. They never used a coup de main using gliders. If they did they it would have been highly likely they would have secured the Zon bridge.
US Official history....
Spearheading the 30 Corps ground column, reconnaissance troops of the Guards Armoured Division linked with Colonel Tucker's 504th Parachute Infantry at Grave at 0820 the morning of D plus 2, 19 September. Major formations of the British armor were not far behind.
XXX Corps covered over 26 miles in 2 hr 45 mins, averaging about 7 mph. They got to Zon at about 1330 hrs d-day+1, So they would have reached the 82nd at at Nijmegen at 1615 hrs d-day+1, at the latest. More like an hour earlier, or as fast as the vehicles could go. If the 82nd had secured the Nijmegen bridge XXX Corps would have linked up with the British paras early evening d-day+1.
The situation on the 17th at H hour, d-day, was:
♦ Heavy German forces on the Dutch-Belgian border - naturally as it was their front line
♦ A few German infantry north of Eindhoven.
♦ About 600 older men of a training unit at Nijmegen, who were moving north to safety on hearing of the para drops.
♦ Some scattered German infantry at Arnhem.
♦ The road from north of Eindhoven to Arnhem was pretty well totally free.
XXX Corps brushed aside the heavy German resistance on the Dutch-Belgian border, with "remarkable" progress as the US Official history states.
From 21st Army Group Orders:
Final point of PHASE I:
(f) The Div may conc SOUTH of EINDHOVEN in areas of the CL preparatory to further adv.
conc = concentration area:
Which is an area, usually in the theatre of operations, where troops are assembled before beginning, or continuing, active operations. It says: preparatory to further adv. adv = advance. So, on phase 1 they were to concentrate South of Eindhoven before (preparatory) to advancing. That is clear. When concentrating that is gathering all vehicles in one location. Vehicles will still be moving into this concentration location at 35 vehicles to every mile of the train at a hoped 10 mph. If the vehicles move at 10mph from the starting point the lead vehicles should be south of Eindhoven in 1 hour. But the lead have to stop to concentrate. And 35 vehicles in each mile at a hoped 10 mph are pouring into the concentration location. It does not say how many vehicles have to be in the concentration area before moving off again.
Now onto phase 2. Phase 2 clearly states that it will start at 1st light on D+1. It says:
PHASE II: (a) The Div will continue the adv
That is advance after phase 1 is concluded of course. To continue the advance you have to be stopped. Phase 1 concludes south of Eindhoven as the force concentrated. Clear. The document says a hoped 10 mih (10mph), but not for phase 1 as the forces are concentrated south of Eindhoven at end of phase 1. South of Eindhoven is approx 11 miles from the start point. It only expects 11 miles of advance in the first 5 hours, which is understandable as German forces formed a line in front of British forces at the northern British front on the Belgian/Dutch border.
So, on D-day XXX Corps have to get to Eindhoven which is 11 miles and depending on tactic conditions it is hoped they will move at 10 mph when moving north from Eindhoven. There are two different points here:
1. Target time -
XXX Corps do not have 100% control of the time to reach targets, except south of Eindhoven.
2. Rate of Movement, when "moving" -
XXX Corps have near 100% control of this.
XXX Corps when moving were moving not quite as hoped, but rather than expected, irrespective of the tactical situation. Reaching hoped for vague target times (which are not specific only roughly deducted) are different. Indeed as XXX Corps were dependent on the MARKET side of the operation, the airborne units, to keep up their rate of movement.
XXX Corps were not slow. They maintained the less than a hoped speed of movement, but clearly what was realistically expected. The only times they did not move were due to the US 101st and 82nd, when both failed to seize bridges, which was out of XXX Corp's control. XXX Corps had to seize the bridges themselves or create the bridge (Bailey bridge). When XXX Corps turned up at Nijmegen at 0820 at D+2, given the approx 12 hour delay at Zon when the 101st failed to seize the bridge, they were near enough at an expected rate of movement - when they were actually moving. Less than hoped, but clearly adequate to complete the operation.
The longer the delay, the more time for the Germans to pour in troops and armour. Time was vital to a successful operation. All it needed was the three para units to secure their assigned bridges immediately, then XXX would have run up the empty road to Arnhem, crossing the Rhine on d-day plus 1 with a successful operation.
The British First Airborne secured their crossing in denying it to the Germans, the other two US units failed.
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Patton was an average US general, no more, after WW2 most German generals had never heard of him. A US media creation, elevating the average beyond their status.
"The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian First Army HQ for the same purpose. Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
In Normandy, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton who came in late in Normandy, faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact. This eastern dash devoid of German forces was the ride the US media claimed Patton was some sort of master of fast moving armour.
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed in The Lorraine with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were re-fitting and rebuilt after the Normandy battles. The Panzer Brigades had green crews with little time to train, unfamiliar with their tanks, had no recon elements only meeting their unit commander on his arrival at the front. These were not elite forces. The 17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, equipped only with assault guns not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy being below strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine.
In The Lorraine, the Third Army faced a rabble full of eyes and ears units. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said: "I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Patton failed to reach the Westwall.
Patton was not advancing or being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. Bastogne was on the very southern German flank, their focus being west. The strategic significance of the stand at Bastogne, is over exaggerated. The 18,000 did not change the course of the battle. The German's bypassed Bastogne, placing a containment force around the town. Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory, with the road from Luxembourg to Bastogne having few German forces. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was far from being one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, 26th Volks-Grenadier having about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind with a small number of operational tanks. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne.
Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1. Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were being stopped by forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance pushing them back.
▪ Start line for Patton's attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, 15km southwest of Bastogne;
It took him five days to get through to Bastogne;
▪ On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night;
▪A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons stopped the American attack who pulled back;
▪The next day, allied fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders; The attack to resume the next afternoon;
▪A German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B again retreating; It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont;
▪They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day.
Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF, who gave Patton massive ground attack support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall. US historian Roger Cirillo said, "Patton launched attack, after attack, after attack, after attack, that failed. Because he never waited to concentrate".
The 18,000 men in Bastogne pretty well walked out, even the commander of the US 101st stated that. The Germans had vacated the area heading west. Decades later, Eisenhower recalled how Patton would telephone with frustrating progress reports, saying: “General, I apologize for my slowness. This snow is God-awful. I’m sorry.”
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the weakest German divisions in the west where.
▪ Who did the 3rd Army engage?
▪ Who did the 3rd Army defeat?
▪ Patton never once faced a full strength premier Waffen SS panzer division nor a Tiger battalion.
▪ Patton was not at E Alamein, D-Day or the main area of the Bulge.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates:
▪ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics Bradley's II Corps were employing;
He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division, Truscott of being "afraid to fight";
▪ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps;
▪ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize stalled, he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being "very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect";
▪ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in reporting their losses;
Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated, had incestual relationships and wore cowboy guns. Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his and Eisenhower's orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read:
Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds and
Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies by Harry Yeide
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Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust over other fronts and even seizing Antwerp and clearing the Schedlt. Clearing the Scheldt would take time as the German 15th SS army, highly experienced from the Russian front, had set up shop in the Scheldt and not retreated back into Germany, under Hitler's orders. All available supplies would be directed to this northern thrust.
"Since Eisenhower — the Supreme Commander and Ground Force Commander — approved the Arnhem operation rather than a push to clear the Scheldt, then surely he was right, as well as noble, to accept the responsibility and any resulting blame? The choice in early September was the Rhine or Antwerp: to continue the pursuit or secure the necessary facilities to solve the logistical problem? The decision was made to go for the Rhine, and that decision was Eisenhower’s."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"On 4 Sept, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr"
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen to British troops when he issued the northern thrust directive. Montgomery wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive, devising Operation Comet, multiple crossings of the Rhine, to be launched on 2 Sept, being cancelled due to German resistance and poor weather. Operation Comet was not presented to Eisenhower for his approval. Montgomery asked Brereton, an American, of the First Allied Airborne Army, to drop into the Scheldt in early September - he refused.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 Sept had divisions of the US 1st Army and Montgomery's view of taking multiple bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. The British 2nd Army needed some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow). Hodges' would protect the right flank. the Canadians would protect the left flank from the German 15th army.
"the narrow thrust was reduced to the Second Army and two US corps, the XIX and VII of Hodges’ First Army, a total of around eighteen Allied divisions"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
The northern thrust was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944."
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower’s reply of 5 September to Montgomery deserves analysis, not least the part that concerns logistics. The interesting point is that Eisenhower apparently believes that it is possible to cross the Rhine and take both the Ruhr and the Saar — and open the Scheldt — using the existing logistical resources."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp. In thinking this Ike was wrong."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Post-Normandy Bradley seemed unable to control Patton, who persistently flouted Eisenhower’s directives and went his own way, aided and abetted by Bradley. This part of their relationship quickly revealed itself in matters of supply, where Hodges, the commander of the US First Army, was continually starved of fuel and ammunition in order to keep Patton’s divisions rolling, even when Eisenhower’s strategy required First Army to play the major role in 12th Army Group’s activities."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again, and being bogged down - again. The resources starved First Army could not be a part of northern thrust as Bradley and Patton, against Eisenhower's orders, were syphoning off supplies destined for the First army. This northern thrust over the Rhine, as Eisenhower envisaged, obviously would not work as he thought. A lesser operation was devised by Montgomery, Market Garden, eliminating the divisions of US First Army, with only ONE crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London wanted eliminating ASAP, giving a 60 mile long salient buffer between German forces and the important port of Antwerp. This would only have one corps above Eindhoven, a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time. Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance. Eisenhower should have fired Bradley and Patton for sabotaging the Northern Thrust operation.
Montgomery did not plan or was in involved in Market Garden's execution. Montgomery, after fixing the operations objectives with Eisenhower to the measly forces available, gave Market Garden planning to others, mainly USAAF generals, Brereton and Williams. General Brereton, who liked the plan, agreed to it with even direct input. Brereton ordered the drops will take place during the day and Brereton oversaw the troop carrier and supply drops schedules. Williams forbid fighter-bombers to be used. A refusal by Brereton and the operation would never have gone ahead; he earlier rejected Montgomery's initial plan of a drop into the Scheldt at Walcheren Island.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time the Canadians had cleared, or were investing, many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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ئم وحوادث
http://www.airpowerstudies.co.uk/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/Arnhem.pdf
"the composition of the German forces at Arnhem was far more complex than most published histories of Market Garden ha tended to suggest. The two SS panzer divisions had been operating far below their full strength on the eve of the operation and, while 1st Airborne was ultimately confronted by armour in considerable strength, hardly any tanks were actually present in the Arnhem area on 17 September. The vast majority deployed from Germany or other battle fronts after the airborne landings"
- ARNHEM - THE AIR RECONNAISSANCE STORY by the RAF
Some low level pictures of a few Panzer IIIs and IVs were taken in early September for operation Comet. Ryan on speaking to
Urquhart got it wrong. "Urquhart’s account is therefore somewhat perplexing. Further problems arise if we seek to document the events he described. Several extensive searches for the photographs have failed to locate them. Ostensibly, this might not seem surprising, as most tactical reconnaissance material was destroyed after the war, but Urquhart insisted that the Arnhem sortie was flown by a Spitfire squadron based at Benson; this would almost certainly mean 541 Squadron. Far more imagery from the Benson squadrons survived within the UK archives, but no oblique photographs showing tanks at Arnhem. In addition, although the Benson missions were systematically recorded at squadron and group level, not one record matches the sortie Urquhart described."
"The low-level missions targeting the bridges on 6 September were scrupulously noted down, but all other recorded reconnaissance sorties over Arnhem were flown at higher altitudes and captured vertical imagery. Equally, it has proved impossible as yet to locate an interpretation report derived from a low-level mission that photographed German armour near Arnhem before Market Garden." "As for Brian Urquhart’s famous account of how a low-level Spitfire sortie took photographs of tanks assumed to belong to II SS Panzer Corps, the reality was rather different. In all probability, the low-level mission that Urquhart recalled photographed the bridges and not the tanks"
- ARNHEM - THE AIR RECONNAISSANCE STORY by the RAF
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@roodborstkalf9664
Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower, approved the under resourced operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the reason why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak". The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 8 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men in the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself.
XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.
Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm
The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
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@EdgyNumber1
Again..
Just for you....
Germany had no realistic ability to overrun the UK. The British knew what sort of chance the Germans had. The reason the Germans had no chance was that the British were ready and waiting with factories turning out the latest equipment 24/7. During the so-called Battle of Britain, the Royal Navy had a mass of ships at Gibraltar ready for offensive operations against the Italians, they took the invasion of Britain really so seriously.
The German Navy was near non-existent. The single battleship the British kept in Portsmouth was quite able to handle everything the Germans had on the surface, together with the four flotillas of destroyers. I'm not counting the Home Fleet, which had additional powerful ships. In other words, the British kept plenty of naval force at home. All they needed to deal with the Germans with a good deal to spare. Also, 55 Matilda 2 tanks, which was immune from German anti-tank guns, were sent to North Africa, the Brits took the invasion so seriously.
Admiral Raeder said he could not guarantee putting down an invasion force, even with German air superiority, when the Royal Navy was still there. General Jodl talked of his men going through a British mincing machine.
In Churchill's memoirs, he says that he was prepared to defeat tens of thousands of Germans if they invaded (take that as slaughter). Presumably even if they arrived with weapons and not half-dead from seasickness in a 24 hour sea trip in barges being attacked from sea, land and air. The British kept plenty of force at home, all they needed.
And what were the Germans supposed to do? Sortie with two or three heavy cruisers, and blast their way through the Home Fleet or the Channel defences? At that point in the war, Bismarck was still under construction, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were under repair from the Norway operation, two of six heavy cruisers sunk, two of six light cruisers sunk, and only five of those could be considered modern warships, a large number of their destroyers were sunk at Narvik. The repair status on the rest of the ships wasn't real good. The Germans never even had an effective torpedo plane. The Stuka dive bomber was predictable in that it dived vertically. It was easily shot down and suffered so many losses in the Battle of Britain it was withdrawn from the battle.
So, with the German navy whittled to almost nothing, and the army incapable of crossing with enough force to win, the only threats was the then small U-boats force and the Luftwaffe. The British were therefore sparing about sending the RAF overseas. I don't know of any significant deployment of Spitfires outside the UK until the second half of 1942, and escort vessels kept on being built. The RAF defeated the Luftwaffe over Dunkirk, so the Germans knew they were no push over.
If anyone thinks that operation Sealion was a serious attempt at an invasion they are deluded. Even German generals never took it seriously. An invasion in concrete barges towed by tugs and no navy to speak of? The Germans knew the UK had a large industry working 24/7, the same size as Germany's, and the largest navy in the world to their virtually none.
The RAF was large with a large bomber force, which the Germans could not knock out. Any invasion at the few suitable invasion beaches would be met at the beaches by all types of aircraft. These could be based out of Me 109 range. State-of-the-art fighters would still be produced 24/7. There would always be top line fighters around.
According to Guderian in "Panzer Leader", and by pretty much any historian to follow, Sealion (Zee Lowe?) could succeed only with complete air superiority over the invasion areas, and at least naval equality in the Channel. Hence the air Battle of Britain, hard fought and clearly won by Britain. Naval equality was a pipe dream for Germany, but a pipe smoked only if the Luftwaffe could attain a decisive victory. Given the failure of the prerequisite, there is really no point in debating the if Germans could invade the UK.
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Montgomery was in charge of all ground forces in Normandy. It came in ahead of schedule with less casualties than expected. Eisenhower, supreme commander, a political job with enough to do in that position, then also took on the ground forces job. He had to much on his plate. He was inexperienced for the role. All went pear shaped with his broad front, which stretched from Switzerland to the North Sea. There was not enough punch anywhere all along the line to force through. Eisenhower was out of his depth.
"Returning to his theme in a letter to Eisenhower, written on 18 September, Montgomery stated — yet again — that time was of the essence, that there was not enough logistical support to sustain such a big effort [broad front], that one route, preferably the northern one, must have priority"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Monty wanted divisions of the US First Army on his right flank at Market Garden. This was rejected. It amounted to three corps with only one above Eindhoven. An absolute disgrace.
"By the evening of 14 September, the day V and VII Corps of the US First Army opened their attacks, Patton had established half a dozen crossing points over the Moselle, and was heading east, consuming great quantities of fuel and ammunition. The outcome was that Patton did not stop until brought to a halt by the German army in front of Metz. It should be noted that this move, designed by Bradley and Patton to check Montgomery, actually had a dire effect on Bradley’s other contingent, the US First Army, which was starved of fuel and artillery ammunition at Aachen."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley and Patton were conspiring, in disobeying orders, to scupper a fellow allied commander. Unbelievable.
"On 16 September, when Eisenhower told Bradley that logistical priority must go to First Army and Patton must stop, Patton again told Bradley that the Third Army must get involved ‘at once’ and asked Bradley to ignore this order and ‘not to call me until after dark on the nineteenth."
"On 17 September, again defying his Supreme Commander and with the backing of his Army Group commander, Patton launched an all-out attack on his two prime objectives, sending XX Corps against Metz and XII Corps in a drive for the Rhine. Success can justify such actions, but *neither attack succeeded.*"
"Bradley now faced a considerable dilemma. By favouring Patton at the expense of Hodges he had ensured that neither Army could actually achieve anything — and he had undermined Eisenhower’s current strategy at the same time. By 20 September, the Allied armies had to face the unpalatable fact that the days of rapid advances against a retreating foe were over."
-Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower should have fired Bradley and Patton. The US had excellent corps commanders like Collins and Truscot who would have done better jobs.
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@arcanondrum6543
They landed 1330 hrs local time. RAF was clear it could land land in daylight.
10 of the 12 howitzers that landed on the 17th were in operation immediately. These howitzers broke up German pockets of attack in the first 24 hrs.
Monty didn’t plan Market Garden, coming up with the idea and broad outline only. He had no involvement in its execution.
It was planned mainly by the Air Force commanders, Brereton and Williams of the USAAF and Hollinghurst of the RAF.
It was Bereton and Williams who:
▪ decided that there would be drops spread over three days, defeating the object of para jumps by losing all surprise, which is their major asset; rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-day on the Pegasus Bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
▪ chose the drop and and landing zones so far from the Bridges; Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to take on the flak positions and attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports, thereby allowing them to bring in reinforcements with impunity;
▪Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of “possible flak.“;
A destruction of an Arnhem myth. The choice of drop zones was in the gift of the US Air Force commanders, not the airborne commanders.
The air planners decision was that ground-attack fighters were not to be sent over the battlefield while escort fighters were in the air protecting supply drops. This decision denied the airborne units the vital assistance that these ground-attack aircraft had been giving to the troops in Normandy just a month before, and a lack of air support exacerbated the problems of the airborne units.
From THE WAR IN WESTERN EUROPE 1944-1945. Rick Atkinson:
“General Brereton’s troop carrier commanders had insisted that only a single mission fly on Sunday; a second sortie would ostensibly exhaust air and ground crews and leave insufficient time to service and reload the planes (although double missions over the same distance had been flown from Italy in Dragoon the previous month). Pleas by airborne commanders and by an emissary from Montgomery to Brereton’s headquarters failed to reverse the decision.”
These kind of decisions ended up being crucial flaws and it was Brereton who enforced them, not Montgomery. The US air commanders made the wrong choices throughout the planning.
XXX Corps took and kept 100km of ground up that road to the Rhine. Monty’s idea was actually a good one, as nearly all the relevant personnel involved agreed. Including the Americans. Eisenhower and Brereton, were the ones who had to agree with it and give it the go ahead. They very much liked the idea.
Eisenhower:
“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.”
Beyond the initial broad outline, Monty didn’t plan the operation and nor did he have any jurisdiction over the air forces. He can consult and discuss but he cannot give them orders. Monty’s aides tried to persuade Brereton to double missions on the 17th but Brereton refused.
Do not get your history from Hollywood.
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@arcanondrum6543
You are very confused.
The state of play on the 17th, D day, was:
1) the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was largely clear;
2) there were concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally;
3) there were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen;
4) a few scattered about along the road; 5) there was no armour in Arnhem.
That was it.
i) XXX Corps would deal from the Belgium border to Eindhoven;
ii) 101st from Eindhoven to Grave;
iii) 82nd from Grave to north of Nijmegen;
iv) British and Polish paras from north of Nijmegen to north of the Rhine;
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 2 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition, hanging around in village. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured it.
Evidently expecting that Major La Prade's flanking battalion would have captured the highway bridge, these two battalions made no apparent haste in moving through Zon. They methodically cleared stray Germans from the houses, so that a full two hours had passed before they emerged from the village. Having at last overcome the enemy 88 south of the Zonsche Forest, Major LaPrade's battalion caught sight of the bridge at about the same time. Both forces were within fifty yards of the bridge when their objective went up with a roar.
- US Official History.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected. XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and towards the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up.
The road was still largely clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump. XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, largely making up the delay at Zon. They reached Nijmegen expecting to speed over the bridge, instead seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to run over.
If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves, after the 82nd tried again and failed again. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
According to the official AMERICAN Army historian, Forrest Pogue, he stated that the failure of US 82nd Airborne to assault the lightly defended Nijmegen bridge immediately upon jumping 'sounded the death knell' for the men at Arnhem.
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Eisenhower was in command, not the British. From American historian Roger Cirillo’s paper No Band of Brothers:
The Eisenhower view of concentration at the operational level had brought stalemate or disaster repeatedly to Allied arms in the Mediterranean. His support of a “far” landing in Casablanca to please Marshall, rather than a closer landing to weight his attack for Tunis, the strategic object; his far-fetched SATIN plan to dash laterally across Tunisia without roads, transport, or logistics that brought on the Kasserine fiasco; his wasteful landing of Eighth Army in the toe of Italy, rather than pushing for a Second army sized-landing north of Salerno; and his farcical plan to outflank the Winter Line in Italy with a single division which hatched the too-small and subsequently disastrous Anzio landings - all these were the result of Staff college maxims concerning boldness and maneuver that played well in crayons on maps but which the Germans often turned into bloody horror-shows when attempted with real troops. Failure, of course, was accorded in military tradition to subordinates. Ike learned nothing.”
Eisenhower’s broad front strategy was a disaster.
The Chief of Staff to the German C-in-C West, Field-Marshal von Rundstedt, later considered:
“the best course of the Allies would have been to concentrate a really strong striking force with which to break through past Aachen to the Ruhr area. Strategically and politically, Berlin was the target. Germany’s strength is in the north. He who holds northern Germany holds Germany. Such a break-through, coupled with air domination, would have torn in pieces the weak German front and ended the war. Berlin and Prague would have been occupied ahead of the Russians. There were no German forces behind the Rhine, and at the end of August our front was wide open.There was the possibility of an operational break-through in the Aachen area, in early September. This would have facilitated a rapid conquest of the Ruhr and a quicker advance on Berlin. By turning the forces from the Aachen area sharply northward, the German 15th and 1st parachute Armies could have been pinned against the estuaries of the Maas and the Rhine. They could not have escaped eastwards into Germany.”
General Blumentritt, in The Other Side of the Hill, op. cit. Blumentritt reiterated the view on publication of Monty’s memoirs in 1958, as did General Kurt Student von Manteuffel, wh commanded the Fifth Panzer Army in the Battle of the Bulge:
I am in full agreement with Montgomery. I believe General Eisenhower’s insistence on spreading the Allied force’s out for a broader advance was wrong.The acceptance of Montgomery’s plan would have shortened the war considerably. Above all, tens of thousands of lives- on both sides- would have been saved.
-Monty, The Field-Marshal 1944–1976. Nigel Hamilton.
“Despite objections raised to Montgomery’s plan of a assault on a 40 division front, it was more sensible than Eisenhower’s insistence on the entire front being in motion set all times, for no better reason than he could not abide the thought that the two American army groups would not participate as entities in the anticipated victory. Not only did Eisenhower fail to heed Montgomery’s suggestions, but also he never seemed to understand the possible benefits. He was evidently unable to understand that to supply 40 divisions attacking on one front would have been an easier task than to supply first one army and then the other as each in turn went over to the offensive. It was this concentration of effort which Eisenhower failed to understand and implement.“
-Eisenhower and the Art of Warfare. DJ Haycock.
“.... but in the autumn of 1944 his [Eisenhower] strategy was little short of lamentable: to pretend otherwise is a denial of the facts. On the evidence presented during the months between the Normandy breakout and the end of the Bulge, the facts suggest that Eisenhower was a superb Supreme Commander but an indifferent field commander.“
-The Battle for the Rhine 1944. Neillands, Robin.
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@grjoe4412
Eisenhower's broad front was a joke. Only because the Germans blew their last reserves at the Bulge, the war was over in 1945. It was predicted to run to 1946. It could have been over by Christmas 1944 if the professional British were still in charge of all ground forces.
General Bodo Zimmermann, Chief of Operations, German Army Group D, said that had the strategy of Montgomery succeeded in the autumn of 1944, there would have been no need to fight for the West Wall, not for the central and upper Rhine, all of 24 which would have fallen automatically.
Indeed, had Monty's idea for a 40 division concentrated thrust towards the Ruhr been accepted by Eisenhower instead of messing about in the Lorraine, Alsace, Vosges etc, it would have all been over for the Germans in the west. A 1985 US Army report of the Lorraine Campaign castigated it as having no first rate objectives.
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In 1941 the British were concurrently fighting in all theatres of war, in all corners of the globe and against better prepared forces of greater numbers. Germany’s war was regional, extending from their borders - all logistics went directly over land back to Germany, apart from North Africa where the Italians provided the sea transport back to nearby Italy. Italy and Vichy France too. Japan’s war was confined to a radius around Japan. Taking on all these countries and securing wins for the free World was pure brilliance. As well as achieving the first three victories against the ‘unstoppable’ German military war machine, Britain achieved that which no other nation in the world could even possibly dream of accomplishing in the early 1940s.
Britain fought a global war in the:
▪ Middle East;
▪ Far East;
▪ Indian subcontinent;
▪ Pacific;
▪ North Africa;
▪ West Africa;
▪ East Africa;
▪ North Atlantic;
▪ South Atlantic;
▪ North Sea;
▪ Barents Sea;
▪ Arctic Sea;
▪ Mediterranean;
▪ Adriatic;
▪ Mainland Western Europe;
▪ Eastern Europe;
▪ Scandinavia.
The British were the only military power in human history to fight in such globally spread theatres of conflict. For the third year running, Britain was propping up an ally - France, USSR, then the USA. The incompetence of US Navy to provide convoy protection on its east coast almost lost the allies the Battle of the Atlantic. Six hundred ships off the US eastern seaboard were lost in the first six months of 1942. Shipping losses climbed to a level that undermined British ability to supply themselves, keep the Soviets in the war, and keep reinforcements flowing to the Middle East and Asia. The British quickly deployed 60 escort vessels to cover the US coast. In 1942 the USA was a liability. For most of 1942 the British Commonwealth held the line, kept back the combined efforts of Germany, Italy and Japan, with minimal input from the USA compared to her potential power, keeping the Atlantic and Indian oceans open with supplies flowing to the vital armies in the Middle East and Asia, and to the USSR. No other empire in the history of the world has been capable of such a sustained multi-continent and multi-ocean operation.
In 1942 the British Commonwealth was fighting a three continent, four ocean campaign, against three major powers and keeping the USSR supplied The thousands of tanks and aircraft sent to the USSR would have saved Singapore.
The total British losses of territory and people in the early war were:
▪ One third of the territory the Soviets lost;
▪ Half of the people the Americans lost - mainly Philippines;
Yet those nations were fighting only on one front and only against one of the three powers. The British Commonwealth had far more ground troops in action against the Japanese than the Americans. Also the British were maintaining sea control over the North Atlantic, South Atlantic, Mediterranean and Indian Ocean. And then provided aircraft carriers and cruisers to help in the Pacific - while the USA concentrated on just one of those theatres.
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German labour mobilisation:
The fact that more women were not mobilized for war work is sometimes taken as one more symptom of the inability of the Nazi regime to demand sacrifices from the German population. In this respect it has often been contrasted to Britain, where an increase in female participation in the workforce was the key to sustaining the war effort. Such comparisons, however, are completely misleading, since they ignore the fact that the labour market participation of German women in 1939 was higher than that reached by Britain and the United States even at the end of the war. In 1939, a third of all married women in Germany were economically active and more than half of all women between the ages of 15 and 60 were in work. As a result, women made up more than a third of the German workforce before the war started, compared to a female share of only a quarter in Britain. A year later, the share of German women in the native workforce stood at 41 per cent, compared to less than 30 per cent in Britain. Not surprisingly, over the following years Britain caught up. But even in 1944 the participation rate for British women between the ages of 15 to 65 was only 41 per cent, as against a minimum of 51 per cent in Germany already in 1939.
- Adam Tooze, Wages of Destruction - The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy
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@thevillaaston7811
Basic facts. The state of play on the 17th was:
1) the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was clear;
2) there were concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally;
3) there were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen;
4) a few scattered Germans along the road;
5) there was no armour in Arnhem.
That was it.
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 2 km to the Zon bridge with no heavy opposition. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured the bridge.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected.
XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and towards the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on the road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up. The road was still pretty clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump.
XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, making up the delay at Zon. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves, after the 82nd tried again and failed again. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
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T S Birkby wrote:
"https://www.scribd.com/document/33755316/Operation-Market-Garden-1944 APPENDIX 'L', page 93/94"
"So according to PHASE II (a), Guards Armoured Division expected to be at the final objective at Nunspeet on the second day. Meaning in Nijmegen and Arnhem on the second day. There is no other mentions of a time plan in that whole document from 21st Army Group"
The Orders. Not an after match analysis. It says:
PHASE II: (a) The Div will continue the adv two up,
as ordered by GOC at first lt [light] D+1 and will go
through to the final objective.
It says when the the Guards are to be SOUTH of EINDHOVEN at 1st light D+1 to then continue. That is all. No times stated to reach anything else. The document wanted the Guards to be south of Eindhoven on the morning of D+1, that is all in any stated time for an objective. From the starting point to Nijmegen bridge, south of Eindhoven is only one quarter of the distance. So approx 18 hours to travel 11 miles means 72 hours (3 days) to get to Nijmegen. So by simple deduction, that means XXX Corps are expected at 1400 hrs at D+3 at Nijmegen bridge by that rate of travel. They got to Nijmegen at D+2 at first light.
When Browning knew that the bridge was not taken he ordered Gavin to take it by the morning of the 19th (D+2) at the latest - the time XXX Corps actually rolled up to Nijmegen.
Sorry FullMontyUK, I eventually got that document - which is an after match analysis, written 7 years later in 1951. It has no references, and on page 24, it says the Guards as planned were to be at Nijmegen bridge at D+1 at noon. So this document states that a whole armoured corps and its supply and support were to fight 55 miles into enemy territory in 22 hours. To call that highly ambitious is an understatement. The 21st Army Group's Orders prior to the attack, say nothing whatsoever of such a planned time. T S Birkby didn't get it quite right. It is safe to say that document is wrong.
On page 89 it does say:
"It also appears that if elements of the airborne troops had moved to the Nijmegen bridge more quickly and in more strength on D-day the situation there would not have reached such serious proportions"
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Cody Sonnet
Ohain was a charleton. His first designs were centrifugal and failed. The Germans went the problematic, at the time, axial flow design. The British flew a Meteor with an axial-flow Metro-Vick engine in 1943 dropping it in favour of the reliable centrifugal design. There were five turbojet engines in the UK under R&D in WW2:
♦ Centrifugal, by Whittle (Rover);
♦ Centrifugal, by Frank Halford (DeHaviland);
♦ Axial-flow, by Metro-Vick;
♦ Axial-flow by Griffiths (Rolls Royce);
♦ Axial flow compressor, with reverse flow combustion chambers. The ASX by Armstrong Siddley;
Metro-Vick sold their jet engine division to Armstrong Siddley. The Metro-Vick engine transpired into the post war Sapphire. Most American engines in the 1940s/50s were of UK design, many made under licence. The US licensed the J-42 (RR Nene) and J-48 (RR Tay), being virtually identical to the British engines. US aircraft used licensed British engines powering the: P-59, P-80, T-33, F9F Panther, F9F-6 Cougar, FJ Fury 3 and 4, Martin B-57 Canberra, F-94 Starfire, A4 Skyhawk and the A7 Corsair.
The US General Electric J-47 turbojet was developed by General Electric in conjunction with Metropolitan Vickers of the UK, who had already developed a 9-stage axial-flow compressor engine licensing the design to Allison in 1944 for the earlier J-35 engine first flying in May 1948. The centrifugal Rolls Royce Nene is one of the highest production jet engines in history with over 50,000 built.
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The state of play on the 17th, D day, was:
1) the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was largely clear;
2) there were concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally;
3) there were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen who were getting out fast;
4) a few scattered about along the road;
5) there was no armour in Arnhem.
That was it.
i) XXX Corps would deal from the Belgium border to Eindhoven;
ii) 101st from Eindhoven to Grave;
iii) 82nd from Grave to north of Nijmegen;
iv) British and Polish paras from north of Nijmegen to north of the Rhine;
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 2 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition, hanging around in the village. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured it.
Evidently expecting that Major La Prade's flanking battalion would have captured the highway bridge, these two battalions made no apparent haste in moving through Zon. They methodically cleared stray Germans from the houses, so that a full two hours had passed before they emerged from the village. Having at last overcome the enemy 88 south of the Zonsche Forest, Major LaPrade's battalion caught sight of the bridge at about the same time. Both forces were within fifty yards of the bridge when their objective went up with a roar.- US Official History.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected. XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and towards the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up.
The road was still largely clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump. Horrocks promised the 1st Airborne at Anhem XXX Corps would reach them within 48 hours. XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820 hrs on d-day plus 2, on schedule making up for the delay at Zon, having seven hours left to travel 8 miles. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over. If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves, after the 82nd tried again and failed again. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
According to the official American Army historian, Forrest Pogue, he stated that the failure of US 82nd Airborne to assault the lightly defended Nijmegen bridge immediately upon jumping 'sounded the death knell' for the men at Arnhem.
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Germany never motorised its army. 650,000 horses invaded the USSR. The Royal Navy blockade prevented rubber being available for tyres for vehicles, and also oil to run the vehicles, preventing the German forces being fully motorised. If the forces took to the roads there would not be a problem. Incidently, the world's first fully motorised army was the BEF in France, and later the US army. So they had to use rail for the armed forces, clogging the rail network, depriving industry. Nothing to do with socialism. You cannot create what you do not have - rubber & oil.
They needed to look ahead, expanding the rail network when they had the chance pre-war, also anticipating supply shortages. But I doubt anyone thought of rubber and oil shortages until it happened - military men rarely would do that. A privatised railway would not have forecast the situation, that can only come from government. It is just that no one thought it through.
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By not having much of a surface navy facing the largest navy in the world, the chances of the Germans invading the UK were about zero. In 1940, the British could not believe that the ramshackle collection of converted canal barges and other vessels assembling in the Channel ports represented an invasion fleet, seeing it as a secondary operation or a diversion. It was thought that the main invasion fleet was being assembled in Germany and being launched from Germany.
The Joint Intelligence Committee reported to the Chiefs of Staff, 1 Sept:-
“In spite of many movements of enemy shipping, especially barges, it is still not considered to be sufficient tonnage in enemy occupied ports southward from DEN HELDER to transport a large scale invading force to the United Kingdom."
"The present known position of shipping and barges appears to threaten EAST KENT as opposed to EAST ANGLIA or the south coast west of HASTINGS. There has been nothing to alter the opinion that if there is any immediate intention to invade, the expedition is probably being held in readiness in HAMBURG – where the quantity of shipping has lately much increased – or the BALTIC. Information about shipping in the BALTIC ports is not available.”
Intelligence Summary 26 Sept:-
“The existing state of the invasion preparations of the enemy may be summarized as follows:-
"In Norway shipping is available for one division. This would presumably have some northern objective, Scotland, Iceland or Ireland.
In Denmark and the Baltic from which the main weight of the sea-borne attack is likely to emerge, specific information is scanty. But a large amount of shipping is known to be available while troop concentrations and shipping activity have been reported from most of the Baltic ports."
"From DELFZYL to BREST 280 ships are assembled with a carrying capacity of 460,000 tons. To this may be added a potential barge carrying capacity of 750,000 tons (of which 200,000 tons represents the increase in the last four days)."
"South of BREST along the Biscayan coast of France are a further 300,000 tons of shipping, which might represent the invasion threat to the West of England and to Eire."
"Embarkation practices and other final preparations have been reported from almost all cases.”
Fears of a German invasion dissipated on the 29 October after the Luftwaffe were defeated. A new long-range reconnaissance Spitfire photographed Rostock, Stettin and Swinemünde revealing nothing of interest.
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Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower, approved and under-resourced the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed - they were the prime planners. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams:
♦ Who ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practiced and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, however rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak". The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself.
XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corps' Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.
Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm
The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
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I am from another generation. When young all my uncles, neighbours and older men I worked with were in WW2. Also fuelled by films on TV - mainly American. I have talked to men, British American and German who were: on the first wave at D-day, Arnhem, Falaise, Arctic convoys, Sinking of the Bismarck, fighting the Graf Spree, in the 8th Army, Italy, Burma, US army in the Philippines, on a US carrier 50 miles off Tokyo, etc, etc.
I had one uncle on the 1st wave at D-Day, one killed 500 miles east of Cape Race by a U-Boat (froze to death in a lifeboat), one torpedoed twice and never sunk, and many on AA guns in southern England, Malta, etc.
I am interested in all history, not just WW2.
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@reginaldmcnab3265 wrote:
"the British empire had a population of 500 million people."
The Turkish ambassador to the UK stated that the UK can raise 40 million troops from its empire so it will win the war. This was noted by Franco who indirectly said to Hitler he would not win, fearing British occupation of Spanish islands and territory if Spain joined the war. Spain and Turkey stayed out of the war. The Turkish ambassador’s point was given credence when an army of 2.6 million was assembled in India that moved into Burma to wipe out the Japanese.
From day one the Royal Navy formed a ring around the Axis positioning ships from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Arctic off Norway, blockading the international trade of the Axis. This deprived the Axis of vital human and animal food, oil, rubber, metals, and other vital resources. By 1941 the successful Royal Navy blockade had confined the Italian navy to port due to lack of oil. By the autumn of 1941 Germany's surface fleet was confined to harbour, by the British fleet and the chronic lack of fuel. A potential German invasion from the USSR in the north into the oil rich Middle East entailed expanded British troop deployment to keep the Germans away from the oil fields, until they were defeated at Stalingrad.
Throughout 1942 British Commonwealth troops were fighting, or seriously expecting to be attacked, in:
♦ French North Africa;
♦ Libya;
♦ Egypt;
♦ Cyprus;
♦ Syria: where an airborne assault was expected, with preparations to reinforce Turkey if they were attacked;
♦ Madagascar: fighting the Vichy French to prevent them from inviting the Japanese in as they had done in Indochina;
♦ Iraq;
♦ Iran: the British & Soviets invaded Iran in August 1941.
Those spread-out covering troops were more in combined numbers than were facing Japan and Rommel in North Africa. They were supplied by a massive merchant fleet, via the Cape. The equivalent of sailing halfway around the world.
Those spread-out covering troops were more in combined numbers than were facing Japan and Rommel in North Africa. The British Commonwealth fielded over 100 divisions in 1942 alone, compared to the US total of 88 by the end of the war. The Americans and Soviets were Johnny-come-late in WW2, moreso the Americans. Before the USSR entered the conflict the Royal Navy’s blockade had reduced the Italian and German surface navies to the occasional sorties because of a lack of oil, with the British attacking the Germans and Italians in North Africa, also securing Syria, Iraq, the Levant and ridding the Italians from East Africa.
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@strikehold
Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower, approved under resourcing the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak". The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself.
XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge.
The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.
Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time Monty had the Canadians cleared it, or were investing in many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@finallyfriday.
You will notice e) Mareth Line.....
The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British under Montgomery. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
1) August 1942 - Alem el Halfa
2) October 1942 - El Alamein;
3) March 1943 - Medenine;
4) June 1944 - Normandy;
5) Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands;
6) December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge;
Montgomery’s victories in WW2:
a) Battle of Alam Halfa;
b) Second Battle of El Alamein;
c) Battle of El Agheila;
d) Battle of Medenine;
e) Battle of the Mareth Line;
f) Battle of Wadi Akarit;
g) Allied invasion of Sicily;
h) Operation Overlord - the largest amphibious invasion in history;
i) Market Garden - a 60 mile salient created into German territory;
j) Battle of the Bulge - while taking control of two shambolic US armies;
k) Operation Veritable;
l) Operation Plunder.
Montgomery not once had a reverse.
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Monty's 8th Army advanced the fastest of any army in WW2. From El Alamein to El Agheila from the 4th to 23rd November 1942, 1,300 km in just 17 days. After fighting a major exhausting battle at El Alemein through half a million mines. This was an Incredible feat, unparalleled in WW2. With El Alamein costing just 13,500 casualties.
The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties, with the Lorraine campaign being a failure. Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties.
Hodges, head of the US First army, fled from Spa to near Liege on the 18th, despite the Germans never getting anywhere near to Spa. Hodges did not even wait for the Germans to approach Spa. He had already fled long before the Germans were stopped. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British, with Montgomery involved in planning, with also Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers.
Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
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@finallyfriday.
i) Caen was a second tier objective. Monty was in command of all armies in Normandy with it coming in ahead of schedule with less casualties than predicted.
ii) Monty took a quarter of a million Axis troops in Tunisia. Fact.
iii) Monty ran Rommel out of Africa. Fact.
iv) General Günther Blumentritt: ‘Field Marshall Montgomery was the one general who never suffered a reverse’
v) Monty had to take command ot two shambolic US armies in the German Bulge attack, saving their arses.
vi) “I find it difficult to refrain from expressing my indignation at Hodges and Ridgeway and my appreciation of Montgomery whenever I talk about St. Vith. It is my firm opinion that if it hadn't been for Montgomery, the First US Army, and especially the troops in the St. Vith salient, would have ended in a debacle that would have gone down in history.”
“I'm sure you remember how First Army HQ fled from Spa leaving food cooking on the stoves, officers' Xmas presents from home on their beds and, worst of all, top secret maps still on the walls... First Army HQ never contacted us with their new location and I had to send an officer to find them. He did and they knew nothing about us...(Montgomery) was at First Army HQ when my officer arrived. A liaison officer from Montgomery arrived at my HQ within 24 hrs. His report to Montgomery is what saved us...”
- Hasbrouck of 7th Armor - “Generals of the Bulge” by Jerry D. Morelock, page 298.
vii) You have poor comprehension skills, unable to read and understand my post.
viii) Also, the USA is the leader in Gay parades.
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@finallyfriday.
The US army was a poor army. It performed poorly in North Africa and the ETO. The US casualties in NW Europe were horrific. 85,000 at the Bulge, 50,000 in Patton's failure in Lorraine, 33,000 in the Hurtgen Forest defeat, 12,000 in Operation Queen, US para units failing to seize easy bridges in Market Garden, etc. US generals cared little over the lives of their own green men.
On 5 Nov 1944 Patton told Bradley he would be over the westwall in a few days,. He failed to breech the westwall in Lorraine. In the Lorraine, Patton was too cautious and hesitant failing to correctly concentrate his forces. Patton also failed to relieve Bastogne on time, being too late. The 18,000 inside just walked out.
Montgomery had to take command of two shambolic US armies in the German Bulge attack.
Antwerp was NEVER needed for the westwall battles - the US blame Antwerp for their lack of progress. Supplies were coming via Le Havre and Cherbourg. The allies were not moving anywhere fast because of Eisenhower's ridiculous broad-front strategy. So there was no need to get supplies to them from Antwerp to supply the advance quickly...... because there was NO advance because of the poor broad front strategy instigated by Eisenhower - he was a colonel only a few years previously.
All the American attack campaigns of autumn 1944 were well equipped and well supplied. They didn't fail due to Antwerp not being opened, which is their excuse for their failures. They failed due to poor American strategy and tactical decisions.
Churchill should never have allowed an American to head the ETO. A crass decision by Churchill.
Monty never suffered a reverse moving though nine countries.
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John Cornell
US Official History...
The priority on gasoline which had been assigned the First Army, in consequence of General Eisenhower’s decision to make the main Allied effort in the north, left the Third Army virtually immobilized from 1 to 5 September.
During the period 26 August–2 September the gasoline received by the Third Army averaged 202,382 gallons per day. 51 Since Patton’s tanks and trucks had habitually consumed between 350,000 and 400,000 gallons a day during the last phases of the pursuit, and since some 450,000 gallons per day would be needed east of the Moselle, there could be no real question of mounting a fullscale attack against the Moselle line until the supply situation improved. On 2 September the gasoline receipts at Third Army dumps reached the lowest figure of the entire arid period—25,390 gallons. But finally on 4 September the gasoline drought started to break, only a day later than General Bradley had predicted to General Patton. On this date the Third Army was issued 240,265 gallons; during the next three days 1,396,710 gallons arrived, and by 10 September the period of critical shortage was ended.
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Why Germany rushed to invade the USSR.
The coming air war:
Roosevelt promised 50,000 plane per year production in May 1940, of which a substantial amount would be in the RAF. Germany could not compete with the level of aircraft at the UKs disposal. Whether the planes had US and UK pilots or just UK pilots they were coming Germany's way. And the only way they could really get at each other was by air. Germany feared mass bombing, which came - the first 1,000 bomber raid on Germany by the RAF was a matter of weeks after the USA entered the war. The bomber in the late 1930s was perceived as a war winning weapon. The Germans knew the lead time for aircraft was 18 months from order to delivery. That meant in late 1941/early 1942, these planes would be starting to come in service in great numbers. Germany needed the resources of the east to compete. If the population was too big they would eliminate the population - the precedence was the American move to the west expanding the USA, taking lands from the natives population and Mexicans then eliminating the population.
Wages of Destruction by Prof Adam Tooze:
Page 422:
"At the Berghof on 31 July 1940, in conference with the military leadership. Hitler emphasized that the Soviet Union would have to be knocked out of the war, if Britain was to be brought to heel and America's support neutralized. 'Britain's hope lies in Russia and the United States. If Russia drops out of the picture, America, too, is lost for Britain, because elimination of Russia would tremendously increase Japan's power in the Far East.' Russia, according to Hitler, was the 'Far Eastern sword of Britain and the United States', a spearhead pointed at Japan. Attacking and decisively defeating the Soviet Union in 1941 would rob Britain of its 'dagger on the mainland' and unleash Japan. If Britain did choose to continue the war and if Japanese aggression provoked American entry, complete control of the Eurasian landmass would at least secure for Germany the resources it needed for a true trans-Atlantic confrontation. As Hitler put in on 9 January 1941, after the conquest of Lebensraum in the East, Germany would be ready for a 'war against continents'."
Tooze Page 454:
"Critical stores would be reserved above all for the main strike force of 33 tank and motorised infantry divisions. If the battle extended much beyond the first months of the attack, the fighting power of the rest of the German army would dwindle rapidly."
"Fundamentally the Wehrmacht was a "poor army". The fast striking motorised element of the Germans army in 1941 consisted of only 33 divisions of 130. Three-quarters of the German army continued to rely on more traditional means of traction: foot and horse. The German army in 1941 invaded the Soviet Union with somewhere between 600,000 and 740,000 horses. The horses were not for riding. They were for moving guns, ammunition and supplies."
"The vast majority of Germany's soldiers marched into Russia, as they had in France, on foot."
"But to imagine a fully motorised Wehrmacht, poised for an attack on the Soviet Union is a fantasy of the Cold War, not a realistic vision of the possibilities of 1941. To be more specific, it is an American fantasy. The Anglo-American invasion force of 1944 was the only military force in WW2 to fully conform to the modern model of a motorised army."
Page 455:
"the chronic shortage of fuel and rubber"
"the fuel shortage of 1941 was expected to be so severe that the Wehrmacht was seriously considering demotorisation as a way of reducing its dependency on scarce oil."
"Everything therefore depended on the assumption that the Red Army would crack under the impact of the first decisive blow."
Page 456:
"a new Soviet industrial base to the east of the Urals, which had the capacity to sustain a population of at least 40 million people."
"Soviet industrial capacity was clearly very substantial."
"Franz Halder recorded Hitler's ruminations about the Soviets' immense stock of tanks and aircraft."
Reading further Tooze gives the misgivings of the German generals of the invasion. All were negative.
Page 457:
"Halder noted in his diary: Barbarossa: purpose not clear, We do not hurt the English. Our economic base is not significantly improved."
At the top of page 459 Tooze emphasises that Hitler misinterpreted Backe's comments about the Ukraine grain. A region that had little surplus and had a substantial population increase from WW1.
Page 459:
"On 22 January 1941 Thomas had informed his boss, Keitel, that he was planning to submit a report urging caution with regard to the military-economic benefits of the invasion. Now he reversed directions. As it became clear that Hitler was justifying Barbarossa first and foremost as a campaign of economic conquest, Thomas began systematically working towards the Fuehrer."
Thomas was head of the OKW economic planning staff. He modified his reports from nagative to positive, presenting the Ukraine as an economic breadbasket. Thomas was an insider and it is assumed he had heard of the misinterpreted Backe's comments to Hitler.
Page 459:
"The OKW now claimed that in the first thrust the Wehrmacht would be able to seize control of at least 70% of the Soviet Union's industrial potential."
Page 460:
"As late as the Spring of 1941, the Foreign Ministry was still opposing the coming war, preferring to continue the alliance with the Soviet Union against the British Empire."
"If the shock of the initial assault does not destroy Stalin's regime, it was evident in February 1941 that the Third Reich would find itself facing a strategic disaster."
Page 452:
"the Germans had already conscripted virtually all their prime manpower. By contrast, the Red Army could call up millions of reservists."
Why did Germany invade the USSR in a rushed ill-conceived plan?
Page 431:
"the strongest arguments for rushing to conquer the Soviet Union in 1941 were precisely the growing shortage of grain and the need to knock Britain out of the war before it could pose a serious air threat."
"Meanwhile, the rest of the German military-industrialised complex began to gird itself for the aerial confrontation with Britain and America."
Germany rushed to invade the Soviet Union, with an ill-equipped army with no reserves in anticipation of a massive air war with Britain and the USA, hoping they could win the Soviet war within weeks.
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General Bodo Zimmermann, Chief of Operations, German Army Group D, said that had the strategy of Montgomery succeeded in the autumn of 1944, there would have been no need to fight for the Westwall, not for the central and upper Rhine, all of 24 which would have fallen automatically.
Indeed, had Monty's idea for a 40 division concentrated thrust towards the Ruhr been accepted by Eisenhower instead of messing about in the Lorraine, Alsace, Vosges etc, it would have all been over for the Germans in the west.
"The best course of the Allies would have been to concentrate a really strong striking force with which to break through past Aachen to the Ruhr area. Germany's strength is in the north. South Germany was a side issue. He who holds northern Germany holds Germany. Such a break-through, coupled with air domination, would have torn in pieces the weak German front and ended the war. Berlin and Prague would have been occupied ahead of the Russians. There were no German forces behind the Rhine, and at the end of August our front was wide open. There was the possibility of an operational break-through in the Aachen area, in September. This would have facilitated a rapid conquest of the Ruhr and a quicker advance on Berlin.
By turning the forces from the Aachen area sharply northward, the German 15th and 1st Parachute Armies could have been pinned against the estuaries of the Mass and the Rhine. They could not have escaped eastwards into Germany."
- Gunther Blumentritt in, The Other Side Of The Hill by Liddell Hart
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@pfarden5836
The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British under Montgomery. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
* August 1942 - Alem el Halfa; October 1942 - El Alamein;
* March 1943 - Medenine;
June 1944 - Normandy;
* Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands;
* December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge;
A list of Montgomery’s victories in WW2:
i) Battle of Alam Halfa;
ii) Second Battle of El Alamein;
iii) Battle of El Agheila;
iv) Battle of Medenine;
v) Battle of the Mareth Line;
vi) Battle of Wadi Akarit;
vii) Allied invasion of Sicily;
viii) Operation Overlord - the largest amphibious invasion in history;
ix) Market Garden - a 60 mile salient
x) created into German territory;
xi) Battle of the Bulge - while taking control of two shambolic US armies;
xii) Operation Veritable;
xiii) Operation Plunder.
Montgomery not once had a reverse.
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Monty's 8th Army advanced the fastest of any army in WW2. From El Alamein to El Agheila from the 4th to 23rd November 1942, 1,300 km in just 17 days. After fighting a major exhausting battle at El Alemein through half a million mines. This was an Incredible feat, unparalleled in WW2. With El Alamein costing just 13,500 casualties.
The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties, with the Lorraine campaign being a failure. Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties. Hodges, head of the US First army, fled from Spa to near Liege on the 18th, despite the Germans never getting anywhere near to Spa. Hodges did not even wait for the Germans to approach Spa. He had already fled long before the Germans were stopped. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British, with Montgomery involved in planning, with also Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
You need to give respect where it is due.
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@pfarden5836
"The Battle of the Generals" by General Blumenson makes it clear that Bradley, not Montgomery, ordered Patton to stop at Falaise;
1) Bradley, on his own initiative, ordered Patton to stop on August 12 (page. 206-207);
2) Bradley's post-war effort to blame this on Montgomery was "dishonest and anti-British" (page. 211);
3) Despite Bradley stating he ordered it. Patton was running off to Paris, but Bradley failed to stop him from making a long hook encirclement of the Germans towards Dreux at the Sein (page. 223);
4) This was in clear contradiction to Montgomery's suggestion that he do so (page. 218).
In Bradley's memoir A Soldier's Story he says on page 377, "Monty had never prohibited and I never proposed that U.S. forces close the gap from Argentan to Falaise." He gives a number of reasons for not pushing north from Argentan, but Monty forbidding it is not one of them.
In A General's Life Bradley writes, "Montgomery had no part in the decision; it was mine and mine alone. Some writers have suggested that I appealed to Monty to move the boundary north to Falaise and he refused, but, of course, that is not true... I was determined to hold Patton at Argentan and had no cause to ask Monty to shift the boundary."
Nigel Hamilton, Monty's official biographer, states in The War Years that the decision was Bradley's. "Dempsey's diary record of his meeting with Monty and Bradley proves there was certainly no plot to deny Patton glory, since Dempsey specifically recorded: `So long as the Northward move of Third Army meets little opposition, the two leading Corps will disregard inter-Army boundaries'" (page. 788).
There are plenty of secondary sources that pin the blame on Bradley.
a) Russell Weigley, Eisenhower's Lieutenants" page. 216: "Bradley, having set the stage by urging Eisenhower and Montgomery to grasp the opportunity of a short envelopment at Falaise-Argentan, failed to persist in completing his own design. He abandoned the short envelopment before its potential was achieved, and meanwhile he had delayed the long envelopment at the Seine."
b) Peter Mansoor, The GI Offensive in Europe page. 171: "Bradley was slow to concentrate sufficient force to close the Falaise Gap from the south when he had the opportunity to do so."
c) Robin Neillands, The Battle of Normandy 1944 page. 358: "Bradley's memoirs and the British Official History make it abundantly clear this decision was Bradley's."
There are many more sources where these came from.Carlo D'Este states on page 444, "When Dempsey met Bradley and Montgomery there was apparently no restraint placed on further northward movement by XV Corps... the fact that the Third Army did not move north of Argentan appears to have been Bradley's choice rather than a prohibition by Montgomery." On page 448 he writes, "The assertion that Montgomery made no effort to close the gap is without foundation." D'Este also dismisses the view of Strafford on page 451. No reasonable reading of D'Este on Falaise could possibly support blaming Montgomery. The US Official History, the British Official History, BRADLEY HIMSELF (twice!) and a multitude of secondary sources say Monty did not order Patton to halt. Neither Bradley himself, nor Montgomery, nor the senior British Army commander, nor the British or American official historians think Montgomery ordered Bradley to stop. THERE WAS NO HALT ORDER by Monty.
Chester Hanson and Ralph Ingersoll promoted that Monty halted Patton at Falaise were Anglophobes. Ingersoll had Communist leanings who wrote in order to convince people to trust the Russians and hate the British "imperialists".
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@davemac1197
Reading Chester Graham and Gavin, Lindquist was not given an order to wait for a divisional order to proceed. Gavin failed to put his order in writing. Or if he did it was inexplicably removed from the US archives.
US Official History...
"Although extensive combat interviews were conducted with personnel of the 508th Parachute Infantry, they are inexplicably missing from Department of the Army files. The story has been reconstructed from unit records; Gavin's letters to Westover and OCMH; letters to OCMH from Colonel Warren, 5 July 1955, Colonel Lindquist, 9 September 1955, Col. Thomas J. B. Shanley formerly Executive Officer, 508th Parachute Infantry, 2 Sep 55, and Rev. Bestebreurtje, 25 Oct 56; a postwar interview with Colonel Lindquist by Westover, 14 Sep 45, copy in 82d Airborne Division Combat Interview file; and Westover, The American Divisions in Operation MARKET, a preliminary narrative written in the European theater shortly after the war, copy in OCMH. Captain Westover had access to all the combat interviews when writing his narrative."
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@trickylifts
Kershaw wrote, "All that stood in the way of XXX Corps and Arnhem during much of the night of 20-21 September were a few security pickets". He is wrong.
Harmel: "At this instant there were no German armoured forces available to block Elst".
Kershaw: "at the same time we lost the Nijmegen bridge, we were just about over the Arnhem bridge" Correct.
Kershaw said in an interview that there was two companies of German infantry at Elst as pickets. With Panzerfausts. He never mentioned that as soon as the Nijmegen bridge fell to XXX Corps, they were joined by tanks.
Armour, with a number of Tigers, were waiting to cross south on the Arnhem bridge. They moved immediately. The five British tanks that crossed the Nijmegen bridge, with two being hit, were to form a bridgehead on the north of the bridge. They were unable to move north to Arnhem.
Later, five unarmoured Achilles self propelled guns, not tanks, with the crews open to the atmosphere, moved north over the Nijmegen bridge, to protect the bridgehead against the German tanks that had moved south over the Arnhem bridge.
Harmel and Kershaw, were wrong. German records show otherwise.
When the Arnhem bridge was surrendered by the British paras, there is an account, from Private James Sims of 2nd Battalion, as he was led out under the bridge ramp, he turned left and then right into a tree-lined avenue, he saw an "unending line of Mark IV tanks" parked under the trees. The Germans had a lot of tanks available to send over the bridge once the wreckage was cleared and it was re-opened, which they cleared very quickly. They had far more tank available than the three the British had at the northern end of Nijmegen bridge.
There were two Tiger units deployed to Arnhem. The first was Panzer Kompanie 'Hummel' (named after Hauptmann Hummel, the commander) from schwere-Panzer-Abteilung 500 (heavy tank battalion 500) at Paderborn - it was a unit held in reserve as a fire brigade. The (1st) Kompanie was equipped with 14 Tiger I tanks, but because they could not be sent to a railhead near Arnhem due to air attacks, they were detrained at Bocholt road marching to Arnhem. This is not good for mechanically unreliable vehicles and all but two broke down on the way. The two that did arrive approached the bridge area, shot up a few British occupied buildings and then retreated when they came under anti-tank gun fire. By the time the whole of Kompanie Hummel was assembled in Arnhem, the siege at the bridge was over, ready to move south to Elst.
The other Tiger unit was schwere-Panzer-Abteilung 506, re-equipped with 45 King Tiger tanks in three companies. They were due to be sent to Aachen to deal with the American penetration of the Westwall, but instead the 3.Kompanie was detached to 9.SS-Panzer-Division being deployed against British 1st Airborne at Oosterbeek, and 2.Kompanie detached to 10.SS-Panzer-Division and deployed with Kampfgruppe Knaust. The 1.Kompanie and the Abteilung staff were either sent immediately to Aachen or held in reserve for a period at Elten, on the German-Dutch border.
SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 had 16 Mark IV tanks on the books, concentrated in 5.Kompanie of the II.Abteilung. They tried to raft them over the Pannerden canal (the canalised part of the Rijn at the Pannerden ferry location) but the Mark IVs were too heavy for the raft and had to wait for the Arnhem bridge to be cleared. They could raft their remaining 4 StuG III assault guns, concentrated in 7./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 and sent to reinforce Nijmegen. They fought a fighting retreat from Nijmegen northwards over the bridge. At least one survived to halt Sgt. Robinson's Firefly' and Shermans at the Lent railway viaduct, and again halted the Irish Guards the next day on a defence line established between Oosterhout and Ressen by Kampfgruppe Knaust.
They also had a few old surviving Mark III tanks from Panzer Kompanie Meikle (part of Knaust's battlegroup from the training units in Germany), the whole of Panzer Kompanie Hummel (14 x Tiger I) and 2.Kompanies.
Panzer-Abteilung 506 (14 x Tiger II). Heavy tank operations on the 'island' between Arnhem and Nijmegen were extremely difficult because of the terrain. They could not be deployed off the roads onto the soft polder, and a number were lost after falling into roadside ditches not being extricated. About 5 Tiger I tanks were lost in the area of Elst due to the terrain and an ambush by infantry units from 43rd (Wessex) Division. The tanks simply couldn't be deployed effectively.
GenFM Model also had 20 brand new Panthers delivered straight from the factory to Arnhem, with no camouflage paint or tactical markings. They were crewed by the 100 Panther crewmen of a 9.SS 'alarm kompanie' that had been quartered at the Saksen-Weimarkazerne in north Arnhem, the barracks were assigned to the remnants of SS-Panzer-Regiment 9 under a junior officer and possessed two alarm companies acting as infantry, the 100 dehorsed Panther crews and 100 or so men from the workshop company.
They also had three Panthers from Normandy, kept off the books, and two Flakpanzer IV 3.7cm. Two Panthers were lost to British paras dropping gammon bombs on them from upper floor windows in western Arnhem, and the Flakpanzers were deployed by Kampfgruppe Spindler against 4th Parachute Brigade with deadly effect. The 20 new Panthers were also attached to Kampfgruppe Knaust and several lost in the Elst area.
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@trickylifts wrote:
"No, there's no error there on XXX Corps' missed opportunity to drive on to Elst and thereby offer a last chance at saving Frost's force. If they'd taken off fast they would have certainly beaten the German tanks to Elst, while consolidating a tough position there."
Not this US blame diversion again. You have been watching too many Hollywood films.
One of the statements by Kershaw/Harmel was incorrect. Look...
At the village of Ressen, less than three miles north of Nijmegen, the Germans had erected an effective screen composed of an SS battalion reinforced with 11 tanks, another infantry battalion, 2 batteries of 88-mm. guns, 20 20-mm. anti-aircraft guns, and survivors of earlier fighting at Nijmegen, all operating under General Bittrich's II SS Panzer Corps. Arnhem lay seven miles north of this screen. The British could not pass.
- US Official History.
And it would have been a 100% success had the US 82nd Airborne captured the Nijmegen bridge when there were only 19 Germans guarding it. As it happens they didn’t move on it for hours, allowing time for it to be reinforced.
The biggest mistakes historians make is to glorify and narrow mindedly concern themselves with Arnhem and Oosterbeek. The Allies were stopped in the south just north of Nijmegen- that is why Arnhem turned out as it did.
- SS Major-General Heinz Harmel, 1987
”The US history points out that there ‘was no incentive for urgency over taking the Nijmegen bridge as XXX Corps were not yet in Eindhoven’ and it might be some time before they arrived at the Nijmegen bridge. In fact, XXX Corps had already passed Eindhoven and were waiting to cross the Bailey bridge at Zon. The US Official Historian, Charles B. MacDonald, dismisses this casual approach to the question of taking the Nijmegen bridge, stating that: ‘According to this theory, General Gavin had another full day to tackle the Germans at Nijmegen.’ This theory also assumes that one day would be sufficient for a Gavin to take the bridge - from one side only - having already sacrificed the advantage of surprise and with German strength increasing”.
- Neillands Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
You have selective amnesia. The US 82nd men held the southern approaches to the Nijmegen bridge overnight. This amazing German force in Nijmegen of non-combat troops you keep on about, was so good it could not suppress a small US force form holding the end of a bridge in a town they were based and holding.
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@trickylifts
Zaloga reinforces what I wrote. What I wrote was clear...
There were no combat troops in Nijmegen on the jump day, the 17th. There was none, besides Flak in the city at that time. There were HQ units in Nijmegen, who evacuated immediately - the Dutch HQ of the SS-Polizei, the equivalent to a divisional HQ. The figure of 19 men guarding the bridge came from the Dutch underground. That figure may have included the 11 manning an 88mm Flak gun north of Nijmegen bridge. The gun was taken out by the first British tank over the bridge - the tank took it out when it was half way across the bridge, firing on the move.
The few 82nd men who reached the bridge late, stayed near the southern approach road all night before Gavin ordered men out of Nijmegen completely, de-prioritising the bridge. That was a mixture of SS men who came down from Arnhem, and non-combat personnel. The German troops in Nijmegen on the 17th were non-combat being no match for the highly trained 82nd men. Once the Germans had secured the Nijmegen bridge German troops came over via the ferry. They manned the rubble in the town centre (the US air force bombed the town months earlier by mistake), making it more difficult to seize when XXX Corps arrived.
Zaloga states: Lieutenant-Colonel Warren and the Co. A of 1/508th PIR did not set out for Nijmegen until 2100hrs. That is 6.5 hours after landing. If they had gone to the bridge immediately they would have walked on it. Not only that one of the 82nd companies got lost.
Compare the 82nd men moving to Nijmegen bridge to the British First Airborne paras who got to Arnhem bridge. They landed after the 82nd men, getting to their bridge before the 82nd men got to the Nijmegen bridge, with further to go. The British paras, not to be detected, moved along the river bank, in and out of houses, over back yard walls, carrying all with them. They reached the undefended north end of Arnhem bridge, taking control of that end.
The Germans were so disorganised initially both bridges could have been seized by walking on them. The British walked on theirs the 82nd were so slow, the Germans had 8 hours to reinforce their bridge.
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Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower, approved under resourcing the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak". The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself.
XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.
Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time Monty had the Canadians cleared it, or were investing in many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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The Comet was 33 tons, while the Panther was 44 tons. Big difference. Not quite the same. The British got the German factory to make some new Panthers just after WW2 to see how it was made and assess the tank. Very little of the tank, if anything, was used in post war British designs, so they couldn't have been that impressed. The Comet continued to be made post war, serving in Korea, being exported to a number of countries. The Centurion, a WW2 tank (just), was made in volume after WW2 being probably, with the Soviet T-54-55s, the best post war tank for 35 years after the war. The Centurion is regarded as the first ever MBT.
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@suppo6092
"But I still don't understand how a man like Churchill would like an alliance with the bolsheviks. He seems so smart otherwise. "
In a special radio address to the British nation on the evening of 22 June 1941, Churchill said, “No one has been a more consistent opponent of Communism for the last twenty-five years. I will unsay no word I have spoken about it. But all this fades away before the spectacle which is now unfolding. The past, with its crimes, its follies, its tragedies, flashes away.… The Russian danger is therefore our danger, and the danger of the United States, just as the cause of any Russian fighting for hearth and house is the cause of free men and free peoples in every quarter of the globe.”
Churchill then announced that Britain would provide all possible military aid to the USSR in its battle against Germany. Britain provide 40% of the tanks used in the vital battle of Moscow. Britain was fighting the Japanese in Malaya/Singapore. The Japanese had tanks, the British troops never. Just one convoy destined for the USSR, diverted to Singapore would have meant British victory.
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Christian Noll
No armour was near Arnhem.
http://www.airpowerstudies.co.uk/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/Arnhem.pdf
"the composition of the German forces at Arnhem was far more complex than most published histories of Market Garden had tended to suggest. The two SS panzer divisions had been operating far below their full strength on the eve of the operation and, while 1st Airborne was ultimately confronted by armour in considerable strength, hardly any tanks were actually present in the Arnhem area on 17 September. The vast majority deployed from Germany or other battle fronts after the airborne landings" - ARNHEM - THE AIR RECONNAISSANCE STORY by the RAF
Some low level pictures of a few Panzer IIIs and IVs were taken in early September for operation Comet. Ryan on speaking to Urquhart got it wrong. "Urquhart’s account is therefore somewhat perplexing. Further problems arise if we seek to document the events he described. Several extensive searches for the photographs have failed to locate them. Ostensibly, this might not seem surprising, as most tactical reconnaissance material was destroyed after the war, but Urquhart insisted that the Arnhem sortie was flown by a Spitfire squadron based at Benson; this would almost certainly mean 541 Squadron. Far more imagery from the Benson squadrons survived within the UK archives, but no oblique photographs showing tanks at Arnhem. In addition, although the Benson missions were systematically recorded at squadron and group level, not one record matches the sortie Urquhart described."
"The low-level missions targeting the bridges on 6 September were scrupulously noted down, but all other recorded reconnaissance sorties over Arnhem were flown at higher altitudes and captured vertical imagery. Equally, it has proved impossible as yet to locate an interpretation report derived from a low-level mission that photographed German armour near Arnhem before Market Garden." "As for Brian Urquhart’s famous account of how a low-level Spitfire sortie took photographs of tanks assumed to belong to II SS Panzer Corps, the reality was rather different. In all probability, the low-level mission that Urquhart recalled photographed the bridges and not the tanks" - ARNHEM - THE AIR RECONNAISSANCE STORY by the RAF
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Eisenhower's “in the east we had been unable to break out towards the Seine“
- Hamilton Nigel. Monty, Master of the Battlefield 1942–1944
The above showed he had not much of a clue.
Brooke, however, was worried that he had not completely stopped the rot, and the next morning penned a long letter to Monty warning him of Eisenhower’s ‘mischief-making’: “I drew attention to what your basic strategy had been, i.e. to hold with your left and draw the Germans onto the flank while you pushed with your right. I explained how in my mind this conception was being carried out, that the bulk of the Armour had continuously been kept against the British. He could not refute these arguments, and then asked whether I did not consider that we were in a position to launch major offensives on each Army front simultaneously.
I told him that in view of the fact that the German density in Normandy is 2½ times that on the Russian front, whilst our superiority in strength was only in the nature of some 25% as compared to 300% on the Russian superiority on the Eastern front, I did not consider that we were in a position to launch an all out offensive along the whole front.’ The strategy of the Normandy landing is quite straight-forward. The British (on the left) must hold and draw Germans on to themselves off the western flank whilst Americans swing up to open Brest peninsular,’ Brooke noted in his diary.
- Hamilton Nigel. Monty, Master of the Battlefield 1942–1944
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@DonMeaker
Not this one again! Operation Cobra was planned by Monty - part of the overall plan explained at St.Paul's school in London. All below is from Nigel Hamilton in _Monty, Master of the Battlefield 1942–1944:
Brooke, however, was worried that he had not completely stopped the rot, and the next morning penned a long letter to Monty warning him of Eisenhower’s ‘mischief-making’:
My dear Monty The trouble between you and the P.M. has been satisfactorily settled for the present, but the other trouble I spoke to you about is looming large still and wants watching very carefully. Ike lunched with P.M. again this week and as a result I was sent for by P.M. and told that Ike was worried at the outlook taken by the American Press that the British were not taking their share of the fighting and of the casualties.
There seems to be more in it than that and Ike himself seemed to consider that the British Army could and should be more offensive. The P.M. asked me to meet Ike at dinner with him which I did last night, Bedell was there also. It is quite clear that Ike considers that Dempsey should be doing more than he does; it is equally clear that Ike has the very vaguest conception of war!
I drew attention to what your basic strategy had been, i.e. to hold with your left and draw the Germans onto the flank while you pushed with your right. I explained how in my mind this conception was being carried out, that the bulk of the Armour had continuously been kept against the British. He could not refute these arguments, and then asked whether I did not consider that we were in a position to launch major offensives on each Army front simultaneously. I told him that in view of the fact that the German density in Normandy is 2 ½ times that on the Russian front, whilst our superiority in strength was only in the nature of some 25% as compared to 300% on the Russian superiority on the Eastern front, I did not consider that we were in a position to launch an all out offensive along the whole front.
Such a procedure would definitely not fit in with our strategy of opening up Brest by swinging forward Western Flank.’
To Brooke, Monty’s strategy was so clear that he could not understand Eisenhower’s apparent obsession with side issues, such as accusations in the American press that the British were leaving all the fighting up to the Americans: ’The strategy of the Normandy landing is quite straight-forward. The British (on the left) must hold and draw Germans on to themselves off the western flank whilst Americans swing up to open Brest peninsular,’ Brooke noted in his diary.
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@jdsaldivar5606
In fact the 82nd had no part in the eventual seizure of the bridge at all, as it was taken in the dark by the British XXX Corps tanks and Guards infantry. The Irish Guards cleared out 180 Germans from the bridge girders the day after capture. Only 5 tanks crossed the bridge with two being knocked out, and one got operational again by a lone sergeant who met up with the rest of the tanks in the village of Lent 1 km north of the bridge.
So, only four operational tanks were available on the north side of the bridge. Strangely, Gavin's plan was to take one of Europe's largest road bridges only from one end, taking no boats with him. The film A Bridge Too Far has Robert Redford (playing Capt Cook) as one of the 82nd men taking the vital road bridge after rowing the river in canvas boats. This never happened.
Sergeant Peter Robinson, of the of the Guards Armored Division who led the charge over the Nijmegen road bridge in his Firefly tank stated:
"The Nijmegen bridge wasn’t taken [by the 82nd] which was our objective. We reached the far end of the bridge and immediately there was a roadblock. So the troop sergeant covered me through and then I got to the other side and covered the rest of the troop through. We were still being engaged; there was a gun in front of the church three or four hundred yards in front of us. We knocked him out. We got down the road to the railway bridge; we cruised round there very steady. We were being engaged all the time. Just as I got round the corner and turned right I saw these helmets duck in a ditch and run, and gave them a burst of machine gun fire. I suddenly realised they were Americans. They had already thrown a gammon grenade at me so dust and dirt and smoke were flying everywhere. They jumped out of the ditch; they kissed the tank; they kissed the guns because they’d lost a lot of men. They had had a very bad crossing.
Sgt Robinson again....
"Well, my orders were to collect the American colonel who was in a house a little way back, and the first thing he said to me was "I have to surrender""Well I said, 'I'm sorry. My orders are to hold this bridge. I've only got two tanks available but if you'd like to give me ground support for a little while until we get some more orders then we can do it. He said he couldn’t do it, so I said that he had better come back to my wireless and talk to General Horrocks because before I started the job I had freedom of the air. Everybody was off the air except myself because they wanted a running commentary about what was going on - So he came over and had a pow-wow with Horrocks. The colonel said 'Oh very well’ and I told him where I wanted the men, but of course you can't consolidate a Yank and they hadn’t been there ten minutes before they were on their way again."
The 82nd men wanted to surrender! And never gave support which was what they were there to do.
Captain Lord Carington's (in the 5th tank over the bridge) own autobiography entitled 'Reflect on Things Past':
Two of our tanks were hit not lethally - by anti-tank fire, and we found a number of Germans perched in the girders who tried to drop things on us but without great effect."
"A film representation of this incident has shown American troops as having already secured the far end of the bridge. That is mistaken - probably the error arose from the film-maker's confusion of two bridges, there was a railway bridge with planks placed between the rails and used by the Germans for [light] road traffic, to the west of the main road bridge we crossed; and the gallant American Airborne men: reached it."
When Sergeant Robinson and his little command crossed our main road bridge, however, only Germans were there to welcome him; and they didn't stay.
The first meeting of the 82nd men and the tanks was 1 km north of the bridge at the village of Lent where the railway embankment from the railway bridge met the north running road running off the main road bridge. The 82nd men did not reach the north end of the actual road bridge, the Guards tanks and the Guards infantry got there first from the south. Historians get confused. There are two bridges at Nijmegen. a railway bridge to the west and and road bridge to the east. They are about 1km apart. The 82nd men rowed the river west of the railway bridge and seized that bridge. The railway bridge was not suitable for running tanks over of course.
The 82nd men moved along the railway embankment north to where the embankment meets the road approach to the road bridge at Lent.
Only five British tanks were able to cross the bridge that night, and two of them were damaged. 4 tanks initially went across then Carrington's lone tank followed, guarding the northern end of the bridge by itself for nearly an hour before he was relieved.
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Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower approved, under resourcing the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak". The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself.
XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.
Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time Monty already had the Canadians clear it, or were investing in many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@johnlucas8479
Monty didn’t plan Market Garden, coming up with the idea and broad outline only. Montgomery was largely excluded from the planning process.
It was planned mainly by the Air Force commanders, Brereton and Williams of the USAAF and Hollinghurst of the RAF.
It was Bereton and Williams who:
▪decided that there would be drops spread over three days, defeating the object of para jumps by losing all surprise, which is their major asset.
▪rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-day on the Pegasus Bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet.
▪chose the drop and and landing zones so far from the Bridges.
▪Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to take on the flak positions and attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports, thereby allowing them to bring in reinforcements with impunity.
▪ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of “possible flak.“
Market Garden Then and Now by Karel Margry....
These kind of decisions ended up being crucial flaws and it was Brereton who enforced them, not Montgomery. The air commanders made the wrong choices throughout the planning.
They took and kept 100km of ground up that road i.e. 90% of it. They NEARLY did it. They were not stopped where they set off, or even halfway up it. They got 90% of the way, within touching distance. Had the operation been planned a bit better by the air commanders and with more resources it would have worked.
Monty’s idea was actually a good one, as nearly all the relevant personnel involved agreed. Including the Americans. They (Eisenhower and Brereton) were the ones who had to agree with it and give it the go ahead. They very much liked the idea.
Eisenhower....
“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.”
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John Cornell
Neillands is clear that Bradley and Patton, against Eisenhower's orders, were siphoning off supplies from the US 1st army. Also clear it was to reduce Monty's power. A conspiracy theorist could go wild on Market Garden.
♦ A US general, Gavin, does not go for his prime target immediately.
♦ A US general, Taylor, does not seize one of his prime
targets immediately.
♦ US paras do not take boats in terrain full of rivers and canals.
♦ Gavin thinks there is a 1,000 tanks in a forest with no firm proof.
♦ Brereton, an American, comes up with odd landing zones.
♦ Brereton refuses to jump into the Scheldt.
♦ USAAF forbid fighter-bombers.
♦ Bradley and Patton siphon off supplies, ensuring Market
Garden would be under resourced.
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@sg0310
The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British under Montgomery. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa;
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein;
♦ March 1943 - Medenine;
♦ June 1944 - Normandy;
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands;
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge;
A list of Montgomery’s victories in WW2:
♦ Battle of Alam Halfa;
♦ Second Battle of El Alamein;
♦ Battle of El Agheila;
♦ Battle of Medenine;
♦ Battle of the Mareth Line;
♦ Battle of Wadi Akarit;
♦ Allied invasion of Sicily;
♦ Operation Overlord - the largest amphibious invasion in history;
♦ Market Garden - a 60 mile salient created into German territory;
♦ Battle of the Bulge - while taking control of two shambolic US armies;
♦ Operation Veritable;
♦ Operation Plunder.
Montgomery not once had a reverse.
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Monty's 8th Army advanced the fastest of any army in WW2. From El Alamein to El Agheila from the 4th to 23rd November 1942, 1,300 km in just 17 days. After fighting a major exhausting battle at El Alemein through half a million mines. This was an Incredible feat, unparalleled in WW2. With El Alamein costing just 13,500 casualties. Monty took a quarter of a million POWs in Tunisia. More than taken at Stalingrad.
The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties, with the Lorraine campaign being a failure.
Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties. Hodges, head of the US First army, fled from Spa to near Liege on the 18th, despite the Germans never getting anywhere near to Spa. Hodges did not even wait for the Germans to approach Spa. He had already fled long before the Germans were stopped. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British, with Montgomery involved in planning, with also Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
You need to give respect where it is due.
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@sg0310
Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower approved, under resourcing the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak". The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed. XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem.
Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself. XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves.
What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge.
The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin. Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time Monty had the Canadians cleared it, or were investing in many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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Facts are wonderful things.......
♦ The Bolsheviks did not have to grant independence to the Finns in 1919, it was a part of Russia. Even the rail gauge was Russian not compatible with other adjacent countries.
♦ The borders of independent Finland (a country that had hardly ever been independent in its history) were too close to Leningrad for defense reasons. A mistake by the Bolshevik independence negotiators.
♦ Guns were available to hit Leningrad from the Finnish border, although none in Finland. Leningrad was too close, vulnerable to large easy air strikes from Finland. War technology had move on a lot quite quickly.
♦ The Soviets never wanted to take all of Finland, as they did with the three other Baltic states, just move borders back with a territory exchange for defense reasons. Finland would gain more territory in the deal.
♦ The Bolsheviks were not statesmen. The Soviets wanted to rectify a mistake on the independence agreement.
♦ Germany was expecting the USSR to take all of Finland back into Russia, reverting the situation as it was 20 years previously.
♦ Finland refused any territory exchange.
♦ In 1939 the USSR moves into Finland to move the border back.
♦ The Finns resist.
♦ The Soviets win.
♦ The Soviets in 1940 never took all of Finland, as they did with the other three Baltic states, just moved the border back, having no desires on all of Finland. This baffled the Germans.
♦ Peace is signed between Finland and the USSR in 1940.
♦ The USSR had no intention of occupying or attacking Finland once the border was moved back.
♦ The Finns allowed Germans onto their territory within months after the Soviets never incorporated Finland back into Russia, which they could easily have.
♦ The Soviets were naturally concerned with German troops in Finland, realising they made a mistake in not incorporating all of Finland back into Russia.
♦ Finland attacks the USSR along with Germany in June 1941, despite signing a peace treaty with the USSR in 1940.
♦ The USSR realises it made a mistake by not incorporating Finland back into Russia, having to fight on a front that need not have been there.
♦ Finland imprisons its leader after WW2 for attacking the USSR in 1941.
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"The 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Shields Warren, was charged with taking the road bridge over the Waal at Nijmegen: a prime task of Operation Market was being entrusted here to just one battalion from an entire division. According to the US Official History, there was some dispute over exactly when the 1st Battalion should go for the bridge. General Gavin was to claim later that the battalion was to ‘go for the bridge without delay’. However, Colonel Lindquist, the 508th Regimental commander, understood that Warren’s battalion was not to go for the bridge until the other regimental objectives — securing the Groesbeek Ridge and the nearby glider LZs, had been achieved: General Gavin’s operational orders confirm Warren’s version. Warren’s initial objective was ground near De Ploeg, a suburb of Nijmegen, which he was to take and organise for defence: only then was he to ‘prepare to go into Nijmegen later’ and these initial tasks took Lieutenant Colonel Warren most of the day. It was not until 1830hrs that he was able to send a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small, just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a radio — say forty men."
- Neillands
This was all on D-Day. Browning was expecting the bridge to have been taken immediately. So, Browning was guilty of believing Gavin about the 1,000 tanks, but not in failing to seize the bridge on the 1st day.
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1. Thousands of vehicles mustered around Eindhoven - they were continually arriving bumper to bumper - all this needed control and management. They could not all wonder off into the night, as there were too many of them. They needed support by infantry.
2. Horrocks got to Nijmegen ahead of schedule despite a 12 hour delay at Son. The aim was to secure the bridges and make a foothold over the Rhine. Supporting troops and armour would move up and flesh out the penetration, which happened, creating a 60 mile buffer in front of Antwerp. A buffer the Germans had to go around when later attacking the US armies in the Ardennes. If the buffer was not created, the shortest, and flat, route to Antwerp was through the buffer.
3. Cook's Waal crossing was to secure the north end of the bridge while XXX Corps secured the south. Then XXX Corps tanks and troops would roll over. The tanks did roll over, however no US troops secured the north end of the bridge. XXX Corps took all the bridge themselves. They met the US paras 1 km north of the bridge at Lent as they never managed to get to the bridge. Twenty percent of the Waal crossing troops were British Sappers.
The failure point was not seizing the Nijmegen bridge immediately. At the end of D-Day all crossings were denied to the Germans, except one - the Nijmegen bridge.
General Gavin of the US 82nd was tasked to seize the Nijmegen bridge as soon as landing. Gavin never, he failed with only a few German guards on the bridge. He failed because his 82nd did not move to and seize the Nijmegen bridge immediately. Gavin even de-prioritised the bridge the prime target and focus. The 82nd were ready at 2 pm on the jump day not moving to the bridge. The gigantic bridge was guarded by only 19 guards. The Germans occupied the bridge at 1900 hrs. Six hours after the 82nd were ready to march. The 82nd could have easily secured the bridge if they moved to it immediately. They never.
Events on the 1st day:
♦ "At 1328, the 665 men of US 82nd 1st Battalion began to fall from the sky."
- Poulussen, R. Lost at Nijmegen.
♦ "Forty minutes after the drop, around 1410, _the 1st Battalion marched off towards their objective, De Ploeg, three miles away."
_ Poulussen,
♦ "The 82nd were digging in and performing recon in the area looking for 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald
- Neillands, R. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
♦ The 82nd were dug in and preparing to defend their newly constructed regimental command post, which they established at 1825. Then Colonel Lindquist "was told by General Gavin, around 1900, to move into Nijmegen."
-Poulussen
Events on the evening of the 1st day:
♦ Having dug in at De Ploeg, Warren's battalion wasn't prepared to move towards Nijmegen at all.
-Poulussen,
♦ Once Lindquist told Lieutenant Colonel Warren that his battalion was to move, Warren decided to visit the HQ of the Nijmegen Underground first - to see what info the underground had on the Germans at the Nijmegen bridge.
- Poulussen,
♦ It was not until 1830hrs that he [Warren] was able to send a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small, just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a radio — say forty men.
- Neillands. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
♦ This was not a direct route to the bridge from Warren's original position, and placed him in the middle of the town. It was also around 2100 when "A" Company left to attempt to capture the Nijmegen road bridge.
♦ "B" Company was not with them because they'd split up due to it being dark with "visibility was less than ten yards".
- Poulussen,
♦ The 82nd attacks were resisted by the Germans until the next day.
Events of the 2nd day:
♦ Gavin drove up in a jeep the next morning and told by Warren that although they didn't have the bridge yet, another attack was about to go in.
♦ Gavin then told Warren to hold because the Germans were attacking in the southeast portion of the 82nd perimeter.
♦ At around 1100, Warren was ordered to withdraw from Nijmegen completely.
- Poulussen
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@charlieboffin2432
Lord Carington, who was in the 5th tank across the bridge:
"My recollection of this meeting is different. Certainly I met an American officer but he was perfectly affable and agreeable. As I said the Airborne were all very glad to see us and get some support, no one suggested we press on to Arnhem. This whole allegation is bizarre, just to begin with I was a captain and second-in-command of my squadron so I was in no position either to take orders from another captain or depart from my own orders which were to take my tanks across the bridge, join up with the US Airborne and form a bridgehead. This story is simple lunacy and this exchange did not take place."
Lord Carrington again...
"At that stage my job - I was second-in-command of a squadron - was to take a half-squadron of tanks across the bridge. Since everybody supposed the Germans would blow this immense contraption we were to be accompanied by an intrepid Royal Engineer officer to cut the wires and cleanse the demolition chambers under each span. Our little force was led by an excellent Grenadier, Sergeant Robinson, who was rightly awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his action. Two of our tanks were hit not lethally - by anti-tank fire, and we found a number of Germans perched in the girders who tried to drop things on us but without great effect. Sergeant Robinson and the leading tank troop sprayed the opposite bank and we lost nobody, When I arrived at the far end my sense of relief was considerable: the bridge had not been blown, we had not been plunged into the Waal (In fact it seems the Germans never intended to blow the bridge. The demolition chambers were packed with German soldiers, who surrendered), we seemed to have silenced the opposition in the vicinity, we were across one half of the Rhine."
"A film representation of this incident has shown American troops as having already secured the far end of the bridge. That is mistaken - probably the error arose from the film-maker's confusion of two bridges, there was a railway bridge with planks placed between the rails and used by the Germans for [light] road traffic, to the west of the main road bridge we crossed; and the gallant American Airborne men: reached it. When Sergeant Robinson and his little command crossed our main road bridge, however, only Germans were there to welcome him; and they didn't stay."
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Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower, approved under resourcing the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak". The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge from both ends simultaneously.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. Taking the bridge easily had now passed.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, ahead of schedule, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself.
XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.
Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
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The British 1st Airborne made it to Arnhem bridge, taking the north end of the bridge, denying its use to the Germans.
The other two airborne units, both US, failed to seize their assigned bridges immediately. If they had XXX Corps would have been in Arnhem on d-day+1, before any armour came in from Germany. Game set and match. The Germans would not have known what had hit them.
The 12 hour delay caused by the 101st not seizing the Zon bridge, meant the Germans for 12 hours had a critical time window to pour in troops and get armour moving towards Arnhem. The longer the time delay the more Germans poured in, hence more resistance, hence a slower XXX Corps. Obvious.
On top of the 12 hour delay, the 82nd not seizing their bridge at Nijmegen (XXX Corps had to take it for them), caused an additional 36 hour delay. This meant another longer time window for the Germans to keep up the reinforcing. The extra 36 hour delay created by the 82nd, meant a bridgehead over the Rhine was precluded, as the two day time window in total given to the Germans was far too long.
The British paras did their part in securing a crossing over its assigned waterway, the Rhine. The two US para units failed in theirs.
XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
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The bile from the USA that has been directed against Montgomery is just downright disgusting, showing a total lack of respect. Montgomery could have had a field day wiping the floor with them after the war highlighting their poor performance overall. He never. He was too professional. They have attempted to paper over their poor performance by diverting attention and just plain telling lies.
The fact is the US performed poorly in Europe in WW2, especially at high level. They never had a good general, none. Vane Mark Clark disobeyed an order to complete an allied encirclement of the Germans finishing them off in Italy, so he could run off to Rome with his army for a photo shoot and glory. He even had the photographers taken photos of his good side and best facial angle. He allowed the Germans to get away, who went north and formed another line across Italy. So the allied forces had to do it all again. If he was German he would have been shot.
Eisenhower's broad front strategy was near a disaster, of which Montgomery was totally against. Monty wanted a 30-40 division thrust to the north, over the Rhine at multiple crossings, then east across the German plains chasing a disorganised retreating army right to Berlin, while seizing the vital Ruhr. Montgomery continually was on that he should be made ground forces commander again, especially after the "failure" at the Bulge. Anyone with sense would have given Monty the job again after the Bulge, but Eisenhower gave in to the deflated egos of his humiliated whining generals, who by now detested Monty for showing the world what they were like. The only reason why the allies got going again in Feb 1945 was because the Germans expended lots of men and equipment in the Ardennes at the Bulge. If not for the Bulge, under Eisenhower's broad front strategy the allies would not have been over the Rhine until summer 1945. The Americans just stumbled into one embarrassment after another. All because of poor generalship.
♦ Bradley refusing to use the Funnies at Omaha beach causing excessive,
needless casualties;
♦ Patton leaving Falaise on a triumphal parade to Paris instead of going to the Seine to cut
off the retreating Germans. Montgomery never went to the victory parade in Paris sending
one of his men, as he was too busy trying to win a war;
♦ Mark Clark, disobeying an order to encircle the Germans and finish them off in Italy so
he could run off to Rome with his army for a photo shoot;
♦ Pattons' Lorraine crawl. 10 miles in 3 months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties
for unimportant territory. Read American historian Harry Yeide on Patton;
♦ The Hurtgen Forest defeat with around 34,000 casualties. They could have just
gone around the forest, as Earnest Hemingway observed;
♦ Bradley and Patton stealing supplies destined for Hodges against Eisenhower's
orders, which cut down the Market Garden operation to ridiculously low levels of
one Rhine crossing and one corps above Eindhoven;
♦ The German Ardennes offensive (the Bulge), of which Bradley and Hodges ignored
the German build up - they were warned by British SHAEF officers 5 weeks prior
to the German attack. The British had noticed the German build up, who were not
even on that front. Montgomery had to take control of US armies to get a grip
of the shambles. Near 100,000 US casualties;
♦ Patton stalled at the Bulge continually. Patton had less than 20 km of German
held ground to cover during his move north to Bastogne, with the vast majority
of his drive through American held lines. It still took him five days to get
through to Bastogne. It took Patton almost three days just to get through
the village of Chaumont;
♦ The ordering of a retreat at the Vosges in south eastern France abandoning
the city of Strasbourg, which caused a huge row with French military leaders
who refused to retreat. The French held onto Strasbourg;
♦ Under Monty the allies moved 500 km in only three months from D-Day to
September 1944. Under Eisenhower they moved 100 km in seven months
from September 1944 to March 1945.
♦ etc;
US forces were running out of men at an alarming rate because of clear poor leadership. Men in the US destined for the Far East were diverted to Europe because of the excessive losses. Hence in the Far East the British had more boots on the ground than the USA.
The clearing the Scheldt, delayed by Eisenhower in favour of Market Garden, did not change anything for many months on the exceptionally long broad-front from Switzerland to the North Sea/Channel. The allies did not advance anywhere until Feb 1945. The Scheldt was cleared for many months with Antwerp's port fully operational. With the port fully operational with supplies plentiful, the US Army was even rammed back into a retreat at the Bulge.
Monty, was a proven army group leader being a success in North Africa and Normandy, which came in with 22% less than predicated casualties and ahead in territory taken at D-Day plus 90. Common sense dictates to keep Monty in charge of all ground operations, not give it to a political man like Eisenhower, who was only a colonel a few years previously and had never been in charge of any army directly, never mind three army groups. The longest advance in late 1944/early 1945 was the 60 mile lightening four day advance by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
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@billfix1150
“Patton finally began receiving adequate supplies on September 4, after a week’s excruciating pause”
- Harry Yeide
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
“ It was commonly believed at Third Army H.Q. that Montgomery's advance through Belgium was largely maintained by supplies diverted from Patton. (See Butcher, op. cit., p. 667.) This is not true. The amount delivered by the 'air-lift ' was sufficient to maintain only one division. No road transport was diverted to aid Montgomery until September 16th. On the other hand, three British transport companies, lent to the Americans on August 6th "for eight days," were not returned until September 4th.' “
- CHESTER WILMOT, THE STRUGGLE FOR EUROPE. 1954, P 589
"Despite objections raised to Montgomery's plan of an assault on a 40 division front, it was more sensible than Eisenhower's insistence on the entire front being in motion at all times, for no better reason than he could not abide the thought that the two American army groups would not participate as entities in the anticipated victory. Not only did Eisenhower fail to heed Montgomery's suggestions, but also he never seemed to understand the possible benefits. He was evidently unable to understand that to supply 40 divisions attacking on one front would have been an easier task than to supply first one army and then the other as each in turn went over to the offensive. It was this concentration of effort which Eisenhower failed to understand and to implement"
- Eisenhower at the Art of Warfare, by DJ Haycock, page 182.
Land supplies were not taken from Patton and given to Monty. It is a complete myth to claim otherwise. Monty didn't even have a full army for his attack at Market Garden, just a Corps and supporting elements, with much flow in from England.
Market Garden was not a very large ground operation. It was limited in size. The American attack into the Hurtgen Forest started when Market Garden was going on. The US advance on the Hurtgen Forest by First US Army 9th Infantry Division began on 14th September, 3 days before Market Garden began, and was continuing to try and advance into the Hurtgen even when Market Garden began 3 days later, but it was halted by the Germans however.
This was soon followed up by a larger advance by US First Army towards Aachen at the start of October. Market Garden didn't make a notable dent in allied supplies seeing as the US was able to put on a LARGER ground attack right afterwards. According to Bradley in his own book there was parity of supplies between the three allied armies, Second British, First and Third US by mid September 1944 and according to the official US Army History as cited in Hugh Cole's book, The Lorraine Campaign page ... "by 10th September the period of critical (gasoline) shortage had ended". This was a whole week before Market Garden took place. The gasoline drought was the end of August/beginning of September. It was over by the time of Market Garden.
It ain't how Ben Affleck, Ronald Reagan, Steven Spielberg and John Wayne told it.
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@johnlucas8479
"Where is your evidence the road was clear for 40 hours?"
XXX Corps moved from Zon to Nijmegen in 2 hrs 45 mins. But you already know this.
From US Offcial history....
"During the night they installed a Bailey bridge, so that at 0645 (D plus 2, 19 September) the armor rumbled across."
at 0645 (D plus 2, 19 September) the armor rumbled across [the Zon bridge].
US Official history....
Spearheading the 30 Corps ground column, reconnaissance troops of the Guards Armoured Division linked with Colonel Tucker's S04th Parachute Infantry at Grave at 0820 the morning of D plus 2, 19 September. Major formations of the British armor were not far behind.
XXX Corps covered over 26 miles in 2 hr 45 mins.
If the 82nd had not hung around De Ploeg moving directly to the bridge they would have walked on it whistling Dixie. Three men of an 82nd patrol took half the bridge guards prisoner for 45-60 minutes having to let them go because no one turned up.
Use simple sums. XXX Corp reached Zon at 1900 Hours on D-Day plus 1. If it took them 2 hrs 45 mins to run up 26 miles of road, they would have been in Nijmegen at 2145 hrs d-day plus 1, seven miles from Arnhem. If the 82nd had seized the Nijmegen bridge, XXX Corps would have reached the south of the Arnhem bridge probably around 2300 hrs on d-day plus 1.
Eisenhower insisted the operation go ahead on the 17th, irrespective that VIII Corps could not join the fight until the 19th, d-day plus 2. If VIII had joined the fight on d-day, the German counter-attacks on the 101st would have been minimal and the highway free from attack.
Second Army now had three corps along the Meuse-Escaut Canal, but VIII Corps on the right was not yet ready to attack and XII Corps on the left was facing a belt of difficult, marshy country. Moreover, there were sufficient supplies forward to maintain a deep penetration only by XXX Corps.
- The Struggle for Europe by Chester Wilmot
Owing to the shortage of transport for troops and ammunition, XII Corps could secure only one small bridgehead beyond the Meuse-Escaut Canal before the 17th, and VIII Corps could not join the offensive until the 19th. Even then this corps had only two divisions, for the 51st Highland was grounded throughout the Arnhem operation so that its transport could be used to supply the forward troops. On the first two days of MARKET GARDEN Dempsey was able to employ offensively only three of the nine British divisions available, and, as already recorded, the actual break-out was made by two battalions advancing along one narrow road. This was the direct result of Eisenhower’s policy. If he had kept Patton halted on the Meuse, and had given full logistic support to Hodges and Dempsey after the capture of Brussels, the operations in Holland could have been an overwhelming triumph"
- The Struggle for Europe by Chester Wilmot
VIII Corps and XII Corps hardly got above Eindhoven.
But you know all this anyhow.
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@johnlucas8479
Oh No! He is still ion this the British tankers sat down and drank tea after seizing Nijmegen bridge or the 82nd.
"For all the concern that must have existed about getting to Arnhem, only a small part of the British armor was freed late on D plus 4, 21 September, to start the northward drive. As the attack began, British commanders saw every apprehension confirmed. The ground off the main roads was low-lying, soggy bottom-land, denying employment of tanks.
A few determined enemy bolstered with antitank guns might delay even a large force."
since the preceding night the bridge had been open to German traffic. At the village of Ressen, less than three miles north of Nijmegen, the Germans had erected an effective screen composed of an SS battalion reinforced with 11 tanks, another infantry battalion, 2 batteries of 88-mm. guns, 20 20-mm. antiaircraft guns, and survivors of earlier fighting at Nijmegen, all operating under General Bittrich's II SS Panzer Corps. Arnhem lay seven miles north of this screen. The British could not pass.
- US Official History (which you ignore)
Mr Lucas wrote:
"Yet again in your previous post you claim XXX Corp would have cross the same terrain in the dark in 1 hour 15 minutes."
This is where your logic fails you. On d-day plus 4 the Arnhem bridge was free for German traffic, who were sending Tiger tanks south to Elst - as the US Official History states: The British could not pass.
Prior to Frost's men capitulating German forces between the Nijmegen and Arnhem bridges were light. On d-day plus 1 they may have taken over a StuG on the ferry.
Get it?
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@fishingthelist4017
Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower approved, under resourcing the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans, that failed, while Garden mainly the British, which succeed. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak". The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed. XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem.
Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself. XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge.
The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin. Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time Monty had the Canadians cleared it, or were investing in many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@fishingthelist4017
A prime strategic problem for SHAEF in September 1944 was opening up the approaches to Antwerp and keeping it from German counter-attack - the logistics problem to supply all allied armies. It was:
1) Take Noord Brabant, the land to the north and northeast of Antwerp, or;
2) Take the Schedlt.
Noord Branant had to be taken first, as it was essential. It was taken with limited forces also sent to take the Schedlt. Market Garden had to go ahead regardless of any threat, actually being a success. To use Antwerp and control the approaches, the Scheldt, everything up to the south bank of the lower Rhine at Nijmegen needed to be under allied control.
The low-lying lands, boggy ground between Arnhem and Nijmegen with land strewn with rivers and canals, is perfect geography as a barrier against a German counter-attack towards Antwerp. Without control of Noord Brabant German forces would have been in artillery range of Antwerp, and with a build up of forces and supply directly back to Germany in perfect position for a counter-attack. Market Garden was the offensive SHEAF wanted to secure Antwerp, a prime port for logistics for all allied armies. It made sense as the Germans were in disarray, so should be easy enough to gain.
Monty added Arnhem to form a bridgehead over the Rhine. It made complete sense in establishing a bridgehead over the Rhine as an extra to the operation. You needed Arnhem for a jump into Germany. Everything up to Nijmegen was needed if you wanted to do anything at all - that is protect Antwerp and have a staging point to move into Germany. Gaining Noord Brabant, was vital, and was successfully seized. Fighting in the low lying mud and waterways of the Schedlt, which will take time, while the Germans are still holding Noord Brabant made no sense at all.
SHEAF got what they wanted from a strategic point of view.
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@fishingthelist4017
The British 1st Airborne made it to Arnhem bridge, taking the north end of the bridge, denying its use to the Germans. The other two airborne units, both US, failed to seize their assigned bridges immediately. If they had XXX Corps would have been in Arnhem on d-day+1, before any armour came in from Germany. Game set and match. The Germans would not have known what had hit them.
The 12 hour delay caused by the 101st not seizing the Zon bridge, meant the Germans for 12 hours had a critical time window to pour in troops and get armour moving towards Arnhem. The longer the time delay the more Germans poured in, hence more resistance, hence a slower XXX Corps. Obvious.
On top of the 12 hour delay, the 82nd not seizing their bridge at Nijmegen (XXX Corps had to take it for them), caused an additional 36 hour delay. This meant another longer time window for the Germans to keep up the reinforcing. The extra 36 hour delay created by the 82nd, meant a bridgehead over the Rhine was precluded, as the two day time window in total given to the Germans was far too long.
The British paras did their part in securing a crossing over its assigned waterway, the Rhine. The two US para units failed in theirs. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
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@fishingthelist4017
Once again, the British army had adbvanced into Belgium super quick with supply being from Normandy. The Germans had consolidated on their own borders. Simple to understand.
Monty had to be put in command of two shambolic US armies, the First and the Ninth, when the Germans attacked them at the Bulge.
Monty's reputation is all he did. He never had a reverse, going through nine countries.
The broad front was an initial disaster. Eisenhower was out of his depth.
Montgomery to Alan Brooke..
"If we want the war to end within any reasonable period you have to get Eisenhower’s hand taken off the land battle. I regret to say that in my opinion he just doesn’t know what he is doing.
Montgomery wrote of Eisenhower and his ridiculous broad-front strategy
on 22 January 1945:
“I fear that the old snags of indecision and vacillation and refusal to consider the military problem fairly and squarely are coming to the front again . . . The real trouble is that there is no control and the three army groups are each intent on their own affairs. Patton today issued a stirring order to Third Army, saying the next step would be Cologne . . . One has to preserve a sense of humour these days, otherwise one would go mad.”
Alanbrooke wrote in his diary about buffoon Einsenhower:
“At the end of this morning's C.O.S. [Chief of Staff] meeting I put before the committee my views on the very unsatisfactory state of affairs in France, with no one running the land battle. Eisenhower, though supposed to be doing so, is on the golf links at Rheims — entirely detached and taking practically no part in running of the war. Matters got so bad lately that a deputation of Whiteley, Bedell Smith and a few others went up to tell him that he must get down to it and RUN the war, which he said he would."
"We discussed the advisability of getting Marshall to come out to discuss the matter, but we are doubtful if he would appreciate the situation. Finally decided that I am to see the P.M. to discuss the situation with him.”
"November 28th I went to see the P.M. I told him I was very worried."
Alan Brooke described in his daily diary that American generals Eisenhower and Marshall as poor strategists, when they were in jobs were strategy mattered. Brooke wrote to Montgomery about his talks with Eisenhower, “it is equally clear that Ike has the very vaguest conception of war!”
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@fishingthelist4017
It has been explained to you. Stretched logistics was a problem. Also the retreating Germans re-grouped with forces in Germany. Simple to understand.
Monty tried to get a para jump into the Scheldt but was refused. It was take the Scheldt or Noodd Brandant. A prime strategic problem for SHAEF in September 1944 was opening up the approaches to Antwerp and keeping it from German counter-attack - the logistics problem to supply all allied armies. It was:
1) Take Noord Brabant, the land to the north and northeast of Antwerp, or;
2) Take the Schedlt.
Noord Branant had to be taken first, as it was essential. It was taken with limited forces also sent to take the Schedlt. Market Garden had to go ahead regardless of any threat, actually being a success. To use Antwerp and control the approaches, the Scheldt, everything up to the south bank of the lower Rhine at Nijmegen needed to be under allied control.
The low-lying lands, boggy ground between Arnhem and Nijmegen with land strewn with rivers and canals, is perfect geography as a barrier against a German counter-attack towards Antwerp. Without control of Noord Brabant German forces would have been in artillery range of Antwerp, and with a build up of forces and supply directly back to Germany in perfect position for a counter-attack. Market Garden was the offensive SHEAF wanted to secure Antwerp, a prime port for logistics for all allied armies. It made sense as the Germans were in disarray, so should be easy enough to gain.
Monty added Arnhem to form a bridgehead over the Rhine. It made complete sense in establishing a bridgehead over the Rhine as an extra to the operation. You needed Arnhem for a jump into Germany. Everything up to Nijmegen was needed if you wanted to do anything at all - that is protect Antwerp and have a staging point to move into Germany. Gaining Noord Brabant, was vital, and was successfully seized. Fighting in the low lying mud and waterways of the Schedlt, which will take time, while the Germans are still holding Noord Brabant made no sense at all.
SHEAF got what they wanted from a strategic point of view.
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@fishingthelist4017
Read again. Monty created Operation Comet, a pursuit operation.
Monty had taken a large port intact, the only one taken intact. The German 15th army was to the north west of him, with Germans to the north and west.
Monty's prime concern was ensuring Antwerp stayed in allied hands, not being taken back, or destroyed, by the Germans. It was essential Antwerp was not taken back by the Germans. Monty was not going on speculative chases that may run out of steam, like what happened in North Africa to the British and Germans, then being driven back losing a major port. He was not going to do what happened with Patton in the east, getting nowhere, sustaining heavy casualties for no progress.
The logistics had not fully kept up. It is not difficult to understand.
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@fishingthelist4017
The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British under Montgomery. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa;
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein;
♦ March 1943 - Medenine;
♦ June 1944 - Normandy;
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands;
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge;
A list of Montgomery’s victories in WW2:
♦ Battle of Alam Halfa;
♦ Second Battle of El Alamein;
♦ Battle of El Agheila;
♦ Battle of Medenine;
♦ Battle of the Mareth Line;
♦ Battle of Wadi Akarit;
♦ Allied invasion of Sicily;
♦ Operation Overlord - the largest amphibious invasion in history;
♦ Market Garden - a 60 mile salient created into German territory;
♦ Battle of the Bulge - while taking control of two shambolic US armies;
♦ Operation Veritable;
♦ Operation Plunder.
Montgomery not once had a reverse.
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Monty's 8th Army advanced the fastest of any army in WW2. From El Alamein to El Agheila from the 4th to 23rd November 1942, 1,300 km in just 17 days. After fighting a major exhausting battle at El Alemein through half a million mines. This was an Incredible feat, unparalleled in WW2. With El Alamein costing just 13,500 casualties.
The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties, with the Lorraine campaign being a failure. Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties. Hodges, head of the US First army, fled from Spa to near Liege on the 18th, despite the Germans never getting anywhere near to Spa. Hodges did not even wait for the Germans to approach Spa. He had already fled long before the Germans were stopped. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British, with Montgomery involved in planning, with also Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
You need to give respect where it is due.
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Robert Mullin
As for 3 fully operational XXX Corps' tanks running onto Arnhem after taking the bridge.
SS man Harmel:
"The four panzers [Carrington's five tank troop] who crossed the bridge made a mistake when they stayed in Lent. If they had carried on their advance, it would have been all over for us.'
But Harmel also contradictory stated:
"what is seldom understood, that the Arnhem battle was lost in Nijmegen. If the allies had taken the [Nijmegen] bridge on the first day, it would have been all over for us. Even if we had lost it on the second day we would have had difficulty stopping them. By the time the English tanks had arrived, the matter was already decided".
♦ 17th at 14.50 hrs, XXX Corps started to roll.
It took them 42 hours to reach the Nijmegen bridge,
Just ahead of schedule.
♦ 19th a.m. XXX Corps reached Nijmegen.
♦ 19th at 20.00 hrs , about eleven hours after XXX Corps
arrived at Nijmegen, the first two Tigers driven in from Germany,
drove up onto the ramp leading to the Arnhem bridge then
systematically shelled houses occupied by the British paras.
The 2 Tigers were hit and taken to be repaired.
♦ 20th at 19,00 hrs, XXX Corps take NIjmegen bridge in the dark
with only five tanks crossing the bridge with two hit by enemy fire.
The British 1st Airborne had already capitulated. Schwere
Panzerkompanie Hummel with 12 Tigers had already ran
south over the Arnhem bridge blocking any route north.
XXX Corps were now 36 hrs behind schedule because they
had to seize the Nijmegen bridge which should have been
done by the US 82nd.
If the US 82nd had taken the Nijmegen bridge on the 1st day, the 17th, XXX Corps would have been over the bridge on the morning of the 19th about 10 hrs before any Tiger entered Arnhem. The 82nd's 6pdr anti-tanks guns could have easily dealt with any German armour that arrived at Lent, the north end of the bridge, in the first 42 hours.
SS Man Harmel who said there was no German opposition between Nijmegen and Arnhem on the evening of the 20th, did not know about the Tiger tanks that ran south. The route to Arnhem was already closed. He never knew this until decades after the war. Five Shermans, with two of them damaged, that crossed the Nijmegen bridge would have been made scrap metal by the 12 Tigers between Nijmegen and Arnhem.
http://www.defendingarnhem.com/schpzkphummel.htm
Harmel had no knowledge this Tiger unit had arrived on the 19th. When he says that nothing was between Nijmegen and Arnhem he was totally wrong. He never knew this until the 1970s.
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Peorhum
"but everything says Monty screwed up after Normandy, including in regards to the scheldt."
The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British. From El Alemein it moved right up into Denmark and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery had to give the US armies an infantry role as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour. Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein
♦ March 1943 - Medenine
♦ June 1944 - Normandy
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - Holland
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge
Not on one occasion were Monty's ground armies pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. The US Army were struggling in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform all that great east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months. The Battle of the Bulge took all the US effort, and vital help from Montgomery and the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe. The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, the only allied army to be pushed back into a RETREAT in the 1944-45 timeframe. When the Germans attacked, the US First and Ninth armies had to be put under Montgomery's control, with the Ninth staying until the end of the war just about.
Montgomery never suffered a reverse from Mid 1942 until May 1945, from Egypt to Denmark. Normandy was planned and commanded by the British which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The German armour in the west was wiped out by the primarily British - the US forces were impotent against the best of the panzers. Monty assessed the US armies giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped to fight tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn 1944/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
Americans do not like Montgomery as he, not deliberately, exposed their overall poor performance in Europe. Hollywood says one thing while facts dictate another.
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@owenjones7517
As for Patton's dash across France with no one there. When Patton did meet the Germans near their border, it all stopped big time.
1985 US Army report on the Lorraine Campaign.
Patton does not come out well at all.
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a211668.pdf
Combat Studies Institute.
The Lorraine Campaign: An Overview, September-December 1944.
by Dr. Christopher R. Gabel
February, 1985
From the document is in italics:
Soldiers and generals alike assumed that Lorraine would fall quickly, and unless the war ended first, Patton's tanks would take the war into Germany by summer's end. But Lorraine was not to be overrun in a lightning campaign. Instead, the battle for Lorraine would drag on for more than 3 months." "Despite its proximity to Germany, Lorraine was not the Allies' preferred invasion route in 1944. Except for its two principal cities, Metz and Nancy, the province contained few significant military objectives." "Moreover, once Third Army penetrated the province and entered Germany, there would still be no first-rate military objectives within its grasp.
The Saar industrial region, while significant, was of secondary importance when compared to the great Ruhr industrial complex farther north."
Another Patton chase into un-needed territory, full of vineyards like he did when running his troops into Brittany.
"With so little going for it, why did Patton bother with Lorraine at all? The reason was that Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, made up his mind to destroy as many German forces as possible west of the Rhine."
In other words a waste of time.
"Communications Zone organized the famous Red Ball Express, a non-stop conveyor belt of trucks connecting the Normandy depots with the field armies."
They were getting fuel via 6,000 trucks.
"The simple truth was that although fuel was plentiful in Normandy, there was no way to transport it in sufficient quantities to the leading elements. On 31 August , Third Army received no fuel at all."
In short, Patton overran his supply lines. What was important was to secure the Port of Antwerp's approaches, which Eisenhower deprioritised, ordered Monty to halt. Montgomery approached the US leaders of the First Airborne Army who would not drop into the Scheldt.
"Few of the Germans defending Lorraine could be considered First-rate troops. Third Army encountered whole battalions made up of deaf men, others of cooks, and others consisting entirety of soldiers with stomach ulcers."
Some army the Americans were going to fight
"Was the Lorraine campaign an American victory? From September through November, Third Army claimed to have inflicted over 180,000 casualties on the enemy. But to capture the province of Lorraine, a problem which involved an advance of only 40 to 60 air miles, Third Army required over 3 months and suffered 50,000 casualties, approximately one-third of the total number of casualties it sustained in the entire European war."
The US Army does not think it was a victory. Huge losses for taking unimportant territory, against a poor German army.
"Ironically, Third Army never used Lorraine as a springboard for an advance into Germany after all. Patton turned most of the sector over to Seventh Army during the Ardennes crisis, and when the eastward advance resumed after the Battle of the Bulge, Third Army based its operations on Luxembourg, not Lorraine. The Lorraine campaign will always remain a controversial episode in American military history."
It's getting worse. One third of all European casualties in Lorraine and never used the territory to move into Germany.
"Finally the Lorraine Campaign demonstrated that Logistics often drive operations, no matter how forceful and aggressive the commanding general may be." "Patton violated tactical principles" "His discovered that violating logistical principles is an unforgiving and cumulative matter."
Not flattering at all. And Americans state Patton was the best general they had. Bradley stated later:
“Patton was developing as an unpopular guy. He steamed about with great convoys of cars and great squads of cameramen … To George, tactics was simply a process of bulling ahead. Never seemed to think out a campaign. Seldom made a careful estimate of the situation. I thought him a shallow commander … I disliked the way he worked, upset tactical plans, interfered in my orders. His stubbornness on amphibious operations, parade plans into Messina sickened me and soured me on Patton. We learned how not to behave from Patton’s Seventh Army.”
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When Gavin found out the 508th were not moving, he was livid, expecting them to be moving on the bridge, if there was no opposition. The 508th did send a recon patrol. According to Phil Nordyke’s Put Us Down In Hell (2012) three lead scouts of the troop of 40, were separated making it to the vicinity of south end of the road bridge approaches, not the main steel span. They captured six Germans and also their small artillery gun. They waited about an hour for reinforcements that never arrived, having to withdraw then observed the 9.SS-Panzer recon battalion arriving from Arnhem.
These few scouts that reached the southern end of the Nijmegen bridge just before the 9th SS recon, reached the bridge about an hour before the 9th SS. Joe Atkins in The 508th said, "at the bridge, only a few German soldiers were standing around a small artillery weapon... The Germans were so surprised; the six or seven defenders of the bridge gave up without resisting. We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark and none of our other troops showed up. We decided to pull away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge." That was the 9th SS. The 82nd men had captured one third of the guards on the bridge.
US Official History, page 163:
Colonel Warren about 1830 sent into Nijmegen a patrol
After around 4.5 hours after landing a patrol of 40 men were sent.
Colonel Warren directed Companies A and B to rendezvous at a point just south of Nijmegen at 1900 and move with the Dutch guide to the bridge. Company C, a platoon of which already had gone into the city as a patrol, was withheld in regimental reserve. Although Company A reached the rendezvous point on time, Company B "got lost en route." After waiting until about 2000, Colonel Warren left a guide for Company B and moved through the darkness with Company A toward the edge of the city. Some seven hours after H-Hour, the first real move against the Nijmegen bridge began.
As the scouts neared a traffic circle surrounding a landscaped circular park near the center of Nijmegen, the Keizer Karel Plein, from which a mall-like park led northeast toward the Nijmegen bridge, a burst of automatic weapons fire came from the circle. The time was about two hours before midnight.
As Company A formed to attack, the men heard the noise of an approaching motor convoy emanating from a side street on the other side of the traffic circle. Enemy soldiers noisily dismounted (the 9th SS now in the town)
No one could have said so with any finality at the time, but the chance for an easy, speedy capture of the Nijmegen bridge had passed. This was all the more lamentable because in Nijmegen during the afternoon the Germans had had nothing more than the same kind of "mostly low quality" troops encountered at most other places on D Day.
Vandervoort's 505th had a number of failed attempts at seizing Nijmegen bridge, unable to get onto the southern approach road.
The 82nd men captured one third of the Guards on the bridge without a fight and also their big gun, probably a 2cm Flak 30. There was a similar gun at the northern end.
They literally got one end of the bridge, well the southern approaches, just before the 9th SS turned up. If they had got there in greater force a few hours earlier, they would have hopped and skipped onto the bridge whistling Dixie.
Regarding Zon, we do not know if the Germans would have blown the bridge if the 101st had got there within minutes. Probably they would not have, as to blow it takes authority, which takes time as an officer would want to know the whole picture before ordering an explosion. It took the Germans four hours to blow the Zon bridge.
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It was easy. Grab the largely undefended bridges with a large para drop, while powering up a largely undefended road.
The state of play on the 17th, D day, was:
1) the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was largely clear;
2) there were concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally;
3) there were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen;
4) a few scattered about along the road;
5) there was no armour in Arnhem.
That was it.
i) XXX Corps would deal from the Belgium border to Eindhoven;
ii) 101st from Eindhoven to Grave;
iii) 82nd from Grave to north of Nijmegen;
iv) British and Polish paras from north of Nijmegen to north of the Rhine;
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 2 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured it.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected. XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and towards the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up.
The road was still largely clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump. XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, making up the delay at Zon. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over. If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves, after the 82nd tried again and failed again. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
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@11nytram11
Monty had to deal with egotistical American amateurs.
“At the end of this morning's C.O.S. meeting I put before the committee my views on the very unsatisfactory state of affairs in France, with no one running the land battle. Eisenhower, though supposed to be doing so, is on the golf links at Rheims — entirely detached and taking practically no part in running of the war. Matters got so bad lately that a deputation of Whiteley, Bedell Smith and a few others went up to tell him that he must get dowm to it and RUN the war, which he said he would."
_"We discussed the advisability of getting Marshall to come out to discuss the matter, but we are doubtful if he would appreciate the situation. Finally decided that I am to see the P.M. to discuss the situation with him.”
"November 28th. 1 went to see the P.M. 1 told him I was very worried."_
“I find it difficult to refrain from expressing my indignation at Hodges and Ridgeway and my appreciation of Montgomery whenever I talk about St.Vith. It is my firm opinion that if it hadn't been for Montgomery, the First US Army, and especially the troops in the St.Vith salient, would have ended in a debacle that would have gone down in history.”
-Alan Brooke's Diaries
“I'm sure you remember how First Army HQ fled from Spa leaving food cooking on the stoves, officers' Xmas presents from home on their beds and, worst of all, top secret maps still on the walls... First Army HQ never contacted us with their new location and I had to send an officer to find them. He did and they knew nothing about us...(Montgomery) was at First Army HQ when my officer arrived. A liaison officer from Montgomery arrived at my HQ within 24 hrs. His report to Montgomery is what saved us...”
- General Hasbrouck of US 7th Armor. Generals of the Bulge by Jerry D. Morelock. page 298
Montgomery to Alan Brooke..
"If we want the war to end within any reasonable period you have to get Eisenhower’s hand taken off the land battle. I regret to say that in my opinion he just doesn’t know what he is doing.
Montgomery on Eisenhower:
"He has never commanded anything before in his whole career; now, for the first time, he has elected to take direct command of very large-scale operations and he does not know how to do it."
Montgomery wrote of Eisenhower and his failing broad-front strategy on 22 January 1945:
“I fear that the old snags of indecision and vacillation and refusal to consider the military problem fairly and squarely are coming to the front again . . . The real trouble is that there is no control and the three army groups are each intent on their own affairs. Patton today issued a stirring order to Third Army, saying the next step would be Cologne . . . One has to preserve a sense of humour these days, otherwise one would go mad.”
Bradley doing nothing at the Bulge. Eisenhower did little either. Montgomery stated:
"I do not believe that Eisenhower ever really understood the strategy of the Normandy campaign. He seemed to me to get the whole thing muddled up."
Alan Brooke had to explain a number times what the strategy in Normandy was to Eisenhower. Alan Brooke described in his daily diary that American generals Eisenhower and Marshall as poor strategists, when they were in jobs were strategy mattered. Brooke wrote to Montgomery about his talks with Eisenhower,
“it is equally clear that Ike has the very vaguest conception of war!”
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@bigwoody4704
Monty stopped the Germans taking all the US armies as POWs, by taking control of them in the Bulge. Well the Germans did take 20,000 US POWs and the US took near 100,000 casualties. Monty stopped all that while Ike was holed up in his HQ not communicating with anyone.
I will let the Germans have the first say on the Bulge:
General Hasso von Manteuffel:
‘The operations of the American First Army had developed into a series of individual holding actions. Montgomery's contribution to restoring the situation was that he turned a series of isolated actions into a coherent battle fought according to a clear and definite plan. It was his refusal to engage in premature and piecemeal counter-attacks which enabled the Americans to gather their reserves and frustrate the German attempts to extend their breakthrough’.
By November 1944, British SHEAF officer, Strong, noted that there was a possibility of a German counter-offensive in the Ardennes or the Vosges. Strong went to personally warn Bradley at his HQ, who said, "let 'em come".
Montgomery on hearing of the attack immediately, without consulting Eisenhower, took British forces to the Meuse to prevent any German forces from making a bridgehead, securing the rear. He was prepared to halt their advance and attack them. This was while Eisenhower and Bradley were doing nothing.
even by 19 December, three days into the offensive, no overall plan had emerged from 12th Army Group or SHAEF, other than the decision to send Patton’s forces north to Bastogne. Overall, the Ardennes battle was in urgent need of grip. General Hodges had yet to see Bradley or receive more than the sketchiest orders from his Army Group commander.
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
On 20 December, Montgomery had sent a signal to Alanbrooke regarding the US forces:
"Not good... definite lack of grip and control. I have heard nothing from Ike or Bradley and had no orders or requests of any sort. My own opinion is that the American forces have been cut in half and the Germans can reach the Meuse at Namur without opposition."
Omar Bradley, commander of the 12th Army Group, did very little:
16 Dec, the first day, for 12 hours did nothing.
16 Dec, after 12 hours, he sent two armoured divisions from the flanking Ninth and Third Armies.
17 Dec, after 24 Hours, he then called in two US airborne divisions from Champagne.
18 Dec, he ordered Patton to halt his pending offensive in the Saar.
18 Dec, he had still not established contact with the First Army, while Monty had.
19 Dec, he withdrew divisions from the Aachen front to shore up the Ardennes.
19 Dec, he had still not produced an overall defensive plan.
19 Dec, the Supreme Commander intervened directly late in the day.
20 Dec, Eisenhower telephoned Montgomery telling him to take command of the US First and Ninth Armies
While all this dillying by Bradley was going on, German armies were pounding forward into his lines. Bradley should have been fired. Hodges ran away from his command post.
British officer Whiteley & American officer Betts of SHEAF visited the U.S. First Army HQ after the German attack, seeing the shambles. Strong, Whiteley, and Betts recommended that command of the armies north of the Ardennes be transferred from Bradley to Montgomery. Unfortunately only the two British officers approached Beddel Smith of their recommendations, who immediately fired the pair, claiming it was a nationalistic thing. The next morning, Beddel Smith apologized seeing the three were right, recommending to Eisenhower to bring in Monty.
During the Battle of the Bulge Eisenhower was stuck self imprisoned in his HQ in des-res Versailles near Paris in fear of German paratroopers wearing US uniforms with the objective to kill allied generals. He had remained locked up more than 30 days without sending a single message or order to Montgomery, and that is when he thought he was doing ground control of the campaign, when in effect Montgomery was in control as two US armies had to be put under his control after the German attack, the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF had to take control of US air force units. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war, just about.
And yet biased American authors such as Stephen Ambrose said that Eisenhower took control of the Bulge and made the battle his veneering it as an all American victory. Ambrose completely falsified history. The only thing Eisenhower did was tell Monty to get control of two out of control US armies, tell the US 101st to go to Bastogne (who were in northern France after the buffer Market Garden was created) and men under Bradley to counterattack. That is it.
At the end of the Bulge would you believe it, Eisenhower gave Bradley an award.
A shocking state of affairs on the Yankee side Rambo. Truly shocking.
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XXX Corps were NOT slow.
Brereton wrote: “It was the breakdown of the 2nd Army’s timetable on the first day—their failure to reach Eindhoven in 6 to 8 hours as planned—that caused the delay in the taking of the Nijmegen bridge and the failure at Arnhem.” Is this criticism justified?
The Guards, breaking out along one road, met strong opposition nearly all the way to Eindhoven, and yet they drove their armour through these twelve bitterly contested miles in twenty-four hours. When they reached the southern end of the ‘airborne corridor’ on the evening of D plus 1, they were halted for the night by the blown bridge at Zon. This bridge might have been captured intact if the 101st Division had agreed to Montgomery's proposal that it should drop paratroops on either side of the objective, as was done at Grave.
- THE STRUGGLE FOR EUROPE 1954, CHAPTER XXVII. THE LOST OPPORTUNITY, P 588 by CHESTER WILMOT
XXX Corps slowed up when hearing of the blown bridge at Zon. The US 101st failed to take the bridge, not XXX Corps. Brereton lied. XXX Corps were not slow, as facts prove that.
From US Official history....
As night came the British stopped in Valkenswaard, their "formal" objective. The objective of Eindhoven, which General Horrocks had indicated he hoped to reach on D-Day, lay six miles to the north.
XXX Corps brushed aside the heavy German resistance on the Dutch-Belgian border, with "remarkable" progress as the US Official history states.
So, XXX Corps was on schedule meeting their objective. XXX Corps reached Eindhoven at 1230 hrs, [d-day+1] running through without stopping, only to stop at the Zon bridge which the US 101st failed to seize.
US Official history...
at 0645 (D plus 2, 19 September) the armor rumbled across [the Zon bridge].
That is about 19 hours delay - OK knock off an hour for getting through Eindhoven, say 18 hours. An 18 hours delay because the US 101st failed to seize their objective.
US Official history....
Spearheading the 30 Corps ground column, reconnaissance troops of the Guards Armoured Division linked with Colonel Tucker's S04th Parachute Infantry at Grave at 0820 the morning of D plus 2, 19 September. Major formations of the British armor were not far behind.
XXX Corps covered over 26 miles in 2 hr 45 mins. Very fast indeed. They got to Zon at about 1330 hrs d-day+1. So XXX Corps would have reached the 82nd at 1615 hrs d-day+1, at the latest if the Zon bridge had been secured. More like an hour earlier, or as fast as the vehicles could go. If the 82nd had secured the Nijmegen bridge XXX Corps would have linked up with the British paras possibly early evening d-day+1.
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1985 US Army report on the Lorraine Campaign.
Patton does not come out well.
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a211668.pdf
Combat Studies Institute. The Lorraine Campaign: An Overview, September-December 1944. by Dr. Christopher R. Gabel February, 1985
From the document is in italics:
Soldiers and generals alike assumed that Lorraine would fall quickly, and unless the war ended first, Patton's tanks would take the war into Germany by summer's end. But Lorraine was not to be overrun in a lightning campaign. Instead, the battle for Lorraine would drag on for more than 3 months." "Despite its proximity to Germany, Lorraine was not the Allies' preferred invasion route in 1944. Except for its two principal cities, Metz and Nancy, the province contained few significant military objectives." "Moreover, once Third Army penetrated the province and entered Germany, there would still be no first-rate military objectives within its grasp.
The Saar industrial region, while significant, was of secondary importance when compared to the great Ruhr industrial complex farther north."
Another Patton chase into un-needed territory, full of vineyards like he did when running his troops into Brittany.
"With so little going for it, why did Patton bother with Lorraine at all? The reason was that Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, made up his mind to destroy as many German forces as possible west of the Rhine."
In other words a waste of time.
"Communications Zone organized the famous Red Ball Express, a non-stop conveyor belt of trucks connecting the Normandy depots with the field armies."
They were getting fuel via 6,000 trucks.
"The simple truth was that although fuel was plentiful in Normandy, there was no way to transport it in sufficient quantities to the leading elements. On 31 August , Third Army received no fuel at all."
In short, Patton overran his supply lines. What was important was to secure the Port of Antwerp's approaches, which Eisenhower deprioritised. Montgomery approached the US leaders of the First Airborne Army who would not drop into the Scheldt.
"Few of the Germans defending Lorraine could be considered First-rate troops. Third Army encountered whole battalions made up of deaf men, others of cooks, and others consisting entirety of soldiers with stomach ulcers."
Some army the Americans were going to fight
"Was the Lorraine campaign an American victory? From September through November, Third Army claimed to have inflicted over 180,000 casualties on the enemy. But to capture the province of Lorraine, a problem which involved an advance of only 40 to 60 air miles, Third Army required over 3 months and suffered 50,000 casualties, approximately one-third of the total number of casualties it sustained in the entire European war."
The US Army does not think it was a victory. Huge losses for taking unimportant territory, against a poor German army.
"Ironically, Third Army never used Lorraine as a springboard for an advance into Germany after all. Patton turned most of the sector over to Seventh Army during the Ardennes crisis, and when the eastward advance resumed after the Battle of the Bulge, Third Army based its operations on Luxembourg, not Lorraine. The Lorraine campaign will always remain a controversial episode in American military history."
It's getting worse. One third of all European casualties in Lorraine and never used the territory to move into Germany.
"Finally the Lorraine Campaign demonstrated that Logistics often drive operations, no matter how forceful and aggressive the commanding general may be." "Patton violated tactical principles" "His discovered that violating logistical principles is an unforgiving and cumulative matter."
Not flattering at all. And Americans state Patton was the best general they had. Bradley stated later:
“Patton was developing as an unpopular guy. He steamed about with great convoys of cars and great squads of cameramen … To George, tactics was simply a process of bulling ahead. Never seemed to think out a campaign. Seldom made a careful estimate of the situation. I thought him a shallow commander … I disliked the way he worked, upset tactical plans, interfered in my orders. His stubbornness on amphibious operations, parade plans into Messina sickened me and soured me on Patton. We learned how not to behave from Patton’s Seventh Army.”
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Timeless design in where the proportions are correct. Humans focus in on the 3 by 4 arrangement. You see this in windows, the distance between windows, shapes of building, TV screens, etc. Ancient Greek architects knew this, as did Georgian house architects. Timeless architecture knows what people identify with that makes it appealing visually. Georgian houses have never gone away being continually built for the past 250 years. Georgian houses were the first mass produced style. They were designed to look good from the outside, to sell, using the 3 by 4 generally in proportions.
What makes a good looking face? Why do we all think one person is good looking and another is not? The proportions between eyes, nose, mouth, etc.
Jaguar get the proportions right, apart from the Mk 10. That is why any Jag from the mid 1950s to now looks good. They sit on the road well.
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General Bodo Zimmermann, Chief of Operations, German Army Group D, said that had the strategy of Montgomery succeeded in the autumn of 1944, there would have been no need to fight for the West Wall, not for the central and upper Rhine, all of 24 which would have fallen automatically.
Indeed, had Monty's idea for a 40 division concentrated thrust towards the Ruhr been accepted by Eisenhower instead of messing about in the Lorraine, Alsace, Vosges, etc, it would have all been over for the Germans in the west.
"The best course of the Allies would have been to concentrate a really strong striking force with which to break through past Aachen to the Ruhr area. Germany's strength is in the north. South Germany was a side issue. He who holds northern Germany holds Germany. Such a break-through, coupled with air domination, would have torn in pieces the weak German front and ended the war. Berlin and Prague would have been occupied ahead of the Russians. There were no German forces behind the Rhine, and at the end of August our front was wide open. There was the possibility of an operational break-through in the Aachen area, in September. This would have facilitated a rapid conquest of the Ruhr and a quicker advance on Berlin.
By turning the forces from the Aachen area sharply northward, the German 15th and1st Parachute Armies could have been pinned against the estuaries of the Mass and the Rhine. They could not have escaped eastwards into Germany."
- Gunther Blumentritt in, The Other Side Of The Hill by Liddell Hart
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@Parawingdelta2
The German jets were axial-flow with concept flaws - copied from Whittle's patents.
There were five turbojet engines in the UK under R&D in WW2:
1) Centrifugal, by Whittle (Rover);
2) Centrifugal, by Frank Halford (DeHaviland);
3) Axial-flow, by Metro-Vick;
4) Axial-flow by Griffiths (Rolls Royce);
5) Axial flow compressor, with reverse flow combustion chambers. The ASX by Armstrong Siddeley;
Metro-Vick sold their jet engine division to Armstrong Siddeley. The Metro-Vick engine transpired into the post war Sapphire. Most American engines in the 1940s/50s were of UK design, many made under licence. The US licensed the J-42 (RR Nene) and J-48 (RR Tay), being virtually identical to the British engines. US aircraft used licensed British engines powering the: P-59, P-80, T-33, F9F Panther, F9F-6 Cougar, FJ Fury 3 and 4, Martin B-57 Canberra, F-94 Starfire, A4 Skyhawk and the A7 Corsair.The US General Electric J-47 turbojet was developed by General Electric in conjunction with Metropolitan Vickers of the UK, who had already developed a nine-stage axial-flow compressor engine licensing the design to Allison in 1944 for the earlier J-35 engine, first flying in May 1948. The centrifugal Rolls Royce Nene is one of the highest production jet engines in history with over 50,000 built.
Centrifugal compressors are not obsolete being used in turboprops. Between a turbojet and a turboprop, the only difference is the turbine, not the compressor. Centrifugal compressor jet engines are still in service on a handful of commercial aircraft like the ALF 502, the Williams FJ44 and the GE Honda HF120. The Rolls Royce Dart turboprop, a very reliable centrifugal compressor engine made in 27 versions, was produced the longest, being a comparable design turbojet to the likes of the Rolls Royce Nene. The rugged engine was produced from 1946 up to 1987.
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Pre WW2 Britain was on two paths:
1) The axial-flow air compressor by Griffiths;
2) The centrifugal air compressor by Whittle.
Griffiths' 1926 seminal paper laid down axial-flow. His paper actually outlined a turbo prop. He did not believe at the time the engines could produce enough thrust, but could turn a propeller. He got Metrovick to develop an axial-flow turbojet in 1938, who started the groundwork of the F.2 axial-flow in 1940, having an engine first spin in 1940, with a successful test bed spin in 1941. Whittle's patent was in 1930, which laid down the turbojet. All this info was available to the Germans.
Whittle went for centrifugal, as it was a simpler way of compressing air. Whittle wanted a simple air compressor to establish his turbo jet design quickly. In short, he was interested more in establishing the back end of the engine, the thrust, rather than the front. Once the back end was perfected then he could improve the front, the air compression. This was the sensible approach. The centrifugal compressor was perfectly adequate to prove the rear thrust side of the engine.
As post war engines proved the centrifugal was taken to higher limits. Axial-flow compression was a series of turbine fans on one shaft, with successive fans passing compressed air to the next fan to increase air compression. This added complexity in many ways.
Griffiths went for the more complex axial-flow. He also laid down a contra-rotating compressor, but Metrovick did not go down that road. The more powerful F.2 was used to fly the Meteor plane but considered unreliable at that stage, so Whittle's centrifugal engine was used. The F.2 was more reliable than the German Jumo, but the British would never put a plane in the air with such an unreliable under-developed engine. Wiggin in Birmingham were commissioned to develop high temperature resistant alloys as the jet engines were being developed. The Germans had no such programme. The F.2 ended up as the post war Sapphire being built under licence in the USA as the J65, powering the: Douglas A-4 Skyhawk, Grumman F-11 Tiger, Martin B-57 and the Republic F-84F Thunderstreak.
It took the French a wasted eight years to get the German design reliable, which by that time they had discarded many of the German engine concepts. The French airliner the Sud Aviation Caravelle, used Rolls Royce Avon engines the French engines, based on German designs, were so good.
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David Himmelsbach
Eisenhower had prioritised the north in his broad front strategy. Monty had the concept and some preparations for Operation Comet, a multiple crossing of the Rhine. This would have the US 1st Army on the right flank. On hearing of this Bradley disobeyed Eisenhower's orders and starving Hodge's 1st army of supplies giving them to Patton.
Comet, a pursuit operation, had to be cut down to Market Garden, with one crossing of the Rhine, with the US 1st Army omitted. Bradley and Patton should have been fired. The US had some excellent Corps commanders like Truscott who would have done a far better job. Of all the manpower available a vital thrust, which Eisenhower prioritised, was down to three corps operation. VIII Corps and XII Corps were on XXX Corps flanks to Eindhoven. Then XXX Corps by themselves above.
Monty wanted the crossing of the Rhine to be Kasel, but was overruled for Arnhem. Monty did not plan or take part in the execution of Market Garden. Brereton, an American, who was in command of the First Allied Airborne Army did a lot of it. The USAAF objected to fighter-bombers being used. So the vital tool that prevented the Germans from moving during the day was not there. The Germans in broad daylight moved tanks fro Germany to Arnhem.
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The Mustang was basically a British plane made by an American manufacturer for them. The British Air Ministry directed a six year old inexperienced company, North American Aviation, to the design points they wanted for their plane. They assisted North American who drew it up, as a university lecturer would do in directing students to research various points in a project. The students run off do the research with the lecturer assessing what they did and how it fits into the project as a whole. The Mustang was a British plane made by an American company for them. There was no US forces involvement in the concept, specifications or design. Many Americans lose sight of these fundamental points.
The Rolls Royce Merlin engine made the Mustang perform superbly. The plane initially used an Allison engine, which was only good at low level, as RR could not meet the supply of Merlins at the time, so the Alison it had to be. The US were behind the British in engine supercharging with the Tizard Mission giving the USA details of advanced super charging. Also the cylinder head design of the Alison was not good enough for full supercharging. Stanley Hooker of RR developed the auto controlled twin-speed twin-charger supercharging technology which was given free to the USA. The first use of the Mustang by the US military was for ground attack because of the poor high level performance of the Allison engine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by4lH2whhjk
In the early stages of WW2, the U.S. government allowed the British & French to by-pass them allowing direct approaches to U.S. aircraft makers, as would the British government approach say Hawker. The British needed all types of planes urgently, even the P-40 which was inferior to their own front line planes. But warplanes they were being useful in certain theatres and for training.
In early February 1940 the British asked North American Aviation's President Dutch Kindelberger to supply P-40s made under licence from Curtiss, as Curtiss could not supply demand. Unlike Curtiss North American were far from near full capacity. Kindelberger told the British, without any detailed drawings or plans, "I can build you a better airplane, and I can get it built fast". Contrary to popular belief in the USA, North American did not have a prototype ready design which the Brits just happened to have snapped up under the noses of the US military.
North American were first approached in Feb 1940, who had no "detailed drawings or plans". The British gave this young inexperienced company a chance but they would have to hold their hands. In May 1940 as France was falling, North American still never presented any detailed plans, mailing a "design concept" to the British delegation in New York. This never had the famed laminar flow wings. The British Air Ministry accepted the inferior Allison engine as Rolls Royce were working flat out 24/7 unable to meet demand for Merlins. New Merlin factories were being set up but not yet fully on-line.
In the interim from Feb to May, three months, the British Air Ministry were forming the fundamentals of the design concepts directing North American to Curtiss and NACA the developer of the laminar flow wings, to ensure a fighter with some leading edge design points, not produce another P-40 fly-alike wasting valuable time. The Air Ministry directed NAA to the Curtiss XP-46 experimental plane with all the leading edge design points of top European designs, with a few of their own, rolled into one. It never worked as the individual points never complimented each other when merged into one complete whole.
NAA were ordered by the British Air Ministry to buy the plans and test results of the XP-46 plane from Curtiss if they wanted the job, at a whopping $52,000, a lot of money at the time. Curtiss engineers always said the Mustang was their design. Not quite as the British Air Ministry had a lot to say in the leading design points - they were paying and calling the shots as it was their plane. There was a danger the Mustang may end up the same way as the XP-46 - a plane with leading edge points that never performed as expected. The British Air Ministry took a major gamble with NAA so were active in approving the emerging design points.
The Ministry wanted something better than the poor P-40, being prepared to wait, but realistically never expected Spitfire performance. Initially that was the case with the first deliveries using the Allison engine - better than a P-40 but no Spitfire. The initial Allison engined Mustangs filled an RAF niche, so no problems for the British at that point. A niche the plane filled was that the RAF needed a long range reconnaissance plane that could also perform ground attack being able as a low level fighter if the need was there. The Spitfire was a short range fast interceptor. With the fall of France the RAF needed a plane with range to penetrate over the German border from English air bases.
Reading many US books on the Mustang you would think the concept of the plane was to escort US bombers. That is way off from the truth. The last thing the British Air Ministry were thinking of when laying down the points of the plane was US bomber doctrine. The US were not even in the war. Initially the US military overall didn't want to know the plane. The Mustang was not even in U.S. service when it was shooting down FW-190s by the RAF over France. The Air Ministry gave the U.S. military two planes which were left in the corner of a hangar for a long period. They initially never assessed it. Quite amazing, as the USA never had a decent front line fighter at the time.
The excuse not to take up the plane by U.S. forces was that it was liquid cooled and vulnerable in frontal attack. This was a poor excuse to reject the plane because it wasn't theirs. What went over their heads was that the world's two best fighters locked horns in the Battle of Britain, both with liquid cooled engines. With British support, the Mustang finally was noticed by the U.S. Army Air Force. The US military had to go to England to fully assess the plane as it was finished off in Liverpool being flow by the RAF. They did eventually adopt the plane calling it the Apache and P-51 when in U.S. service.
UK and U.S. Mustangs for the European war theatre were finished off in Liverpool. They were test flown then delivered to the units by young English girls, many of them teenagers. The Mustang was built to British specification and design guidance without a doubt. They specified and paid for it. It never performed at all like the short range interceptor the Spitfire, not having the manoeuvrability of the Spitfire. It was 'fine' and reasonably fast at low altitude with the Allison engine. It could operate over France and even Germany at a push escorting bombers because of the longer range that the British Air Ministry specified. The Mustang filled a niche role for the British. continued......
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There is talk of damming in the Channel and the North Sea. Two dams from Cornwall to France and a number from Scotland, Orkney's, Shetlands and then Norway. UK, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Russia will all be protected. 14 countries.
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Thatcher her was economically illiterate. The Heath government's policies gave way to high inflation having him voted out. She saw the curse of the economy being inflation, so set out to stop that at all costs. She had the view that that prime cause too much money in a society causes inflation, so went out to make sure people never had much money (apart from the chosen few), by restricting money into a society, hence no public sector wage increases, no infrastructure spending by printing money, and implemented general wage increase limits. What did not help was having this obsession that anything privately owned, even monopolies, was more efficient, so dismantled an efficient public sector, that the private sector prospered upon.
Of course everything turned into a disaster.
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The British 1st Airborne made it to Arnhem bridge, taking the north end of the bridge, denying its use to the Germans.
The other two airborne units, both US, failed to seize their assigned bridges immediately. If they had XXX Corps would have been in Arnhem on d-day+1, before any armour came in from Germany. Game set and match.
The Germans would not have known what had hit them.
The 12 hour delay caused by the 101st not seizing the Zon bridge, meant the Germans for 12 hours had a critical time window to pour in troops and get armour moving towards Arnhem.
The 36 hour delay, on top of the 12 hour delay, caused by the 82nd not seizing their bridge at Nijmegen (XXX Corps had to take it for them), meant another longer time window for the Germans to keep up the reinforcing. The 36 hour delay created by the 82nd, meant a bridgehead over the Rhine was precluded, as the two day time window given to the Germans was far too long.
The British paras did their part in securing a crossing over its assigned waterway, the Rhine. The two US para units failed in theirs. XXX Corps never put a foot wrong.
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Randisides
There has been a tradition in the world of downgrading Britain's contribution to WW2, especially in the USA. The British fought a highly technological and industrial war and did so very efficiently. Britain used not only her vast empire but her even larger trading empire to great effect - an army of 2.6 million marched into Burma. The British, with its massive navy, surrounded the Axis, from the Med (cutting off both entrances to the sea) to the Eastern Atlantic, starving them of natural resources, and ensuring where the battles would be fought.
Steel not flesh was the slogan. The British assessed that having massive armies is highly inefficient. The larger the army the higher the casualties. Britain deliberately chose to keep numbers of front line troops as low as possible building machines and using technology advances instead - the BEF in France was the first army were men never marched - fully motorised. The Kangaroo was the first armoured personnel carrier developed in WW2 from adapted tanks, saving many lives, in contrast to the horrendous US casualties. The policy worked, despite fighting for the duration, the only major country to do so, and all around the globe, the country had only lost around 440,000, which is half the British dead of the 1914-1918 war, which lasted two years less. Germany and the USSR lost considerably more troops than they had in WW1.
From the war came amazing British inventions: the cavity magnetron, electronic computer, the world’s most advanced jet engines, anti-submarine electronics, the proximity fuse, as well as the Liberty ship (a Sunderland design), to name but a few. Massive developments in manufacturing, with a staggering 132,500 aircraft and over one million military vehicles. Canada alone produced more wheeled vehicles than Germany.
From the first American servicemen arriving in Britain in 1942, until VE Day, the British provided the USA with 31% of all their supplies in the European Theatre of Operations. Britain's war effort was astonishing – backed by their insistence in continuing the fight in 1940. The British made an enormous contribution to winning the war, being the key agents. This had a positive effect on the future of the world. The declinist view of Britain in the war must be dispelled for good.
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@jasonwiggins6137
Rambo, no I have not.
The Americans were a poor army in WW2 led by a lot of buffoons. Their record shows that.
Alan Brooke, Chief of Staff, described in his daily diary that American generals Eisenhower and Marshall as poor strategists, when they were in jobs were strategy mattered. Brooke wrote to Montgomery about his talks with Eisenhower, “it is equally clear that Ike has the very vaguest conception of war!”
Montgomery to Alan Brooke..
"If we want the war to end within any reasonable period you have to get Eisenhower’s hand taken off the land battle. I regret to say that in my opinion he just doesn’t know what he is doing.”
Montgomery wrote of Eisenhower and his ridiculous broad-front strategy on 22 January 1945:
“I fear that the old snags of indecision and vacillation and refusal to consider the military problem fairly and squarely are coming to the front again . . . The real trouble is that there is no control and the three army groups are each intent on their own affairs. Patton today issued a stirring order to Third Army, saying the next step would be Cologne . . . One has to preserve a sense of humour these days, otherwise one would go mad.”
Alanbrooke wrote in his diary about Eisenhower:
“At the end of this morning's C.O.S. [Chief of Staff] meeting I put before the committee my views on the very unsatisfactory state of affairs in France, with no one running the land battle. Eisenhower, though supposed to be doing so, is on the golf links at Rheims — entirely detached and taking practically no part in running of the war. Matters got so bad lately that a deputation of Whiteley, Bedell Smith and a few others went up to tell him that he must get down to it and RUN the war, which he said he would."
"We discussed the advisability of getting Marshall to come out to discuss the matter, but we are doubtful if he would appreciate the situation. Finally decided that I am to see the P.M. to discuss the situation with him.”
"November 28th I went to see the P.M. I told him I was very worried."
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TIK, from Neillands in 2005, when all information had been revealed. ....
"The Comet plan [preceded Market Garden] stuck to the basic airborne rule — land as close to the objective as possible — and to the basic rule for capturing any bridge — take both ends at once."
"The choice of drop zones was in the gift of the US Air Force commanders, not the airborne commanders — and the factor that governed the Air Force commanders’ choice of parachute drop zones ( DZs) or glider landing zones (LZs) was the presence, actual or feared, of anti-aircraft batteries around the bridges. Since the US Air Force commanders considered that these bridges would be surrounded by flak guns, they selected landing zones that were, in the main, well away from the bridges."
"Nor was this the only error committed by the air planners. Another was their decision that ground-attack fighters were not to be sent over the battlefield while escort fighters were in the air protecting supply drops. This decision denied the airborne units the vital assistance that these ground-attack aircraft had been giving to the troops in Normandy just a month before"
- Neillands
"The enemy was able to bring reinforcements into Arnhem in broad daylight, with impunity, a move which would have been fraught with risk in Normandy a few weeks earlier.’"
- Neillands
TIK, the element of surprise was lost at Arnhem. Neillands says it was the USAAF who chose the landing zones not the RAF and also insisted on no fighter-bombers and also a protracted drop over 3 days.
"‘To the Americans Browning appeared too dapper and Brereton did not trust him; neither did Gavin. Browning in turn detested Brereton, who was disliked by many of his fellow-countrymen."
- Neillands
"The British transport commander, Air Vice Marshal Leslie Hollinghurst of No. 38 Group, RAF Transport Command, wanted to solve the aircraft shortage by flying-in two lifts on D-Day. His colleague of the US IX Troop Carrier Command, Major-General Paul L. Williams, did not agree, believing that time was needed to service the aircraft and rest the crews — and this view prevailed at Allied Airborne HQ where Brereton supported it. Since the principal asset of an airborne operation is surprise, the two- to three-day deployment — an attack by instalments — was throwing this vital asset away."
- Neillands
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The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties, with the Lorraine campaign being a failure. Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties. Hodges, head of the US First army, fled from Spa to near Liege on the 18th, despite the Germans never getting anywhere near to Spa. Hodges did not even wait for the Germans to approach Spa. He had already fled long before the Germans were stopped. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
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@cavscout888
"This advance duly began at 0630hrs on August 18 which, as the Canadian Official History remarks, ‘was a day and a half after Montgomery had issued the order for the Canadians to close the gap at Trun, and four and a half days after Patton had been stopped at the Third Army boundary’. During that time, says the Canadian History, the Canadians had been ‘fighting down from the north with painful slowness’ and the Germans had been making their way east through the Falaise gap. They were not, however, unimpeded; the tactical air forces and Allied artillery were already taking a fearful toll of the German columns on the roads heading east past Falaise.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise – Operation Tractable – which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
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@jamesberwick2210
What US historian Harry Yeide wrote of what the Germans thought of Patton:
1) for most of the war the Germans barely took notice [of Patton].
2) on March 23 at the Battle of El Guettar—the first American victory against the experienced Germans. Patton’s momentum, however, was short-lived: Axis troops held him to virtually no gain until April 7, when they withdrew under threat from British Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army.
3) There is no indication in the surviving German military records—which include intelligence reports at the theater, army, and division levels—that Patton’s enemies had any idea who he was at the time. Likewise, the immediate postwar accounts of the German commanders in Tunisia, written for the U.S. Army’s History Division, ignore Patton. Those reports show that ground commanders considered II Corps’s attacks under Patton to have been hesitant, and to have missed great opportunities.
4) In mid-June [1943], another detachment report described Patton as “an energetic and responsibility-loving command personality”—a passing comment on one of the numerous Allied commanders. Patton simply had not yet done anything particularly noteworthy in their eyes.
5) But his race to Palermo through country they had already abandoned left the commanders unimpressed. Major General Eberhard Rodt, who led the 15th Panzergrenadier Division against Patton’s troops during the Allied push toward Messina, thought the American Seventh Army fought hesitantly and predictably. He wrote in an immediate postwar report on Sicily, “The enemy very often conducted his movements systematically, and only attacked after a heavy artillery preparation when he believed he had broken our resistance. This kept him regularly from exploiting the weakness of our situation and gave me the opportunity to consolidate dangerous situations.” Once again, Patton finished a campaign without impressing his opponents.
6) General Hermann Balck, who took command of Army Group G in September, thus did not think highly of Patton—or any other opposing commanders—during this time. Balck wrote to his commander, Runstedt, on October 10, “I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans” Looking back on his battles against Patton throughout the autumn, in 1979 Balck recalled, “Within my zone, the Americans never once exploited a success. Often [General Friedrich Wilhelm von] Mellenthin, my chief of staff, and I would stand in front of the map and say, ‘Patton is helping us; he failed to exploit another success.’”
7) The commander of the Fifth Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel, aimed a dismissive, indirect critique at Patton’s efforts at Bastogne, writing in his memoirs that the Americans did not “strike with full élan.” The commanders who fought against Patton in his last two mobile campaigns in the Saar-Palatinate and east of the Rhine already knew they could not win; their losses from this point forward were inevitable, regardless of the commanding Allied opponent.
8) the Germans offered Patton faint praise during and immediately after the war.
9) posterity deserves fact and not myth. The Germans did not track Patton’s movements as the key to Allied intentions. Hitler does not appear to have thought often of Patton, if at all. The Germans considered Patton a hesitant commanding general in the scrum of position warfare. They never raised his name in the context of worthy strategists.
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Where do I start to list all the inaccuracies of this US focused vid!
The BEF was not kicked out of France, they left - seeing that they were only 9% of all allied land forces. The British won the Battle of Dunkirk.
British generals did not want to stay at Tobruk making it a fortress, that was Churchill's idea.
The Royal Navy was depleted in the Eastern Med as ships moved into the Indian Ocean to counter a large Japanese fleet.
The Med was vital as it prevented the Germans getting at the oil fields. In May 1941, before the invasion of the USSR, the Italians could not put their substantial navy to sea because they had no oil, such was the impact of the RN blockade.
The British were protecting territory and people they were responsible for.
Churchill wanted to get into the heart of Germany via the gap via Italy into Austria.
The USA wanted an invasion of France in 1942, yet could only supply two green divisions. The British had to tell them it was not feasible at the time, as the June 1944 landings proved, supported by 5,000 vessels.
Montgomery wanted a 40 division thrust up north via Holland, then turn east on the North German Plains, which was tank country, right to Berlin. The US prevented this.
Etc.
Etc.
A poor documentary displaying a lack of understanding of the big picture.
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Major-General Sir Francis De Guingand:
‘It is interesting to consider how far we failed in this operation. It should be remembered that the Arnhem bridgehead was only a part of the whole. We had gained a great deal in spite of this local set-back. The Nijmegen bridge was ours, and it proved of immense value later on. And the brilliant advance by 30th Corps led the way to the liberation of a large part of Holland, not to speak of providing a stepping stone to the successful battles of the Rhineland.'
What the Germans thought of Market Garden...
MONTY The Field-Marshal 1944-1976 by Nigel Hamilton:
‘General Student, in a statement after the war, considered the ‘Market Garden’ operation to have ‘proved a great success. At one stroke it brought the British 2nd Army into the possession of vital bridges and valuable territory. The conquest of the Nijmegen area meant that the creation of a good jumping board for the offensive which contributed to the end of war.’ Student was expressing the professional admiration of an airborne commander - ‘those who had planned and inaugurated with complete the first airborne operations of military history, had not now even thought of such a possible action by the enemy… the Allied Airborne action completely surprised us. The operation hit my army nearly in the centre and split it into two parts… In spite of all precautions, all bridges fell intact into the hands of the Allied airborne forces—another proof of the paralysing effect of surprise by airborne forces!’ As for hindsight, the only part of that would interest me would be to judge the actions of those people at that time in the situation that they found themselves in. As far as MARKET GARDEN was concerned, the German V-2 rockets on London alone justified the attempt, even without the other, good reasons for making the attempt.
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Montgomery to Alan Brooke..
"If we want the war to end within any reasonable period you have to get Eisenhower’s hand taken off the land battle. I regret to say that in my opinion he just doesn’t know what he is doing.
Montgomery wrote of Eisenhower and his ridiculous broad-front strategy on 22 January 1945:
“I fear that the old snags of indecision and vacillation and refusal to consider the military problem fairly and squarely are coming to the front again . . . The real trouble is that there is no control and the three army groups are each intent on their own affairs. Patton today issued a stirring order to Third Army, saying the next step would be Cologne . . . One has to preserve a sense of humour these days, otherwise one would go mad.”
Alanbrooke wrote in his diary about Eisenhower:
“At the end of this morning's C.O.S. [Chief of Staff] meeting I put before the committee my views on the very unsatisfactory state of affairs in France, with no one running the land battle. Eisenhower, though supposed to be doing so, is on the golf links at Rheims — entirely detached and taking practically no part in running of the war. Matters got so bad lately that a deputation of Whiteley, Bedell Smith and a few others went up to tell him that he must get down to it and RUN the war, which he said he would."
"We discussed the advisability of getting Marshall to come out to discuss the matter, but we are doubtful if he would appreciate the situation. Finally decided that I am to see the P.M. to discuss the situation with him.”
"November 28th I went to see the P.M. I told him I was very worried."
Alan Brooke described in his daily diary that American generals Eisenhower and Marshall as poor strategists, when they were in jobs were strategy mattered. Brooke wrote to Montgomery about his talks with Eisenhower, “it is equally clear that Ike has the very vaguest conception of war!”
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♦ The Churchill had amazing hill climbing ability. The Churchill could climb mountains as in Tunisia. Many times in Italy and Tunisia the Churchill’s would climb hills the Germans thought were tank proof. On one occasion a Colonel Koch of the Herman Goering regiment, transmitted this radio message: “… been attacked by a mad tank battalion which had scaled impossible heights and forced me to withdraw!”
♦ It could cross muddy ground and force through the forests of the Reichswald in 1944. No other tank could have managed the same conditions.
♦ There is a story of a large line of tanks waiting to cross a bridge over an anti-tank ditch. The Churchill's drove into and out of the ditch.
♦ The Churchill could keep going even if it had three wheels on the same side blown off.
♦ The Churchill was also used in Korea, with many American Units extremely glad of its amazing hill climbing ability getting to places Sherman and Pershing tanks could not.
♦ It had a flat engine, giving a lower centre of gravity.
♦ It was to be discontinued a few months after introduction, however performed well at El Alemein so was kept on.
♦ The Churchill was the basis of the Hobart 'Funnies'.
♦ It could turn on its own length because of the innovative Merrit-Brown transmission, which the Germans missed in their assessment.
♦ During trials the Australians found it a better tank for jungle warfare than even the Matilda II.
♦ In the fighting in late 1944 the Germans flooded areas so heavily that resupply could only be carried out by using DUKW’s. The roads were even impassable to trucks. The 6th Guards tank brigade's Churchill's, fought and continued the advance. Churchill’s even crossed an underwater bridge on the Dneiper river, operating without problems alongside T-34′s in swamps.
♦ It was well armoured, which was only penetrable except by the most powerful of German guns. It had initially 102mm in the front, which was then upgraded to 152mm for the later models - thicker than the Tiger I.
♦ It had a large chassis allowing it to be use larger turrets and guns. Churchill’s were adequately armed for the job they were meant to do.
♦ The Churchill was roomy by WW2 standards being popular with crews.
♦ The 4th Grenadier Guards in Churchill’s were the unit that set the record for fastest advance of any armoured unit in Europe.
♦ After WWII a study on all armoured units in 21st army group found that the 4th Grenadiers had the lowest casualty rate of all.
♦ In Italy a single Churchill was hit over 100 times by enemy AT weapons.
♦ The best all round tank of the war. As an army moves forward, tanks have to do a multitude of tasks. Tank v tank engagements were rare. No other tank accomplished the various tasks better and more comprehensively than the Churchill.
♦ It was heavily armoured could match most tanks in the 6pdr gun version and with APDS ammunition could penetrate a Tiger.
♦ At Dieppe it was the only tank in the world that could get off the pebble beaches. Half got over the high sea wall. Attributes that went un-noticed by the Germans.
♦ After Dieppe the Germans tested a Panzer IV on a beach, and got the following results. To quote David Fletcher:
“This showed that on beaches with a slope between 15 and 20 degrees the German tank could manage quite well but where the slope increased to between 30 and 40 degrees the tank started to slip then dug itself in until the tracks ceased to function.”
♦ Towed 6-pdrs in Tunisia took out two Tigers plus their supporting Pz III’s using standard AP (no APDS was around then) with penetrations starting at 800 yards to the turrets. Churchill tanks also took out four more Tigers in Tunisia, with no loss, 48 Royal Tank Regiment and Northern Irish Horse- two each, still only armed with 6-pdrs firing standard AP.
♦ Churchills got the first Panther kills by the western allies, 48 Royal Tank Regiment, with 6-pdr armed Churchills.
♦ The Churchill had the highest survivability in any tank of WW2.
A much ignored and underrated tank.
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Eisenhower was named Supreme Commander for Overlord, with British professionals in place to run the land campaign (Montgomery), the naval campaign (Ramsay), and the air campaign (Leigh- Mallory). Meanwhile, Eisenhower could go off and do broadcasts, meet and greet with politicians etc, at various Chateaux, and so on.
The problems started when he added another job to his onerous workload, running the land campaign instead of Montgomery, a job he was unsuited for. As the enormity of Montgomery’s victory in France became apparent, decisions needed to be made about how the campaign would be carried forward as the German forces all but disintegrated after Falaise. Montgomery approached Bradley on the 17th August, and then Eisenhower on the 23rd August about the plan to move forward in the North. The need being to make best use of allied resources available at that time and keep the campaign moving forward.The Germans knew that Montgomery's plan was the best way forward for the allies at that time:
'I am in full agreement with Montgomery. I believe General Eisenhower's insistence on spreading the Allied forces out for a broader advance was wrong. The acceptance of Montgomery's plan would have shortened the war considerably. Above all, tens of thousands of lives - on both sides -would have been saved'
- Hasso von Manteuffel.
‘The best course of the Allies would have been to concentrate a really strong striking force with which to break through past Aachen to the Ruhr area. Germany's strength is in the north. South Germany was a side issue. He who holds northern Germany holds Germany. Such a break-through, coupled with air domination, would have torn in pieces the weak German front and ended the war. Berlin and Prague would have been occupied ahead of the Russians. There were no German forces behind the Rhine, and at the end of August our front was wide open. There was the possibility of an operational break-through in the Aachen area, in September. This would have facilitated a rapid conquest of the Ruhr and a quicker advance on Berlin.’
- Gunther Blumentritt.
Eisenhower ducked the sensible way forward, citing US public opinion in support of his decision to disperse allied resources. The result, the whole advance ground to a halt.Eisenhower’s lack of military expertise was made worse by his failure to keep up with the allied armies, and the communications problems that resulted from him being so far from the front. Examples: His letter to Montgomery of the 4th September 1944 from Ranville in Normandy outlining his plans for 21st Army Group in the weeks ahead took until 9th September to finish arriving at Montgomery’s headquarters. In mid-November, Eisenhower had to get his chauffeur, Mrs Summersby to find out if Bradley’s attack on the Rhine had gone ahead. When the Ardennes crisis unfolded, Eisenhower took five days to go see Montgomery after he had placed him in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, arriving at the nearest railway station to Montgomery’s head in a special train.
Eisenhower should have resigned after Market Garden. The undertaking should be set against allied failures in the same period at Aachen, the Hurtgen Forest, Metz, Lorraine and the Ardennes (Bulge) debacle. All were victims of Eisenhower’s failure of command in the early autumn of 1944.
And the Germans: MONTY The Field-Marshal 1944-1976, NIGEL HAMILTON, P 98
‘General Student, in a statement after the war, considered the ‘Market Garden’ operation to have ‘proved a great success. At one stroke it brought the British 2nd Army into the possession of vital bridges and valuable territory. The conquest of the Nijmegen area meant that the creation of a good jumping board for the offensive which contributed to the end of war.’
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"on 18 September, the 82nd’s next lift arrived from the UK, 450 gliders bringing in three fresh battalions, one parachute and two glider, and a quantity of artillery."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Knowing 3 battalions were to come, with artillery, Gavin could have still sent a large force to seize the bridge.
"The US History points out that there was ‘no incentive for urgency over taking the Nijmegen bridge as XXX Corps were not yet in Eindhoven’ and it might be some time before they arrived at the Nijmegen bridge. In fact, XXX Corps had already passed Eindhoven and were waiting to cross the Bailey bridge at Zon. The US Official Historian, Charles B. MacDonald, dismisses this casual approach to the question of taking the Nijmegen bridge, stating that: ‘According to this theory, General Gavin had another full day to tackle the Germans at Nijmegen.’ This theory also assumes that one day would be sufficient for Gavin to take the bridge — from one side only — having already sacrificed the advantage of surprise and with German strength increasing."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@iemjgf
A prime problem for SHAEF in September 1944 was opening up the approaches to Antwerp - the logistics issue.
It was:
1) Take Noord Brabant, the land to the north and northeast of Antwerp, or;
2) Take the Schedlt.
Noord Branant had to be take first, as it was essential. It was with limited forces sent to take the Schedlt as well.
Market Garden had to go ahead regardless of any threat, actually being a success.
To use Antwerp and control the approaches, the Scheldt, you needed to control everything up to the south bank of the lower Rhine at Nijmegen. The low-lying lands and boggy ground between Arnhem and Nijmegen make a perfect geographical feature to stop behind and prepare a defence of Antwerp. Without control of Noord Brabant German forces would have been in artillery range of Antwerp. The Germans were actually directing artillery at Antwerp.
Market Garden was the offensive launched to solve the Antwerp problem, in keeping the Germans away - it made sense as the Germans were is disarray. Monty’s decision to push on to Arnhem may have been one last attempt at his single front northern thrust argument, and making complete sense in establishing a bridgehead over the Rhine as an extra to the operation.
You only needed Arnhem if you wanted to springboard into Germany, but you needed everything up to Nijmegen if you wanted to do anything at all. Gaining Noord Brabant, was vital and accomplished.
Fighting in the low lying mud and waterways of the Schedlt, which will take time, while the Germans are still holding Noord Brabant made no sense at all.
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"A more perceptive analysis comes from Major-General John Frost, commander of the 2nd Parachute Battalion at the Arnhem bridge:
The worst mistake of the Arnhem plan was the failure to give priority to capturing the Nijmegen bridge. The capture would have been a walkover on D-Day, yet the 82nd Division could spare only one battalion as they must at all costs secure the Groesbeek heights where the Corps HQ was to be sited.
These numerous attempts to divert attention from this failure, and pass the blame to a captain in the Guards Armoured Division, have been shameful... and highly successful. The myths surrounding the Nijmegen bridge have persisted and been engraved on the public mind by the media and the cinema. Given the US commanders’ chronic tendency to pass the buck and blame their British allies at every opportunity, it certainly might have been better if some effort had been made to get elements of the Guards Division on the move to Arnhem that night.
That, however, is the romantic view, bolstered by hindsight. In practical terms it takes time to assemble an entire armoured division from a battlefield in the dark streets of a town, issue fresh orders and prepare it for another advance."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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Monty never suffered a reverse moving thousands of miles through nine countries from Egypt to Denmark taking all in his path. He was a general over generals. Montgomery was by far most successful western allied commander of WW2. Monty fought more battles, took more ground and engaged more elite German divisions than any other general. Monty commanded all the Normandy ground forces, being the man the Americans ran to in the Ardennes offensive. No other general in the western allied armies possessed his experience in dealing with the Germans or his expertise.
Monty stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him.
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein
♦ March 1943 - Medenine
♦ June 1944 - Normandy
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - Holland
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge
Not on one occasion were Monty's ground armies, including US armies under his control, pushed back into a retreat by the Germans.
Eisenhower:
‘General Montgomery is a very able, dynamic type of army commander’.
Eisenhower on D-Day and Normandy:
'He got us there and he kept us there'.
General Günther Blumentritt:
‘Field Marshall Montgomery was the one general who never suffered a reverse’
Genral Hasso von Manteuffel on the Bulge:
‘The operations of the American 1st Army had developed into a series of individual holding actions. Montgomery's contribution to restoring the situation was that he turned a series of isolated actions into a coherent battle fought according to a clear and definite plan. It was his refusal to engage in premature and piecemeal counter-attacks which enabled the Americans to gather their reserves and frustrate the German attempts to extend their breakthrough’.
Patton on Monty:
'small,very alert, wonderfully conceited, and the best soldier - or so it seems - I have met in this war’.
American Major General Matt Ridgway commander of the US XVIII Airborne Corps, 17 Jan 1945
"It has been an honored privilege and a very great personal pleasure to have served, even so briefly, under your distinguished leadership [Montgomery]. To the gifted professional guidance you at once gave me, was added to your own consummate courtesy and consideration. I am deeply grateful for both. My warm and sincere good wishes will follow you and with them the hope of again serving with you in pursuit of a common goal".
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@Stephen Prince wrote:
" Eisenhower ordered Montgomery to take the Scheldt Estuary with his entire 21st Army Group"
Eisenhower never. Eisenhower put back the Scheldt to concentrate on the Northern Thrust. He only told Monty to dedicate all his forces on the Scheldt on 6 October, as he though the existing supply lines could cope in the interim. Monty by then had the Canadians taking Channel ports and moving on the Scheldt anyhow. Eisenhower was ground forces commander, not Monty. He directed.
Montgomery was in no race against egotistical amateurish US generals. He had more experience than all of them combined - literally. Most US generals, inc' Eisenhower, were only colonels only a few years previously. Montgomery saw it was a nationalistic thing for the Americans rather than focus resources on defeating the Germans ASAP with the fewest of casualties. This greatly irritated him being a 100% professional solider. He said to Eisenhower he would even operate under Bradley if all armies are focused on the northern thrust. Montgomery wanted to get tanks north of the Ruhr (the north German plains) in open flat land suitable for tanks and get to Berlin ASAP.
The prime thrust into Germany over the Rhine in 1945 was via the British 21st Army Group.
BTW, in Monty's memoirs he cut the Bulge section short so as not to upset Americans, saying:
"I think the less one says about this battle the better, for I fancy that whatever I do say will almost certainly be resented. All those with whom I was associated during the battle have now retired—Bradley, Hodges, Simpson, Ridgway, Collins, and Gerow. And Patton is dead. So I will just mention the highlights as they appeared to me at the time."
- Montgomery of Alamein Memoirs of Field-Marshal Montgomery
Montgomery should have told it as it was, as it was irresponsible of him not to.
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Patton was an average US general, no more. A US media creation, elevating the average beyond their status.
"The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian First Army HQ for the same purpose.__Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
In Normandy, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton who came in late in Normandy, faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact.This eastern dash devoid of German forces was the ride the US media claimed Patton was some sort master of fast moving armour.
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed in The Lorraine with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were re-fitting and rebuilt after the Normandy battles. The Panzer Brigades had green crews with little time to train, unfamiliar with their tanks, had no recon elements only meeting their unit commander on his arrival at the front. These were not elite forces. The 17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, equipped only with assault guns not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy being below strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine. In The Lorraine, the Third Army faced a rabble full of eyes and ears units. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said:_"I have never been in command of such irregularly_ assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Patton failed to reach the Westwall.
Patton was not advancing or being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. Bastogne was on the very southern German flank, their focus being west. The strategic significance of the stand at Bastogne, is over exaggerated. The 18,000 did not change the course of the battle. The German's bypassed Bastogne, placing a containment force around the town.
Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory, with the road from Luxembourg to Bastogne having few German forces. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was far from being one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, 26th Volks-Grenadier having about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind with a small number of operational tanks. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1. Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance pushing them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons stopped the American attack who pulled back. The next day, fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B again retreating. It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day. Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne. After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF, who gave Patton massive ground attack support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the weakest German divisions in the west where.
♦ Who did the 3rd Army engage?
♦ Who did the 3rd Army defeat?
♦ Patton never once faced a full strength premier Waffen SS panzer division nor a Tiger battalion.
♦ Patton was not at E Alamein, D-Day or the main area of the Bulge.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates:
♦ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics Bradley's II Corps were employing;
♦ He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division, Truscott of being "afraid to fight";
♦ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps;
♦ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize stalled, he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being "very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect";
♦ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in reporting their losses;
Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated, had incestual relationships and wore cowboy guns. Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his and Eisenhower's orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read:
Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds and_Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies_ by Harry Yeide
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William Eaton
The British Army from mid 1942 was the finest army in the world. It went through a major reformation, new doctrine with new equipment." The so-called invincible Germans army tried and failed, with its allies, for two years in WW2 to defeat the British army in North Africa. The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British. From El Alemein it moved right up into Denmark and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British.
Montgomery was in charge of all armies in Normandy. He had to give the US armies an infantry role as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him.
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein
♦ March 1943 - Medenine
♦ June 1944 - Normandy
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - Holland
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge.
Not on one occasion were Monty's ground armies pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. The US Army were struggling in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform all that great east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months. The Battle of the Bulge took all the US effort, and vital help from Montgomery and the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe. The USA retreat at the Bulge, the only allied army to be pushed back into a RETREAT in the 1944-45 timeframe.
Montgomery never suffered a reverse from Mid 1942 until May 1945, from Egypt to Denmark. Normandy was planned and commanded by the British which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against the panzers. Monty assessed the US armies and had to give them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped to fight tank v tank battles, nor had the experience.
On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces from Montgomery everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
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The British in Malaya were second rate troops, with the best troops sent to the desert, whereas the Japanese troops were experienced from fighting the Chinese. Also, the Japanese had around 200 tanks, while the British had none. The tanks were not good tanks, but when the opposition has none, it makes a massive difference.
At the time of fighting the Japanese in Malaya the British were sending tanks to the USSR. Just one of those convoys of Matilda 2 tanks diverted to Malaya would have made all the difference giving a British victory for sure. The Matilda 2s would have scythed through any Japanese defences, as they had no anti-tank gun to knock it out - why the Australians later used the Matilda 2 against the Japanese. Small, well armoured, being suitable for jungle war.
But the British should have won anyhow. The Japanese had run out of ammunition at Singapore and were ready to surrender when General Yamashita sat down at the table with Percival. To Yamashita's surprise, he realised the British officers were talking about surrendering, so started a bluff banging the table. It worked. One of the best bluffs in military history. Also, Percival was naïve and rightly disgraced after WW2..
Yamashita was moved to the Philippines. When he surrendered the Philippines, Percival was taken from a Japanese prison camp being present at the surrender, to the surprise and dismay of Yamashita. Yamashita was hung after WW2 for war crimes. Percival lived being snubbed after WW2.
Yamashita wrote:
‘My attack on Singapore was a bluff, a bluff that worked. I had 30,000 men and was outnumbered more then three to one. I knew if I had to fight long for Singapore I would be beaten. That is why the surrender had to be at once. I was very frightened all the time that the British would discover our numerical weakness and lack of supplies and force me into disastrous street fighting.’
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General Bodo Zimmermann, Chief of Operations, German Army Group D, said that had the strategy of Montgomery succeeded in the autumn of 1944, there would have been no need to fight for the Westwall, not for the central and upper Rhine, all of 24 which would have fallen automatically.
Indeed, had Monty's idea for a 40 division concentrated thrust towards the Ruhr been accepted by Eisenhower instead of him messing about in the Lorraine, Alsace, Vosges etc, it would have all been over for the Germans in the west.
"The best course of the Allies would have been to concentrate a really strong striking force with which to break through past Aachen to the Ruhr area. Germany's strength is in the north. South Germany was a side issue. He who holds northern Germany holds Germany. Such a break-through, coupled with air domination, would have torn in pieces the weak German front and ended the war. Berlin and Prague would have been occupied ahead of the Russians. There were no German forces behind the Rhine, and at the end of August our front was wide open. There was the possibility of an operational break-through in the Aachen area, in September. This would have facilitated a rapid conquest of the Ruhr and a quicker advance on Berlin.
By turning the forces from the Aachen area sharply northward, the German 15th and1st Parachute Armies could have been pinned against the estuaries of the Mass and the Rhine. They could not have escaped eastwards into Germany."
- Gunther Blumentritt in, The Other Side Of The Hill by Liddell Hart
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@coryridgway6586
Tell the people of London Market Garden was not a success when the V2s stopped coming over. The salient kept German artillery away from Antwerp. It also was a buffer for Antwerp, which we saw when the Germans pounded though US lines at the Bulge.
Heading towards the Lorraine & Sar was a nonsense, as a 1985 US report stated.
Eisenhower even instructed supplies to be given to the US First army who would be involved in the Northern Thrust, which was priority. So giving supplies to Patton was silly, which Bradley was doing against Eisenhower's orders. The First army could not be involved in Market Garden as they were under supplied. Bradley and Patton should have been fired.
The German 15th army had retreated to the Scheldt, under Hitler's orders, rather than back to Germany. They were to ensure that Antwerp was kept isolated from the sea as long as possible.
The British 2nd army was down on supplies and in no state to take on the Scheldt immediately on seizing Antwerp, with the German 15th army there, Germans were ahead and to their east as well. The Germans put up resistance on the Albert Canal.
Eisenhower went for a watered down Northern Thrust, putting the Scheldt on the back burner. Only on the 6 October did he instruct Montgomery to concentrate 100% on the Scheldt.
Before Market Garden had started, the US Third Army with wonder boy Patton had already stalled at Metz.
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@johnhenderson131
“A Bridge too Far” has far too many inaccuracies and does not go into why a bridgehead was not established over the Rhine. Not worth reading.
“It was commonly believed at Third Army H.Q. that Montgomery's advance through Belgium was largely maintained by supplies diverted from Patton. (See Butcher, op. cit., p. 667.) This is not true. The amount delivered by the ' air-lift ' was sufficient to maintain only one division. No road transport was diverted to aid Montgomery until September 16th. On the other hand, three British transport companies, lent to the Americans on August 6th " for eight days," were not returned until September 4th.' “
- CHESTER WILMOT, THE STRUGGLE FOR EUROPE. Page 589
Monty actually signaled Eisenhower’s headquarters postponing the operation. Eisenhower resurrecting it and a cable from the War office about V2s committed Montgomery to the operation. From Nigel Hamilton’s biography of Monty:
For Monty now to cancel the British part of ‘the main effort of the Allies because of stiffening enemy resistance, even had he wished to do so, would thus have been tantamount to insubordination, leaving him open to charges of timidity at a moment when American forces were thrusting towards the German border. Moreover the Arnhem-Nijmegan axis had been Monty’s proposal, making it doubly hard to rescind. Eisenhower’s directive was not the only signal committing Monty to the continuation of his planned thrust via Arnhem on 9 September - for during the afternoon a ‘Secret’ cable arrived from the War Office, sent by VCIGS, General Nye, in the absence of Field-Marshal Brooke: Two rockets so called V.2 landed in England yesterday. Believed to have been fired from areas near ROTTERDAM and AMSTERDAM. Will you please report urgently by what approximate date you consider you can rope off the Coastal area contained by ANTWERP-UTRECHT-ROTTERDAM. When this area is in our hands the threat from this weapon will probably have disappeared. By striking north-east from Eindhoven to Arnhem, 21st Army Group would be in a position to ‘rope off’ the whole of Holland, including the 150,000 fleeing German troops and the V2 bomb sites. Few people are aware that there were supporting units on either flank who set off to the left and right of Hells Highway shortly after and in fact one of these supporting flanks advances pushed the Germans away from cutting the highway near Eindhoven on the 20th after XXX Corps had gone through ahead. They even widened the axis of advance with their follow on actions.
It should be borne in mind that promised supplies from SHAEF failed to arrive, leaving VIII Corps, supposed to attack alongside, mostly stranded in place. “Garden” launched with only half the troops it should have had. Montgomery had also wanted to use Hodges 1st US Army (and had in fact been promised) as a follow up flanking advance. But Bradley was stealing fuel and other resources from Hodges and giving it to Patton.
Eisenhower:
”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”.
Eisenhower insisted it go ahead and Eisenhower under-resourced it. MG wasn’t even an army just a corps.
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What US historian Harry Yeide wrote of what the Germans thought of Patton:
▪ for most of the war the Germans barely took notice [of Patton].
▪ on March 23 at the Battle of El Guettar—the first American victory against the experienced Germans. Patton’s momentum, however, was short-lived: Axis troops held him to virtually no gain until April 7, when they withdrew under threat from British Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army.
▪ There is no indication in the surviving German military records—which include intelligence reports at the theater, army, and division levels—that Patton’s enemies had any idea who he was at the time. Likewise, the immediate postwar accounts of the German commanders in Tunisia, written for the U.S. Army’s History Division, ignore Patton. Those reports show that ground commanders considered II Corps’s attacks under Patton to have been hesitant, and to have missed great opportunities.
▪ In mid-June [1943], another detachment report described Patton as “an energetic and responsibility-loving command personality”—a passing comment on one of the numerous Allied commanders. Patton simply had not yet done anything particularly noteworthy in their eyes.
▪ But his race to Palermo through country they had already abandoned left the commanders unimpressed. Major General Eberhard Rodt, who led the 15th Panzergrenadier Division against Patton’s troops during the Allied push toward Messina, thought the American Seventh Army fought hesitantly and predictably. He wrote in an immediate postwar report on Sicily, “The enemy very often conducted his movements systematically, and only attacked after a heavy artillery preparation when he believed he had broken our resistance. This kept him regularly from exploiting the weakness of our situation and gave me the opportunity to consolidate dangerous situations.” Once again, Patton finished a campaign without impressing his opponents.
▪ General Hermann Balck, who took command of Army Group G in September, thus did not think highly of Patton—or any other opposing commanders—during this time. Balck wrote to his commander, Runstedt, on October 10, “I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans” Looking back on his battles against Patton throughout the autumn, in 1979 Balck recalled, “Within my zone, the Americans never once exploited a success. Often [General Friedrich Wilhelm von] Mellenthin, my chief of staff, and I would stand in front of the map and say, ‘Patton is helping us; he failed to exploit another success.’”
▪ The commander of the Fifth Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel, aimed a dismissive, indirect critique at Patton’s efforts at Bastogne, writing in his memoirs that the Americans did not “strike with full élan.” The commanders who fought against Patton in his last two mobile campaigns in the Saar-Palatinate and east of the Rhine already knew they could not win; their losses from this point forward were inevitable, regardless of the commanding Allied opponent.
▪ the Germans offered Patton faint praise during and immediately after the war.
▪ posterity deserves fact and not myth. The Germans did not track Patton’s movements as the key to Allied intentions. Hitler does not appear to have thought often of Patton, if at all. The Germans considered Patton a hesitant commanding general in the scrum of position warfare. They never raised his name in the context of worthy strategists.
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The myth is that the Germans lost because they attacked London, not the radar sites. Goering moved attacks away from the radar sites because they were ineffective, yet they were losing planes and pilots trying to do so. The me109 bomber escorts could not reach London. The Luftwaffe bombers were protected by the me110. Near London they were attacked by swarms of RAF fighters who easily moved the me110’s out of the way to get at the bombers. Bomber formations were repeatedly broken up or deflected, being forced to turn back for home.
The great air battle of 15 September 1940, the Germans sent 400 fighters to escort about 100 bombers part of the way to London. Fighter Command ordered into the air nearly 200 Spitfires and Hurricanes swarming high above London and Kent, attacking the poorly escorted bombers. Nearly 300 RAF fighter sorties were launched that day against German fighter escorts. British fighters would land refuel and rearm then take off again. This massive concentration of fighters, larger than anything ever previously displayed by the RAF, convinced the Luftwaffe that Fighter Command was far from being the beaten force that German intelligence was telling them.
Chain Home and the fighter control system, which the Germans did not have at the time, allowed outnumbered British fighters to turn up at the right time to intercept Luftwaffe raids time after time after time. The sight of such a large fighter force, that miraculously intercepted the Luftwaffe everywhere it turned, shattered German hopes. The element of surprise gave the RAF men an advantage. German formations could be seen, and also their in-flight deviations, in real time as it was happening. This was directed to the intercepting flights as they moved towards the deviating German formations, to accurately locate them springing surprise attacks.
“From the very beginning the British had an extraordinary advantage which we could never overcome throughout the war - radar and fighter control. For us and for our command this was a surprise, and a very bitter one. The British fighter was guided all the way from take-off to his correct position for an attack on the German formations. We had nothing of the kind.”
- Adolf Galland
The RAF knew exactly where the Germans were and coming from, while the German knew nothing of the locations of RAF fighters. The RAF used intelligence and technology. The Germans were relying on brute force in numbers.
The British were far more advanced in radar than the Germans, having types of radar sets the Germans never knew existed. German pilots gave feedback that they were being intercepted on every flight in surprise attacks, so the British must have advanced radar. German scientist refused to acknowledge this. British radar engineers in early August 1940 replaced several of the huge 350-foot fixed antenna arrays of the Chain Home network with a new, smaller, rotating antenna that was used for transmitting and receiving radar pulses - a technological marvel at the time.
They also introduced a new superior type of radar scope, called a Plan Position Indicator (PPI). It gave a bird’s eye view from above, rather than the previous side-view presentation. This is what we now traditionally picture as being the typical radar screen. It was an astounding advance. It gave more close controlling of aircraft. The Ground Controlled Interception (GCI). GCI was brilliant for controlling fighters to intercept enemy aircraft, particularly during night interceptions. GCI surpassed the cumbersome filtering of information from visual sightings, sound, radar, etc, and the time-consuming plotting on situation maps. A GCI controller could actually “see” the aircraft as they flew across the countryside, rather than watching voiced plots being pushed across a map. By studying the PPI, the GCI controller could determine the positions of the German fighters, identified by the newly invented Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) technology. The GCI controller could provide timely radio code word instructions directly to the fighters to successfully conduct the interception. The ingenious GCI transformed the British radar system. It provided:
i) a basic early warning capability;
ii) an actual means for dependable air interception control.
So, even as the battle was progressing the British were introducing new advanced technology in radar, improved air defence systems and improving the fighter planes. The Germans brought nothing new to the battle. Goering in June 1940 said “My Luftwaffe is invincible. So now we turn to England. How long will this one last - two, three weeks?” After the clash over Dunkirk it is incredulous he said this.
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@dmbeaster
Montgomery or Browning never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower insisted it go ahead, under resourcing the operation. Monty wanted it cancelled. Only the V rockets launched from Holland tipped to go with it. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans, while Garden was mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
▪Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practiced and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
▪Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
▪ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
▪Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
▪Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
▪ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
▪Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak".
The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgment or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defenses such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump.
The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed. XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem.
Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself. XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.Even the US Official War record confirms this. The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
but you know this anyhow.
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The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British under Montgomery. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa;
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein;
♦ March 1943 - Medenine;
♦ June 1944 - Normandy;
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands;
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge;
A list of Montgomery’s victories in WW2:
♦ Battle of Alam Halfa;
♦ Second Battle of El Alamein;
♦ Battle of El Agheila;
♦ Battle of Medenine;
♦ Battle of the Mareth Line;
♦ Battle of Wadi Akarit;
♦ Allied invasion of Sicily;
♦ Operation Overlord - the largest amphibious invasion in history;
♦ Market Garden - a 60 mile salient created into German territory;
♦ Battle of the Bulge - while taking control of two shambolic US armies;
♦ Operation Veritable;
♦ Operation Plunder.
Montgomery not once had a reverse.
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Monty's 8th Army advanced the fastest of any army in WW2. From El Alamein to El Agheila from the 4th to 23rd November 1942, 1,300 km in just 17 days. After fighting a major exhausting battle at El Alemein through half a million mines. This was an Incredible feat, unparalleled in WW2. With El Alamein costing just 13,500 casualties.
The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties, with the Lorraine campaign being a failure.
Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties. Hodges, head of the US First army, fled from Spa to near Liege on the 18th, despite the Germans never getting anywhere near to Spa. Hodges did not even wait for the Germans to approach Spa. He had already fled long before the Germans were stopped. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British, with Montgomery involved in planning, with also Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
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@seth1422
"The Allied armies closing the [Falaise] pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian First Army HQ for the same purpose.
Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation at Falaise.
"This advance duly began at 0630hrs on August 18 which, as the Canadian Official History remarks,16 ‘was a day and a half after Montgomery had issued the order for the Canadians to close the gap at Trun, and four and a half days after Patton had been stopped at the Third Army boundary’. During that time, says the Canadian History, the Canadians had been ‘fighting down from the north with painful slowness’ and the Germans had been making their way east through the Falaise gap. They were not, however, unimpeded; the tactical air forces and Allied artillery were already taking a fearful toll of the German columns on the roads heading east past Falaise.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise – Operation Tractable – which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton irresponsibly ran off to Paris, with few Germans in front of him. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months.
Once the British broke out of Normandy - despite the US Third Army wandering off for a photo shoot leaving the US First Army and the British & Canadians to finish off the Germans - they advanced within days into Belgium.
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Rambo....again
This half-wit keeps posting the same lies time and time again. A metal case.
The US Official History makes the point that even after the Nijmegen bridge had finally been taken. The Siegfried Line Campaign, p. 185:
The Guards Armoured’s Coldstream Guards Group still was needed as a reserve for the Airborne division. This left but two armoured groups to go across the Waal. Even those did not make it until next day, D plus 4, 21 September, primarily because of diehard German defenders who had to be ferreted out from the superstructure and bridge underpinnings. Once on the north bank, much of the British armour and infantry had to be used to help hold and improve the bridgehead that the two battalions of the 504th Parachute Infantry had forged. By the time the Nijmegen bridge fell on D plus 3, it was early evening and it would be dark before an armoured column could be assembled to march on Arnhem. North of Nijmegen the enemy had tanks and guns and infantry of two SS Panzer divisions, in unknown but growing strength, established in country ideal for defence.
This US Official History account adds that:
At the village of Ressen, less than three miles north of Nijmegen, the Germans had erected an effective screen composed of an SS battalion reinforced by eleven tanks, another infantry battalion, two batteries of 88mm guns, 20 20mm anti-aircraft guns and survivors of earlier fighting in Nijmegen.
"American readers should note that the above comments come from the US Official History, where the notion that Lord Carrington and his five tanks could have penetrated this screen and got up to Arnhem on the night of D plus 3 — even supposing such a move was ever suggested — is revealed as a delusion."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
These numerous attempts to divert attention from this failure, and pass the blame to a captain in the Guards Armoured Division, have been shameful... and highly successful. The myths surrounding the Nijmegen bridge have persisted and been engraved on the public mind by the media and the cinema. Given the US commanders’ chronic tendency to pass the buck and blame their British allies at every opportunity, it certainly might have been better if some effort had been made to get elements of the Guards Division on the move to Arnhem that night.
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
That, however, is the romantic view, bolstered by hindsight. In practical terms it takes time to assemble an entire armoured division from a battlefield in the dark streets of a town, issue fresh orders and prepare it for another advance.
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Major-General John Frost, commander of the 2nd Parachute Battalion at the Arnhem bridge:
_The worst mistake of the Arnhem plan was the failure to give priority to capturing the Nijmegen bridge. The capture would have been a walkover on D-Day.
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U.S. 82nd Division records state that the first troop of British tanks, four of them, crossed at 1830 hours. Two were hit with the crews taken POW bar one. The tanks charged across at full speed approaching 30 mph firing against German guns all the way, some of whom were high in the girders. Gunner Leslie Johnson in the lead tank said:
“They were falling like nine-pins. The incoming fire was so heavy that I swear to this day that Jesus Christ rode on the front of our tank. The Germans were so close that I didn’t bother to look through my sights. We could feel the tracks going over them as we shot them down, and there was blood and gore all over the tank.”
Thirty-four machine guns, an 88 mil-gun, and two 20mm cannons were found to be on the road bridge itself, and at least six anti-tank guns and a few 88-mil-guns were situated around the northern end. Once the two leading tanks of Pacey and Robinson got past the bridge obstacles at the northern end. Pacey stopped. The War Office report states: “At this point, Pacey stopped, he was not sure where to go as no Americans were seen, so Sergeant Robinson passed him and led on. Much to their surprise, they could not see any Americans so having passed through the concrete chicane they pushed on. Having crossed the road bridge, the four tanks moved down the northern embankment, where they destroyed another anti tank gun. Robinson and Pacey found themselves in a running battle against more guns, and against German infantry who poured out of the church in Lent, and then 1,500 yards further down the road from the bridge, where the main road goes under the railway line, contact was at last made with some Americans, both were very happy to see each other."
The first American troops that arrived at the bridge approaches/waterside was at 1915 hours with Burriss’ company of about sixteen men. 45 minutes after the first tanks crossed. Official U.S. records confirm that 82nd troops from the 82nd 504th arrived at the northern end of the road bridge at 1938 hours. This would be the time they arrived in any real strength to consolidate. One hour 8 mins after the first tank crossed. The records state at 1938 hours, “All seemed quiet at this point, with the enemy, disorganised and in great confusion, suffering heavy losses. Prior to the physical occupation of the northern end of the bridge by 504th PIR, eight British light tanks had (already) crossed. Two of these were destroyed just north of the bridge”.
The 504 did not occupy the northern end of the bridge. The second troop of tanks crossed at least half an hour after the first. Burriss was there when the second troop of tanks rolled over, thinking they were the first over. Carington's tank was one of them. Eight rolled over the bridge, with two hit, being there to consolidate the bridgehead and ensure the Germans did not take the bridge back. Horrock of XXX Corps in his plan had the 43 Wessex infantry to take the ground from Nijmegen bridge to Arnhem, destroying anti-tank weapons. It was not tank country. The tanks were to follow behind the infantry. The tanks would have been sitting ducks if they went first.
The 43rd Wessex were to do the river crossing, pre-planned if the bridge was blown, using proper assault boats, which they had in Nijmegen, and DUKW and Buffalo amphibious craft, in two columns. But to save face as they failed to seize the bridge, Gavin pestered Horrocks for his men to do it, he agreed. Not one 82nd man was on the bridge when the tanks crossed at 1830, or at 1915 when the second troop of tanks went over.
Official XXX Corps records from the War Office highlight that the successful tank attack on the road bridge was at 1830 hours. All this drinking tea nonsense by the British tankers, only seems to have started as an American diversion, after inquiries by the Official US historian Charles MacDonald into why the Nijmegen Bridges were not taken on the first day.
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Why the Germans invaded the USSR? The imminent concern of Germany was to get hold of resources to fend off the coming air war with Britain. Tooze nails it.
Wages of Destruction by Prof Adam Tooze:
Planning for Barbarossa.
Tooze Page 454:
"Critical stores would be reserved above all for the main strike force of 33 tank and motorised infantry divisions. If the battle extended much beyond the first months of the attack, the fighting power of the rest of the German army would dwindle rapidly."
"Fundamentally the Wehrmacht was a "poor army". The fast striking motorised element of the German army in 1941 consisted of only 33 divisions of 130. Three-quarters of the German army continued to rely on more traditional means of traction: foot and horse. The German army in 1941 invaded the Soviet Union with somewhere between 600,000 and 740,000 horses. The horses were not for riding. They were for moving guns, ammunition and supplies."
"The vast majority of Germany's soldiers marched into Russia, as they had in France, on foot."
"But to imagine a fully motorised Wehrmacht, poised for an attack on the Soviet Union is a fantasy of the Cold War, not a realistic vision of the possibilities of 1941. To be more specific, it is an American fantasy. The Anglo-American invasion force of 1944 was the only military force in WW2 to fully conform to the modern model of a motorised army."
Page 455:
"the chronic shortage of fuel and rubber"
"the fuel shortage of 1941 was so expected to be so severe that the Wehrmacht was seriously considering demotorisation as a way of reducing its dependency on scarce oil."
"Everything therefore depended on the assumption that the Red Army would crack under the impact of the first decisive blow."
Page 456:
"a new Soviet industrial base to the east of the Urals, which had the capacity to sustain a population of at least 40 million people."
"Soviet industrial capacity was clearly very substantial."
"Franz Halder recorded Hitler's ruminations about the Soviets' immense stock of tanks and aircraft."
Reading further Tooze gives the misgivings of the German generals of the invasion. All were negative.
Page 460:
"As late as the Spring of 1941, the Foreign Ministry was still opposing the coming war, preferring to continue the alliance with the Soviet Union against the British Empire."
"If the shock of the initial assault does not destroy Stalin's regime, it was evident in February 1941 that the Third Reich would find itself facing a strategic disaster."
Page 452:
"the Germans had already conscripted virtually all their prime manpower. By contrast, the Red Army could call up millions of reservists."
Why did Germany invade the USSR in a rushed ill-conceived plan?
Page 431:
"the strongest arguments for rushing to conquer the Soviet Union in 1941 were precisely the growing shortage of grain and the need to knock Britain out of the war before it could pose a serious air threat."
"Meanwhile, the rest of the German military-industrialised complex began to gird itself for the aerial confrontation with Britain and America."
Germany rushed to invade the Soviet Union, with an ill-equipped army with no reserves in anticipation of a massive air war with Britain and the USA, hoping they could win the Soviet war within weeks.
The coming air war:
Roosevelt promised 50,000 plane per year production in May 1940, of which a substantial amount would be in the RAF. Germany could not compete with the level of aircraft at the UKs disposal. Whether the planes had US and UK pilots or just UK pilots they were coming Germany's way. And the only way they could really get at each other was by air. Germany feared mass bombing, which came - the bomber in the late 1930s was perceived as a war winning weapon. The Germans knew the lead time for aircraft was 18 months from order to delivery. That meant in late 1941/early 1942, these planes would be starting to come into service in great numbers against Germany. Germany needed the resources of the east to compete. If the population was too big they would eliminate the population - the precedence was the American move to the west expanding the USA, taking lands from the natives population and Mexican and eliminating the population.
War Production:
Keegan, World War Two, chapter War Production:
- Germany was third behind the USA, then the UK in GDP, in 1939. Germany = UK in capital goods production in 1939.
- UK economy grows 60% during WW2.
- Hitler says to Guderian, re: USSR, "had I known they had so many tanks as that, I would have thought twice before invading"
Tooze, Preface, xxiii:
Combined GDP of the UK and France exceeded Germany & Italy by 60%.
- page 454:
"It was poor because of the incomplete industrial and economic development of Germany".
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The American post war version of events is one that attempts to whitewash their failures, to capture the Zon and Nijmegen bridges on the first day. The largely fictitious film A bridge Too Far, made when Browning had already died, only cemented the false narrative in the minds of the public. Since then many researchers have uncovered the real facts of the operation.
The 508th launched some patrols into Nijmegen far too late. A patrol from the 3rd Battalion almost reached the bridge - but only after being delayed by the enemy with the bridge being reinforced in company strength by the time they reached it.
Warren's 1st Bn had launched a patrol or two patrols, yes, just patrols. Nordyke relates two versions from Warren and his exec' officer. It, or they, were led by the Bn S-2 Intelligence Section, followed and joined by Lt. Weaver's 3rd Platoon of the Bn reserve C Company, plus two squads from the HQ Company LMG Platoon and C Company's SCR-300 radio set and operator, for communication back to the battalion. Weaver's patrol met enemy resistance, then withdrawing when they heard the Bn were sending A and B Companies to take the bridge. They only went because of Gavin intervened; running livid to Lindquist's CP in a Jeep, screaming at him to get moving when he found, after many hours, he was not moving to the bridge.
"I knew all of the division staff and the other regimental commanders, and was included in the planning of operations and briefings. I was ‘bigoted.’ [This is a WWII military term for being read into/briefed on missions.]
Prior to the Holland jump, I sat in 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.
After we were dropped in Holland, 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 (drop zone) is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.” So I went cross-country through Indian country [slang military term for enemy territory] 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 to, “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.”
- by Chester E Graham, liaison officer between the 508th and the 82nd Division Headquarters.
Bergström states that three of the S-2 Section patrol, got separated reaching the bridge. They managed to capture six or seven German troops and a small Falk artillery weapon. They waited an hour until dark at around 7:30 pm, withdrawing. They could hear heavy equipment approaching from Arnhem, being the SS-Panzer Recon Battalion 9, who just just missed Frost's men at Arnhem bridge at 7pm. The SS-Panzer Recon Battalion 9 reached Arnhem 5.5 hours after the 82nd had landed. It will take another 5 hours or so before the 82nd launched an attack. Bergström's source is Demolition Platoon, 508th by Zig Burroughs.
This contrasts sharply to Frost's progress in Arnhem, where his whole battalion following A Company moved away from the Germans, through people's houses, over walls, and back yards, carrying all their equipment, by-passing German positions, reaching the Arnhem bridge. The British First Airborne landed half an hours after the 508. They have an extra 4 or 5 miles march, met more resistance, yet reached the Arnhem bridge before the US paras reached the Nijmegen bridge.
Gavin obtained promotion 505th PIR command to Assistant Divisional commander for Normandy, being promoted again to Divisional commander for Holland Gavin inherited Lindquist as commander of the 508th, who were the least experienced regiment in the Division. Yet gave the least experienced regiment the prime task. Gavin says that in England he told Lindquist to go for the bridge "without delay." Lindquist denied Gavin said this.
Gavin chose the most experienced regiment, the 504th, who had just returned from Anzio, to secure the Grave bridge, because it was on the Division's supply line. Without the Grave bridge secured, the 82nd would be in serious trouble. The next most experienced regiment was Gavin's old unit the 505th. He gave them the defensive task of securing the landing zones from counter-attack from the Reichswald. The intelligence picture by SHAEF, on 16 September, suspected II.SS-Panzerkorps was drawing new tanks from a depot in the Kleve area of Germany.
Gavin had this mythical 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald, so he gave the less experienced 508th the task of securing Nijmegen and its bridges. This was a unit, better suited to the defensive role. The 508th, and Lindquist, were well dug-in on the Groesbeek ridge when Gavin was informed they were not moving on the bridges in Nijmegen. They were not following Gavin's divisional plan, Lindquist was waiting for an order from the division HQ before moving into Nijmegen. This was a clear command failure between Gavin and Lindquist.
When Ridgway was promoted to command XVIII Airborne Corps with Gavin moving up to command 82nd Division, Gavin's old position of assistant Divisional commander was left vacant. During Market Garden he was doing two jobs. Ridgway had no role to play in Market Garden as his two divisions of XVIII Corps were attached to the British First Airborne Corps for the operation, under Browning. Ridgway paid a visit to Gavin's CP to see why they had not secured the bridge, after XXX Corps made contact with the Division. Gavin entered to find Ridgway in the CP studying a map. Gavin ignored him and immediately left without even acknowledging Ridgway's presence. If Ridgway was still divisional commander for Market Garden operation, the 82nd would have secured the bridge immediately.
There were no German combat troops in Nijmegen on the jump day. None. That is a fact. The low grade aged troops were scared stiff of meeting well armed aggressive paras. The German HQs moved out immediately. Regarding Harmel, when interviewed by Kershaw in the 1970s, he said there was no German armour between the Nijmegen and Arnhem bridge when XXX corps secured the Nijmegen bridge. This was incorrect as German records show German tanks, inc' Tigers, were already crossing south on the Arnhem bridge to form a line at Elst - the British First Airborne had capitulated on the Arnhem bridge running out of ammunition, at the same time XXX Corps seized then secured the Nijmegen bridge. Harmel never knew this, as communications was skant in a fluid situation. After the episode, the last thing they were thinking of was where and what time, as they saw the allies in a few days had punched a 60 mile salient right into their lines on the German border, taking the largest road bridge in Europe at the time.
Add to your reading list:
1) Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History Of The 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment In World War II by Phil Nordyke.
2) Arnhem 1944 by Christer Bergström
3) Market Garden, Then and Now by Karl Magry.
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High Speed Rail In Spain - which is comprehensive. Spain has twice as much km of track per inhabitant as France and three times more than China and Japan. But... it is the least used, with passengers per km 15,500, against France at 58,300 and Japan at 101,500. A bit of a flop to say the least, when the local rail, which benefits most people, was dire needing urgently updating, they built this white elephant. Echoes of the UK, with crumbling local & regional rail.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYWYhPVwJBY
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@Daniel McGREW
Arnhem bridge is only 11.57 miles from the German border. Two American Airforce Generals, Brereton (in command of the First Allied Airborne Army) and Williams were the reason why the plan was flawed. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been preached, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports not hindering German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that prevented the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak".
The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge at Grave was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends. General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the the biggest bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 20 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives. He sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 22.00, eight hours after landing. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 20 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 19.00 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory as it was rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town by mistake thinking they were in Germany.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 8 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men in the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself. XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge.
If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, the Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A failure made possible by General Gavin. Even the US Official War record confirms this.
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@charleswesley9907 Ther USA asset stripped Britain. They made a profit on WW2. British and French orders pre and during WW2 got rid of American soup lines. The British owned a substantial parts of US industry - about 1/5 to 1/4. This had to be sold to US interests before material, finished or raw, would flow. Churchill said "Give us the tools and we will finish the job". He never asked for men. In December 1940 Roosevelt stated that Britain was the USAs first line of defence. Since Britain needed supplies to help protect American security, America wouldn't give anything without payment. In the first two years of war, Roosevelt had drained Britain dry, stripping her of all her assets in the USA, including real estate and industry. An example is, the British owned Viscose Company, worth £125 million and was liquidated with Britain receiving only £87 million.
Britain's £1,924 million investments in Canada were sold off to pay for raw materials bought in the United States. Roosevelt to ensure he got his money dispatched USS Louisville to British South African naval base at Simonstown to collect £42 million worth of British gold. This was Britain's last negotiable asset. This paid for American guns and ammunition. Not content with stripping Britain of her gold and assets, in return for 50 old World War I rusting destroyers (they were a political move), Roosevelt demanded that Britain transfer all her scientific and technological secrets to the USA - FREE. What price were these? He also demanded territory before supplying raw materials, but settled for 99 year leases on the islands of Newfoundland, Jamaica, Trinidad and Bermuda for establishing American military and naval bases in case Britain should fall.
Of the 50 old, leaking, rusting and hardly operational WW1 destroyers supplied to Britain, most were never used and those serviceable were given to the USSR, France and Poland and Norway.
Lend-Lease was designed to serve the USAs interests in fighting Germany without entering the war. In December 1940 Roosevelt asserted that England was America's first line of defense. Since Britain needed supplies to help protect American security.
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@spartacusgladiator
Monty didn’t plan Market Garden, coming up with the idea and broad outline only. Montgomery was largely excluded from the planning process. It was planned mainly by the Air Force commanders, Brereton and Williams of the USAAF. The failure points were that two US para units, the 101st and the 82nd, failed to seize their bridges.
It was Bereton and Williams who:
▪ decided that there would be drops spread over three days, defeating the object of para jumps by losing all surprise, which is their major asset; rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-day on the Pegasus Bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
▪ chose the drop and and landing zones so far from the Bridges; Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to take on the flak positions and attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports, thereby allowing them to bring in reinforcements with impunity;
▪Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of “possible flak.“;
The state of play on the 17th, D day, was:
1) the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was largely clear;
2) there were concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally;
3) there were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen;
4) a few scattered about along the road;
5) there was no armour in Arnhem.
That was it.
i) XXX Corps would deal from the Belgium border to Eindhoven;
ii) 101st from Eindhoven to Grave;
iii) 82nd from Grave to north of Nijmegen;
iv) British and Polish paras from north of Nijmegen to north of the Rhine;
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 2 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition, hanging around, spending 2 hours in the village. The Germans blew the bridge when they finally reached it. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured it.
Evidently expecting that Major La Prade's flanking battalion would have captured the highway bridge, these two battalions made no apparent haste in moving through Zon. They methodically cleared stray Germans from the houses, so that a full two hours had passed before they emerged from the village. Having at last overcome the enemy 88 south of the Zonsche Forest, Major LaPrade's battalion caught sight of the bridge at about the same time. Both forces were within fifty yards of the bridge when their objective went up with a roar.
- US Official History.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected. XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and towards the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up.
The road was still largely clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump. XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, making up the delay at Zon, being right on time. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over. If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves, after the 82nd tried again and failed again. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
According to the official AMERICAN Army historian, Forrest Pogue, he stated that the failure of US 82nd Airborne to assault the lightly defended Nijmegen bridge immediately upon jumping 'sounded the death knell' for the men at Arnhem.
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Ohain's first designs were centrifugal - failing. The Germans went for the problematic, at the time, axial flow design. The British flew a Meteor with an axial-flow Metro-Vick engine in 1943 dropping it in favour of the reliable centrifugal design. There were five turbojet engines in the UK under R&D in WW2:
▪ Centrifugal, by Whittle (Rover);
▪ Centrifugal, by Frank Halford (DeHaviland);
▪ Axial-flow, by Metro-Vick;
▪ Axial-flow by Griffiths (Rolls Royce);
▪ Axial flow compressor, with reverse flow combustion chambers. The ASX by Armstrong Siddeley;
Metro-Vick sold their jet engine division to Armstrong Siddeley. The Metro-Vick engine transpired into the post war Sapphire. Most American engines in the 1940s/50s were of UK design, many made under licence. The US licensed the J-42 (RR Nene) and J-48 (RR Tay), being virtually identical to the British engines. US aircraft used licensed British engines powering the: P-59, P-80, T-33, F9F Panther, F9F-6 Cougar, FJ Fury 3 and 4, Martin B-57 Canberra, F-94 Starfire, A4 Skyhawk and the A7 Corsair.
The US General Electric J-47 turbojet was developed by General Electric in conjunction with Metropolitan Vickers of the UK, who had already developed a 9-stage axial-flow compressor engine licensing the design to Allison in 1944 for the earlier J-35 engine first flying in May 1948. The centrifugal Rolls Royce Nene is one of the highest production jet engines in history with over 50,000 built.
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@alanmichael5619
In an interview with Maj Gen G. E. Prier-Palmer, British Joint Services Mission in Washington, in 1955, General Browning said the Grave and Nijmegen Bridges must be seized "as soon as possible", although the wooded Groesbeek Heights on the route to the bridge must be held.
Field Order 11 of 13 Sept is clear in section 2 a), putting the bridges first in the writing, that they were to be seized, then the high ground secured and then the roads. Order 1, of 13 September, written by Lindquist of the 508th, states he will wait at the high ground for a Division Order to move from the Heights to the bridge. In short, wait for an Order from Gavin to move.
The heights near De Ploeg, which are really pretty flat being a wooded area but high for Holland, are pretty well between the Drop Zone (DZ) and bridge. The 508th would go through the Heights to reach the bridge. Browning and Gavin naturally did not want German troops between the LZ and the bridge, so the Heights had to be occupied and secure. The 508th CP would be established at the Heights.
Gavin understood the priorities in sending the 508th to the bridge and Groesbeek heights immediately, with Coln Warren's battalion of the 508th assigned the bridge. To get to the bridge from the DZ you have to pass the Groesbeek Heights, so any enemy at the Heights naturally had to be subdued, then secure the area, which could take time, then send Warren's battalion to the bridge.
It took the 665 men of 508th a painfully slow 3.5 hours to march a few miles from the DZ to the heights, reaching the Groesbeek heights at 1730. They encountered only a few Labour troops in opposition. There were no Germans at the Groesbeek Heights as forward scouts relayed back the situation. So, on route Coln Lindquist the head of the 508th could have sent Warren's A and B companies directly to the bridge, bypassing the Groesbeek Heights, immediately via the riverbank as instructed by Gavin. The rest of the battalion could move to the empty Groesbeek Heights setting up defences at De Ploeg on the heights.
Dutch resistance men informed the 508th that the Germans had largely cleared out of Nijmegen with only 19 guards on the bridge. So all was easy and fine, so the two companies assigned the bridge could move immediately to their objective without a diversion via the Groesbeek Heights.
Despite hearing the good news from the Dutch Underground, Lindquist in command of the 508th was not moving at all, keeping all his men static at De Ploeg. Lindquist was waiting for a Divisional Order from Gavin informing him that the DZ was secure, then send Warren's battalion to the bridge. When Gavin found out Lindquist was static via a liaison officer he was livid, running over to De Ploeg in a Jeep telling Lindquist to get moving to the bridge. Even then, took Lindquist another two hours to send men in force to the bridge.
Three stray men from a forty man patrol sent to the bridge immediately by Warren to confirm what the Dutch Underground told them on reaching DePloeg, took the guards on the south end of the bridge prisoner. They left when no one turned up. When leaving they saw hundreds of Germans pour from the north onto the previously lightly guarded bridge. Later, a company of Warren's main force became lost when they eventually moved towards the bridge. By the time Warren's two companies did reach the bridge in force, the Germans had reinforcing the bridge with hundreds of men. Too late.
The first attack on the bridge was just before midnight, 10.5 hours after landing. The 82nd were expecting German resistance from the east, however it came from the north via the Nijmegen bridge. Gavin was expecting Lindquist to secure the Groesbeek heights, which were devoid of enemy forces, then immediately move to the bridge, which meant sending Warren's battalion immediately. Lindquist was expecting Gavin to notify him that the DZ was clear.
Gavin was expecting Lindquist to go to the bridge when it was obvious the Groesbeek heights, on the way to the bridge, were secure. As no Germans were about, the heights were naturally secure. Regarding Lindquist's expected clearing of the LZ before moving from DePloeg. Lindquist did write a Field Order for the 508th on 13 September copied to Gavin, stating that once the heights were secure he would wait for a Divisional Order [from Gavin] to move.
Two days later at the jump briefing Gavin verbally overruled Lindquist's Field Order, using a map he told him that he should move to the bridge "without delay". Poor command communications by Gavin. Poulussen, in Lost at Nijmegen discovered that the 508th jumped without any written offensive orders from Gavin. All was verbal from Gavin to Lindquist of the 508. Chester Graham, the 82nd liaison officer, was at the pre jump meeting in England. He said there was no ambiguity amongst anyone there that the bridge was the prime target.
In 1945 Historical Officer, Capt. John Westover of the US Army Centre of Military History, was wanting confirmation that if the capture of the Nijmegen bridge had been part of the objectives. In response, dated 25 July 1945, General Gavin was clear: "About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping well, I personally directed Col Lindquist, commanding the 508 PIR to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen Bridge without delay _after landing but to keep a close watch on it in the event he needed to protect himself against the Reichswald and he was cautioned to send the battalion via the east of the city."
General Browning never knew men were static at De Ploeg. Like Gavin he was expecting men to be seizing the bridge. Being corps commander, he was busy attempting to communicate with all three parachute divisions. The 82nd did launch a few failed attacks on the bridge. In the afternoon of the next day, 18th, Gavin asked permission to launch another attack. Browning, seeing the bridge was well defended, and the failed attacks, refused, opting to wait for XXX Corps to arrive to seize the bridge. Inexplicably Gavin moved _all his men out of Nijmegen town completely to the heights and DZ, giving the town back to the Germans. This made matters worse when XXX Corps arrived who had expended vital time, and ammunition, in flushing them out.
On page 162 of the U.S. Official History:
"many documents regarding the extensive combat interviews were conducted with personnel of the 508th Parachute Infantry, they are inexplicably missing from Department of the Army files."
Read:
1) Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History Of The 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment In World War II by Phil Nordyke.
2) Arnhem 1944 by Christer Bergström.
3) Market Garden, Then and Now by Karl Magry.
4) Lost at Nijmegen by R Poulusson
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The British 1st Airborne made it to Arnhem bridge, taking the north end of the bridge, denying its use to the Germans.
The other two airborne units, both US, failed to seize their assigned bridges immediately. If they had XXX Corps would have been in Arnhem on d-day+1, before armour came in from Germany in large numbers. Game set and match. The Germans would not have known what had hit them.
The 12 hour delay caused by the 101st not seizing the Zon bridge, meant the Germans for 12 hours had a critical time window to pour in troops and get armour moving towards Arnhem. The longer the time delay the more Germans poured in, hence more resistance, hence a slower XXX Corps. Obvious.
On top of the 12 hour delay, the 82nd not seizing their bridge at Nijmegen (XXX Corps had to take it for them), caused an additional 36 hour delay. This meant another longer time window for the Germans to keep up the reinforcing. The extra 36 hour delay created by the 82nd, meant a bridgehead over the Rhine was precluded, as the two day time window in total given to the Germans was far too long.
The British paras did their part in securing a crossing over its assigned waterway, the Rhine. The two US para units failed in theirs. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
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@davemac1197
Browning never put the bridge at a 'lower' priority to the Heights.
The Heights were pretty well between the Waal bridge and DZs. The 508 slowly moved to the Heights nearly unopposed, unlike Frost's men at Arnhem. They reached the Heights with no one there. Now it is time to move "without delay" to the bridge as Lindquists was ordered to move to the bridge when in England. No excuse not to, as the Heights are secure.
They stayed at the Heights. They met Dutch resistance men who said there were 18 old men on the bridge and the town evacuated. Lindquist sent a 40 man patrol to verify what the Dutch were saying, when he should have sent Warrens battalion, as there no resistance to the drop, the march to the Heights and now no one in Nijmegen. A reccie patrol will take time, they never had time. Keeping Warren's men idle on the Heights which was not under immediate threat was a senseless act. The Dutch were correct as three lost men from the patrol took half the guards on the bridge. They left as no one turned up.
Lindquist never sent Warren's battalion, which was earmarked to seize the bridge, _"without delay"_. He sent Warren to the bridge only after Gavin went to him in a Jeep screaming at him to move. "Two hours" later Warren's men moved. The Germans occupied the bridge at 1930hrs. The first attack was just before midnight which the Germans beat off.
After a number of failed attacks, the next morning Browning ordered no more futile attacks wasting ammunition and men waiting for XXX Corps to arrive, then seize the bridge which they did.
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@seth1422
It is bad enough having brainwashed Rambo with his multiple aliases and disjointed ramblings - fun as he is. No I will not play a different game at all. Your game is trying to say the 82nd on d-day did nothing wrong. They did. They failed to seize the bridge, after being ready to march then only moving towards the bridge after five hours. Men were assigned only for the bridge. XXX Corps seized the bridge not the US 82nd.
The failure point was the US 82nd. Now lets is go to the US Official History: Note: Page 164: the chance for an easy, speedy capture of the Nijmegen bridge had passed. Read on......
The European Theater of Operations
THE SIEGFRIED LINE CAMPAIGN
by Charles B. MacDonald
CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY
UNITED STATES ARMY
WASHINGTON, D.C., 1993
Page 185.
Page 161:
Colonel Lindquist's 508th Parachute Infantry and of Colonel Ekman's 505th Parachute Infantry had assembled within an hour after the D-Day drop.
Page 162:
General Gavin's understanding, as recalled later, was that Warren's battalion was to move "without delay after landing." On the other hand, Colonel Lindquist's understanding, also as recalled later, was that no battalion was to go for the bridge until the regiment had secured its other objectives, that is to say, not until he had established defenses protecting his assigned portion of the high ground and the northern part of the division glider landing zone. Instead of moving immediately toward the Nijmegen bridge, Colonel Warren's battalion was to take an "assigned initial objective" in the vicinity of De Ploeg, a suburb of Nijmegen a mile and a quarter southeast of the city astride the Nijmegen-Groesbeek highway.
Page 163:
Colonel Warren about 1830 sent into Nijmegen a patrol consisting of a rifle platoon and the battalion intelligence section. This patrol was to make an aggressive reconnaissance, investigate reports from Dutch civilians that only eighteen Germans guarded the big bridge, and, if possible, capture the south end of the bridge.
Colonel Warren directed Companies A and B to rendezvous at a point just south of Nijmegen at I900
As the scouts neared a traffic circle surrounding a landscaped circular park near the center of Nijmegen, the Keizer Karel Plein, from which a mall-like park led northeast toward the Nijmegen bridge, a burst of automatic weapons fire came from the circle. The time was about two hours before midnight. (2200 hrs)
Page 164:
the chance for an easy, speedy capture of the Nijmegen bridge had passed. This was all the more lamentable because in Nijmegen during the afternoon the Germans had had nothing more than the same kind of "mostly low quality" troops encountered at most other places on D Day.
- page 185
For all the concern that must have existed about getting to Arnhem, only a small part of the British armor was freed late on D plus 4, 2 I September, to start the northward drive. As the attack began, British commanders saw every apprehension confirmed. The ground off the main roads was low-lying, soggy bottomland, denying employment of tanks. A few determined enemy bolstered with antitank guns might delay even a large force. Contrary to the information that had been received, Colonel Frost and his men had been driven away from the north end of the Arnhem bridge the afternoon before, so that since the preceding night the bridge had been open to German traffic. At the village of Ressen, less than three miles north of Nijmegen, the Germans had erected an effective screen composed of an SS battalion reinforced with I I tanks, another infantry battalion, 2 batteries of 88-mm. guns, 20 20-mm. antiaircraft guns, and survivors of earlier fighting at Nijmegen, all operating under General Bittrich's II SS Panzer Corps.20 Arnhem lay seven miles north of this screen. The British could not pass.
Note: the US history got the times pretty well right but added them up wrong.
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@seth1422
The Guards Armoured’s Coldstream Guards Group still was needed as a reserve for the [82nd] Airborne division. This left but two armoured groups to go across the Waal. Even those did not make it until next day, D plus 4, 21 September, primarily because of diehard German defenders who had to be ferreted out from the superstructure and bridge underpinnings. Once on the north bank, much of the British armour and infantry had to be used to help hold and improve the bridgehead that the two battalions of the 504th Parachute Infantry had forged. By the time the Nijmegen bridge fell on D plus 3, it was early evening and it would be dark before an armoured column could be assembled to march on Arnhem. North of Nijmegen the enemy had tanks and guns and infantry of two SS Panzer divisions, in unknown but growing strength, established in country ideal for defence.
This account [The US Official History The Siegfried Line Campaign, p. 185:
] adds that:
At the village of Ressen, less than three miles north of Nijmegen, the Germans had erected an effective screen composed of an SS battalion reinforced by eleven tanks, another infantry battalion, two batteries of 88mm guns, 20 20mm anti-aircraft guns and survivors of earlier fighting in Nijmegen.
"American readers should note that the above comments come from the US Official History, where the notion that Lord Carrington and his five tanks could have penetrated this screen and got up to Arnhem on the night of D plus 3 — even supposing such a move was ever suggested — is revealed as a delusion."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
These numerous attempts to divert attention from this failure, and pass the blame to a captain in the Guards Armoured Division, have been shameful... and highly successful. The myths surrounding the Nijmegen bridge have persisted and been engraved on the public mind by the media and the cinema. Given the US commanders’ chronic tendency to pass the buck and blame their British allies at every opportunity, it certainly might have been better if some effort had been made to get elements of the Guards Division on the move to Arnhem that night.
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
That, however, is the romantic view, bolstered by hindsight. In practical terms it takes time to assemble an entire armoured division from a battlefield in the dark streets of a town, issue fresh orders and prepare it for another advance.
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Major-General John Frost, commander of the 2nd Parachute Battalion at the Arnhem bridge:
"The worst mistake of the Arnhem plan was the failure to give priority to capturing the Nijmegen bridge. The capture would have been a walkover on D-Day"
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From the US Official History:
The European Theater of Operations
THE SIEGFRIED LINE CAMPAIGN
by Charles B. MacDonald
CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY
UNITED STATES ARMY
WASHINGTON, D.C., 1993
Page 158:
"About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well," that they could risk sending one battalion in a quick strike for the bridge. This was admittedly a minimum force, but if the Germans were not in strength at the bridge and if the expected counterattacks from the Reichswald could be held with a smaller force than originally deduced, the risk would be justified because of the nature of the prize.
""I personally directed Colonel Roy E.
Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry," General Gavin recalled later, "to commit his first battalion
against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing"
Page 159:
"Landed against almost no opposition."
Page 162:
General
Gavin's understanding, as recalled later, was that Warren's battalion was to move "without delay after landing."
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@davemac1197
Captain Lord Carington's own autobiography entitled 'Reflect on Things Past':
"My recollection of this meeting is different. Certainly I met an American officer but he was perfectly affable and agreeable. As I said the Airborne were all very glad to see us and get some support, no one suggested we press on to Arnhem. This whole allegation is bizarre, just to begin with I was a captain and second-in-command of my squadron so I was in no position either to take orders from another captain or depart from my own orders which were to take my tanks across the bridge, join up with the US Airborne and form a bridgehead. This story is simple lunacy and this exchange did not take place."
Lord Carrington again...
"At that stage my job - I was second-in-command of a squadron - was to take a half-squadron of tanks across the bridge. Since everybody supposed the Germans would blow this immense contraption we were to be accompanied by an intrepid Royal Engineer officer to cut the wires and cleanse the demolition chambers under each span. Our little force was led by an excellent Grenadier, Sergeant Robinson, who was rightly awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his action. Two of our tanks were hit not lethally - by anti-tank fire, and we found a number of Germans perched in the girders who tried to drop things on us but without great effect. Sergeant Robinson and the leading tank troop sprayed the opposite bank and we lost nobody, When I arrived at the far end my sense of relief was considerable: the bridge had not been blown, we had not been plunged into the Waal (In fact it seems the Germans never intended to blow the bridge. The demolition chambers were packed with German soldiers, who surrendered), we seemed to have silenced the opposition in the vicinity, we were across one half of the Rhine."
"A film representation of this incident has shown American troops as having already secured the far end of the bridge. That is mistaken - probably the error arose from the film-maker's confusion of two bridges, there was a railway bridge with planks placed between the rails and used by the Germans for [light] road traffic, to the west of the main road bridge we crossed; and the gallant American Airborne men reached it. When Sergeant Robinson and his little command crossed our main road bridge, however, only Germans were there to welcome him; and they didn't stay."
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@Karl hill
Monty actually signaled Eisenhower’s headquarters postponing the operation. Eisenhower resurrecting it and a cable from the War office about V2s committed Montgomery to the operation.
From Nigel Hamilton’s biography of Monty:
For Monty now to cancel the British part of ‘the main effort of the Allies because of stiffening enemy resistance, even had he wished to do so, would thus have been tantamount to insubordination, leaving him open to charges of timidity at a moment when American forces were thrusting towards the German border. Moreover the Arnhem-Nijmegan axis had been Monty’s proposal, making it doubly hard to rescind.
Eisenhower’s directive was not the only signal committing Monty to the continuation of his planned thrust via Arnhem on 9 September - for during the afternoon a ‘Secret’ cable arrived from the War Office, sent by VCIGS, General Nye, in the absence of Field-Marshal Brooke:
Two rockets so called V.2 landed in England yesterday. Believed to have been fired from areas near ROTTERDAM and AMSTERDAM. Will you please report urgently by what approximate date you consider you can rope off the Coastal area contained by ANTWERP-UTRECHT-ROTTERDAM. When this area is in our hands the threat from this weapon will probably have disappeared. By striking north-east from Eindhoven to Arnhem, 21st Army Group would be in a position to ‘rope off’ the whole of Holland, including the 150,000 fleeing German troops and the V2 bomb sites.
Few people are aware that there were supporting units on either flank who set off to the left and right of Hells Highway shortly after and in fact one of these supporting flanks advances pushed the Germans away from cutting the highway near Eindhoven on the 20th after XXX corps had gone through ahead. They even widened the axis of advance with their follow on actions.
It should be borne in mind that promised supplies from SHAEF failed to arrive, leaving VIII Corps, supposed to attack alongside, mostly stranded in place. “Garden” launched with only half the troops it should have had.
Montgomery had also wanted to use Hodges 1st US Army (and had in fact been promised) as a follow up flanking advance. But Bradley was stealing fuel and other resources from Hodges and giving it to Patton. Eisenhower:
”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”.
Eisenhower insisted it go ahead and Eisenhower under-resourced it. Market Garden wasn’t even an army just a corps.
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In an interview with General Browning in the NY Times he said he gave equal priority to the Nijmegen bridge and the Groesbeek heights. The heights near De Ploeg, which are really pretty flat being a wooded area but high for Holland, are pretty well between the Drop Zone (DZ) and bridge. Browning and Gavin naturally did not want German troops between the DZ and the bridge, so the heights had to be occupied and secure.
Gavin understood the priorities in sending the 508th to the bridge and Groesbeek heights immediately, with Coln Warren's battalion of the 508th assigned the bridge. To get to the bridge from the DZ you have to pass the Groesbeek heights, so any enemy at the heights naturally had to be subdued, then secure the area, which could take time, then send Warren's battalion to the bridge.
It took the 508th a painfully slow 3.5 hours to march a few miles from the DZ to the heights, reaching the Groesbeek heights at 1730. There were no Germans at the Groesbeek heights as forward scouts relayed back the situation. So, on route Coln Lindquist could have sent Warren's battalion directly to the bridge, bypassing the Groesbeek heights, immediately via the riverbank as instructed by Gavin. The rest of the 508th could move to the empty Groesbeek heights setting up defences at De Ploeg on the heights. Dutch resistance men informed the 508th that the Germans had largely cleared out of Nijmegen with only 19 guards on the bridge. So all was easy and fine, men could move immediately to the bridge without a diversion via the Groesbeek heights.
Despite hearing the good news from the Dutch Underground, Lindquist in command of the 508th was not moving at all, staying static at De Ploeg. Lindquist was waiting for a Divisional Order from Gavin that the DZ was secure, then send Warren's battalion to the bridge. When Gavin found out via a liaison officer he was livid, running over to De Ploeg in a Jeep telling Lindquist to get moving to the bridge.
Three stray men from a patrol sent to the bridge by Warren to confirm what the Dutch Underground told them, took the guards on the south end of the bridge prisoner. They left when no one turned up. When leaving they saw hundreds of Germans pour onto the previously lightly guarded bridge. Some of Warren's men became lost when they eventually moved towards the bridge. By the time the 508th did get to the bridge in force, the Germans had come south reinforcing the bridge with hundreds of men. Too late. The 82nd were expecting German resistance from the east, however it came from the north via the Nijmegen bridge.
Gavin was expecting Lindquist to secure the Groesbeek heights, which were devoid of enemy forces, then immediately move to the bridge, which meant sending Warren's battalion immediately.
▪Lindquist was expecting Gavin to notify him that the DZ was clear.
▪Gavin was expecting Lindquist to go to the bridge when it was obvious the Groesbeek heights, on the way to the bridge, were secure. As no Germans were about, the heights were naturally secure.
Regarding Lindquist's expected clearing of the DZ before moving from DePloeg. Lindquist did write a Field Order for the 508th on 13 September copied to Gavin, stating that once the heights were secure he would wait for a Divisional Order [from Gavin] to move. Two days later at the jump briefing Gavin verbally overruled Lindquist's Field Order, using a map that he should move to the bridge "without delay". Poor command communications by Gavin.
Poulussen, in Lost at Nijmegen discovered that the 508th jumped without any written offensive orders from Gavin. All was verbal from Gavin to Lindquist. Chester Graham, the 82nd liaison officer, was at the pre jump meeting in England. He said there was no ambiguity amongst anyone there that the bridge was the prime target.
In 1945 Historical Officer, Capt. John Westover of the US Army Centre of Military History, was wanting confirmation that if the capture of the Nijmegen bridge had been part of the objectives. In response, dated 25 July 1945, General Gavin was clear: "About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping well, I personally directed Col Lindquist, Commanding the 508 PIR to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen Bridge without delay after landing but to keep a close watch on it in the event he needed to protect himself against the Reichswald and he was cautioned to send the battalion via the east of the city."
General Browning never knew men were static at De Ploeg. Like Gavin he was expecting men to be seizing the bridge. Being corps commander, he was busy attempting to communicate with all three parachute divisions. The 82nd did launch a few failed attacks on the bridge. In the afternoon of the next day, 18th, Gavin asked permission to launch another attack. Browning, seeing the bridge was well defended, and the failed attacks, refused, opting to wait for XXX Corps to arrive to seize the bridge. Inexplicably Gavin moved all his men out of Nijmegen town completely to the heights and DZ, giving the town back to the Germans. This made matters worse when XXX Corps arrived who had expended vital time, and ammunition, in flushing them out.
On page 162 of the U.S. Official History:
"many documents regarding the extensive combat interviews were conducted with personnel of the 508th Parachute Infantry, they are inexplicably missing from Department of the Army files."
Read:
▪Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History Of The 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment In World War II by Phil Nordyke.
▪Arnhem 1944 by Christer Bergström.
▪Market Garden, Then and Now by Karl Magry.
▪Lost at Nijmegen by R Poulusson
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@jbjones1957
You never got the timeline did you? Read what I wrote again.
Zon bridge
The 101st took 3 to 4 hours to get to the vital Zon bridge which was only a few km away.
Read R Poulussen, Lost at Nijmegen.
Nijmegen (Waal) bridge
An 82nd patrol did actual take half the 19 bridge guards and their artillery piece POW. They just walked on and they surrendered. They left the bridge and the POWs as no 82nd men turned up, as the rest of them were dawdling at DePloeg.
Timeline Nijmegen
Events on the 1st day - D day:
▪ "At 1328, the 665 men of US 82nd 1st Battalion began to fall from the sky."
- R Poulussen, Lost at Nijmegen.
▪ "Forty minutes after the drop, around 1410, the 1st Battalion marched off towards their objective, De Ploeg, three miles away."
- R Poulussen.
"The 82nd were digging in and performing reconn in the area looking for 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald
- Neillands, R. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
▪ "Colonel Warren about 1830 sent into Nijmegen a patrol consisting of a rifle platoon and the battalion intelligence section. This patrol was to make an aggressive reconnaissance, investigate reports from Dutch civilians that only eighteen Germans guarded the big bridge"
- US Official history, page 163.
▪ It was not until 1830hrs that he [Warren] was able to send a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small, just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a radio — say forty men.
- Neillands. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
▪ The 82nd were dug in and preparing to defend their newly constructed regimental command post, which they established at 1825. Having dug in at De Ploeg, Warren's battalion wasn't prepared to move towards Nijmegen at all.
- R Poulussen.
▪ Then Colonel Lindquist "was told by General Gavin, around 1900, to move into Nijmegen."
- R Poulussen.
▪ Warren sent a patrol of about 40 men to reconnoiter the bridge at 1830. Three strays from the patrol captured seven of the 18 guards and their 20mm cannon who were guarding the south end of the bridge, having to let them go as no reinforcements arrived. The 508th had actually captured the south end of the largely undefended bridge. The three scouts that reached the southern end of the Nijmegen bridge about an hour before the 9th SS arrived. Joe Atkins of the patrol said: "at the bridge, only a few German soldiers were standing around a small artillery weapon... The Germans were so surprised; the six or seven defenders of the bridge gave up without resisting. We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark and none of our other troops showed up. We decided to pull away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge."
- The 508th Connection by Zig Boroughs.
That heavy equipment was the 9th SS arriving at 1930.
82nd attack the bridge too late
The first attack on the Nijmegen bridge was 8.5 hours after the jump. More than enough time for the Germans to reinforce the bridge.
As the scouts neared a traffic circle surrounding a landscaped circular park near the center of Nijmegen, the Keizer Karel Plein, from which a mall-like park led northeast toward the Nijmegen bridge, a burst of automatic weapons fire came from the circle. The time was about two hours before midnight. [2200 hrs]
- US Official History, page 163
If the 82nd had bothered to move to the bridge immediately they would have walked on it whistling Dixie.
The 9th SS recon should have been engaged and stopped by 82nd men around Lent 1km north of the Nijmegen bridge, if they had bothered to move to the bridge of course.
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@jbjones1957
The 101st took 3 to 4 hours to get to the vital Zon bridge which was only a few km away. Read R Poulussen, Lost at Nijmegen.
Landing close to the bridge has the effect of seizing the bridge.
JB Jones asked:
"where all the other XXX Corps units of 3 and a half divisions?"
They were out of ammunition and fuel with crews that needed sleep. XXX Corps' tanks were spread all over Nijmegen and beyond, clearing the Germans put of the town, after the 82nd totally abandoned the town.
The Arnhem bridge fell to the Germans at the same time the Nijmegen bridge fell to the British.
* At 1400 on 18 September Colonel Mendez ordered Company G to withdraw from Nijmegen_
- US Official History, page 166.
"the chance for an easy, speedy capture of the Nijmegen bridge had passed. This was all the more lamentable because in Nijmegen during the afternoon the Germans had had nothing more than the same kind of "mostly low quality" troops encountered at most other places on D Day."
- US Official History, page 164.
The 82nd completely withdrew from Nijmegen town, allowing the Germans to pour the 10th SS infantry, who went over on the ferry, south over the Nijmegen bridge to reinforce the town. This made matters worse when the 82nd and XXX Corps went into the town to clear them out.
that a successful push to Arnhem on the night of 20 September was unlikely for a number of sound military reasons, and probably would have yielded a column of burning Sherman hulks along the road to Arnhem
- Nijmegen by Tim Saunders
Colonel Frost and his men had been driven away from the north end of the Arnhem bridge the afternoon before, so that since the preceding night the bridge had been open to German traffic. At the village of Ressen, less than three miles north of Nijmegen, the Germans had erected an effective screen composed of an SS battalion reinforced with 11 tanks, another infantry battalion, 2 batteries of 88-mm. guns, 20 20-mm. antiaircraft guns, and survivors of earlier fighting at Nijmegen, all operating under General Bittrich's II SS Panzer Corps.20 Arnhem lay seven miles north of this screen. The British could not pass.
- US Official History
According to the official American Army historian, Forrest Pogue, he stated that the failure of US 82nd Airborne to assault the lightly defended Nijmegen bridge immediately upon jumping 'sounded the death knell' for the men at Arnhem.
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@jbjones1957
The British 1st seized the north end of Arnhem bridge.
Read my posts again. All is there. Stop making things up.
The state of play on the 17th, D day, was:
1) the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was largely clear;
2) there were concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally;
3) there were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen;
4) a few scattered about along the road;
5) there was no armour in Arnhem.
That was it.
i) XXX Corps would deal from the Belgium border to Eindhoven;
ii) 101st from Eindhoven to Grave;
iii) 82nd from Grave to north of Nijmegen;
iv) British and Polish paras from north of Nijmegen to north of the Rhine;
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 2 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured it.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected. XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and towards the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up.
The road was still largely clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump. XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, making up the delay at Zon. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over. If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves, after the 82nd tried again and failed again. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
According to the official AMERICAN Army historian, Forrest Pogue, he stated that the failure of US 82nd Airborne to assault the lightly defended Nijmegen bridge immediately upon jumping 'sounded the death knell' for the men at Arnhem.
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Many are so eager to assert that German technological advances was superior to the British, that they forget to read what the Germans actually made, and how useful it actually was.
The first jet engine to fly in a plane, was von Ohain's project at Heinkel. He had substantial funding from a major industrialist. Von Ohain himself admitted that he studied very closely Whittle's jet engine patents before starting work on his own jet engine. His engine had a centrifugal compressor and turbine. It was not the axial-flow jet. It was unreliable, inefficient, low power and low life, despite having massive funding from Heinkel - a failure, that was not continued. The German jet programme was dropped until they knew the British had prototype planes in the air, then it was revived.
Whittle concentrated his very limited funding on the centrifugal compressor because it was well-understood and less problematic than axial-flow designs. He was focused on making a war-usable, reliable and powerful engine - quickly - which would outperform the best piston engine planes of the day. All of these qualities the Jumo and BMW axial jet engines lacked. On limited funding, Whittle developed a reliable engine which was combat-ready near the end of the war. Within months of the first operational flight, production engines were also more powerful than any of the total garbage engines turned out by the rushed German programs to the enormous detriment of actual combat - Gloster Meteor's top speed of 600 mph in late 1945, 650mph in mid 1946. No one can claim that an engine is combat ready with a service life of 10-12 hours, which cannot be rapidly throttled up or down otherwise it stalls, is prone to flame-out and terrifies its pilots. They were underdeveloped and unproven axial-flow jet engines, being garbage. The British installed axial-flow engines in a Meteor, however dropping them as they were too problematic at the time, requiring yearsto put right. A war was on, with years in development they could not afford.
The problems with German jet engines were not caused by the scarcity of metals in Germany during WW2, as they had access to enough rare metals. To produce a high performing jet engine high-strength alloys are required resisting high temperature. No iron-based alloy is suitable. Germany had no programme to develop such alloys. The British did, developing the nimonic series of alloys, making use of them in the WW2 jet engine programme. That is one, just one, of the reasons why the British jet program had combat potential, with the German program doomed to failure.
The Me262 airframe had many serious faults:
♦ high landing speed:
♦ difficult to maneuver;
♦ no air brakes;
♦ centre of gravity too far back;
♦ Poor downwards pilot visibility;
Those faults made attacking other aircraft far more difficult - at a time when they were desperately short of pilots, particularly pilots with sufficient skill and experience to fly what was a very difficult plane to fly and fight in.
The sweep-back of the wing of the Me262 was minimal, only in the leading edge, with a part of the trailing edge of the wing being straight. The swept wing was an insufficient correction for the plane's centre of gravity problem, not aerodynamics, that prompted the slight wing sweep. It was not until years later that properly designed swept-back wings were introduced in combat planes. By contrast the Gloster Meteor was:
♦ handleable;
♦ maneuverable;
♦ a balanced combat plane.
While the Meteor was being developed, the British were also working on the supersonic Miles 52 plane - the project was dropped with the plans given over to the USA, which resulted in Bell X-1. No one copied the Me262 in the post war rush to get fast jet planes into service. The British also produced new planes - the world's most advanced, in engine and airframe.
After WW2 the leader German plane designer Kurt Tank, and 62 other German engineers, went to Argentina to design and build the FMA IAe 33 Pulqui II jet plane. They used an RR Nene engine. The plane was a flop, way behind other jet planes of the time.
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@BrianFrancisHeffron-1776
You need a history lesson....
The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British under Montgomery. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
1) August 1942 - Alem el Halfa
2) October 1942 - El Alamein;
3) March 1943 - Medenine;
4) June 1944 - Normandy;
5) Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands;
6) December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge;
A list of Montgomery’s victories in WW2:
a) Battle of Alam Halfa;
b) Second Battle of El Alamein;
c) Battle of El Agheila;
d) Battle of Medenine;
e) Battle of the Mareth Line;
f) Battle of Wadi Akarit;
g) Allied invasion of Sicily;
h) Operation Overlord - the largest amphibious invasion in history;
i) Market Garden - a 60 mile salient created into German territory;
j) Battle of the Bulge - while taking control of two shambolic US armies;
k) Operation Veritable;
l) Operation Plunder.
Montgomery not once had a reverse.
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Monty's 8th Army advanced the fastest of any army in WW2. From El Alamein to El Agheila from the 4th to 23rd November 1942, 1,300 km in just 17 days. After fighting a major exhausting battle at El Alemein through half a million mines. This was an Incredible feat, unparalleled in WW2. With El Alamein costing just 13,500 casualties.
The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties, with the Lorraine campaign being a failure. Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties.
Hodges, head of the US First army, fled from Spa to near Liege on the 18th, despite the Germans never getting anywhere near to Spa. Hodges did not even wait for the Germans to approach Spa. He had already fled long before the Germans were stopped. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British, with Montgomery involved in planning, with also Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers.
Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
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@davemac1197
Interesting post. Dave M A C wrote:
"The point on timing is that British resistance at the Arnhem bridge expired at about the same time (1230 hrs) as the Irish Guards re-commenced their advance from Nijmegen (1300 hrs) on 21 September. "
All accounts say the evening before with German armour run over soon after. Some accounts say the initial tanks ran over the dead German bodies, until they could be cleared which was quite quick. The wreckage only needed to be pushed to one side allowing one lane to be free. Karl Magry in Market Garden Then and Now, says German armour was running south over Arnhem bridge at 1500 hrs to create a line at Elst - 3.5 hours prior to the Guards tanks seizing Nijmegen bridge.
For all the concern that must have existed about getting to Arnhem, only a small part of the British armor was freed late on D plus 4, 21 September, to start the northward drive. As the attack began, British commanders saw every apprehension confirmed. The ground off the main roads was low-lying, wet bottomland, denying employment of tanks. A few determined enemy bolstered with antitank guns might delay even a large force. Contrary to the information that had been received, Colonel Frost and his men had been driven away from the north end of the Arnhem bridge the afternoon before, so that since the preceding night the bridge had been open to German traffic. At the village of Ressen, less than three miles north of Nijmegen, the Germans had erected an effective screen composed of an SS battalion reinforced with 11 tanks, another infantry battalion, 2 batteries of 88-mm. guns, 20 20-mm. antiaircraft guns, and survivors of earlier fighting at Nijmegen, all operating under General Bittrich's II SS Panzer Corps. Arnhem lay seven miles north of this screen. The British could not pass.
- US Official History.
Frost controlled the north end of Arnhem bridge for about another two hours after the tanks took Nijmegen bridge. It was dark when the Nijmegen bridge was seized. The bridge had to be secured from German counter-attack with a secure cordon erected on the north bank. Harmel stated: "The four panzers who crossed the [Nijmegen] bridge made a mistake when they stayed in the village of Lent. If they had carried on their advance, it would have been all over for us." According to Saunders, three Tiger tanks and infantry had already been heading south from Arnhem towards Lent about the time the tanks seized Nijmegen bridge. By the time the bridge was fully secured, and tanks ready to roll, then they moved up the road, they would be meeting heavy armour, or/and anti-tank guns.
Saunders and the US Official History match up. Some of Frosts men were still fighting the next day, being scattered not stopping bridge traffic.
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@chuckokelley2448
What US historian Harry Yeide wrote of what the Germans thought of Patton:
1) for most of the war the Germans barely took notice [of Patton].
2) on March 23 at the Battle of El Guettar—the first American victory against the experienced Germans. Patton’s momentum, however, was short-lived: Axis troops held him to virtually no gain until April 7, when they withdrew under threat from British Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army.
3) There is no indication in the surviving German military records—which include intelligence reports at the theater, army, and division levels—that Patton’s enemies had any idea who he was at the time. Likewise, the immediate postwar accounts of the German commanders in Tunisia, written for the U.S. Army’s History Division, ignore Patton. Those reports show that ground commanders considered II Corps’s attacks under Patton to have been hesitant, and to have missed great opportunities.
4) In mid-June [1943], another detachment report described Patton as “an energetic and responsibility-loving command personality”—a passing comment on one of the numerous Allied commanders. Patton simply had not yet done anything particularly noteworthy in their eyes.
5) But his race to Palermo through country they had already abandoned left the commanders unimpressed. Major General Eberhard Rodt, who led the 15th Panzergrenadier Division against Patton’s troops during the Allied push toward Messina, thought the American Seventh Army fought hesitantly and predictably. He wrote in an immediate postwar report on Sicily, “The enemy very often conducted his movements systematically, and only attacked after a heavy artillery preparation when he believed he had broken our resistance. This kept him regularly from exploiting the weakness of our situation and gave me the opportunity to consolidate dangerous situations.” Once again, Patton finished a campaign without impressing his opponents.
6) General Hermann Balck, who took command of Army Group G in September, thus did not think highly of Patton—or any other opposing commanders—during this time. Balck wrote to his commander, Runstedt, on October 10, “I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans” Looking back on his battles against Patton throughout the autumn, in 1979 Balck recalled, “Within my zone, the Americans never once exploited a success. Often [General Friedrich Wilhelm von] Mellenthin, my chief of staff, and I would stand in front of the map and say, ‘Patton is helping us; he failed to exploit another success.’”
7) The commander of the Fifth Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel, aimed a dismissive, indirect critique at Patton’s efforts at Bastogne, writing in his memoirs that the Americans did not “strike with full élan.” The commanders who fought against Patton in his last two mobile campaigns in the Saar-Palatinate and east of the Rhine already knew they could not win; their losses from this point forward were inevitable, regardless of the commanding Allied opponent.
8) the Germans offered Patton faint praise during and immediately after the war.
9) posterity deserves fact and not myth. The Germans did not track Patton’s movements as the key to Allied intentions. Hitler does not appear to have thought often of Patton, if at all. The Germans considered Patton a hesitant commanding general in the scrum of position warfare. They never raised his name in the context of worthy strategists.
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oldtanker2
The British were the single biggest agents in the defeat of Nazi Germany. They were there from day one until the end. The so-called "invincible" Germans army tried and failed, with their allies, for two years in WW2 to defeat the British army in North Africa. The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British. From El Alemein it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery had to give the US armies an infantry role as they were not equipped or experienced enough to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein
♦ March 1943 - Medenine
♦ June 1944 - Normandy
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge
Not on one occasion were Monty's ground armies pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. The US Army were struggling in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months with over 50,000 casualties. The Battle of the Bulge, with 100,000 US casualties, took all the US effort, and vital help from Montgomery and the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe. The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Parts of the USAAF was put under RAF control. The Ninth stayed under his control until the end of the war just about.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British with Montgomery leading, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against the panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) and had to give them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped to fight tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
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David Himmelsbach
"This kind of decision belonged in the lap of Browning and Monty."
You really have no idea how these things work. Browning was in the First Allied Airborne Army. They look after their own army and their own back yard, which was led by an American, Brereton. Montgomery was in charge an army group, that is a number of armies. Get it?
"Montgomery did not need to hold committee meetings to discuss operational plans and choose options because he knew what was going on with his forces all the time. He kept his Tactical Headquarters close to the front, employed a large number of liaison officers — including American officers — who went out every day to find out the front-line facts and report back every evening, while Monty himself spent a great deal of his time out visiting the troops and the commanders. Montgomery concentrated on keeping a feel for the battle: he was much less interested in attending brain-storming sessions at SHAEF. Since he knew what he was doing — and what he wanted — Monty’s orders were direct, clear and simple, and this was good because in war simplicity works, and direct, clear orders are most easily followed."
"The fact that Monty rarely turned up for those meetings at SHAEF, sending his chief of staff, Major-General Freddie de Guingand instead, was one of the many things about Monty that irritated his American colleagues. They regarded his absence as an insult to Ike and — probably — to them as well. The real reason was that Monty did not believe in command by committee, was well aware that most of his colleagues loathed him, and that the well-liked de Guingand would be the best advocate for his views."
"Monty’s abrasive character brought on a no-win situation with his American colleagues. His habit of reducing his orders to simple terms inevitably produced criticism, not least from American historians, that he was patronising his US subordinates. This is not a complaint often heard from those subordinates —including, in moments of stress, subordinates like Simpson or Hodges during the Bulge — or even Bradley in Normandy. The first two generals appreciated the fact that Montgomery was a regular visitor to their headquarters and was always ready with help or advice — if needed. Neither American general has accused Monty of condescension"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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Monty did not have an ego, that was a part of the Yanks makeup, he was professional. Monty wanted to know at all levels of his command what was going on. If he was a control freak he would not have allowed others to plan Market Garden and stand back in its execution.
You are very confused. Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust over other fronts:
On 4 September, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr
- Robin Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen when he issued the directive. Montgomery also wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive. He devised Operation Comet to be launched on 2 September 1944. It was cancelled due to German resistance and poor weather.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 September incorporating divisions of the US 1st Army had Montgomery view the thrust to take the bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. To do this the British 2nd Army, some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow) would clearly be needed. Hodges' would protect the right flank. The Canadians would be on the coast of Belgium and Holland protecting the left flank from the German 15th army. The idea was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy preventing them from manning the German West Wall gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
Neillands on this point...
"the evidence also suggests that certain necessary objectives on the road to Berlin, crossing the Rhine and perhaps even taking the Ruhr, were possible with the existing logistical set-up, provided the right strategy to do so was set in place. Montgomery’s popular and astute Chief of Staff, Freddie de Guingand, certainly thought so: 'If Eisenhower had not taken the steps he did to link up at an early date with Anvil and had held back Patton, and had he diverted the resources so released to the north, I think it possible we might have obtained a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter - but not more.' "
- Robin Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944.
- Robin Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' 1st Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again. This thrust over the Rhine obviously would not work with the resources starved US 1st Army, so a lesser Market Garden operation was devised by Montgomery, eliminating the US 1st Army, with only one crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London wanted eliminating ASAP, and give a buffer between German forces and Antwerp. This would only have one corps above Eindhoven. This was a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time. Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance. Montgomery, although not liking Eisenhower's strategy making that clear continuously, being a professional soldier he always obeyed Eisenhower's orders, unlike Bradley who also allowed Patton to disobey his own orders.
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David Himmelsbach
On 12 September, Bradley had told Patton about Market Garden and warned him that if it succeeded, the Third Army might be held back on the west bank of the Moselle for weeks while the detested Montgomery performed wonders in the north.
Patton therefore suggested to Bradley that he cross the Moselle and get his forces so involved beyond the river that Eisenhower would be unable to stop him and must therefore support him. This ploy proved unnecessary: Eisenhower changed his mind yet again, at least in part, telling Bradley that he might ‘push his right wing [Patton’s Army] only far enough for the moment so as to hold adequate bridgeheads beyond the Moselle, and thus create a constant threat'.
This was all that Patton needed to cross the river and surge ahead as far as he could, never mind the point about bridgeheads. By the evening of 14 September, the day V and VII Corps of the US First Army opened their attacks, Patton had established half a dozen crossing points over the Moselle, and was heading east, consuming great quantities of fuel and ammunition. The outcome was that Patton did not stop until brought to a halt by the German army in front of Metz. It should be noted that this move, designed by Bradley and Patton to check Montgomery, actually had a dire effect on Bradley’s other contingent, the US First Army, which was starved of fuel and artillery ammunition at Aachen.
On 16 September, when Eisenhower told Bradley that logistical priority must go to First Army and Patton must stop, Patton again told Bradley that the Third Army must get involved ‘at once’ and asked Bradley to ignore this order and ‘not to call me until after dark on the nineteenth.’
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944:
There has been speculation that Market Garden was sabotaged by the US 82nd, who were taking one of the largest bridges in Europe at Nijmegen, just to get one over Montgomery. Take that at face value.
As Neillands states, "It should be noted that this move, designed by Bradley and Patton to check Montgomery." The move was not to gain an advantage over the enemy it was to spite a fellow allied general. This was when there was problems with the logistical train as well, so supplies were precious.
"and Patton ignored or watered down any of Ike’s orders he did not like, aided and abetted by Bradley. Ike should have gripped Monty and Patton, telling them bluntly and in so many words to obey his orders or face the sack"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Once Ike had delivered his verdict or announced his current strategy, Montgomery obeyed orders and did his best to make the strategy work."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley and Patton should have been sacked for gross insubordination.
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Larry Brown
I will let the Germans have an intial say on the Bulge:
Genral Hasso von Manteuffel:
‘The operations of the American 1st Army had developed into a series of individual holding actions. Montgomery's contribution to restoring the situation was that he turned a series of isolated actions into a coherent battle fought according to a clear and definite plan. It was his refusal to engage in premature and piecemeal counter-attacks which enabled the Americans to gather their reserves and frustrate the German attempts to extend their breakthrough’.
By November 1944, British SHEAF officer, Strong, noted that there was a possibility of a German counteroffensive in the Ardennes or the Vosges. Strong went to personally warn Bradley, who said, let 'em come.
Montgomery on hearing of the attack immediately took British forces to the Meuse to prevent any German forces from making a bridgehead, securing the rear. He was prepared to halt their advance and attack them. This was while Eisenhower and Bradley were doing nothing.
even by 19 December, three days into the offensive, no overall plan had emerged from 12th Army Group or SHAEF, other than the decision to send Patton’s forces north to Bastogne. Overall, the Ardennes battle was in urgent need of grip.
General Hodges had yet to see Bradley or receive more than the sketchiest orders from his Army Group commander.
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
On 20 December, Montgomery had sent a signal to Alanbrooke regarding the US forces:
"Not good... definite lack of grip and control. I have heard nothing from Ike or Bradley and had no orders or requests of any sort. My own opinion is that the American forces have been cut in half and the Germans can reach the Meuse at Namur without opposition."
Omar Bradley, commander of the 12th Army Group, did very little:
16 Dec, the first day, for 12 hours did nothing.
16 Dec, after 12 hours, he sent two armoured divisions from
the flanking Ninth and Third Armies.
17 Dec, after 24 Hours, he then called in two US airborne
divisions from Champagne.
18 Dec, he ordered Patton to halt his pending offensive in
the Saar.
18 Dec, he had still not established contact with the First Army,
while Monty had.
19 Dec, he withdrew divisions from the Aachen front to shore
up the Ardennes.
19 Dec, he had still not produced an overall defensive plan.
19 Dec, the Supreme Commander intervened directly late in the day.
20 Dec, Eisenhower telephoned Montgomery telling him to take
command of the US First and Ninth Armies
While all this dillying by Bradley was going on, German armies were pounding forward into his lines.
British SHEAF officer Whiteley & American officer Betts visited the U.S. First Army HQ seeing the shambles. Strong, Whiteley, and Betts recommended that command of the armies north of the Ardennes be transferred from Bradley to Montgomery. Unfortunately only two British officers approached Beddel Smith of their recommendations, who immediately fired the pair, claiming it was a nationalistic thing. The next morning, Beddel Smith apologized seeing the three were right, recommending to Eisenhower to bring in Monty.
During the Battle of the Bulge Eisenhower was stuck self imprisoned on his HQ in des-res Versailles near Paris in fear of German paratroopers wearing US uniforms with the objective to kill allied generals. He had remained locked up more than 30 days without sending a single message or order to Montgomery, and that is when he thought he was doing ground control of the campaign, when in effect Montgomery was in control as two US armies had to be put under his control after the German attack, the US First and Ninth armies. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war, just about. Coningham of the RAF had to take control of US air force units.
And yet biased American authors such as Stephen Ambrose said that Eisenhower took control of the Bulge and made the battle his veneering it as an all American victory. Ambrose completely falsified history. The only thing Eisenhower did was tell Monty to get control of two out of control US armies, tell the US 101st to go to Bastogne (who were in northern France after the buffer Market Garden was created) and men under Bradley to counterattack. That is it.
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@michaelschmid9567
You have been told! XXX Corps were on schedule when reaching Nijmegen. Seven hours to go, with seven miles to travel, up a largely empty road.
Three of an 82nd patrol were separated reaching the Nijmegen bridge. They managed to capture six or seven German troops and a small Flak artillery weapon. They waited an hour until dark at around 7:30 pm, withdrawing. They could hear heavy equipment approaching from Arnhem, being the SS-Panzer Recon Battalion 9, who just just missed Frost's men at Arnhem bridge at 7pm.
Source: Demolition Platoon, 508th by Zig Burroughs.
This contrasts sharply to Frost's progress in Arnhem, where his whole battalion following A Company moved away from the Germans, through people's houses, over walls, and back yards, carrying all their equipment, by-passing German positions, reaching the Arnhem bridge. The British First Airborne landed half an hour after the 508. They have an extra 4 or 5 miles march, met more resistance, yet reached the Arnhem bridge before the US paras reached the Nijmegen bridge.
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@Scaleyback317 wrote:
"How and why did Gavin come out smelling of roses?"
In 1945 Historical Officer, Capt. John Westover of the US Army Centre of Military History, wanting confirmed if the capture of the Nijmegen bridge had been part of the prime objectives. In response – dated 25 July 1945 – Gen Gavin was clear:
"About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping well, I personally directed Col Lindquist, Commanding the 508 PIR to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen Bridge without delay after landing but to keep a close watch on it in the event he needed to protect himself against the Reichswald and he was cautioned to send the battalion via the east of the city."
A straight order to immediately capture the bridge with one battalion. The rest of the regiment were to defend against a possible attack from the Reichswald and clear the LZ. They were to approach the bridge via the flat ground east of the city. Two companies went into Nijmegen with one disobeying orders getting completely lost. Two hours later when they finally rendezvoused, the attack was called off and the battalion called back into defence. In 1947 in his book ‘Airborne Warfare’ Gavin was vague regarding the failure:
"Just before take-off, I discussed the situation with Col Lindquist and directed him to commit not more than one battalion to the seizure of the Nijmegen Bridge as soon as possible after landing, so as to take advantage of surprise and darkness"
Gavin created the illusion that it had been the responsibility of the cautious Col Lindquist to decide when to send troops to the Nijmegen bridge, by writing as ‘soon as possible’. Gavin successfully created the myth that the failure to immediately attack the bridge was a misunderstanding. There was little misunderstand. Gavin did not give Lindquist any written offensive orders. All was verbal.
In the official US History written by Charles MacDonald in 1963 he also noticed the conflicting statements. Capt. Westover had access to all the 82nd Divisional records could find no record of these orders. Official US history determined that Col Lindquist of 508 PIR, Lt Col Stanley of 508 PIR, Lt Col Warren of 1/508 PIR and Capt. Bestebreurtje, a Dutch Liaison officer were not aware of any pre jump orders. It noted the only guidance for the men of 508 PIR was Field Order No 1 which was defensive.
Regarding the shift in priorities from the bridge to Groebeeke Heights, Capt. Westover while preparing the official US history of the US divisions taking part in Market Garden, and who was in possession of after action reports, unit diaries and official reports, still found inexplicable discrepancies. Capt. Westover asked Gen Gavin: "What person, staff or headquarters made the decision to apportion the weight of the 82nd AD to the high ground rather than the bridge at Nijmegen?" Gavin’s reply: "This decision was made by myself and approved by my Corps Commander.". There is no record of the conversation on this matter. Gavin then wrote to Westover saying: "Even if we were driven off the low ground, around the bridges, if the high ground could be held, ultimately the Second Army could accomplish the mission."
Gavin assumed the Germans would not reinforce their troops around Arnhem and Nijmegen, and the British paras in Arnhem could hold on indefinitely, it seems that Gavin had chosen this course of action. No real concerted attempt to capture Nijmegen bridge was made until XXX Corps arrived in Nijmegen. XXX Corps successfully seized the bridge, delayed 36 hours, too late to save the British paras holding out on the Arnhem bridge.
Note: From US Official History:
"Although extensive combat interviews were conducted with personnel of the 508th Parachute Infantry, they are inexplicably missing from Department of the Army files. The story has been reconstructed from unit records; Gavin's letters to Westover and OCMH; letters to OCMH from Colonel Warren, 3 July 1955, Colonel Lindquist, 9 September 1955, Col. Thomas J. B. Shanley formerly Executive Officer, 508th Parachute Infantry, 2 Sep 55, and Rev. Bestebreurtje, 25 Oct 56; a postwar interview with Colonel Lindquist by Westover, 14 Sep 45, copy in 82d Airborne Division Combat Interview file; and Westover, The American Divisions in Operation MARKET, a preliminary narrative written in the European theater shortly after the war, copy in OCMH. Captain Westover had access to all the combat interviews when writing his narrative."
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@dmbeaster
In an interview with General Browning in the NY Times he said he gave equal priority to the Nijmegen bridge and the Groesbeek heights. The heights near De Ploeg, which are really pretty flat being a wooded area but high for Holland, are pretty well between the Drop Zone (DZ) and bridge. Browning and Gavin did not want German troops between the DZ and the bridge, so the heights had to be occupied and secure.
Gavin understood the priorities in sending the 508th to the bridge and heights immediately, with Coln Warren's battalion of the 508th assigned the bridge. To get to the bridge from the DZ you have to pass the heights, so any enemy at the heights naturally had to be subdued, then secure the area, then send Warren's battalion to the bridge.
It took the 508th a painfully slow 3.5 hours to march a few miles from the DZ to the heights, reaching the heights at 1730. There were no Germans at the Groesbeek heights as forward scouts relayed back, so Coln Lindquist could send Warren's battalion directly to the bridge immediately, without any delay, while the rest of the 508th stayed back setting up defences at De Ploeg on the Groesbeek heights. Dutch resistance men informed the 508th that the Germans had largely cleared out of the town with only 19 guards on the bridge.
Despite hearing the good news from the Dutch Underground, Lindquist in command of the 508th was not moving at all, staying static at De Ploeg. Lindquist was waiting for a Divisional Order from Gavin that the DZ was secure, then send Warren's battalion to the bridge. When Gavin found out via a liaison officer he was livid, running over to De Ploeg in a Jeep telling Lindquist to get moving to the bridge.
Three stray men from a patrol sent to the bridge by Warren to confirm what the Dutch Underground told them, took the guards on the south end of the bridge prisoner. They left when no one turned up. When leaving they saw hundreds of Germans pour onto the previously lightly guarded bridge. Some of Warren's men became lost when they eventually moved towards the bridge. By the time the 508th did get to the bridge in force, the Germans had come south reinforcing the bridge with hundreds of men. Too late.
The 82nd were expecting German resistance from the east, however it came from the north via the Nijmegen bridge.
▪ Gavin was expecting Lindquist to secure the Groesbeek heights, which were devoid of enemy forces, then immediately move to the bridge, which meant sending Warren's battalion immediately.
▪ Lindquist was expecting Gavin to notify him that the DZ was clear.
Gavin was expecting Lindquist to go to the bridge when it was obvious the Groesbeek heights, on the way to the bridge, were secure. As no Germans were about, the heights were naturally secure.
Regarding Lindquist expecting clearing of the DZ before moving from DePloeg. Lindquist did write a Field Order for the 508th on 13 September copied to Gavin, stating that once the heights were secure he would wait for a Divisional Order [from Gavin] to move. Two days later at the jump briefing Gavin verbally overruled Lindquist's Field Order. Using a map Gavin verbally told Lidquist to move to the bridge "without delay". Poor command communications by Gavin.
Poulussen, in Lost at Nijmegen discovered that the 508th jumped without any written offensive orders from Gavin. All was verbal from Gavin to Lindquist. Chester Graham, the 82nd liaison officer, was at the pre jump meeting in England. He said there was no ambiguity amongst anyone there that the bridge was the prime target.
In 1945 Historical Officer, Capt. John Westover of the US Army Centre of Military History, was wanting confirmation that if the capture of the Nijmegen bridge had been part of the objectives. In response, dated 25 July 1945, General Gavin was clear: "About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping well, I personally directed Col Lindquist, Commanding the 508 PIR to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen Bridge without delay after landing but to keep a close watch on it in the event he needed to protect himself against the Reichswald and he was cautioned to send the battalion via the east of the city."
General Browning never knew men were static at De Ploeg. Like Gavin he was expecting men to be seizing the bridge. Being corps commander, he was busy attempting to communicate with all three parachute divisions. The 82nd did launch a few failed attacks on the bridge. In the afternoon of the next day, 18th, Gavin asked permission to launch another attack. Browning, seeing the bridge was well defended, and the failed attacks, refused, opting to wait for XXX Corps to arrive to seize the bridge. Inexplicably Gavin moved all his men out of Nijmegen town completely to the heights and DZ, giving the town back to the Germans. This made matters worse when XXX Corps arrived who had expended vital time, and ammunition, in flushing them out.
On page 162 of the U.S. Official History:
"many documents regarding the extensive combat interviews were conducted with personnel of the 508th Parachute Infantry, they are inexplicably missing from Department of the Army files."
Read:
1) Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History Of The 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment In World War II by Phil Nordyke.
2) Arnhem 1944 by Christer Bergström.
3) Market Garden, Then and Now by Karl Magry.
4) Lost at Nijmegen by R Poulusson
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@Scaleyback317
Chester Graham, who was at the 82nd meeting on 15th in England said it was clear to all what the prime objectives were. It seems Gavin never verbally overrode Lindquist's written Field Order No 1. Well if he did, he never emphasised it to him.
Lost in Nijmegen emphasises that in the unit journal of 508 PIR, that Gavin "desires" that the bridge be taken, not ordered it taken. It also states that A and B companies of the 508th left DePloeg at 2030 hrs to go to the bridge. This is seven hours after landing and 2.5 hours after Gavin told them personally to move to the bridge.
Gavin's divisional plan was for the 508th to "move with speed" on the Nijmegen bridge as soon as possible after landing. The 508th's liaison officer to Division HQ was Captain Chester 'Chet' Graham - "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.
"Captain Ben Delamater was the 1st Battalion’s executive officer - "The regimental commanding officer [Colonel Roy Lindquist], with his radio operator and two Dutch interpreters from the British army soon followed us onto our first objective. The planned defenses were being set up when several civilians wearing arm bands and carrying Underground credentials of some sort told the colonel that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen, that the town and the highway bridge were lightly held. The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.
”When Chet Graham 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.' "
- Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment in World War II by Phil Nordyke
Lost in Nijmegen emphasises that Gavin gave no written offensive orders to Lindquist of the 508th.
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Guy Parris
Prof Adam Tooze, Wages of Destruction - The making and breaking of the Nazi economy:
Page 273
"If Hitler had wanted war on 1 October 1938, he could have had it. The French and British had reached the point at which they could make no further concessions. The armies of France and the Soviet Union had mobilized. The Royal Navy stood at full alert. On 9 September 1938 it was Hitler who stepped back not his opponents"
Page 274
"Hitler backed down and accepted the extraordinarily generous settlement on offer at the hastily convened conference in Munich. In so doing, he almost certainly saved his regime from disaster."
Hitler was more nervous at Munich in 1938. The USSR, France and the Royal Navy were at action stations. Hitler backed away from war - he could have had it if he wanted. However the Brits & French gave him too much in the negotiations making it look too much like appeasement.
If the British and French said a clear "no" to everything Hitler demanded over Czechoslovakia he would have backed down. Brinkmanship of course, but the cards were stacked against Germany.
Chamberlain actually declared war on Germany.
Niall Ferguson in The War of the World, page 332, states:
"the Americans were eager to appease Germany as anyone in Britain".
Roosevelt wanted to give the Polish corridor back to them. The USA just prior to WW2 increased exports dramatically to Germany.
On page 333, he states:
"In Asia, the USA had already established a pattern of calling on others to take stands against aggression, while pursuing its own economic interest". "When Roosevelt began to do the same in Europe too, Chamberlain concluded that Americans were "a nation of cads". He said "it is best and safest to count on nothing from the Americans except words".
Chamberlain, distrusted the Americans to a degree viewing them as economic opportunist. He wasn't far wrong as they made a profit on WW2..
Ferguson states that the UK and France in 1938 should have rolled over the German border instead of Chamberlain engaging in shuttle diplomacy over Czechoslovakia. The German militarily would not have stood a chance. Although this is this being more wise in hindsight by Ferguson. Churchill said that throwing a small state to the wolves to obtain peace was highly delusionary, supporting an advance into Germany in 1938.
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Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower, approved and under resourced the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak". The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself.
XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.
Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
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The Market Garden concept was derived from Monty's pursuit operation Comet, which was never presented to Eisenhower. Eisenhower rightly wanted to chase the Germans who were on the retreat. Market Garden was primarily a strategic operation. But Monty said it was tactical.
The planning was mainly by Americans Brereton and Williams. Brereton was a no-can-do general, unsuited for risky airborne operations. The plan had only one corps in the end above Eindhoven - a disgrace.
Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust over other fronts and even seizing Antwerp and clearing the Schedlt. Clearing the Scheldt would take time as the German 15th SS army, highly experienced from the Russian front, had set up shop in the Scheldt and not retreated back into Germany, under Hitler's orders. All available supplies would be directed to this northern thrust.
"Since Eisenhower — the Supreme Commander and Ground Force Commander — approved the Arnhem operation rather than a push to clear the Scheldt, then surely he was right, as well as noble, to accept the responsibility and any resulting blame? The choice in early September was the Rhine or Antwerp: to continue the pursuit or secure the necessary facilities to solve the logistical problem? The decision was made to go for the Rhine, and that decision was Eisenhower’s."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"On 4 Sept, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr"
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen to British troops when he issued the northern thrust directive. Montgomery wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive, devising Operation Comet, multiple crossings of the Rhine, to be launched on 2 Sept, being cancelled due to German resistance and poor weather. Operation Comet was not presented to Eisenhower for his approval. Montgomery asked Brereton, an American, of the First Allied Airborne Army, to drop into the Scheldt in early September - he refused.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 Sept had divisions of the US 1st Army and Montgomery's view of taking multiple bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. The British 2nd Army needed some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow). Hodges' would protect the right flank. the Canadians would protect the left flank from the German 15th army. "the narrow thrust was reduced to the Second Army and two US corps, the XIX and VII of Hodges’ First Army, a total of around eighteen Allied divisions"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
The northern thrust was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944."
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower’s reply of 5 September to Montgomery deserves analysis, not least the part that concerns logistics. The interesting point is that Eisenhower apparently believes that it is possible to cross the Rhine and take both the Ruhr and the Saar — and open the Scheldt — using the existing logistical resources."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp. In thinking this Ike was wrong."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Post-Normandy Bradley seemed unable to control Patton, who persistently flouted Eisenhower’s directives and went his own way, aided and abetted by Bradley. This part of their relationship quickly revealed itself in matters of supply, where Hodges, the commander of the US First Army, was continually starved of fuel and ammunition in order to keep Patton’s divisions rolling, even when Eisenhower’s strategy required First Army to play the major role in 12th Army Group’s activities."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again, and being bogged down - again. The resources starved First Army could not be a part of northern thrust as Bradley and Patton, against Eisenhower's orders, were syphoning off supplies destined for the First army. This northern thrust over the Rhine, as Eisenhower envisaged, obviously would not work as he thought. A lesser operation was devised by Montgomery, Market Garden, eliminating the divisions of US First Army, with only ONE crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London wanted eliminating ASAP, giving a 60 mile long salient buffer between German forces and the important port of Antwerp. This would only have one corps above Eindhoven, a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time. Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance. Eisenhower should have fired Bradley and Patton for sabotaging the Northern Thrust operation.
Montgomery did not plan or was in involved in Market Garden's execution. Montgomery, after fixing the operations objectives with Eisenhower to the measly forces available, gave Market Garden planning to others, mainly USAAF generals, Brereton and Williams. General Brereton, who liked the plan, agreed to it with even direct input. Brereton ordered the drops will take place during the day with Brereton also overseeing the troop carrier and supply drops schedules. Williams forbid fighter-bombers to be used. A refusal by Brereton and the operation would never have gone ahead; he earlier rejected Montgomery's initial plan of a drop into the Scheldt at Walcheren Island.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time the Canadians had cleared, or were investing, many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Operation MARKET-GARDEN had two major objectives:
to get Allied troops across the Rhine
and to capture the Ruhr.
Three major advantages were expected to accrue:
( I) cutting the land exit of those Germans remaining in western Holland;
(2) outflanking the West Wall, and
(3) positioning British ground forces for a subsequent drive into Germany along the North German Plain."
- US Official History, THE SIEGFRIED LINE CAMPAIGN. Page 120.
"Eisenhower approved the operation with certain conditions. Market Garden would commence on 17 September. Securing the approaches to the port at Antwerp would be delayed until Montgomery seized bridgeheads over the Rhine. His priority after seizing the bridgeheads would be gaining the much needed deep water port. He would not continue the attack to Berlin as he had proposed."
- A FRAMEWORK FOR MILITARY DECISION MAKING UNDER RISKS
by JAMES V. SCHULTZ
AIR UNIVERSITY MAXWELL AIR FORCE BASE,
ALABAMA
JUNE 1996. Page 50.
"later, on 15 September, General Eisenhower himself reopened the wound, perhaps with a view to healing it once and for all through a process of bloodletting. Looking beyond both Arnhem and Antwerp, he named Berlin as the ultimate Allied goal"
- US Official History, THE SIEGFRIED LINE CAMPAIGN. Page 210.
One of the prime aims of Market Garden was to be the northern grip of the the pincer on the Ruhr. Wayward Eisenhower changed yet again his strategy from the Ruhr to Berlin two days before Market Garden.
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Since WW2 and up to the wildly inaccurate film A Bridge Too Far, the way Market Garden was portrayed was that XXX Corps were too slow, the US paras took all their bridges, the British after seizing Nijmegen bridge stopped for tea not wanting to move to Arnhem, the British planned the operation, etc, etc. This was US propaganda backed up by Hollywood and poor US authors. Since the film, many have researched the operation in depth collectively concluding another rather accurate story. The conclusion was that Market Garden was an American failure.
Americans:
1) Failed to seize two bridges immediately, putting the operation back 42 hours;
2) Primarily planned the operation;
3) Gave the operation the go ahead, despite British reservations expressed over its viability;
4) Under resourced the operation;
5) Had the final say over air operations;
6) Prevented fighter-bombers from operating;
7) Prevented two drops in one day.
The British XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong getting to Nijmegen on schedule. Instead of rolling over the bridge onto Arnhem six miles away, they then had to seize a bridge which they were not tasked for.
The British paras held one end of a bridge denying its use to the Germans, until they ran out of ammunition - the Germans said they were the best soldiers they had met in WW2.
Brereton after WW2, on film stated XXX Corps were too slow. He lied knowing they were not. All facts prove they were not slow. Since WW2 Americans have lied through their back teeth over Market Garden, constantly blaming Montgomery who had little involvement, with the OK given by ground forces commander Eisenhower.
This vid shows up Gavin and the lies that have been put in place by the US over the operation since WW2.
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@cedricgist7614
Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust over other fronts and even seizing Antwerp and clearing the Schedlt. Clearing the Scheldt would take time as the German 15th SS army, highly experienced from the Russian front, had set up shop in the Scheldt and not retreated back into Germany, under Hitler's orders. All available supplies would be directed to this northern thrust.
"Since Eisenhower — the Supreme Commander and Ground Force Commander — approved the Arnhem operation rather than a push to clear the Scheldt, then surely he was right, as well as noble, to accept the responsibility and any resulting blame? The choice in early September was the Rhine or Antwerp: to continue the pursuit or secure the necessary facilities to solve the logistical problem? The decision was made to go for the Rhine, and that decision was Eisenhower’s."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"On 4 Sept, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr"
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen to British troops when he issued the northern thrust directive. Montgomery wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive, devising Operation Comet, multiple crossings of the Rhine, to be launched on 2 Sept, being cancelled due to German resistance and poor weather. Operation Comet was not presented to Eisenhower for his approval. Montgomery asked Brereton, an American, of the First Allied Airborne Army, to drop into the Scheldt in early September - he refused.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 Sept had divisions of the US 1st Army and Montgomery's view of taking multiple bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. The British 2nd Army needed some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow). Hodges' would protect the right flank. the Canadians would protect the left flank from the German 15th army.
"the narrow thrust was reduced to the Second Army and two US corps, the XIX and VII of Hodges’ First Army, a total of around eighteen Allied divisions"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
The northern thrust was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944."
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower’s reply of 5 September to Montgomery deserves analysis, not least the part that concerns logistics. The interesting point is that Eisenhower apparently believes that it is possible to cross the Rhine and take both the Ruhr and the Saar — and open the Scheldt — using the existing logistical resources."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp. In thinking this Ike was wrong."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Post-Normandy Bradley seemed unable to control Patton, who persistently flouted Eisenhower’s directives and went his own way, aided and abetted by Bradley. This part of their relationship quickly revealed itself in matters of supply, where Hodges, the commander of the US First Army, was continually starved of fuel and ammunition in order to keep Patton’s divisions rolling, even when Eisenhower’s strategy required First Army to play the major role in 12th Army Group’s activities."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again, and being bogged down - again. The resources starved First Army could not be a part of northern thrust as Bradley and Patton, against Eisenhower's orders, were syphoning off supplies destined for the First army. This northern thrust over the Rhine, as Eisenhower envisaged, obviously would not work as he thought. A lesser operation was devised by Montgomery, Market Garden, eliminating the divisions of US First Army, with only ONE crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London wanted eliminating ASAP, giving a 60 mile long salient buffer between German forces and the important port of Antwerp. This would only have one corps above Eindhoven, a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time. Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance. Eisenhower should have fired Bradley and Patton for sabotaging the Northern Thrust operation.
Montgomery did not plan or was in involved in Market Garden's execution, distancing himself from the underesourced operation. Montgomery, after fixing the operations objectives with Eisenhower to the measly forces available, gave Market Garden planning to others, mainly USAAF generals, Brereton and Williams. General Brereton, who liked the plan, agreed to it with even direct input. Brereton ordered the drops will take place during the day and Brereton oversaw the troop carrier and supply drops schedules. Williams forbid fighter-bombers to be used. A refusal by Brereton and the operation would never have gone ahead; he earlier rejected Montgomery's initial plan of a drop into the Scheldt at Walcheren Island.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time the Canadians had cleared, or were investing, many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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There is a myth that the Germans were way ahead of the British in jet engines and planes in WW2, when the opposite is true. The WW2 German jet engines were extremely unreliable with low performances and very high fuel consumption. The German axial-flow turbojets never worked as they wanted, being developed up to 1953 by the French to obtain a usable engine. The French lost a lot of time playing around with the German engines, instead of working with the British. The French and Soviets after WW2 tried to improve the German axial-flow engines and largely failed.
The Germans did not invent the axial-flow turbojet, they based everything on Frank Whittle's patents. The British Metropolitan-Vickers F.1 axial-flow engine was running on a test bed in 1941. The F.2 was an axial-flow being an extremely advanced design using a nine-stage axial compressor, annular combustor, and a two-stage turbine. It powered a Meteor in November 1943. It was considered unreliable and never saw use during the war, hence why the British went for the reliability, controllability and quick development of the centrifugal turbojets.
The Metro-Vick F.3 was the first ever turbofan in 1943. Metro-Vick developed the F.9 Sapphire, however left the jet business in 1947 giving all their designs to Armstrong Siddeley, who commercially produced the Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire engine, which was licence built in the US as the J-65.
The British in order to get a usable and reliable jet engine, with the technology of the time, went for a centrifugal design rather than the troublesome axial-flow design. This design produce more thrust than an axial-flow in WW2 as the Ne e dud in 2944. Centrifugal was quicker to develop and reliable outperforming the best piston engines planes at the time. It took 5 months to develop, while the first reliable axial-flow engine was the 1950 Rolls Royce Avon, which took 5 years to get right. The Avon is still in production as a ground based gas turbine, with the aero version in production for 30 years.
In 1945 the French made and tested some German designed turbo jets made with quality alloys unavailable to German industry in WW2. They ran for 25 hours instead of the 10 hours of the Germans engines that used poorer quality steel. Not much better. The German axial-flow engines failed because of heavy design flaws. The centrifugal compressor used by the first British Meteor plane was fine and much more reliable, but unable to reach high compression ratios. This limited performances. Centrifugal compressors were used up to the 1960s.
In 1945 the team from the French ATAR laboratory plus some BMW and Junkers engineers, were engaged by the French SNECMA research bureau, with the objective to build a new reliable and performing axial-flow turbojet. The BMW 003/Jumo004 was considered unusable. It was tested on the first French jet aircraft, the 1946 So6000 Triton, overheating and exploding. The plane only flew with a Rolls Royce Nene centrifugal turbojet.
The ATAR project took 6 years to produce the first acceptable axial-flow turbojet (ATAR 101 B1), produced in 1953. So 8 years research and developments by the French using the German jet engines as the base. It was installed on the first French jet fighter, the Dassault Ouragan.
The French lost a lot of time because the German jets had poor efficiency and some concept failures. The failures were essentially in the combustion chambers and fresh air circulation to reduce the external temperature of the engine. The BMW jet was known for overheating problems which precluded fuselage installation.
The question at the end of WW2 was: what is the most efficient way to produce jet fighters? The answer was clearly not adopting the German design of engine and fuselage. The build costs for a jet engine were much higher than a piston engine at the time with the fuel consumption near 3x. The centrifugal compressor the British adopted in some planes was the best choice with 1944-45 technology, more compression pressure was not an advantage when the hot turbine was unable to resist higher temperatures.
The German turbojets had big overheat problems as the engine would not work in an enclosed fuselage for single-engined fighters. This defect was immediately noted by the French on the 1946 "SO 6000 Triton" prototype, and by the Soviets on the 1946 Mig 9. The Soviets quickly replaced the BMW 004B2 by the centrifugal Rolls Royce Nene which worked without problems, dismissing the BMW engine for fighter planes. The Rolls Royce Nene was copied to the last nut by the USSR being installed in the Mig 15 being used effectively in the Korean war.
The Meteor was the first proper fully developed jet plane in squadron service. The 262 was slightly faster than the Meteor F3, but extremely unreliable. The British would never put into the sky such an undeveloped plane as the me262. The British could have had a jet fighter operational in 1941, but it may have been as bad as the me262. The Germans advanced R&D on jets after they interrogated captured British RAF men. They learned the British were advanced in jet technology and flying prototype planes. Until then the Germans had no intention of mass producing jet planes.
The rushed together Me262 started claiming kills on 26 July 1944, the Meteor claimed its first V1 kill a few days later on the 4 August 1944. But the Meteor was a proper fully developed jet plane, not a thrown together desperate effort as the me262 was. The me262 fuselage was similar to a piston plane with the pilot over the wings obscuring downward vision, while the Meteor was a proper new design fuselage specifically for jet fighters with a forward of the wings pilot position giving superior pilot vision, as we see in planes today. The cockpit was very quiet. The sweptback wings of the me262 were to move the engines further back for better weight distribution, not for aerodynamic reasons as is thought the case. The me262's airframe was based on piston engine planes, even with an initial rear tail wheel. The tricycle landing gear was only introduced when it was found the thrust of the jet engines would scorch the runway surface as the exhaust faced downwards. The nosewheel was unreliable. The Meteor's airframe was designed purely for jet propulsion even with a high tail to prevent thrust interfering with the tail which could affect control.
Centrifugal compressors are still used in turboprops. Between a turbo jet and a turboprop, the only difference is the turbine, not the compressor. The last centrifugal compressor jet engine still in service on a handful of commercial aircraft like the Fokker 27, is the Rolls Royce Dart turboprop. A very reliable engine made in 27 versions, but with high fuel consumption to modern engines. The Rolls Royce Dart Turboprop turbo jet engine was produced the longest, being a comparable design turbojet to the likes the Rolls Royce Nene. The rugged engine was produced from 1946 up to 1987.
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Eisenhower resurrecting it and a cable from the War office about V2s committed Montgomery to the operation.
From Nigel Hamilton’s biography of Monty: For Monty now to cancel the British part of ‘the main effort of the Allies because of stiffening enemy resistance, even had he wished to do so, would thus have been tantamount to insubordination, leaving him open to charges of timidity
.. Moreover the Arnhem-Nijmegan axis had been Monty’s proposal, making it doubly hard to rescind. Eisenhower’s directive was not the only signal committing Monty to the continuation of his planned thrust via Arnhem on 9 September - for during the afternoon a ‘Secret’ cable arrived from the War Office, sent by VCIGS, General Nye, in the absence of Field-Marshal Brooke: Two rockets so called V.2 landed in England yesterday. Believed to have been fired from areas near ROTTERDAM and AMSTERDAM. Will you please report urgently by what approximate date you consider you can rope off the Coastal area contained by ANTWERP-UTRECHT-ROTTERDAM. When this area is in our hands the threat from this weapon will probably have disappeared.
By striking north-east from Eindhoven to Arnhem, 21st Army Group would be in a position to ‘rope off’ the whole of Holland, including the 150,000 fleeing German troops and the V2 bomb sites.
It should be borne in mind that promised supplies from SHAEF failed to arrive, leaving VIII Corps, supposed to attack alongside, mostly stranded in place. “Garden” launched with only half the troops it should have had. Montgomery had also wanted to use Hodges 1st US Army (and had in fact been promised) as a follow up flanking advance. But Bradley was stealing fuel and other resources from Hodges and giving it to Patton.
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@johnlucas8479
Comet, which had Wesel as one of its northern target towns, was not presented to Eisenhower. Monty cancelled it. When the FAAA got hold of Comet to expand it, Bererton and Williams:
▪ decided that there would be drops spread over three days, defeating the object of para jumps by losing all surprise, which is their major asset; rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-day on the Pegasus Bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
▪ chose the drop and and landing zones so far from the Bridges;
▪ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to take on the flak positions and attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports, thereby allowing them to bring in reinforcements with impunity;
▪Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Zon, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of “possible flak.“;
Some airborne leader! Half of Williams' troop transport aircraft were not fully available as they were delivering parcels to Bradley. The FAAA was under SHAEF. It was to be used by all the army groups when needed. For Market Garden the FAAA was notionally under the 21st Army Group, in participating in their operations, but not directly under its command. They were under Eisenhower, not Monty, Bradley or Devers.
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@johnlucas8479
Comet was not presented to Eisenhower. It was part complete being shelved under planning when circumstances dictated it does not go ahead. Work in progress. Dempsey wanted Wesel. Thinking extended to two jumps over the Rhine, not one. British troops did eventually move through Wesel.
FAAA was under Eisenhower, being a flexible airborne army to use by any of the army groups. Monty (and Bradley & Devers) could not overrule Brereton. Brereton overruled Monty when he requested a drop on the Scheldt. Although under the 21st Army Group umbrella, as the FAAA was to assist in operations with an airborne element, Monty had to request, from Brereton, not order Brereton. But you know this.
101st had a good chance of seizing the Zon bridge if they did not spend 2 hours in Zon village. It took them 3.5 hours to move a few km.
Half of Williams' troop transport planes were not available to drop troops as they were being used to deliver parcels for US armies running into unimportant territory. But you already know this.
Despite the very poor planning by the FAAA leaders, and lack of troop air transports, the operation would have been a success if the US 82nd had moved to the Waal bridge immediately, not dawdling in DePloeg incorrectly waiting for Gavin to tell them to move. Gavin never gave any written offensive orders for the 508. A bridge they could have walked on whistling Dixie. Three 82nd 508 men took half the bridge guards, but left as no one turned up. No kidding. But you already know this.
Many documents went missing out of the archives according the US Official History. I wonder why!
"Although extensive combat interviews were conducted with personnel of the 508th Parachute Infantry, they are inexplicably missing from Department of the Army files. The story has been reconstructed from unit records; Gavin's letters to Westover and OCMH; letters to OCMH from Colonel Warren, 5 July 1955, Colonel Lindquist, 9 September 1955, Col. Thomas J. B. Shanley formerly Executive Officer, 508th Parachute Infantry, 2 Sep 55, and Rev. Bestebreurtje, 25 Oct 56; a postwar interview with Colonel Lindquist by Westover, 14 Sep 45, copy in 82d Airborne Division Combat Interview file; and Westover, The American Divisions in Operation MARKET, a preliminary narrative written in the European theater short! after the war, copy in OCMH. Captain Westover had access to all the combat interviews when writing his narrative."
- US Official History.
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@johnlucas8479
Patton peeled off for a photo shoot in Paris rather than cut off German troops pouring through the Falaise gap at the Seine. Many of these troops ended up in the Scheldt to fight allies troops again.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
When Monty reached Antwerp he was not too concerned about the port for obvious reasons. Antwerp is an awkward port, being 80km inland with a maze of tidal inlets, islands and estuaries covering the approaches, which were now occupied by German troops who retreated from Normandy. The vulnerable approach river would be mined with blocking wrecks, taking weeks to get operational even if the approaches were taken immediately. Stopping to open up Antwerp was always going to take considerable time. Time was important when chasing a retreating reeling enemy.
If Eisenhower had let Monty go for a well supported Rhine crossing, with US forces on the right flank, in late August/early September, an expanded Operation Comet, with the aim of the inland sea in Holland, they could have got Rotterdam and even Amsterdam. Ports not needing an 80km river for access. Monty was all for bypassing the problems of Antwerp gaining Rotterdam. Eisenhower felt it was better to secure the line and concentrate on Antwerp as the supply head before pressing on. When he made the decision the paras were on standby and there was fuel in the tanks. Rotterdam was possible.
To a surprised Monty and Allenbooke Eisenhower went for a Rhine crossing. Market Garden was that plan. An operation promised to be well supported and supplied. Eisenhower reneged on his promises. Antwerp wouldn't be 100% operational to allied shipping until early January 1945 with the first ships entering on October 1944.
The majority of supplies came from Normandy until November. That was three months from Antwerp's capture to 100% fully operational. Near twice the time it took to break out of Normandy. By that time the French railway service had been largely rebuilt and supplies coming in from Normandy and LeHavre for Bradley’s 12th Army Group and via Marseilles for Devers’ 6th Army Group.
In August 1944 Monty was for pushing on, Eisenhower for caution. Eisenhower's caution allowed the Germans to reinforce gifting them an opportunity to strike back. Pushing Monty into northern Holland and then going for caution, Rotterdam and Antwerp are attainable.
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There is an excellent BBC series about design, The Genius of Design.
BBC The Genius Of Design 3 of 5 Blueprints For War 2010
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_0z1kvM6ns&list=PL745-VcJ1xdWXorY43gHI2YMxmT928l1H&index=3
Episode three was about war design. Peter Gudgeon claims to have fired the shot in a Churchill that disabled Tiger 131, after it disabled his friend's Churchill, killing his friend. As the series was about design, the Tiger was featured (131) as an example of how not to do it. It was considered a waste of time and resources, being too expensive, over engineered and unreliable for such a war. One point that the TV series put over was that one of a product's design goals is reached when it is just good enough. for its intended function.
The same episode features the Sten machine gun, a product of how to design it right for war - minimalistic with only 48 parts of off the shelf items, including a bed spring, that did exactly what it was supposed to do, super cheaply, made fast (by Triang, a toy company), very small & light, being stamped out in the millions, which could also be made in a garden shed.
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@billballbuster7186
A prime strategic problem for SHAEF in September 1944 was opening up the approaches to Antwerp and keeping it from German counter-attack - the logistics problem to supply all allied armies. It was:
1) Take Noord Brabant, the land to the north and northeast of Antwerp, or;
2) Take the Schedlt.
Eisenhower had a Northern Thrust strategy, a push to the north on his stretched broad front lines. Taking Noord Brabant fell in line with the desires for both SHEAF and Eisenhower. Noord Brabant had to be taken before the Scheldt, as it was essential. It was taken with limited forces, with forces also sent to take the Schedlt.
Market Garden had to go ahead regardless of any threat or Northern Thrust strategy, and was actually a success. To use Antwerp and control the approaches, the Scheldt, everything up to the south bank of the lower Rhine at Nijmegen needed to be under allied control. The low-lying lands, boggy ground between Arnhem and Nijmegen with land strewn with rivers and canals, is perfect geography as a barrier against a German counter-attack towards Antwerp. Without control of Noord Brabant German forces would have been in artillery range of Antwerp, and with a build up of forces and supply directly back to Germany in perfect position for a counter-attack.
Market Garden was the offensive SHEAF wanted to secure Antwerp, a prime port for logistics for all allied armies. It made sense as the Germans were in disarray, so should be easy enough to gain. Monty added Arnhem to form a bridgehead over the Rhine to fall in line with Eisenhower's priority Northern Thrust strategy at the time. It made complete sense in establishing a bridgehead over the Rhine as an extra to the operation.
You needed Arnhem for an easier jump into Germany. Everything up to Nijmegen was needed if you wanted to do anything at all - that is, protect Antwerp and have a staging point to move into Germany. Gaining Noord Brabant, was vital, and was successfully seized. Fighting in the low lying mud and waterways of the Schedlt, which will take time, while the Germans a few miles away and still holding Noord Brabant made no sense at all. SHEAF got what they wanted from a strategic point of view.
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@billballbuster7186
Market Garden was a success:
♦ It kept Antwerp out of German artillery range.
♦ It created a 60 mile buffer between Antwerp and German forces. Antwerp was the only port taken intact. This buffer proved itself in the German Bulge attack which went right through US lines. The Germans went through a forest rather than the direct route, which would have been through the Market Garden salient.
♦ It created a staging point to move into Germany at Nijmegen, which was later used.
♦ It eliminated V rocket launching sites aimed at London.
♦ It isolated the German 15th Army in Holland, splitting the German armies.
♦ They reached the Rhine.
♦ The salient was fleshed out to the Meuse.
♦ The Germans never retook one mm of ground taken.
♦ It captured the important Philips radio factory at Eindhoven.
All this while Patton was stalled at Metz moving 10 miles in three months against a 2nd rate German army. Also US forces were stopped before Aachen and eventually defeated at Hurtgen Forest - you know that engagement, the US historians and History channels ignore. To flesh out the salient the US 7th armor was sent into Overloon. They were so bad they were extracted with British forces sent in to take the town.
The Germans never thought Market Garden was a failure. It punched a 60 mile salient right into their lines in a few days, right on their border. They saw it as a staging area to jump into Germany - which it was. In late '44/early '45, the longest allied advance was the 60 mile Market Garden advance. The only operation to fully achieve its goals in that time period was Monty's clearing of the Scheldt.
'It is interesting to consider how far we failed in this operation. It should be remembered that the Arnhem bridgehead was only a part of the whole. We had gained a great deal in spite of this local set-back. The Nijmegen bridge was ours, and it proved of immense value later on. And the brilliant advance by XXX Corps led the way to the liberation of a large part of Holland, not to speak of providing a stepping stone to the successful battles of the Rhineland.'
- OPERATION VICTORY by MAJOR-GENERAL DEGUINGAND, 1947, page 419.
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After WW2 the Finnish gave territory to the USSR, the Soviets even had a base on the Finnish coast, Porkkala, west of Helsinki which they abandoned in 1956. That does not sound like they wanted to take over all of Finland. Post WW2 the Soviets kept all of the other three Baltic states making them Soviet republics, not just have bases on their Baltic coasts. The Soviets sent troops into Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. They ensured the eastern countries on their borders, as is Finland, were in the Soviet block not being any threat to their security.
I doubt if this battle, in which the Soviets gained much of what they demanded in 1939, frightened the Soviets. If they thought Finland was a threat, in 1945 with the Red Army now idle consisting of millions of men, they would have just walked in post WW2 incorporating all of Finland back into Russia. It is that simple.
The Soviets failed in not taking all of Finland in 1940, which allowed an unnecessary front to be formed with German troops being invited into Finland, consuming vital resources. The Soviets never trusted the Finns pre-WW2, that is why they wanted the borders away from Leningrad. That mistrust was well founded by Finnish actions in 1941. The Soviets never made that mistake again post WW2, when sending troops into Hungary and Czechoslovakia when seeing a territory that could become a threat to their security. Post WW2, if Finland were looking like they were to join NATO, Soviet troops would have walked in incorporating Finland as a Soviet republic, or back into the Russian republic. The Finns made sure they never learning from previous mistakes.
The Finns were just plain lucky after WW2 that they were not a part of the USSR.
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@Excellent226002
There is a myth that the Germans were way ahead of the British in jet engines and planes in WW2, when the opposite is true. The WW2 German jet engines were extremely unreliable with low performances and very high fuel consumption. The German axial-flow turbojets never worked as they wanted being developed up to 1953 by the French to obtain a usable engine. The French lost a lot of time playing around with the German engines, instead of working with the British. The French and Soviets after WW2 tried to improve the German axial-flow engines and largely failed.
The Germans did not invent the axial-flow turbojet, they based everything on Frank Whittle's patents. The British Metropolitan-Vickers F.1 axial-flow engine was running on a test bed in 1941. The F.2 was an axial-flow being an extremely advanced design using a nine-stage axial compressor, annular combustor, and a two-stage turbine. It powered a Meteor in November 1943. It was considered unreliable and never saw use during the war, hence why the British went for the reliability, controllability and quick development of the centrifugal turbojets. The Metro-Vick F.3 was the first ever turbofan in 1943. Metro-Vick developed the F.9 Sapphire, however left the jet business in 1947 giving all their designs to Armstrong Siddeley, who commercially produced the Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire engine, which was licence built in the US as the J-65.
The British in order to get a usable and reliable jet engine, with the technology of the time, went for a centrifugal design rather than the troublesome axial-flow design. This design produced less thrust than an axial-flow but was quicker to develop and reliable outperforming the best piston engines planes at the time. It took 5 months to develop, while the first reliable axial-flow engine was the 1950 Rolls Royce Avon, which took 5 years to get right. The Avon is still in production as a ground based gas turbine, with the aero version in production for 30 years.
In 1945 the French made and tested some German designed turbo jets made with quality steel unavailable to German industry in WW2. They ran for 25 hours instead of the 10 hours of the Germans engines that used poorer quality steel. Not much better. The German axial-flow engines failed because of heavy design flaws. The centrifugal compressor used by the first British Meteor plane was fine and much more reliable, but unable to reach high compression ratios. This limited performances. Centrifugal compressors were used up to the 1960s.
In 1945 the team from the French ATAR laboratory plus some BMW and Junkers engineers, were engaged by the French SNECMA research bureau, with the objective to build a new reliable and performing axial-flow turbojet. The BMW 003/Jumo004 was considered unusable. It was tested on the first French jet aircraft, the 1946 So6000 Triton, overheating and exploding. The plane only flew with a Rolls Royce Nene centrifugal turbojet.
The ATAR project took 6 years to produce the first acceptable axial-flow turbojet (ATAR 101 B1), produced in 1953. So 8 years research and developments by the French using the German jet engines as the base. It was installed on the first French jet fighter, the Dassault Ouragan.
The French lost a lot of time because the German jets had poor efficiency and some concept fails. Essentially in the combustion chambers and fresh air circulation to reduce the external temperature of the engine. The BMW jet was known for overheat problems which precluded fuselage installation.
The question at the end of WW2 was: what is the most efficient way to produce jet fighters? The answer was clearly not adopting the German design of engine and fuselage. The build costs for a jet engine were much higher than a piston engine, with the fuel consumption near 3x. The centrifugal compressor the British adopted in some planes was the best choice with 1944-45 technology, more compression pressure was not an advantage when the hot turbine was unable to resist higher temperatures. The German turbojets had big overheat problems as the engine would not work in an enclosed fuselage for single engined fighters. This defect was immediately noted by the French on the 1946 "SO 6000 Triton" prototype, and by the Soviets on the 1946 Mig 9. The Soviets quickly replaced the BMW 004B2 by the centrifugal Rolls Royce Nene which worked without problems, dismissing the BMW engine for fighter planes. The Rolls Royce Nene was copied to the last nut by the USSR being installed in the MIG 15 being used effectively in the Korean war.
The Meteor was the first proper fully developed jet plane introduced operationally. The 262 was slightly faster than the Meteor F3, but extremely unreliable. The British would never put into the sky such an undeveloped plane as the me262. The British could have had a jet fighter operational in 1941, but it may have been as bad as the me262. The Germans advanced R&D on jets after they interrogated captured British RAF men. They learned the British were advanced in jet technology and flying prototype planes. Until then the Germans had no intention of mass producing jet planes.
The rushed together Me262 started claiming kills on 26 July 1944, the Meteor claimed its first V1 kill a few days later on the 4 August 1944. But the Meteor was a proper fully developed jet plane, not a thrown together desperate effort as the me262 was. The me262 fuselage was similar to a piston plane with the pilot over the wings obscuring downward vision, while the Meteor was a proper new design fuselage specifically for jet fighters with a forward of the wings pilot position giving superior pilot vision, as we see in planes today. The cockpit was very quiet. The sweptback wings of the me262 were to move the engines further back for better weight distribution, not for aerodynamic reasons as is thought the case. The me262's airframe was based on piston engine planes, even with an initial rear tail wheel. The fame had some problems with the rudder giving poor stability. The tricycle landing gear was only introduced when it was found the thrust of the jet engines would scorch the runway surface as the exhaust faced downwards. The Meteor's airframe was designed purely for jet propulsion even with a high tail to prevent thrust interfering with the tail which could affect control.
Centrifugal compressors were not obsolete being used in turboprops. Between a turbo jet and a turboprop, the only difference is the turbine, not the compressor. The last centrifugal compressor jet engine still in service on a handful of commercial aircraft like the Fokker 27, is the Rolls Royce Dart turboprop. A very reliable engine made in 27 versions, but with high fuel consumption to modern engines. The Rolls Royce Dart Turboprop turbo jet engine was produced the longest, being a comparable design turbojet to the likes the Rolls Royce Nene. The rugged engine was produced from 1946 up to 1987.
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In France? Napoleon said and army marches on its stomach (supply). The Germans supplied via slow horses.
The German armour had outrun their infantry and supplies, having advanced far, faster than they expected. Their advance surprised themselves. They were seriously running out of fuel and ammunition. The German troops had been fighting for two weeks straight without a break. They rested, replaced their losses, re-supplied (by slow horses) and reorganize their forces, which had taken heavy losses in France.
The ground around the Dunkirk area was not ideal for tank operations being full of the marshes and canals that had bogged down German soldiers in WW1.
Hitler's "Halt Order" was given in support of Generals von Kluge and von Rundstedt's request to halt. They knew the situation. The other generals were gamblers. General Franz Halder wrote in his diary: "The Fuhrer is terribly nervous. Afraid to take any chances." Too much had been achieved already to take the risk of falling into an Allied trap at that late stage, with still large French forces and reserves to deal with south of the Somme and Aisne rivers. Street fighting in Warsaw had shown the uselessness of tanks in built-up areas, such as Dunkirk. The RAF, with the Spitfire just introduced en-mass, were getting the best of the Luftwaffe - their first defeat.
Hitler's Halt order was given after a meeting at Army Group A's headquarters in the Maison Blairon chateau at Charleville-Mezieres. Only after von Rundstedt had said he wanted to conserve the armour for a push to the south, to Bordeaux, where he feared the British would open another large front. He knew the British were taking men back to England fearing they would be shipped to southern France boosting the forces there. British and French forces were not far to the south of the Germans lines ready to attack threatening the left flank of the German advance. The numerous canals in Flanders and northern France also made it bad country for tanks. Hitler merely agreed with von Kluge and von Rundstedt, the men on the ground.
The German front line was clearly poorly supplied. They had overstretched their supply line moving far faster and further than they ever thought. A blitzkrieg line can only reach so far then it has to stop. That is reckoned to be about 150 miles at the very most, they were way over that limit. A fleet of trucks and fuel tankers running up and down 150 miles is lot of trucks which are open to air attack. They have to consolidate.
The fear of encountering the new Matilda 2 was also on their mind, after a bad experience meeting it at Arras. Only the big 88mm AA guns levelled could stop it. The Matilda 2 could knock out any German tank, but no German tank could knock it out, unless they hit a track. Then the British and French forces to the south counter-attacking, was their main concern. The French started some excellent and effective hedgehog tactics on German lines late in the day. Hedgehogs were used by NATO up until the 1980s.
In 1944 the Canadians, Poles and Czechs with the RN controlling the Channel and able to give naval gunfire support and the allies with total control of the skies, attempted to take Dunkirk off the Germans but failed. Dunkirk stayed in German hands until the end of the war.
In 1940, with the British having infinitely more men and far more equipment in 1940 than the Germans in 1944, after falling back with their equipment, and also controlling the Channel, and forming a CAP, the Germans could never take Dunkirk.
On 26 May the Germans resumed the attack after re-supply. The Allies had improved their defences and offered stiff resistance. The Germans held off, consolidating, fearing massive losses or counter-attacks from the south and from Dunkirk.
The Germans had to stop, as they could not take Dunkirk. If the British decided to make an issue of it and stay, the Germans most probably would have been mauled in and around the Dunkirk pocket.
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+Pennywise Marhakesh
The tactic I think you think the Germans discovered was what the west called Blitzkrieg. First used by the British at Amiens in 1918.
Prof Adam Tooze, Wages of Destruction
Page 380
"because it involved such a concentrated use of force, Manstein's plan was a __one-shot affair._ If the initial assault had failed, and it could have failed in many ways, the Wehrmacht as an offensive force would have been spent. The gamble paid off. But contrary to appearances, the Germans had not discovered a patent recipe for military miracles. The overwhelming success of May 1940, resulting in the defeat of a major European military power in a matter of weeks, _was not a repeatable outcome."
The Germans tried it on the USSR and it failed, despite having superb advantages, of surprise, better organisation and battle proven forces.
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I was talking to a ship designer and they are always looking at ways of cutting running costs. Some were looking ahead and favoured rotary engines in banks in cruise ships if they were made large enough.
The 4 deck high Wartsila and Suzler engines when needing overhauling means the ship is dock, which means down time which costs. Ships and moreso cruise ship operators do as much maintenance as possible under way. They even paint the sides of the ship when in a calling port. They want the ship in dock only for essential dry dock maintenance like azipods, props or the keel. They want maintenance to be ongoing as the ship is moving and earning money.
Some ship's designers are looking ahead and favouring larger rotary engines in banks (slide out modules say 1.5 metre by 1.5 metre complete with generator) in cruise ships. Rotaries are one third of the size and weight for the same power output. The smoothness is a great asset in passenger accommodation. Rotaries scale up seamlessly.
The rotary genset modules can be phased in, in stages to what the ship's power demand is, rather than running these massive Sultzer engines when there is low demand. Then they can slide out a genset module in port and slide one in, which will take a few hours. The genset module in port can be overhauled onshore and the ship continues with no downtime maximising efficiencies and revenues.
The rotaries niche is where a constant speed is appropriate as in genset applications. Then the rotary overtakes the piston/crank engines in economy. Other niches are aircraft because of the superb power to weight ratio over piston/crank engines and UAVs currently exploit this well. Applications for ship gensets are way down the line and probably will only come about when there is a wider acceptance in vehicles, although large rotaries were commercially operational in the 1970s, Ingersoll Rand making the largest which reliably ran for many years.
As to ships, keeping the hull small enough to negotiate the Panama locks and packing as much cargo or passengers inside as possible increases the profitability. Replacing large engines with smaller lighter units which are flexible to the location inside the hull gives a ship designer great scope. More economical engines means smaller fuel tanks which again gives over more space for revenue earning cargo or passengers. Being secured in a strong niche market may elevate the rotary as the first choice of engine in time, as direct drive applications become rare.
Light weight rotary engines can be located out of the depths of the hull, instead of all laying on the keel. The flexibility of design is there. Many ships have Azipods for the the obvious manoeuvrability and also that they liberate space in the hull. Cruise ships want as much space as possible for revenue gaining. They cost a lot to run in crew and fuel costs. On the lower decks the crew are housed. Liberated engine space can accommodate more crew and lower the crew down maybe a deck or half a deck and utilise the liberated space for passenger functions, while moving these functions down decks will again liberate space on upper decks for more revenue earning passenger cabins.
The industry will move to smaller lighter engines if they are available for sure. They moved from steam to turbines and diesel piston engines. They move with the economic flow. Cruise ships use an amazing level of fuel, especially in hot climates when the a/c's are running. Size of propulsion and ancillary equipment in ships now matters. There have been large rotaries and they scale up seamlessly. A new large rotary in a genset would have the new innovations and improvement of over the past 40 years. Some newer rotaries are cooled through the driveshaft for instance giving engine longevity as hot spots are eliminated.
There is concern that vibration of ship's diesel engines could damage ancient historical buildings in places like Venice. Venetians constantly complain of this. Vibration is greatly eliminated using smooth rotaries. Having been on a number of cruise ships I can attest that vibration is a problem and I am always on around the 12th deck where it is minimal. What it is like further down I dread to know. I pity some of the crew near the engine room. Cabins on lower decks tend to be cheaper because of engine noise and vibrations; less revenue.
Look at the size, and weight, of a ship's diesel engine. It is massive taking up to 4 decks in height and cruisers have banks of these. The advantages of rotaries are easy to see.
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User Name wrote: ' It does best in constant rpm situations or high speed applications like a light weight sports car.'
The niche wankels are filling is range-extenders where the engine only turns a generator or UAVs where it is always running at high speed. They then are superior to piston engines. The small size, low weight and amazing smoothness will tip the scales. Mr Takashi Yamanouchi, the global CEO of Mazda stated, "The rotary engine has very good dynamic performance, but it's not so good on economy when you accelerate and decelerate. However, with a range extender you can use a rotary engine at a constant 2,000rpm, at its most efficient. It's compact, too."
+User Name wrote: 'The downside of the engine is its lack of reliability, the excessive use of oil, and the terrible emissions.'
Mazda are introducing the RX-Vision next year, which is direct drive, and claim to have solved the fuel and emissions problems. I do not doubt them. Use the engine as a range extender and it is bye, bye piston engine.
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There is a myth that the Germans were way ahead of the British in jet engines and planes in WW2, when the opposite is true. The WW2 German jet engines were extremely unreliable and had low performances with very high fuel consumption. The German axial-flow turbojets never worked properly and were developed up to 1953 by the French to obtain a usable engine. The French lost a lot of time playing around with the German engines, instead of working with the British. The French and Soviets after WW2 tried to improve the German axial-flow engines and largely failed.
The British in order to get a usable and reliable jet engine, with the technology of the time, went for a centrifugal design rather than the troublesome axial-flow design. This design produced less thrust than an axial-flow but was quicker to develop and reliable. It took 5 months to develop, while the first reliable axial-flow engine was the 1950 Rolls Royce Avon, which took 5 years to get right.
In 1945 the French made and tested some German designed turbo jets made with quality steel unavailable to German industry in WW2. They ran for 25 hours instead 10 hours to the poor steel the Germans used. Not much better. The German axial-flow engines failed because of heavy design faults. The centrifugal compressor used by the first British Meteor plane was fine and much more reliable, but unable to reach high compression ratios. This limited performances. Centrifugal compressors were used up to the 1960s.
In 1945 the team from the French ATAR laboratory plus some BMW and Junkers engineers, were engaged by the French SNECMA research bureau, with the objective to built a new reliable and performing axial-flow turbojet. The BMW 003/Jumo004 was considered unusable. It was tested on the first French jet aircraft, the 1946 So6000 Triton, overheating and exploding. The plane only flew with a Rolls Royce Nene centrifugal turbojet.
The ATAR project took 6 years to produce the first acceptable axial-flow turbojet (ATAR 101 B1), produced in 1953. So 8 years research and developments by the French using the German jet engines as the base. It was installed on the first French jet fighter, the Dassault Ouragan.
The French lost a lot of time because the German jets had a poor efficiency and some concept fails. Essentially in the combustion chambers and fresh air circulation to reduce the external temperature of the engine. The BMW jet was know for overheat problems which precluded fuselage installation.
The question at the end of WW2 was what is the most efficient way to produce jet fighters. The answer is clearly not adopting the German design of engine and fuselage. The build costs for a jet engine were much higher than a piston engine, with the fuel consumption near 3x. The centrifugal compressor the British adopted in some planes was the best choice with 1944-45 technology, more compression pressure was not an advantage when the hot turbine was unable to resist higher temperatures. The German turbojets had big overheat problems as the engine would not work in an enclosed fuselage for single engined fighters. This defect was immediately noted by the French on the 1946 "SO 6000 Triton" prototype, and by the Soviets on the 1946 Mig 9. The Soviets quickly replaced the BMW 004B2 by the centrifugal Rolls Royce Nene which worked without problems, dismissing the BMW engine for fighter planes.
The Rolls Royce Nene was copied to the last nut by the USSR being installed in the Mig 15 being used effectively in the Korean war. About 10 years ago the USSR eventually paid royalties to Rolls Royce.
The Meteor was the first proper fully developed jet plane introduced. The 262 was slightly faster than the Meteor F3, but extremely unreliable. The British would never put into the sky such an undeveloped plane as the me262. The British could have had a jet fighter operational in 1941, but it would have been as bad as the me262. The Germans advanced R&D on jets after they interrogated captured British RAF men. They learned the British were advanced in jet technology and flying prototype planes. Until then the Germans had no intention of mass producing jet planes.
The rushed together Me262 started claiming kills on 26 July 1944, the Meteor claimed its first V1 kill on 4 August 1944. But the Meteor was a proper fully developed jet plane, not a thrown together desperate effort as the me262 was. The me262 fuselage was similar to a piston plane with the pilot over the wings obscuring downward vision, while the Meteor was a proper new design fuselage specifically for jet fighters with a forward of the wings pilot position with superior vision, as we see today. The sweptback wings of the me262 were to move the engines further back for better weight distribution, not for aerodynamic reasons as is thought the case.
Centrifugal compressors were not obsolete being used in turboprops. Between a turbo jet and a turboprop, the only difference is the turbine, not the compressor. The last centrifugal compressor jet engine still in service on a handful of commercial aircraft like the Fokker 27, is the Rolls Royce Dart turboprop. A very reliable engine made in 27 versions, but with high fuel consumption to modern engines. The Rolls Royce Dart Turboprop turbo jet engine was produced the longest, being a comparable design turbojet to the likes the Rolls Royce Nene. This rugged engine was produced from 1946 up to 1987.
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Ian Whittle, son of Frank Whittle, primary concern is to protect his father's memory from continued erosion. "It is now an accepted fact in America that my father did not invent the jet, but that he and von Ohain - who became an American citizen - co-invented it at the same time," he says. "Pretty soon, history will be rewritten to say that it was a German or American invention." Certainly, many engineering institutions now routinely describe von Ohain as one of the "inventors" of the jet. So would the Germans have flown that first jet in 1939 if they hadn't pinched young Whittle's plans?
"Certainly not. It was Frank's invention and they just copied him," says one of the greatest test pilots in aviation history, Captain Eric Brown, late of the Fleet Air Arm. He should know. Not only has he flown more planes than anyone - 487 different types - but he was sent to Germany straight after the war to get hold of all the Nazis' aviation technology. "I interrogated von Ohain, who was very ambivalent about where he had got his ideas," says Capt Brown. 'But his sidekick was utterly straight-forward about it. He said that Whittle's patent had been in every technical library in Germany even before the war.
"I have absolutely no hesitation in saying that Frank Whittle was the real inventor of the jet engine and that he could have produced a jet fighter by 1937 if the Establishment had been on his side."
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peter feltham Only one third of the British Army was in France - 9% of the allied forces - French, Dutch, British and Belgian forces. The French complained of the luke-warm British response on the ground. The British concentrated on the sea and air as the French had a massive armoured army. The BEF was small and the first army that was fully motorised - no one marched. Nevertheless they stopped the German advance at Arras using the new Matilda 2 tank, with German troops running away in panic. The German anti-tank guns could not knock out the tank. They had to level 88mm guns in panic to knock it out.
The British started a retreat across water well before the Germans arrived as the French lines had broken down. Dunkirk was not a fiasco. It was retreat across water in which 350,000 men got to England. A success. They lived to fight another day. The RAF's CAP was a huge success in largely keeping the Luftwaffe away killing more German aircraft than what they lost.
Back in the UK British industry was turning over 24/7 producing the latest equipment, not the old stuff used in France. Matlida 2s were being tuned out, of which the Germans had met and feared.
The Germans first had to get a beachhead on a coast full of cliffs, there are few suitable landing beaches. They would be crossing in concrete barges towed by tugs and Rhine barges. The barges were being bombed by the RAF in port. It would take them about 24 hours to cross, and through the night, being straffed by the RAF, shore batteries and even the wash from an RN frigate would turn them over. The beaches were oiled up setting the water on fire as invasion barges came in. The Germans never even had a torpedo plane. The Ju97 Stuka was easy to knock out - they withdrew it from the Battle of Britain the losses were so high.
If they managed to get ashore it would not have lasted. They had no surface navy worth talking of as most had been destroyed in Norway. Supply would have been near impossible. How you think this army with hand weapons on a beach was to be resupplied facing the world's largest navy? Well I suggest you read some history and absorb some figures.
Then the British army afters Dunkirk is re-equipped with heavy tanks moving in on these men. The German paras might take a small town for a few days until the tanks come in. Annihilation of Germans are the words that come to mind. General Jodle said it would be like sending his men through a British mincing machine.
BTW, the British took Sealion so seriously they sent 55 Matilda 2 tanks to North Africa during the Battle of Britain.
Look at the preparation for Normandy and with 100% air and sea superiority. And you think the German had a chance in concrete barges? My oh my!
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The German army attacking the USSR......
The Germans thought they had formulated a version of Blitzkrieg in France that was a sure-fire success. If the belt broke the whole movement stopped. They used this in the USSR, just scaling up forces. They did not have the intelligence to assess properly, that the reason for their success in France was allied incompetence not anything brilliant they did.
The Germans vastly underestimated the quality of design and make of Soviet weapons. The T-34 took them by surprise and they knew they were fighting an army they had hopelessly underestimated in all aspects. The Germans did not take into account the British supplying the USSR - 40% of the tanks used at the vital battle of Moscow were British supplied. The USSR had more tanks than the rest of the world combined in 1940.
The Germans underestimated the Soviets so much they decided to attack them with no reserves, all the German forces were involved in Barbarossa, lack of proper logistics to re-supply, short of steel, rubber, oil, an industry that could not re-supply at the rate required, short of fuel for industry and the forces, etc, etc. The Germans were so inept at assessing the Soviets they did not envisage fighting in the Russian winter in 1942/1942 thinking they would have overcome the USSR in three months. When they did not break the USSRs back they did not have enough winter clothes and equipment designed for such low temperatures. It was not just the logistics of getting to the troops, they just did not have the equipment. The Germans thought the Soviets could field 360 divisions, they fielded over 600.
Soviet industry was large and had moved to the east after the initial German attack. Much was in the east anyhow. This was working 24/7 to re-supply. The T-34 tank by Dec 1941 was well established and available in numbers. The Germans first faced The T-34 in October 1941, reducing a German division to a few tanks. The Soviet counter-attack in Dec 1941 was well supplied, and heavily with T-34s. There was still 1,400 Soviet aircraft available in Dec 1941.
The Soviet's mistake was attacking on a broad front and not aiming the the weakest point and pushing them right back, nevertheless they mauled the Germans. By Dec 1941 the Germans were exhausted in fuel, men and equipment. They could do no more. As early as July 1941, many German armies were at the end of their effective supply lines. As Prof Tooze said, most say the Germans failed to take Moscow, the reality was that they could not as they were on their last legs. The large Soviet air force was still attacking German supply lines as well, exasperating the situation. The Germans foolishly thought most supplies could be taken along three very long rail tracks, which were easily ripped up by the Soviets and bombed via the air. Thousands of German rail men worked to get lines partially operation. The Soviets evacuated lots of rail trucks.
Prof Tooze: Wages of Destruction, page 453:
'Halder wrote, Barbarossa needed speed and motorized transport for supply. No waiting for railways. The Germans planned for three rail lines and 740,000 horses.'
...the Germans never had enough motorised transport to supply all the fast moving armies. Pre June 1941, they were considering de-motorising because of a shortage of rubber inflicted by the Royal Navy blockade.
Tooze: page 454:
'Three rail lines were used. The existing Soviet rail network was not even good enough to supply the German army if taken intact. It was also of a narrower gauge too. The retreating Soviets took most wagons with them and destroyed the rail infrastructure on retreating.
The Soviets had taken massive losses, but being so big they could absorb so many losses. The Soviets also had inflicted great losses on the Germans by Dec 1941. The only large power Germany conquered was France. This gave them a sense of superiority - their technique was now known, so succeeding twice was unlikely.'
They largely dropped the blitzkrieg of coordinated air and ground attacks.
Tooze: page 487.
'In July, all three German Army groups had reached the limit of resupply and stopped. The Soviets had taken devastating losses but not defeated. The Soviets saw the halt of the German armies and the re-supply problem and launched 17 armies against them forcing the Germans to dig in and defend.'
The UK & US can be forgiven in underestimating the Red Army, which they did, not so the Germans as they would have to assess this force in detail as they were to fight it, unlike the UK & US. Soviet industry was turning out the arms and to advanced designs. I don't want to go into what ifs, but if the T-34 was in place in summer 1941 the Germans would never have had such spectacular progress. Stalin knew what was being produced. They knew once the weaponry was in place, they could defeat the Germans who would be operating over 1000kms along a few supply lines they could not fully supply.
Apart from Stalingrad, which the Germans and the Soviets had an obsession with, the Soviets became less reckless as the UK and USA were in the fight and arms, and some well advanced arms, were building up. The Germans would not win, and the Soviets knew that. Once a western second front was in place, it was clear the Germans would quickly crumble, and they did. On D-Day 1944, the Germans were still way inside the USSR. The end came quickly once hit from both sides. It can be argued that the Soviets should have pushed the Germans out of the USSR by 1943 or even 1942, however they were inept at most levels. But the Soviets knew in a war of attrition the Germans were doomed.
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Rotaries are better suited to constant speed, high efficiency genset applications rather than direct drive via gearboxes. In that application piston engines cannot compete. Rotaries are better suited for series-hybrid cars being much superior than piston engines.
Direct fuel injection and laser ignition will improve the Wankel considerably when introduced. The problem of unburnt fuel in the exhaust will be eliminated improving emissions and fuel consumption. The engine performs very, very well in fuel consumption and emissions running at a 'constant speed' turning a generator - its most efficient "sweet spot". Wankels lose efficiency dramatically when they are revved up and down as when directly driving a car. The engine has a vastly superior power-weight ratio than piston/crank engines and is about one third of the size and weight of a piston engine for a similar power output.
All these positive attributes combine to make a superb range extender, when the wheels are turned by electric motors. If a car is plugged in each night and uses grid power to run most of the time, then wear on these units will be negligible. As the engine is only periodically used, the life of the engine is greatly extended. Also newer metallurgic techniques are being used to make the engines. Even when batteries are depleted, the Wankel can provide enough electricity to power the car and still be economical.
The first ever series-hybrid plane flew in June 2013 - using a Wankel engine because of its small size and light weight, and an electric prop. The makers say it can be scaled up to around a 100-150 seater plane. The Wankel engine(s) can be in the fuselage for better weight distribution with small electric motors on the wings giving lighter, and cheaper, wings. About 5 companies still make Wankel engines for special purposes such as drones.
The sooner they are introduced in road vehicles in series-hybrid form the better. The Wankel has finally met its niche.
It takes only 25 to 30hp to propel a large American car down the highway at 70mph. Yet they put engines in them that can output 150 to 200hp. Most of that output is for acceleration and heavy loads. Highly inefficient.
The great thing about a series-hybrid is that the generating engine works totally independent of the demands of the electric driving motor, enabling maximum efficiency when running. This means the generating engines can be greatly downsized. The battery acts as an energy buffer to give acceleration boosts.
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+Daniel Liston
I don't need lecture on Capitalism, Communism and any other ism by an amateur. Thank You.
"America’s inequality has grown enormously over the past 35 years, to the point where the upper 1% receives more than a fifth of all the nation’s income. Wealth inequality is even greater: the top 1% own about 42% of the wealth, and the top 0.1% alone own 22%. And while the share of income garnered by the top 1% has doubled in the last third of a century, the share going to the top 0.1% has increased even more, going up nearly threefold as of 2013."
- Joseph Stigliz (US economist)
"There is a simple resolution to these conundrums. Much of the increase in wealth has little to do with savings in the usual sense. Rather it is the result of capital gains - especially the increased value of land - and an increase in the capitalized value of other rents."
- Joseph Stiglitz
_"The value of land today is largely dependent on its expected value tomorrow, ad infinitum. This means that land prices are largely untethered. Rising expectations can, at least for a while, be self-fulfilling. ►Land bubbles◄ have marked capitalism from its early days, and we have been going through just the latest instance."
- Joseph Stiglitz
The world's biggest selling book, after the bible, was ►Progress and Poverty◄ by US economist Henry George. It has been air-brushed from history. Ever wondered why? Read the book. All the confusion in your head will dissipate once you understand it.
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Pablo Ricardo de Tarragon
Laser ign can project FOUR sparks deeps inside a combustion chamber, which is ideal for a rotary with its moving combustion chamber. NATO want to standardise on fuel HFO. It can be spark ignited by preheating it. Rotaries in R&D have excellent thermal efficiencies when run at constant speeds.
Those 4 deck high Wartsila Suzler engines when needing overhauling means the ship is dock, which means down time which costs. Ship and moreso cruise ship operators do as much maintenance as possible under way. They even paint the sides of the ship when in a calling port. They want the ship in dock only for essential dry dock maintenance like azipods, props or the keel. Some ship's designers are looking ahead and favouring larger rotary engines in banks (slide out modules say 1.5 metre by 1.5 metre complete with generator) in cruise ships. Rotaries are one third of the size and weight for the same power output. The smoothness is a great asset in passenger accommodation. Rotaries scale up seamlessly.
The rotary genset modules can be phased in, in stages to what the ship's demand is, rather than running these massive Sultzer engines when there is low demand. Then they can slide out a genset module in port and slide one in, which will take a few hours. The genset module in port can be overhauled onshore and the ship continues with no down time maximising efficiencies.
These big diesel engines are also filthy. Such huge ships emit as many air pollutants as five million cars going the same distance.
"Southampton, which has Britain’s second largest container port and is Europe’s busiest cruise terminal, is one of nine UK cities cited by the World Health Organisation as breaching air quality guidelines even though it has little manufacturing."
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/21/the-worlds-largest-cruise-ship-and-its-supersized-pollution-problem
Some companies are running the cruise ships on LPG to reduce pollution. Rotaries as constant speed gensets are also very good at burning hydrogen.
The thermal efficiency of these diesels is because they run at constant speeds. Car engines do not, so efficiency is very low with cars.
You are right, in a rational world petrol engines are obsolete and electric is the way. The best range extenders for cars are rotaries with the new R&D very promising superior performance over piston/crank engines. They can be easily hidden in cars being one third of the size and weight, which is a fantastic attribute. Also, as range-extenders are part time engines the efficiency is not a great point - as they will be rarely used. Size weight and smoothness matters. But at a constant speed a rotary with the new advances running as its 'sweet spot' exceeds piston/crank engines. The rotary does not like being revved up and down.
Rotaries do not have sealing problems that is myth from 50 years ago.
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At 14:35 hrs on the 17th XXX Corps rolled. It took them 42 hours to reach the Nijmegen bridge, that is they reached Nijmegen on the morning of the 19th.
At about eleven hours later at 20:00 hrs on the 19th September 1944, the first two Tigers, driven in from Germany, drove up and onto the ramp leading to the Arnhem bridge and shelled houses occupied by the British paras. Two Tigers near the bridge were disabled by the 6pdrs of the paras. If the 82nd had taken the bridge on the 1st day, XXX Corps would have been over the bridge on the morning of the 19th about 10 hrs before any Tiger entered Arnhem. The 82nd's 6pdrs could have easily dealt with any German armour that arrived at Lent, the north end of the bridge in the first 42 hours.
Schwere Panzerkompanie Hummel with 14 Tigers were already at Arnhem blocking any route north after XXX Corps taking and crossing the Nijmegen bridge on the 20th at 19:00 hrs in the dark - 36 hrs behind schedule.
SS Man Harmel who said there was no German opposition on the evening of the 20th, did not know this. The route to Arnhem was already closed. He never knew this until decades after the war. If they moved on from the Nijmegen bridge, the five Shermans, with two of them damaged, would have been made scrap metal by the 14 Tigers between Nijmegen and Arnhem.
http://www.defendingarnhem.com/schpzkphummel.htm
Harmel had no knowledge this Tiger unit had just arrived on the 19th. When he says that nothing was between Nijmegen and Arnhem he was totally wrong.
BTW, the British paras at Arnhem did knock out Tigers using 6pdrs. You didn't have to penetrate the tank to disable it. A number of German tanks, inc' a Tiger, were disabled by PIATs.
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The British BEF was only 9% of the total allied forces in France and the Low Countries. The German advance was halted in France as the British with a vastly inferior force stopped them at Arras. Some German soldiers turned and ran. Directive 13, issued by German Supreme Headquarters on 24 May 1940 stated specifically for the annihilation of the French, English and Belgian forces in the Dunkirk pocket. The Luftwaffe was ordered to prevent the escape of the British forces across the English Channel.
The German advance was stopped at Arras by the British with a numerically inferior force. The Germans never moved much further after. The Germans could not have taken Dunkirk, they would have been badly beaten in and around the town. The Luftwaffe was defeated over Dunkirk by the RAF with the first showing of the Spitfire en-mass. More German than allied planes were destroyed in the Dunkirk pocket. The first defeat of the Nazis in WW2 was in the air by the British over Dunkirk. Only six small warships were sunk at Dunkirk by the Germans as the the effectiveness of the Luftwaffe blunted.
The British were retreating after the French collapsed in front of them - a programme already in motion, a programme already in motion before the Germans showed up, as General Gort saw the disjointed performance of the French forces in front of him. If the French collapsed the small BEF had no hope against the large German force heading west. The French were still in front of the British when General Gort decided to take the men back to England, as he did not trust the French in a joint counter-attack. All armies retreat and regroup when the need is there. There happened to be a body of water in the line of the retreat. Were they to move down the English coast and enter France further west with more men from England? The Germans did not know what was to be the next British or allied move. The Germans could not have taken Dunkirk and they tried. The British retreat operation was carried out as planned and in orderly fashion. All bridges to Dunkirk were destroyed by the allies.
The British counter-attack at Arras was with outdated Matilda 1 tanks, which only had machine guns, and a few of the brand new Matilda 2 tanks. The Germans fled in droves. In desperation the Germans turned a 88mm AA gun horizontal and it worked against the Matilda 2 - their conventional anti-tank weapons and tanks could not penetrate the tank. The Matilda 2 would roll over German gun emplacements killing the gunners. Rommel thought he had been hit by a force three times the size, which made them stop and rethink. The Germans countered with their superior numbers pushing back the British who fell back towards Dunkirk.
The British resolve and the new Matilda 2 made the Germans sit up and think about a street fight in Dunkirk against a consolidated force still with its weapons and the new Matilda 2 - the 88mm would be useless in Dunkirk streets while the Matilda 2 would be in its element, and the Matlida 2 would have easily destroyed the Panzer mk3s. The Matilda 2 could knock out any German tank at the time, while no German tank could knock it out. The Germans were expecting the Matilda 2 to be shipped over in numbers and for all they knew many were in Dunkirk. The Germans could not stop the tanks coming as the British controlled the skies with a CAP and the waters of the Channel. Not a good prospect for the Germans. A Dunkirk street fight was a fight the German troops were untrained and unequipped for and unwise to get involved in.
Von Rundstedt and von Kluge suggested to Hitler that German forces around the Dunkirk pocket cease their advance and consolidate and also to prevent an Allied break out from Dunkirk. Hitler agreed with the support of the Wehrmacht. German preoccupation rightly was with an expected attack from the fluid mainly French and some British forces to the south of the German line, not from dug-in Dunkirk which was too much of a formidable consolidated opponent, taking substantial resources to seize. The German column had Allied troops to each side and in front and there was soft marshland to the south west of Dunkirk unsuitable for tanks. If German forces had engaged in a street battle for Dunkirk, they would be vulnerable on their weak flank from the south. In short the fast moving panzers were now static; German forces attacking Dunkirk in a battle of attrition would have been largely wiped out.
The Germans were consolidating their remaining armour and the important resupply from Germany, which was slow as it was via horses, for an expected attack by the British and French from the south. They had over-stretched their supply lines. The Germans had no option but to stop. The Germans were more concerned at defending from the mainly French forces in the south which were viewed as a greater threat than Dunkirk. French general Weigand implemented his creation of hedgehogs to attack German lines from the sides, with success - hedgehogs were a part of NATO tactics until the 1970s.
The German were thinking, are the British retreating to England from Dunkirk to move down the English coast and re-enter France further south with fresh forces, including Canadians and the new Matilda 2 tanks, which they feared, and join up with the French forces there? The British could easily do that as they controlled the Channel. This would create one large difficult to combat force. German generals were trying to figure out what was happening. None thought that British troops would retreat to England and stay there. The British never did that sort of thing.
The Germans could divert most of their forces south and risk a Dunkirk breakout and then risk being attacked from their rear fighting on two fronts, or stay and consolidate, which they needed to do, awaiting a French/British attack from the south and use some forces and the Luftwaffe to attack Dunkirk, which they did. German forces resumed their attack on Dunkirk for 6 days failing to seize the port and the surrounding pocket.
There was a British plan to break out of the Dunkirk Pocket using British and French forces which was abandoned as Gort had no confidence in the French. All military school studies since, knowing what the German and allied positions and situations were, have shown it would have succeeded.
This sounds strange, but the Germans were defeated at Dunkirk. They tried militarily to seize it but failed. Only because the British did not trust the French and moved back to England did the Germans eventually occupy the town. The Germans did not let the British get away that is misguided myth, they tried and simply could not seize Dunkirk.
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What Juggernaut race was Patton in? In Lorraine he moved 10 miles in 3 months. Patton was fired for cowardly hitting a sick soldier in a hospital bed. An utter coward. A nutball who believed he was re-incarnated. US Army report on the Lorraine Campaign. Patton does not come out well.
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a211668.pdf
From the document is in italics.
"Soldiers and generals alike assumed that Lorraine would fall quickly, and unless the war ended first, Patton's tanks would take the war into Germany by summer's end. But Lorraine was not to be overrun in a lightning campaign. Instead, the battle for Lorraine would drag on for more than 3 months."
The Brits never said the war would be over by Xmas.
"Despite its proximity to Germany, Lorraine was not the Allies' preferred invasion route in 1944. Except for its two principal cities, Metz and Nancy, the province contained few significant military objectives."
"Moreover, once Third Army penetrated the province and entered Germany, there would still be no first-rate military objectives within its grasp. The Saar industrial region, while significant, was of secondary importance when compared to the great Ruhr industrial complex farther north."
Another Patton chase into un-needed territory, like he did when running his troops into Brittany.
"With so little going for it, why did Patton bother with Lorraine at all? The reason was that Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, made up his mind to destroy as many German forces as possible west of the Rhine."
In other words a waste of time.
"Communications Zone organized the famous Red Ball Express, a non-stop conveyor belt of trucks connecting the Normandy depots with the field armies."
They were getting fuel via 6,000 trucks.
_"The simple truth was that although fuel was plentiful in Normandy, there was no way to transport it in sufficient quantities to the
leading elements. On 31 August , Third Army received no fuel at all."_
In short, Patton overran his supply lines. What was important was to secure the Port of Antwerp's approaches. Monty approached the US leaders of the First Airborne Army and they would not drop into the Scheld.
"Few of the Germans defending Lorraine could be considered First-rate troops. Third Army encountered whole battalions made up of deaf men, others of cooks, and others consisting entirety of soldiers with stomach ulcers."
Some army the Americans were going to fight
"Was the Lorraine campaign an American victory' From September through November, Third Army claimed to have inflicted over 180,000 casualties on the enemy. But to capture the province of Lorraine, a problem which involved an advance of only 40 to 60 air miles, Third Army required over 3 months and suffered 50,000 casualties, approximately one-third of the total number of casualties it sustained in the entire European war."
Huge losses for taking unimportant territory, against a poor German army. How clever.
"Ironically, Third Army never used Lorraine as a springboard for an advance into Germany after all. Patton turned most of the sector over to Seventh Army during the Ardennes crisis, and when the eastward advance resumed after the Battle of the Bulge, Third Army based its operations on Luxembourg, not Lorraine. The Lorraine campaign will always remain a controversial episode in American military history."
It's getting worse. The Americans had one third of all their European casualties in Lorraine and never used the territory to move into Germany.
"Finally the Lorraine Campaign demonstrated that Logistics often drive operations, no matter how forceful and aggressive the commanding general may be."
"Patton violated tactical principles"
"His discovered that violating logistical principles is an unforgiving and cumulative matter."
Not flattering at all.
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Market Garden. The leaders of the US 82nd were clearly inept, that is why focus is centred on them.
The single road up to Arnhem was not that big a problem. It came under pressure constantly and to their credit the British XXX Corps and the US 101st kept it open. It functioned 24/7. If traffic stopped it was only for a very short time. The road was not a problem in the operation's overall execution.
XXX Corps were delayed 12 hours as the 101st did not take the bridge at Son. XXX Corps ran a Bailey bridge over. XXX Corps made up the time and arrived slightly ahead of schedule in Nijmegen. Only to see the Germans were occupying the bridge as the 82nd never moved to take the bridge guarded by only 12 men on the 1st day.
The Operation....
So, the operation was to seize vital bridges 65 miles into Holland and thrust up one road to the end which was Arnhem. Well that was only a part of it. XXX Corps were to proceed to the Zuiderzee once through Arnhem and also to the east to the Dutch/German border. Bold. If any of the bridges were not seized the operation is doomed. It depended on all paras seizing their bridges on the 1st day. That was vital.
Did the allies have the men & materials? Yes.
Was it doable? Yes.
Was it worth the chance? Yes.
Two large vital bridges:
1. Arnhem - to be taken by the British paras;
2. Nijmegen - (one of Europe's largest bridges), to be taken by the US 82nd paras.
US 101st paras to take small bridges in the south.
The Execution
All did their jobs well, with all bridges seized on the first 1st day as planned, except one. The bridge at Nijmegen. The small canal bridge at Son in the south was not taken by the US 101st, but this was expected with XXX Corps running a Bailey bridge run over on the 1st day. XXX Corps were doing well in thrusting up the road over the seized bridges until they reached Nijmegen ahead of schedule. Instead of rolling over the bridge, they saw it still in German hands. This is the potential failure point. If the bridge is not seized within hours of XXX Corps arrival the operation is near certain to fail. The bridge was not seized for many days resulting in operation failure.
Let us analyse the failure point - the Nijmegen bridge. If the Germans had counter-attacked with a superior force on the first day and held off the 82nd men or had hidden a superior force unknown to the allies, then there is an excuse for the 82nd not seizing the bridge. That means the strategic gamble failed as one of the links in the operation was not secured.
All did their jobs well. The air forces, the XXX Corps armour & mobile troops, the paras at Arnhem and those to the south near Belgium.
There was no excuse for the 82nd. Only 12 men guarded the Nijmegen bridge with only a few German troops in Nijmegen. 1,900 men of the 508th were sitting around for 3 hours (3.5 hours after the perfect drop) before even moving towards the bridge. The operation was easily doable and that was proven. It could have succeeded with relative ease. The failure of Market Garden rests squarely with the link in the chain the US 82nd paras were responsible for. What was the reason for this failure? Ineptitude of the leaders.
The operation needed all to do their part professionally and 100%. They all did except the US 82nd.
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"the composition of the German forces at Arnhem was far more complex than most published histories of Market Garden had tended to suggest. The two SS panzer divisions had been operating far below their full strength on the eve of the operation and, while 1st Airborne was ultimately confronted by armour in considerable strength, hardly any tanks were actually present in the Arnhem area on 17 September. The vast majority deployed from Germany or other battle fronts after the airborne landings"
- ARNHEM - THE AIR RECONNAISSANCE STORY by the RAF
Some low level pictures of a few Panzer IIIs and IVs were taken in early September for operation Comet. Ryan on speaking to Urquhart got it wrong.
"Urquhart’s account is therefore somewhat perplexing. Further problems arise if we seek to document the events he described. Several extensive searches for the photographs have failed to locate them. Ostensibly, this might not seem surprising, as most tactical reconnaissance material was destroyed after the war, but Urquhart insisted that the Arnhem sortie was flown by a Spitfire squadron based at Benson; this would almost certainly mean 541 Squadron. Far more imagery from the Benson squadrons survived within the UK archives, but no oblique photographs showing tanks at Arnhem. In addition, although the Benson missions were systematically recorded at squadron and group level, not one record matches the sortie Urquhart described."
"The low-level missions targeting the bridges on 6 September were scrupulously noted down, but all other recorded reconnaissance sorties over Arnhem were flown at higher altitudes and captured vertical imagery. Equally, it has proved impossible as yet to locate an interpretation report derived from a low-level mission that photographed German armour near Arnhem before Market Garden."
"As for Brian Urquhart’s famous account of how a low-level Spitfire sortie took photographs of tanks assumed to belong to II SS Panzer Corps, the reality was rather different. In all probability, the low-level mission that Urquhart recalled photographed the bridges and not the tanks"
- ARNHEM - THE AIR RECONNAISSANCE STORY by the RAF
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+oldtanker2
A 1985 US Army study of the Lorraine Campaign was highly critical of your wonderful Patton.
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a211668.pdf
The document states:
"Few of the Germans defending Lorraine could be considered First-rate troops. Third Army encountered whole battalions made up of deaf men, others of cooks, and others consisting entirety of soldiers with stomach ulcers."
"Soldiers and generals alike assumed that Lorraine would fall quickly, and unless the war ended first, Patton's tanks would take the war into Germany by summer's end. But Lorraine was not to be overrun in a lightning campaign. Instead, the battle for Lorraine would drag on for more than 3 months."
"Moreover, once Third Army penetrated the province and entered Germany, there would still be no first-rate military objectives within its grasp. The Saar industrial region, while significant, was of secondary importance when compared to the great Ruhr industrial complex farther north."
"Was the Lorraine campaign an American victory' From September through November, Third Army claimed to have inflicted over 180,000 casualties on the enemy. But to capture the province of Lorraine, a problem which involved an advance of only 40 to 60 air miles, Third Army required over 3 months and suffered 50,000 casualties, approximately one-third of the total number of casualties it sustained in the entire European war."
"Ironically, Third Army never used Lorraine as a springboard for an advance into Germany after all. Patton turned most of the sector over to Seventh Army during the Ardennes crisis, and when the eastward advance resumed after the Battle of the Bulge, Third Army based its operations on Luxembourg, not Lorraine. The Lorraine campaign will always remain a controversial episode in American military history."
"Finally the Lorraine Campaign demonstrated that Logistics often drive operations, no matter how forceful and aggressive the commanding general may be."
"He [Patton] discovered that violating logistical principles is an unforgiving and cumulative matter."
The US Army study highlighted Patton's tendency to overstretch his supply lines.
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@oldtanker2
The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British under Montgomery. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
▪️ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa;
▪️ October 1942 - El Alamein;
▪️ March 1943 - Medenine;
▪️ June 1944 - Normandy;
▪️ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands;
▪️ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge;
A list of Montgomery’s victories in WW2:
▪️ Battle of Alam Halfa;
▪️ Second Battle of El Alamein;
▪️ Battle of El Agheila;
▪️ Battle of Medenine;
▪️ Battle of the Mareth Line;
▪️ Battle of Wadi Akarit;
▪️ Allied invasion of Sicily;
▪️ Operation Overlord - the largest amphibious invasion in history;
▪️ Market Garden - a 60 mile salient created into German territory;
▪️ Battle of the Bulge - while taking control of two shambolic US armies;
▪️ Operation Veritable;
▪️ Operation Plunder.
Montgomery not once had a reverse.
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Monty's 8th Army advanced the fastest of any army in WW2. From El Alamein to El Agheila from the 4th to 23rd November 1942, 1,300 km in just 17 days. After fighting a major exhausting battle at El Alemein through half a million mines. This was an Incredible feat, unparalleled in WW2. With El Alamein costing just 13,500 casualties.
The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties, with the Lorraine campaign being a failure. Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties.
Hodges, head of the US First army, fled from Spa to near Liege on the 18th, despite the Germans never getting anywhere near to Spa. Hodges did not even wait for the Germans to approach Spa. He had already fled long before the Germans were stopped. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British, with Montgomery involved in planning, with also Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles.
On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
You need to give respect where it is due.
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@oldtanker2
What US historian Harry Yeide wrote of what the Germans thought of Patton:
▪️ for most of the war the Germans barely took notice [of Patton].
▪️ on March 23 at the Battle of El Guettar—the first American victory against the experienced Germans. Patton’s momentum, however, was short-lived: Axis troops held him to virtually no gain until April 7, when they withdrew under threat from British Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army.
▪️ There is no indication in the surviving German military records—which include intelligence reports at the theater, army, and division levels—that Patton’s enemies had any idea who he was at the time. Likewise, the immediate postwar accounts of the German commanders in Tunisia, written for the U.S. Army’s History Division, ignore Patton. Those reports show that ground commanders considered II Corps’s attacks under Patton to have been hesitant, and to have missed great opportunities.
▪️ In mid-June [1943], another detachment report described Patton as “an energetic and responsibility-loving command personality”—a passing comment on one of the numerous Allied commanders. Patton simply had not yet done anything particularly noteworthy in their eyes.
▪️ But his race to Palermo through country they had already abandoned left the commanders unimpressed. Major General Eberhard Rodt, who led the 15th Panzergrenadier Division against Patton’s troops during the Allied push toward Messina, thought the American Seventh Army fought hesitantly and predictably. He wrote in an immediate postwar report on Sicily, “The enemy very often conducted his movements systematically, and only attacked after a heavy artillery preparation when he believed he had broken our resistance. This kept him regularly from exploiting the weakness of our situation and gave me the opportunity to consolidate dangerous situations.” Once again, Patton finished a campaign without impressing his opponents.
▪️ General Hermann Balck, who took command of Army Group G in September, thus did not think highly of Patton—or any other opposing commanders—during this time. Balck wrote to his commander, Runstedt, on October 10, “I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans” Looking back on his battles against Patton throughout the autumn, in 1979 Balck recalled, “Within my zone, the Americans never once exploited a success. Often [General Friedrich Wilhelm von] Mellenthin, my chief of staff, and I would stand in front of the map and say, ‘Patton is helping us; he failed to exploit another success.’”
▪️ The commander of the Fifth Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel, aimed a dismissive, indirect critique at Patton’s efforts at Bastogne, writing in his memoirs that the Americans did not “strike with full élan.” The commanders who fought against Patton in his last two mobile campaigns in the Saar-Palatinate and east of the Rhine already knew they could not win; their losses from this point forward were inevitable, regardless of the commanding Allied opponent.
▪️ the Germans offered Patton faint praise during and immediately after the war.
▪️ posterity deserves fact and not myth. The Germans did not track Patton’s movements as the key to Allied intentions. Hitler does not appear to have thought often of Patton, if at all. The Germans considered Patton a hesitant commanding general in the scrum of position warfare. They never raised his name in the context of worthy strategists.
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@oldtanker2
Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower approved, under resourcing the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
▪️ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
▪️ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
▪️ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
▪️ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
▪️ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
▪️ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
▪️ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak".
The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgment or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed. XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem.
Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself. XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin. Even the US Official War record confirms this. The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time Monty had the Canadians clear it, or were investing in many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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+Joseph Barboza
" He was a terrible general with very poor skills at planning offensive battles."
Not the brainwashed Yanks again who get their history from Hollywood! No mate the Yanks never won WW2. The fact is the Americans were a very mediocre army. with not one general that stood out. In Normandy Monty who was in charge of all armies, assessed the US armies giving them the infantry role. If they faced mass German armour they would have been annihilated. The Brits took on the German heavy armour and destroyed 90% of it.
Patton moved 10 miles in three months in Lorraine taking 52,000 casualties against a 2nd rate army. Hurtgen Forest was a defeat. The only retreat in WW2 by any Allied army was the US in the Ardennes offensive, taking 100,000 casualties. Monty had to take control of the US 1st and 9th armies, keeping the 9th until the end of WW2. XXX Corps advanced 60 miles in a few days in Market Garden. No other army in 1944-45 moved so fast. TIK never mentioned that.
Monty never suffered a reverse moving 1,000 miles through nine countries from Egypt to Denmark taking all in his path. He was a general over generals. Montgomery was by far most successful western allied commander of WW2. Monty fought more battles, took more ground and engaged more elite German divisions than any other general. Monty commanded all the Normandy ground forces, being the man the Americans ran to in the Ardennes offensive. No other general in the western allied armies possessed his experience in dealing with the Germans or his expertise.
Eisenhower:
‘General Montgomery is a very able, dynamic type of army commander’.
Eisenhower on D-Day and Normandy:
'He got us there and he kept us there'.
General Günther Blumentritt:
‘Field Marshall Montgomery was the one general who never suffered a reverse’
Genral Hasso von Manteuffel on the Bulge:
‘The operations of the American 1st Army had developed into a series of individual holding actions. Montgomery's contribution to restoring the situation was that he turned a series of isolated actions into a coherent battle fought according to a clear and definite plan. It was his refusal to engage in premature and piecemeal counter-attacks which enabled the Americans to gather their reserves and frustrate the German attempts to extend their breakthrough’.
Patton on Monty:
'small,very alert, wonderfully conceited, and the best soldier - or so it seems - I have met in this war’.
American Major General Matt Ridgway commander of the US XVIII Airborne Corps, 17 Jan 1945
"It has been an honored privilege and a very great personal pleasure to have served, even so briefly, under your distinguished leadership [Montgomery]. To the gifted professional guidance you at once gave me, was added to your own consummate courtesy and consideration. I am deeply grateful for both. My warm and sincere good wishes will follow you and with them the hope of again serving with you in pursuit of a common goal".
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Look, the 1st Airborne only took one end of Arnhem bridge but stopped the Germans controlling the bridge. The Germans on the island between the two bridges made little impact on taking the Arnhem bridge back. The 1st Airborne were overwhelmed by German troops and armour that approached them from Arnhem town, not the island.
If the 82nd at Nijmegen had secured the bridge and 2,000 men set up a cordon around it with anti-tank guns, the likelihood of the Germans taking the bridge from the island within a few days, before XXX Corps came along, would be very, very, low. German morale at this point was very low after continually being battered and chased from Normandy.
German communications was not as good as you think. Harmel never knew that Tiger tanks ran onto the island over the Arnhem bridge, after the 1st Airborne capitulated, until the late 1970s.
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@jthunders
Rambo,
Patton was not advancing or being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. Bastogne was on the very southern German flank, their focus being west. The strategic significance of the stand at Bastogne, is over exaggerated. The 18,000 did not change the course of the battle.
The German's bypassed Bastogne, placing a containment force around the town.
Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory, with the road from Luxembourg to Bastogne having few German forces. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was far from being one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, 26th Volks-Grenadier having about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind with a small number of operational tanks. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne.
Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1. Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance pushing them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons stopped the American attack who pulled back. The next day, fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon.
However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B again retreating. It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day. Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne.
After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF, who gave Patton massive ground attack support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall.
Read:
Battle of the Bulge by Charles Whiting
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+oldtanker2
Some of your conclusions make sense but others ignore basic tactical principals.1. You fail to address the decision to ignore intel that said that heavy armor was present.
There was no proof heavy armour was present. None was there in the Arnhem, area. Read on...
"the composition of the German forces at Arnhem was far more complex than most published histories of Market Garden had tended to suggest. The two SS panzer divisions had been operating far below their full strength on the eve of the operation and, while 1st Airborne was ultimately confronted by armour in considerable strength, hardly any tanks were actually present in the Arnhem area on 17 September. The vast majority deployed from Germany or other battle fronts after the airborne landings"
- ARNHEM - THE AIR RECONNAISSANCE STORY by the Royal Air Force
Some low level pictures of a few Panzer IIIs and IVs were taken in early September for operation Comet. Ryan on speaking to Urquhart got it wrong.
"Urquhart’s account is therefore somewhat perplexing. Further problems arise if we seek to document the events he described. Several extensive searches for the photographs have failed to locate them. Ostensibly, this might not seem surprising, as most tactical reconnaissance material was destroyed after the war, but Urquhart insisted that the Arnhem sortie was flown by a Spitfire squadron based at Benson; this would almost certainly mean 541 Squadron. Far more imagery from the Benson squadrons survived within the UK archives, but no oblique photographs showing tanks at Arnhem. In addition, although the Benson missions were systematically recorded at squadron and group level, not one record matches the sortie Urquhart described."
"The low-level missions targeting the bridges on 6 September were scrupulously noted down, but all other recorded reconnaissance sorties over Arnhem were flown at higher altitudes and captured vertical imagery. Equally, it has proved impossible as yet to locate an interpretation report derived from a low-level mission that photographed German armour near Arnhem before Market Garden."
"As for Brian Urquhart’s famous account of how a low-level Spitfire sortie took photographs of tanks assumed to belong to II SS Panzer Corps, the reality was rather different. In all probability, the low-level mission that Urquhart recalled photographed the bridges and not the tanks"
- ARNHEM - THE AIR RECONNAISSANCE STORY by the Royal Air Force
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I advise you to read Wages of Destruction - the Making and Breaking of the NAZI economy by Prof Adam Tooze. The USSR out-produced the USA in war production in 1942, the critical year. The UK and USSR could have finished off Germany alone, as the combined economies were far larger.
Germany gambled that they could crush the USSR in 6 months assuming they could emulate what they did in France. The gamble failed. From Dec 1941 when Soviets counter attacked at Moscow, with 40% of the tanks supplied by the British, the outcome of WW2 was clear. Germany were checked in the west by the UK at the air battle over southern England and the might of the Royal Navy on the western seas, and now checked in the east.
In early 1941 the UK had defeated the Luftwaffe, wiped out most of the German surface fleet, neutralised the French fleet, wiped out large sections of the Italian fleet, was freely sailing the Mediterranean Sea, routed the Italian army in North Africa, bombing Germany by air, building up a massive air fleet and were ready to take all the south coast of the Mediterranean. By the end of 1941 the USSR had checked Germany and the end result was all to clear to see.
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The Royal Navy blockade of Germany was one of the most effective campaigns in WW2. It went from the 1st day to the last. The RN also blockaded Italy. No oil tankers got through the straights of Gibraltar. In Feb 1941. The Italian Navy was to drop all naval operations unless Germany provided 25,000 tons of oil. The German surface navy was neutralized in port through lack of fuel. Lack of oil was a big Axis problem.
Wages of Destruction by Prof Adam Tooze : Page 439:
"In November 1941 the fuel oil situation of both the Italian and German navies was described by the Wehrmacht as 'catastrophic'. In May 1941 the Royal Navy had sunk the battleship Bismarck as it made a futile bid to escape into the Atlantic shipping lanes. By the autumn the rest of Germany's surface fleet was confined to harbour, not only by the British but also by the chronic lack of fuel."
Wages of Destruction: page 442:
"Shipments of oil to Britain peaked at more than 20 million tons, nine times the maximum figure ever imported by Germany during the war. In January 1941, when Germany is sometimes described as being 'glutted' with oil, stocks came to barely more than 2 million tons. In London, alarm bells went off whenever stocks fell below 7 million tons. So great was the disparity that the British Ministry of Economic Warfare, charged with assessing Germany's economic situation, had difficulty believing its highly accurate estimates of German oil stocks. To the British it seemed implausible that Hitler could possibly have embarked on the war with such a small margin of fuel security, an incredulity shared by both the Soviets and the Americans, who agreed in overestimating Germany's oil stocks by at least 100 per cent."
During 1941, Italy was only able to import 600,000 tons of fuel with 163,000 tons given to the navy. At this point that monthly consumption had to be reduced to 60,000 tons. The total amount of oil fuel available at the end of the year was about 200,000 tons. During this period it was decided to remove from service the older battleships. After the November British attack from Egypt (Operation Crusader), the high command and Mussolini requested that the Italian fleet defend the Libya-bound convoys. This paid off and was only possible by the special shipment of 80,000 tons of German oil fuel delivered at the end of the year.
On January 10th, 1942 the Italians informed the Germans that their navy’s supplies of fuel had dropped to 90,000 tons. During these months, the bottom was hit with reserves down to 14,000 tons. The situation deteriorated by the shipment of 9,000 tons of German oil fuel of quality too low to use. At the end of April, it was possible to import 50,000 tons of fuel oil per month from Romania. Suspending escort and mining missions by Italian cruisers reduced consumption. These cuts and new shipments allowed for the deployment of the whole Italian fleet during the battle with the British of mid-June. The Germans supplied fuel oil of only 10,000 tons in July 1942 and 23,000 tons in September. At the end of November 1942 the oil fuel reserve was about 70,000 tons plus all which was stored aboard the ships, This was enough for one sortie of the whole fleet. At the end of December, the old battleships Cesare, Duilio and Doria were removed from service.
The allied landing in North Africa in 1943 put the Italian navy in another state of fuel crisis. New missions were made possible by the shipment of 40,000 tons of quality German fuel oil. In January 1943, the fuel oil crisis reached its climax and the three modern battleships had to be removed from service eliminating the Italian battle force. The only naval division still operating was in Sardinia. Only 3,000 tons were received in February 1943 and in March and April the modern destroyers had to be removed from escort missions. By the 10th of April, the only major naval force was annihilated when the Trieste was sunk and the Gorizia seriously damaged by allied air attack. Expecting a possible Allied invasion, the remaining destroyers were reactivated along with the battleships which had only half their bunkers filled with diesel fuel.
In April 1943, the Italian navy was partially active and destroyers were used in escort missions. But there was no reserves of fuel oil left. The Germans "loaned" 60,000 tons of fuel oil captured from the French fleet at Toulon, allowing the three battleships to be reactivated with some cruisers. When Italy surrendered on September 8th 1943, their fleet only had enough fuel to reach Malta to surrender.
Such was the effect of the Royal Navy blockades.
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Neil Wilson
Goodwood's focus was not specifically tanks, as the Germans had five lines of defence with dug in 88mm's and heavy Tiger and fast Panther tanks for mobility. Goodwood was mostly 'not' bocage but open ground more suitable for tank battles, where the German long range 88mm's would be at an advantage.
Monty's plan was not for British forces to take territory. He specifically wanted to draw in German armour onto British forces to grind them up to keeping them away from the US forces for them to break out (Operation Cobra). That was even stated at St.Paul's school in Fulham. To do that he was confident British armour could match German armour - US armour would struggle or most likely be overwhelmed. A 12 mile sector around Caen saw more concentrated German armour in all of WW2. Goodwood was not British forces taking territory, as the plan was for the US forces to do that, Monty specifically states this here in this link in an interview with Edward R Murrow. Transcript....
"The acquisition of territory on the eastern flank of the beachhead in the Caen sector was not really important. What was important there was to draw the maximum number of German divisions, and especially the armour, into that flank. The acquisition of territory was important on the western flank [the US sector]." ...."an accusation drawn at me, that I ought to have taken Caen in the programme on D-Day! And we didn't. I didn't mind about that because....The air force would get very het up because I didn't go further down towards Falaise and get the ground suitable for airfields. I didn't bother about that, it would have meant enormous casualties in doing it and it wasn't necessary."
"I could reply to that criticism that on the American front the line from which the breakout was finally launched was a line the St.Lo-Periers road, should have been captured in the initial plan by the American 1st Army on D-Day plus 5, that was the 11th June. But they didn't actually capture it until the 18th July. But I have never returned the charge with that accusation. ...until now"
"I have never understood why Ike said in his dispatches that, when the British failed to break out towards Paris on the eastern flank. The Americans were able [to break out], because of our flexibility, to take it on, on our western flank. I have always thought that was an unfair criticism of Dempsey and the 2nd British Army."
- Field Marshall Montgomery (1959)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_TB9wHRRSw
The RAF chief Tedder, wanted Monty fired as he wanted open territory to the south towards Falaise to setup his airfields saying Monty was not pursing territory aggressively enough. Monty would have none of it. Operation Goodwood was engaging the massed armoured German defences drawing them in to British lines, grinding them up moving slowly. Here is a 1970s objective British Army Sandhurst internal video analysing Operation Goodwood, with even German commanders who were there taking part. At the beginning it specifically states Monty told Generals O'Connor and Dempsey not to run south to Falaise, not to take territory. Look at 6 mins:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udW1UvSHXfY
Monty was not too concerned with Caen as it would consume too many resources to take. He was more concerned with grinding up German armour in the field. Although by the time of Goodwood only the southern suburbs were in German hands.
Monty was in charge of all of Operation Overlord. He wanted the German armour away from US forces, to allow them to break out. It worked. That is what he wanted and planned. Monty never saw Caen as important but never criticised US forces..... until 1959 when they were at him about Caen, he criticised them for taking St.Lo a month late - with little German armour around for a month. The Germans did send some armour to St.Lo with the US forces making it worse for themselves to capture the place.
Even Bradley agreed with Monty. Bradley wrote that:
"The British and Canadian armies were to decoy the enemy reserves and draw them to their front on the extreme eastern edge of the Allied beachhead. Thus, while Monty taunted the enemy at Caen, we (the Americans)were to make our break on the long roundabout road to Paris. When reckoned in terms of national pride, this British decoy mission became a sacrificial one, for while we tramped around the outside flank, the British were to sit in place and pin down the Germans. Yet strategically it fitted into a logical division of labors, for it was towards Caen that the enemy reserves would race once the alarm was sounded".
The Bulge was stopped by British 21st Army Group and absolutely the US 1st and 9th Armies were part of that army group. Monty was very diplomatic, wise and clever and never put British armies in the front, putting the US armies up there. But he was clever in putting British forces 'in' the US 9th army under US army command. So, British forces were at the front answerable to US commanders who were answerable to British commanders. Sounds very allied to me. He did not want to humiliate US forces by putting them at the rear, which would have been the sensible thing to do if the armies were of all one nationality. That would be counter to allied cooperation.
General Hasso von Manteuffel on the Bulge:
‘The operations of the American 1st Army had developed into a series of individual holding actions. Montgomery's contribution to restoring the situation was that he turned a series of isolated actions into a coherent battle fought according to a clear and definite plan. It was his refusal to engage in premature and piecemeal counter-attacks which enabled the Americans to gather their reserves and frustrate the German attempts to extend their breakthrough’.
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No need for HS2 north of Crewe.
Currently, the HS2 plan links to the WCML south of Crewe, as the Golborne Link has been dropped. HS2 then running north only serves Manchester. For a few miles from Crewe, north to Minshull Vernon HS2 parallels the WCML, being six tracks wide in total.
Hendy, head of Network Rail, wants the WCML upgraded from Crewe to Preston. From Crewe to Weaver Junction where trains split to Liverpool and Scotland, the 2-track WCML there could be made into 4-track with two tracks being for HS2 classic compatible trains to Liverpool and Scotland – but having these tracks still on the WCML, not HS2. The Crewe North HS2 to WCML junction could remain, allowing Liverpool and Lancaster trains to access Crewe station as already planned under the Crewe Hub scheme.
Non-stop trains would be at full HS2 linespeed of 360kph (223 mph) on the new WCML tracks dedicated to HS2 classic compatible services, with no existing restriction to such speeds. This way, Liverpool and Scotland get ‘fast’ services with Runcorn retaining its London service. Journey times would be similar to HS2 times. All just by making 16 miles of new WCML track 223mph.
Manchester already has a dedicated line to Crewe. Upgrade this and near equal HS2 times are achieved.
HS2 phase 2b will cost £32 billion and rising. Most of that is for the western leg which only runs to Manchester. This is an obscene amount of money serving only one provincial city. Upgrading the WCML north of Crewe, and the Liverpool WCML spur and Manchester WCML spur, can be done for a fraction of the cost of HS2 without needlessly tearing up countryside
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Oh no! Monty was only good at set battles? From El Alemein, he chased Rommel 1,000 kms in 17 days. The fastest advance in WW2 over that distance. It’s a myth that Monty was ‘slow’ and ‘cautious’ and American propaganda, spread largely by Bradley and his staff because Bradley was embarrassed that during the Bulge Monty was brought in to replace him and take control of two shambolic US armies.
In France 1944 D-Day plus 90 was 4 September 1944, the projected end to the operation. Monty said Paris would be liberated on D-day plus 90. It was liberated on D-Day plus 80.
Dempsey took Brussels, 183 miles from Caen, on D-Day plus 89. Dempsey took Antwerp, 253 miles from Caen, on D-Day plus 90.That is faster than the Germans in 1940.
Monty had no time for WW1-like narrow breakthroughs that would run out of steam after a few miles and let the Germans form new defensive lines. Many generals before Monty had outrun their supply.
From Nigel Hamilton’s biography:
As in the campaign from Alamein to Tripoli, Monty’s intention was to resist opportunism and to defeat the enemy by retaining the initiative- building up his forces, and then ‘driving’ so hard that he could maintain sufficient momentum to reach his considered objective in one operation. Tripoli had fallen in this way.
Monty was in his element. It was a repetition of Alam Halfa- and just as he had then astonished his staff by planning the offensive battle of Alamein while Eighth Army prepared itself for a defensive battle at Alam Halfa, so now he gave Simpson details of his forthcoming offensive at Mareth.....
The secret, as he had learned in the aftermath of Alamein and demonstrated in the battle for Tripoli, was not simply to follow up the enemy, but to prepare men, material and supplies so that, having once broken through the crust of opposition, Eight Army had sufficient momentum to smash its way through to its further objectives. In a letter of 2 January 1943 Monty had explained his tactical strategy to the CIGS, Sir Alanbrooke:
”My present situation is that the further I get from Benghazi, the more difficult my administration becomes. I have now got to the point where I cannot let the enemy go on drawing me forward slowly. My solution is to stand where I am, to spend up to 14th Jan in building resources of petrol, supplies, ammunition, etc. and then to smash my way through to TRIPOLI in one big bound.”
This tactical strategy, so mocked later by romantic historians enamoured of the pragmatic cut-and-thrust type of military manoeuvre, was Monty’s greatest contribution to the war in North Africa. The Allies under Eisenhower had attempted to exploit the success and surprise of their ‘Torch’ landing by piecemeal advance into Tunisia. Within a month Anderson was confessing to Eisenhower he had reached a "point of diminishing power" being at the end of a long and tortuous line of supply.
- Hamilton, Nigel. Monty, Master of the Battlefield.
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On 12 September, Bradley had told Patton about Market Garden and warned him that if it succeeded, the Third Army might be held back on the west bank of the Moselle for weeks while the detested Montgomery performed wonders in the north.
Patton therefore suggested to Bradley that he cross the Moselle and get his forces so involved beyond the river that Eisenhower would be unable to stop him and must therefore support him. This ploy proved unnecessary: Eisenhower changed his mind yet again, at least in part, telling Bradley that he might ‘push his right wing [Patton’s Army] only far enough for the moment so as to hold adequate bridgeheads beyond the Moselle, and thus create a constant threat'.
This was all that Patton needed to cross the river and surge ahead as far as he could, never mind the point about bridgeheads. By the evening of 14 September, the day V and VII Corps of the US First Army opened their attacks, Patton had established half a dozen crossing points over the Moselle, and was heading east, consuming great quantities of fuel and ammunition. The outcome was that Patton did not stop until brought to a halt by the German army in front of Metz. It should be noted that this move, designed by Bradley and Patton to check Montgomery, actually had a dire effect on Bradley’s other contingent, the US First Army, which was starved of fuel and artillery ammunition at Aachen.
On 16 September, when Eisenhower told Bradley that logistical priority must go to First Army and Patton must stop, Patton again told Bradley that the Third Army must get involved ‘at once’ and asked Bradley to ignore this order and ‘not to call me until after dark on the nineteenth.’
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944:
There has been speculation that Market Garden was sabotaged by the US 82nd, who were taking one of the largest bridges in Europe at Nijmegen, just to get one over Montgomery.
As Neillands states, "It should be noted that this move, designed by Bradley and Patton to check Montgomery." The move was not to gain an advantage over the enemy it was to spite a fellow allied general. This was when there was problems with the logistical train and resources scarce. Unbelievable.
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The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British under Montgomery. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
▪ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa; October 1942 - El Alamein;
▪ March 1943 - Medenine;
▪ June 1944 - Normandy;
▪ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands;
▪ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge;
A list of Montgomery’s victories in WW2:
▪ Battle of Alam Halfa;
▪ Second Battle of El Alamein;
▪ Battle of El Agheila;
▪ Battle of Medenine;
▪ Battle of the Mareth Line;
▪ Battle of Wadi Akarit;
▪ Allied invasion of Sicily;
▪ Operation Overlord - the largest amphibious invasion in history;
▪ Market Garden - a 60 mile salient created into German territory;
▪ Battle of the Bulge - while taking control of two shambolic US armies;
▪ Operation Veritable;
▪ Operation Plunder.
Montgomery not once had a reverse.
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Monty's 8th Army advanced the fastest of any army in WW2. From El Alamein to El Agheila from the 4th to 23rd November 1942, 1,300 km in just 17 days. After fighting a major exhausting battle at El Alemein through half a million mines. This was an Incredible feat, unparalleled in WW2. With El Alamein costing just 13,500 casualties.
The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties, with the Lorraine campaign being a failure. Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties. Hodges, head of the US First army, fled from Spa to near Liege on the 18th, despite the Germans never getting anywhere near to Spa. Hodges did not even wait for the Germans to approach Spa. He had already fled long before the Germans were stopped. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British, with Montgomery involved in planning, with also Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
You need to give respect where it is due.
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@5co756
The axial-flow was only perfected and made reliable by the RR Avon in 1950. Until then the centrifugal engine was the better option. Simple. Please try.
Only the manufacturers claimed 550mph from the 262. Pilots were told not to go over 450mph. Just a little faster than the Spitfire Mk IV.
The Meteor was built to known aerodynamics so if problem it could be pinned to the new jet engine. Many jet fighters did not have swept wings. The Meteor during WW2 was have more advanced engines fitted as they were being released.
The Meteor is still flying today being flown operationally until the 1980s, unlike the dog the 262.
Germany never had an advanced high temperature alloys programme. The British did. They also had concept failures on their engines.
Meteor did not need to fly over enemy territory.
There were five turbojet engines in the UK under R&D in WW2:
1) Centrifugal, by Whittle (Rover);
2) Centrifugal, by Frank Halford (DeHaviland);
3) Axial-flow, by Metro-Vick;
4) Axial-flow by Griffiths (Rolls Royce);
5) Axial flow compressor, with reverse flow combustion chambers. The ASX by Armstrong Siddley;
Metro-Vick sold their jet engine division to Armstrong Siddley. The Metro-Vick engine transpired into the post war Sapphire. Most American engines in the 1940s/50s were of UK design, many made under licence. The US licensed the J-42 (RR Nene) and J-48 (RR Tay), being virtually identical to the British engines. US aircraft used licensed British engines powering the: P-59, P-80, T-33, F9F Panther, F9F-6 Cougar, FJ Fury 3 and 4, Martin B-57 Canberra, F-94 Starfire, A4 Skyhawk and the A7 Corsair.The US General Electric J-47 turbojet was developed by General Electric in conjunction with Metropolitan Vickers of the UK, who had already developed a nine-stage axial-flow compressor engine licensing the design to Allison in 1944 for the earlier J-35 engine, first flying in May 1948. The centrifugal Rolls Royce Nene is one of the highest production jet engines in history with over 50,000 built.
Now you know.
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"The 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Shields Warren, was charged with taking the road bridge over the Waal at Nijmegen: a prime task of Operation Market was being entrusted here to just one battalion from an entire division. According to the US Official History, there was some dispute over exactly when the 1st Battalion should go for the bridge. General Gavin was to claim later that the battalion was to ‘go for the bridge without delay’. However, Colonel Lindquist, the 508th Regimental commander, understood that Warren’s battalion was not to go for the bridge until the other regimental objectives — securing the Groesbeek Ridge and the nearby glider LZs, had been achieved: General Gavin’s operational orders confirm Warren’s version. Warren’s initial objective was ground near De Ploeg, a suburb of Nijmegen, which he was to take and organise for defence: only then was he to ‘prepare to go into Nijmegen later’ and these initial tasks took Lieutenant Colonel Warren most of the day. It was not until 1830hrs that he was able to send a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small, just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a radio — *say forty men."
*
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
So Gavin thought that Linquist was moving onto the bridge immediately, with Warren joining later. Warren moved to the bridge only to find now a bunch of SS men there, instead of US paras.
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@bretrudeseal4314
Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower, approved and under resourced the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak".
The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself.
XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.
Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time Monty had the Canadians cleared it, or were investing in many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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Mazda have done promising research on HCCI ignition for its SkyActiv-R rotary engine project using research from its SkyActive 2 program. They have removed the need to locate the spark plug outside the combustion chamber to allow the rotor to sweep past. Mazda solved this in the SkyActiv-R rotary project. Rotaries generally have high compression ratios giving the design easy adoption of homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI).
It looks like the next Mazda rotary will not have a spark plug and be HCCI ignition. Fuel consumption will match piston engines and when used at a constant speed genny as in a hybrid, outperform piston engines with all the advantages of low weight, small size, super-smooth, simplicity, etc. The expectation will be that the engine will be introduced in 2020, the 100th anniversary of Mazda. Looking good.
Rotaries are better suited to constant speed, high efficiency genset applications rather than direct drive via gearboxes. In that application piston engines cannot compete. Rotaries are better suited for series-hybrid cars being much superior than piston engines.
Direct fuel injection and laser ignition will improve the Wankel considerably when introduced. The problem of unburnt fuel in the exhaust will be eliminated improving emissions and fuel consumption. The engine performs very, very well in fuel consumption and emissions running at a 'constant speed' turning a generator - its most efficient "sweet spot". Wankels lose efficiency dramatically when they are revved up and down as when directly driving a car. The engine has a vastly superior power-weight ratio than piston/crank engines and is about one third of the size and weight of a piston engine for a similar power output.
All these positive attributes combine to make a superb range extender, when the wheels are turned by electric motors. If a car is plugged in each night and uses grid power to run most of the time, then wear on these units will be negligible. As the engine is only periodically used, the life of the engine is greatly extended. Also newer metallurgic techniques are being used to make the engines. Even when batteries are depleted, the Wankel can provide enough electricity to power the car and still be economical.
It takes only 25 to 30hp to propel a large American car down the highway at 70mph. Yet they put engines in them that can output 150 to 200hp. Most of that output is for acceleration and heavy loads. Highly inefficient. The great thing about a series-hybrid is that the generating engine works totally independent of the demands of the electric driving motor, enabling maximum efficiency when running. This means the generating engines can be greatly downsized. The battery acts as an energy buffer to give acceleration boosts.
Mazda announced a rotary in a hybrid will be available in 12-18 months.
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You never looked at the vid. It is very British thing to be realistic. Market Garden failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. The failure point was not seizing the Nijmegen bridge immediately. At the end of D-Day all crossings were denied to the Germans, except one - the Nijmegen bridge.
General Gavin of the US 82nd was supposed to seize the Nijmegen bridge as soon as landing. Gavin never, he failed with only a few German guards on the bridge. He failed because his 82nd did not seize the Nijmegen bridge immediately. Gavin even de-prioritised the bridge the prime target and focus. The 82nd were ready at 2 pm on the jump day and never moved to the bridge. The gigantic bridge was guarded by only 19 guards. The Germans occupied the bridge at 1900 hrs. Six hours after the 82nd were ready to march.
Events on the 1st day:
♦ "At 1328, the 665 men of US 82nd 1st Battalion began
to fall from the sky." Poulussen, R. Lost at Nijmegen.
♦ "Forty minutes after the drop, around 1410, _the
1st Battalion marched off towards their objective,
De Ploeg, three miles away." Poulussen,
♦ "The 82nd were digging in and performing recon
in the area looking for 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald
- Neillands, R. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
♦ The 82nd were dug in and preparing to defend their
newly constructed regimental command post, which
they established at 1825. Then Colonel Lindquist
"was told by General Gavin, around 1900, to move
into Nijmegen." Poulussen
Events on the evening of the 1st day:
♦ Having dug in at De Ploeg, Warren's battalion wasn't prepared
to move towards Nijmegen at all. Poulussen,
♦ Once Lindquist told Lieutenant Colonel Warren that his
Battalion was to move, Warren decided to visit the HQ
of the Nijmegen Underground first - to see what info the
underground had on the Germans at the Nijmegen bridge.
- Poulussen,
♦ It was not until 1830hrs that he [Warren] was able to send
a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small,
just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a
radio — say forty men.
- Neillands. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
♦ This was not a direct route to the bridge from Warren's
original position, and placed him in the middle of the town.
It was also around 2100 when "A" Company left to attempt
to capture the Nijmegen road bridge.
♦ "B" Company was not with them because they'd split up
due to it being dark with "visibility was less than ten yards".
- Poulussen,
♦ The 82nd attacks were resisted by the Germans until the
next day.
Events of the 2nd day:
♦ Gavin drove up in a jeep the next morning and
was told by Warren that although they didn't have the bridge
yet, another attack was about to go in.
♦ Gavin then told Warren to hold because the Germans were
attacking in the southeast portion of the 82nd perimeter.
♦ At around 1100, Warren was ordered to withdraw from
Nijmegen completely. - Poulussen
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The first solid state electronic component was the cats whisker detector in 1904, by an Indian, Jagadish Chandra Bose, in England. Julius Edgar Lilienfeld, a Pole, invented a solid state amplifier, what a transistor is, as mentioned in the vid, in the 1920s. The men at Bell Labs (a telephone company) developed the transistor to improve the sound of speech on long distance phone calls, using his patents. They based it on Lilienfeld's patents, not giving him credit, so hence were charlatans, not deserving a Nobel prize. The Japanese, Sony, took it from Bell, improving it to use in radio sets. The men at Bell Labs laughed at the Japanese who visited them thinking they could never do that. They did. Credit must also go to the Sony men. Sony was more back street outfit at the time.
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The Germans had advanced beyond their widest dreams. The panzers were supplied by slow horses behind unable to keep up supplies. They had overstretched their supply lines. Rommel's Panzer column had been stopped by the Briitish at Arras, using the new Matilda 2 tank, which the German standard anti-tank guns could not knock out. Rommel stated that he thought he had been hit by a force three times the size.
German crews were tired. The truck drivers supporting the tanks were put on speed pills to keep them awake. They lacked sleep, fuel, ammunition, water, food, and maintenance of the vehicles (vehicles then were not like they are today).
In front of them were the British, and French, consolidating at Dunkirk, with the new small, nibble and heavily armoured Matilda 2 tank, which could knock out any German tank, but they could not knock it out unless they levelled an AA gun firing a solid shell. A gun useless in Dunkirk's streets. Added to this, the terrain south of Dunkirk was soft and marshy, not tank country. The fast moving panzers, now pretty well static, were now ineffective in a war of attrition. A form of fighting the Germans were not used to. Faced with this situation they had no option but to stop, consolidate, or be mauled. They stopped for only 24 hours.
Hitler issued Directive 13, which stated, to annihilate the forces inside the Dunkirk pocket. Aided by the Luftwaffe, the German troops and tanks continued the fight. A battle ensued called the Battle of Dunkirk. The British won the battle in the air and on the ground.
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What US historian Harry Yeide wrote of what the Germans thought of Patton:
♦ for most of the war the Germans barely took notice [of Patton].
♦ on March 23 at the Battle of El Guettar—the first American victory against the experienced Germans. Patton’s momentum, however, was
short-lived: Axis troops held him to virtually no gain until April 7, when they withdrew under threat from British Lieutenant General Bernard
Montgomery’s Eighth Army.
♦ There is no indication in the surviving German military records—which include intelligence reports at the theater, army, and division
levels—that Patton’s enemies had any idea who he was at the time. Likewise, the immediate postwar accounts of the German commanders in Tunisia, written for the U.S. Army’s History Division, ignore Patton. Those reports show that ground commanders considered II Corps’s attacks under Patton to have been hesitant, and to have missed great opportunities.
♦ In mid-June [1943], another detachment report described Patton as “an energetic and responsibility-loving command personality” —a passing comment on one of the numerous Allied commanders. Patton simply had not yet done anything particularly noteworthy in their eyes.
♦ But his race to Palermo through country they had already abandoned left the commanders unimpressed. Major General Eberhard Rodt, who led the 15th Panzergrenadier Division against Patton’s troops during the Allied push toward Messina, thought the American Seventh Army fought hesitantly and predictably. He wrote in an immediate postwar report on Sicily, “The enemy very often conducted his movements systematically, and only attacked after a heavy artillery preparation when he believed he had broken our resistance. This kept him regularly from exploiting the weakness of our situation and gave me the opportunity to consolidate dangerous situations.” Once again, Patton finished a campaign without impressing his opponents.
♦ General Hermann Balck, who took command of Army Group G in September, thus did not think highly of Patton—or any other opposing
commanders—during this time. Balck wrote to his commander, Runstedt, on October 10, “I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans” Looking back on his battles against Patton throughout the autumn, in 1979 Balck recalled, “Within my zone, the Americans never once exploited a success. Often [General Friedrich Wilhelm von] Mellenthin, my chief of staff, and I would stand in front of the map and say, ‘Patton is helping us; he failed to exploit another success.’”
♦ The commander of the Fifth Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel, aimed a dismissive, indirect critique at Patton’s efforts at Bastogne, writing in his memoirs that the Americans did not “strike with full élan.” The commanders who fought against Patton in his last two mobile campaigns in the Saar-Palatinate and east of the Rhine already knew they could not win; their losses from this point forward were inevitable, regardless of the commanding Allied opponent.
♦ the Germans offered Patton faint praise during and immediately after the war.
♦ posterity deserves fact and not myth. The Germans did not track Patton’s movements as the key to Allied intentions. Hitler does not
appear to have thought often of Patton, if at all. The Germans considered Patton a hesitant commanding general in the scrum of position warfare. They never raised his name in the context of worthy strategists.
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@snakey934Snakeybakey
Sgt Robinson and his crew who were in the first Firefly tank over the bridge state the US troops kissed the tanks.
Carington, who was head of NATO at one time, said it never happened. Burriss said it did.
The film A Bridge Too Far has Robert Redford (playing Capt Cook) as one of the 82nd men taking the vital road bridge after rowing the river in canvas boats. This never happened. Another part of the film has Redford (Cook) insisting to a British commander of the British XXX Corps tanks, after the tanks crossed the bridge, to run onto Arnhem and relieve the British paratroopers and the commander refusing, leaving his tanks idle.
Moffat Burris of the 82nd, on film stated he ordered the tank captain to run his tanks to Arnhem, saying on film, "I just sacrificed half of my company capturing that bridge". The tank officer was Capt (Lord) Carington, who eventually became head of NATO. Moffatt Burris stated: “I cocked my tommy gun, pointed it at his head and said, ‘Get down that blankety-blank road before I blow your blankety-blank head off." Carington explained politely that Captain Burriss surely didn’t expect him to obey orders of a foreign officer, but then, Burris says, Carington “ducked into his tank and locked the hatch” so, as Burris recalls, “I couldn’t get at him.” There is no record of this event occurring and there were many men around, implying Buffet is lying, maybe to save the face of the 82nd, as they played no part in seizing the bridge.
The tanks were to secure the north end of the bridge after seizing the bridge, not to run off to Arnhem in the dark leaving the bridge vulnerable. The Irish Guards after seizing the bridge and removing the 180 bodies from the girders with themselves used the 82nd men to form a defensive line around the bridge. The Irish Guards infantry advanced no further than the immediate vicinity of the bridge that night.
Sergeant Peter Robinson, of the of the Guards Armored Division who led the charge over the Nijmegen road bridge in his Firefly tank stated:
"The Nijmegen bridge wasn’t taken [by the 82nd] which was our objective. We reached the far end of the bridge and immediately there was a roadblock. So the troop sergeant covered me through and then I got to the other side and covered the rest of the troop through. We were still being engaged; there was a gun in front of the church three or four hundred yards in front of us. We knocked him out. We got down the road to the railway bridge; we cruised round there very steady. We were being engaged all the time. Just as I got round the corner and turned right I saw these helmets duck in a ditch and run, and gave them a burst of machine gun fire. I suddenly realised they were Americans. They had already thrown a gammon grenade at me so dust and dirt and smoke were flying everywhere. They jumped out of the ditch; they kissed the tank; they kissed the guns because they’d lost a lot of men. They had had a very bad crossing."
Captain Lord Carrington's own autobiography entitled 'Reflect on Things Past':
"My recollection of this meeting is different. Certainly I met an American officer but he was perfectly affable and agreeable. As I said the Airborne were all very glad to see us and get some support, no one suggested we press on to Arnhem. This whole allegation is bizarre, just to begin with I was a captain and second-in-command of my squadron so I was in no position either to take orders from another captain or depart from my own orders which were to take my tanks across the bridge, join up with the US Airborne and form a bridgehead. This story is simple lunacy and this exchange did not take place."
Lord Carrington again...
"At that stage my job - I was second-in-command of a squadron - was to take a half-squadron of tanks across the bridge. Since everybody supposed the Germans would blow this immense contraption we were to be accompanied by an intrepid Royal Engineer officer to cut the wires and cleanse the demolition chambers under each span. Our little force was led by an excellent Grenadier, Sergeant Robinson, who was rightly awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his action. Two of our tanks were hit not lethally - by anti-tank fire, and we found a number of Germans perched in the girders who tried to drop things on us but without great effect. Sergeant Robinson and the leading tank troop sprayed the opposite bank and we lost nobody, When I arrived at the far end my sense of relief was considerable: the bridge had not been blown, we had not been plunged into the Waal (In fact it seems the Germans never intended to blow the bridge. The demolition chambers were packed with German soldiers, who surrendered), we seemed to have silenced the opposition in the vicinity, we were across one half of the Rhine."
"A film representation of this incident has shown American troops as having already secured the far end of the bridge. That is mistaken - probably the error arose from the film-maker's confusion of two bridges, there was a railway bridge with planks placed between the rails and used by the Germans for [light] road traffic, to the west of the main road bridge we crossed; and the gallant American Airborne men: reached it. When Sergeant Robinson and his little command crossed our main road bridge, however, only Germans were there to welcome him; and they didn't stay."
The meeting of the 82nd men and the tanks was 1 km north of the bridge at the village of Lent where the railway embankment from the railway bridge met the north running road running off the main road bridge. The 82nd men did not reach the north end of the actual road bridge, the Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry got there first from the south.
Only five tanks were available at the north end of the bridge to secure it, with two hit. No tanks were available to run on any further to Arnhem and any that did would have been sitting ducks on the raised road.
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What US historian Harry Yeide wrote of what the Germans thought of Patton:
♦ for most of the war the Germans barely took notice [of Patton].
♦ on March 23 at the Battle of El Guettar—the first American victory against the experienced Germans. Patton’s momentum, however, was short-lived: Axis troops held him to virtually no gain until April 7, when they withdrew under threat from British Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army.
♦ There is no indication in the surviving German military records—which include intelligence reports at the theater, army, and division levels—that Patton’s enemies had any idea who he was at the time. Likewise, the immediate postwar accounts of the German commanders in Tunisia, written for the U.S. Army’s History Division, ignore Patton. Those reports show that ground commanders considered II Corps’s attacks under Patton to have been hesitant, and to have missed great opportunities.
♦ In mid-June [1943], another detachment report described Patton as “an energetic and responsibility-loving command personality”—a passing comment on one of the numerous Allied commanders. Patton simply had not yet done anything particularly noteworthy in their eyes.
♦ But his race to Palermo through country they had already abandoned left the commanders unimpressed. Major General Eberhard Rodt, who led the 15th Panzergrenadier Division against Patton’s troops during the Allied push toward Messina, thought the American Seventh Army fought hesitantly and predictably. He wrote in an immediate postwar report on Sicily, “The enemy very often conducted his movements systematically, and only attacked after a heavy artillery preparation when he believed he had broken our resistance. This kept him regularly from exploiting the weakness of our situation and gave me the opportunity to consolidate dangerous situations.” Once again, Patton finished a campaign without impressing his opponents.
♦ General Hermann Balck, who took command of Army Group G in September, thus did not think highly of Patton—or any other opposing commanders—during this time. Balck wrote to his commander, Runstedt, on October 10, “I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans” Looking back on his battles against Patton throughout the autumn, in 1979 Balck recalled, “Within my zone, the Americans never once exploited a success. Often [General Friedrich Wilhelm von] Mellenthin, my chief of staff, and I would stand in front of the map and say, ‘Patton is helping us; he failed to exploit another success.’”
♦ The commander of the Fifth Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel, aimed a dismissive, indirect critique at Patton’s efforts at Bastogne, writing in his memoirs that the Americans did not “strike with full élan.” The commanders who fought against Patton in his last two mobile campaigns in the Saar-Palatinate and east of the Rhine already knew they could not win; their losses from this point forward were inevitable, regardless of the commanding Allied opponent.
♦ the Germans offered Patton faint praise during and immediately after the war.
♦ posterity deserves fact and not myth. The Germans did not track Patton’s movements as the key to Allied intentions. Hitler does not appear to have thought often of Patton, if at all. The Germans considered Patton a hesitant commanding general in the scrum of position warfare. They never raised his name in the context of worthy strategists.
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The state of play on the 17th was that the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was clear. There was concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally. There were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen. Then a few scattered about along the road. There was no armour in Arnhem. That was it.
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 3 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured the bridge.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected.
XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up. The road was still clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump.
XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, at the planned expected time, making up the delay at Zon. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over.
If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
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John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
Montgomery to Alexander on July 19th 1943. A letter regarding to Patton and Messina in Sicily: " ..when the Americans have cut the coast road north of Petralia, one American division should develop a strong thrust eastwards towards Messina so as to stretch the enemy who are all Germans and possibly repeat the Bizerte (Tunisia) manoeuvre (i.e cut them off)"
Monty wrote in his diary:
"the Seventh American Army should develop two strong thrusts with (a) two divisions on Highway 120 and (b) two divisions on Highway 113 towards Messina. This was all agreed"
Pages 140/141 of Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory by Michael Reynolds.
"[Monty] sent a message to Patton inviting him to come and discuss the capture of Messina. He offered, “Many congratulations to you and your gallant soldiers on securing Palermo and clearing up the western half of Sicily.” Privately, of course, he believed Patton’s Palermo escapade had been a completely wasted effort."
"Patton met Monty at Syracuse airfield on the 25th. Expecting the worst and mistrusting his comrade’s intentions, he was astounded when Monty suggested that the Seventh Army should use both the major roads north of Mount Etna (Highways 113 and 120) in a drive to capture Messina. In fact, Monty went even further and suggested that his right hand, or southern, thrust might even cross the inter-Army boundary and strike for Taormina, thereby cutting off the two German divisions facing the Eighth Army; the latter would “take a back seat.”
by Michael Reynolds author of Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory
‘Montgomery was heading for Messina too, but the German forces still on the island threw up a tough defence line and it was late July before Montgomery worked his way through them and resumed his advance. Fans of the movie ''Patton'' think they know what happened next. Montgomery marched into Messina at the head of his triumphant troops - to find a smirking Patton waiting for him. Mr. D'Este assures us it didn't happen that way. Patton was indeed trying to beat Montgomery to Messina, but Montgomery would not make a race of it. He wanted only to keep the Germans from escaping and realized Patton was in the best position to accomplish that. In fact he urged Patton to use roads assigned to the Eighth Army.’
www.nytimes.com/1988/11/27/books/the-finish-line-was-messina.html
In Sicily Patton was moving in the west over ground the Germans had abandoned and still made heavy going of it. It was arranged that Patton gets to Messina first with Montgomery. His troops did taking the easy route while the British slogged it out with the Germans, reaching Messina only a few hours after Patton.
"Although Brig. Gen. Maxwell Taylor, the artillery commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, described the provisional corps’ advance into northwestern Sicily as “a pleasure march, shaking hands with Italians asking, ‘How’s my brother Joe in Brooklyn?’ Nicest war I’ve ever been in!” it was in fact extremely unpleasant for many of the GIs who had to march over 100 miles through very rugged country in stifling heat and swirling dust."
by Michael Reynolds author of Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory
Bradley:
“Patton was developing as an unpopular guy. He steamed about with great convoys of cars and great squads of cameramen … To George, tactics was simply a process of bulling ahead. Never seemed to think out a campaign. Seldom made a careful estimate of the situation. I thought him a shallow commander … I disliked the way he worked, upset tactical plans, interfered in my orders. His stubbornness on amphibious operations, parade plans into Messina sickened me and soured me on Patton. We learned how not to behave from Patton’s Seventh Army.”
The reference to amphibious operations was in relation to three landings made on the north coast of Sicily during the advance to Messina, known to the Americans as end runs. Patton did not in fact interfere in the first successful landing, but he ordered the second to take place earlier than Bradley and Truscott wished, ending in a minor disaster, and he ordered the third to take place despite the fact that the 3rd Division had already advanced beyond the landing site!"
by Michael Reynolds author of Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory
More amateurism from Patton, taking towns unnecessarily slowing down the operation:
"On July 19, Monty had signalled Alexander, outlining his axes of advance around either side of Mount Etna and suggesting that “when the Americans have cut the coast road north of Petralia, one American division should develop a strong thrust eastwards towards Messina so as to stretch the enemy who are all Germans and possibly repeat the Bizerta manoeuvre [i.e., cut them off].”
"This made complete military sense, but by the 17th Patton had persuaded Alexander to allow him to drive toward the northwestern part of the island. When Alexander tried to restrain Patton by sending him a new directive on the evening of the 19th, it was too late. The directive, in accordance with Monty’s suggestion, ordered Patton to first cut the coastal road north of Petralia and only then to move on Palermo. However, the Seventh Army Chief of Staff, Brig. Gen. Hobart Gay, kept the first part of the message from Patton, ensured that the remainder took a long time to be decoded, and then asked for it to be repeated on the grounds that it had been garbled! By the time this problem had been resolved, the advance guard of Keyes’ provisional corps was already in Palermo and Monty’s idea of an American division helping him, at least in the short term, had been frustrated."
by Michael Reynolds author of Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory
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Germany's biggest mistake was declaring war in the first place. Once they waged war when was the point they could not win? That was when the British refused to make peace in June 1940. With Britain still in the war the Royal Navy blockade starved Germany, and the Axis, of vital resources, including food (animal & human) and oil. Britain was even buying up rare metals from Turkey to ensure the Germans did not have them. The Royal Navy controlled and freely sailed the eastern Atlantic and the eastern Mediterranean, and both entrances to the Mediterranean. They even had Malta all through WW2, on the doorstep of Axis Italy. Britain's land forces were from Turkey to Libya. Essentially the British surrounded Europe, controlling the sea lanes.
The Royal Navy ensured the conflict with Germany would continue. Germany could not win from June 1940 onwards. Being a largely landlocked country, Germany's forces were heavily based on its army, while Britain's was heavily based on its navy and air force with a small highly mobile army. Germany could not remove Britain from the war having pretty well no surface fleet to Britain having the largest navy in the world.
Britain's approach was that every operation was to bleed Germany of resources, especially oil. Operations in Norway and Greece forced the Germans to deploy troops to these areas but also its surface fleet, which mainly was destroyed in Norway. The German occupied countries were also under the blockade, which were also a drain of German resources.
The British, because of its armed forces structure of massive navy, large air force and small highly mobile army were unable to engage the Germans on the European land mass, on which Germany had a massive army. Apart from the air, the two countries could not get at each other. Britain's war then was partially an economic war. Every German operation against the British had to be decisive whereas the British could lose to the Germans while still asserting economic pressure in its favour. This was the British way of war being very good at it. Britain used similar tactics against Germany in WW1 to devastating effects. This approach was used against the French on multiple occasions over 200 years. Smaller nations in Europe would follow Pax Britannica due British naval dominance. Britain could dictate any war's outcome by blocking trade and resources to one side or another.
The Germans like most of Europe relied on imported oil, raw materials and food (animal & human). For the Germans these resources can only come from two regions - the USSR or the rest of the world. By removing the rest of the world from the grasp of the Axis, the British forced the Germans to acquire Soviet oil - Romania did not produce enough. Hitler had no choice but to invade the Soviet Union in June 1941 because of the resources situation. He needed the resources of the USSR to fight the coming air war with Britain. In May 1940 Roosevelt stated the USA would produce 50,000 planes per year. Most of these would be directed towards Germany with British production on top.
Germany greatly expanded its U-Boat fleet. The popular view was that this fleet was to starve Britain into submission. That was valid but a high hope, however, it was also to divert and lock up Royal Navy resources in convoy protection and U-Boat hunting, allowing merchant ships to enter Germany and the occupied countries more freely.
Germany had been forced into a situation by the British that they knew they could not escape from. Even if Germany had seized the Caucuses' oil fields intact (the Soviets sabotaged them to the point new deep bore holes would need to be drilled) the British would have focused them for their bombing campaign operating from the Middle East - there were plans to bomb them as Britain held nearby Iraq and occupied Iran. This was to drain Germany of vital oil. Every British victory in Africa was decisive and every German victory was not, even if Germany won an operation, they were still being bled. Unless Germany could seize the Suez Canal and beyond, the British could just come back year after year and counter attack with new tanks and new men, with resources not being a problem for them.
Germany knew that they could not invade Britain as the royal Navy was just too powerful. The RAF could replace losses far quicker than they could, as they found out in the air Battle of Britain. Germany could not put their large army on British soil.
After June 1940 Germany has an enemy it can’t defeat not entertaining peace, economically throttling the Germans every day of the war. Germany never had time, the British did. The German invasion of the USSR with an army short of resources due to the Royal Navy blockade, may have quickened the war's end for Germany, however it was not the point that Germany was doomed. Germany had already lost the war it was just a matter of time when Germany collapsed.
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aRealHoot76
Britain was key in WW2. Britain fought on every front, being in the war on the first day up to the last - Britain’s war actually ended in 1946 staying on in Viet Nam using Japanese troops alongside British troops to defeat the Viet Minh, but that is another story. Britain was not attacked or attacked anyone, going into WW2 on principle. The Turkish ambassador to the UK stated that the UK can raise 40 million troops from its empire so will win the war. This was noted by Franco who indirectly said to Hitler he would not win, fearing British occupation of Spanish islands and territory if Spain joined the war. Spain and Turkey stayed out of the war.
The Turkish ambassador’s point was given credence when an army of 2.6 million was assembled in India that moved into Burma to wipe out the Japanese. From day one the Royal Navy formed a ring around the Axis positioning ships from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Arctic off Norway, blockading the international trade of the Axis. This deprived the Axis of vital human and animal food, oil, rubber, metals, and other vital resources. By 1941 the successful Royal Navy blockade had confined the Italian navy to port due to lack of oil. By the autumn of 1941 Germany's surface fleet was confined to harbour, by the British fleet and the chronic lack of fuel. A potential German invasion from the the USSR in the north into the oil rich Middle East entailed expanded British troop deployment to keep the Germans away from the oil fields, until they were defeated at Stalingrad.
Throughout 1942 British Commonwealth troops were fighting, or seriously expecting to be attacked, in:
♦ French North Africa;
♦ Libya;
♦ Egypt;
♦ Cyprus;
♦ Syria: where an airborne assault was expected, with preparations to reinforce Turkey if they were attacked;
♦ Madagascar: fighting the Vichy French to prevent them from inviting the Japanese in as they had done in Indochina;
♦ Iraq;
♦ Iran: the British & Soviets invaded Iran in August 1941.
Those spread-out covering troops were more in combined numbers than were facing Japan and Rommel in North Africa. The British Commonwealth fielded over 100 divisions in 1942 alone, compared to the US total of 88 by the end of the war. The Americans and Soviets were Johnny-come-late in WW2, moreso the Americans.
Before the USSR entered the conflict the Royal Navy’s blockade had reduced the Italian and German surface navies to the occasional sorties because of a lack of oil, with the British attacking the Germans and Italians in North Africa, also securing Syria, Iraq, the Levant and ridding the Italians from East Africa. The Germans were on the run by the time the USA had boots on the ground against the Axis.
The Germans had been stopped:
♦ in the west at the Battle of Britain in 1940;
♦ in the east at the Battle of Moscow in 1941. In which Britain provided 40% of the Soviet tanks.
Before the US had boots on the ground, the Germans were on the run after the simultaneous battles in late 1942 of:
♦ El Alemein;
♦ Stalingrad;
The Battle of El Alemein culminated in a quarter of a million Axis prisoners taken in Tunisia - more than taken at Stalingrad. Apart from the US Filipino forces that surrendered in early 1942, the US had a couple of divisions in Gaudalcanal after August 1942, and one in New Guinea by November 1942. In 1943 the US managed to get up to six divisions in the Pacific, but still not matching the British or British Indian armies respectively. Until late 1943 the Australian Army alone deployed more ground fighting troops against the Japanese than the USA.
The Americans never put more ground troops into combat against the Japanese at any point than just the British Indian Army alone, which was 2.6 million strong. The US had nowhere near 2.6 million men on the ground against the Japanese. The Soviets fielded about a million against the Japanese. Most Japanese troops were put out of action by the British and Soviets, not the USA. At the battles of Khohima and Imphal the Japanese suffered their worst defeat in their history up to that point.
Then the British set their Eastern and Pacific fleets against the Japanese, not far off in numbers to the US fleet. The British Pacific Fleet assisted US troops protecting the western coast of Okinawa with its armoured carriers - they could operate way nearer to the coast than wooden decked US carriers, as kamikaze's bounced off them. The fleet also bombarded Japan, Sumatra and Taiwan, sinking one Japanese aircraft carrier and disabling another. The massive British merchant fleet greatly assisted the supply of US forces.
The Australian navy assisted the US navy all through the Japanese war. The USA was in the war for four years, yet it was less than 10 months before the Japanese surrender they actually fielded an entire army against the Japanese. That was in the Philippines. Before that it was just divisions fighting on scattered islands for a month or so at a time.
In Europe the British planned and ran the D-Day Normandy campaign which came in ahead of schedule with 22% less casualties than predicted, with the British in command of all the air, sea and land forces of all nationalities. Then also destroying 90% of German armour in the west in the process, with constant air raids on German cities and industry culminating with 1,000 bomber raids. The Canadian navy was heavily involved in anti U-Boat operations in the Atlantic. The biggest agents in the defeat of the Nazis and Japanese were the British.
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March 2019:
Mazda has made a breakthrough with its age-old rotary engine that will allow it to power future models in markets across the world beyond being just a range extender.
Previously, the Japanese car maker announced that it was working on a rotary range extender - a compact version of its iconic Wankel combustion engine that it used in the iconic RX-7 series and other models. It would supplement an electric car in the way that the BMW i3s can be optioned with a small petrol motor, quietly generating electricity to charge batteries low on charge.
The Mazda version would do essentially the same thing, bringing its famed engine that was never emissions friendly into production again.
However, Mazda has made a further breakthrough in development, with an electric vehicle announcement scheduled for later this year that may include details of a rotary engine hybrid car.
Speaking with Drive at the launch of the brand’s all-new CX-30, managing executive officer in charge of powertrain development, Ichiro Hirose, said that it had developed a flexible rotary hybrid platform that was so efficient it could go on sale in the world’s most emissions-strict markets, leaving the door open for a driveline currently named ‘XEV’ to arrive in Australia in the future.
“We made an announcement that we are considering the combination of the rotary-based range extender and combined that with battery EV,” he said.
“What that entails is not simply a combined solution you’d find normally but it falls under what we call an umbrella term ‘XEV’, and what that means is that of course the range extender and the rotary engine has two functions.
“It has the generator function and also it can be used to provide the drive force to give you traction.”
The setup Hirose describes is similar to a vehicle such as the Toyota Prius, where a petrol engine is the main driving force and a light-weight electric hybrid setup supplements the traditional engine, using an electric motor for standing start acceleration and low-speed cruising – conditions that require high fuel consumption and thus produce high emissions.
“The enabler is simply because the rotary engine is compact in terms of its packaging size [and] if we should choose to do so we can have the generator, rotary engine and electric motor all in the one [driveline] because of the small packaging.”
Mazda’s approach is innovative, with an adaptable electric platform that can be modified to add or subtract the required electric-battery power – from a lightweight mild rotary petrol hybrid car to a full battery-electric car with a rotary range extender. Could this be the big electric vehicle announcement scheduled for later this year?
“What we intend to do is that with this combination you can vary the amount of battery and also the amount of fuel tank supply. What that allows us to do is, depending on the ratio between the two, is that we can have a derivative that can work more like a plugin hybrid.
“If you reduce the other way around it could be a pure battery-electric, using really the rotary engine as a range extender and, according to the balance, you can even provide something akin to the series hybrid that is providing the drive force.
“So, we are looking at a wider coverage and scope. Based on this architecture it allows us to do that, to explore the huge range of applications we can have with the rotary.”
Mazda remains coy on talking about production, but Hirose said it had already tested the new rotary to make sure it meets the most stringent emissions standards in the world, confirming it could be sold in the US.
“There are certain difficulties in order to comply with as you can imagine.
“What that means is during a typical drive the rotary engine would have been stopped but when certain conditions are met it needs to start moving suddenly. And this is where we need to look at the emissions for hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide and we need to be looking at a way of where the catalyst starts working exactly when the rotary engine starts moving. This is the difficulty in trying to meet the regulations when the ramp up happens of the rotary engine.”
But it appears that this is the reason for the flexible XEV hybrid architecture Mazda has developed, that can be altered easily to meet a region’s emissions requirements without going into the considerable expense of developing a new system for the one market.
“The reason we are taking this [flexible hybrid] approach is that we have many different requirements that are coming from many different regions if you look at it globally. I mentioned three main ways of doing so and one is most befitting and appropriate to a specific region. So, for those reasons, we introduce one sort [of hybrid setup] and change it to the other [for another market]. So, we will make appropriate arrangements that fits that region.
“If we were to introduce it in the US we would comply with the [stringent] level regulations during when the rotary is in operation. So, we have been able to make progress.
“I’m just saying that – theoretically - if we were to introduce it in the US we would be able to comply with the strictest of regulations.”
https://www.drive.com.au/news/mazda-confirms-flexible-xev-rotary-hybrid-driveline-120928
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@tomatoisnotafruit5670
You failed to read my post. Market Garden was a success. A prime strategic problem for SHAEF in September 1944 was opening up the approaches to Antwerp and keeping it from German counter-attack - the logistics problem to supply all allied armies. It was:
1) Take Noord Brabant, the land to the north and northeast of Antwerp, or;
2) Take the Schedlt.
Eisenhower had a Northern Thrust strategy, a push to the north on his stretched broad front lines. Taking Noord Babant fell in line with the desires for both SHEAF and Eisenhower. Noord Brabant had to be taken before the Scheldt, as it was essential. It was taken with limited forces. Forces were also sent to take the Schedlt.
Market Garden had to go ahead regardless of any threat or Northern Thrust strategy, and was actually a success. To use Antwerp and control the approaches, the Scheldt, everything up to the south bank of the lower Rhine at Nijmegen needed to be under allied control. The low-lying lands, boggy ground between Arnhem and Nijmegen with land strewn with rivers and canals, is perfect geography as a barrier against a German counter-attack towards Antwerp. Without control of Noord Brabant German forces would have been in artillery range of Antwerp, and with a build up of forces and supply directly back to Germany in perfect position for a counter-attack.
Market Garden was the offensive SHEAF wanted to secure Antwerp, a prime port for logistics for all allied armies. It made sense as the Germans were in disarray, so should be easy enough to gain. Monty added Arnhem to form a bridgehead over the Rhine to fall in line with Eisenhower's priority Northern Thrust strategy at the time. It made complete sense in establishing a bridgehead over the Rhine as an extra to the operation.
You needed Arnhem for an easier jump into Germany. Everything up to Nijmegen was needed if you wanted to do anything at all - that is, protect Antwerp and have a staging point to move into Germany. Gaining Noord Brabant, was vital, and was successfully seized. Fighting in the low lying mud and waterways of the Schedlt, which will take time, while the Germans a few miles away and still holding Noord Brabant made no sense at all.SHEAF got what they wanted from a strategic point of view.
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paxwallacejazz
The British Army from mid 1942 was the finest army in the world. It went through a major reformation, new doctrine with new equipment." The so-called invincible Germans army tried and failed, with its allies, for two years in WW2 to defeat the British army in North Africa. The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British. From El Alemein it moved right up into Denmark and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British.
Montgomery was in charge of all armies in Normandy. He had to give the US armies an infantry role as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him.
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein
♦ March 1943 - Medenine
♦ June 1944 - Normandy
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - Holland
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge.
Not on one occasion were Monty's ground armies pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. The US Army were struggling in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform all that great east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months. The Battle of the Bulge took all the US effort, and vital help from Montgomery and the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe. The USA retreat at the Bulge, the only allied army to be pushed back into a RETREAT in the 1944-45 timeframe.
Montgomery never suffered a reverse from Mid 1942 until May 1945, from Egypt to Denmark - 9 countries. Normandy was planned and commanded by the British which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against the panzers. Monty assessed the US armies and had to give them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped to fight tank v tank battles, nor had the experience.
On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces from Montgomery everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
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The Battle of Britain was an attempt to establish German air superiority in daylight over Southern England, with a view to either:
♦ Allow Operation Sealion, the invasion of England to proceed;
♦ To force the British government to ask for peace terms by the loss of that air superiority over their own soil.
The German aim was to obliterate RAF Fighter Command, which meant engaging them in the air. The German view of gaining air superiority gradually changed because of Luftwaffe losses,. Their decisions confirmed their change of stance::
♦ Withdrawing Stuka ground attack dive bombers from combat on August 19 because of heavy losses.
♦ On September 3, Kesselring presented the case for attacking London in mass as the last attempt at forcing the British to the decisive air-to-air engagement, being the Luftwaffe's last chance for air superiority in a short time.
♦ On September 16, Goering still wanted to believe that Fighter Command could not sustain the fight. On September 23, Speidel's report to the OKW could not avoid acknowledging that the Germans would be using fighters during the day and bombers only at night.
This precluded German total air superiority of fighters and bombers during the day. German fighters during the day had little chance of achieving the destruction of Fighter Command, because the British would not scramble for German fighter sweeps leaving German fighters flying around by themselves. The RAF would scramble for fighter-bomber attacks, but these would not cause mass combat leaving the RAF with ample planes, doing little to establish total German daylight air superiority for seaborne invasion purposes. The Germans being matched, and exceeded, in fighter technology made matters even worse for them.
Lee Mallory's air defence system was the world's first 'intranet', on which all current air defence systems are based. It located, intercepted and engaged German bomber formations before they reached land. The threat of Sealion was over by September 15, having begun in August 1940. The British had more planes at the end of the battle than at the beginning, while German stocks of planes dwindled fast.
On October 12, orders by Hitler made it clear that the preparations for an attempted invasion would only be carried on as a means to exercise pressure, however without damaging the German economy. In short, this order acknowledges that assuming Operation Sealion had not always been a bluff, it was from then on.
By October 27, Enigma intercepts, aerial photos of the barge fleet being sent back into the German economy, the season, and the winding down of the Luftwaffe's daylight air activity convinced Churchill that Sealion wasn't coming and that the Luftwaffe was shifting to the siege strategy of night bombing, dropping sea mines, etc.
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Germany had no realistic ability to overrun the UK. The British knew what sort of chance the Germans had. The reason the Germans had no chance was that the British were ready and waiting with factories turning out the latest equipment 24/7. During the so-called Battle of Britain, the Royal Navy had a mass of ships at Gibraltar ready for offensive operations against the Italians, they took the invasion of Britain really so seriously.
The German Navy was near non-existent. The single battleship the British kept in Portsmouth was quite able to handle everything the Germans had on the surface, together with the four flotillas of destroyers. I'm not counting the Home Fleet, which had additional powerful ships. In other words, the British kept plenty of naval force at home. All they needed to deal with the Germans with a good deal to spare. Also, 55 Matilda 2 tanks, which was immune from German anti-tank guns, were sent to North Africa, the Brits took the invasion so seriously.
Admiral Raeder said he could not guarantee putting down an invasion force, even with German air superiority, when the Royal Navy was still there. General Jodl talked of his men going through a British mincing machine.
In Churchill's memoirs, he says that he was prepared to defeat tens of thousands of Germans if they invaded (take that as slaughter). Presumably even if they arrived with weapons and not half-dead from seasickness in a 24 hour sea trip in barges being attacked from sea, land and air. The British kept plenty of force at home, all they needed, two million regular soldier and one million Home Guard.
And what were the Germans supposed to do? Sortie with two or three heavy cruisers, and blast their way through the Home Fleet or the Channel defences? At that point in the war, Bismarck was still under construction, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were under repair from the Norway operation, two of six heavy cruisers sunk, two of six light cruisers sunk, and only five of those could be considered modern warships, a large number of their destroyers were sunk at Narvik. The repair status on the rest of the ships wasn't real good. The Germans never even had an effective torpedo plane. The Stuka dive bomber was predictable in that it dived vertically. It was easily shot down and suffered so many losses in the Battle of Britain it was withdrawn from the battle.
So, with the German navy whittled to almost nothing, and the army incapable of crossing with enough force to win, the only threats was the then small U-boats force and the Luftwaffe. The British were therefore sparing about sending the RAF overseas. I don't know of any significant deployment of Spitfires outside the UK until the second half of 1942, and escort vessels kept on being built. The RAF defeated the Luftwaffe over Dunkirk, so the Germans knew they were no push over.
If anyone thinks that operation Sealion was a serious attempt at an invasion they are deluded. Even German generals never took it seriously. An invasion in concrete barges towed by tugs and no navy to speak of? The Germans knew the UK had a large industry working 24/7, the same size as Germany's, and the largest navy in the world to their virtually none.
The RAF was large with a large bomber force, which the Germans could not knock out. Any invasion at the few suitable invasion beaches would be met at the beaches by all types of aircraft. These could be based out of Me 109 range. State-of-the-art fighters would still be produced 24/7. There would always be top line fighters around.
According to Guderian in "Panzer Leader", and by pretty much any historian to follow, Sealion (Zee Lowe?) could succeed only with complete air superiority over the invasion areas, and at least naval equality in the Channel. Hence the air Battle of Britain, clearly won by Britain. Naval equality was a pipe dream for Germany, but a pipe smoked only if the Luftwaffe could attain a decisive victory. Given the failure of the prerequisite, there is really no point in debating the if Germans could invade the UK.
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Jay, read Scotsman Callum Douglas', author of The Secret Horsepower Race. Callum Douglas is an F1 engine designer and WW2 engine historian, who spent 5 years researching his book in the UK, USA and Germany. He learned technical German to research the German archives. He is the world's authority on WW2 aero engines.
Calum E Douglas wrote in a Twitter post:
Surely everyone just KNOWS that the good old stories about FORD laughing at the Merlin drawings and that Rolls-Royce engines were all hand built must be true!
But the British bumpkins in sheds with flat caps and files is far too much fun so it is generally preferred over pesky "archive data" to this very day.
Well this document, plus the fact there is a huge parts interchange manual which tells you which Packard part number you need to get to replace a certain Rolls-Royce part in either engine and visa versa. Of course not all parts were interchangeable, Packard did their own supercharger drive gearbox system, and used American sourced accessories like cabin air compressors and magnetos.
As I have previously posted, the Americans DID indeed deserve massive credit for the mass production of the Merlin in BOTH the USA and England, but this was in truth due to the fact that the best automatic machine tools in the world at the time were American, all the British mass production depended to a huge degree on American machine tools. But again, nobody cares about machine tools in history, so its not a sexy enough fact to promote on TV.
Calum Again....
Claiming that Britain didn't mass produce engines properly because if they had, they would never have needed to ask Packard for help. Despite having made twice the number anyone else did. It took Packard 4 years to exceed RR annual Merlin production by the way, and all the Packard Merlin`s we used had to be modified by RR after they arrived in the UK, because to allow Packard to work as they wished to, they agreed to let Packard make huge runs of exactly the same spec' engines, which were obsolete by the time they were finished and had to be modified by RR in Britain to the latest mod-spec individually after shipping.
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ORDER
508- P-rcht Infantry will:
(a) Land on DZ "T"
(b) Seize, organise and hold key terrain features in area of responsibility, and be prepared to seize Waal River crossing at NIJMEGEN (714633) on order of Div Comdr.
Let us assume pre-jump in England Gavin did not verbally tell Lindquist to go for the Waal bridge overriding the Order. So we have to go by the written Order which is freely available and a section coped above.
Regimental Liaison Officer of the 508th was Chester Graham: "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.'
Two battalions of the 508th were marching for just under three hours from the DZ to the empty Heights, arriving at *5 pm*. One battalion remained at the DZ securing it. The DZ was secure when they left. As soon as they were in the Heights with no Germans in sight the Heights were secure. All secure. Lindquist should have had his two companies prepared which was written in the Order.
Lindquist should have contacted Gavin 'immediately', by radio or messenger, to get the Divisional Order to go to the bridge on reaching the vacant and secure Heights. Lindquist could not move to the bridge without it.
Lindquist:
1) was way too late in obtaining the Order to proceed by radio or messenger;
2) never had the two companies prepared to move to the bridge.
When informed Lindquist was not moving to the bridge, Gavin sped personally to Lindquist screaming at him to move to the bridge at 7 pm, two hours after the 508 arrived at the Heights. Half an hour later the Germans reinforced the bridge. It took another two hours to muster the two companies spread over the Heights under Cnl Warren before they started to march at 9 pm. Far too late.
Lindquist failed on two important points.
Again, this is all assuming Gavin never gave verbal orders to Lindquist in England, only going by the written Order.
Whichever way you cut it, Lindquist was amateurish and to blame. Gavin also takes blame as he never had Lindquist trained and alert enough.
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Subsequent books by US authors quoting men who were actually there are useful.
When Gavin found out the 508th were not moving, he was livid, expecting them to be moving on the bridge, if there was no opposition. The 508th did send a recon patrol. According to Phil Nordyke’s Put Us Down In Hell (2012) three lead scouts of the patrol of 40, were separated making it to the vicinity of south end of the road bridge approaches, not the main steel span. They captured seven of the 18 Germans guards also their 20mm artillery gun guarding the south end of the bridge. They waited about an hour for reinforcements that never arrived, having to withdraw then observed the 9th SS Panzer recon battalion arriving from Arnhem.
The three scouts that reached the southern end of the Nijmegen bridge about an hour before the 9th SS arrived. Joe Atkins in The 508th Connection (2013) said:
"at the bridge, only a few German soldiers were standing around a small artillery weapon... The Germans were so surprised; the six or seven defenders of the bridge gave up without resisting. We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark and none of our other troops showed up. We decided to pull away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge."
That was the 9th SS arriving after being gifted a generous time window by the 82nd to reinforce.
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TIK, the RAF deny they spotted armour around Nijmegen.
http://www.airpowerstudies.co.uk/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/Arnhem.pdf
From the RAF document:
"the composition of the German forces at Arnhem was far more complex than most published histories of Market Garden had tended to suggest. The two SS panzer divisions had been operating far below their full strength on the eve of the operation and, while 1st Airborne was ultimately confronted by armour in considerable strength, hardly any tanks were actually present in the Arnhem area on 17 September. The vast majority deployed from Germany or other battle fronts after the airborne landings" - ARNHEM - THE AIR RECONNAISSANCE STORY by the RAF
Some low level pictures of a few Panzer IIIs and IVs were taken in early September for operation Comet. "Brian Urquhart’s account is therefore somewhat perplexing. Further problems arise if we seek to document the events he described. Several extensive searches for the photographs have failed to locate them. Ostensibly, this might not seem surprising, as most tactical reconnaissance material was destroyed after the war, but Urquhart insisted that the Arnhem sortie was flown by a Spitfire squadron based at Benson; this would almost certainly mean 541 Squadron. Far more imagery from the Benson squadrons survived within the UK archives, but no oblique photographs showing tanks at Arnhem. In addition, although the Benson missions were systematically recorded at squadron and group level, not one record matches the sortie Urquhart described."
"The low-level missions targeting the bridges on 6 September were scrupulously noted down, but all other recorded reconnaissance sorties over Arnhem were flown at higher altitudes and captured vertical imagery. Equally, it has proved impossible as yet to locate an interpretation report derived from a low-level mission that photographed German armour near Arnhem before Market Garden." "As for Brian Urquhart’s famous account of how a low-level Spitfire sortie took photographs of tanks assumed to belong to II SS Panzer Corps, the reality was rather different. In all probability, the low-level mission that Urquhart recalled photographed the bridges and not the tanks"
- ARNHEM - THE AIR RECONNAISSANCE STORY by the RAF
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Prof Adam Tooze in Wages of Destruction gives some answers.
Brand names like Krupp, Siemens and IG Farben gave substance to the myth of German industrial invincibility. Viewed in wider terms, however, the German economy differed little from the European average; its national per capita income in the 1930s was middling; in present-day terms it was comparable to that of Iran or South Africa. The standard of consumption enjoyed by the majority of the German population was modest and lagged behind that of most of its Western European neighbours. Germany under Hitler was still only a partially modernized society, in which upwards of 15 million people depended for their living either on traditional handicrafts or on peasant agriculture.
America should provide the pivot for our understanding of the Third Reich. In seeking to explain the urgency of Hitler's aggression, historians have underestimated his acute awareness of the threat posed to Germany, along with the rest of the European powers, by the emergence of the United States as the dominant global superpower. On the basis of contemporary economic trends. Hitler predicted already in the 1920s that the European powers had only a few more years to organize themselves against this inevitability. Furthermore, Hitler understood the overwhelming attraction already exerted on Europeans by America's affluent consumer lifestyle, an attraction whose force we can appreciate more vividly, given our sharpened awareness of the more generally transitional status of the European economies in the inter-war period. As in many semi-peripheral economies today, the German population in the 1930s was already thoroughly immersed in the commodity world of Hollywood, but at the same time many millions of people lived three or four to a room, without indoor bathrooms or access to electricity. Motor vehicles, radios and other accoutrements of modern living such as electrical household appliances were the aspiration of the social elite. The originality of National Socialism was that, rather than meekly accepting a place for Germany within a global economic order dominated by the affluent English-speaking countries.
Hitler sought to mobilize the pent-up frustrations of his population to mount an epic challenge to this order. Repeating what Europeans had done across the globe over the previous three centuries, Germany would carve out its own imperial hinterland; by one last great land grab in the East it would create the self-sufficient basis both for domestic affluence and the platform necessary to prevail in the coming superpower competition with the United States.
The aggression of Hitler's regime can thus be rationalized as an intelligible response to the tensions stirred up by the uneven development of global capitalism, tensions that are of course still with us today. But at the same time an understanding of the economic fundamentals also serves to sharpen our appreciation of the profound irrationality of Hitler's project.
Tooze, Wages of Destruction. Preface xxvi:
"Germany could not simply settle down to become an affluent satellite of the USA"
Tooze emphasises how backward German agriculture was. Tooze describes Germany as a medium sized workshop economy dependent on imported food. Hitler feared the rise of the USA, whose industrial and economical influence was felt in Germany. Hitler specifically mentioned the efficient US vehicle industry. He feared efficient US industry would wipe out European industry.
To counter the USA, Hitler wanted Germany to control the Continent, the British the other parts of the world. He admired the British empire stating Germany could never have done it better than the British. He thought this was the only way to preserve European culture being self contained with no indirect economic control, and influence, from the USA. Fighting the British was not a part of his view, hence wanting a Germany/UK/France alliance in the 1930s. He gave out many feelers for peace after September 1939. Hitler did not want Germany being a sub-set economy of the USA. Hitler wanted to be alongside the USA and Britain as world economic powers. He also wanted Germany to be an influential power in the world.
Hitler could see how the UK was influential because it possessed the largest empire ever seen and large industrial country, and he accepted that. However he could not accept the upstart USA being a world economic power also spreading its culture. Both the British Empire and the USA had access to large natural resources, while Germany did not. The standard of living in the USA, Germany could not match. Even if Germans enjoyed a higher standard of living than the USA without stealing land in the east, that would still not be acceptable to Hitler as their economy would be a sub-set with foreign industry setup in Germany. Hitler was attempting to put Germany, a relatively new nation, in a world economic position without having built anything up as the British had over centuries, and without any significant natural resources, as the USA and the British empire had. To do that he had to steal from others.
The place that had resources was to the east of Germany. It was populated with few resource surpluses. Expanding Germany into the east and removing the populations would give resource surplusses for Germany to make her compete on a world stage. Germany had industrialised in the late 1800s/early 1900s, however was still largely an agricultural country with outdated agriculture which contrasted sharply with some of its top-line industries. It could not feed itself without importing food - animal and human. It had no control of the imported food production and not full control of the source distribution of its imported food.
The world was moving away from coal as the prime fuel and turning to the magic oil, which also contained many properties to extract for other valuable products. The USA had an abundance of oil extracted mainly from the acquired territory in the west. The UK had oil in its empire, Germany had none. The UK became a world player over centuries building up an empire and world trade routes. The USA did it by expanding west taking land. The precedence of the USA in taking land and removing the populations was one way Germany could be a major economy, major power, self sufficient in most aspects and have influence.
Hitler's mentality was one of being a world economic player alongside the UK and USA. The precedence of the USA's rapid rise to a world economic power, based on land acquisition by force from indigenous people and the Mexicans, and largely eliminating the indigenous populations convinced the Germans they could do the same to their east. It is quite simple.
"If the Germans had succeeded in exterminating the peoples to their east, as the white settlers did the American Indians, this would have the same effect on them that it has had on the Americans. The Germans would have become apostles of international brotherhood and goodwill".
- AJP Taylor The Course of German History
All the above is what Hitler wanted to catapult Germany into a global economic power. He justified this by fear of western European culture being eliminated from both sides - the Communist east and the Jewish led Capitalists from the west, across the Atlantic. He also had an ideology to back this up and have the people on his side. One of a pure German race - which the Germans are clearly not. An ideology with adherences to control and unify the population. He called it National Socialism. He needed a bogey man to also justify this new ideology - he chose the Jews who he truly believed controlled world Capitalism, especially in the USA. World capitalism was responsible, in his and the minds of others, for the dire poverty in Germany in the 1930s.
Hitler had expanded Germany in his view, by negotiation. Turning to violence to achieve a further step of this Greater Germany by invading Poland was a massive gamble - Hitler was a gambler. On invading Poland in 1939, Hitler never dreamed that he would eventually be fighting the world's three larges economies. He never thought the war would escalate as it did. He underestimated the British, who never went along with his Greater self sufficient Germany by stealing off others, or his confused ideology.
So was Hitler mad? Look at the two prime points of what he wanted:
1) A Greater self sufficient Germany;
2) An ideology to underpin the Greater Germany.
The above were not mad at all. The precedence of the USA justified 1). The ideology based on race, 2), was not the bad thing we think today, as racism, and nationalism was common throughout the world. In Europe, not the UK, most countries had people wearing national dress on a daily basis. The death factories only came about during WW2, when the war creeped up on Hitler.
Where was the madness? In thinking he could get it all by violence, and that others would stand by while he achieved what he wanted.
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@redserpent
Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower, approved under rescourcing the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak". The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself.
XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.
Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time Monty had the Canadians cleared it, or were investing in many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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Germany has hydrogen fuel cell trains in fare paying service. The UK is to trial them on the Liverpool to Chester line via Runcorn. Electrification of the UK rail network, which is very expensive to install and maintain, has been put on hold in view of introducing hydrogen fuel cell trains. These will be highly cost effective. The initial run out for trains is electric/diesel hybrids, which can be easily converted to hydrogen/electric keeping the same electric running gear. Some will be capable of running under electric wires, then on diesel, then eventually hydrogen, when running away from the electric wires.
Diesel trains pour out a high level of pollution in urban areas, so all looks good for hydrogen trains. Hydrogen will probably not be suitable for cars, just large vehicles like: trains, ships, trucks, buses, etc. In the UK and Germany the level of fossil fuel free electricity generation is high. So when no wind or at night, the stored energy, in hydrogen, is used.
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Monty was vastly superior to any US general, who were quite poor most of the time. Normandy came in well ahead of schedule with 22% less casualties than predicted. Monty was in charge of all armies. The British destroyed 90% of German armour in the west. Caen was strategically unimportant. The aim was for the British to grind down German armour. US General Omar Bradley's memoirs:
While Collins was hoisting his VII Corps flag over Cherbourg, Montgomery was spending his reputation in a bitter siege against the old university city of Caen. For three weeks he had rammed his troops against those panzer divisions he had deliberately drawn towards that city as part of our Allied strategy of diversion in the Normandy Campaign. Although Caen contained an important road junction that Montgomery would eventually need, for the moment the capture of that city was only incidental to his mission. For Monty’s primary task was to attract German troops to the British front that we might more easily secure Cherbourg and get into position for the breakout.
In this diversionary mission Monty was more than successful, for the harder he hammered towards Caen, the more German troops he drew into that sector. Too many correspondents, however, had overrated the importance of Caen itself, and when Monty failed to take it, they blamed him for the delay. But had we attempted to exonerate Montgomery by explaining how successfully he had hoodwinked the German by diverting him toward Caen from the Cotentin, we would have also given our strategy away. We desperately wanted the German to believe this attack on Caen was the main Allied effort.
But while this diversion of Monty’s was brilliantly achieved, he nevertheless left himself open to criticism by overemphasising the importance of his thrust toward Caen. Had he limited himself simply to the containment without making Caen a symbol of it, he would have been credited with success instead of being charged, as he was, with failure at Caen. For Monty’s success should have been measured in the panzer divisions the enemy rushed against him whilst Collins sped on toward Cherbourg. Instead, the Allied newspaper readers clammered for a place name called Caen which Monty had once promised but failed to win for them.
The containment mission that had been assigned Monty in the OVERLORD plan was not calculated to burnish British pride in the accomplishments of their troops. For in the minds of most people, success in battle is measured in the rate and length of advance. They found it difficult to realise that the more successful Monty was in stirring up German resistance, the less likely he was to advance. For another four weeks it fell to the British to pin down superior enemy forces in that sector while we manoeuvred into position for the US breakout. With the Allied world crying for blitzkrieg the first week after we landed, the British endured their passive role with patience and forbearing.
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Montgomery gave the end time of Normandy, which came in ahead of schedule, the bits between were put in by his planners, who needed something to fill in. Monty allowed them to put some in. Caen was strategically unimportant.
"the timings, when all this was going to happen. The answer is again found in the strategic plan, which states that the Allied armies would have driven the Germans back to the Seine on or about D plus 90, say September 1. Various intermediate targets – phase lines – were introduced into the plan but these were largely, as stated above, for administrative reasons, to give the logistical planners some time frame. Indeed, when Lt Colonel C. P. Dawnay, Monty’s military assistant, was helping his chief prepare for the first presentation of plans on April 7, 1944, eight weeks before D-Day, he asked Montgomery where the phase lines should be drawn between D-Day and D plus 90?
Monty replied, ‘Well, it doesn’t matter, Kit – draw
them where you like’. ‘Shall I draw them equally, Sir?’,
asked Dawnay. ‘Yes, that’ll do’, replied Montgomery.
Montgomery knew that whatever was intended two months before the landing would be altered the minute the troops went ashore. Even so, two other points need explaining. The first is that changes in plan in the course of the battle were only to be expected – and hardly matter if the overall aim of the campaign is kept broadly on track.
-Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
"The ground force plan for Overlord had been drawn up by Montgomery – and approved by Eisenhower and the Combined Chiefs-of-Staff – and in that plan the city of Caen was to be taken – or effectively masked – on D-Day"
-Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
"The Second Army plan states ‘The capture and retention of Caen is vital to the Army plan.’ This intention is confirmed when the final Army plan for D-Day – Order No. 1, was issued on April 21. ‘I Corps will capture Caen’.
Then matters grow cloudy. The orders issued by I Corps do indeed restate that the capture of Caen is vital to the Army plan and confirm that ‘the task of 3 British Division is to capture Caen and secure a bridgehead over the river Orne at that place’, which could hardly be more definite. However, the detailed order goes on to state that, ‘3 Brit Inf Div should, by the evening of D-Day, have captured or effectively masked Caen, and be disposed in depth with brigade locations firmly established, north-east of Bénouville in support of 6th Airborne Division ... having taken over the Bénouville–Ranville crossing ... and north-west of Caen, tied up with the left forward brigade locality of 3 Cdn Inf Div’.
So far so good, but the order goes on: ‘Should the enemy forestall us at Caen and the defences prove to be strongly organised, thus causing us to fail to capture it on D-Day, further direct frontal assaults which may prove costly will not be undertaken without reference to I Corps. In such an event, 3 Brit Inf Div will contain the enemy in Caen and retain the bulk of its forces disposed for mobile operations outside the covering position. Caen will be subjected to heavy air bombardment to limit its usefulness to the enemy and make its retention a costly business.’
This is, in fact, what actually happened and it is interesting that this counterproposal was made well before 3rd Infantry Division went ashore. It therefore appears that the major unit most directly concerned with the capture of Caen on D-Day – Lieutenant-General Crocker’s I Corps – already had an alternative strategy in place to that of the Allied Commanders, Eisenhower and Montgomery but only should the defences prove too strong. This again seems sensible – no plan survives the first contact with the enemy etc."
-Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
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During the war Britain was not, by any reasonable standard, under siege or blockaded. Imports into Britain stayed at pre-war levels in value. Most food was not rationed, and was available in quantity. Meat and cheese imports actually increased. Oil products, fuel oil, petrol, aviation spirit and lubricating oils were all imported in unprecedented quantities. The context of British action was not, as so often suggested, one of weakness, isolation and austerity, but rather of abundance of key resources.
The exceptional mobilization of armed forces and industry was, rather than an indication of national genius, a product of the support Britain got from elsewhere, and from the nature of its economy. Britain had many war fronts, and many home fronts. Appropriately enough, at the time the idea of the ‘People’s War’ was often one where many different peoples were united in a common international struggle. The British war machine imposed hardships on and created opportunities for not just the peoples of the British Isles, but those of much of the world.
- Britain's War Machine by David Edgerton
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The Mazda MX-30. The innovative 830cc rotary engine acts as a generator for the battery, while the electric motor sends power to the wheels. Combined, the model’s 50-litre fuel tank and battery offer a driving range of over 400 miles, with emissions of 21g/km - a big range increase over the 130 miles provided by the current, EV-only model, which has a 35.5kWh battery.
The MX-30 R-EV can travel up to 53 miles on pure electric per charge, Mazda says, which ranks ahead of much larger plug-in hybrids, such as the Suzuki Across, the Toyota RAV4 and the Mercedes-Benz A-Class 250e. It can charge in around 90 minutes using a 7.2kWh charger, 50 minutes on an 11kW unit or 25 minutes with a 36kWh charger.
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XXX Corps got to Nijmegen ahead of schedule. If the Nijmegen bridge had been taken by the 82nd they would have reached Arnhem on time.
The plan was sound. What bad intelligence? Do not go by that Bridge Too Far, book or film.
http://www.airpowerstudies.co.uk/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/Arnhem.pdf
"the composition of the German forces at Arnhem was far more complex than most published histories of Market Garden had tended to suggest. The two SS panzer divisions had been operating far below their full strength on the eve of the operation and, while 1st Airborne was ultimately confronted by armour in considerable strength, hardly any tanks were actually present in the Arnhem area on 17 September. The vast majority deployed from Germany or other battle fronts after the airborne landings"
- ARNHEM - THE AIR RECONNAISSANCE STORY by the RAF
Some low level pictures of a few Panzer IIIs and IVs were taken in early September for operation Comet. Ryan on speaking to Urquhart got it wrong. "Urquhart’s account is therefore somewhat perplexing. Further problems arise if we seek to document the events he described. Several extensive searches for the photographs have failed to locate them. Ostensibly, this might not seem surprising, as most tactical reconnaissance material was destroyed after the war, but Urquhart insisted that the Arnhem sortie was flown by a Spitfire squadron based at Benson; this would almost certainly mean 541 Squadron. Far more imagery from the Benson squadrons survived within the UK archives, but no oblique photographs showing tanks at Arnhem. In addition, although the Benson missions were systematically recorded at squadron and group level, not one record matches the sortie Urquhart described."
"The low-level missions targeting the bridges on 6 September were scrupulously noted down, but all other recorded reconnaissance sorties over Arnhem were flown at higher altitudes and captured vertical imagery. Equally, it has proved impossible as yet to locate an interpretation report derived from a low-level mission that photographed German armour near Arnhem before Market Garden." "As for Brian Urquhart’s famous account of how a low-level Spitfire sortie took photographs of tanks assumed to belong to II SS Panzer Corps, the reality was rather different. In all probability, the low-level mission that Urquhart recalled photographed the bridges and not the tanks"
- ARNHEM - THE AIR RECONNAISSANCE STORY by the RAF
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T S Birkby
"Thanks for acknowledging Guards Div was overburdened and unable to allocate resources for the seizure of Nijimeen bridge."
I wrote no such thing! The Guards should have sped over the bridge when entering Nijmegen and on to Arnhem as there was little resistance at the time between the two bridges. They were bled assisting the 82nd. You didn't read this did you?..............
"In Nijmegen, the arrival of British armour had raised the intensity and scale of the fighting. Extensive fires had broken out, marking the progress of the XXX Corps advance. Combined Sherman and infantry attacks during the early night hours of 20 September had been halted by accurate artillery fire around the traffic circle south of the Hunner park. SS-Captain Krueger of 21 Battery had personally directed the fire. At 0130 two Shermans remained with sheared tracks after the attack had been repelled. During the course of the morning three more combined arms attacks were concentrated upon the gradually shrinking 10SS perimeter defending the southern bank of the Waal."
- It Never Snows in September, by Kershaw, page 192.
"At 1500, 40 Sherman tanks plus artillery and air support began firing to cover the advance of Cook's 3rd Battalion as they crossed the Waal in boats. Kershaw, P196. But resistance inside Nijmegen continued for quite some time after the famous actions to take the bridges. Bittrich (commander of IISS Corps) reported at 2330 on September 20th that "nothing [had] been heard from the Nijmegen garrison for two hours" and that he could "only assume the German units had been destroyed".
- Kershaw, page 212.
Just because nothing had been heard for two hours at 2330, didn't mean that Nijmegen was cleared of German units. It just meant that they hadn't been in contact. Some units continued to fight on. Kampfgruppe Euling were still holding their positions at 2230, although they then made a break for it in the dark some time afterwards."
- It Never Snows in September, by Kershaw, page 213
"The Guards Armoured Coldstream Guards Group still was needed as a reserve for the Airborne division. This left but two armoured groups to go across the Waal [Nijmegen road bridge]. Even those did not make it until next day, D plus 4, 21 September, primarily because of diehard German defenders who had to be ferreted out from the superstructure and bridge underpinnings."
- The Battle for the Rhine 1944, Neillands
Neillands emphasises that the US Official History itself stated that it is a delusion to think that the five Guards tanks could have penetrated the German lines to get to Arnhem on the night of 20th September.
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@lyndoncmp5751
“With supplies needing to be built up, Monty sent off a signal on the next day advising Eisenhower that he would have to delay the operation until 23 September. The response was immediate. On 12 September, Bedell Smith arrived in Brussels to tell Monty that Eisenhower had now agreed to divert the transport of three American divisions to supporting the new operation, to halt the Saar thrust, to give priority within 12th US Army Group to Hodges’s First US Army on Monty’s right flank and to allow Monty to deal directly with Hodges, rather than through Bradley. It seemed that the Northern Thrust was now becoming a reality and an exultant Monty advanced D-Day for MARKET GARDEN to 17 September."
"It all proved to be an illusion. Bradley, who visited Monty on 13 September and heard all about the proposals, then lobbied Eisenhower, with the result than none of the promised support materialized. With Monty, Dempsey and Browning all completely unaware of this, preparations for the operation continued.”
— The Men Behind Monty by Richard Mead
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"the US comprised between 65% and 75% of the boots on the ground "
That was at the end of WW2, not at the time of Market Garden. The US were losing so many men in ETO operations (50,000 Lorraine, 33,000 at the Hurtgen Forest defeat, 12,000 Aachen, 80,000 Battle of the Bulge, etc), they brought far too men from the USA in fear of a big defeat. Men destined for the Far East.
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"Case study: The city of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Harrisburg, Pennsylvania is the seat of the State’s government, but in the early 1980s was one of the nation's most distressed cities. It was still recovering from Hurricane Agnes (in 1972) that put buildings under four metres of water, and it had lost 800 businesses and a third of its population in 20 years.
In 1975 the city enacted LVT as a policy tool to stimulate development and to discourage land speculation. It reduced the tax on buildings to one-half of that on land and, over a period of time, increased the tax on land to six times that of property.
Mayor Stephen Reed credits LVT with the resulting regeneration. “In the period from 1982 to the end of 2009 [there was], $4.8 billion worth of investment, businesses increased in 1988 to 9,100, thousands of new jobs were created, over 40,000 building permits were issued.”
“The tax base… went from $212 million to a total of $1.6 billion. The number of residential units sharply increased. In fact, the city of Harrisburg from its different housing programs and initiatives played a direct role in either building or helping others to build over 6,000 residential units.”… “There is no city our size in America that had that much to do with that many residential units in that period of time. The crime rate came down 46 per cent, the fire rate dropped 78 per cent and the number of vacant structures fell by 80 per cent.”
Stephen Reed was nominated the US Mayor of the Year in 2006 and said: “As part of our economic development incentives, the land value tax policy is key, and without it a significant amount of new investment would not have occurred here during recent years.”
Joshua Vincent CEO
Centre for the Study of Economics
http://www.urbantoolsconsult.org/"
https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/final-draft-lvt-report_2.pdf
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john milner
Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust over other fronts:
On 4 Sept, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen when he issued the directive. Montgomery wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive, devising Operation Comet to be launched on 2 Sept, being cancelled due to German resistance and poor weather.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 Sept had divisions of the US 1st Army and Montgomery's view of taking multiple bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. The British 2nd Army needed some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow). Hodges' would protect the right flank. the Canadians would protect the left flank from the German 15th army. It was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
"the evidence also suggests that certain necessary objectives on the road to Berlin, crossing the Rhine and perhaps even taking the Ruhr, were possible with the existing logistical set-up, provided the right strategy to do so was set in place. Montgomery’s popular and astute Chief of Staff, Freddie de Guingand, certainly thought so: 'If Eisenhower had not taken the steps he did to link up at an early date with Anvil and had held back Patton, and had he diverted the resources so released to the north, I think it possible we might have obtained a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter - but not more.' "
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944.
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again. This northern thrust over the Rhine obviously would not work with the resources starved First Army, so a lesser operation was devised by Montgomery, Market Garden, eliminating the divisions of US First Army, with only ONE crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London wanted eliminating ASAP giving a 60 mile long salient buffer between German forces and the important port of Antwerp. This would only have one corps above Eindhoven, a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time. Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance.
Montgomery, although not liking Eisenhower's broad front strategy, making that clear continuously since the Normandy breakout, being a professional soldier he always obeyed Eisenhower's orders keeping to the laid down strategy, unlike Bradley who also allowed Patton to disobey his own orders.
Montgomery after fixing the operations objectives with Eisenhower to what forces were available, gave Market Garden planning to others, mainly Genl Brereton, an American, of the First Allied Airborne Army. Genl Brereton, who liked the plan, agreed to it with even direct input. Brereton ordered the drops will take place during the day and Brereton oversaw the troop carrier and supply drops schedules. A refusal by Brereton and the operation would never have gone ahead, as he earlier rejected Montgomery's initial plan of a drop into the Scheldt at Walcheren Island.
Montgomery left all the planning to his generals to plan and execute: Brereton, Williams, Browning, Urquhart, Gavin, Taylor, Horrocks, etc. Monty gave them a free run at it with their own discretion and did not interfere. Montgomery had no involvement whatsoever in its execution. Montgomery was an army group commander, in charge of armies. The details were left to 'competent' subordinates.
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@Answer Questions
Market Garden failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. The failure point was not seizing the Nijmegen bridge immediately. At the end of D-Day all crossings were denied to the Germans, except one - the Nijmegen bridge. General Gavin of the US 82nd was supposed to get to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as landing. Gavin never, he failed with only a few German guards on the bridge. He failed because his 82nd did not seize the Nijmegen bridge immediately.
Gavin even de-prioritised the bridge the prime target and focus. The 82nd were ready at 2 pm on the jump day and never moved to the bridge. The gigantic bridge was guarded by only 19 guards. The Germans occupied the bridge at 1900 hrs. Six hours after the 82nd were ready to march.
Events on the 1st day:
♦ "At 1328, the 665 men of US 82nd 1st Battalion began to fall from the sky."
- Poulussen, R. Lost at Nijmegen.
♦ "Forty minutes after the drop, around 1410, the 1st Battalion marched off towards their objective, De Ploeg, three miles away."
-Poulussen,
♦ "The 82nd were digging in and performing reconnin the area looking for 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald
- Neillands, R. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
♦ The 82nd were dug in and preparing to defend their newly constructed regimental command post, which they established at 1825. Then Colonel Lindquist "was told by General Gavin, around 1900, to move into Nijmegen."
-Poulussen
Events on the evening of the 1st day:
♦ Having dug in at De Ploeg, Warren's battalion wasn't prepared to move towards Nijmegen at all.
- Poulussen,
♦ Once Lindquist told Lieutenant Colonel Warren that his Battalion was to move, Warren decided to visit the HQ of the Nijmegen Underground first - to see what info the underground had on the Germans at the Nijmegen bridge.
- Poulussen,
♦ It was not until 1830hrs that he [Warren] was able to send a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small, just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a radio — say forty men.
- Neillands. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
♦ This was not a direct route to the bridge from Warren's original position, and placed him in the middle of the town. It was also around 2100 when "A" Company left to attempt to capture the Nijmegen road bridge.
♦ "B" Company was not with them because they'd split up due to it being dark with "visibility was less than ten yards".
- Poulussen,
♦ The 82nd attacks were resisted by the Germans until the next day.
Events of the 2nd day:
♦ Gavin drove up in a jeep the next morning and was told by Warren that although they didn't have the bridge yet, another attack was about to go in.
♦ Gavin then told Warren to hold because the Germans were attacking in the southeast portion of the 82nd perimeter.
♦ At around 1100, Warren was ordered to withdraw from Nijmegen completely.
- Poulussen
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Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust over other fronts:
On 4 September, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr
- Robin Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen when he issued the directive. Montgomery also wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive. He devised Operation Comet to be launched on 2 September 1944. It was cancelled due to German resistance and poor weather.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 September incorporating divisions of the US 1st Army, incorporated Montgomery's view of a thrust taking multiple bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. To do this the British 2nd Army, some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow) would clearly be needed. Hodges' would protect the right flank. The Canadians would be on the coast of Belgium and Holland protecting the left flank from the German 15th army. The idea was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy, preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
Neillands on this point...
"the evidence also suggests that certain necessary objectives on the road to Berlin, crossing the Rhine and perhaps even taking the Ruhr, were possible with the existing logistical set-up, provided the right strategy to do so was set in place. Montgomery’s popular and astute Chief of Staff, Freddie de Guingand, certainly thought so: 'If Eisenhower had not taken the steps he did to link up at an early date with Anvil and had held back Patton, and had he diverted the resources so released to the north, I think it possible we might have obtained a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter - but not more.' "
- Robin Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944.
- Robin Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again. This northern thrust over the Rhine obviously would not work with the resources starved First Army, so a lesser operation was devised by Montgomery, Market Garden, eliminating the resource starved divisions of US First Army, with only one crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London wanted eliminating ASAP, and give a 60 mile long salient buffer between German forces and the important port of Antwerp. This would only have one corps above Eindhoven. This was a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time. Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance.
Montgomery, although not liking Eisenhower's broad front strategy, making that clear continuously since the Normandy breakout, being a professional soldier he always obeyed Eisenhower's orders keeping to the laid down strategy, unlike Bradley who also allowed Patton to disobey his own orders.
Montgomery after fixing the operations objectives with Eisenhower to what forces were available, gave Market Garden planning to others, mainly Brereton, an American, of the First Allied Airborne Army. Montgomery had no involvement whatsoever in its execution. Montgomery was an army group commander, in charge of armies. The details were left to competent subordinates.
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@andym9571
The narrative from the US since WW2 was that Monty planned Market Garden. Massed panzers were in Arnhem being ignored. The radios never worked. The British tankers sat around all day drinking tea. That the reason for the failure was that XXX Corps was too slow. All false.
Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower approved, under resourcing the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
1) Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
2) Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
3) Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
4) Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
5) Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
6) Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
7) Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak".
The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgment or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 650 men and then a brigade of the 9th SS Panzer Division (recon infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump.
The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed. XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem.
Expecting to cross the road bridge XXX Corps found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself. XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge.
If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin. Even the US Official War record confirms this. The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
The Germans did not consider that they had some sort of victory in Market Garden. Far from it. A 60 mile salient was rammed between German armies right up to the Rhine in a few days, right on the German border. The Salient was fleshed out to the Meuse. Not one mm of territory was retaken by the Germans. A buffer was created to protect Antwerp keeping the port from artillery range and counter-attack. V weapons could not operate in that salient, or in NW Holland.
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@caelroighblunt1956
Patton was an average US general, no more. A US media creation, elevating the average beyond their status.
"The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian First Army HQ for the same purpose.
Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
In Normandy, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton who came in late in Normandy, faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact.
This eastern dash devoid of German forces was the ride the US media claimed Patton was some sort master of fast moving armour.
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed in The Lorraine with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were re-fitting and rebuilt after the Normandy battles. The Panzer Brigades had green crews with little time to train, unfamiliar with their tanks, had no recon elements only meeting their unit commander on his arrival at the front. These were not elite forces. The 17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, equipped only with assault guns not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy being below strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine.
In The Lorraine, the Third Army faced a rabble full of eyes and ears units. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said:
"I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Patton failed to reach the Westwall.
Patton was not advancing or being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. Bastogne was on the very southern German flank, their focus being west. The strategic significance of the stand at Bastogne, is over exaggerated. The 18,000 did not change the course of the battle. The German's bypassed Bastogne, placing a containment force around the town.
Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory, with the road from Luxembourg to Bastogne having few German forces. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was far from being one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, 26th Volks-Grenadier having about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind with a small number of operational tanks. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1. Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance pushing them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons stopped the American attack who pulled back. The next day, fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B again retreating. It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day. Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne. After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF, who gave Patton massive ground attack support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the weakest German divisions in the west where.
♦ Who did the 3rd Army engage?
♦ Who did the 3rd Army defeat?
♦ Patton never once faced a full strength premier Waffen SS panzer division nor a Tiger battalion.
♦ Patton was not at E Alamein, D-Day or the main area of the Bulge.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates:
♦ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics Bradley's II Corps were employing;
♦ He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division, Truscott of being "afraid to fight";
♦ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps;
♦ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize stalled, he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being "very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect";
♦ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in reporting their losses;
Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated, had incestual relationships and wore cowboy guns. Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his and Eisenhower's orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read:
Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds and_Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies_ by Harry Yeide
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@caelroighblunt1956
Britain was key in WW2. Britain fought on every front, being in the war on the first day up to the last - the only country at the surrender of Japan in September 1945 to do so - Britain’s war actually ended in 1946 staying on in Viet Nam using Japanese troops alongside British troops to defeat the Viet Minh, but that is another story. Britain was not attacked or attacked anyone, going into WW2 on principle.
The Turkish ambassador to the UK stated that the UK can raise 40 million troops from its empire so will win the war. This was noted by Franco who indirectly said to Hitler he would not win, fearing British occupation of Spanish islands and territory if Spain joined the war. Spain and Turkey stayed out of the war. The Turkish ambassador’s point was given credence when an army of 2.6 million was assembled in India that moved into Burma to wipe out the Japanese.
From day one the Royal Navy formed a ring around the Axis positioning ships from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Arctic off Norway, blockading the international trade of the Axis. This deprived the Axis of vital human and animal food, oil, rubber, metals, and other vital resources. By 1941 the successful Royal Navy blockade had confined the Italian navy to port due to lack of oil. By the autumn of 1941 Germany's surface fleet was confined to harbour, by the British fleet and the chronic lack of fuel.
A potential German invasion from the the USSR in the north into the oil rich Middle East entailed expanded British troop deployment to keep the Germans away from the oil fields, until they were defeated at Stalingrad. Throughout 1942 British Commonwealth troops were fighting, or seriously expecting to be attacked, in:
♦ French North Africa;
♦ Libya;
♦ Egypt;
♦ Cyprus;
♦ Syria: where an airborne assault was expected, with preparations to reinforce Turkey if they were attacked;
♦ Madagascar: fighting the Vichy French to prevent them from inviting the Japanese in as they had done in Indochina;
♦ Iraq;
♦ Iran: the British & Soviets invaded Iran in August 1941.
Those spread-out covering troops were more in combined numbers than were facing Japan and Rommel in North Africa. The British Commonwealth fielded over 100 divisions in 1942 alone, compared to the US total of 88 by the end of the war.
The Americans and Soviets were Johnny-come-late in WW2, moreso the Americans. Before the USSR entered the conflict the Royal Navy’s blockade had reduced the Italian and German surface navies to the occasional sorties because of a lack of oil, with the British attacking the Germans and Italians in North Africa, also securing Syria, Iraq, the Levant and ridding the Italians from East Africa.
The Germans were on the run by the time the USA had boots on the ground against the Axis. The Germans had been stopped:
♦ in the west at the Battle of Britain in 1940;
♦ in the east at the Battle of Moscow in 1941. In which Britain provided 40% of the Soviet tanks.
The Germans were on the run after the simultaneous battles in late 1942 of:
♦ El Alemein;
♦ Stalingrad;
The Battle of El Alemein culminated in a quarter of a million Axis prisoners taken in Tunisia - more than taken at Stalingrad.
Apart from the US Filipino forces that surrendered in early 1942, the US had a couple of divisions in Gaudalcanal after August 1942, and one in New Guinea by November 1942. In 1943 the US managed to get up to six divisions in the Pacific, but still not matching the British or British Indian armies respectively. Until late 1943 the Australian Army alone deployed more ground fighting troops against the Japanese than the USA. The Americans never put more ground troops into combat against the Japanese at any point than just the British Indian Army alone, which was 2.6 million strong. The US had nowhere near 2.6 million men on the ground against the Japanese. The Soviets fielded about a million against the Japanese.
Most Japanese troops were put out of action by the British and Soviets, not the USA. At the battles of Khohima and Imphal the Japanese suffered their worst defeat in their history up to that point. Then the British set the Eastern and Pacific fleets against the Japanese, not far off in numbers to the US fleet.
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@caelroighblunt1956
There has been a tradition in the world of downgrading Britain's contribution to WW2, especially in the USA. The British fought a highly technological and industrial war doing so very efficiently. Britain used not only her vast empire but her even larger trading empire to great effect. For example, an army of 2.6 million marched into Burma with meat products coming from British owned food industries in Argentina - the bully beef provided to British soldiers was mainly Argentinian.
The British, with its massive navy and army, surrounded the Axis, from Iran, through the Middle East, through the Med (cutting off both entrances to the the Med with a base in the middle, Malta) to the Eastern Atlantic up to the Arctic at Norway, starving them of natural resources.
The British assessed that having massive armies is highly inefficient. The larger the army the higher the casualties. Britain deliberately chose to keep numbers of front line troops as low as possible building machines and using technology advances instead - the BEF in France was the first army in which men never marched being fully motorised. The Kangaroo was the first armoured personnel carrier developed in WW2 from adapted tanks, saving many lives, in contrast to the horrendous US casualties. The policy worked, despite fighting for the duration, the only major country to do so, all around the globe. The country only lost around 440,000, which is half the British dead of WW1, which lasted two years less than WW2. Germany and the USSR lost considerably more troops than they had in WW1.
WW2 produced amazing British inventions: the cavity magnetron, electronic computer, the world’s most advanced jet engines, anti-submarine electronics, the proximity fuse, to name but a few. Engineering advancements such as Rolls Royce’s auto controlled twin-speed twin-charger supercharging engine technology which was given free to the USA, and the Liberty ship, a Sunderland design. Scientific advancements such as calculating how to make the A-bomb for the Manhattan project - the undercover Tube Alloys project, a part of the British A-Bomb project started in 1939.
Massive developments in manufacturing, with a staggering 132,500 aircraft (more than Germany) along with over one million military vehicles. Britain also manufactured war products in the Commonwealth with Canada alone producing more wheeled vehicles than Germany along with tanks and aircraft. Other examples are India building ships and Australia building aircraft. Seeing American industries idle from the depression, the British put them to use for the war effort. Examples being the Americans manufacturing the British 6-pounder anti-tank gun, penicillin in large quantities, the proximity fuse, Rolls Royce engines, and even new planes to British specifications, before the USA even entered WW2.
The British produced so much they could even supply the USSR. Postan in the book British War Production (1951), states that the USA provided 11% of British supplies which were mainly raw materials and machine tools for manufacturing.
From the first American servicemen arriving in Britain in 1942, until VE Day, the British provided the USA in the European Theatre of Operations with 31% of all their supplies, with 70% of supplies in 1942. Britain's war effort was astonishing – backed by their insistence in continuing the fight in 1940. The British made an enormous contribution to winning the war, being the key agents. This had a positive effect on the future of the world. The declinist view of Britain as being a minor partner in WW2 must be dispelled for good.
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The state of play on the 17th, D day, was:
1) the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was largely clear;
2) there were concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally;
3) there were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen;
4) a few scattered about along the road;
5) there was no armour in Arnhem.
That was it.
i) XXX Corps would deal from the Belgium border to Eindhoven;
ii) 101st from Eindhoven to Grave;
iii) 82nd from Grave to north of Nijmegen;
iv) British and Polish paras from north of Nijmegen to north of the Rhine;
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 2 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured it.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected. XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and towards the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up.
The road was still largely clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump. XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, making up the delay at Zon. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over. If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves, after the 82nd tried again and failed again. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
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@johnlucas8479
A patrol of the 82nd, that set off too late, took half the bridge guards prisoner. If they had moved in force earlier they would have taken the whole bridge. More like walked on it whistling Dixie. It was five hours after the jump and 4 hours 20 minutes after being ready after jumping, before men actually moved specifically towards Nijmegen bridge
Timeline
Events on the 1st day - D day:
▪ "At 1328, the 665 men of US 82nd 1st Battalion began to fall from the sky."
- R Poulussen, Lost at Nijmegen.
▪ "Forty minutes after the drop, around 1410, the 1st Battalion marched off towards their objective, De Ploeg, three miles away." - R Poulussen.
"The 82nd were digging in and performing reconn in the area looking for 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald
- Neillands, R. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
▪ "Colonel Warren about 1830 sent into Nijmegen a patrol consisting of a rifle platoon and the battalion intelligence section. This patrol was to make an aggressive reconnaissance, investigate reports from Dutch civilians that only eighteen Germans guarded the big bridge"
- US Official history, page 163.
▪ It was not until 1830hrs that he [Warren] was able to send a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small, just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a radio — say forty men.
- Neillands. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
▪ The 82nd were dug in and preparing to defend their newly constructed regimental command post, which they established at 1825. Having dug in at De Ploeg, Warren's battalion wasn't prepared to move towards Nijmegen at all.
- R Poulussen.
▪ Then Colonel Lindquist "was told by General Gavin, around 1900, to move into Nijmegen."
- R Poulussen.
▪ Warren sent a patrol of about 40 men to reconnoiter the bridge at *1830*. Three strays from the patrol captured seven of the 18 guards and their 20mm cannon who were guarding the south end of the bridge, having to let them go as no reinforcements arrived. The 508th had actually captured the south end of the largely undefended bridge. The three scouts that reached the southern end of the Nijmegen bridge about an hour before the 9th SS arrived. Joe Atkins of the patrol said: "at the bridge, only a few German soldiers were standing around a small artillery weapon... The Germans were so surprised; the six or seven defenders of the bridge gave up without resisting. We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark and none of our other troops showed up. We decided to pull away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge."
- The 508th Connection by Zig Boroughs.That was the 9th SS arriving at 1930.
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Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust over other fronts and even seizing Antwerp and clearing the Schedlt. Clearing the Scheldt would take time as the German 15th SS army, highly experienced from the Russian front, had set up shop in the Scheldt and not retreated back into Germany, under Hitler's orders. All available supplies would be directed to this northern thrust.
"Since Eisenhower — the Supreme Commander and Ground Force Commander — approved the Arnhem operation rather than a push to clear the Scheldt, then surely he was right, as well as noble, to accept the responsibility and any resulting blame? The choice in early September was the Rhine or Antwerp: to continue the pursuit or secure the necessary facilities to solve the logistical problem? The decision was made to go for the Rhine, and that decision was Eisenhower’s."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"On 4 Sept, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr"
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen to British troops when he issued the northern thrust directive. Montgomery wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive, devising Operation Comet, multiple crossings of the Rhine, to be launched on 2 Sept, being cancelled due to German resistance and poor weather. Operation Comet was not presented to Eisenhower for his approval. Montgomery asked Brereton, an American, of the First Allied Airborne Army, to drop into the Scheldt in early September - he refused.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 Sept had divisions of the US 1st Army and Montgomery's view of taking multiple bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. The British 2nd Army needed some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow). Hodges' would protect the right flank. the Canadians would protect the left flank from the German 15th army.
"the narrow thrust was reduced to the Second Army and two US corps, the XIX and VII of Hodges’ First Army, a total of around eighteen Allied divisions"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
The northern thrust was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944."
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower’s reply of 5 September to Montgomery deserves analysis, not least the part that concerns logistics. The interesting point is that Eisenhower apparently believes that it is possible to cross the Rhine and take both the Ruhr and the Saar — and open the Scheldt — using the existing logistical resources."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp. In thinking this Ike was wrong."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Post-Normandy Bradley seemed unable to control Patton, who persistently flouted Eisenhower’s directives and went his own way, aided and abetted by Bradley. This part of their relationship quickly revealed itself in matters of supply, where Hodges, the commander of the US First Army, was continually starved of fuel and ammunition in order to keep Patton’s divisions rolling, even when Eisenhower’s strategy required First Army to play the major role in 12th Army Group’s activities."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again, and being bogged down - again. The resources starved First Army could not be a part of northern thrust as Bradley and Patton, against Eisenhower's orders, were syphoning off supplies destined for the First army. This northern thrust over the Rhine, as Eisenhower envisaged, obviously would not work as he thought. A lesser operation was devised by Montgomery, Market Garden, eliminating the divisions of US First Army, with only ONE crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London wanted eliminating ASAP, giving a 60 mile long salient buffer between German forces and the important port of Antwerp. This would only have one corps above Eindhoven, a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time. Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance. Eisenhower should have fired Bradley and Patton for sabotaging the Northern Thrust operation.
Montgomery after fixing the operations objectives with Eisenhower to the measly forces available, gave Market Garden planning to others, mainly General Brereton, an American, of the First Allied Airborne Army. General Brereton, who liked the plan, agreed to it with even direct input. Brereton ordered the drops will take place during the day and Brereton oversaw the troop carrier and supply drops schedules. A refusal by Brereton and the operation would never have gone ahead, as he earlier rejected Montgomery's initial plan of a drop into the Scheldt at Walcheren Island.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time the Canadians had cleared, or were investing, many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@martinidry6300
For the Germans to reach Antwerp, the easiest route was north of the Ardennes straight across flat land. If Market Garden had not been undertaken the salient would have been in German hands, making it far easier for the massed German armoured forces at the Bulge to reach Antwerp.
The Market Garden salient protected vital Antwerp.
"Operation MARKET-GARDEN had two major objectives:
to get Allied troops across the Rhine
and to capture the Ruhr.
Three major advantages were expected to accrue:
( I) cutting the land exit of those Germans remaining in western Holland;
(2) outflanking the West Wall, and
(3) positioning British ground forces for a subsequent drive into Germany along the North German Plain."
- US Official History, THE SIEGFRIED LINE CAMPAIGN
(Page 120).
"Eisenhower approved the operation with certain conditions. Market Garden would commence on 17 September. Securing the approaches to the port at Antwerp would be delayed until Montgomery seized bridgeheads over the Rhine. His priority after seizing the bridgeheads would be gaining the much needed deep water port. He would not continue the attack to Berlin as he had proposed."
- A FRAMEWORK FOR MILITARY DECISION MAKING UNDER RISKS
BY JAMES V. SCHULTZ
A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE SCHOOL OF ADVANCED AIRPOWER STUDIES FOR THE COMPLETION OF GRADUATION REQUIREMENTS
SCHOOL OF ADVANCED AIRPOWER STUDIES
AIR UNIVERSITY MAXWELL AIR FORCE BASE,
ALABAMA J
UNE 1996
(Page 50).
"later, on I5 September, General Eisenhower himself reopened the wound, perhaps with a view to healing it once and for all through a process of bloodletting. Looking beyond both Arnhem and Antwerp, he named Berlin as the ultimate Allied goal"
- US Official History, THE SIEGFRIED LINE CAMPAIGN
(Page 210).
One of the prime aims of Market Garden was to be the northern grip of the pincer on the Ruhr, Eisenhower changed yet again his strategy from the Ruhr to Berlin two days before Market Garden.
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@matthawkins123
Monty actually signaled Eisenhower’s headquarters postponing the operation. Eisenhower resurrecting it and a cable from the War office about V2s committed Montgomery to the operation.
From Nigel Hamilton’s biography of Monty:
For Monty now to cancel the British part of ‘the main effort of the Allies because of stiffening enemy resistance, even had he wished to do so, would thus have been tantamount to insubordination, leaving him open to charges of timidity at a moment when American forces were thrusting towards the German border. Moreover the Arnhem-Nijmegan axis had been Monty’s proposal, making it doubly hard to rescind.
Eisenhower’s directive was not the only signal committing Monty to the continuation of his planned thrust via Arnhem on 9 September - for during the afternoon a ‘Secret’ cable arrived from the War Office, sent by VCIGS, General Nye, in the absence of Field-Marshal Brooke:
Two rockets so called V.2 landed in England yesterday. Believed to have been fired from areas near ROTTERDAM and AMSTERDAM.
Will you please report urgently by what approximate date you consider you can rope off the Coastal area contained by ANTWERP-UTRECHT-ROTTERDAM. When this area is in our hands the threat from this weapon will probably have disappeared.
By striking north-east from Eindhoven to Arnhem, 21st Army Group would be in a position to ‘rope off’ the whole of Holland, including the 150,000 fleeing German troops and the V2 bomb sites.
Few people are aware that there were supporting units on either flank who set off to the left and right of Hells Highway shortly after and in fact one of these supporting flanks advances pushed the Germans away from cutting the highway near Eindhoven on the 20th after XXX corps had gone through ahead. They even widened the axis of advance with their follow on actions.
It should be borne in mind that promised supplies from SHAEF failed to arrive, leaving VIII Corps, supposed to attack alongside, mostly stranded in place. “Garden” launched with only half the troops it should have had.
Montgomery had also wanted to use Hodges 1st US Army (and had in fact been promised) as a follow up flanking advance. But Bradley was stealing fuel and other resources from Hodges and giving it to Patton.
Eisenhower:
”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”.
Eisenhower insisted it go ahead and Eisenhower under-resourced it. MG wasn’t even an army just a corps.
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Tim Pyle. Nonsense!
In an interview with General Browning in the NY Times he said he gave 'equal' priority to the bridge and the Groesbeek heights. The heights near De Ploeg, which are really pretty flat being a wooded area but high for Holland, are between the DZ and bridge. Gavin understood the priorities of sending the 508th to the bridge and heights immediately. To get to the bridge from the DZ you have to go through the heights, so any enemy at the heights had to be subdued, then secure the area, then send men to the bridge.
They were to secure the heights and secure the bridge. It took the 508th a painfully slow 3.5 hours to march a few miles from the DZ to the heights, reaching the heights at 1730. There were no Germans at the heights as a forward patrol relayed back, so Coln Lindquist could send men to the bridge immediately, without any delay, while men stayed back setting up defences at De Ploeg on the Heights. Dutch resistance men informed the 508th that the Germans had largely cleared out of the town with 19 guards on the bridge.
Lindquist of the 508th was not moving at all, staying static at De Ploeg. Lindquist was waiting for a Divisional Order from Gavin that the "DZ" was secure then move to the bridge. When Gavin found out he was livid, running over to De Ploeg in a Jeep telling Lindquist to get moving to the bridge. Three stray men from a patrol sent to the bridge by Lindquist took the guards on the south end of the bridge POW. They left when no one turned up.
By the time the 508th did get to the bridge in force, the Germans had come south reinforcing the bridge with hundreds of men. Too late. The 82nd were expecting German resistance from the east, however it came from the north via the Nijmegen bridge. Gavin was expecting Lindquist to secure the heights, which were devoid of enemy forces, then move to the bridge, which meant moving immediately. Lindquist was expecting Gavin to notify him that the DZ was clear, Gavin was expecting Lindquist to go to the bridge when it was obvious the heights, on the way to bridge, were secure.
As no Germans were about, they were secure. No one knows where he got the clearing of the DZ from. Poor command communications by Gavin. Poulussen, in Lost at Nijmegen discovered that the 508th jumped without any offensive orders from Gavin. All was verbal between Gavin and Lindquist. Chester Graham, the 82nd liaison man, was at the pre jump meeting in England. He said there was no ambiguity amongst anyone that the bridge was the prime target.
In 1945 Historical Officer, Capt. John Westover of the US Army Centre of Military History, wanting confirmed if the capture of the Nijmegen bridge had been part of the objectives. In response – dated 25 July 1945 – Gen Gavin was clear: "About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping well, I personally directed Col Lindquist, Commanding the 508 PIR to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen Bridge without delay _after landing but to keep a close watch on it in the event he needed to protect himself against the Reichswald and he was cautioned to send the battalion via the east of the city."_Browning never knew men were static at De Ploeg. Like Gavin he was expecting men to be seizing the bridge. Being corps commander, he was busy trying to communicate with all three para divisions. The 82nd launched a few failed attacks on the bridge. In the afternoon of the next day, 18th, Gavin asked permission to launch another attack.
Browning, seeing the bridge was well defended, and the failed attacks, refused, opting to wait for XXX Corps to arrive to seize the bridge. Inexplicably Gavin moved all his men out of Nijmegen town completely, giving the town back to the Germans. This made matters worse when XXX Corps arrived.
Read:
Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History Of The 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment In World War II by Phil Nordyke.
Arnhem 1944 by Christer Bergström.
Market Garden, Then and Now by Karl Magry.
Lost at Nijmegen by R Poulusson
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@jacktattis
Some info from: Allison-Engined P-51 Mustang, 1 (Air Vanguard) by Martyn Chorlton (2012).
1939:British looking at Curtiss P-40 to purchase. Curtiss were working flat out unable to supply. The Air Ministry approached North American Aviation to build the P-40s. NAA said they could build them a plane to RAF specs in the time it took to tool up for a P-40. They had a concept, no more. No detailed design drawings existed. The Air Ministry took it further.
Jan - April 1940 (three months):
NAA and British engineers at the British Purchasing Commission's offices in NYC, doing design to RAF specifications. They used a lot of free-hand conceptual drawings.
Sir Henry Self, the head, had concerns that NAA had no experience of designing and making a fighter after initial talks with British engineers. Self told NAA to buy, at great cost, the drawings and wind-tunnel test results for the Curtiss Xp-46 experimental plane then study them. The British and NAA engineers were told to look at the laminar flow wings based on work by Briton Merville-Jones, which NACA said they had made progress on. They were told to use the British developed Meredith effect radiator used by Spitfires.
Atwood, head of the NAA team in NYC was relaying back to NAA details when fixed to get draftsmen moving. After three months with a design nailed down between them, NAA went away, returning with detailed design drawings. The Air Ministry approved the presented drawings.
4 May 1940:
The Mustang project started with the signing of the contract. British expertise was used like Ken Bowen from Yorkshire, who designed the progressive curvature principle used to build the Mustang fuselage. This was quick to form and easy to jig.
29 May 1940:
After three weeks of seeing NAA operate, the Air Ministry ordered 320 planes.
9 September 1940:
First prototype completed for evaluation by the Ministry.
26 October 1940:
First flight in front of NAA and Ministry engineers. There were several British designers and engineers on the committee besides Ken Bowen. Bev Shenstone, designer of the Spitfire's wing, was sent to the USA who shaved off 600lbs in weight and redesigned the wings and parts of the fuselage.
Installing the RR Merlin is another chapter in itself.
.
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@jacktattis .
1939:
British looking at Curtiss P-40 to purchase. Curtiss were working flat out unable to supply. The Air Ministry approached North American Aviation to build the P-40s. NAA said they could build them a plane to RAF specs in the time it took to tool up for a P-40. They had a concept, no more. No detailed design drawings existed. The Air Ministry took it further.
Jan - April 1940 (three months):
NAA and British engineers at the British Purchasing Commission's offices in NYC, doing design to RAF specifications. They used a lot of free-hand conceptual drawings.
Sir Henry Self, the head, had concerns that NAA had no experience of designing and making a fighter after initial talks with British engineers. Self told NAA to buy, at great cost, the drawings and wind-tunnel test results for the Curtiss Xp-46 experimental plane then study them. The British and NAA engineers were told to look at the laminar flow wings based on work by Briton Merville-Jones, which NACA said they had made progress on. They were told to use the British developed Meredith effect radiator used by Spitfires.
Atwood, head of the NAA team in NYC was relaying back to NAA details when fixed to get draftsmen moving. After three months with a design nailed down between them, NAA went away, returning with detailed design drawings. The Air Ministry approved the presented drawings.
4 May 1940:
The Mustang project started with the signing of the contract. British expertise was used like Ken Bowen from Yorkshire, who designed the progressive curvature principle used to build the Mustang fuselage. This was quick to form and easy to jig.
29 May 1940:
After three weeks of seeing NAA operate, the Air Ministry ordered 320 planes.
9 September 1940:
First prototype completed for evaluation by the Ministry.
26 October 1940:
First flight in front of NAA and Ministry engineers. There were several British designers and engineers on the committee besides Ken Bowen. Bev Shenstone, designer of the Spitfire's wing, was sent to the USA who shaved off 600lbs in weight and redesigned the wings and parts of the fuselage.
Installing the Rolls-Royce Merlin is another chapter.
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@jacktattis
Bev Shenstone from Supermarine had designed the Spitfire wings worked as an advisor for NAA regarding aerodynamics on the Mustang. He lightened the plane by 600lbs. He also used the British Meredith principle from the English inventor of the same name.
Sir Bennett Melvill-Jones of Cambridge University later of RAE laid down the low drag laminar flow wing principles taken up by NACA. His specialties were drag. Melvill-Jones later did the gyroscopic gun sight.
Ken Bowen from Hull, East Yorkshire designed the progressive curvature principle used to build the fuselage, which had the blessing of being quick to form as well as and easy to jig.
The Rolls Royce Merlin was substituted when the Allison was not working out.
The Mustang was born in co-operation with British money financing it, and the first to buy it and use it were the RAF. The USAAF had nothing to do with the specification. A triumph of an aeroplane and one of the most outstanding fighters of the war.
An Anglo-US designed and built collaborative project, but for those who claim it as an all-American aircraft that is fine. Apart from the specification, wings, intake, assembly jigs, gyroscopic gunsight, engine, canopy and to lighten it by 600lbs.
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The British and Canadians invented the armoured personnel carrier in WW2. This kept infantry losses down substantially improving fighting efficiency. The British could deliver a big blow with fewer men. Over the world the British had a vast army. 2.5 million in the British Indian Army alone.
Mobilization:
Across SIX years of war, Britain and its Empire mobilized nine million people into land forces. This figure excludes auxiliary, naval and air force personnel.
Land Forces 1939-45
Australia 751,729
Britain 3,510,309
B. Indian Ocean 6,500
Canada 730,625
Cyprus 30,000
East Africa 200,000
Fiji 3,050
British Guiana 42
Hong Kong 2,200
India 2,455,779
Kenya 98,240
Malaysia 1,500
Nepal 250,280
Newfoundland 4,005
New Zealand 128,905
Nigeria 121,652
Sudan 20,000
South Africa 334,000
Southern Africa 77,767
West Africa 200,000
West Indies 10,000
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@TheChieftainsHatch
The Kangaroo initially based on the Churchill. Shermans had their turrets removed to just pile men inside. The allies were not short of tanks. The tanks were not as good as German tanks in many cases, but they had lots of them. Montgomery cared for his men under his command, British, Canadian, American, Poles, etc. Casualties were always lighter than American and German armies. Some US casualties were horrendous in WW2: 52,000 in Lorraine, 34,000 at Hurtgen Forest, 1000,000 at the Bulge alone. In the Scheldt, the Canadian casualties were far less than anticipated using Kangaroos. They were first used in Normandy.
A Kanagroo was based on a Grant chassis. The Grant was outdated by the time Normandy came along, so those chassis' were rife for conversion. The chassis' were also used for mounting artillery guns on.
The best Kangaroo was the converted Churchill. They had side doors and I believe the top was covered on some of them. The Churchill could climb to places no other tank could, like up steep hills and small mountains. The Merritt Brown gearbox assured all that. It could also turn on its axis, so ideal as an armoured personnel carrier.
WW1 ended, for the armoured personnel carrier to be used, although invented for the 1919 plan. What amazes me is that the idea was not used for the outbreak of WW2.
https://youtu.be/-DjcNZWVa0w
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@ErikExeu
ORDER
508- Prcht Infantry will:
(a) Land on DZ "T"
(b) Seize, organise and hold key terrain features in area of responsibility, and be prepared to seize Waal River crossing at NIJMEGEN (714633) on order of Div Comdr.
Let us assume pre-jump in England Gavin did not verbally tell Lindquist to go for the Waal bridge overriding the Order, he did with witnesses. So we have to go by the written Order which is freely available and a section coped above.
Regimental Liaison Officer of the 508th was Chester Graham:
"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.'
Two battalions of the 508th were marching for just under three hours from the DZ to the empty Heights, arriving at 5 pm. One battalion remained at the DZ securing it. The DZ was secure when they left. As soon as they were in the Heights with no Germans in sight the Heights were secure. All secure. Lindquist should have had his two companies prepared which was written in the Order.
Lindquist should have contacted Gavin 'immediately', by radio or messenger, to get the Divisional Order to go to the bridge on reaching the vacant and secure Heights. Lindquist could not move to the bridge without it. Lindquist:
1) was way too late in obtaining the Order to proceed by radio or messenger;
2) never had the two companies prepared to move to the bridge.
When informed Lindquist was not moving to the bridge, Gavin sped personally to Lindquist screaming at him to move to the bridge at 7 pm, two hours after the 508 arrived at the Heights. Half an hour later the Germans reinforced the bridge. It took another two hours to muster the two companies spread over the Heights under Cnl Warren before they started to march at 9 pm. Far too late.
Lindquist failed on two important points.
Again, this is all assuming Gavin never gave verbal orders to Lindquist in England, only going by the written Order.
Whichever way you cut it, Lindquist was amateurish and to blame. Gavin also takes blame as he never had Lindquist trained and alert enough.
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@ErikExeu
A few SS troops were in Nijmegen and on the bridge because the 82nd did not move to the undefended bridge immediately.
The dawdling of the 82nd 508 on d-day
Phil Nordyke's Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2 (2012), Chapter 9, 'Put Us Down In Hell':
"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.
"'Put Us Down In Hell', Chapter 10, 'Use Trench Knives and Bayonets':
"Receiving information from the patrols that no enemy was between them and their objective at De Ploeg [Groesbeek heights], Captain Adams and Company A increased the pace of the advance. “The march to the objective was (almost) uneventful… Everyone started digging in. Everyone had the idea that the rest of the job would be as easy as it had been up to that point. That was somewhat my own impression and I still believe if we had marched straight to the [highway] bridge [in Nijmegen] we would have had it without a fight.
”Captain Ben Delamater, the battalion’s executive officer, got the command post organised. "The regimental commanding officer [Colonel Roy Lindquist], with his radio operator and two Dutch interpreters from the British army soon followed us onto our first objective [Groesbeek heights]. The planned defenses were being set up when several civilians wearing arm bands and carrying Underground credentials of some sort told the colonel that the Germans had deserted Nijmegen, that the town and the highway bridge were lightly held."__"The regimental CO had been instructed that if the initial mission were accomplished to 'go ahead and take the highway bridge if you can.' This division order was perfectly understood in relation to the primary missions and was not a weak, conditional order as might be supposed offhand.”
“The regimental and battalion COs then planned to send one platoon of C Company [led by Lieutenant Bob Weaver], plus the S-2 section, plus two light machine gun squads on a reconnaissance patrol to approach the bridge from the south.
"Zig Borough's The 508th Connection (2013), Chapter 6, Holland, Operation Market Garden - Nijmegen bridge:
"A battalion S-2 patrol led the way and reached the Nijmegen bridge during the daylight hours. Trooper Joe Atkins, HQ 1st, told that story: "I was called on to take the point going into Nijmegen. As we entered the city, a crowd of people gathered around us, and we had to push our way through. Three of us in the lead became separated from the other troopers behind us by the crowds of Dutch people. We three continued to make our way into the city until we came to the bridge.
"At the bridge, only a few German soldiers were standing around a small artillery weapon. I had a Thompson sub and a .45 pistol. The other two were armed with M1 rifles...”
“The Germans were so surprised; the six or seven defenders of the bridge gave up without resisting. We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark, and none of our other troopers showed up. We decided to pull back away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge."
Nordyke, Chapter 10: cont:
"Captain Chet Graham, the regimental liasion 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.' "
On the first afternoon of d-day, the 82nd 508 could have taken the bridge without hardly firing a shot, as there were only 18 German guards on it, with half taken prisoner, until darkness fell then the SS arrived. The 508th PIR only had two bridges to secure in their area of operations, the road and rail bridges at Nijmegen. The division's other tasks were being carried out by the 504th and 505th PIRs. The 508th failed to move, as instructed, against zero opposition in Nijmegen.Gavin specifically instructed Lindquist to send 1st Battalion to the bridge as soon as the Groesbeek Heights were secured. The heights are between the LZ and the bridge.
The main source is 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2 (2012), but further details are in American historian John McManus' September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far (2012). These are American histories using primary sources.
The evidence of a three man point team from the 1st Battalion S-2 (Intel) Section reaching the bridge and taking seven prisoners without firing a shot (The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs 2013, chapter 6 - Nijmegen Bridge) proves that the whole battalion could have done it, just as Frost's 2nd Battalion at Arnhem had secured their primary objective at about the same time, trapping Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 between the two bridges. The fact that Gräbner's unit was badly shot up on the bridge trying to force Frost's position at Arnhem the following morning suggest's Warren's 1st Battalion 508th could have done the same thing if Gräbner had tried to force the issue at Nijmegen. Instead, Gräbner's unit was able to reinforce Nijmegen uncontested that evening because Lindquist only sent a patrol into the city, which got lost, and only three men detached from their main body reached the bridge an hour before Gräbner arrived, leaving when he did arrive.
Nijmegen was an open city and only a few guards were on the bridges - members of the band. Gavin was the man responsible for his divisional plan not being carried out, and as Lindquist's supervisor, the man to blame for not following Gavin's instructions, he has to bear responsibility for what happened at Nijmegen. Other units involved in this operation were making it work, but the unforced error at Nijmegen compromised the entire operation.
When Gavin found out Lindquist was on the Groesbeek heights and not moving a battalion into the city, he was as mad as the regiment's liaison officer had ever seen him, ordering the officer into a Jeep - "come with me - let's get him moving." Gavin's subsequent behaviour makes more sense as a result. He knew the entire operation was potentially blown by his division and tried to make amends after the 508th's failure.
When XXX Corps arrived in Nijmegen, Gavin insisted his own 504th Regiment be used to conduct the river assault, despite the fact that the pre-planned backup for this scenario of the Nijmegen bridges being held in strength by the enemy was for 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division to make the assault crossings with either one or two Brigades.
• Source:Special Bridging Force - Engineers Under XXX Corps During Market Garden (2021) by John Sliz.
Gavin was trying to fix his own mistake, not some perceived failure of planning that happened in Montgomery's caravan - that's an American trope and a prejudice that's not based on any of the established facts.
Sources:
• Retake Arnhem Bridge, Bob Gerritsen and Scott Revell (2010)
• Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011)
• Put Us Down In Hell, Phil Nordyke (2012)
• September Hope, John C McManus (2012)
• The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs (2013)
• Arnhem: The Air Reconnaissance Story, Royal Air Force (2016, revised 2019)
• Nijmegen Schutzgruppe, Regionaal Archief Nijmegen, NL-NmRAN_80_86_0001 - 0015 (1947)
• Special Bridging Force - Engineers Under XXX Corps During Market Garden, John Sliz (2021).
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What US historian Harry Yeide wrote of what the Germans thought of Patton:
▪ for most of the war the Germans barely took notice [of Patton].
▪ on March 23 at the Battle of El Guettar—the first American victory against the experienced Germans. Patton’s momentum, however, was short-lived: Axis troops held him to virtually no gain until April 7, when they withdrew under threat from British Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army.
▪ There is no indication in the surviving German military records—which include intelligence reports at the theater, army, and division levels—that Patton’s enemies had any idea who he was at the time. Likewise, the immediate postwar accounts of the German commanders in Tunisia, written for the U.S. Army’s History Division, ignore Patton. Those reports show that ground commanders considered II Corps’s attacks under Patton to have been hesitant, and to have missed great opportunities.
▪ In mid-June [1943], another detachment report described Patton as “an energetic and responsibility-loving command personality” —a passing comment on one of the numerous Allied commanders. Patton simply had not yet done anything particularly noteworthy in their eyes.
▪ But his race to Palermo through country they had already abandoned left the commanders unimpressed. Major General Eberhard Rodt, who led the 15th Panzergrenadier Division against Patton’s troops during the Allied push toward Messina, thought the American Seventh Army fought hesitantly and predictably. He wrote in an immediate postwar report on Sicily, “The enemy very often conducted his movements systematically, and only attacked after a heavy artillery preparation when he believed he had broken our resistance. This kept him regularly from exploiting the weakness of our situation and gave me the opportunity to consolidate dangerous situations.” Once again, Patton finished a campaign without impressing his opponents.
▪ General Hermann Balck, who took command of Army Group G in September, thus did not think highly of Patton—or any other opposing commanders—during this time. Balck wrote to his commander, Runstedt, on October 10, “I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans” Looking back on his battles against Patton throughout the autumn, in 1979 Balck recalled, “Within my zone, the Americans never once exploited a success. Often [General Friedrich Wilhelm von] Mellenthin, my chief of staff, and I would stand in front of the map and say, ‘Patton is helping us; he failed to exploit another success.’”
▪ The commander of the Fifth Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel, aimed a dismissive, indirect critique at Patton’s efforts at Bastogne, writing in his memoirs that the Americans did not “strike with full élan.” The commanders who fought against Patton in his last two mobile campaigns in the Saar-Palatinate and east of the Rhine already knew they could not win; their losses from this point forward were inevitable, regardless of the commanding Allied opponent.
▪ the Germans offered Patton faint praise during and immediately after the war.
▪ posterity deserves fact and not myth. The Germans did not track Patton’s movements as the key to Allied intentions. Hitler does not appear to have thought often of Patton, if at all. The Germans considered Patton a hesitant commanding general in the scrum of position warfare. They never raised his name in the context of worthy strategists.
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Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust over other fronts:
On 4 Sept, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen when he issued the directive. Montgomery wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive, devising Operation Comet to be launched on 2 Sept, being cancelled due to German resistance and poor weather.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 Sept had divisions of the US 1st Army and Montgomery's view of taking multiple bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. The British 2nd Army needed some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow). Hodges' would protect the right flank. the Canadians would protect the left flank from the German 15th army. It was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
"the evidence also suggests that certain necessary objectives on the road to Berlin, crossing the Rhine and perhaps even taking the Ruhr, were possible with the existing logistical set-up, provided the right strategy to do so was set in place. Montgomery’s popular and astute Chief of Staff, Freddie de Guingand, certainly thought so: 'If Eisenhower had not taken the steps he did to link up at an early date with Anvil and had held back Patton, and had he diverted the resources so released to the north, I think it possible we might have obtained a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter - but not more.' "
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944."
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again. This northern thrust over the Rhine obviously would not work with the resources starved First Army, so a lesser operation was devised by Montgomery, Market Garden, eliminating the divisions of US First Army, with only ONE crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London wanted eliminating ASAP giving a 60 mile long salient buffer between German forces and the important port of Antwerp. This would only have one corps above Eindhoven, a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time. Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance.
Montgomery, although not liking Eisenhower's broad front strategy, making that clear continuously since the Normandy breakout, being a professional soldier he always obeyed Eisenhower's orders keeping to the laid down strategy, unlike Bradley who also allowed Patton to disobey his own orders.
Montgomery after fixing the operations objectives with Eisenhower to what forces were available, gave Market Garden planning to others, mainly Genl Brereton, an American, of the First Allied Airborne Army. Genl Brereton, who liked the plan, agreed to it with even direct input. Brereton ordered the drops will take place during the day and Brereton oversaw the troop carrier and supply drops schedules. A refusal by Brereton and the operation would never have gone ahead, as he earlier rejected Montgomery's initial plan of a drop into the Scheldt at Walcheren Island.
Montgomery left all the planning to his generals to plan and execute: Brereton, Williams, Browning, Urquhart, Gavin, Taylor, Horrocks, etc. Monty gave them a free run at it with their own discretion and did not interfere. Montgomery had no involvement whatsoever in its execution. Montgomery was an army group commander, in charge of armies. The details were left to 'competent' subordinates.
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Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed there with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept to try and plug the gaps while the panzer divisions proper were being re-fitted and rebuilt after the summer 1944 battles.
The Panzer Brigades had green crews that never had enough time to train, did not know their tanks properly, did not have any recon elements and didn't even meet their unit commander until his arrival at the front. These were not means elite forces.
17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. The 17th SS was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, only equipped with assault guns, not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy and not up to strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the best German divisions in the west were NOT.
♦ Who did the 3rd Army engage?
♦ Who did 3rd Army defeat?
♦ Patton never once faced a full strength
Waffen SS panzer division nor a
Tiger battalion.
In The Lorraine, the 3rd Army faced a rabble. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took over in September 1944 said:
"I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Patton was facing a second rate rabble in The Lorraine for the most part. Patton was also neither on the advance nor being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines.
The road from Luxembourg to Bastogne pretty well devoid of German forces, as Bastogne was on the very southern German flank. Only when Patton got near to Bastogne did he engage some German armour but it was not a great amount at all. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade wasn't one of the best German armoured units, while 26th Volks-Grenadier only had a dozen Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind only had a small number of tanks operational. Its not as if Patton had to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne, he never. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1.
Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They where were still engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Leading elements were engaging the Americans and British under Montgomery's command near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance and pushed them back.
In Normandy in 1944, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates.
♦ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics
Bradley's II Corps were employing
♦ He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division,
Truscott of being "afraid to fight".
♦ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the
US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps.
♦ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize
stalled he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being
"very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect".
♦ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in
reporting their losses.
After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF. Coningham, gave Patton massive US ground attack plane support and he still stalled. It was Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance that were the reasons for his stall. Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault, including his subordinates. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated. Oh, and wore cowboy guns.
Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his orders, and Eisenhowers orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds
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Market Garden failed by a whisker. Because the 82nd did not seize the Nijmegen bridge immediately. They were ready at 2 pm on the jump day and never moved to the bridge. The gigantic bridge was guarded by 19 guards. Germans occupied the bridge at 1900 hrs. Six hours after the 82nd were ready to march.
Events on the 1st day:
♦ "At 1328, the 665 men of US 82nd 1st Battalion began
to fall from the sky." Poulussen, R. Lost at Nijmegen.
♦ "Forty minutes after the drop, around 1410, the
1st Battalion marched off towards their objective,
De Ploeg, three miles away." Poulussen,
♦ The 82nd were digging in and performing recon
in the area looking for 1000 tanks in the Reichswald
- Neillands, R. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
♦ The 82nd were dug in and preparing to defend their
newly constructed regimental command post, which
they established at 1825. Then Colonel Lindquist
"was told by General Gavin, around 1900, to move
into Nijmegen." Poulussen
Events on the evening of the 1st day:
♦ Having dug in at De Ploeg, Warren's battalion wasn't prepared
to move towards the Nijmegen at all. Poulussen,
♦ Once Lindquist told Lieutenant Colonel Warren that his
Battalion was to move, Warren decided to visit the HQ
of the Nijmegen Underground first - to see what info the
underground had on the Germans at the Nijmegen bridge.
- Poulussen,
♦ This was not a direct route to the bridge from Warren's
original position, and placed him in the middle of the town.
It was also around 2100 when "A" Company left to attempt
to capture the Nijmegen road bridge.
♦ "B" Company was not with them because they'd split up
due to it being dark with "visibility was less than ten yards".
- Poulussen,
♦ The 82nd attacks were resisted by the Germans until the
next day.
Events of the 2nd day:
♦ Gavin drove up in a jeep the next morning and
was told by Warren that although they didn't have the bridge
yet, another attack was about to go in.
♦ Gavin then told Warren to hold because the Germans were
attacking in the southeast portion of the 82nd perimeter.
♦ At around 1100, Warren was ordered to withdraw from
Nijmegen completely. - Poulussen
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@MinhLe-fx9lf
Patton was an average US general, no more. A US media creation, elevating the average beyond their status.
"The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian First Army HQ for the same purpose.
Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
In Normandy, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton who came in late in Normandy, faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact.This eastern dash devoid of German forces was the ride the US media claimed Patton was some sort of master of fast moving armour.
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed in The Lorraine with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were re-fitting and rebuilt after the Normandy battles. The Panzer Brigades had green crews with little time to train, unfamiliar with their tanks, had no recon elements only meeting their unit commander on his arrival at the front. These were not elite forces. The 17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, equipped only with assault guns not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy being below strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine. In The Lorraine, the Third Army faced a rabble full of eyes and ears units. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said:
"I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Patton failed to reach the Westwall.
Patton was not advancing or being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. Bastogne was on the very southern German flank, their focus being west. The strategic significance of the stand at Bastogne, is over exaggerated. The 18,000 did not change the course of the battle. The German's bypassed Bastogne, placing a containment force around the town.
Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory, with the road from Luxembourg to Bastogne having few German forces. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was far from being one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, 26th Volks-Grenadier having about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind with a small number of operational tanks. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1. Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance pushing them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons stopped the American attack who pulled back. The next day, fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B again retreating. It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day. Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne. After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF, who gave Patton massive ground attack support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall.
The 18,000 men in Bastogne pretty well walked out, even the commander of the US 101st stated that. The Germans had vacated the area heading west.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the weakest German divisions in the west where.
♦ Who did the 3rd Army engage?
♦ Who did the 3rd Army defeat?
♦ Patton never once faced a full strength premier Waffen SS panzer division nor a Tiger battalion.
♦ Patton was not at E Alamein, D-Day or the main area of the Bulge.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates:
♦ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics Bradley's II Corps were employing;
♦ He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division, Truscott of being "afraid to fight";
♦ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps;
♦ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize stalled, he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being "very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect";
♦ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in reporting their losses;
Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated, had incestual relationships and wore cowboy guns. Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his and Eisenhower's orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read:
Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds and_Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies_ by Harry Yeide
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Dunkirk a defeat? PLEASE!
The British won the Battle of Dunkirk. They achieved their aims.
The British BEF was only 9% of the total allied forces in France and the Low Countries. The German advance was halted in France as the British with a vastly inferior force stopped them at Arras. Some German soldiers turned and ran. Directive 13, issued by German Supreme Headquarters on 24 May 1940 stated specifically for the annihilation of the French, English and Belgian forces in the Dunkirk pocket. The Luftwaffe was ordered to prevent the escape of the British forces across the English Channel.
The German southern advance was stopped at Arras by the British with a numerically inferior force. The Germans never moved much further after. The Germans could not have taken Dunkirk, they would have been badly beaten in and around the town. The Luftwaffe was defeated over Dunkirk by the RAF with the first showing of the Spitfire en-mass. More German than allied planes were destroyed in the Dunkirk pocket. The first defeat of the Nazis in WW2 was by the British in the air battle over Dunkirk. Only six small warships were sunk at Dunkirk by the Germans as the effectiveness of the Luftwaffe blunted.
The British were retreating after the French collapsed in front of them - a programme already in motion, a programme already in motion before the Germans showed up in force, as General Gort saw the disjointed performance of the French forces in front of him, and the exceptionally poor leadership. If the French collapsed the small BEF had no hope against the large German force heading west. The French were amongst the British when General Gort decided to take the men back to England, as he did not trust the French in a joint counter-attack. French General Wiegand held a meeting to arrange a counter-attack not inviting General Gort head of the BEF. Gort was under the command of Weigand. Gort heard of the meeting rushing to be there. He got there after the French and Belgians had left. He ordered the evacuation having no faith in the elderly French leaders.
All armies retreat and regroup when the need is there. There happened to be a body of water in the line of the retreat. Were the BEF to move down the English coast and enter France further west with more men from England? The Germans did not know what was to be the next British or allied move. The Germans could not have taken Dunkirk trying for nearly a week failing in the process. The British retreat operation was carried out as planned and in orderly fashion. All bridges to Dunkirk were destroyed by the allies. The British counter-attack at Arras was with outdated Matilda 1 tanks, which only had machine guns, and a few of the brand new Matilda 2 tanks. The Germans fled in droves. In desperation the Germans turned a 88mm AA gun horizontal successfully against the Matilda 2 - their conventional anti-tank weapons and tanks could not penetrate the tank. The Matilda 2 would roll over German gun emplacements killing the gunners..
Rommel thought he had been hit by a force three times the size, which made them stop and rethink. The Germans countered with their superior numbers pushing back the British who fell back consolidating towards Dunkirk. The British resolve and the new Matilda 2 made the Germans sit up and think about a street fight in Dunkirk against a consolidated force still with its weapons and the new Matilda 2 - the large 88mm would be useless in Dunkirk streets while the Matilda 2 would be in its element, with the Matlida 2 easily destroying the Panzer MkIII & MkIVs. The Matilda 2 could knock out any German tank at the time, while no German tank could knock it out. The Germans were expecting the Matilda 2 to be shipped over in numbers and for all they knew many were in Dunkirk.
The Germans could not stop the tanks coming as the RAF controlled the skies with a CAP and the RN the waters of the Channel. Not a good prospect for the Germans. A Dunkirk street fight was a fight the German troops were untrained and unequipped for and unwise to get involved in. Von Rundstedt and von Kluge suggested to Hitler that German forces around the Dunkirk pocket cease their advance, consolidating, preventing an Allied break out from Dunkirk. Hitler agreed with the support of the Wehrmacht. German preoccupation rightly was with an expected attack from the fluid south of the German lines, by mainly French and some British forces, not from dug-in Dunkirk which was too much of a formidable consolidated opponent, taking substantial resources to seize.
The German column had Allied troops to each side with soft marshland to the south west of Dunkirk unsuitable for tanks. If German forces had engaged in a street battle for Dunkirk, they would be vulnerable on their weak flank from the south. In short the fast moving panzers were now static; German forces attacking Dunkirk in a battle of attrition would have been largely wiped out. The German columns were consolidating their remaining armour for an expected attack by the British and French from the south, and the important resupply from Germany, which was slow as it was via horses - or maybe a combined attack from the south and the Dunkirk pocket. The Germans attacked on a remarkably narrow front. They had over-stretched their supply lines. The Germans had no option but to stop, being more concerned at defending from the mainly French forces in the south which were viewed as a greater threat than Dunkirk.
French general Weigand implemented his creation of hedgehogs to attack German lines from the sides, with success - hedgehogs were adopted post war by NATO being a part of the tactics until the 1970s. What were the Germans thinking? Are the British retreating to England from Dunkirk to move down the English coast and re-enter France further south with fresh forces, including Canadians and the new Matilda 2 tanks, which they feared, and join up with the French forces there? Are they going to reinforce the Dunkirk pocket supplied by the Royal Navy with a 24/7 air CAP? The British could easily do any of these as they controlled the Channel. This would create one large difficult to combat force at Dunkirk. They also saw the resolve of outnumbered British forces at Arras. German generals were trying to figure out what was happening. None thought that British troops would retreat to England and stay there. The British never did that sort of thing.
The Germans could divert most of their forces south and risk a Dunkirk breakout being attacked from their rear fighting on two fronts, or stay and consolidate, which they needed to do, awaiting a French/British attack from the south and use some forces and the Luftwaffe to attack Dunkirk, which they did. German forces resumed their attack on Dunkirk for over 6 days and failed to seize the port. The plan to break out of the Dunkirk Pocket using British, Belgian and French forces was abandoned as Gort had no confidence in the French. All military school studies since, knowing what the German and allied positions and situations were in 1940, have shown it would have succeeded.
The Germans were defeated at the Battle of Dunkirk. They tried militarily to seize the port but failed. Only because the British did not trust the French and moved back to England did the Germans eventually occupy the town. The Germans did not let the British get away that is misguided myth, they tried for a week simply not able to seize Dunkirk.
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John Cornell
The British would not deploy the Meteor over German held territory. The Germans were desperate. The 262 was not better than than Meteor. There is a myth that the Germans were way ahead of the British in jet engines and planes in WW2, when the opposite is true. The WW2 German jet engines were extremely unreliable with low performances and very high fuel consumption. The German axial-flow turbojets never worked as they wanted being developed up to 1953 by the French to obtain a usable engine. The French lost a lot of time playing around with the German engines, instead of working with the British. The French and Soviets after WW2 tried to improve the German axial-flow engines and largely failed.
The Germans did not invent the axial-flow turbojet, they based everything on Frank Whittle's patents. The British Metropolitan-Vickers F.1 axial-flow engine was running on a test bed in 1941. The F.2 was an axial-flow being an extremely advanced design using a nine-stage axial compressor, annular combustor, and a two-stage turbine. It powered a Meteor in November 1943. It was considered unreliable and never saw use during the war, hence why the British went for the reliability, controllability and quick development of the centrifugal turbojets. The Metro-Vick F.3 was the first ever turbofan in 1943. Metro-Vick developed the F.9 Sapphire, however left the jet business in 1947 giving all their designs to Armstrong Siddeley, who commercially produced the Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire engine, which was licence built in the US as the J-65.
The British in order to get a usable and reliable jet engine, with the technology of the time, went for a centrifugal design rather than the troublesome axial-flow design. This design produced less thrust than an axial-flow but was quicker to develop and reliable outperforming the best piston engines planes at the time. It took 5 months to develop, while the first reliable axial-flow engine was the 1950 Rolls Royce Avon, which took 5 years to get right. The Avon is still in production as a ground based gas turbine, with the aero version in production for 30 years.
In 1945 the French made and tested some German designed turbo jets made with quality steel unavailable to German industry in WW2. They ran for 25 hours instead of the 10 hours of the Germans engines that used poorer quality steel. Not much better. The German axial-flow engines failed because of heavy design flaws. The centrifugal compressor used by the first British Meteor plane was fine and much more reliable, but unable to reach high compression ratios. This limited performances. Centrifugal compressors were used up to the 1960s.
In 1945 the team from the French ATAR laboratory plus some BMW and Junkers engineers, were engaged by the French SNECMA research bureau, with the objective to build a new reliable and performing axial-flow turbojet. The BMW 003/Jumo004 was considered unusable. It was tested on the first French jet aircraft, the 1946 So6000 Triton, overheating and exploding. The plane only flew with a Rolls Royce Nene centrifugal turbojet.
The ATAR project took 6 years to produce the first acceptable axial-flow turbojet (ATAR 101 B1), produced in 1953. So 8 years research and developments by the French using the German jet engines as the base. It was installed on the first French jet fighter, the Dassault Ouragan.
The French lost a lot of time because the German jets had poor efficiency and some concept fails. Essentially in the combustion chambers and fresh air circulation to reduce the external temperature of the engine. The BMW jet was known for overheat problems which precluded fuselage installation.
The question at the end of WW2 was: what is the most efficient way to produce jet fighters? The answer was clearly not adopting the German design of engine and fuselage. The build costs for a jet engine were much higher than a piston engine, with the fuel consumption near 3x. The centrifugal compressor the British adopted in some planes was the best choice with 1944-45 technology, more compression pressure was not an advantage when the hot turbine was unable to resist higher temperatures. The German turbojets had big overheat problems as the engine would not work in an enclosed fuselage for single engined fighters. This defect was immediately noted by the French on the 1946 "SO 6000 Triton" prototype, and by the Soviets on the 1946 Mig 9. The Soviets quickly replaced the BMW 004B2 by the centrifugal Rolls Royce Nene which worked without problems, dismissing the BMW engine for fighter planes. The Rolls Royce Nene was copied to the last nut by the USSR being installed in the Mig 15 being used effectively in the Korean war.
The Meteor was the first proper fully developed jet plane introduced operationally. The 262 was slightly faster than the Meteor F3, but extremely unreliable. The British would never put into the sky such an undeveloped plane as the me262. The British could have had a jet fighter operational in 1941, but it may have been as bad as the me262. The Germans advanced R&D on jets after they interrogated captured British RAF men. They learned the British were advanced in jet technology and flying prototype planes. Until then the Germans had no intention of mass producing jet planes.
The rushed together Me262 started claiming kills on 26 July 1944, the Meteor claimed its first V1 kill a few days later on the 4 August 1944. But the Meteor was a proper fully developed jet plane, not a thrown together desperate effort as the me262 was. The me262 fuselage was similar to a piston plane with the pilot over the wings obscuring downward vision, while the Meteor was a proper new design fuselage specifically for jet fighters with a forward of the wings pilot position giving superior pilot vision, as we see in planes today. The cockpit was very quiet. The sweptback wings of the me262 were to move the engines further back for better weight distribution, not for aerodynamic reasons as is thought the case. The me262's airframe was based on piston engine planes, even with an initial rear tail wheel. The tricycle landing gear was only introduced when it was found the thrust of the jet engines would scorch the runway surface as the exhaust faced downwards. The Meteor's airframe was designed purely for jet propulsion even with a high tail to prevent thrust interfering with the tail which could affect control.
Centrifugal compressors were not obsolete being used in turboprops. Between a turbo jet and a turboprop, the only difference is the turbine, not the compressor. The last centrifugal compressor jet engine still in service on a handful of commercial aircraft like the Fokker 27, is the Rolls Royce Dart turboprop. A very reliable engine made in 27 versions, but with high fuel consumption to modern engines. The Rolls Royce Dart Turboprop turbo jet engine was produced the longest, being a comparable design turbojet to the likes the Rolls Royce Nene. The rugged engine was produced from 1946 up to 1987.
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John Cornell
The Me 262 first flew in 1942, well over a year after the Gloster 'Whittle' of May 1941. The Meteor was in RAF service from 1944 to 1984, also used by Argentina, Australia, Egypt, France, Belgium, Israel, Syria, etc. The Meteor set the world air speed record in 1945 and again in 1946 and the London - Copenhagen - London record in 1950. The Meteor also set an endurance record of 12 hours and 3,600 miles being refuelled by a Lancaster tanker in 1949 and several times height records using Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire engines in 1948.
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@WilliamJones-Halibut-vq1fs
There is a myth that the Germans were way ahead of the British in jet engines and planes in WW2, when the opposite is true. The WW2 German jet engines were extremely unreliable with low performances and very high fuel consumption. The German axial-flow turbojets never worked as they wanted being developed up to 1953 by the French to obtain a usable engine. The French lost a lot of time playing around with the German engines, instead of working with the British. The French and Soviets after WW2 tried to improve the German axial-flow engines and largely failed.
The Germans did not invent the axial-flow turbojet, they based everything on Frank Whittle's patents. The British Metropolitan-Vickers F.1 axial-flow engine was running on a test bed in 1941. The F.2 was an axial-flow being an extremely advanced design using a nine-stage axial compressor, annular combustor, and a two-stage turbine. It powered a Meteor in November 1943. It was considered unreliable and never saw use during the war, hence why the British went for the reliability, controllability and quick development of the centrifugal turbojets. The Metro-Vick F.3 was the first ever turbofan in 1943. Metro-Vick developed the F.9 Sapphire, however left the jet business in 1947 giving all their designs to Armstrong Siddeley, who commercially produced the Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire engine, which was licence built in the US as the J-65.
The British in order to get a usable and reliable jet engine, with the technology of the time, went for a centrifugal design rather than the troublesome axial-flow design. This design produced less thrust than an axial-flow but was quicker to develop and reliable outperforming the best piston engines planes at the time. It took 5 months to develop, while the first reliable axial-flow engine was the 1950 Rolls Royce Avon, which took 5 years to get right. The Avon is still in production as a ground based gas turbine, with the aero version in production for 30 years.
In 1945 the French made and tested some German designed turbo jets made with quality steel unavailable to German industry in WW2. They ran for 25 hours instead of the 10 hours of the Germans engines that used poorer quality steel. Not much better. The German axial-flow engines failed because of heavy design flaws. The centrifugal compressor used by the first British Meteor plane was fine and much more reliable, but unable to reach high compression ratios. This limited performances. Centrifugal compressors were used up to the 1960s.
In 1945 the team from the French ATAR laboratory plus some BMW and Junkers engineers, were engaged by the French SNECMA research bureau, with the objective to build a new reliable and performing axial-flow turbojet. The BMW 003/Jumo004 was considered unusable. It was tested on the first French jet aircraft, the 1946 So6000 Triton, overheating and exploding. The plane only flew with a Rolls Royce Nene centrifugal turbojet.
The ATAR project took 6 years to produce the first acceptable axial-flow turbojet (ATAR 101 B1), produced in 1953. So 8 years research and developments by the French using the German jet engines as the base. It was installed on the first French jet fighter, the Dassault Ouragan.
The French lost a lot of time because the German jets had poor efficiency and some concept fails. Essentially in the combustion chambers and fresh air circulation to reduce the external temperature of the engine. The BMW jet was known for overheat problems which precluded fuselage installation.
The question at the end of WW2 was: what is the most efficient way to produce jet fighters? The answer was clearly not adopting the German design of engine and fuselage. The build costs for a jet engine were much higher than a piston engine, with the fuel consumption near 3x. The centrifugal compressor the British adopted in some planes was the best choice with 1944-45 technology, more compression pressure was not an advantage when the hot turbine was unable to resist higher temperatures. The German turbojets had big overheat problems as the engine would not work in an enclosed fuselage for single engined fighters. This defect was immediately noted by the French on the 1946 "SO 6000 Triton" prototype, and by the Soviets on the 1946 Mig 9. The Soviets quickly replaced the BMW 004B2 by the centrifugal Rolls Royce Nene which worked without problems, dismissing the BMW engine for fighter planes. The Rolls Royce Nene was copied to the last nut by the USSR being installed in the Mig 15 being used effectively in the Korean war.
The Meteor was the first proper fully developed jet plane introduced operationally. The 262 was slightly faster than the Meteor F3, but extremely unreliable. The British would never put into the sky such an undeveloped plane as the me262. The British could have had a jet fighter operational in 1941, but it may have been as bad as the me262. The Germans advanced R&D on jets after they interrogated captured British RAF men. They learned the British were advanced in jet technology and flying prototype planes. Until then the Germans had no intention of mass producing jet planes.
The rushed together Me262 started claiming kills on 26 July 1944, the Meteor claimed its first V1 kill a few days later on the 4 August 1944. But the Meteor was a proper fully developed jet plane, not a thrown together desperate effort as the me262 was. The me262 fuselage was similar to a piston plane with the pilot over the wings obscuring downward vision, while the Meteor was a proper new design fuselage specifically for jet fighters with a forward of the wings pilot position giving superior pilot vision, as we see in planes today. The cockpit was very quiet. The sweptback wings of the me262 were to move the engines further back for better weight distribution, not for aerodynamic reasons as is thought the case. The me262's airframe was based on piston engine planes, even with an initial rear tail wheel. The tricycle landing gear was only introduced when it was found the thrust of the jet engines would scorch the runway surface as the exhaust faced downwards. The Meteor's airframe was designed purely for jet propulsion even with a high tail to prevent thrust interfering with the tail which could affect control.
Centrifugal compressors were not obsolete being used in turboprops. Between a turbo jet and a turboprop, the only difference is the turbine, not the compressor. The last centrifugal compressor jet engine still in service on a handful of commercial aircraft like the Fokker 27, is the Rolls Royce Dart turboprop. A very reliable engine made in 27 versions, but with high fuel consumption to modern engines. The Rolls Royce Dart Turboprop turbo jet engine was produced the longest, being a comparable design turbojet to the likes the Rolls Royce Nene. The rugged engine was produced from 1946 up to 1987.
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Market Garden failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. Because the 82nd did not seize the Nijmegen bridge immediately. They were ready at 2 pm on the jump day and never moved to the bridge. The gigantic bridge was guarded by 19 guards. Germans occupied the bridge at 1900 hrs. Six hours after the 82nd were ready to march.
Events on the 1st day:
♦ "At 1328, the 665 men of US 82nd 1st Battalion
began to fall from the sky."
- Poulussen, R. Lost at Nijmegen.
♦ "Forty minutes after the drop, around 1410, the
1st Battalion marched off towards their objective,
De Ploeg, three miles away."
- Poulussen,
♦ The 82nd were digging in and performing recon
in the area looking for 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald
- Neillands, R. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
♦ The 82nd were dug in and preparing to defend their
newly constructed regimental command post, which
they established at 1825. Then Colonel Lindquist
"was told by General Gavin, around 1900, to move
into Nijmegen."
- Poulussen
Events on the evening of the 1st day:
♦ Having dug in at De Ploeg, Warren's battalion
wasn't prepared to move towards the Nijmegen
at all.
- Poulussen,
♦ Once Lindquist told Lieutenant Colonel Warren
that his Battalion was to move, Warren decided
to visit the HQ of the Nijmegen Underground
first - to see what info the underground had
on the Germans at the Nijmegen bridge.
- Poulussen,
♦ This was not a direct route to the bridge from
Warren's original position, and placed him in
the middle of the town.
It was also around 2100 when "A" Company
left to attempt to capture the Nijmegen road
bridge.
♦ "B" Company was not with them because
they'd split up due to it being dark with
"visibility was less than ten yards".
- Poulussen,
♦ The 82nd attacks were resisted by the
Germans until the next day.
Events of the 2nd day:
♦ Gavin drove up in a jeep the next morning and
was told by Warren that although they didn't
have the bridge yet, another attack was about
to go in.
♦ Gavin then told Warren to hold because the Germans
were attacking in the southeast portion of the 82nd
perimeter.
♦ At around 1100, Warren was ordered to withdraw
from Nijmegen completely.
- Poulussen
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@AFT_05G
I gave the source. The book is Wages of Destruction - The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy. Tooze clearly states the USSR outproduced the USA in 1942.
Keegan: World War Two, chapter War Production:
- Germany was third behind the USA, then the UK in GDP, in 1939. Germany = UK in capital goods production in 1939.
- UK economy grows 60% during WW2.
- Hitler says to Guderian, re: USSR, "had I known they had so many tanks as that, I would have thought twice before invading"
Tooze: Wages of Destruction Preface, xxiii:
Combined GDP of the UK and France exceeded Germany & Italy by 60%.
- page 454:
"It was poor because of the incomplete industrial and economic development of Germany".
Interesting:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/workingpapers/publications/twerp603.pdf
Snippets:
"Soviet exceeded German GDP in 1940"
"The Allies won the war because their economies supported a greater volume of war production and military personnel in larger numbers. This was true of the war as a whole, and it was also true on the eastern front where the Soviet economy, of a similar size to Germany's but less developed and also seriously weakened by invasion, supplied more soldiers and weapons."
"the technological key to Soviet superiority in the output of weapons was mass production. At the outbreak of war Soviet industry as a whole was not larger and not more productive than German industry. The non-industrial resources on which Soviet industry could draw were larger than Germany's in the sense of territory and population, but of considerably lower quality, more far-flung, and less well integrated. Both countries had given considerable thought to industrial mobilisation preparations, but the results were of questionable efficacy. In both countries war production was poorly organised at first and productivity in the military-industrial sector had been falling for several years. The most important difference was that Soviet industry had made real strides towards mass production, while German industry was still locked into an artisan mode of production that placed a premium on quality and assortment rather than quantity. Soviet industry produced fewer models of each type of weapon, and subjected them to less modification, but produced them in far larger quantities. Thus the Soviet Union was able to make considerably more effective use of its limited industrial resources than Germany."
"Before the war Soviet defence industry was in a state of permanent technological reorganisation as new models of aircraft, tanks, and other weapons were introduced and old ones phased out at a dizzying rate."
The USSR had access to oil and more natural resources and far more men than Germany. Giving them the ability to produce far greater than Germany, which actually happened. This was despite that in 1942 the Axis forces outnumbered the Soviets.
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@johnlucas8479
The state of play on the 17th was:
1) the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was clear;
2) there were concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally;
3) there were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen;
4) then a few scattered about along the road;
5) there was no armour in Arnhem.
That was it.
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 3 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured the bridge.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected.
XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and towards the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up. The road was still clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump.
XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, making up the delay at Zon. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over.
If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
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@johnlucas8479
The largest airborne contribution was the USAs. The 82nd was the largest division. The bridge at Grave was the only bridge to be taken from both ends as per established tactics.
Monty actually signaled Eisenhower’s headquarters postponing the operation. Eisenhower resurrecting it. A cable from the War Office about V2s committed Montgomery to the operation. Tactical Operation Market Garden was based on Operation Comet, with multiple Rhine crossings, which was a quick pursuit operation formed by Monty. He cancelled it due to reformed German resistance.
From Nigel Hamilton’s biography of Monty:
For Monty now to cancel the British part of ‘the main effort of the Allies because of stiffening enemy resistance, even had he wished to do so, would thus have been tantamount to insubordination, leaving him open to charges of timidity at a moment when American forces were thrusting towards the German border. Moreover the Arnhem-Nijmegan axis had been Monty’s proposal, making it doubly hard to rescind.
Eisenhower’s directive was not the only signal committing Monty to the continuation of his planned thrust via Arnhem on 9 September - for during the afternoon a ‘Secret’ cable arrived from the War Office, sent by VCIGS, General Nye, in the absence of Field-Marshal Brooke:
Two rockets so-called V.2 landed in England yesterday. Believed to have been fired from areas near ROTTERDAM and AMSTERDAM. Will you please report urgently by what approximate date you consider you can rope off the Coastal area contained by ANTWERP-UTRECHT-ROTTERDAM. When this area is in our hands the threat from this weapon will probably have disappeared.
By striking north-east from Eindhoven to Arnhem, 21st Army Group would be in a position to ‘rope off’ the whole of Holland, including the 150,000 fleeing German troops and the V2 bomb sites.
Few people are aware that there were supporting units on either flank who set off to the left and right of Hells Highway shortly after and in fact one of these supporting flanks advances pushed the Germans away from cutting the highway near Eindhoven on the 20th after XXX corps had gone through ahead. They even widened the axis of advance with their follow on actions.
It should be borne in mind that promised supplies from SHAEF failed to arrive, leaving VIII Corps, supposed to attack alongside, mostly stranded in place. “Garden” launched with only half the troops it should have had.
Montgomery had also wanted to use Hodges First US Army (and had in fact been promised) as a follow up flanking advance. But Bradley was stealing fuel and other resources from Hodges and giving it to Patton.
Eisenhower:
”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”.
Eisenhower insisted it go ahead who also under-resourced it. Market Garden wasn’t even an army just a corps above Eindhoven. A disgrace.
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@johnlucas8479
From the US Official History:
"I personally directed Colonel Roy E. Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry," General Gavin recalled later, "to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing"
Gavin did give urgency to the bridge for sure. And clearly equal priority.
US Official History:
As darkness approached, General Gavin ordered Colonel Lindquist "to delay not a second longer and get the bridge as quickly as possible with Warren's battalion."
Gavin's men failed to act with urgency dawdling at DePloge
US Official History:
The assembly and movement to De Ploeg took approximately three and a half hours. After organizing a defense of the objective, Colonel Warren about 1830 sent into Nijmegen a patrol consisting of a rifle platoon and the battalion intelligence section.
Until Gavin told them to move when finding they were doing nothing. About 40 men, a patrol, set off to the bridge about four hours after the jump, reaching the vicinity of the bridge over five hours after the jump. Instead of seizing the bridge, with only 19 guards guarding it and the adjacent rail bridge, they found it was now held by an SS recon battalion who moved down from Arnhem, in the time they were dawdling at DePloge. The SS recon men reached the bridge just prior to the Patrol reaching the bridge - about five hours after the jump.
The 82nd had a five hour window in which to launch an attack on a largely undefended bridge with no significant bridge defenses.
US Official History:
the chance for an easy, speedy capture of the Nijmegen bridge had passed. This was all the more lamentable because in Nijmegen during the afternoon the Germans had had nothing more than the same kind of "mostly low quality" troops encountered at most other places on D Day.
US Official History:
As the scouts neared a traffic circle surrounding a landscaped circular park near the center of Nijmegen, the Keizer Karel Plein, from which a mall-like park led northeast toward the Nijmegen bridge, a burst of automatic weapons fire came from the circle. The time was about two hours before midnight.
The first attack on the bridge was 8.5 hours after the jump.
So blaming Browning for the 82nd men dawdling is a slur on Browning in a poor attempt at defecting blame. Gavin did have the bridge as priority as the text above confirms. Blaming Browning for the incompetence of the 82nd in not moving to the bridge quickly is totally out of order. Browning did not order the 82nd men to dawdle at DePloge.
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@gerhardris
The First Allied Airborne Army under American Brereton was given Operation Comet by Eisenhower, a cancelled operation conceived and cancelled by Montgomery. FAAA were to flesh out the operation morphing it into Market Garden.
The FAAA were only answerable to SHAEF, not Monty. The FAAA, a floating army available to slot into any army group as needed, was 'notionally' in the 21st Army Group on a temporary basis. The FAAA were responsible for the planning of the operation executing the air part, Market. The FAAA used ground units of Dempsey's Second Army to link seized bridges powering 60 miles into enemy territory.
The ground elements, mainly XXX Corps of Dempsey's Second Army, were superb being on time and having to get around the failures of the 101st and 82nd of the air element, erecting a Bailey bridge overnight at Zon and seizing the Waal bridge for the 82nd. These delays set XXX Corps back two days.
Two of the FAAA's three main air elements failed with one a partial success but did seize a part of the Arnhem bridge, preventing German traffic using the bridge.
All failures were by Americans. Yet Americans blame Monty who never planned the operation or was in command of the execution, which was by the FAAA, XXX Corps or the Second Army.
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@gerhardris
Ike could not sack Monty. If anyone should have been sacked it was Ike...
Montgomery to AlanBrooke..
"If we want the war to end within any reasonable period you have to get Eisenhower’s hand taken off the land battle. I regret to say that in my opinion he just doesn’t know what he is doing.
Montgomery wrote of Eisenhower and his ridiculous broad-front strategy on 22 January 1945:
“I fear that the old snags of indecision and vacillation and refusal to consider the military problem fairly and squarely are coming to the front again . . . The real trouble is that there is no control and the three army groups are each intent on their own affairs. Patton today issued a stirring order to Third Army, saying the next step would be Cologne . . . One has to preserve a sense of humour these days, otherwise one would go mad.”
Alanbrooke wrote in his diary about Eisenhower:
“At the end of this morning's C.O.S. [Chief of Staff] meeting I put before the committee my views on the very unsatisfactory state of affairs in France, with no one running the land battle. Eisenhower, though supposed to be doing so, is on the golf links at Rheims — entirely detached and taking practically no part in running of the war. Matters got so bad lately that a deputation of Whiteley, Bedell Smith and a few others went up to tell him that he must get down to it and RUN the war, which he said he would."
"We discussed the advisability of getting Marshall to come out to discuss the matter, but we are doubtful if he would appreciate the situation. Finally decided that I am to see the P.M. to discuss the situation with him.”
"November 28th I went to see the P.M. I told him I was very worried."
Alan Brooke described in his daily diary that American generals Eisenhower and Marshall as poor strategists, when they were in jobs were strategy mattered. Brooke wrote to Montgomery about his talks with Eisenhower, “it is equally clear that Ike has the very vaguest conception of war!”
You are very confused. Read what I wrote again and understand it.
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What US historian Harry Yeide wrote of what the Germans thought of Patton:
▪️ for most of the war the Germans barely took notice [of Patton].
▪️ on March 23 at the Battle of El Guettar—the first American victory against the experienced Germans. Patton’s momentum, however, was short-lived: Axis troops held him to virtually no gain until April 7, when they withdrew under threat from British Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army.
▪️ There is no indication in the surviving German military records—which include intelligence reports at the theater, army, and division levels—that Patton’s enemies had any idea who he was at the time. Likewise, the immediate postwar accounts of the German commanders in Tunisia, written for the U.S. Army’s History Division, ignore Patton. Those reports show that ground commanders considered II Corps’s attacks under Patton to have been hesitant, and to have missed great opportunities.
▪️ In mid-June [1943], another detachment report described Patton as “an energetic and responsibility-loving command personality”—a passing comment on one of the numerous Allied commanders. Patton simply had not yet done anything particularly noteworthy in their eyes.
▪️ But his race to Palermo through country they had already abandoned left the commanders unimpressed. Major General Eberhard Rodt, who led the 15th Panzergrenadier Division against Patton’s troops during the Allied push toward Messina, thought the American Seventh Army fought hesitantly and predictably. He wrote in an immediate postwar report on Sicily, “The enemy very often conducted his movements systematically, and only attacked after a heavy artillery preparation when he believed he had broken our resistance. This kept him regularly from exploiting the weakness of our situation and gave me the opportunity to consolidate dangerous situations.” Once again, Patton finished a campaign without impressing his opponents.
▪️ General Hermann Balck, who took command of Army Group G in September, thus did not think highly of Patton—or any other opposing commanders—during this time. Balck wrote to his commander, Runstedt, on October 10, “I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans” Looking back on his battles against Patton throughout the autumn, in 1979 Balck recalled, “Within my zone, the Americans never once exploited a success. Often [General Friedrich Wilhelm von] Mellenthin, my chief of staff, and I would stand in front of the map and say, ‘Patton is helping us; he failed to exploit another success.’”
▪️ The commander of the Fifth Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel, aimed a dismissive, indirect critique at Patton’s efforts at Bastogne, writing in his memoirs that the Americans did not “strike with full élan.” The commanders who fought against Patton in his last two mobile campaigns in the Saar-Palatinate and east of the Rhine already knew they could not win; their losses from this point forward were inevitable, regardless of the commanding Allied opponent.
▪️ the Germans offered Patton faint praise during and immediately after the war.
▪️ posterity deserves fact and not myth. The Germans did not track Patton’s movements as the key to Allied intentions. Hitler does not appear to have thought often of Patton, if at all. The Germans considered Patton a hesitant commanding general in the scrum of position warfare. They never raised his name in the context of worthy strategists.
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@Polygon-yug-9581
Manstein?
Wages of Destruction By Prof Adam Tooze. Page 380
because it involved such a concentrated use of force, Manstein's plan was a one-shot affair. If the initial assault had failed, and it could have failed in many ways, the Wehrmacht as an offensive force would have been spent. The gamble paid off. But contrary to appearances, the Germans had not discovered a patent recipe for military miracles. The overwhelming success of May 1940, resulting in the defeat of a major European military power in a matter of weeks, was not a repeatable outcome.
Tooze, page 373:
In retrospect, it suited neither the Allies nor the Germans to expose the amazingly haphazard course through which the Wehrmacht had arrived at its most brilliant military success. The myth of the Blitzkrieg suited the British and French because it provided an explanation other than military incompetence for their pitiful defeat. But whereas it suited the Allies to stress the alleged superiority of German equipment, Germany's own propaganda viewed the Blitzkrieg in less materialistic terms.
Tooze page 380:
In both campaigns [France and Barbarossa], the Germans gambled on achieving decisive success in the opening phases of the assault. Anything less spelled disaster.
Rommel?
Pushed back by an inferior British force at Arras in May 1940. He constantly overran his supply lines, then being pushed back. He was defeated by Montgomery every time they met. The first time they met at Alem al Halfa Rommel had a superior force.
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@johnlucas8479
You must stop exaggerating, distorting and making things up.
PLANNING
Was primarily by Brereton and Williams of the USAAF. Hollingworth of the RAF is culpable as he agreed with many of their flawed proposals.
FAILURE POINTS
1) 101st failing to seize the Zon bridge.
They never planned a coup de main, attacking from one end. The 101st failed to seize the Zon bridge, taking 4 hours to travel 2 km to the bridge. If they moved to the bridge immediately they would have taken it from one end. The Germans blew the bridge after 4 hours.
2) 82nd failing to seize the Nijmegen bridge.
The 82nd's plan was to seize this large bridge from one end, not using a coup de main from both ends. The 82nd failed to seize the largest bridge in Europe, being defended by 18 guards, as they were far too late reaching the bridge. Three stragglers from the 82nd actually captured one third of the 18 guards, then let them go when no US troops turned up. The 82nd were far too late in moving to the largely undefended bridge, allowing the 9th SS to motor in reinforcing the bridge. The 82nd's first attack on the bridge was approaching midnight.
SUCCESS POINTS
1) XXX Corps reached the Rhine, yards from their objective, Arnhem.
2) An 60 mile salient had been rammed into German lines on their border splitting German armies.
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ALA
Market Garden failed by a whisker. Because the 82nd did not seize the Nijmegen bridge immediately. They were ready at 2 pm on the jump day and never moved to the bridge. The gigantic bridge was guarded by 19 guards. Germans occupied the bridge at 1900 hrs. Six hours after the 82nd were ready to march.
Events on the 1st day:
♦ "At 1328, the 665 men of US 82nd 1st Battalion began
to fall from the sky." Poulussen, R. Lost at Nijmegen.
♦ "Forty minutes after the drop, around 1410, the
1st Battalion marched off towards their objective,
De Ploeg, three miles away." Poulussen,
♦ The 82nd were digging in and performing recon
in the area looking for 1000 tanks in the Reichswald
- Neillands, R. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
♦ The 82nd were dug in and preparing to defend their
newly constructed regimental command post, which
they established at 1825. Then Colonel Lindquist
"was told by General Gavin, around __1900,_ to move_
into Nijmegen." Poulussen, location 445.
Events on the evening of the first day:
♦ Having dug in at De Ploeg, Warren's battalion wasn't prepared
to move towards the Nijmegen at all. Poulussen,
♦ Once Lindquist told Lieutenant Colonel Warren that his
Battalion was to move, Warren decided to visit the HQ
of the Nijmegen Underground first - to see what info the
underground had on the Germans at the Nijmegen bridge.
- Poulussen,
♦ This was not a direct route to the bridge from Warren's
original position, and placed him in the middle of the town.
It was also around 2100 when "A" Company left to attempt
to capture the Nijmegen road bridge.
♦ "B" Company was not with them because they'd split up
due to it being dark with "visibility was less than ten yards".
- Poulussen,
♦ The 82nd attacks were resisted by the Germans until the
next day.
Events of the 2nd day:
♦ Gavin drove up in a jeep the next morning and
was told by Warren that although they didn't have the bridge
yet, another attack was about to go in.
♦ Gavin then told Warren to hold because the Germans were
attacking in the southeast portion of the 82nd perimeter.
♦ At around 1100, Warren was ordered to withdraw from
Nijmegen completely. - Poulussen
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@arcanondrum6543
U.S. 82nd Division records state that the first troop of British tanks, four of them, crossed the Waal road bridge at 1830 hours. Two tanks were hit with the crews taken POW bar one, Sgt Knight. The tanks charged across at full speed approaching 30 mph firing against German guns all the way, with few hundred high in the girders.
Gunner Leslie Johnson in the lead tank said: “They were falling like nine-pins. The incoming fire was so heavy that I swear to this day that Jesus Christ rode on the front of our tank. The Germans were so close that I didn’t bother to look through my sights. We could feel the tracks going over them as we shot them down, and there was blood and gore all over the tank.”
Once the two leading tanks of Pacey and Robinson got past the bridge obstacles at the northern end, Pacey stopped. The War Office report states:
“At this point, Pacey stopped, he was not sure where to go as no Americans were seen, so Sergeant Robinson passed him and led on. Much to their surprise, they could not see any Americans so having passed through the concrete chicane they pushed on. Having crossed the road bridge, the four tanks moved down the northern embankment, where they destroyed another anti tank gun. Robinson and Pacey found themselves in a running battle against more guns, and against German infantry who poured out of the church in Lent, and then 1,500 yards further down the road from the bridge, where the main road goes under the railway line, contact was at last made with some Americans, both were very happy to see each other."
The 82nd men at Lent reached Lent following the railway embankment from the riverbank using it for cover. The first American troops that arrived at the bridge approaches/waterside after moving along the riverbank from their river landing point with Burriss’ company of about sixteen men, was at 1915 hours. 45 minutes. after the first tanks had already crossed. This was not the main bridge span, just the raised approach road over land. Official U.S. records confirm that 82nd troops from the 504th arrived at the northern road bridge approaches at 1938 hours. This would be the time they arrived in any real strength to consolidate, one hour 8 mins after the first tank crossed. The records state at 1938 hours:
“All seemed quiet at this point, with the enemy disorganised and in great confusion, suffering heavy losses. Prior to the physical occupation of the northern end of the bridge by 504th PIR, eight British light tanks had [already] crossed. Two of these were destroyed just north of the bridge”.
The second troop of tanks crossed at least half an hour after the first. Burris was there under the approach road when the second troop rolled over, thinking they were the first tanks over. Lord Carington's tank was one of them. Eight rolled over the bridge in total, with two hit, being there to consolidate the bridgehead and ensure the Germans did not take the bridge back.
Not one 82nd man was on the bridge when the first troop of four tanks crossed at 1830, or at 1915 when the second troop of four went over. Official XXX Corps records from the War Office highlight that the successful tank attack on the road bridge was at 1830 hours.
Thirty-four machine guns, an 88mm gun, and two 20mm cannons were found to be on the road bridge itself, and at least six anti-tank guns and a few 88mm guns were situated around the northern end.
All this nonsense of drinking tea by the British tankers disinterested in the battle seems to have started as an American diversion, after inquiries by the Official US historian Charles MacDonald into why the Nijmegen bridges were not taken on the first day.
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@arcanondrum6543
U.S. 82nd Division records state that the first troop of British tanks, four of them, crossed the Waal road bridge at 1830 hours. Two tanks were hit with the crews taken POW bar one, Sgt Knight. The tanks charged across at full speed approaching 30 mph firing against German guns all the way, with few hundred high in the girders. Gunner Leslie Johnson in the lead tank said: “They were falling like nine-pins. The incoming fire was so heavy that I swear to this day that Jesus Christ rode on the front of our tank. The Germans were so close that I didn’t bother to look through my sights. We could feel the tracks going over them as we shot them down, and there was blood and gore all over the tank.”
Once the two leading tanks of Pacey and Robinson got past the bridge obstacles at the northern end, Pacey stopped. The War Office report states:
“At this point, Pacey stopped, he was not sure where to go as no Americans were seen, so Sergeant Robinson passed him and led on. Much to their surprise, they could not see any Americans so having passed through the concrete chicane they pushed on. Having crossed the road bridge, the four tanks moved down the northern embankment, where they destroyed another anti tank gun. Robinson and Pacey found themselves in a running battle against more guns, and against German infantry who poured out of the church in Lent, and then 1,500 yards further down the road from the bridge, where the main road goes under the railway line, contact was at last made with some Americans, both were very happy to see each other."
The 82nd men at Lent reached Lent following the railway embankment from the riverbank using it for cover. The first American troops that arrived at the bridge approaches/waterside after moving along the riverbank from their river landing point with Burriss’ company of about sixteen men, was at 1915 hours. 45 minutes. after the first tanks had already crossed. This was not the main bridge span, just the raised approach road over land. Official U.S. records confirm that 82nd troops from the 504th arrived at the northern road bridge approaches at 1938 hours. This would be the time they arrived in any real strength to consolidate, one hour 8 mins after the first tank crossed. The records state at 1938 hours:
“All seemed quiet at this point, with the enemy disorganised and in great confusion, suffering heavy losses. Prior to the physical occupation of the northern end of the bridge by 504th PIR, eight British light tanks had [already] crossed. Two of these were destroyed just north of the bridge”.
The second troop of tanks crossed at least half an hour after the first. Burris was there under the approach road when the second troop rolled over, thinking they were the first tanks over. Lord Carington's tank was one of them. Eight rolled over the bridge, with two hit, being there to consolidate the bridgehead and ensure the Germans did not take the bridge back.
Horrock of XXX Corps in his plan had the 43 Wessex infantry to seize the ground from Nijmegen bridge to Arnhem, destroying anti-tank weapons. It was not tank country. The tanks were to follow behind the infantry. The tanks would have been sitting ducks if they went first. The 43rd Wessex were to do the river crossing in two columns. There was a contingency planned if the bridge was blown. The Wessex were to use dedicated assault boats, which they had in Nijmegen, and DUKW and Buffalo amphibious craft. But to save face as they failed to seize the bridge, Gavin of the 82nd pestered Horrocks for his men to do the crossing, Horrocks agreed. It appears that the 82nd did not know of the Buffalo amphibious craft using collapsible bridge engineers boats to cross the Waal. Or the Wessex did not want to give them fearing the valuable craft would be lost with an 82nd river assault failure - that needs more research.
Not one 82nd man was on the bridge when the first troop of four tanks crossed at 1830, or at 1915 when the second troop of four went over. Official XXX Corps records from the War Office highlight that the successful tank attack on the road bridge was at 1830 hours.
Thirty-four machine guns, an 88mm gun, and two 20mm cannons were found to be on the road bridge itself, and at least six anti-tank guns and a few 88mm guns were situated around the northern end.
All this nonsense of drinking tea by the British tankers disinterested in the battle seems to have started as an American diversion, after inquiries by the Official US historian Charles MacDonald into why the Nijmegen bridges were not taken on the first day.
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@flyoptimum wrote:
"personally gave an order to Jim Gavin that, although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges as soon as possible, it was essential that he should capture the Groesbeek Ridge and hold it.""
Browning gave equal priority to the ridge and bridge. He did not de-prioritize the bridge. The above statement confirms that by the words: "every effort should be made to effect the capture, and as soon as possible.
The failure to seize the bridge was that the US 82nd never moved to it immediately. Gavin said he ordered the 508 to do so.
The 82nd never seized the Nijmegen bridge. Of the 18 bridge guards, three 82nd scouts took prisoner seven of them on the south end of Nijmegen bridge, together with their 20mm cannon, but had to let them go after an hour as no one turned up. The 9th SS came south to reinforce the bridge about 6 hours after the 82nd landed. The 82nd scouts saw them arrive as they were leaving the bridge.
The 82nd had 6 hours to move and occupy the bridge but hung around in DePloeg. If they had moved to the bridge immediately they would have walked on it whistling Dixie.
Browning was not there to hold General Gavin's hand. Browning had full faith and confidence in Gavin as up until then he had an excellent record. Browning was in the air when the 82nd 508 should have been moving to the bridge. He landed two hours after the first jump. Then Browning had to set up his CP when on the ground and communicate with three generals.
The 82nd around midnight made their fist attack on the bridge, staying all night around the southern approaches. Browning was informed they had not seized the bridge on the morning of d day plus 1. He was concerned ordering Gavin to take the bridge ASAP. Gavin moved all his men out of Nijmegen town and the bridge approaches, de-prioritizing the bridge. Gavin said to Browning that XXX Corps can take the bridge when they arrive. They did. The resulting two day delay due to the 101st and 82nd failing to seize their bridges precluded a bridgehead over the Rhine.
The First Airborne seized one end of the Arnhem bridge denying its use to the Germans. The 9th SS and its vehicles were shot up on the Arnhem bridge. If XXX Corps had arrived, not being delayed by two US para units, the whole Arnhem bridge would have been in British hands - game set and match.
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@flyoptimum
Timeline
Events on the 1st day - D day:
▪ "At 1328, the 665 men of US 82nd 1st Battalion began to fall from the sky."
- R Poulussen, Lost at Nijmegen.
▪ "Forty minutes after the drop, around 1410, the 1st Battalion marched off towards their objective, De Ploeg, three miles away."
- R Poulussen.
"The 82nd were digging in and performing reconn in the area looking for 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald
- Neillands, R. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
▪ "Colonel Warren about 1830 sent into Nijmegen a patrol consisting of a rifle platoon and the battalion intelligence section. This patrol was to make an aggressive reconnaissance, investigate reports from Dutch civilians that only eighteen Germans guarded the big bridge"
- US Official history, page 163.
▪ It was not until 1830hrs that he [Warren] was able to send a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small, just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a radio — say forty men.
- Neillands. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
▪ The 82nd were dug in and preparing to defend their newly constructed regimental command post, which they established at 1825. Having dug in at De Ploeg, Warren's battalion wasn't prepared to move towards Nijmegen at all.
- R Poulussen.
▪ Then Colonel Lindquist "was told by General Gavin, around 1900, to move into Nijmegen."
- R Poulussen.
▪ Warren sent a patrol of about 40 men to reconnoiter the bridge at 1830. Three strays from the patrol captured seven of the 18 guards and their 20mm cannon who were guarding the south end of the bridge, having to let them go as no reinforcements arrived. The 508th had actually captured the south end of the largely undefended bridge. The three scouts reached the southern end of the Nijmegen bridge about an hour before the 9th SS arrived. Joe Atkins of the patrol said: "at the bridge, only a few German soldiers were standing around a small artillery weapon... The Germans were so surprised; the six or seven defenders of the bridge gave up without resisting. We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark and none of our other troops showed up. We decided to pull away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge."
- The 508th Connection by Zig Boroughs.
That was the 9th SS arriving at 1930.
▪ Unfortunately, the patrol's radio failed to function so that Colonel Warren was to get no word from the patrol until the next morning
- US Official History, page 163.
▪ Once Lindquist told Lieutenant Colonel Warren [at 1900] that his Battalion was to move, Warren decided to visit the HQ of the Nijmegen Underground first - to see what info the underground had on the Germans at the Nijmegen bridge.
- R Poulussen,
▪ "Although Company A reached the rendezvous point on time, Company B "got lost en route." After waiting until about 2000, Colonel Warren left a guide for Company B and moved through the darkness with Company A toward the edge of the city. Some seven hours after H-Hour, [2030] the first real move against the Nijmegen bridge began."
- US Official History, page 163.
▪ As the scouts neared a traffic circle surrounding a landscaped circular park near the center of Nijmegen, the Keizer Karel Plein, from which a mall-like park led northeast toward the Nijmegen bridge, a burst of automatic weapons fire came from the circle. The time was about two hours before midnight. [2200 hrs]
- US Official History, page 163.
D Day plus 1
▪ In the meantime Colonel Warren had tried to get a new attack moving toward the highway bridge; but this the Germans thwarted just before dawn with another sharp counterattack.
- US Official History, page 165.
▪ "While the counterattack was in progress, General Gavin arrived at the battalion command post." "General Gavin directed that the battalion "withdraw from close proximity to the bridge and reorganize"." This was to mark the end of this particular attempt to take the Nijmegen bridge"
- US Official History, page 165.
▪ "A new attack to gain the bridge grew out of an early morning conference between General Gavin and Colonel Lindquist." "At 0745 on 18 September, D plus 1, Company G under Capt. Frank J. Novak started toward the bridge."
▪ At around 1100, Warren was ordered to withdraw from Nijmegen completely.
- R Poulussen.
▪ At 1400 on 18 September Colonel Mendez ordered Company G to withdraw from Nijmegen_
- US Official History, page 166.
"the chance for an easy, speedy capture of the Nijmegen bridge had passed. This was all the more lamentable because in Nijmegen during the afternoon the Germans had had nothing more than the same kind of "mostly low quality" troops encountered at most other places on D Day."
- US Official History, page 164.
The 82nd completely withdrew from Nijmegen town, allowing the Germans to pour in the 10th SS infantry, who went over on the ferry, then south over the Nijmegen bridge to reinforce the town. This made matters worse when XXX Corps and the 82nd went into the town to clear them out.
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@davidhimmelsbach557
My oh my!
1985 US Army report on the Lorraine Campaign. Patton does not come out well.
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a211668.pdf
Combat Studies Institute.
The Lorraine Campaign:
An Overview, September-December 1944.
by Dr. Christopher R. Gabel February, 1985
From the document is in italics:
"Soldiers and generals alike assumed that Lorraine would fall quickly, and unless the war ended first, Patton's tanks would take the war into Germany by summer's end. But Lorraine was not to be overrun in a lightning campaign. Instead, the battle for Lorraine would drag on for more than 3 months." "Despite its proximity to Germany, Lorraine was not the Allies' preferred invasion route in 1944. Except for its two principal cities, Metz and Nancy, the province contained few significant military objectives." "Moreover, once Third Army penetrated the province and entered Germany, there would still be no first-rate military objectives within its grasp. The Saar industrial region, while significant, was of secondary importance when compared to the great Ruhr industrial complex farther north."
Another Patton chase into un-needed territory, full of vineyards like he did when running his troops into Brittany.
"With so little going for it, why did Patton bother with Lorraine at all?
The reason was that Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, made up his mind to destroy as many German forces as possible west of the Rhine."
In other words a waste of time.
"Communications Zone organized the famous Red Ball Express, a non-stop conveyor belt of trucks connecting the Normandy depots with the field armies."
They were getting fuel via 6,000 trucks. _
You do not get the above from Hollywood fillms.
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@davidhimmelsbach557
What a lot of disjointed babble!
Browning never laid out the drop zone all by himself.
Cornelius Ryan spent most of his time with Patton's Third Army. His book, A Bridge Too Far is highly inaccurate in parts. He also leaves out large parts. Not worth bothering with.
Montgomery did not plan Market Garden or was in involved in its execution. Eisenhower starved the operation of resources.
John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
Montgomery to Alexander on July 19th 1943. A letter regarding to Patton and Messina in Sicily: " ..when the Americans have cut the coast road north of Petralia, one American division should develop a strong thrust eastwards towards Messina so as to stretch the enemy who are all Germans and possibly repeat the Bizerte (Tunisia) manoeuvre (i.e cut them off)"
Monty wrote in his diary:
"the Seventh American Army should develop two strong thrusts with (a) two divisions on Highway 120 and (b) two divisions on Highway 113 towards Messina. This was all agreed"
Pages 140/141 of Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory by Michael Reynolds.
"[Monty] sent a message to Patton inviting him to come and discuss the capture of Messina. He offered, “Many congratulations to you and your gallant soldiers on securing Palermo and clearing up the western half of Sicily.” Privately, of course, he believed Patton’s Palermo escapade had been a completely wasted effort."
"Patton met Monty at Syracuse airfield on the 25th. Expecting the worst and mistrusting his comrade’s intentions, he was astounded when Monty suggested that the Seventh Army should use both the major roads north of Mount Etna (Highways 113 and 120) in a drive to capture Messina. In fact, Monty went even further and suggested that his right hand, or southern, thrust might even cross the inter-Army boundary and strike for Taormina, thereby cutting off the two German divisions facing the Eighth Army; the latter would “take a back seat.”
by Michael Reynolds author of Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory
‘Montgomery was heading for Messina too, but the German forces still on the island threw up a tough defence line and it was late July before Montgomery worked his way through them and resumed his advance. Fans of the movie ''Patton'' think they know what happened next. Montgomery marched into Messina at the head of his triumphant troops - to find a smirking Patton waiting for him. Mr. D'Este assures us it didn't happen that way. Patton was indeed trying to beat Montgomery to Messina, but Montgomery would not make a race of it. He wanted only to keep the Germans from escaping and realized Patton was in the best position to accomplish that. In fact he urged Patton to use roads assigned to the Eighth Army.’
- New York Times
www.nytimes.com/1988/11/27/books/the-finish-line-was-messina.html
In Sicily Patton was moving in the west over ground the Germans had abandoned and still made heavy going of it. It was arranged that Patton gets to Messina first with Montgomery. His troops did take the easy route while the British slogged it out with the Germans, reaching Messina only a few hours after Patton.
"Although Brig. Gen. Maxwell Taylor, the artillery commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, described the provisional corps’ advance into northwestern Sicily as “a pleasure march, shaking hands with Italians asking, ‘How’s my brother Joe in Brooklyn?’ Nicest war I’ve ever been in!” it was in fact extremely unpleasant for many of the GIs who had to march over 100 miles through very rugged country in stifling heat and swirling dust."
by Michael Reynolds author of Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory
Bradley:
“Patton was developing as an unpopular guy. He steamed about with great convoys of cars and great squads of cameramen … To George, tactics was simply a process of bulling ahead. Never seemed to think out a campaign. Seldom made a careful estimate of the situation. I thought him a shallow commander … I disliked the way he worked, upset tactical plans, interfered in my orders. His stubbornness on amphibious operations, parade plans into Messina sickened me and soured me on Patton. We learned how not to behave from Patton’s Seventh Army.”
The reference to amphibious operations was in relation to three landings made on the north coast of Sicily during the advance to Messina, known to the Americans as end runs. Patton did not in fact interfere in the first successful landing, but he ordered the second to take place earlier than Bradley and Truscott wished, ending in a minor disaster, and he ordered the third to take place despite the fact that the 3rd Division had already advanced beyond the landing site!"
by Michael Reynolds author of Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory
More amateur garbage from the Americans, taking towns unnecessarily slowing down the operation:
"On July 19, Monty had signalled Alexander, outlining his axes of advance around either side of Mount Etna and suggesting that “when the Americans have cut the coast road north of Petralia, one American division should develop a strong thrust eastwards towards Messina so as to stretch the enemy who are all Germans and possibly repeat the Bizerta manoeuvre [i.e., cut them off].”
"This made complete military sense, but by the 17th Patton had persuaded Alexander to allow him to drive toward the northwestern part of the island. When Alexander tried to restrain Patton by sending him a new directive on the evening of the 19th, it was too late. The directive, in accordance with Monty’s suggestion, ordered Patton to first cut the coastal road north of Petralia and only then to move on Palermo. However, the Seventh Army Chief of Staff, Brig. Gen. Hobart Gay, kept the first part of the message from Patton, ensured that the remainder took a long time to be decoded, and then asked for it to be repeated on the grounds that it had been garbled! By the time this problem had been resolved, the advance guard of Keyes’ provisional corps was already in Palermo and Monty’s idea of an American division helping him, at least in the short term, had been frustrated."
by Michael Reynolds author of Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory
"The Seventh U.S. Army, once on shore, was allowed to wheel west towards Palermo. - It thereby missed the opportunity to direct its main thrust-line northwards in order to cut the island in two: as a preliminary to the encirclement of the Etna position and the capture of Messina."
- Memoirs of Field-Marshal Montgomery by Montgomery of Alamein.
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@davidhimmelsbach557
Patton was an average US general, like Simpson, Patch, Hodges, etc. No more. "The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian First Army HQ for the same purpose.
Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation.
"This advance duly began at 0630hrs on August 18 which, as the Canadian Official History remarks, ‘was a day and a half after Montgomery had issued the order for the Canadians to close the gap at Trun, and four and a half days after Patton had been stopped at the Third Army boundary’. During that time, says the Canadian History, the Canadians had been ‘fighting down from the north with painful slowness’ and the Germans had been making their way east through the Falaise gap. They were not, however, unimpeded; the tactical air forces and Allied artillery were already taking a fearful toll of the German columns on the roads heading east past Falaise.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise – Operation Tractable – which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed there with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were re-fitting and rebuilt after the summer 1944 battles. The Panzer Brigades had green crews with little time to train, did not know their tanks properly, had no recon elements and didn't even meet their unit commander until his arrival at the front. These were not elite forces.
The 17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, equipped only with assault guns not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy and not up to strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the best German divisions in the west were NOT.
♦ Who did the 3rd Army engage?
♦ Who did the 3rd Army defeat?
♦ Patton never once faced a full strength Waffen SS panzer division nor a Tiger battalion.
In The Lorraine, the 3rd Army faced a rabble. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said:
"I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Patton was mostly facing a second rate rabble in The Lorraine.
Patton was neither on the advance nor being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. The road from Luxembourg to Bastogne saw few German forces, with Bastogne being on the very southern German flank, their focus was west. Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was not one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, while 26th Volks-Grenadier only had about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind only had a small number of tanks operational. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1.
Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Leading elements were engaging the Americans and British under Montgomery's command near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance and pushed them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons opened up with the American attack stopping and pulling back. The next day fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B retreating once again. It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. Patton's forces arrived at Chaumont late on the 22nd December. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day, the 25th! Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, just 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne.
In Normandy in 1944, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact. This eastern dash devoid of German forces was the ride the US media claimed Patton was some sort master of fast moving armour.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates.
♦ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics Bradley's II Corps were employing
♦ He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division, Truscott of being "afraid to fight".
♦ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps. ♦ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize stalled he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being "very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect".
♦ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in reporting their losses.
After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF. Coningham, gave Patton massive ground attack plane support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall. Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault, including his subordinates. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated. Oh, and wore cowboy guns.
Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his orders, and Eisenhower's orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read:
Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds and
Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies by Harry Yeide
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The British won the Battle of Dunkirk.
The British BEF was only 9% of the total allied forces in France and the Low Countries. The German advance was halted in France as the British with a vastly inferior force stopped them at Arras. Some German soldiers turned and ran. Directive 13, issued by German Supreme Headquarters on 24 May 1940 stated specifically for the annihilation of the French, English and Belgian forces in the Dunkirk pocket. The Luftwaffe was ordered to prevent the escape of the British forces across the English Channel.
The German southern advance was stopped at Arras by the British with a numerically inferior force. The Germans never moved much further after. The Germans could not have taken Dunkirk, they would have been badly beaten in and around the town. The Luftwaffe was defeated over Dunkirk by the RAF with the first showing of the Spitfire en-mass. More German than allied planes were destroyed in the Dunkirk pocket. The first defeat of the Nazis in WW2 was in the air by the British over Dunkirk. Only six small warships were sunk at Dunkirk by the Germans as the effectiveness of the Luftwaffe blunted.
The British were retreating after the French collapsed in front of them - a programme already in motion, a programme already in motion before the Germans showed up, as General Gort saw the disjointed performance of the French forces in front of him. If the French collapsed the small BEF had no hope against the large German force heading west. The French were amongst the British when General Gort decided to take the men back to England, as he did not trust the French in a joint counter-attack. French General Wiegand held a meeting to arrange a counter-attack and never invited General Gort head of the BEF. Gort was under the command of Weigand. Gort heard of the meeting and rushed to be a part. He got there after the French and Belgians had left. He ordered the evacuation having no faith in the elderly French leaders.
All armies retreat and regroup when the need is there. There happened to be a body of water in the line of the retreat. Were they to move down the English coast and enter France further west with more men from England? The Germans did not know what was to be the next British or allied move. The Germans could not have taken Dunkirk trying for nearly a week failing in the process. The British retreat operation was carried out as planned and in orderly fashion. All bridges to Dunkirk were destroyed by the allies.
The British counter-attack at Arras was with outdated Matilda 1 tanks, which only had machine guns, and a few of the brand new Matilda 2 tanks. The Germans fled in droves. In desperation the Germans turned a 88mm AA gun horizontal successful against the Matilda 2 - their conventional anti-tank weapons and tanks could not penetrate the tank. The Matilda 2 would roll over German gun emplacements killing the gunners. Rommel thought he had been hit by a force three times the size, which made them stop and rethink. The Germans countered with their superior numbers pushing back the British who fell back consolidating towards Dunkirk.
The British resolve and the new Matilda 2 made the Germans sit up and think about a street fight in Dunkirk against a consolidated force still with its weapons and the new Matilda 2 - the 88mm would be useless in Dunkirk streets while the Matilda 2 would be in its element, with the Matlida 2 easily destroying the Panzer MkIII & MkIVs. The Matilda 2 could knock out any German tank at the time, while no German tank could knock it out. The Germans were expecting the Matilda 2 to be shipped over in numbers and for all they knew many were in Dunkirk. The Germans could not stop the tanks coming as the British controlled the skies with a CAP and the waters of the Channel. Not a good prospect for the Germans. A Dunkirk street fight was a fight the German troops were untrained and unequipped for and unwise to get involved in.
Von Rundstedt and von Kluge suggested to Hitler that German forces around the Dunkirk pocket cease their advance, consolidating preventing an Allied break out from Dunkirk. Hitler agreed with the support of the Wehrmacht. German preoccupation rightly was with an expected attack from the fluid mainly French and some British forces to the south of the German line, not from dug-in Dunkirk which was too much of a formidable consolidated opponent, taking substantial resources to seize. The German column had Allied troops to each side with soft marshland to the south west of Dunkirk unsuitable for tanks. If German forces had engaged in a street battle for Dunkirk, they would be vulnerable on their weak flank from the south. In short the fast moving panzers were now static; German forces attacking Dunkirk in a battle of attrition would have been largely wiped out.
The German columns were consolidating their remaining armour and the important resupply from Germany, which was slow as it was via horses, for an expected attack by the British and French from the south - or maybe a combined attack from the south and the Dunkirk pocket. The Germans attacked on a remarkably narrow front. They had over-stretched their supply lines. The Germans had no option but to stop, being more concerned at defending from the mainly French forces in the south which were viewed as a greater threat than Dunkirk. French general Weigand implemented his creation of hedgehogs to attack German lines from the sides, with success - hedgehogs were adopted post war by NATO being a part of the tactics until the 1970s.
What were the Germans thinking? Are the British retreating to England from Dunkirk to move down the English coast and re-enter France further south with fresh forces, including Canadians and the new Matilda 2 tanks, which they feared, and join up with the French forces there? Are they going to reinforce the Dunkirk pocket supplied by the Royal Navy with a 24/7 air CAP? The British could easily do any of these as they controlled the Channel. This would create one large difficult to combat force at Dunkirk. They also saw the resolve of outnumbered British forces at Arras. German generals were trying to figure out what was happening. None thought that British troops would retreat to England and stay there. The British never did that sort of thing.
The Germans could divert most of their forces south and risk a Dunkirk breakout being attacked from their rear fighting on two fronts, or stay and consolidate, which they needed to do, awaiting a French/British attack from the south and use some forces and the Luftwaffe to attack Dunkirk, which they did. German forces resumed their attack on Dunkirk for over 6 days and failed to seize the port.
The plan to break out of the Dunkirk Pocket using British, Belgian and French forces was abandoned as Gort had no confidence in the French. All military school studies since, knowing what the German and allied positions and situations were in 1940, have shown it would have succeeded.
The Germans were defeated at the Battle of Dunkirk. They tried militarily to seize the port but failed. Only because the British did not trust the French and moved back to England did the Germans eventually occupy the town. The Germans did not let the British get away that is misguided myth, they tried for a week simply not able to seize Dunkirk.
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@kennethrosequist8963
In Market Garden XXX Corps moved at night.
Intelligence never revealed that the Germans had reinforced between Eindhoven and the Belgian border. Yet they brushed them aside within 24 hours, as the US official history states with remarkable progress. Being wise in hindsight, if the 101st had moved down from Eindhoven the Germans would have moved out quicker.
XXX Corps arrived at Zon seeing the bridge blown up at 1800hrs on d-day plus 1. With a Bailey Bridge ready to run over. This set them back 12 hours.
After erecting the Bailey bridge overnight, XXX Corps arrived at Nijmegen at around 0830hrs the next morning, d-day plus 2. Well on schedule, after covering the 20 miles in 2.75 hours. Instead of speeding over the Nijmegen bridge to Anhem, they found the Germans still occupying the bridge, with fighting going on in the town. An additional 36 hour delay as XXX Corps had to secure the crossing themselves, meant a bridgehead over the Rhine was precluded.
If the 101st had seized the Zon bridge and the 82nd the Nijmegen bridge, XXX Corps would have reached Arnhem on late evening on d-day plus 1. If the Nijmegen bridge was taken on d-day, even if the 101st failed to seize the Zon bridge, XXX Corps would have been in Arnhem on the afternoon of d-day plus 2.
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The imminent concern of Germany was to get the resources to fend off the coming air war with Britain.
Wages of Destruction. Prof Adam Tooze:
Planning for Barbarossa..
Tooze Page 454:
"Critical stores would be reserved above all for the main strike force of 33 tank and motorised infantry divisions. If the battle extended much beyond the first months of the attack, the fighting power of the rest of the German army would dwindle rapidly."
"Fundamentally the Wehrmacht was a "poor army". The fast striking motorised element of the German army in 1941 consisted of only 33 divisions of 130. Three-quarters of the German army continued to rely on more traditional means of traction: foot and horse. The German army in 1941 invaded the Soviet Union with somewhere between 600,000 and 740,000 horses. The horses were not for riding. They were for moving guns, ammunition and supplies."
"The vast majority of Germany's soldiers marched into Russia, as they had in France, on foot."
"But to imagine a fully motorised Wehrmacht, poised for an attack on the Soviet Union is a fantasy of the Cold War, not a realistic vision of the possibilities of 1941. To be more specific, it is an American fantasy. The Anglo-American invasion force of 1944 was the only military force in WW2 to fully conform to the modern model of a motorised army."
Page 455:
"the chronic shortage of fuel and rubber"
"the fuel shortage of 1941 was so expected to be so severe that the Wehrmacht was seriously considering demotorisation as a way of reducing its dependency on scarce oil."
"Everything therefore depended on the assumption that the Red Army would crack under the impact of the first decisive blow."
Page 456:
"a new Soviet industrial base to the east of the Urals, which had the capacity to sustain a population of at least 40 million people."
"Soviet industrial capacity was clearly very substantial."
"Franz Halder recorded Hitler's ruminations about the Soviets' immense stock of tanks and aircraft."
Reading further Tooze gives the misgivings of the German generals of the invasion. All were negative.
Page 460:
"As late as the Spring of 1941, the Foreign Ministry was still opposing the coming war, preferring to continue the alliance with the Soviet Union against the British Empire."
"If the shock of the initial assault does not destroy Stalin's regime, it was evident in February 1941 that the Third Reich would find itself facing a strategic disaster."
Page 452:
"the Germans had already conscripted virtually all their prime manpower. By contrast, the Red Army could call up millions of reservists."
Why did Germany invade the USSR in a rushed ill-conceived plan?
Page 431:
"the strongest arguments for rushing to conquer the Soviet Union in 1941 were precisely the growing shortage of grain and the need to knock Britain out of the war before it could pose a serious air threat."
"Meanwhile, the rest of the German military-industrialised complex began to gird itself for the aerial confrontation with Britain and America."
Germany rushed to invade the Soviet Union, with an ill-equipped army with no reserves in anticipation of a massive air war with Britain and the USA, hoping they could win the Soviet war within weeks.
The coming air war:
Roosevelt promised 50,000 plane per year production in May 1940, of which a substantial amount would be in the RAF. Germany could not compete with the level of aircraft at the UKs disposal. Whether the planes had US and UK pilots or just UK pilots they were coming Germany's way. And the only way they could really get at each other was by air. Germany feared mass bombing, which came - the bomber in the late 1930s was perceived as a war winning weapon. The Germans knew the lead time for aircraft was 18 months from order to delivery. That meant in late 1941/early 1942, these planes would be starting to come into service in great numbers. Germany needed the resources of the east to compete. If the population was too big they would eliminate the population - the precedence was the American move to the west expanding the USA, taking lands from the natives population and Mexican and eliminating the population.
War Production:
Keegan, World War Two, chapter War Production:
- Germany was third behind the USA then the UK in GDP
- In 1939. Germany = UK in capital goods production in 1939.
- UK economy grows 60% during WW2.
- Hitler says to Guderian, re: USSR, "had I known they had so many tanks as that, I would have thought twice before invading"
Tooze, Preface, xxiii:
Combined GDP of the UK and France exceeded Germany & Italy by 60%.
- page 454:
"It was poor because of the incomplete industrial and economic development of Germany".
Interesting from Harrison at Warwick uni.
Snippets:
"Soviet exceeded German GDP in 1940"
"The Allies won the war because their economies supported a greater volume of war production and military personnel in larger numbers. This was true of the war as a whole, and it was also true on the eastern front where the Soviet economy, of a similar size to Germany's but less developed and also seriously weakened by invasion, supplied more soldiers and weapons."
"the technological key to Soviet superiority in the output of weapons was mass production. At the outbreak of war Soviet industry as a whole was not larger and not more productive than German industry. The non-industrial resources on which Soviet industry could draw were larger than Germany's in the sense of territory and population, but of considerably lower quality, more far-flung, and less well integrated. Both countries had given considerable thought to industrial mobilisation preparations, but the results were of questionable efficacy. In both countries war production was poorly organised at first and productivity in the military-industrial sector had been falling for several years. The most important difference was that Soviet industry had made real strides towards mass production, while German industry was still locked into an artisan mode of production that placed a premium on quality and assortment rather than quantity. Soviet industry produced fewer models of each type of weapon, and subjected them to less modification, but produced them in far larger quantities. Thus the Soviet Union was able to make considerably more effective use of its limited industrial resources than Germany."
"Before the war Soviet defence industry was in a state of permanent technological reorganisation as new models of aircraft, tanks, and other weapons were introduced and old ones phased out at dizzying rate."
The USSR had access to oil and more natural resources and far more men. Making their ability to produce far greater than Germany, which actually happened.
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@flyoptimum
Ist Airborne did make it to the north end of Arnhem bridge. They denied its use to the Germans.
Sergeant Peter Robinson, of the Guards Armored Division who led the charge over the Nijmegen road bridge in his Firefly tank stated:
"The Nijmegen bridge wasn’t taken [by the 82nd] which was our objective. We reached the far end of the bridge and immediately there was a roadblock. So the troop sergeant covered me through and then I got to the other side and covered the rest of the troop through. We were still being engaged; there was a gun in front of the church three or four hundred yards in front of us. We knocked him out. We got down the road to the railway bridge; we cruised round there very steady. We were being engaged all the time. Just as I got round the corner and turned right I saw these helmets duck in a ditch and run, and gave them a burst of machine gun fire. I suddenly realised they were Americans. They had already thrown a gammon grenade at me so dust and dirt and smoke were flying everywhere. They jumped out of the ditch; they kissed the tank; they kissed the guns because they’d lost a lot of men. They had had a very bad crossing."
The passage:
"We got down the road to the railway bridge; we cruised round there very steady. We were being engaged all the time. Just as I got round the corner and turned right I saw these helmets duck in a ditch and run, and gave them a burst of machine gun fire. I suddenly realised they were Americans."
The railways bridge is a bridge over the road. It is 1 km north of the main road bridge in the village of Lent. Google Maps shows it. It is still there today, but rebuilt for road widening. This was where the British tanks that took the bridge met the US 82nd men. No US 82nd men were on the bridge when it was seized.
From US Official history, page 181.
"In Nijmegen, as the British tankers approached the south end of the highway bridge, they spotted an American flag floating atop what they took to be the north end of the bridge. This the British assumed to be an American signal that the tanks could cross. In reality, the paratroopers still were a few steps from the highway bridge; the flag was flying from the north end of the railroad span. Spraying shells and machine gun bullets into the girders, the British tankers nevertheless raced onto the bridge. Three tanks reached the far end."
"A few steps" was that the 82nd men were in the village of Lent, 1km north. A few lost privates were hanging around the long north approach ramp to the bridge.
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@flyoptimum
The 1st Airborne took the north end of Arnhem bridge. Indisputable fact.
The 101st never attempted to take the Zon bridge from both ends. Failure.
Browning gave equal priority to the Groesbeek Heights and the bridge.
by Chester E Graham.....
During the Holland operation, I was the liaison officer between the 508th and the 82nd Division Headquarters. I first became the Regimental Liaison Officer after we returned to Nottingham from the Normandy operation.
This assignment as Regimental Liaison Officer was a most enjoyable and interesting duty. I spent the nights with the Division, and each morning, I picked up reports and left in my jeep with my driver for Regimental Headquarters to pass the reports to the Regimental staff.
While at Division, I visited with various staff members and helped out in the G3 Section, and at the end of the day I returned to Regimental Headquarters with reports from Division. I saw places I would never have seen if I just stayed in the regimental area, and I met some very interesting people at the higher echelon. I knew all of the division staff and the other regimental commanders, and was included in the planning of operations and briefings. I was ‘bigoted.’ [This is a WWII military term for being read into/briefed on missions.]
Prior to the Holland jump, I sat in 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.
After we were dropped in Holland, 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 (drop zone) is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.” So I went cross-country through Indian country [slang military term for enemy territory] 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 to, “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.”
US Official history.....
"I personally directed Colonel Roy E. Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry," General Gavin recalled later, "to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing
After receiving General Gavin's pre-jump orders in regard to the Nijmegen bridge, Colonel Lindquist had earmarked Colonel Warren's battalion as one of two battalions from which he intended to choose one to move to the bridge, depending upon the developing situation. General Gavin's understanding, as recalled later, was that Warren's battalion was to move "without delay after landing." On the other hand, Colonel Lindquist's understanding, also as recalled later, was that no battalion was to go for the bridge until the regiment had secured its other objectives
The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as - Battles for the Rhine by Neillands states: Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'.
Gavin screwed up.
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@flyoptimum
Market Garden failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. The failure point was not seizing the Nijmegen bridge immediately. At the end of D-Day all crossings were denied to the Germans, except one - the Nijmegen bridge. General Gavin of the US 82nd was supposed to get to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as landing. Gavin never, he failed with only a few German guards on the bridge. He failed because his 82nd did not seize the Nijmegen bridge immediately.
Gavin even de-prioritised the bridge the prime target and focus. The 82nd were ready at 2 pm on the jump day and never moved to the bridge. The gigantic bridge was guarded by only 19 guards. The Germans occupied the bridge at 1900 hrs. Six hours after the 82nd were ready to march.
Events on the 1st day:
♦ "At 1328, the 665 men of US 82nd 1st Battalion began to fall from the sky."
- Poulussen, R. Lost at Nijmegen.
♦ "Forty minutes after the drop, around 1410, the 1st Battalion marched off towards their objective, De Ploeg, three miles away."
-Poulussen,
♦ "The 82nd were digging in and performing reconnin the area looking for 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald
- Neillands, R. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
♦ The 82nd were dug in and preparing to defend their newly constructed regimental command post, which they established at 1825. Then Colonel Lindquist "was told by General Gavin, around 1900, to move into Nijmegen."
-Poulussen
Events on the evening of the 1st day:
♦ Having dug in at De Ploeg, Warren's battalion wasn't prepared to move towards Nijmegen at all.
- Poulussen,
♦ Once Lindquist told Lieutenant Colonel Warren that his Battalion was to move, Warren decided to visit the HQ of the Nijmegen Underground first - to see what info the underground had on the Germans at the Nijmegen bridge.
- Poulussen,
♦ It was not until 1830hrs that he [Warren] was able to send a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small, just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a radio — say forty men.
- Neillands. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
♦ This was not a direct route to the bridge from Warren's original position, and placed him in the middle of the town. It was also around 2100 when "A" Company left to attempt to capture the Nijmegen road bridge.
♦ "B" Company was not with them because they'd split up due to it being dark with "visibility was less than ten yards".
- Poulussen.
♦ As the scouts neared a traffic circle surrounding a landscaped circular park near the center of Nijmegen, the Keizer Karel Plein, from which a mall-like park led northeast toward the Nijmegen bridge, a burst of automatic weapons fire came from the circle. The time was about two hours before midnight. (2200 hrs)
- US Official History, Siegfried Line Campaign.
♦ The 82nd attacks were resisted by the Germans until the next day.
Events of the 2nd day:
♦ Gavin drove up in a jeep the next morning and was told by Warren that although they didn't have the bridge yet, another attack was about to go in.
♦ Gavin then told Warren to hold because the Germans were attacking in the southeast portion of the 82nd perimeter.
♦ At around 1100, Warren was ordered to withdraw from Nijmegen completely.
- Poulussen
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@flyoptimum
The USA Official History.
THE SIEGFRIED LINE CAMPAIGN
by Charles B. MacDonald
CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY
UNITED STATES ARMY
WASHINGTON, D.G., 1993
Page 161:
Colonel Lindquist's 508th Parachute Infantry and of Colonel Ekman's 505th Parachute Infantry had assembled within an hour after the D-Day drop.
Page 162:
General Gavin's understanding, as recalled later, was that Warren's battalion was to move "without delay after landing." On the other hand, Colonel Lindquist's understanding, also as recalled later, was that no battalion was to go for the bridge until the regiment had secured its other objectives, that is to say, not until he had established defenses protecting his assigned portion of the high ground and the northern part of the division glider landing zone. Instead of moving immediately toward the Nijmegen bridge, Colonel Warren's battalion was to take an "assigned initial objective" in the vicinity of De Ploeg, a suburb of Nijmegen a mile and a quarter southeast of the city astride the Nijmegen-Groesbeek highway.
It is clear the 82nd did not a have clue what they were doing.
Page 163:
Colonel Warren about 1830 sent into Nijmegen a patrol consisting of a rifle platoon and the battalion intelligence section. This patrol was to make an aggressive reconnaissance, investigate reports from Dutch civilians that only eighteen Germans guarded the big bridge, and, if possible, capture the south end of the bridge.
Colonel Warren directed Companies A and B to rendezvous at a point just south of Nijmegen at I900
As the scouts neared a traffic circle surrounding a landscaped circular park near the center of Nijmegen, the Keizer Karel Plein, from which a mall-like park led northeast toward the Nijmegen bridge, a burst of automatic weapons fire came from the circle. The time was about two hours before midnight. (2200 hrs)
Page 164:
No one could have said so with any finality at the time, but the chance for an easy, speedy capture of the Nijmegen bridge had passed. This was all the more lamentable because in Nijmegen during the afternoon the Germans had had nothing more than the same kind of "mostly low quality" troops encountered at most other places on D Day.
The 82nd hung about for 6 hours allowing the SS troops to enter Nijmegen over the bridge, who then reinforced the bridge..
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In an interview with General Browning in the NY Times he said he gave 'equal' priority to the bridge and the Groesbeek heights. The heights near De Ploeg, which are really pretty flat being a wooded area but high for Holland, are between the DZ and bridge. Gavin understood the priorities of sending the 508th to the bridge and heights immediately. To get to the bridge from the DZ you have to go through the heights, so any enemy at the heights had to be subdued, then secure the area, then send men to the bridge.
They were to secure the heights and secure the bridge. It took the 508th a painfully slow 3.5 hours to march a few miles from the DZ to the heights, reaching the heights at 1730. There were no Germans at the heights as a forward patrol relayed back, so Coln Lindquist could send men to the bridge immediately, without any delay, while men stayed back setting up defences at De Ploeg on the Heights. Dutch resistance men informed the 508th that the Germans had largely cleared out of the town with 19 guards on the bridge.
Lindquist of the 508th was not moving at all, staying static at De Ploeg. Lindquist was waiting for a Divisional Order from Gavin that the "DZ" was secure then move to the bridge. When Gavin found out he was livid, running over to De Ploeg in a Jeep telling Lindquist to get moving to the bridge. Three stray men from a patrol sent to the bridge by Lindquist took the guards on the south end of the bridge POW. They left when no one turned up.
By the time the 508th did get to the bridge in force, the Germans had come south reinforcing the bridge with hundreds of men. Too late. The 82nd were expecting German resistance from the east, however it came from the north via the Nijmegen bridge. Gavin was expecting Lindquist to secure the heights, which were devoid of enemy forces, then move to the bridge, which meant moving immediately. Lindquist was expecting Gavin to notify him that the DZ was clear, Gavin was expecting Lindquist to go to the bridge when it was obvious the heights, on the way to bridge, were secure.
As no Germans were about, they were secure. No one knows where he got the clearing of the DZ from. Poor command communications by Gavin. Poulussen, in Lost at Nijmegen discovered that the 508th jumped without any offensive orders from Gavin. All was verbal from Gavin to Lindquist. Chester Graham, the 82nd liaison man, was at the pre jump meeting in England. He said there was no ambiguity amongst anyone that the bridge was the prime target.
In 1945 Historical Officer, Capt. John Westover of the US Army Centre of Military History, wanting confirmed if the capture of the Nijmegen bridge had been part of the objectives. In response – dated 25 July 1945 – Gen Gavin was clear: "About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping well, I personally directed Col Lindquist, Commanding the 508 PIR to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen Bridge without delay after landing but to keep a close watch on it in the event he needed to protect himself against the Reichswald and he was cautioned to send the battalion via the east of the city."
Browning never knew men were static at De Ploeg. Like Gavin he was expecting men to be seizing the bridge. Being corps commander, he was busy trying to communicate with all three para divisions. The 82nd launched a few failed attacks on the bridge. In the afternoon of the next day, 18th, Gavin asked permission to launch another attack. Browning, seeing the bridge was well defended, and the failed attacks, refused, opting to wait for XXX Corps to arrive to seize the bridge. Inexplicably Gavin moved all his men out of Nijmegen town completely, giving the town back to the Germans. This made matters worse when XXX Corps arrived.
Read:
Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History Of The 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment In World War II by Phil Nordyke.
Arnhem 1944 by Christer Bergström.
Market Garden, Then and Now by Karl Magry.
Lost at Nijmegen by R Poulusson
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@wintersking4290
Monty didn’t plan Market Garden, coming up with the idea and broad outline only. Montgomery was largely excluded from the planning process. It was planned mainly by the Air Force commanders, Brereton and Williams of the USAAF. The failure points that two US para units, the 101st and the 82nd, failed to seize their bridges. It was Bereton and Williams who:
▪decided that there would be drops spread over three days, defeating the object of para jumps by losing all surprise, which is their major asset;
▪rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-day on the Pegasus Bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
▪chose the drop and and landing zones so far from the Bridges;
▪Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to take on the flak positions and attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports, thereby allowing them to bring in reinforcements with impunity;
▪Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of “possible flak.“;
The state of play on the 17th, D day, was:
1) the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was largely clear;
2) there were concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally;
3) there were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen;
4) a few scattered about along the road;
5) there was no armour in Arnhem.
That was it.
i) XXX Corps would deal from the Belgium border to Eindhoven;
ii) 101st from Eindhoven to Grave;
iii) 82nd from Grave to north of Nijmegen;
iv) British and Polish paras from north of Nijmegen to north of the Rhine;
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 2 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition, hanging around, spending 2 hours in the village. The Germans blew the bridge when they finally reached it. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured it.
Evidently expecting that Major La Prade's flanking battalion would have captured the highway bridge, these two battalions made no apparent haste in moving through Zon. They methodically cleared stray Germans from the houses, so that a full two hours had passed before they emerged from the village. Having at last overcome the enemy 88 south of the Zonsche Forest, Major LaPrade's battalion caught sight of the bridge at about the same time. Both forces were within fifty yards of the bridge when their objective went up with a roar.
- US Official History.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected. XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and towards the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up. The road was still largely clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump.
XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, making up the delay at Zon, being right on time. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over. If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves, after the 82nd tried again and failed again. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem. XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
According to the official AMERICAN Army historian, Forrest Pogue, he stated that the failure of US 82nd Airborne to assault the lightly defended Nijmegen bridge immediately upon jumping 'sounded the death knell' for the men at Arnhem.
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@paulrobinson4256
The British won the Battle of Dunkirk.
The British BEF was only 9% of the total allied forces in France and the Low Countries. The German advance was halted in France as the British with a vastly inferior force stopped them at Arras. Some German soldiers turned and ran. Directive 13, issued by German Supreme Headquarters on 24 May 1940 stated specifically for the annihilation of the French, English and Belgian forces in the Dunkirk pocket. The Luftwaffe was ordered to prevent the escape of the British forces across the English Channel.
The German southern advance was stopped at Arras by the British with a numerically inferior force. The Germans never moved much further after. The Germans could not have taken Dunkirk, they would have been badly beaten in and around the town. The Luftwaffe was defeated over Dunkirk by the RAF with the first showing of the Spitfire en-mass. More German than allied planes were destroyed in the Dunkirk pocket. The first defeat of the Nazis in WW2 was in the air by the British over Dunkirk. Only six small warships were sunk at Dunkirk by the Germans as the effectiveness of the Luftwaffe blunted.
The British were retreating after the French collapsed in front of them - a programme already in motion, a programme already in motion before the Germans showed up, as General Gort saw the disjointed performance of the French forces in front of him. If the French collapsed the small BEF had no hope against the large German force heading west. The French were still in front of the British when General Gort decided to take the men back to England, as he did not trust the French in a joint counter-attack. French General Wiegand held a meeting to arrange a counter-attack and never invited General Gort head of the BEF. Gort was under the command of Weigand. Gort heard of the meeting and rushed to be a part. He got there after the French and Belgians had left. He ordered the evacuation having no faith in the elderly French leaders.
All armies retreat and regroup when the need is there. There happened to be a body of water in the line of the retreat. Were they to move down the English coast and enter France further west with more men from England? The Germans did not know what was to be the next British or allied move. The Germans could not have taken Dunkirk and they tried. The British retreat operation was carried out as planned and in orderly fashion. All bridges to Dunkirk were destroyed by the allies.
The British counter-attack at Arras was with outdated Matilda 1 tanks, which only had machine guns, and a few of the brand new Matilda 2 tanks. The Germans fled in droves. In desperation the Germans turned a 88mm AA gun horizontal and it worked against the Matilda 2 - their conventional anti-tank weapons and tanks could not penetrate the tank. The Matilda 2 would roll over German gun emplacements killing the gunners. Rommel thought he had been hit by a force three times the size, which made them stop and rethink. The Germans countered with their superior numbers pushing back the British who fell back towards Dunkirk.
The British resolve and the new Matilda 2 made the Germans sit up and think about a street fight in Dunkirk against a consolidated force still with its weapons and the new Matilda 2 - the 88mm would be useless in Dunkirk streets while the Matilda 2 would be in its element, and the Matlida 2 would have easily destroyed the Panzer mk3s. The Matilda 2 could knock out any German tank at the time, while no German tank could knock it out. The Germans were expecting the Matilda 2 to be shipped over in numbers and for all they knew many were in Dunkirk. The Germans could not stop the tanks coming as the British controlled the skies with a CAP and the waters of the Channel. Not a good prospect for the Germans. A Dunkirk street fight was a fight the German troops were untrained and unequipped for and unwise to get involved in.
Von Rundstedt and von Kluge suggested to Hitler that German forces around the Dunkirk pocket cease their advance and consolidate and also to prevent an Allied break out from Dunkirk. Hitler agreed with the support of the Wehrmacht. German preoccupation rightly was with an expected attack from the fluid mainly French and some British forces to the south of the German line, not from dug-in Dunkirk which was too much of a formidable consolidated opponent, taking substantial resources to seize. The German column had Allied troops to each side and in front and there was soft marshland to the south west of Dunkirk unsuitable for tanks. If German forces had engaged in a street battle for Dunkirk, they would be vulnerable on their weak flank from the south. In short the fast moving panzers were now static; German forces attacking Dunkirk in a battle of attrition would have been largely wiped out.
The German columns were consolidating their remaining armour and the important resupply from Germany, which was slow as it was via horses, for an expected attack by the British and French from the south. The Germans attacked on a remarkably narrow front. They had over-stretched their supply lines. The Germans had no option but to stop, being more concerned at defending from the mainly French forces in the south which were viewed as a greater threat than Dunkirk. French general Weigand implemented his creation of hedgehogs to attack German lines from the sides, with success - hedgehogs were adopted post war by NATO being a part of the tactics until the 1970s.
The Germans were thinking, are the British retreating to England from Dunkirk to move down the English coast and re-enter France further south with fresh forces, including Canadians and the new Matilda 2 tanks, which they feared, and join up with the French forces there? The British could easily do that as they controlled the Channel. This would create one large difficult to combat force. They saw the resolve of outnumbered British forces at Arras. German generals were trying to figure out what was happening. None thought that British troops would retreat to England and stay there. The British never did that sort of thing.
The Germans could divert most of their forces south and risk a Dunkirk breakout and then risk being attacked from their rear fighting on two fronts, or stay and consolidate, which they needed to do, awaiting a French/British attack from the south and use some forces and the Luftwaffe to attack Dunkirk, which they did. German forces resumed their attack on Dunkirk for 6 days and failed to seize the port.
The plan to break out of the Dunkirk Pocket using British, Belgian and French forces was abandoned as Gort had no confidence in the French. All military school studies since, knowing what the German and allied positions and situations were in 1940, have shown it would have succeeded.
The Germans were defeated at the Battle of Dunkirk. They tried militarily to seize the port but failed. Only because the British did not trust the French and moved back to England did the Germans eventually occupy the town. The Germans did not let the British get away that is misguided myth, they tried and simply could not seize Dunkirk.
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@VaderGhost124
Fixed. Beevor is poor. He panders to the lucrative US market as does Hastings. A waste of time.
Paul Woody on WW2TV will not have him on the show.
The state of play on the 17th, D day, was:
1) the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was largely clear;
2) there were concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally;
3) there were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen;
4) a few scattered about along the road;
5) there was no armour in Arnhem.
That was it.
i) XXX Corps would deal from the Belgium border to Eindhoven;
ii) 101st from Eindhoven to Grave;
iii) 82nd from Grave to north of Nijmegen;
iv) British and Polish paras from north of Nijmegen to north of the Rhine;
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 2 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition, hanging around in village. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured it._Evidently expecting that Major La Prade's flanking battalion would have captured the highway bridge, these two battalions made no apparent haste in moving through Zon.
They methodically cleared stray Germans from the houses, so that a full_ two hours had passed before they emerged from the village. Having at last overcome the enemy 88 south of the Zonsche Forest, Major LaPrade's battalion caught sight of the bridge at about the same time. Both forces were within fifty yards of the bridge when their objective went up with a roar.- US Official History. XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready.
Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected. XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and towards the road, which would make matters worse.XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter.
The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up. The road was still largely clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump. XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, making up the delay at Zon. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over. If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves, after the 82nd tried again and failed again. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem. XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
According to the official AMERICAN Army historian, Forrest Pogue, he stated that the failure of US 82nd Airborne to assault the lightly defended Nijmegen bridge immediately upon jumping 'sounded the death knell' for the men at Arnhem.
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Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower approved, under-resourcing the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, who were the prime planners, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
▪ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
▪ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
▪ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
▪ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
▪ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
▪ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
▪ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak".
The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
The 101st failed to seize the bridge at Zon, taking around four hours to travel only a few km. This set the operation back around 12 hours as XXX Corps had to run over a Bailey bridge, in this 12 hour window the Germans were running in reinforcements from Eindhoven to Arnhem. Despite the setback at Zon, if the Nijmegen bridge was seized the operation could still succeed. The 82nd failed to seize the bridge at Nijmegen setting the operation back a further 36 hours, with the Germans given an even longer time window to pour in reinforcements. The time delay was too great to form a bridgehead over the Rhine.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgment or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself.
XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
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@kenmazoch8499
The state of play on the 17th, d-day, was that the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was clear. There was concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally. There were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen. Then a few scattered about along the road. There was no armour in Arnhem. That was it. If the bridges are secured by paras forming an airborne carpet then just a cruise up the road.
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 3 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster, the 101st would have secured the bridge.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected.
XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and towards the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up. The road was still clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump.
XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, at the planned expected time, making up the delay at Zon. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over.
If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
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@kenmazoch8499
Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust of his broad-front over other fronts and even seizing Antwerp and clearing the Schedlt. Clearing the Scheldt would take time as the German 15th SS army, highly experienced from the Russian front, under Hitler's orders had set up shop in the Scheldt not retreating back into Germany. All available supplies would be directed to this northern thrust.
"Since Eisenhower — the Supreme Commander and Ground Force Commander — approved the Arnhem operation rather than a push to clear the Scheldt, then surely he was right, as well as noble, to accept the responsibility and any resulting blame? The choice in early September was the Rhine or Antwerp: to continue the pursuit or secure the necessary facilities to solve the logistical problem? The decision was made to go for the Rhine, and that decision was Eisenhower’s."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower's decision was the correct choice.
"On 4 Sept, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr"
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen to British troops when he issued the northern thrust directive. Montgomery wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive, devising pursuit Operation Comet, multiple crossings of the Rhine, to be launched on 2 Sept, being cancelled due to German resistance and poor weather. Operation Comet was not presented to Eisenhower for his approval.
Montgomery asked Brereton, an American, of the First Allied Airborne Army, to drop into the Scheldt in early September - he refused.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 Sept had divisions of the US First Army and Montgomery's view of taking multiple bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. The British Second Army needed some divisions of Hodges' US First Army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty semi controlled anyhow). Hodges' would protect the right flank. the Canadians would protect the left flank from the German 15th army.
"the narrow thrust was reduced to the Second Army and two US corps, the XIX and VII of Hodges’ First Army, a total of around eighteen Allied divisions"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
The northern thrust was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944."
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower’s reply of 5 September to Montgomery deserves analysis, not least the part that concerns logistics. The interesting point is that Eisenhower apparently believes that it is possible to cross the Rhine and take both the Ruhr and the Saar — and open the Scheldt — using the existing logistical resources."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp. In thinking this Ike was wrong."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Post-Normandy Bradley seemed unable to control Patton, who persistently flouted Eisenhower’s directives and went his own way, aided and abetted by Bradley. This part of their relationship quickly revealed itself in matters of supply, where Hodges, the commander of the US First Army, was continually starved of fuel and ammunition in order to keep Patton’s divisions rolling, even when Eisenhower’s strategy required First Army to play the major role in 12th Army Group’s activities."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again, and being bogged down - again. The resources starved First Army could not be a part of northern thrust as Bradley and Patton, against Eisenhower's orders, were syphoning off supplies destined for the First Army. This northern thrust over the Rhine, as Eisenhower envisaged, obviously would not work as he thought. A lesser operation was devised by Montgomery, Market Garden, eliminating the divisions of US First Army, with only ONE crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London wanted eliminating ASAP, giving a 60 mile long salient buffer between German forces and the important port of Antwerp. This would only have one corps above Eindhoven, a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time.
Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance. Eisenhower should have fired Bradley and Patton for sabotaging the Northern Thrust operation.
Montgomery did not plan or was in involved in Market Garden's execution. Montgomery, after fixing the operations objectives with Eisenhower to the measly forces available, gave Market Garden planning to others, mainly USAAF generals, Brereton and Williams. General Brereton, who liked the plan, agreed to it with even direct input. Brereton ordered the drops will take place during the day with Brereton also overseeing the troop carrier and supply drops schedules. Williams forbid fighter-bombers to be used. A refusal by Brereton and the operation would never have gone ahead; he earlier rejected Montgomery's initial plan of a drop into the Scheldt at Walcheren Island.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time the Canadians had cleared, or were investing, many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@kenmazoch8499
From 21st Army Group Orders:
Final point of PHASE I:
(f) The Div may conc SOUTH of EINDHOVEN in areas of the CL preparatory to further adv.
conc = concentration area:
Which is an area, usually in the theatre of operations, where troops are assembled before beginning, or continuing, active operations. It says: preparatory to further adv. adv = advance.
So, on phase 1 they were to concentrate South of Eindhoven before (preparatory) to advancing. That is clear. They were to stop overnight south of Eindhoven while the vehicle built up, before advancing in strength.
When concentrating, that is gathering all vehicles in one location. Vehicles will still be moving into this concentration location at 35 vehicles to every mile of the train at a hoped 10 mph. If the vehicles move at 10mph from the starting point, the lead vehicles should be south of Eindhoven in 1 hour. But the lead have to stop to concentrate. And 35 vehicles in each mile at a hoped 10 mph are pouring into the concentration location. It does not say how many vehicles have to be in the concentration area before moving off again. Vehicles will pouring into the concentration area overnight.
Now onto phase 2. Phase 2 clearly states that it will start at 1st light on D+1. It says:
PHASE II: (a) The Div will continue the adv
That is advance after phase 1 is concluded of course. To continue the advance you have to be stopped. Phase 1 concludes south of Eindhoven as the force concentrated overnight Clear. The document says a hoped 10 mih (10mph), but not for phase 1 as the forces are concentrated south of Eindhoven at end of phase 1. South of Eindhoven is approx 11 miles from the start point. It only expects 11 miles of advance in the first 5 hours, which is understandable as German forces formed a line in front of British forces at the northern British front on the Belgian/Dutch border.
So, on D-day XXX Corps have to get to Eindhoven which is 11 miles and depending on tactic conditions it is hoped they will move at 10 mph when moving north out of Eindhoven. Scouts will run ahead to meet up with the 101st men.
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@kenmazoch8499 wrote:
"he told a much different story of the drive up "hell's highway"
The Germans only reached and attacked the road after XXX Corps had started to run up it, and were still pouring vehicles up the road.
XXX Corps had to clear the Germans out of Nijmegen because Gavin gave them the town and bridge by pulling all his troops out completely.
Second Army now had three corps along the Meuse-Escaut Canal, but VIII Corps on the right was not yet ready to attack and XII Corps on the left was facing a belt of difficult, marshy country. Moreover, there were sufficient supplies forward to maintain a deep penetration only by XXX Corps.
- The Struggle for Europe by Chester Wilmot
Owing to the shortage of transport for troops and ammunition, XII Corps could secure only one small bridgehead beyond the Meuse-Escaut Canal before the 17th, and VIII Corps could not join the offensive until the 19th. Even then this corps had only two divisions, for the 51st Highland was grounded throughout the Arnhem operation so that its transport could be used to supply the forward troops. On the first two days of MARKET GARDEN Dempsey was able to employ offensively only three of the nine British divisions available, and, as already recorded, the actual break-out was made by two battalions advancing along one narrow road. This was the direct result of Eisenhower’s policy. If he had kept Patton halted on the Meuse, and had given full logistic support to Hodges and Dempsey after the capture of Brussels, the operations in Holland could have been an overwhelming triumph"
- The Struggle for Europe by Chester Wilmot
XII Corps and VIII Corps hardly got above Eindhoven.
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Wood and Dempster , their data comes from Luftwaffe Quartermaster General 6th Abteilung reports, state losses from 10 July to 31 Oct 1940:
• RAF lost 1,100 fighters to all causes, such
as training accidents as well as battle.
• Luftwaffe lost 1,733 fighters and bombers.
The RAF claimed 2,692 German planes shot down. Germans admitted the loss of 896 aircraft.
Wood and Dempster give the number of RAF fighter aircraft available for operations on a daily average, week endings:
• 22 June, 644 out of 871;
• 6 July - 565 out of 814;
• 3 August - 708 out of 1061.
From then on the total then does not fall below 700 available - including Blenheims and Defiants.
John Alcorn in the Sept 1996 Aeroplane Monthly. In the period 1 July to 30 Oct, 1940:
• British lost 887 fighters in combat.
• Germans lost 1,218 aircraft to fighter attack.
Ratio of 1.4/1.
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The Battle of Britain was a major defeat for Germany. They failed to achieve any of their strategic objectives in the campaign. By December 1940, Fighter Command had seen an increase of 40% in its pilots, the German fighter pilots had dropped by 30% and the bomber crews by 25%.
The famous event in the BoB where all available aircraft were in the air, with no reserves at all. This occurred on 16 August. Churchill and Ismay happened to be present at the 11 Group HQ at Uxbridge. That afternoon, all of the Group's Squadrons were listed as not immediately available, while new hostile trackings were being placed on the table.
Three days later, the Luftwaffe commanders gathered and went over the battle so far. The orders they issued were intended to minimize losses, giving a fair idea of what was happening. The Luftwaffe had no idea what they were facing. On the day after this order the German intel chief assessed the RAF had about 300 operational fighters. He was just 550 short if he counted the 850 or so fighters with the line units. If the fighters with storage and maintenance units (but the good-to-go ones, not those under repairs) were counted and with training units, the total was around 1,200. The Germans did not know what they were doing.
Stephen Bungay's, The Most Dangerous Enemy is worth reading on this subject.
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The Battle of Britain was a major defeat for Germany. They failed to achieve any of their strategic objectives in the campaign. By December 1940, Fighter Command had seen an increase of 40% in its pilots, the German fighter pilots had dropped by 30% and the bomber crews by 25%.
The famous event in the BoB where all available aircraft were in the air, with no reserves at all. This occurred on 16 August. Churchill and Ismay happened to be present at the 11 Group HQ at Uxbridge. That afternoon, all of the Group's Squadrons were listed as not immediately available, while new hostile trackings were being placed on the table.
Three days later, the Luftwaffe commanders gathered and went over the battle so far. The orders they issued were intended to minimize losses, giving a fair idea of what was happening. The Luftwaffe had no idea what they were facing. On the day after this order the German intel chief assessed the RAF had about 300 operational fighters. He was just 550 short if he counted the 850 or so fighters with the line units. If the fighters with storage and maintenance units (but the good-to-go ones, not those under repairs) were counted and with training units, the total was around 1,200. The Germans did not know what they were doing.
Stephen Bungay's, The Most Dangerous Enemy is worth reading on this subject.
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@TheImperatorKnight
George is not socialist. He had a spat with Marx. Marx said George "was capitalism's last ditch". George's approach, well it comes from Adam Smith, Ricardo, JJ Mill, etc, would clearly solve the commons, one if its prime aims.
Its base is:
1) Commonly created wealth stays public - used for common services.
2) Privately created wealth stays in private pockets.
Publicly created wealth stays public. What wealth we collectively create we use for us, by reclaiming economic rent. Revenues for the Exchequer is obtained from what we all create.
Privately created wealth stays private.
We currently do the opposite; why wealth of a nation's production ends up in the hands a few people. Why we end up with a grinding poverty layer, in a world with so much wealth creation and production.
Also charging for use or extraction of anything that is commonly owned - oil, ores, electromagnetic spectrum, seas, seabed, etc.
The productive are not penalised - promoting enterprise. They keep all they earn - no personal income tax.
The land cycle is like clockwork, every 18 years. The business cycle follows the land cycle. Kill the land cycle, then devastating boom-bust is killed, resulting in a stable economy. The 2008 crash was based in land speculation.
Martin Wolf is a fan. Ruinous trust in land speculation as the route to wealth has led to expensive houses and inefficient taxes but, far worse, it ended up destabilising the entire global economy, says Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator at the Financial Times:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5kc9RepC1Q
There is a grey area with the Austrians and George. Many do not like mentioning Henry George as it is viewed as a personification, looking like a cult. Also George only popularised it.
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The key to all this is Vichy France.
More importantly, the Caudillo's slowly dawning cognizance of the strength of British resistance would gradually reactivate his deep-seated fears of a retaliatory strike against Spain or her overseas territories.
- Preston
Nevertheless, had Hitler been sufficiently determined to secure Spanish belligerence, he might well have pulled Franco into the war on his side. It would have required massive deliveries of food and military equipment and extravagant promises of imperial spoils at the expense of France. As things were to turn out, the Fiihrer would be inhibited from making the necessary promises to Franco for fear of the French finding out. Overwhelming evidence that Spain would be an economic and military liability convinced Hitler that it was simply not worth the risk of alienating Vichy to gain Spanish belligerence.
-Preston
German policy was to have Vichy France on her side. That means French overseas territories not joining in with the British. The Winston Churchill ‘Some chicken! Some neck!’ speech. “Some chicken, some neck” was a reference to the sneering comment by French Marshal Philippe Pétain, future leader of the collaborationist Vichy French government who was convinced that Germany would successfully invade Britain as it had done France. He told Churchill that in three weeks Britain would “have its neck wrung like a chicken.” From the speech:
The French Government had at their own suggestion solemnly bound themselves with us not to make a separate peace. It was their duty and it was also their interest to go to North Africa, where they would have been at the head of the French Empire. In Africa, with our aid, they would have had overwhelming sea power. They would have had the recognition of the United States, and the use of all the gold they had lodged beyond the seas. If they had done this Italy might have been driven out of the war before the end of 1940, and France would have held her place as a nation in the counsels of the Allies and at the conference table of the victors. But their generals misled them. When I warned them that Britain would fight on alone whatever they did, their generals told their Prime Minister and his divided Cabinet, “In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken.” Some chicken; some neck.
-Winston Churchill, Ottawa, Dec. 30, 1941
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6JxSHmVB5g
The Germans kept Vichy in their camp. If they had not Italy would have been out of North Africa and the large North Africa campaign would not have happened with British forces deployed elsewhere. The Med would have been a British/French lake. The combined French and British fleets would have been indispensable in launching seaborne attacks just about anywhere they wanted. Hitler promised Vichy coal, as their source from the UK was cut off, and oil and other food and raw materials. Also work in producing goods for Germany which they would pay for. Keeping Vichy on his side was vital to Hitler. It was either:
1. Getting Spain into the war and Germany then having to
supply Spain and support her if attacked, which takes
huge resources, and give Franco French territory in Africa,
potentially turning French overseas territories to Britain's side
2. Keep Vichy on Germany's side, which would take resources but
far, far greater benefits.
Spain was best left inert with Germany focusing on pacifying Vichy France making them inert, so they do not move over to align with Britain, which may have meant removing Italy from the war, or at least from Africa. Germany could not supply both countries. Franco's terms were unacceptable to Hitler. So, whether Franco thought Hitler would win or not, was quite irrelevant.
If Franco was not to gain any territory, then why should he join in the war? If he joined the war and the allies won, there was the fear that he would most probably be removed.
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The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British under Montgomery. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa;
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein;
♦ March 1943 - Medenine;
♦ June 1944 - Normandy;
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands;
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge;
A list of Montgomery’s victories in WW2:
♦ Battle of Alam Halfa;
♦ Second Battle of El Alamein;
♦ Battle of El Agheila;
♦ Battle of Medenine;
♦ Battle of the Mareth Line;
♦ Battle of Wadi Akarit;
♦ Allied invasion of Sicily;
♦ Operation Overlord - the largest amphibious invasion in history;
♦ Market Garden - a 60 mile salient created into German territory;
♦ Battle of the Bulge - while taking control of two shambolic US armies;
♦ Operation Veritable;
♦ Operation Plunder.
Montgomery not once had a reverse.
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Monty's 8th Army advanced the fastest of any army in WW2. From El Alamein to El Agheila from the 4th to 23rd November 1942, 1,300 km in just 17 days. After fighting a major exhausting battle at El Alemein through half a million mines. This was an Incredible feat, unparalleled in WW2. With El Alamein costing just 13,500 casualties.
The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties, with the Lorraine campaign being a failure. Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties. Hodges, head of the US First army, fled from Spa to near Liege on the 18th, despite the Germans never getting anywhere near to Spa. Hodges did not even wait for the Germans to approach Spa. He had already fled long before the Germans were stopped. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British, with Montgomery involved in planning, with also Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
You need to give respect where it is due.
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The state of play on the 17th was that the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was clear. There was concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally. There were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen. Then a few scattered about along the road. There was no armour in Arnhem. That was it.
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 3 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured the bridge.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected.
XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up. The road was still clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump.
XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, at the planned expected time, making up the delay at Zon. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over.
If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
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Timeline
Events on the 1st day - D day:
▪ "At 1328, the 665 men of US 82nd 1st Battalion began to fall from the sky." - R Poulussen, Lost at Nijmegen.
▪ "Forty minutes after the drop, around 1410, the 1st Battalion marched off towards their objective, De Ploeg, three miles away." - R Poulussen.
▪ "The 82nd were digging in and performing reconn in the area looking for 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald - Neillands, R. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
▪ "Colonel Warren about 1830 sent into Nijmegen a patrol consisting of a rifle platoon and the battalion intelligence section. This patrol was to make an aggressive reconnaissance, investigate reports from Dutch civilians that only eighteen Germans guarded the big bridge"- US Official history, page 163.
▪ It was not until 1830hrs that he [Warren] was able to send a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small, just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a radio — say forty men. - Neillands. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
▪ The 82nd were dug in and preparing to defend their newly constructed regimental command post, which they established at 1825. Having dug in at De Ploeg, Warren's battalion wasn't prepared to move towards Nijmegen at all. - R Poulussen.
▪ Then Colonel Lindquist "was told by General Gavin, around 1900, to move into Nijmegen." - R Poulussen.
▪Warren sent a patrol of about 40 men to reconnoiter the bridge at 1830. Three strays from the patrol captured seven of the 18 guards and their 20mm cannon who were guarding the south end of the bridge, having to let them go as no reinforcements arrived. The 508th had actually captured the south end of the largely undefended bridge. The three scouts that reached the southern end of the Nijmegen bridge about an hour before the 9th SS arrived. Joe Atkins of the patrol said:
"at the bridge, only a few German soldiers were standing around a small artillery weapon... The Germans were so surprised; the six or seven defenders of the bridge gave up without resisting. We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark and none of our other troops showed up. We decided to pull away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge." - The 508th Connection by Zig Boroughs.
That was the 9th SS arriving at 1930.
▪ Unfortunately, the patrol's radio failed to function so that Colonel Warren was to get no word from the patrol until the next morning - US Official History, page 163.
▪ Once Lindquist told Lieutenant Colonel Warren [at 1900] that his Battalion was to move, Warren decided to visit the HQ of the Nijmegen Underground first - to see what info the underground had on the Germans at the Nijmegen bridge. - R Poulussen,
▪ "Although Company A reached the rendezvous point on time, Company B "got lost en route." After waiting until about 2000, Colonel Warren left a guide for Company B and moved through the darkness with Company A toward the edge of the city. Some seven hours after H-Hour, [2030] the first real move against the Nijmegen bridge began." - US Official History, page 163.
▪ As the scouts neared a traffic circle surrounding a landscaped circular park near the center of Nijmegen, the Keizer Karel Plein, from which a mall-like park led northeast toward the Nijmegen bridge, a burst of automatic weapons fire came from the circle. The time was about two hours before midnight. [2200 hrs] - US Official History, page 163.
D Day plus 1
▪ In the meantime Colonel Warren had tried to get a new attack moving toward the highway bridge; but this the Germans thwarted just before dawn with another sharp counterattack. - US Official History, page 165.
▪ "While the counterattack was in progress, General Gavin arrived at the battalion command post." "General Gavin directed that the battalion "withdraw from close proximity to the bridge and reorganize"." This was to mark the end of this particular attempt to take the Nijmegen bridge" - US Official History, page 165.
▪ "A new attack to gain the bridge grew out of an early morning conference between General Gavin and Colonel Lindquist." "At 0745 on 18 September, D plus 1, Company G under Capt. Frank J. Novak started toward the bridge." - US Official History, page 165.
▪ At around 1100, Warren was ordered to withdraw from Nijmegen completely. - R Poulussen.
▪ At 1400 on 18 September Colonel Mendez ordered Company G to withdraw from Nijmegen - US Official History, page 166.
"the chance for an easy, speedy capture of the Nijmegen bridge had passed. This was all the more lamentable because in Nijmegen during the afternoon the Germans had had nothing more than the same kind of "mostly low quality" troops encountered at most other places on D Day." - US Official History, page 164.
The 82nd completely withdrew from Nijmegen town, allowing the Germans to pour the 10th SS infantry, who come over on the ferry, south over the Nijmegen bridge to reinforce the town. This made matters worse when the 82nd and XXX Corps went into the town to clear them out.
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Subsequent books by US authors quoting men who were actually there are useful.
When Gavin found out the 508th were not moving, he was livid, expecting them to be moving on the bridge, if there was no opposition. The 508th did send a recon patrol. According to Phil Nordyke’s Put Us Down In Hell (2012) three lead scouts of the patrol of 40, were separated making it to the vicinity of south end of the road bridge approaches, not the main steel span. They captured seven of the 18 Germans guards also their 20mm artillery gun guarding the south end of the bridge. They waited about an hour for reinforcements that never arrived, having to withdraw then observed the 9th SS Panzer recon battalion arriving from Arnhem.
The three scouts that reached the southern end of the Nijmegen bridge about an hour before the 9th SS arrived. Joe Atkins in The 508th Connection (2013) said:
"at the bridge, only a few German soldiers were standing around a small artillery weapon... The Germans were so surprised; the six or seven defenders of the bridge gave up without resisting. We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark and none of our other troops showed up. We decided to pull away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge."
That was the 9th SS arriving after being gifted a generous time window by the 82nd to reinforce.
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XXX Corps were not slow. No British tanks stopped for tea time ignoring the bridges. XXX Corps had to secure two crossing for themselves, as two US para units failed.
The state of play on the 17th, d-day, was that the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was clear. There was concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally. There were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen, with a few scattered about along the road. There was no German armour in Arnhem. That was it. If the bridges are secured by paras forming an airborne carpet then just a cruise up the road.
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 3 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved, the 101st would have secured the bridge.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting a Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected.
XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and towards the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up. The road was still clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump.
XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, at the planned expected time, making up the delay at Zon. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over.
If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
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@staffordduecker665
A Frenchman, Eugène Houdry, invented cracking low grade oil into high octane fuel in 1937. Standard aviation fuel in Britain in the 1930s was 87 octane.
After Houdry's invention, in the late 1930s the RAF began to investigate the use of 100 octane, starting purchases of supplies in late 1937. Standard Oil in the USA was the only company that quickly got production up in volume of high octane fuel, so the RAF stockpiled readily available fuel from them, before releasing it for use in March 1940.
The stockpile was added to by British refineries at: Heysham, Billingham and Stanlow near Liverpool (Stanlow only later in the war), who engaged in high octane fuel production. By early November 1940, just after the Battle of Britain that stockpile was 500,000 tons in the UK, with enough reserve sufficient for 80 weeks consumption at the then present levels.
Large amounts were imported from the US, the Caribbean and Middle East once the US entered the war being based in the UK. The British had refineries In Iran, Haifa and Suez to supply the forces more local.
In 1943 the British began producing 100/150 octane fuel, going into full scale production in 1944. This fuel was only produced in Britain. The USA had plans to produce 115/145 during the war, but the demand on production of 100/130 meant that 115/145 was sidelined during the war.
It is wrong to say that the British got high octane fuel only from the USA in the early part of the war, although mist did come from the USA. Later in the war the British were producing higher octane fuel than the USA. The RAF was the first to exploit widely the use of high octane fuel.
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@quagsir-behattedbloboftheu5051
This is applicable to radial and ring circuits. Do the 1st fix using lever Wagos type of connectors inside the socket/receptical backboxes, connecting up a ring (or a radial), and even connecting the earth terminal of a metal backbox. The current of the ring only runs thru the ring's cable not via terminal on teh back of sockets/recepitcals. The backboxes are then effectively doubled up as junction boxes. The ring circuit is tested after the 1st fix. Any wiring problems are identified before finishing trades turn up. Putting it right afterwards may be big problems.
Then the plasterers and painters come in doing their work. The Wagos are left in place in the backboxes. Then on the 2nd fix, on a bench the sockets/recepticals are prepared, by screwing into all the socket's tail's flexible 2.5mm cable, including an insulated earth wire, about four inches long with a ferrule onto the flexible wire into sockets screwed terminal connection. The flexible tails are put into the Wagos at the back of the back boxes. The socket easily pushes back in being on flex tails. Then test again. The speed, and ease, of installation is much quicker. And much safer as the ring itself does not have screw connections that can work loose.
I have found many terminal screws on the back of sockets/recepticals that have worked loose over time - expansion-contraction, vibration from people walking on wooden floors, plugs being rammed in and out constantly, etc. That is why screwed terminal are maintenance terminals. Wago screwless are maintenance free. Wago also apply the correct torque to the wire, which is maintained over time as well. Having the full current of a ring or radial circuit flowing through the terminal at the rear of sockets is a potential fire situation, with maybe arcing, also adding higher resistances to the radial or ring, which may cause one leg of a ring to take most of the load, etc.
That is where Wago types of connectors, in the scenario I just outlined, take the ring's load, not the screwed terminals on the rear of the sockets. It is much safer. The sockets/recepticals are only spurs off the ring, taking only current when an appliance is drawing current. Go back to a ring circuit after 10, 15, 20 years, then test it. Then go back to one which has the ring running though maintenance free Wago types. The integrity of the Wago connection ring will be upheld. Much safer.
Having Wago types of terminal connections on the rear of sockets/recepticals, as in Germany and France, adds another level of safety, in eliminating another potential failure/fire risk of the screw terminal . The UK is just introducing these types of socket/receptical connections.
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Let's see, this guy on other vids say his daily drive is a Land Rover Defender and this one, the Range Rover. Wow two cars in one day. So, he drive a 22 year old Defender, which is no longer made - so safe there, as it is not threatening the US market.
He gives the impression he loves Land Rovers. He has a Range Rover saying is it wonderful, in looks, desirability, luxury, etc, to any USA SUV, which it is. This is all gloss to the real motive.
So, how can you get at castigating this car making inroads into the US SUV market? A car that created the genre fifty years ago. You can only go on reliability. He is easy to see through, not that clever - most certainly paid to spout this stuff. Then a plethora of Americans cheer him on, with liberal insults.
Strange that these cars are only unreliable in the USA. Must be the air of course.
I await more of the paid American trolls to descend on this vid, extolling how unreliable Range Rovers are. The US car industry must be desperate to drop to these levels.
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The Turning point of WW2 was the Battle of Moscow in Dec 1941. That was when Germany and Japan were doomed.
♦ Japan thought Germany would definitely win defeating the USSR soon
after. The German defeat at Moscow would ensure Germany would not
defeat the USSR.
♦ The Japanese entered WW2 on a presumption they would be linking
up with Germany. It transpired they were alone fighting two massive
powers with a third pinning their forces down and eventually fighting
all three. Not at all what they wanted.
♦ Germany needed the Japanese to fight the British to keep them away
from him as they were building up a massive air fleet to attack him.
♦ Germany needed US production, primarily aircraft, diverted away
Germany.
Japan would not attack the British empire, Dutch empire and the US unless Germany declared war on the USA. If Germany said no to declaring war on the USA, Japan would never have attacked and there would be no Pacific war. The two theatres were linked.
Japan did not want to face alone the USA and the British empire. the worst case scenario. And that is what happened. The Germans attempted to get the Japanese to attack the British in the Far East to divert the British away from Europe. The UK was amassing a large air fleet and also had the world's largest navy. They would not sit by for long only fighting in the desert. The reason Germany attacked the USSR was to get their resources to fight the coming air war with the British. The Japanese repeatedly refused to declare war. Only when the Japanese thought the USSR was about to fall they joined in. The USSR kept 40 divisions opposite the Japanese Kwantung army all though WW2. With superior armour to the Japanese.
Japan received assurances from Germany in the Spring of 1941. that they would declare war on the USA. Japan, economically could not sustain war of any length of time against any major power by itself, either the UK or the USA. Especially a war strung over a vast front. They imported most raw materials with their industry primarily artisan based, with little mass production. If going it alone, what the hell attacking the USA and British Empire was to achieve with no back up occupation force at Pearl Harbor defies belief. The Pearl Harbor attack was to fend off the US navy while they gain as much resource rich territory as possible in the south while the USSR threat is moved away from their north in China by the Germans. To Japan the key was the defeat of the USSR, which by Oct/Nov 1941 they thought was a foregone conclusion.
All through WW2 the Soviets had approx 40 divisions (most armoured) in Siberia and the Soviet Far East facing the Japanese. Without Germany fighting the USSR anticipating a quick German win, the Japanese would never had attacked the USA and the British Empire. It was madness to do so unilaterally and would entail certain defeat - even the Japanese knew that.
The Japanese were to eliminate the US Pacific fleet. The US Atlantic fleet would be occupied by the German U-Boats. The carriers got away at Pearl Harbor. If the carriers were sunk, the Japanese would not have been on the defensive by June 1942, giving them far more breathing space and lots more with the anticipated defeat of the USSR within months by the Germans. If the US carriers were sunk along with the US Pacific fleet, and the USSR defeated by summer 1942 by the Germans, Japan would be in very strong position.
The Japanese gained far more territory than they gambled on. They were one day away in Singapore from surrendering, but the British beat them to the white flag. They were expecting more protracted battles in Malaya/Burma and even maybe in the Philippines.
Using some common sense tells you the Japanese were not banking on being alone fighting the world's two largest economic powers. They were expecting at least the USSR to be neutralised or eliminated. And then some military aid from the Germans would be nice if it came. The link was enacted with 41 U-Boats operating from Penang. The Germans then would engage the British diverting them away from fighting the Japanese in Burma. Getting rid of the British and the Soviets was a major prize for Japan, and Germany could do the latter and both they thought the former. So was the notion.
Wages of Destruction by Prof Adam Tooze in quotes:
• The tripartite pact was signed in Sept 1940. If one is attacked the
others come to their aid.
• "The real nightmare of German strategy was the possibility that
Japan might come to terms with the United States, leaving Germany
to fight Britain and maybe America alone. To forestall this possibility,
Hitler had offered to declare war on the United States in conjunction
with Japan already in the Spring of 1941."
• Germany had offered to declare war on the US before the June 1941
attack on the USSR.
• "But the Japanese had refused to commit themselves and instead
entered into a last round of negotiations with the USA."
• "It was not until October and the fall of the Konoe government that
Berlin could feel sure that the Japanese-USA talks were going nowhere."
• "When in November 1941 Tokyo began to signal that Japan was about
to commit itself against the West, it was the cause of relief, bordering
on euphoria in Berlin. Finally Hitler and Ribbentrop had the chance to
complete the global strategic alliance they had been hoping for since
1938. And they did not hesitate."
• The Germans immediately started to revise the Tripartite pact, knowing
of the Japanese commitment to war, at the German's insistence.
• "Without prior knowledge of the Japanese timetable for a surprise attack
on Pearl Harbor, Hitler pledged himself to following Japan in a declaration
of war on the United States."
• 7 Dec 1941, Japanese attack the USA at Pearl Harbor and British territories
in Malaya and Hong Kong.
• The amended Tripartite pact was signed by all, between the 7 Dec 1941,
the attacks on the USA and British Empire, and Germany declaring war
on the USA on 11 Dec 1941.
• 11 Dec 1941 Germany declares war on the USA.
Wages of Destruction is clear that the Germans were informed by the Japanese in November 1941 that they were to declare war. The attacks on the US and British Empire was no surprise to Hitler. He never knew the date or where.
Wages of Destruction also states that Germany was repeatedly attempting to get Japan to declare war on the British empire to get them away from him. The Japanese knew exactly what the Germans wanted and what they would do. It all fits.
As it turned out:
♦ The USSR was not defeated and maintained a large army opposite the
Japanese - the Japanese had already been mauled by the Soviets in
Manchuria in 1939.
♦ Japan was facing the worst case scenario, the scenario it feared - fighting
alone against the British empire and USA, the world's two largest economic
superpowers.
♦ This was not in the forecasting. The German army defeated militarily superior
France within weeks and since June 1941 were mauling the USSR so badly it
was obvious to the Japanese in late 1941 the USSR would be defeated.
♦ The week in which the Japanese attacked the USA and British Empire, the
Soviets counter attacked at Moscow with a battering ram of superior T-34
tanks pushing the Germans back taking 30,000 prisoners, so ending any
chance of Germany defeating the USSR in one swoop. A protracted war
against the USSR would ensue.
♦ In Spring 1941, the Germans feared fighting the USA & the British alone - a
worst case scenario for them. They were desperately worse off, fighting the
British, USA and the USSR alone.
♦ If the Soviet counter attack had been one month earlier the Japanese would
not have attacked the British and the USA - and most probably signed a pact
with the USA which was in ongoing talks virtually to the attack on the British,
Dutch and Americans.
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The RAF was defeating the Luftwaffe with the Royal Navy vastly superior to anything the Germans and Italians combined could put to sea. The British were able to out-produce the Germans in aircraft even prior to the German invasion of the Soviet Union.
Although Germany had access to the industrial plant of Northern Italy, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands they were not able to use it to match either the Soviets or the British in war production. Ironically, the 1940 conquests only burdened the German war economy since Western Europe was a net importer of food (animal & human), and raw materials burdening Germany to support them - the Royal Navy blockade was effective. French aircraft production aimed for Germany was minuscule. France had access to manufacturing plant and supplies of bauxite however was not able to produce as it imported coal from Britain for its electricity production. With the RN blockade the main source of coal for France became Germany. However Germany was not able to increase its production sufficiently to overcome the short fall.
The amount of food produced in Europe fell. Previously the production of meat and dairy products in countries such as Denmark had been dependant on the import of grain and animal feed from the Americas. That was not available and the amount of food available for the dairy industry collapsed as did food production. In the rest of Europe food production had been based on the widespread use of chemical fertilizer. Apart from the issues of the RN blockade huge amounts of the chemicals used for fertilizer production was diverted to the making of explosives affecting agriculture. On January 10th, 1942 the Italians informed the Germans that their navy’s supplies of fuel had dropped to 90,000 tons. During these months, the bottom was hit with reserves down to 14,000 tons. The Italian navy at no time had enough fuel to perform all operations they wanted.
French workers were moved on to subsistence rations and as the country had been dependant on motorized transportation. Most of France's oil imports came from abroad. Agricultural produce could not be distributed because of no fuel, and vehicles taken by the Germans, with milk being literally being poured away. In Germany on the outbreak of war the only available oil products came from Romania or from synthetic oil made in Germany. This was barely enough for the needs of the German armed forces and not enough to keep the Italian Navy operational. France reverted to a pre-petroleum transport economy.
This economic background partially influenced Hitler's decision to invade the USSR. The USSR had the natural resources, including vital oil, that would enable European industry to out-produce Britain and America and face the coming air war with Britain. The two of them could only really get at each other in a big way by air. Roosevelt in May 1940 stated the US would build 50,000 planes a year - they built over 90,000 in 1944 alone. Hitler knew the lead time was approximately 18 months for a plane and that these planes, plus British production, which was greater than Germany's, would be coming his way. The British empire would not talk peace and would not sit back with Hitler knowing that. He had to be prepared with an equal air force. Even as German forces moved into the USSR in June 1941, German industry was moving over from army production to Luftwaffe production in preparation.
Had Hitler won against Stalin, he would have gained unrestricted access to resources he needed to fight the British in an air war. The conquest of the Soviets was a key step in Hitler's strategy and not irrational. However the Soviets were able stand up to an invasion and better able to marshal their resources outlasting the Germans. The USSR in 1942 out-produced the USA in arms.
Germany had 2.5 times the per capita GDP of the USSR. Invading the USSR was critical because Western European industry was dependent upon exports, with the RN blockade cutting them off.
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Germany had no realistic ability to overrun the UK. The British knew what sort of chance the Germans had. The reason the Germans had no chance was that the British were ready and waiting with factories turning out the latest equipment 24/7. During the so-called Battle of Britain, the Royal Navy had a mass of ships at Gibraltar ready for offensive operations against the Italians, they took the invasion of Britain really so seriously.
The German Navy was near non-existent, being largely destroyed in Norway. The single battleship the British kept in Portsmouth was quite able to handle everything the Germans had on the surface, together with the four flotillas of destroyers. I'm not counting the Home Fleet, which had additional powerful ships. In other words, the British kept plenty of naval force at home. All they needed to deal with the Germans with a good deal to spare. Also, 55 Matilda 2 tanks, which was immune from German anti-tank guns, were sent to North Africa, the Brits took the invasion so seriously.
Admiral Raeder said he could not guarantee putting down an invasion force, even with German air superiority, when the Royal Navy was still there. General Jodl talked of his men going through a British _mincing machine_.
In Churchill's memoirs, he says that he was prepared to defeat tens of thousands of Germans if they invaded (take that as slaughter). Presumably even if they arrived with weapons and not half-dead from seasickness in a 24 hour sea trip in barges being attacked from sea, land and air. The British kept plenty of force at home, all they needed.
And what were the Germans supposed to do? Sortie with two or three heavy cruisers, and blast their way through the Home Fleet or the Channel defences? At that point in the war, Bismarck was still under construction, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were under repair from the Norway operation, two of six heavy cruisers sunk, two of six light cruisers sunk, and only five of those could be considered modern warships, a large number of their destroyers were sunk at Narvik. The repair status on the rest of the ships wasn't real good. The Germans never even had an effective torpedo plane. The Stuka dive bomber was predictable in that it dived vertically. It was easily shot down and suffered so many losses in the Battle of Britain it was withdrawn from the battle.
So, with the German navy whittled to almost nothing, and the army incapable of crossing with enough force to win, the only threats was the then small U-boats force and the Luftwaffe. The British were therefore sparing about sending the RAF overseas. I don't know of any significant deployment of Spitfires outside the UK until the second half of 1942, and escort vessels kept on being built. The RAF defeated the Luftwaffe over Dunkirk, so the Germans knew they were no push over.
If anyone thinks that operation Sealion was a serious attempt at an invasion they are deluded. Even German generals never took it seriously. An invasion in concrete barges towed by tugs and no navy to speak of? The Germans knew the UK had a large industry working 24/7, the same size as Germany's, and the largest navy in the world to their virtually none.
The RAF was large with a large bomber force, which the Germans could not knock out. Any invasion at the few suitable invasion beaches would be met at the beaches by all types of aircraft. These could be based out of Me 109 range. State-of-the-art fighters would still be produced 24/7. There would always be top line fighters around.
According to Guderian in "Panzer Leader", and by pretty much any historian to follow, Sealion (Zee Lowe?) could succeed only with complete air superiority over the invasion areas, and at least naval equality in the Channel. Hence the air Battle of Britain, hard fought and clearly won by Britain. Naval equality was a pipe dream for Germany, but a pipe smoked only if the Luftwaffe could attain a decisive victory. Given the failure of the prerequisite, there is really no point in debating the if Germans could invade the UK.
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@uffa00001
Browning only found out that the bridge was not seized on the morning of d-day plus 1. He was very concerned ordering Gavin to take it ASAP. Gavin was about to launch another attack on the bridge, then Gavin said to Browning that he needed to take troops to the heights as Germans had been seen (and I suppose the mythical 1,000 tanks). Browning agreed, but Gavin took the lot.
Browning always said that the bridge and heights were of equal priority. Giving the bridge equal importance does not mean neglecting and de-prioritizing it.
Gavin took all his men out of Nijmegen. The 10th SS men, had arrived via the ferry. These poured them south over the bridge into the town, which previously only had easy non-combat troops there, who the 508th just walked through to the bridge. Three men of a 508 patrol even seized the guards on the south of the bridge. They let them go as no support turned up. The guards did not want to be set free wanting to go with the 508 men. That was the quality of the German troops there.
When XXX Corps turned up they had to clear stubborn Germans from the rubble in the town (US air force bombed it by mistake months earlier), which was not complete until after XXX Corps seized the bridge. This clearing of the town involved most of XXX Corps tanks, who were also using the 82nd men for support, with only five tanks available to cross the bridge and only form a bridgehead.
Gavin made a bad situation even worse by taking his men out of the town. Gavin was bad communicator. He _never- issued written orders to Lindquist, head of 508, to move immediately to the bridge, so he hung around DePloeg. He never verbally communicated effectively to Browning on the morning of d-day plus 1.
What Browning said...
"I personally gave an order to Jim Gavin that, although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen Bridges as soon as possible, it was essential that he should capture the Groesbeek Ridge and hold it
There is nothing there that de-prioritizes the bridge.
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Gavin told Lindquist to go to the bridge, "without delay". Gavin was clearly going for the bridge as a matter of urgency. The problem was the incompetent delay to move to the bridge - that is why the 82nd failed to seize the bridge. Gavin's command structure failed.
After receiving General Gavin's pre jump orders in regard to the Nijmegen bridge, Colonel Lindquist had earmarked Colonel Warren's battalion as one of two battalions from which he intended to choose one to move to the bridge, depending upon the developing situation. General Gavin's understanding, as recalled later, was that Warren's battalion was to move "without delay after landing." On the other hand, Colonel Lindquist's understanding, also as recalled later, was that no battalion was to go for the bridge until the regiment had secured its other objectives, that is to say, not until he had established defenses protecting his assigned portion of the high ground and the northern part of the division glider landing zone.
- US Official History
Prior to the Holland jump, I sat in 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.
After we were dropped in Holland, 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 (drop zone) is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.”
..
I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his jeep, he told me to, “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.”
- by Chester E Graham, liaison officer between the 508th and the 82nd Division Headquarters.
As darkness approached, General Gavin ordered Colonel Lindquist "to delay not a second longer and get the bridge as quickly as possible with Warren's battalion."
- US Official History
"I personally directed Colonel Roy E. Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry," General Gavin recalled later, "to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing
- US Official History
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The state of play on the 17th, the jump day, was that the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was clear. There was concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally. No heavy bridge defences. There were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen. Then a few scattered about along the road. There was no armour in Arnhem. That was it. The Germans were is disarray as they were falling back.
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made "remarkable" progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 3 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or just moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured the bridge.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected. Also, the thousands of vehicles had to be mustered south of Eindhoven before advancing.
XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves made the crossing running over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and to the road where they could, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. The road was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up. The road was still clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump.
XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving and the German occupying all of the town. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over to Arnhem 7 miles to the north.
If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day +1 in the evening. Game, set and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras on the bridge at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
The above is the factual overview.
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The imminent concern of Germany was to get resources to fend off the coming air war with Britain.
Wages of Destruction. Adam Tooze:
Planning for Barbarossa..
Tooze Page 454:
"Critical stores would be reserved above all for the main strike force of 33 tank and motorised infantry divisions. If the battle extended much beyond the first months of the attack, the fighting power of the rest of the German army would dwindle rapidly."
"Fundamentally the Wehrmacht was a "poor army". The fast striking motorised element of the German army in 1941 consisted of only 33 divisions of 130. Three-quarters of the German army continued to rely on more traditional means of traction: foot and horse. The German army in 1941 invaded the Soviet Union with somewhere between 600,000 and 740,000 horses. The horses were not for riding. They were for moving guns, ammunition and supplies."
"The vast majority of Germany's soldiers marched into Russia, as they had in France, on foot."
"But to imagine a fully motorised Wehrmacht, poised for an attack on the Soviet Union is a fantasy of the Cold War, not a realistic vision of the possibilities of 1941. To be more specific, it is an American fantasy. The Anglo-American invasion force of 1944 was the only military force in WW2 to fully conform to the modern model of a motorised army."
Page 455:
"the chronic shortage of fuel and rubber"
"the fuel shortage of 1941 was so expected to be so severe that the Wehrmacht was seriously considering demotorisation as a way of reducing its dependency on scarce oil."
"Everything therefore depended on the assumption that the Red Army would crack under the impact of the first decisive blow."
Page 456:
"a new Soviet industrial base to the east of the Urals, which had the capacity to sustain a population of at least 40 million people."
"Soviet industrial capacity was clearly very substantial."
"Franz Halder recorded Hitler's ruminations about the Soviets' immense stock of tanks and aircraft."
Reading further Tooze gives the misgivings of the German generals of the invasion. All were negative.
Page 460:
"As late as the Spring of 1941, the Foreign Ministry was still opposing the coming war, preferring to continue the alliance with the Soviet Union against the British Empire."
"If the shock of the initial assault does not destroy Stalin's regime, it was evident in February 1941 that the Third Reich would find itself facing a strategic disaster."
Page 452:
"the Germans had already conscripted virtually all their prime manpower. By contrast, the Red Army could call up millions of reservists."
Why did Germany invade the USSR in a rushed ill-conceived plan?
Page 431:
"the strongest arguments for rushing to conquer the Soviet Union in 1941 were precisely the growing shortage of grain and the need to knock Britain out of the war before it could pose a serious air threat."
"Meanwhile, the rest of the German military-industrialised complex began to gird itself for the aerial confrontation with Britain and America."
Germany rushed to invade the Soviet Union, with an ill-equipped army with no reserves in anticipation of a massive air war with Britain and the USA, hoping they could win the Soviet war within weeks.
The coming air war:
Roosevelt promised 50,000 plane per year production in May 1940, of which a substantial amount would be in the RAF. Germany could not compete with the level of aircraft at the UKs disposal. Whether the planes had US and UK pilots or just UK pilots they were coming Germany's way. And the only way they could really get at each other was by air. Germany feared mass bombing, which came - the bomber in the late 1930s was perceived as a war winning weapon. The Germans knew the lead time for aircraft was 18 months from order to delivery. That meant in late 1941/early 1942, these planes would be starting to come into service in great numbers. Germany needed the resources of the east to compete. If the population was too big they would eliminate the population - the precedence was the American move to the west expanding the USA, taking lands from the natives population and Mexican and eliminating the population.
War Production:
Keegan, World War Two, chapter War Production:
- Germany was third behind the USA, then the UK in GDP, in 1939. Germany = UK in capital goods production in 1939.
- UK economy grows 60% during WW2.
- Hitler says to Guderian, re: USSR, "had I known they had so many tanks as that, I would have thought twice before invading"
Tooze, Preface, xxiii:
Combined GDP of the UK and France exceeded Germany & Italy by 60%.
- page 454:
"It was poor because of the incomplete industrial and economic development of Germany".
Interesting:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/workingpapers/publications/twerp603.pdf
Snippets:
"Soviet exceeded German GDP in 1940"
"The Allies won the war because their economies supported a greater volume of war production and military personnel in larger numbers. This was true of the war as a whole, and it was also true on the eastern front where the Soviet economy, of a similar size to Germany's but less developed and also seriously weakened by invasion, supplied more soldiers and weapons."
"the technological key to Soviet superiority in the output of weapons was mass production. At the outbreak of war Soviet industry as a whole was not larger and not more productive than German industry. The non-industrial resources on which Soviet industry could draw were larger than Germany's in the sense of territory and population, but of considerably lower quality, more far-flung, and less well integrated. Both countries had given considerable thought to industrial mobilisation preparations, but the results were of questionable efficacy. In both countries war production was poorly organised at first and productivity in the military-industrial sector had been falling for several years. The most important difference was that Soviet industry had made real strides towards mass production, while German industry was still locked into an artisan mode of production that placed a premium on quality and assortment rather than quantity. Soviet industry produced fewer models of each type of weapon, and subjected them to less modification, but produced them in far larger quantities. Thus the Soviet Union was able to make considerably more effective use of its limited industrial resources than Germany."
"Before the war Soviet defence industry was in a state of permanent technological reorganisation as new models of aircraft, tanks, and other weapons were introduced and old ones phased out at dizzying rate."
The USSR had access to oil and more natural resources and far more men. Making their ability to produce far greater than Germany, which actually happened.
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David Briggs
You are very confused and just about everything you wrote was wrong.
Patton was in the Lorraine and advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept deployed there with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept to try and plug the gaps while the panzer divisions proper were being re-fitted and rebuilt after the summer 1944 battles.
The Panzer Brigades had green crews that never had enough time to train, did not know their tanks properly, did not have any recon elements and didn't even meet their unit commander until his arrival at the front. These were by no means elite forces.
17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. The 7th SS was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, only equipped with assault guns, not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy and was not up to strength at Arracourt in the Lorraine. Patton never even once faced a full strength Waffen SS panzer division nor a Tiger battalion.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the weakest German divisions in the west were. Who did the 3rd Army engage? Who did 3rd Army defeat? In the Lorraine, 3rd Army faced a rabble. Even the German commander of Army Group G in the Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took over in September 1944 said:
"I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Patton was facing a second rate rabble in the Lorraine for the most part. Patton was also neither advancing or being heavily engaged at the time he turned some of his forces north to Bastogne, after the Germans pounded through US lines.
The road from Luxembourg to Bastogne was largely devoid of German forces, as Bastogne was on the very southern German periphery. Only when Patton got near to Bastogne did he face a little of German armour. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade wasn't one of the best armoured units, while 26th Volks-Grenadier only had a dozen Hetzers, and the tiny element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind only had a small number of tanks operational. Its not as if Patton had to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1.
Patton faced comparatively very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in the rear and moved westwards to the River Meuse, where they were still engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Leading elements were engaging the Americans and British under Montgomery's command near Dinant by the Meuse.
In Normandy in 1944, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton faced very little opposition in his break out (operation Cobra) performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September.
Patton repeatedly lambasted his subordinates. In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics Bradley's II Corps were employing while he also accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division, Lucian Truscott of being "afraid to fight". In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps. When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize stalled he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being "very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect" and called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in reporting their losses. It was Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his own decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance that were the reasons for his stall.
After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under RAF command, Coningham. Coningham, gave Patton massive US ground attack plane support and he still stalled. Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault, including his subordinates.
Read Monty and Patton:Two Paths to Victory
by Michael Reynolds
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Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower, approved and under resourced the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, not rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak". The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself.
XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.
Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm
The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
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@americanatlas3631
The US never had a top class general, many buffoons though - Patton, Bradley, Clark and MacArthur come to mind. Most were only colonels a few years previously, including Eisenhower. Montgomery had more years experience as a general than all of them combined in the ETO - literally.
♦ Only the Americans criticise Monty, in a veiled attempt
to disguise their inept performance in Europe.
Monty never retreated, not once.
♦ From mid-1942 onwards the British Army was
the finest in the world, taking all in its path.
♦ Bradley felt humiliated having 2 of his 3 armies
taken from him and given to Monty in the Bulge.
♦ The deplete and demoralised US armies should
have been pushed to the rear of the British 21st
Army Group. Monty never humiliated them. He
kept them at the front.
♦ Monty filled the losses of the two US armies
with British troops. British troops under US
command with the US command under British
command. It worked.
♦ The Americans always criticise Monty for not being
aggressive. Which is a way of saying he was
not stupid and overran his supply lines as Rommel
always did along with some British generals in
North Africa and as did US general Patton.
♦ A US report in the 1980s criticised Patton heavily
in the Lorraine.
When the US 1st and 9th armies were given to Monty at the Bulge, Monty chose the right option. Instead of joining a grindmeat where the Americans lost almost 100,000 and the Germans around 75,000, Monty decided to choose his own ground, and not fight in the Ardennes. The result was that more than 100,000 Germans were made casualties in Operation Veritable and Grenade, British (and American) casualties were less than 20.000. In Operation Plunder the British went further to make 30,000 German casualties, for an remarkable number of only 4,000 allied casualties.
Monty's operations were on the offensive, and yet the Germans suffered a gigantic number of casualties compared to the minimum of the British. Of the three main powers, the British managed the most cost effective advances in the war, while still keeping up the pace, and even facing the majority of the Germans in Normandy, while advancing faster than everyone else after the break-out to Belgium.
Patton was stuck in Metz for 3 months and had 50.000 casualties, Bradley had 34.000 in the Hurtgen Forest defeat. The Americans were having manpower troubles after the bulge. - mostly because of their head on tactics and complete lack of interest in keeping their soldiers alive. They counter-attacked in the Bulge not because it was the most sane thing to do, but just to try make Bradley and the Americans at large less humiliated.
Monty in the Bulge had the same thinking as in Operation Luttich. Let the Germans go as far as west as possible while minimizing casualties.
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The Brits did. Germany's biggest mistake was declaring war in the first place. Once they waged war when was the point they could not win? That was when the British refused to make peace in June 1940. With Britain still in the war the Royal Navy blockade starved Germany, and the Axis, of vital resources, including food (animal & human) and oil. Britain was even buying up rare metals from Turkey to ensure the Germans did not have them. The Royal Navy controlled and freely sailed the eastern Atlantic and the eastern Mediterranean, and controlled both entrances to the Mediterranean. They even had Malta all through WW2, on the doorstep of Axis Italy. Britain's land forces were from Turkey to Libya. Essentially the British surrounded Europe, controlling the sea lanes.
The Royal Navy ensured the conflict with Germany would continue. Germany could not win from June 1940 onwards. Being a largely landlocked country, Germany's forces were heavily based on its army, while Britain's was heavily based on its navy and air force with a small highly mobile army. Germany could not remove Britain from the war having pretty well no surface fleet to Britain having the largest navy in the world.
Britain's approach was that every operation was to bleed Germany of resources, especially oil. Operations in Norway and Greece forced the Germans to deploy troops to these areas but also its surface fleet, which mainly was destroyed in Norway. The German occupied countries were also under the blockade, which were also a drain of German resources.
The British, because of its armed forces structure of massive navy, large air force and small highly mobile army were unable to engage the Germans on the European land mass, on which Germany had a massive army. Apart from the air, the two countries could not get at each other. Britain's war then was partially an economic war. Every German operation against the British had to be decisive whereas the British could lose to the Germans while still asserting economic pressure in its favour. This was the British way of war being very good at it. Britain used similar tactics against Germany in WW1 to devastating effects. This approach was used against the French on multiple occasions over 200 years. Smaller nations in Europe would follow Pax Britannica due British naval dominance. Britain could dictate any war's outcome by blocking trade and resources to one side or another.
The Germans like most of Europe relied on imported oil, raw materials and food (animal & human). For the Germans these resources can only come from two regions - the USSR or the rest of the world. By removing the rest of the world from the grasp of the Axis, the British forced the Germans to acquire Soviet oil - Romania did not produce enough. Hitler had no choice but to invade the Soviet Union in June 1941 because of the resources situation. He needed the resources of the USSR to fight the coming air war with Britain. In May 1940 Roosevelt stated the USA would produce 50,000 planes per year. Most of these would be directed towards Germany with British production on top.
Germany greatly expanded its U-Boat fleet. The popular view was that this fleet was to starve Britain into submission. That was valid but a high hope, however, it was also to divert and lock up Royal Navy resources in convoy protection and U-Boat hunting, allowing merchant ships to enter Germany and the occupied countries more freely.
Germany had been forced into a situation by the British that they knew they could not escape from. Even if Germany had seized the Caucuses' oil fields intact (the Soviets sabotaged them to the point new deep bore holes would need to be drilled) the British would have focused them for their bombing campaign operating from the Middle East - there were plans to bomb them as Britain held nearby Iraq and occupied Iran. This was to drain Germany of vital oil. Every British victory in Africa was decisive and every German victory was not, even if Germany won an operation, they were still being bled. Unless Germany could seize the Suez Canal and beyond, the British could just come back year after year and counter attack with new tanks and new men, with resources not being a problem for them.
Germany knew that they could not invade Britain as the Royal Navy was just too powerful. The RAF could replace losses far quicker than they could, as they found out in the air Battle of Britain. Germany could not put their large army on British soil.
After June 1940 Germany has an enemy it can’t defeat not entertaining peace, economically throttling the Germans every day of the war. Germany never had time, the British did. The German invasion of the USSR with an army short of resources due to the Royal Navy blockade, may have quickened the war's end for Germany, however it was not the point that Germany was doomed. Germany had already lost the war it was just a matter of time when Germany collapsed.
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Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower approved, under resourcing the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak". The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself.
XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.
Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time Monty had the Canadians cleared it, or were investing in many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@naturalobserver6130 wrote:
"the only ones that got trounced in the battle of the bulge were the germans."
Initially? No. Montgomery on hearing of the attack immediately moved British troops to the Meuse river, maintaining a physical barrier, protecting the rear of the US First Army, without any orders from Eisenhower. Hodges only needed to concentrate on the Germans ahead as Monty protected him.
The US First and Ninth armies were a shambles having to be given to Monty to command. Monty stopped the piecemeal counter-attacks, brought them all back into a coherent organised force, then using British troops inside the decimated US armies, stopped the advance, pushing the Germans back to their start line.
"The operations of the American First Army had developed into a series of individual holding actions. Montgomery's contribution to restoring the situation was that he turned a series of isolated actions into a coherent battle fought according to a clear and definite plan. It was his refusal to engage in premature and piecemeal counter-attacks which enabled the Americans to gather their reserves and frustrate the German attempts to extend their breakthrough".
- The commander of the 5th Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel.
The only allied retreat in the 1944/45 timeframe was US forces in the Ardennes, who took 100,000 casualties. The US Ninth army was under Monty's command until near the end of the war. They did not retreat under Monty.
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@naturalobserver6130
Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust over other fronts and even seizing Antwerp and clearing the Schedlt. Clearing the Scheldt would take time as the German 15th SS army, highly experienced from the Russian front, had set up shop in the Scheldt and not retreated back into Germany, under Hitler's orders. All available supplies would be directed to this northern thrust.
"Since Eisenhower — the Supreme Commander and Ground Force Commander — approved the Arnhem operation rather than a push to clear the Scheldt, then surely he was right, as well as noble, to accept the responsibility and any resulting blame? The choice in early September was the Rhine or Antwerp: to continue the pursuit or secure the necessary facilities to solve the logistical problem? The decision was made to go for the Rhine, and that decision was Eisenhower’s."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"On 4 Sept, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr"
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen to British troops when he issued the northern thrust directive. Montgomery wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive, devising Operation Comet, multiple crossings of the Rhine, to be launched on 2 Sept, being cancelled due to German resistance and poor weather. Operation Comet was not presented to Eisenhower for his approval. Montgomery asked Brereton, an American, of the First Allied Airborne Army, to drop into the Scheldt in early September - he refused.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 Sept had divisions of the US 1st Army and Montgomery's view of taking multiple bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. The British 2nd Army needed some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow). Hodges' would protect the right flank. the Canadians would protect the left flank from the German 15th army.
"the narrow thrust was reduced to the Second Army and two US corps, the XIX and VII of Hodges’ First Army, a total of around eighteen Allied divisions"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
The northern thrust was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944."
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower’s reply of 5 September to Montgomery deserves analysis, not least the part that concerns logistics. The interesting point is that Eisenhower apparently believes that it is possible to cross the Rhine and take both the Ruhr and the Saar — and open the Scheldt — using the existing logistical resources."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp. In thinking this Ike was wrong."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Post-Normandy Bradley seemed unable to control Patton, who persistently flouted Eisenhower’s directives and went his own way, aided and abetted by Bradley. This part of their relationship quickly revealed itself in matters of supply, where Hodges, the commander of the US First Army, was continually starved of fuel and ammunition in order to keep Patton’s divisions rolling, even when Eisenhower’s strategy required First Army to play the major role in 12th Army Group’s activities."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again, and being bogged down - again. The resources starved First Army could not be a part of northern thrust as Bradley and Patton, against Eisenhower's orders, were syphoning off supplies destined for the First army.
This northern thrust over the Rhine, as Eisenhower envisaged, obviously would not work as he thought. A lesser operation was devised by Montgomery named Market Garden, eliminating the divisions of US First Army, with only ONE crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London wanted eliminating ASAP, giving a 60 mile long salient buffer between German forces and the important port of Antwerp. This would only have one corps above Eindhoven, a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time. Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance. Eisenhower should have fired Bradley and Patton for sabotaging the Northern Thrust operation.
Montgomery did not plan or was in involved in Market Garden's execution. Montgomery, after fixing the operations objectives with Eisenhower to the measly forces available, gave Market Garden planning to others, mainly USAAF generals, Brereton and Williams. General Brereton, who liked the plan, agreed to it with even direct input. Brereton ordered the drops will take place during the day and Brereton oversaw the troop carrier and supply drops schedules. Williams forbid fighter-bombers to be used. A refusal by Brereton and the operation would never have gone ahead; he earlier rejected Montgomery's initial plan of a drop into the Scheldt at Walcheren Island.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time the Canadians had cleared, or were investing, many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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TIK, Prof Adam Tooze in Wages of Destruction, (you quoted the book) clearly has the driver for Hitler's aggression being the USA. The USA had access to vast resources inside the USA, a land stolen from indigenous people and the Mexicans by moving west. Hitler took this precedence and looked east to emulate the USA, and match them economically. However this was long term.
Tooze again states that the immediate impetus to attack the USSR was that Roosevelt had stated in May 1940 that the USA will make 50,000 planes per year, with of course UK production added to that. Germany needed the resources of the east urgently to counter this coming air threat.
Wages of Destruction - The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy by Adam Tooze:
"On 23 July 1940 British procurement agents in Washington were invited to a clandestine meeting with American industrial planners, from which emerged a scheme to expand the capacity of the United States aircraft industry so that it would be able to deliver no less than 72,000 aircraft per annum, guaranteeing a supply to the British of 3,000 planes per month, three times the current German output."
This confirms Hitler's fears:
Hitler to the Hungarian Premier.... "Following Roosevelt's re-election remarked to the Hungarian premier that American shipments to Britain would not get fully under way before the winter of 1941-42 and this was also the view taken by the German navy. This, as it turned out, was a fairly accurate assessment and it had clear implications for German strategy."
Tooze:
"in 1940 the USA produced 6,019 planes, the UK received 2.006 and France 557. In 1941 the USA produced 19,433,...of which the British share came to 5,012. In 1942 almost 48,000, just shy of Roosevelt's target. The UK only received 7,775. By 1943 the USA had surpassed the "utopian" target of 72,000, with a staggering production of 86,898. Even more were to come in 1944."
Tooze - Page 431:
"the strongest arguments for rushing to conquer the Soviet Union in 1941 were precisely the growing shortage of grain and the need to knock Britain out of the war before it could pose a serious air threat."
Tooze says it was two prime points..
"the strongest arguments for rushing to conquer the Soviet Union in 1941 were"
1. "precisely the growing shortage of grain"
2. "the need to knock Britain out of the war before
it could pose a serious air threat."
Number 1 above, can be extended to a resources shortage with grain being the prime resource shortage. In short, invading the USSR was an economic benefit.
Tooze Page 455:
"the chronic shortage of fuel and rubber"
"the fuel shortage of 1941 was expected to be so severe that the Wehrmacht was seriously considering demotorisation as a way of reducing its dependency on scarce oil."
Tooze Page 459:
"On 22 January 1941 Thomas had informed his boss, Keitel, that he was planning to submit a report urging caution with regard to the military-economic benefits of the invasion. Now he reversed directions. As it became clear that Hitler was justifying Barbarossa first and foremost as a campaign of economic conquest, Thomas began systematically working towards the Fuehrer."
Number 2, above...
In June 1940 Roosevelt put to Congress that the USA construct the world's largest military complex. The USA said it will produce at least 50,000 planes per ann. and large carrier fleets for two oceans. They would supply what the UK wanted and had not decided how the UK would pay. Later this 50,000 was increased to 72,000 by the industrialists.
From June 1940 to Dec 1941 the UK received nearly 11,000 planes and 13,000 aero engines from the USA and produced 15,000 planes at home, a total of near 27,000 planes.
The USA produced 19,500 planes in 1941 and was training the pilots to fly them.
A total UK & US of 46,500 planes. Germany produced only 12,000 planes in 1941.
In July 1940 the USA planned to supply the UK alone with 3,000 aircraft per month. In 1942 the USA produced 86,000 planes exceeding the 72,000 mark with even more in 1944. German intelligence in 1940/41 knew of this massive rise in aircraft fleets that would be set against them. They were not that stupid.
Hitler predicted (accurately) that the masses of US planes would start to come in, in late 1941 - it takes approx 18 months from raw metal to a finished plane. Indeed in the winter of 1940/41 the Luftwaffe was giving equal priority to plane procurement for the coming air war with the UK as with Barbarossa. Hitler had to see off the USSR by late 1941 to have any chance of facing the masses of aircraft in the west. The natural resources, especially grain, oil, rubber and precious metals, of which Germany was desperately short, would be alleviated.
In short, if the UK did not pose a serious air threat in the west, the USSR would not have been invaded. Resources was the motivator, oil being only one of them.
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@haroldfiedler6549
Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower, approved and under resourced the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak". The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself.
XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.
Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time Monty had the Canadians clear it, and investing in many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@BaronsHistoryTimes
Frost's men prevented the Germans from using the bridge. No German troops crossed the bridge when Frost's men were there. The 9th SS recon returned from Nijmegen on the morning of d-day plus 1, to be shot up on the bridge by the First Airborne. Their shot up vehicles and bodies littered the bridge rendering it unusable. The Germans did manage to run a tank south over the bridge, escaping Frost's 6-pdrs, running over their own dead men.
On the evening of d-day plus 3, The Guards seized Nijmegen bridge, and then had to secure it by forming a northern perimeter. By the time the bridge was secured from German counter-attack (they always counter-attacked), it was running towards midnight, Frost's men had capitulated.
If the 82nd had seized Nijmegen bridge immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the southern end of Arnhem bridge on d-day plus 2 around midday. Frost's men were still on the northern end.
The 82nd jump at Nijmegen was unopposed. While other troops were securing the LZ, some of Col. Lindquist's men made their way towards the Nijmegen bridge immediately.
Instead of moving immediately toward the Nijmegen bridge, Colonel Warren's battalion was to take an "assigned initial objective" in the vicinity of DePloeg, a suburb of Nijmegen.
..
then was to "be prepared to go into Nijmegen later." The assembly and movement to DePloeg took approximately three and a half hours.
- US Official History
Col. Warren, who was assigned the bridge, was to move when given orders by Lindquist. Gavin was expecting them to go directly to the bridge. He spent most of the time setting up shop in a hotel.
There was about 600 non-combat German troops in Nijmegen who were old men of a training unit and HQs. The HQs immediately started to move out when they knew paras had dropped. The road and railway bridges had no anti-tank ditches or barbed wire guarded by 18 men.
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@BaronsHistoryTimes
A prime strategic problem for SHAEF in September 1944 was opening up the approaches to Antwerp and keeping it from German counter-attack - the logistics problem to supply all allied armies when they moved into Germany. It was:
1) Take Noord Brabant, the land to the north and northeast of Antwerp, or;
2) Take the Schedlt.
Eisenhower had a Northern Thrust strategy, moving north on his broad front. Taking Noord Babant fell in line with the desires for both SHEAF and Eisenhower.
Noord Brabant had to be taken before the Scheldt, as it was essential. It was taken with limited forces, with forces also sent to take the Schedlt. Market Garden had to go ahead regardless of any threat or Northern Thrust strategy, actually being a success. To use Antwerp and control the approaches, the Scheldt, everything up to the south bank of the lower Rhine at Nijmegen needed to be under allied control. The low-lying lands, boggy ground between Arnhem and Nijmegen with land strewn with rivers and canals, is perfect geography as a barrier against a German counter-attack towards Antwerp. Without control of Noord Brabant German forces would have been in artillery range of Antwerp, and with a build up of forces and supply directly back to Germany in perfect position for a counter-attack.
Market Garden was the offensive SHEAF wanted to secure Antwerp, a prime port for logistics for all allied armies. It made sense as the Germans were in disarray, so should be easy enough to gain. Monty added Arnhem to form a bridgehead over the Rhine to fall in line with Eisenhower's priority Northern Thrust strategy at the time. It made complete sense in establishing a bridgehead over the Rhine as an extra to the operation. You needed Arnhem for an easier jump into Germany. Everything up to Nijmegen was needed if you wanted to do anything at all - that is, protect Antwerp and have a staging point to move into Germany. Gaining Noord Brabant, was vital, and was successfully seized. Fighting in the low lying mud and waterways of the Schedlt, which will take time, while the Germans a few miles away and still holding Noord Brabant made no sense at all.
SHEAF got what they wanted from a strategic point of view - they got Nijmegen.
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Trump does not have to leave the White House. He can mount a coup by just staying, as there is mechanism to remove a sitting president. A TED lecture (on-line):
https://youtu.be/WZWRhLW7Y8w?t=451
There are more Red states than Blue, but Red states are low population. Each state can legally forward a president. If there is violence on the streets (Trump cares nothing about that), with organized large armed groups the Republican states may go along with him to avoid civil unrest, maybe even civil war. Then, knowing when the Democrats get back in they will have the laws changed. All in order to avoid civil war.
If the military get involved in evicting Trump, they are also getting involved in a coup. It is outside their remit. Trump is within the constitution by staying, and going the court route, then hijacking the presidency. Then if all Red states are for him he stays, as it goes by state, not total population.
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@Nicholas Burns
The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British under Montgomery. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
▪ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa; October 1942 - El Alamein;
▪ March 1943 - Medenine;
▪ June 1944 - Normandy;
▪ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands;
▪ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge;
A list of Montgomery’s victories in WW2:
▪ Battle of Alam Halfa;
▪ Second Battle of El Alamein;
▪ Battle of El Agheila;
▪ Battle of Medenine;
▪ Battle of the Mareth Line;
▪ Battle of Wadi Akarit;
▪ Allied invasion of Sicily;
▪ Operation Overlord - the largest amphibious invasion in history;
▪ 60 mile thrust to the Rhine by XXX Corps in Holland;
▪ Battle of the Bulge - while taking control of two shambolic US armies;
▪ Operation Veritable;
▪ Operation Plunder.
Montgomery not once had a reverse.
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Monty's 8th Army advanced the fastest of any army in WW2. From El Alamein to El Agheila from the 4th to 23rd November 1942, 1,300 km in just 17 days. After fighting a major exhausting battle at El Alemein through half a million mines. This was an Incredible feat, unparalleled in WW2. With El Alamein costing just 13,500 casualties.
The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties, with the Lorraine campaign being a failure. Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties.
Hodges, head of the US First army, fled from Spa to near Liege on the 18th, despite the Germans never getting anywhere near to Spa. Hodges did not even wait for the Germans to approach Spa. He had already fled long before the Germans were stopped. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British, with Montgomery involved in planning, with also Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
You need to give respect where it is due.
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@nicholasburns7970
Monty didn’t plan Market Garden, coming up with the idea and broad outline only. Montgomery’s relations with the commander of Second TAF, Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham, were poor, and he was largely excluded from the planning process.
It was planned mainly by the Air Force commanders, Brereton and Williams of the USAAF.
It was Bereton and Williams who:
▪ decided that there would be drops spread over three days, defeating the object of para jumps by losing all surprise, which is their major asset.
▪ rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-day on the Pegasus Bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet.
▪ chose the drop and and landing zones so far from the Bridges.
▪ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to take on the flak positions and attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports, thereby allowing them to bring in reinforcements with impunity.
▪ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of “possible flak.“
Monty did not plan or was involved in the execution of Market Garden. He was an army group leader, over armies.
Market Garden failed to secure a bridgehead over the Rhine because two US army para units failed to seize their bridges, the 101st at Zon and the 82nd at Nijmegen.
Now you know.
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Prof Adam Tooze, Wages of Destruction
Page 371:
The German army that invaded France in May 1940 was far from being a carefully honed weapon of modern armoured warfare. Of Germany's 93 combat ready divisions on May 10 1940, only 9 were Panzer divisions, with a total of 2.438 tanks between them. These units faced a French army that was more heavily motorised, with 3,254 tanks in total.
Half the German tanks that invaded France and Low Countries in the west were armed only with a machinegun!! The German Army was not on equal footing with the French when in fact it was vastly inferior.
Tooze, page 371/372:
Nor should one accept unquestioningly the popular idea that the concentration of the Germans tanks in specialised tank divisions gave them a decisive advantage. Many French tanks were scattered amongst the infantry units, but with their ample stock of vehicles the French could afford to do this. The bulk of France's best tanks were concentrated in armoured units, that, on paper at least, were every bit a match for the Panzer divisions.
Page 378:
if Allied bombers had penetrated the German fighter screen over the Ardennes they could have wreaked havoc amongst the slow moving traffic with highly inflammable fuel tankers were interspersed with the fighting vehicles at the very front with the armoured fighting vehicles. The plan called for the German armoured columns to drive for three days and nights without interruption.
The drivers were put on speed pills.
Page 380:
_because it involved such a concentrated use of force, Manstein's plan was a one-shot affair. If the initial assault had failed, and it could have failed in many ways, the Wehrmacht as an offensive force would have been spent. The gamble paid off. But contrary to appearances, the Germans had not discovered a patent recipe for military miracles. The overwhelming success of May 1940, resulting in the defeat of a major European military power in a matter of weeks, was not a repeatable outcome.
Tooze, page 373:
In retrospect, it suited neither the Allies nor the Germans to expose the amazingly haphazard course through which the Wehrmacht had arrived at its most brilliant military success. The myth of the Blitzkrieg suited the British and French because it provided an explanation other than military incompetence for their pitiful defeat. But whereas it suited the Allies to stress the alleged superiority of German equipment, Germany's own propaganda viewed the Blitzkrieg in less materialistic terms.
Tooze page 380:
In both campaigns [France & Barbarossa], the Germans gambled on achieving decisive success in the opening phases of the assault. Anything less spelled disaster.
If the Blitzkrieg's belt broke the whole movement stopped. The Germans thought they had formulated a version of Blitzkrieg in France that was a sure-fire success. They used this in the USSR, just scaling up forces. They did not have the intelligence to assess properly, that the reason for their success was allied incompetence not anything brilliant they did. Germany never had the resources to fight a sustained war.
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@bobbleheadelvis6607
In 1940 the USSR had decided Finland was to be left independent, as long as it was not a threat to the USSR. They signed a peace agreement with both agreeing on the new borders. The USSR from 1940 to June 1941 was no threat to Finland. There was no massed troop gatherings on its borders. They were at peace with each other.
Finland was at peace with the USSR as was Germany. Both conspired in an unprovoked attack on the USSR in June 1941. The Finns were the only country who knew of the Barbarossa attack, as they were a part of it.
Even the Soviets could understand the Finns retaliating in 1939, and forgive them for that, even agreeing that Finland would remain independent, with some territory given to the USSR for Soviet defence purposes - keep in mind that this was Russian territory only 20 years previously that the Bolsheviks viewed should never have been made independent. Most people in Finland were actually born in Russia, as Finland was a part of Russia.
The allies insisted that with Germany it is unconditional surrender. When Finland made a peace with the USSR and Britain in 1944, a condition was that German troops on Finnish soil must be expelled. The Finns then ordered the Germans out, then turning on the Germans in Finland who refused. So, no Soviet troops occupied Finland.
Should the Soviets have forgiven the Finns for the 1941 attack alongside the Germans, giving them a conditional peace? Few would have forgiven them for what they did. Strangely the Soviets did.
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Frank Hoffman wrote:
" I don't know anyone who is minimizing the British role in the war."
The errors and miscalculations that permitted the Ardennes breakthrough were entirely American in origin and could not be blamed either on Montgomery or the British Second Army’s frequently alleged ‘timidity’, ‘caution’ or ‘slowness’. Fortunately for the US commanders, Monty soon came to their rescue,
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
reading the memoirs of the American generals and the comments passed from one to another, any friend of the USA is constantly saddened by how thin-skinned the US generals seemed to be, how eager to find fault and pass the blame for any failure to their British allies — undisturbed in most cases by the evidence. This attitude certainly affected the conduct of the European war and the decisions taken during the campaign.
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
but in the autumn of 1944 his [Eisenhower] strategy was little short of lamentable: to pretend otherwise is a denial of the facts. On the evidence presented during the months between the Normandy breakout and the end of the Bulge, the facts suggest that Eisenhower was a superb Supreme Commander but an indifferent field commander. The central command and strategy argument having been extensively aired, it would be as well to look at some of the peripheral factors that seem to have played an important role in the post-Normandy campaign, and the first of these is Anglophobia. Any recent love-in between the Anglo-American peoples should not conceal the fact that Anglophobia was a patent factor in their relations during the Second World War. Most US histories admit that Anglophobia was rife in Washington and at SHAEF, and the British are freely and frequently criticised in the memoirs of US commanders — criticism that is sometimes fully justified but is all too often based on a selective interpretation of the facts.
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
on 12 May 1945, four days after the war in Europe ended, Montgomery concluded: "And so the campaign in North West Europe is finished. I am glad. It has been a tough business. When I review the campaign as a whole I am amazed at the mistakes we made. The organisation for command was always faulty. The Supreme Commander had no firm ideas as to how to conduct the war and was blown about in the wind all over the place. At that particular business he was quite useless."
"The Deputy Supreme Commander [Tedder] was completely ineffective; none of the Army Commanders would see him and growled if he appeared on the horizon... and SHAEF were completely out of their depth all the time. And yet we won. The point to understand is that if we had run the show properly the war could have been finished by Xmas, 1944. The blame for this must rest with the Americans. And yet, to balance this, it is merely necessary to say one thing; if the Americans had not come along and lent a hand we would never have won the war at all."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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Frank Hoffman
Eisenhower was totally unsuited to ground commander of any troops. As Monty wrote: The Supreme Commander had no firm ideas as to how to conduct the war and was blown about in the wind all over the place. At that particular business he was quite useless. I would go along with that.
It took 11 months. Monty planned and was in control of Normandy - it was basically a British operation in navy, air force, etc.
Monty was pissed off with the amateurish way the Americans were running matters. Just before the German attack in the Bulge the Americans were talking of crossing the Rhine in May 1945. The Rhine was only reached, not crossed, on two points. The British got to the Rhine in September at Arnhem and the French at Strasbourg on 23 November, with 28,000 US and French casualties.
Every effort by the Americans all along the broad front was failing: Patton, Patch, Hodges, Bradley, the lot.
Eisenhower pointed out that some gains had been made but the Field Marshal was unconvinced and repeated his arguments in a letter to the Supreme Commander on 30 November: "We have definitely failed to implement the plan contained in the SHAEF directive of 28 October, as amended on later dates. That directive ordered the main effort to be made in the north, to defeat decisively the enemy west of the Rhine, to gain bridgeheads over the Rhine and Ijssel rivers and deploy in strength east of the Rhine preparatory to seizing the Ruhr. We have achieved none of this and have no hope of doing so; we have suffered a major strategic reverse."
One of the most irritating things about the Field Marshal — and especially irritating to his critics — is that what he said was often true. So it was here; the 28 October offensive had failed in all its stated objectives and Eisenhower had indeed suffered a major strategic reverse. Even more irritating to the American commanders was the fact that this failure could not be laid at Montgomery’s door
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Monty saved the US at the Bulge when the Germans expended their armour and soon after collapsed.
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Frank Hoffman wrote:
"Apparently, the liberation of Paris and of France in general, were small matters to you."
They were small as few Germans were there.
The Bulge attack failed because Monty was effectively in charge. He took control of two US armies, the First and Ninth. Parts of the USAAF was put under RAF command. Monty's constant criticism of the amateurish way the war was being run by the ground forces commander, Eisenhower, was vindicated.
The 21st Army Group commanded by Montgomery stopped the Germans at the Bulge pushing them back to their start line, depleting them of their armour. In a round about way Monty got what he wanted, defeat of the German army. Instead of a thrust to Berlin, running at the Germans, the Germans came to him. At Caen, grinding them up in a static manner allowing the Germans to enter the British grinder, he did not take territory. Caen allowed the territory to be released and taken by US armies as Monty planned. After the Bulge the territory was taken by the Soviets, which Monty did not plan.
Please do not compare Montgomery with MacArthur, that is as idiotic as comparing Patton to Montgomery.
Frank Hoffman wrote:
"People who see things through a filter of heavy bias invariably see themselves as fair and objective."
I couldn't agree with you more.
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Frank Hoffman
Montgomery's record speak for itself. Neillands, a highly respected author of many books over decades, say it as it is.
Montgomery is a much-criticised man, at least in US military circles, but according to the American historian Harold R. Winton, ‘Monty was a better general than many historians, particularly American historians, are willing to admit.’
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
it would be as well to look at some of the peripheral factors that seem to have played an important role in the post-Normandy campaign, and the first of these is Anglophobia.
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Anglophobia was a patent factor in their relations during the Second World War. Most US histories admit that Anglophobia was rife in Washington and at SHAEF, and the British are freely and frequently criticised in the memoirs of US commanders Among the US officers at SHAEF Montgomery became the lightning rod for the more open manifestations of Anglophobia, but it seems to have been deeply engrained in many American officers and surfaces constantly in their post-war accounts. Anglophobia, open or covert, undoubtedly affected attitudes towards their British colleagues and to any British proposal on the conduct of the campaign, whatever its merit.
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
The British may not have viewed their American allies as supermen or have been warmed by that glow of self-esteem with which many American generals and historians choose to surround themselves, but one will search widely to find evidence of any deep rooted anti-American feeling among the British.
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
This author would also like to record that in over a quarter of a century of interviewing American and British front-line veterans he has However, reading the memoirs of the American generals and the comments passed from one to another, any friend of the USA is constantly saddened by how thin-skinned the US generals seemed to be, how eager to find fault and pass the blame for any failure to their British allies — undisturbed in most cases by the evidence. This attitude certainly affected the conduct of the European war and the decisions taken during the campaign.
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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Frank Hoffman wrote:
"Eisenhower's broad front strategy resulted in German surrender in just about a year. Anyone, like Neillands, can say that the war could have been won sooner. It's easy to be an armchair General. The actual result, however, speaks for itself."
Monty said it would have been over sooner. I take his view than any, or all, or the US generals, whose overall performance was mediocre at best, and some downright amateurish. Monty was a master of strategy and the world's best general at the time for sure as his performance showed.
In December 1944 the US generals at a meeting were putting a date of May 1945 to cross the Rhine. Monty accelerated the end of the war by stopping the German advance in the Ardennes and pushing them back. If Monty had not taken control the Germans would have overran the US armies, and been stopped by the British 21st Army Group waiting for them at the Meuse. They would have stopped them at that point. If Monty had not gained control there would have been a stalemate for a time as the German line would have been further west and two US armies wiped out, probably with the war running into 1946.
Montgomery was no egotist like MacArthur - having worked with many Americans unfortunately they promote and thrive on ego. They all want to be big shots. MacArthur was another general who should have been fired. He did have a sense of humour, or did he? He called his kid Arthur, Arthur MacArthur.
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Frank Hoffman
Neillands was a highly reputable historian. After decades of reading books in research he got fed up with Americans writers and ex generals, aided by Hollywood, overtly distorting history. He put the record right somewhat.
Neillands gives credit where it is due. He says Monty could not have done the Supreme Commanders role like Eisenhower as that was diplomatic. Commanding many army groups is where Monty's skills lay, he had a prior record of achievement. Eisenhower was very poor at that with Bradley and Patton running rings around him, which held up progress. As Neillands constantly emphasized, Eisenhower never had a grip on his subordinates. He rarely had knowledge of the big picture of what was going on all along the front, with no firm strategy and what he had was being constantly changed.
After WW2 Montgomery was very diplomatic with the Americans. He could have told it as it was and laid into them for their poor performance. Monty, being a hard nosed professional, wanted to go the best way to win the war, the Americans were only feeding their own egos with not too much thought when the conflict ended. May 1945 to cross the Rhine? What a joke.
After all most US generals had been rapidly promoted from pretty lowly ranks and were on a big-shot high. And boy they were amateurish a lot of the time. Most would never make it to general in the British Army. Monty did like some US generals, but they were in charge of corps or divisions. Collins was his favourite, who Monty used to good effect in the Bulge.
The Americans to hide their own inadequacies and the poor performance of their top brass in WW2, have constantly attempted to change history and denigrate the finest general in WW2 - Montgomery. Montgomery made them look like most of them were - amateurs.
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Monty was called for by the Americans, and literally saved the situation for them at the Bulge. Instead of thanking the great man, they immediately ridiculed him and have not stopped since.
In his Memoirs Montgomery states that ‘the battle of the Ardennes, which began on 16 December 1944 and continued to 16 January 1945, has aroused such bitter feelings between the British and Americans that I cannot disregard it.’ Montgomery adds later: ‘I think the less one says about this battle the better, for I fancy that whatever I do say will almost certainly be resented’
Montgomery’s Memoirs did not appear until 1958 and most of those ‘bitter feelings’ he refers to appeared before that time, shortly after the war, in the published memoirs of the American commanders, accounts which never fail to condemn the Field Marshal for his various failings, personal and professional. On the matter of the Ardennes, their allegations are that Monty’s interventions in the battle were by no means as important as he claimed, that he attempted to hog the credit for an American ‘victory’ and generally behaved like his usual arrogant self when dealing with the US Army commanders — and Bradley. The sub text of all this is an ill-concealed fury that during the battle Montgomery was placed in command of two American armies by the Allied Supreme Commander, General Eisenhower.
The Ardennes offensive — the Battle of the Bulge — contains many myths, the largest of which is the one peddled by the media and the film industry that the battle was a ‘victory’. If so, it was a victory of the Phyrric kind.
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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Unlike Rommel, Aukinleck, Patton, etc, Monty never outran supplies. If you did with the Germans you were in danger of an encirclement counter attack taking the leading men. And in a plain head on counter-attack you will not have enough supplies to counter. You always need a reserve of supplies at any time. A 1985 US Army document castigated Patton for outrunning supplies. The Americans had a habit of expending far too much ammunition, which made matters even worse. Patton does not come out well.
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a211668.pdf
From the document is in italics:
"Finally the Lorraine Campaign demonstrated that Logistics often drive operations, no matter how forceful and aggressive the commanding general may be." "Patton violated tactical principles. He discovered that violating logistical principles is an unforgiving and cumulative matter.
- Combat Studies Institute. The Lorraine Campaign: An Overview, September-December 1944. by Dr. Christopher R. Gabel February, 1985
Montgomery did not believe in ad-hoc, make-it-up-as-you-go-along strategies, but dealing with the logistical problem did entail periodic pauses. These gave the Americans an excuse for that endless bitching and whining about Montgomery’s ‘caution’ and ‘slowness’ which has haunted his reputation ever since. The record shows that the US armies also paused; the difference is that Montgomery slowed before he outran his supplies, while Patton and his ilk stopped because they had outrun their supplies.
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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I will let the Germans have a say on the Bulge:
Genral Hasso von Manteuffel:
‘The operations of the American 1st Army had developed into a series of individual holding actions. Montgomery's contribution to restoring the situation was that he turned a series of isolated actions into a coherent battle fought according to a clear and definite plan. It was his refusal to engage in premature and piecemeal counter-attacks which enabled the Americans to gather their reserves and frustrate the German attempts to extend their breakthrough’.
By November 1944, British SHEAF officer, Strong, noted that there was a possibility of a German counteroffensive in the Ardennes or the Vosges. Strong went to personally warn Bradley, who said, let 'em come.
Montgomery on hearing of the attack immediately took British forces to the Meuse to prevent any German forces from making a bridgehead, securing the rear. He was prepared to halt their advance and attack them. This was while Eisenhower and Bradley were doing nothing.
British SHEAF officer Whiteley and American officer Betts visited the U.S. First Army HQ seeing the shambles. Strong, Whiteley, and Betts recommended that command of the armies north of the Ardennes be transferred from Bradley to Montgomery. Unfortunately only the British officers approached Beddel Smith of their recommendations, who immediately fired the pair, claiming it was a nationalistic thing. The next morning, Beddel Smith apologized seeing the three were right, recommending to Eisenhower to bring in Monty.
even by 19 December, three days into the offensive, no overall plan had emerged from 12th Army Group or SHAEF, other than the decision to send Patton’s forces north to Bastogne. Overall, the Ardennes battle was in urgent need of grip.
General Hodges had yet to see Bradley or receive more than the sketchiest orders from his Army Group commander.
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
On 20 December, Montgomery sent a signal to Alanbrooke regarding the US forces:
Not good... definite lack of grip and control. I have heard nothing from Ike or Bradley and had no orders or requests of any sort. My own opinion is that the American forces have been cut in half and the Germans can reach the Meuse at Namur without opposition.
Omar Bradley, commander of the 12th Army Group, did very little:
16 Dec, the first day, for 12 hours did nothing.
16 Dec, after 12 hours, he sent two armoured divisions from
the flanking Ninth and Third Armies.
17 Dec, after 24 Hours, he then called in two US airborne
divisions from Champagne.
18 Dec, he ordered Patton to halt his pending offensive in
the Saar.
18 Dec, he had still not established contact with the First Army,
while Monty had.
19 Dec, he withdrew divisions from the Aachen front to shore
up the Ardennes.
19 Dec, he had still not produced an overall defensive plan.
19 Dec, the Supreme Commander intervened directly late in the day.
20 Dec, Eisenhower telephoned Montgomery telling him to take
command of the US First and Ninth Armies
While all this dillying by Bradley was going on, German armies were pounding forward into his lines. Eisenhower promoted Bradley after the Battle of the Bulge. No kidding.
During the Battle of the Bulge Eisenhower was stuck self imprisoned on his HQ in des-res Versailles near Paris in fear of German paratroopers wearing US uniforms with the objective to kill allied generals. He had remained locked up more than 30 days without sending a single message or order to Montgomery, and that is when he thought he was doing ground control of the campaign, when in effect Montgomery was in control as two US armies had to be put under his control after the German attack, the US First and Ninth armies. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war, just about. Coningham of the RAF had to take control of US air force units.
And yet biased American authors such as Stephen Ambrose said that Eisenhower took control of the Bulge and made the battle his veneering it as an all American victory. Ambrose completely falsified history. The only thing Eisenhower did was tell Monty to get control of two out of control US armies, tell the US 101st to go to Bastogne (who were in northern France after the buffer Market Garden was created) and men under Bradley to counterattack. That is it.
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"About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping up well," that they could risk sending one battalion in a quick strike for the bridge. This was admittedly a minimum force, but if the Germans were not in strength at the bridge and if the expected counterattacks from the Reichswald could be held with a smaller force than originally deduced, the risk would be justified because of the nature of the prize. "I personally directed Colonel Roy E. Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry," General Gavin recalled later, "to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay
- US Official History page 158
The official history states that there was only 18 guards on the bridge. Colonel Warren's battalion of 665 men was assigned the bridge, The 508th regiment took three and half hours to reach DePloeg, less than 2 miles away.
Instead of moving immediately toward the Nijmegen bridge, Colonel Warren's battalion was to take an "assigned initial objective" in the vicinity of DePloeg
..
then was to "be prepared to go into Nijmegen later." The assembly and movement to DePloeg took approximately three and a half hours.
- US Official History
Col. Warren, who was assigned the bridge, was to move when given orders, spent most of the time setting up shop at DePloeg.
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Eisenhower stated this a communication to Monty on 5 Sept. I have always given priority to the Ruhr - rpt Ruhr - and the northern route of advance, as indicated in my directive of yesterday, Eisenhower was deluded. "My intention is initially to occupy the Saar and the Ruhr and by the time we have done this Havre and Antwerp should both be available to maintain one or both of the thrusts". Antwerp had not been taken when he wrote this. He had no idea of logistics, thinking he had enough supplies to support two main thrusts over a broad front.
"On 10 Sept Eisenhower met Monty in Brussels and said that his broad front policy would continue despite Monty objecting. Montgomery was urged to press on with his plan to use the Allied Airborne Army in one powerful, full-blooded thrust to the Lower Rhine at Arnhem — a thrust that just a week later would become Operation Market Garden. - Neillands.
"Therefore, since the air planners — specifically [American] Brereton and Major-General Paul L. Williams of the IX US Troop Carrier Command — had the casting vote over the air element in Market, the decision was made for Arnhem," - Neillands
Montgomery wanted the target to be Wesel, just over the Rhine, not Arnhem, which is south east of Nijmegen, putting paid to the notion it was all Monty's plan.
"Horrocks’ orders to XXX Corps for Garden were quite specific: "XXX Corps will break out of the existing bridgehead on 17 September and pass through the airborne carpet which has been laid down in front of us, in order to seize the area Nunspeet-Arnhem and exploit north to the Zuider Zee... the Corps will advance and be supplied down one road - the only major road available - 20,000 vehicles will be involved. Tough opposition must be expected at the break out and the country is very difficult. Speed is absolutely vital as we must reach the lightly equipped 1st Airborne Division, if possible in forty-eight hours."
"The orders of the Airborne Army commander, American Lieutenant General Brereton specify, these bridges were to be taken ‘with thunderclap surprise’. That meant on D-Day, 17 September, for after D-Day the vital element of surprise would be lost. The bridges must be taken on D-Day — not when the various airborne divisional commanders got around to it." - Neillands
Gavin took the Nijmegen bridge when he got around to it, ignoring his orders of "thunderclap surprise".
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Mazda have done promising research on HCCI ignition (no spark plug) for its SkyActiv-R rotary engine project using research from its SkyActive 2 program. They have removed the need to locate the spark plug outside the combustion chamber to allow the rotor to sweep past. Mazda solved this in the SkyActiv-R rotary project. Rotaries generally have high compression ratios giving the design easy adoption of homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI).
Mazda are also looking at laser and HCCI ignition. The aim is to burn all the fuel in the moving combustion chamber, as currently some ends up in the exhaust. Fuel consumption will match piston engines and when used as a constant speed generator as in a hybrid will outperform piston engines with all the advantages of low weight, small size, super-smooth, simplicity, etc. The expectation will be that the engine will be introduced in 2020, the 100th anniversary of Mazda. Looking good.
Rotaries are better suited to constant speed, high efficiency genset applications rather than direct drive via gearboxes, running at a 'constant speed' turning a generator - at its most efficient sweet spot. In that application piston engines cannot compete. Rotaries are better suited for series-hybrid cars being much superior than piston engines in size, smoothness and weight. As a range-extender the engine is only a part time engine.
The engine performs very, very well in fuel consumption and emissions running at a 'constant speed' turning a generator - at its most efficient "sweet spot". Wankels lose efficiency dramatically when they are revved up and down as when directly driving a car.
All these positive attributes combine to make a superb range extender, when the wheels are turned by electric motors. If a car is plugged in each night and uses grid power to run most of the time, then wear on these units will be negligible. As the engine is only periodically used, the life of the engine is greatly extended. Also newer metallurgic techniques are being used to make the engines. Even when electric batteries are depleted, the Wankel can provide enough electricity to power the car and still be economical.
The first ever series-hybrid plane flew in June 2013 - using a Wankel engine because of its small size and light weight, and an electric prop. The makers say it can be scaled up to around a 100-150 seater plane. The Wankel engine(s) can be in the fuselage for better weight distribution with small electric motors on the wings giving lighter, and cheaper, wings. The planes could take off and land on batteries only in urban areas to reduce noise and pollution. About 5 companies still make Wankel engines for special purposes such as drones.
The great thing about a series-hybrid is that the generating engine works totally independent of the demands of the electric driving motor, enabling maximum efficiency when running. This means the generating engines can be greatly downsized. The battery acts as an energy buffer to give acceleration boosts.
The sooner they are introduced in road vehicles in series-hybrid form the better. The Wankel has finally met its niche.
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The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British under Montgomery. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein
♦ March 1943 - Medenine
♦ June 1944 - Normandy
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge
A list of Montgomery’s victories in WW2:
♦ Battle of Alam Halfa;
♦ Second Battle of El Alamein;
♦ Battle of El Agheila;
♦ Battle of Medenine;
♦ Battle of the Mareth Line;
♦ Battle of Wadi Akarit;
♦ Allied invasion of Sicily;
♦ Operation Overlord - the largest amphibious invasion in history;
♦ Market Garden - a 60 mile salient created into German territory;
♦ Battle of the Bulge - while taking control of two shambolic US armies;
♦ Operation Veritable;
♦ Operation Plunder.
Montgomery not once had a reverse.
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Montgomery moved over 1,000 km in 17 days from El Alemein to Tunisia, the fastest advance for such a distance in WW2. The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 Lorraine casualties. Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British with Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
You need to give respect where it is due.
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A prime strategic problem for SHAEF in September 1944 was opening up the approaches to Antwerp and keeping it from German counter-attack - the logistics problem to supply all allied armies. It was:
1) Take Noord Brabant, the land to the north and northeast of Antwerp, or;
2) Take the Schedlt.
Eisenhower had a Northern Thrust strategy. Taking Noord Babant fell in line with the desires for both SHEAF and Eisenhower.
Noord Brabant had to be taken before the Scheldt, as it was essential. It was taken with limited forces, with forces also sent to take the Schedlt. Market Garden had to go ahead regardless of any threat or Northern Thrust strategy, actually being a success. To use Antwerp and control the approaches, the Scheldt, everything up to the south bank of the lower Rhine at Nijmegen needed to be under allied control.
The low-lying lands, boggy ground between Arnhem and Nijmegen with land strewn with rivers and canals, is perfect geography as a barrier against a German counter-attack towards Antwerp. Without control of Noord Brabant German forces would have been in artillery range of Antwerp, and with a build up of forces and supply directly back to Germany in perfect position for a counter-attack. Market Garden was the offensive SHEAF wanted to secure Antwerp, a prime port for logistics for all allied armies. It made sense as the Germans were in disarray, so should be easy enough to gain.
Monty added Arnhem to form a bridgehead over the Rhine to fall in line with Eisenhower's priority Northern Thrust strategy at the time. It made complete sense in establishing a bridgehead over the Rhine as an extra to the operation. You needed Arnhem for an easier jump into Germany.
Everything up to Nijmegen was needed if you wanted to do anything at all - that is protect Antwerp and have a staging point to move into Germany. Gaining Noord Brabant, was vital, and was successfully seized. Fighting in the low lying mud and waterways of the Schedlt, which will take time, while the Germans a few miles away and still holding Noord Brabant made no sense at all.
SHEAF got what they wanted from a strategic point of view.
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@johnlucas8479
Read what I wrote. "To use Antwerp and control the approaches, the Scheldt, you needed to control everything up to the south bank of the lower Rhine at Nijmegen".
Sending troops into the Schedt to be bogged down, with the Germans still within range, who could make a counter attack when they reorganise after the retreat from Normandy, makes no sense whatsoever.
Noord Brabant, the Market Garden salient secured this region, was the priority for Antwerp to be operational. As long as they reached the Rhine at Arnhem it was a success. Getting over the Rhine is a cherry on the top.
As an aside, Monty was right about the 40 division thrust. The Chief of Staff to the German C-in-C West, Field-Marshal von Rundstedt, later considered..
“the best course of the Allies would have been to concentrate a really strong striking force with which to break through past Aachen to the Ruhr area. Strategically and politically, Berlin was the target. Germany’s strength is in the north. He who holds northern Germany holds Germany. Such a break-through, coupled with air domination, would have torn in pieces the weak German front and ended the war. Berlin and Prague would have been occupied ahead of the Russians."
"There were no German forces behind the Rhine, and at the end of August our front was wide open.There was the possibility of an operational break-through in the Aachen area, in early September. This would have facilitated a rapid conquest of the Ruhr and a quicker advance on Berlin. By turning the forces from the Aachen area sharply northward, the German 15th and 1st parachute Armies could have been pinned against the estuaries of the Maas and the Rhine. They could not have escaped eastwards into Germany.”
General Blumentritt, in The Other Side of the Hill, op. cit. Blumentritt reiterated the view on publication of Monty’s memoirs in 1958, as did General Kurt Student von Manteuffel, who commanded the Fifth Panzer Army in the Battle of the Bulge:
"I am in full agreement with Montgomery. I believe General Eisenhower’s insistence on spreading the Allied force’s out for a broader advance was wrong.The acceptance of Montgomery’s plan would have shortened the war considerably. Above all, tens of thousands of lives- on both sides- would have been saved."
- Monty, The Field-Marshal 1944–1976
by Nigel Hamilton.
“Despite objections raised to Montgomery’s plan of a assault on a 40 division front, it was more sensible than Eisenhower’s insistence on the entire front being in motion set all times, for no better reason than he could not abide the thought that the two American army groups would not participate as entities in the anticipated victory. Not only did Eisenhower fail to heed Montgomery’s suggestions, but also he never seemed to understand the possible benefits. He was evidently unable to understand that to supply 40 divisions attacking on one front would have been an easier task than to supply first one army and then the other as each in turn went over to the offensive. It was this concentration of effort which Eisenhower failed to understand and implement.“
- Eisenhower and the Art of Warfare by DJ Haycock.
“.... but in the autumn of 1944 his [Eisenhower] strategy was little short of lamentable: to pretend otherwise is a denial of the facts. On the evidence presented during the months between the Normandy breakout and the end of the Bulge, the facts suggest that Eisenhower was a superb Supreme Commander but an indifferent field commander.“
- The Battle for the Rhine 1944
by Neillands, Robin.
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@johnlucas8479
Near enough 40 divisions were available. The idea was it would be so big and powerful it would roll over everything. The German generals agreed. Monty's idea was to get the Ruhr, then the tanks onto the North German Plains, which was ideal tank country to drive east fast. The Soviets used it to drive west fast, with the British just stopping them getting into Denmark - British and Canadians turned their guns on the Soviets.
Logistics was not seen as a great barrier. A 40 division thrust would have taken all the ground around Antwerp and the Scheldt quickly. Clearing the 40 mile river would have been the delay.
“Patton finally began receiving adequate supplies on September 4”
- Harry Yeide
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
“It was commonly believed at Third Army H.Q. that Montgomery's advance through Belgium was largely maintained by supplies diverted from Patton. (See Butcher, op. cit., p. 667.) This is not true. The amount delivered by the ' air-lift ' was sufficient to maintain only one division. No road transport was diverted to aid Montgomery until September16th. On the other hand, three British transport companies, lent to the Americans on August 6th " for eight days," were not returned until September 4th.' “
- CHESTER WILMOT
THE STRUGGLE FOR EUROPE. 1954
P 589
"Despite objections raised to Montgomery's plan of an assault on a 40 division front, it was more sensible than Eisenhower's insistence on the entire front being in motion at all times, for no better reason than he could not abide the thought that the two American army groups would not participate as entities in the anticipated victory. Not only did Eisenhower fail to heed Montgomery's suggestions, but also he never seemed to understand the possible benefits. He was evidently unable to understand that to supply 40 divisions attacking on one front would have been an easier task than to supply first one army and then the other as each in turn went over to the offensive. It was this concentration of effort which Eisenhower failed to understand and to implement"
- Eisenhower at the Art of Warfare
by DJ Haycock, page 182.
Market Garden was not a very large ground operation. It was limited in size, with many supplies coming in via air. The American attack into the Hurtgen Forest started when Market Garden was going on. The US advance on the Hurtgen Forest by First US Army 9th Infantry Division began on 14th September, 3 days before Market Garden began, continuing an attempt to advance into the Hurtgen even when Market Garden began 3 days later, but it was halted by the Germans however.
This was soon followed up by a larger advance by US First Army towards Aachen at the start of October. Market Garden didn't make a notable dent in allied supplies seeing as the US was able to put on a larger ground attack right afterwards. According to Bradley in his own book there was parity of supplies between the three allied armies, Second British, First and Third US by mid September 1944 and according to the official US Army History as cited in Hugh Cole's book, The Lorraine Campaign, page 52... "by 10th September the period of critical (gasoline) shortage had ended". This was a whole week before Market Garden took place. The gasoline drought was the end of August/beginning of September. It was over by the time of Market Garden.
So, a fast moving, massive, fist, of 40 divisions would have been on the North German Plains quite quickly. Also ensuring Antwerp was in operation ASAP.
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There is a myth that the Germans were way ahead of the British in jet engines and planes in WW2, when the opposite is true.
The WW2 German jet engines were extremely unreliable with low performances and very high fuel consumption. The German axial-flow turbojets never worked as they wanted, being developed up to 1953 by the French to obtain a usable engine. The French lost a lot of time playing around with the German engines, instead of working with the British. The French and Soviets after WW2 tried to improve the German axial-flow engines and largely failed.
The Germans did not invent the axial-flow turbojet, they based everything on Frank Whittle's patents. The British Metropolitan-Vickers F.1 axial-flow engine was running on a test bed in 1941. The F.2 was an axial-flow being an extremely advanced design using a nine-stage axial compressor, annular combustor, and a two-stage turbine. It powered a Meteor in November 1943. It was considered unreliable and never saw use during the war, hence why the British went for the reliability, controllability and quick development of the centrifugal turbojets.
The Metro-Vick F.3 was the first ever turbofan in 1943. Metro-Vick developed the F.9 Sapphire, however left the jet business in 1947 giving all their designs to Armstrong Siddeley, who commercially produced the Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire engine, which was licence built in the US as the J-65.The British in order to get a usable and reliable jet engine, with the technology of the time, went for a centrifugal design rather than the troublesome axial-flow design. This design produced less thrust than an axial-flow but was quicker to develop and reliable, outperforming the best piston engined planes at the time. It took 5 months to develop, while the first reliable axial-flow engine was the 1950 Rolls Royce Avon, which took 5 years to get right. The Avon is still in production as a ground based gas turbine, with the aero version in production for 30 years.
In 1945 the French made and tested some German designed turbo jets made with quality alloys unavailable to German industry in WW2. They ran for 25 hours instead of the 10 hours of the Germans engines that used poorer quality steel. Not much better. The German axial-flow engines failed because of heavy design flaws. The centrifugal compressor used by the first British Meteor plane was fine and much more reliable, but unable to reach very high compression ratios. This limited performances. Centrifugal compressors were used up to the 1960s.
In 1945 the team from the French ATAR laboratory plus some BMW and Junkers engineers, were engaged by the French SNECMA research bureau, with the objective to build a new reliable and performing axial-flow turbojet. The BMW 003/Jumo004 was considered unusable. It was tested on the first French jet aircraft, the 1946 So6000 Triton, overheating and exploding. The plane only flew with a Rolls Royce Nene centrifugal turbojet.The ATAR project took 6 years to produce the first acceptable axial-flow turbojet (ATAR 101 B1), produced in 1953. So 8 years research and developments by the French using the German jet engines as the base. It was installed on the first French jet fighter, the Dassault Ouragan.
The French lost a lot of time because the German jets had poor efficiency and some concept failures. Essentially in the combustion chambers and fresh air circulation to reduce the external temperature of the engine. The BMW jet was known for overheating problems which precluded fuselage installation. The question at the end of WW2 was: what is the most efficient way to produce jet fighters? The answer was clearly not adopting the German design of engine and fuselage. The build costs for a jet engine were much higher than a piston engine, with the fuel consumption near 3x. The centrifugal compressor the British adopted in some planes was the best choice with 1944-45 technology, more compression pressure was not an advantage when the hot turbine was unable to resist higher temperatures.
The German turbojets had big overheat problems as the engine would not work in an enclosed fuselage for single-engined fighters. This defect was immediately noted by the French on the 1946 "SO 6000 Triton" prototype, and by the Soviets on the 1946 Mig 9. The Soviets quickly replaced the BMW 004B2 by the centrifugal Rolls Royce Nene which worked without problems, dismissing the BMW engine for fighter planes. The Rolls Royce Nene was copied to the last nut by the USSR being installed in the Mig 15 being used effectively in the Korean war.
The Meteor was the first proper fully developed jet plane introduced operationally. The 262 was slightly faster than the Meteor F3, but extremely unreliable. The British would never put into the sky such an undeveloped plane as the me262. The British could have had a jet fighter operational in 1941, but it may have been as bad as the me262. The Germans advanced R&D on jets after they interrogated captured British RAF men. They learned the British were advanced in jet technology and flying prototype planes. Until then the Germans had no intention of mass producing jet planes.
The rushed together Me262 started claiming kills on 26 July 1944. However the supposed kill was a Mosquito reconnaissance plane that had a fuselage cap blown off in a sharp fast maneuver, which flew on landing in Italy. The Meteor claimed its first V1 kill a few days later on 4 August 1944. But the Meteor was a proper fully developed jet plane, not a thrown together desperate effort as the me262 was. The me262 fuselage was similar to a piston plane with the pilot over the wings obscuring downward vision, while the Meteor was a proper new design fuselage specifically for jet fighters with a forward of the wings pilot position with superior vision, as we see today. The cockpit was very quiet. The high tail was not to impede the rear jet thrust. The partially swept back wings of the me262 were to move the engines further back for better weight distribution, not for aerodynamic reasons as is thought the case. Lighter engines were eventually used. The 262 balancing problem would be exacerbated when firing the guns as the weight of the bullets exiting suddenly made the air-frame unbalanced.
There were five turbojet engines in the UK under R&D in WW2:
1) Centrifugal, by Whittle (Rover);
2) Centrifugal, by Frank Halford (DeHaviland);
3) Axial-flow, by Metro-Vick;
4) Axial-flow by Griffiths (Rolls Royce);
5) Axial flow compressor, with reverse flow combustion chambers. The ASX by Armstrong Siddeley;
Metro-Vick sold their jet engine division to Armstrong Siddeley. The Metro-Vick engine transpired into the post war Sapphire. Most American engines in the 1940s/50s were of UK design, many made under licence. The US licensed the J-42 (RR Nene) and J-48 (RR Tay), being virtually identical to the British engines. US aircraft used licensed British engines powering the: P-59, P-80, T-33, F9F Panther, F9F-6 Cougar, FJ Fury 3 and 4, Martin B-57 Canberra, F-94 Starfire, A4 Skyhawk and the A7 Corsair.The US General Electric J-47 turbojet was developed by General Electric in conjunction with Metropolitan Vickers of the UK, who had already developed a nine-stage axial-flow compressor engine licensing the design to Allison in 1944 for the earlier J-35 engine, first flying in May 1948. The centrifugal Rolls Royce Nene is one of the highest production jet engines in history with over 50,000 built.
Centrifugal compressors were not obsolete being used in turboprops. Between a turbo jet and a turboprop, the only difference is the turbine, not the compressor. The last centrifugal compressor jet engine still in service on a handful of commercial aircraft like the Fokker 27, is the Rolls Royce Dart turboprop. A very reliable engine made in 27 versions, but with high fuel consumption to modern engines. The Rolls Royce Dart Turboprop turbojet engine was produced the longest, being a comparable design turbojet to the likes of the Rolls Royce Nene. The rugged engine was produced from 1946 up to 1987.
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@alp7292
Sergeant Peter Robinson, of the of the Guards Armored Division who led the charge over the Nijmegen road bridge in his Firefly tank stated:
"The Nijmegen bridge wasn’t taken [by the 82nd] which was our objective. We reached the far end of the bridge and immediately there was a roadblock. So the troop sergeant covered me through and then I got to the other side and covered the rest of the troop through. We were still being engaged; there was a gun in front of the church three or four hundred yards in front of us. We knocked him out. We got down the road to the railway bridge; we cruised round there very steady. We were being engaged all the time. Just as I got round the corner and turned right I saw these helmets duck in a ditch and run, and gave them a burst of machine gun fire. I suddenly realised they were Americans. They had already thrown a gammon grenade at me so dust and dirt and smoke were flying everywhere.
They jumped out of the ditch; they kissed the tank; they kissed the guns because they’d lost a lot of men. They had had a very bad crossing."
Sgt Robinson again....
"Well, my orders were to collect the American colonel who was in a house a little way back, and the first thing he said to me was "I have to surrender". "Well I said, 'I'm sorry. My orders are to hold this bridge. I've only got two tanks available but if you'd like to give me ground support for a little while until we get some more orders then we can do it. He said he couldn’t do it, so I said that he had better come back to my wireless and talk to General Horrocks because before I started the job I had freedom of the air.
Everybody was off the air except myself because they wanted a running commentary about what was going on - So he came over and had a pow-wow with Horrocks. The colonel said 'Oh very well’ and I told him where I wanted the men, but of course you can't consolidate a Yank and they hadn’t been there ten minutes before they were on their way again."
The 82nd men wanted to surrender! And never gave support which was what they were there to do. Captain Lord Carrington's own autobiography entitled 'Reflect on Things Past':
"At that stage my job - I was second-in-command of a squadron - was to take a half-squadron of tanks across the bridge. Since everybody supposed the Germans would blow this immense contraption we were to be accompanied by an intrepid Royal Engineer officer to cut the wires and cleanse the demolition chambers under each span.
Our little force was led by an excellent Grenadier, Sergeant Robinson, who was rightly awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his action. Two of our tanks were hit not lethally - by anti-tank fire, and we found a number of Germans perched in the girders who tried to drop things on us but without great effect. Sergeant Robinson and the leading tank troop sprayed the opposite bank and we lost nobody, When I arrived at the far end my sense of relief was considerable: the bridge had not been blown, we had not been plunged into the Waal (In fact it seems the Germans never intended to blow the bridge. The demolition chambers were packed with German soldiers, who surrendered), we seemed to have silenced the opposition in the vicinity, we were across one half of the Rhine."
"A film representation of this incident has shown American troops as having already secured the far end of the bridge. That is mistaken - probably the error arose from the film-maker's confusion of two bridges, there was a railway bridge with planks placed between the rails and used by the Germans for [light] road traffic, to the west of the main road bridge we crossed; and the gallant American Airborne men: reached it. When Sergeant Robinson and his little command crossed our main road bridge, however, only Germans were there to welcome him; and they didn't stay."
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@alp7292
Again for you. The 82nd never seized the Waal bridge at Nijmegen. Not one US soldier was on the bridge when XXX Corps' tanks rolled across. Once the two leading tanks of Pacey and Robinson got past the bridge obstacles at the northern end, Pacey stopped. The War Office report states:
“At this point, Pacey stopped, he was not sure where to go as no Americans were seen, so Sergeant Robinson passed him and led on. Much to their surprise, they could not see any Americans so having passed through the concrete chicane they pushed on. Having crossed the road bridge, the four tanks moved down the northern embankment, where they destroyed another anti tank gun. Robinson and Pacey found themselves in a running battle against more guns, and against German infantry who poured out of the church in Lent, and then 1,500 yards further down the road from the bridge, where the main road goes under the railway line, contact was at last made with some Americans, both were very happy to see each other."
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@alp7292
Official U.S. 82nd Division records, including a sketch of the ‘road-bridge’ battle, highlight that the first British tank crossed at 1830 hours with an arrow pointing to the northern end of the bridge, and that a handful of American troops arrived there at 1915 hours, 45 minutes later. Official U.S. records confirm that American troops from the 504th arrived at the northern end of the 'road-bridge' in any real strength at precisely 1938 hours, 1 hour 8 minutes after the tanks.
The records state at this point at 1938 hours:
“All seemed quiet at this point, with the enemy, disorganised and in great confusion, suffering heavy losses. Prior to the physical occupation of the northern end of the bridge approaches by 504th, eight British light tanks had [already] crossed. Two of these were destroyed just north of the bridge”.
The 504 acted as a diversion. They did not reach the road bridge before the tanks. The tanks went over in two waves of four each. On the first wave two were hit. The second wave was 45 minutes after the first. A handful of 82nd men reached the bridge approaches when the 2nd wave was crossing, thinking they were the first tanks over. One American even claims a tank stopped on the bridge to chat to him.
Robinson’s gunner Leslie Johnson in the first tank, a Firefly, said:
“They were falling like nine-pins. The incoming fire was so heavy that I swear to this day that Jesus Christ rode on the front of our tank. The Germans were so close that I didn’t bother to look through my sights. We could feel the tracks going over them as we shot them down, and there was blood and gore all over the tank.”
Thirty-four machine guns, an 88mm gun, and two 20mm cannons were found to be on the ‘road-bridge’ itself, and at least six anti-tank guns and a few 88mm guns were situated around the northern end.
The Grenadier Guards took the main Nijmegen road bridge hence the plaque on there. This drinking tea tripe started as a diversion after inquiries by the official US historian Charles MacDonald into why the Nijmegen bridges were not taken on the first day.
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@alp7292
Official U.S. 82nd Division records, including a sketch of the ‘road-bridge’ battle, highlighting that the first British tank crossed at 1830 hours with an arrow pointing to the northern end of the bridge, and that a handful of 82nd troops arrived at 1915 hours, 45 mins later. Official U.S. records confirm that 82nd troops from the 504th arrived at the northern end of the 'road-bridge' in any real strength at precisely 1938 hours, 1 hour 8 mins after the tanks.
The records state at this point at 1938 hours:
“All seemed quiet at this point, with the enemy, disorganised and in great confusion, suffering heavy losses. Prior to the physical occupation of the northern end of the bridge approaches by 504th, eight British light tanks had [already] crossed. Two of these were destroyed just north of the bridge”.
The 504 acted as a diversion. They did not reach the road bridge before the tanks. The tanks went over in two waves of four each. On the first wave two were hit. The second wave was 45 minutes after the first. A handful of 82nd men, not enough to do anything worthwhile, reached the bridge approaches as the second wave moved over, thinking they were the first tanks over. One American even claims a tank stopped on the bridge to chat to him.
Robinson’s gunner Leslie Johnson in the first tank, a Firefly, said:
“They were falling like nine-pins. The incoming fire was so heavy that I swear to this day that Jesus Christ rode on the front of our tank. The Germans were so close that I didn’t bother to look through my sights. We could feel the tracks going over them as we shot them down, and there was blood and gore all over the tank.”
Thirty-four machine guns, an 88mm gun, and two 20mm cannons were found to be on the ‘road-bridge’ itself, and at least six anti-tank guns and a few 88mm guns were situated around the northern end.
The Grenadier Guards took the main Nijmegen road bridge hence why the plaque on there stating so. This drinking tea tripe started as a U.S. diversion after inquiries by the official US historian Charles MacDonald into why the 82nd failed to seize the Nijmegen bridges on the first day.
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Hydrogen fuel cell/electric traction technology is used in trains right now. A hydrogen fuel cell train is in fare paying service in Germany, with a trial scheduled to be on the Liverpool to Chester line. The Dept for Transport has put on hold expensive electrification of rail lines, as hydrogen trains is seen as the answer in replacing dirty, slow diesel trains on surface lines - with also zero emissions being far cheaper overall with no ugly overhead wire gantries.
The expense of wiring up thousands of miles of track, plus the ongoing maintenance costs, is more than introducing hydrogen trains where the hydrogen is produced in the train stabling depot by electricity, so no transport costs of the hydrogen. Buying the trains, setting up the hydrogen producing plant and building (or renting) wind turbines, is cheaper than full 3rd rail or overhead wires. The turbines do not have to be near the hydrogen production plant at the train depots. They can be offshore then fed into the grid. How much the turbines produce then feed into the grid, and how much the plant consumes from the grid, is easily metered.
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Germany used coal for everything. It came from the Ruhr, where most heavy industry was. The prime transport mechanism was rail, using steam trains, that used coal, with steel wheels on steel rails, made using coal, so no imported rubber for tyres. Electricity was generated using coal. Coal for industry. Coal for steel making. Cutting off the Ruhr meant hitting the German war machine at its heart, starving it of manufacturing and energy. Cutting the Ruhr off was vital.
The British saw this, especially Montgomery, wanting an allied thrust north, to turn right to isolate the Ruhr. Eisenhower wanted a broad front, which was totally ineffective. People will say, well from D-day to surrender it was only 11 months. However, it was only that short because the Germans gambled using much of their armour at the Battle of the Bulge, losing it shortening the war. They ran out of armour.
The war could have been over by Christmas 1944 if Montgomery was left in charge of all ground forces. He would have seized the Ruhr - then its all over. Even German generals after WW2 agreed with Montgomery saying they could not have stopped a full allied thrust to the north. They could stop the thin allied line that stretched from Switzerland to the North Sea. The Ruhr was only captured a month before the end of the war.
Eisenhower allowed the under resourced Market Garden to go ahead into the north. It was so small it only had one corps above Eindhoven as Eisenhower would not allocate the US First Army to move up on the right British flank. A total disgrace when looking at the level of allied forces in the ETO.
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@thevillaaston7811
The US official history itself dispels a lot of the drivel from US authors regarding Market Garden. Many never even read it for sure.
Below highlights the slowness of the 82nd and how undefended the bridge was....
US Official History: page 163
"Colonel Warren about 1830 sent into Nijmegen a patrol consisting of a rifle platoon and the battalion intelligence section. This patrol was to make an aggressive reconnaissance, investigate reports from Dutch civilians that only eighteen Germans guarded the big bridge"
"Warren was to get no word from the patrol until the next morning. As darkness approached, General Gavin ordered Colonel Lindquist "to delay not a second longer and get the bridge as quickly as possible with Warren's battalion."
"Although Company A reached the rendezvous point on time, Company B "got lost en route." After waiting until about 2000, Colonel Warren left a guide for Company B and moved through the darkness with Company A toward the edge of the city. Some seven hours after H-Hour, the first real move against the Nijmegen bridge began."
They started to move towards the bridge after seven hours, reaching the bridge and starting their first attack at 2200 hrs. The 9th SS had already moved south over the bridge reinforcing the bridge and town.
page 164
"the chance for an easy, speedy capture of the Nijmegen bridge had passed. This was all the more lamentable because in Nijmegen during the afternoon the Germans had had nothing more than the same kind of "mostly low quality" troops encountered at most other places on D Day."
Neillands summarizes it well, who does quote in parts teh US official history.....
"Field Marshal Model, had entrusted Corps Feldt under Wehrkreis VI with responsibility for Nijmegen, he apparently had recognized the dire necessity of getting a more mobile and effective force to the Nijmegen bridge immediately. Sometime during late afternoon or early evening of 17 September Model had dispatched an advance guard from the 9th SS Panzer Division's Reconnaissance Battalion [infantry] to defend the highway bridge." "The 9th SS Reconnaissance Battalion apparently had gotten across the Neder Rijn at Arnhem before British paratroopers reached the Arnhem bridge." "they had arrived in time to stop the first American thrust toward the Nijmegen bridge"
"but the men of the 10th SS Panzer Division were too late. They subsequently crossed the Neder Rijn at a ferry near Huissen, southeast of Arnhem."
"It was not until 2000hrs, some seven hours after the landing, that Frost got his first sight of the Arnhem road bridge."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Page 166:
"At 1400 on 18 September Colonel Mendez ordered Company G to withdraw from Nijmegen to Hill 64. Nijmegen and the highway bridge so vital to relief of the British airborne troops farther north at Arnhem remained in German hands. Of three attempts to capture the bridge on D-Day and D plus I, one of patrol size had failed because it was too weak and lacked communications; another of two-company size, because the Germans had had time to reinforce their garrison; and the third of company size, for the same reason."
The above is emphasized by Poulussen. The 82nd completely withdrew from Nijmegen town, allowing the Germans to pour the 10th SS infantry south reinforcing the town. This made matters worse when they and XXX Corps went into the town.
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@thevillaaston7811
Various books by US authors who were actually there are useful.
When Gavin found out the 508th were not moving, he was livid, expecting them to be moving on the bridge, if there was no opposition. The 508th did send a recon patrol. According to Phil Nordyke’s Put Us Down In Hell (2012) three lead scouts of the troop of 40, were separated making it to the vicinity of south end of the road bridge approaches, not the main steel span. They captured six Germans and also their small artillery gun. They waited about an hour for reinforcements that never arrived, having to withdraw then observed the 9.SS-Panzer recon battalion arriving from Arnhem.
These few scouts that reached the southern end of the Nijmegen bridge just before the 9th SS recon, reached the bridge about an hour before the 9th SS. Joe Atkins in The 508th said, "at the bridge, only a few German soldiers were standing around a small artillery weapon... The Germans were so surprised; the six or seven defenders of the bridge gave up without resisting. We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark and none of our other troops showed up. We decided to pull away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge." That was the 9th SS.
US Official History, page 163:
Colonel Warren about 1830 sent into Nijmegen a patrol
After around 4.5 hours after landing a patrol of 40 men were sent.
Colonel Warren directed Companies A and B to rendezvous at a point just south of Nijmegen at 1900 and move with the Dutch guide to the bridge. Company C, a platoon of which already had gone into the city as a patrol, was withheld in regimental reserve. Although Company A reached the rendezvous point on time, Company B "got lost en route." After waiting until about 2000, Colonel Warren left a guide for Company B and moved through the darkness with Company A toward the edge of the city. Some seven hours after H-Hour, the first real move against the Nijmegen bridge began.
As the scouts neared a traffic circle surrounding a landscaped circular park near the center of Nijmegen, the Keizer Karel Plein, from which a mall-like park led northeast toward the Nijmegen bridge, a burst of automatic weapons fire came from the circle. The time was about two hours before midnight.
As Company A formed to attack, the men heard the noise of an approaching motor convoy emanating from a side street on the other side of the traffic circle. Enemy soldiers noisily dismounted (the 9th SS now in the town)
No one could have said so with any finality at the time, but the chance for an easy, speedy capture of the Nijmegen bridge had passed. This was all the more lamentable because in Nijmegen during the afternoon the Germans had had nothing more than the same kind of "mostly low quality" troops encountered at most other places on D Day.
Vandervoort's 505th had a number of failed attempts at seizing Nijmegen bridge, unable to get onto the southern approach road.
Regarding Zon, we do not know if the Germans would have blown the bridge if the 101st had got there within minutes. Probably they would not have, as to blow it takes authority, which takes time as an officer would want to know the whole picture before ordering an explosion. It took the Germans four hours to blow the Zon bridge.
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@thevillaaston7811
Focusing more on the timeline....
US Official History: page 163:
[1800hrs]
"Colonel Warren about 1830 sent into Nijmegen a patrol consisting of a rifle platoon and the battalion intelligence section. This patrol was to make an aggressive reconnaissance, investigate reports from Dutch civilians that only eighteen Germans guarded the big bridge"
Warren sent about 40 men to reconnoitre the bridge. Three of them captured seven of the 18 guards and their 20mm cannon who were guarding the south end of the bridge, for an hour, having to let them go as no reinforcements arrived.
[approx 1900hrs]
"Warren was to get no word from the patrol until the next morning. As darkness approached, General Gavin ordered Colonel Lindquist "to delay not a second longer and get the bridge as quickly as possible with Warren's battalion."
[2000 hrs]
"Although Company A reached the rendezvous point on time, Company B "got lost en route." After waiting until about 2000, Colonel Warren left a guide for Company B and moved through the darkness with Company A toward the edge of the city. Some seven hours after H-Hour, the first real move against the Nijmegen bridge began."
[2000 hrs]
"It was not until 2000hrs, some seven hours after the landing, that Frost got his first sight of the Arnhem road bridge."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
[2200 hrs]
US Official History:
They started to move towards the bridge after seven hours, reaching the bridge and starting their first attack at 2200 hrs. The 9th SS had already moved south over the bridge reinforcing the bridge.
page 164:
"the chance for an easy, speedy capture of the Nijmegen bridge had passed. This was all the more lamentable because in Nijmegen during the afternoon the Germans had had nothing more than the same kind of "mostly low quality" troops encountered at most other places on D Day."
"Field Marshal Model, had entrusted Corps Feldt under Wehrkreis VI with responsibility for Nijmegen, he apparently had recognized the dire necessity of getting a more mobile and effective force to the Nijmegen bridge immediately. Sometime during late afternoon or early evening of 17 September
[1930 hrs]
Model had dispatched an advance guard from the 9th SS Panzer Division's Reconnaissance Battalion [infantry] to defend the highway bridge." "The 9th SS Reconnaissance Battalion apparently had gotten across the Neder Rijn at Arnhem before British paratroopers reached the Arnhem bridge." "they had arrived in time to stop the first American thrust toward the Nijmegen bridge"
"but the men of the 10th SS Panzer Division were too late. They subsequently crossed the Neder Rijn at a ferry near Huissen, southeast of Arnhem."
The 10th SS could not get to Nijmegen over the Arnhem bridge. They got to Nijmegen the next day via the ferry eight miles from Nijmegen.
The British paras had already denied the Arnhem bridge to the Germans at the same time Warren's men started to move towards Nijmegen bridge.
Page 166:
"At 1400 on 18 September Colonel Mendez ordered Company G to withdraw from Nijmegen to Hill 64. Nijmegen and the highway bridge so vital to relief of the British airborne troops farther north at Arnhem remained in German hands. Of three attempts to capture the bridge on D-Day and D plus I, one of patrol size had failed because it was too weak and lacked communications; another of two-company size, because the Germans had had time to reinforce their garrison; and the third of company size, for the same reason."
The 82nd completely withdrew from Nijmegen town, allowing the Germans to pour the 10th SS infantry, who come over on the ferry, south to reinforce the town. This made matters worse when the 82nd and XXX Corps went into the town.
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FullMontyUK
Your research is flawed. XXX Corps arrived on time on the morning of the 19th. They were 36 hours behind after XXX Corps themselves seized the bridge. It took 36 hours of fighting to take the bridge, that should have been taken on Day 1 by the 82nd. The 82nd added nothing at Nijmegen that XXX Corps couldn't have done by itself after arriving.
"Spearheading the 30 Corps ground column, reconnaissance troops of the Guards Armoured Division linked with Colonel Tucker's 504th Parachute Infantry at Grave at 0820 the morning of D plus 2, 19 September."
(Page 174) - US Official History.
XXX Corps met up with the 82nd 42 hours after Warren's 1/508 were ready move from the LZ.
"This they failed to do [seize Nijmegen bridge] and the effect on the entire operation was disastrous, creating a delay of some thirty-six hours after the Guards Armoured Division arrived in Nijmegen, a mere eight miles from Arnhem, on the morning of D plus 2."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"This fact disproves the second Arnhem myth: that XXX Corps were too slow during the advance north. They had been delayed, certainly, but had now made up much of the time lost at Zon and covered more ground in two hours on the morning of D plus 2 (19 September) than they had on the two previous days. Horrocks had promised to be at Arnhem on D plus 2: XXX Corps were now in Nijmegen, just eight miles from Arnhem with the rest of D plus 2 to get up to Lieutenant Colonel John Frost’s positions at the Neder Rijn bridge. They should arrive there well within the time Horrocks had forecast. This happy situation did not endure. As the leading tanks of the Grenadier Guards Group, leading the Guards Division, passed over the bridge at Heumen and entered the outskirts of Nijmegen, they learned that the road and rail bridges over the Waal were still firmly in German hands: unlike all the other bridges on the road to Arnhem, the Nijmegen bridge had not been taken on D-Day. It was still firmly in German hands and fighting was raging within the town. Something had clearly gone wrong."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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The final link-up at Arnhem, was expected on the third day, 20th, D+3, of the operation, if everything went well. All I have read says that the link up at Arnhem was to be the 20th. D+3. XXX Corps got to Nijmegen on the morning of D+2. If the bridge was in the hands of the 82nd, XXX Corps would have reached Arnhem bridge within the 48 hrs Horrocks said he could do it. Horrocks was involved in the planning, however they never all agreed with Horrocks, leaving that time target target down to him, or rough estimation really as is all it could be
Give us a reference that says when XXX Corps reached Nijmegen they were 8-12 hours behind schedule.
The 101st Airborne Division planned to drop closest to XXX Corps’ starting position. The finalized plan called for them to drop into two principle locations with objectives of seizing the bridge over the Wilhelmina Canal at Son, liberating Eindhoven, and securing the bridge over the Willems Canal near Veghel (Figure 6). They were supposed to linkup with XXX Corps no later than D+1.
The 82nd Airborne Division planned to drop northeast of the 101st First Airborne Division. They would also drop into two principle areas with the primary missions of seizing crossings over the Maas Canal near Grave, Maas-Waal Canal, and the Waal River near Nijmegen. They expected linkup with XXX Corps sometime between D+2 and D+3.
Just northeast of the 82nd Airborne Division the British 1st Airborne Division and Polish 1st Airborne Brigade would land and secure a river crossing over the Neder River in the vicinity of Arnhem.
The Polish brigade would assault on D+2 and secure the south side of the Neder River bridge. The final plan called for linkup with XXX Corps on D+5.
The above is from:
Once Out the Door: A Study of Division and Corps Level
Airborne Assaults
A Monograph
by
MAJ Kyle W. Anderson
United States Army
School of Advanced Military Studies
United States Army Command and General Staff College
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas
2016
There was no specific times to reach major crossings. The emphasis was on speed. Speed for all involved in the Market and Garden sides of the operation. XXX Corps arriving at Nijmegen on the morning of D+2 is way ahead of expectations, or put it this way, it was fast. An armoured unit with all its support travelling approx 55 miles through enemy territory, with a 12 hour delay, taking 42 hours, was fast. That is 55 miles in 30 hours when deducting the 12 hr delay at Son, averaging 44 miles in 24 hours. How fast should XXX Corps being going through enemy territory?
The emphasis on speed would have meant that no matter when XXX Corps reached crossings they would be able to cross.
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FullMontyUK
The 1951 document can be dismissed as not being too accurate.
If at the end of phase 1 they are to be south of Eindhoven, then where would they be when phase 2 starts? They would be were they where at the end of phase 1.
The 21st Army Group document states in appendix G to part 2, number 5 (a). Rate of Movement:
The rate of movement depends clearly on the tactical situation.
It is, however, hoped to move at approximately 35 vtm and 10 mih.
This is key: The rate of movement depends clearly on the tactical situation. Movement is approx from 0600 to 1900. It says, 13 hours flow daily. It says that movement is "hoped" to be 10 mih (miles in the hour, equiv to mph) and 35 vtm (vehicles in each mile of the train). That is an aspiration. South of Eindhoven is approx 11 miles from the start point. So from south of Eindhoven at 1st light D+1 to Nijmegen they hope to be 44 miles up the road in 4.5 hours. However the hoped means realistically mid to late afternoon on D+1 - depending on the tactical situation, which may mean they would not be so fast. But XXX Corps were delayed 12 hours as the 101st never took the Son bridge, so that means XXX Corps would be at Nijmegen at D+2 about 11 am to noon at the earliest going by the hoped times. They arrived at Nijmegen at 0830 D+2, ahead of schedule given the delay.
Hence XXX Corps were not slow and in no way compromised the operation. They kept roughly to their rate of hoped speed, in fact they were slightly ahead of it. They were doing exactly what they were supposed to do. It was based on speed and hopes of advance. Irrespective of what time they reached a crossing, it was supposed to have been in allied hands, so they just roll over as was the case at Grave.
The only time objective specifically stated in the document was to be south of Eindhoven at the end of D day. The rest is not specific at all. In an operation like this specific target times are not realistic so were sensibly not put in. The only specific time, south of Eindhoven, could be pinned down being about 11 miles from the start point. The further up the road, schedules cannot be guaranteed.
But irrespective of turning up at Nijmegen on the afternoon of D+1 or first thing on D+2, the bridge was not seized by the US 82nd, so XXX Corps speed of movement was insignificant up to Nijmegen. If XXX Corps did roll over Nijmegen bridge at around noon on D+2, and they could have if the bridge was in the hands of the 82nd, they would have reached the British paras who were still on Arnhem bridge on the afternoon of D+2, as at that point there was little German resistance between Nijmegen and Arnhem.
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The 1951 document is definite on target timings, while the Orders are not.
Final point of PHASE I (see T S Birkby above for full points):
(f) The Div may conc SOUTH of EINDHOVEN in areas of the CL
preparatory to further adv.
conc = concentration area:
Which is an area, usually in the theatre of operations, where troops are assembled before beginning, or continuing, active operations.
It says: preparatory to further adv. adv = advance.
So, on phase 1 they were to concentrate South of Eindhoven before (preparatory) to advancing. That is clear. When concentrating that is gathering all vehicles in one location. Vehicles will still be moving into this concentration location at 35 vehicles to every mile of the train at 10 mph. If the vehicles move at 10mph from the starting point the lead vehicles should be south of Eindhoven in 1 hour. But the lead have to stop to concentrate. And 35 vehicles in each mile at 10 mph are pouring into the concentration location. It does not say how many vehicles have to be in the concentration area before moving off again.
Now onto phase 2. Phase 2 clearly states that it will start at 1st light on* D+1.*
It says: PHASE II: (a) The Div will continue the adv
That is advance after phase 1 is concluded of course. To continue the advance you have to be stopped. Phase 1 concludes south of Eindhoven as the force concentrated. Clear. The document says a hoped 10 mih (10mph), but not for phase 1 as the forces are concentrated south of Eindhoven at end of phase 1. South of Eindhoven is approx 11 miles from the start point. It only expects 11 miles of advance in the first 5 hours, which is understandable as German forces formed a line in front of British forces at the north British front on the Belgian/Dutch border. So, on D day XXX Corps have to get to Eindhoven which is 11 miles and depending on tactic conditions it is hoped they will move at 10 mph when moving north from Eindhoven.
There are two different points here:
1. Target time - XXX Corps do not have 100% control of the
time to reach targets, except south of Eindhoven.
2. Rate of Movement, when "moving" - XXX Corps have
near 100% control of this.
XXX Corps when moving were moving as hoped, irrespective of the tactical situation. Reaching hoped for vague target times (which are not specific only roughly deducted) are different indeed as XXX Corps were dependent on the MARKET side of the operation, the airborne units, to move.
My prime point is that XXX Corps were not slow. They maintained the hoped speed of movement, and arguably exceeded that when moving. The only times they did not move were due to the US 101st and 82nd, which was out of their control.
When XXX Corps turned up at Nijmegen at 0830 at D+2, given the 12 hour delay at Son, they were ahead of their rate of movement.
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@thevillaaston7811
Montgomery to Alanbrooke..
"If we want the war to end within any reasonable period you have to get Eisenhower’s hand taken off the land battle. I regret to say that in my opinion he just doesn’t know what he is doing.
Montgomery wrote of Eisenhower and his ridiculous broad-front strategy
on 22 January 1945:
“I fear that the old snags of indecision and vacillation and refusal to consider the military problem fairly and squarely are coming to the front again . . . The real trouble is that there is no control and the three army groups are each intent on their own affairs. Patton today issued a stirring order to Third Army, saying the next step would be Cologne . . . One has to preserve a sense of humour these days, otherwise one would go mad.”
Alanbrooke wrote in his diary about buffoon Eisenhower:
“At the end of this morning's C.O.S. [Chief of Staff] meeting I put before the committee my views on the very unsatisfactory state of affairs in France, with no one running the land battle. Eisenhower, though supposed to be doing so, is on the golf links at Rheims —entirely detached and taking practically no part in running of the war. Matters got so bad lately that a deputation of Whiteley, Bedell Smith and a few others went up to tell him that he must get down to it and RUN the war, which he said he would."
"We discussed the advisability of getting Marshall to come out to discuss the matter, but we are doubtful if he would appreciate the situation. Finally decided that I am to see the P.M. to discuss the situation with him.”
"November 28th I went to see the P.M. I told him I was very worried."
Alan Brooke described in his daily diary that American generals Eisenhower and Marshall as poor strategists, when they were in jobs were strategy mattered. Brooke wrote to Montgomery about his talks with Eisenhower, “it is equally clear that Ike has the very vaguest conception of war!”
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Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the reason why the Market Garden plan was flawed. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that prevented the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak".
The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends. General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 20 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800 Dutch civilians.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 8 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men in the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself. XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge.
If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A failure responsible by General Gavin. Even the US Official War record confirms this.
Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm
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@jandenijmegen5842
The state of play on the 17th was:
1) the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was clear;
2) there were concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally;
3) there were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen;
4) then a few troops scattered about along the road;
5) there was no armour in Arnhem.
That was it.
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 3 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured the bridge.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected.
XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and towards the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up. The road was still clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump.
XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, making up the delay at Zon. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over.
If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
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oldtanker2
Idiot, the Germans tried for nearly three years to defeat the British in Africa and failed. Despite the Germans knew what the British were doing in Africa thanks to a Yank named Fenner Bonner. Look the dope up.
The Germans could not take the home island as the home island had the largest navy in the world. Every time the Germans locked horns with the RAF they lost. They could try but would have ended up mince meat.
After the Bulge when Monty saved the Yanks asses, he should have been given back the ground forces commander role from an incompetent named Eisenhower. But the stupidest Yank general, Bradley, in the Bulge was given a special medal after it. You couldn't make this crap up.
Operation Dragoon was supposed to have been an invasion of Brittany, but then maybe Northern Italy, but then southern France. The British vehemently protested that it should be Trieste, the Ljubljana gap and onto to Vienna and into the heart of Germany. Then the Germans are fighting on three fronts. The Yanks said southern France. They did then the army under Patch, few know of him, melted in with the ridiculous Eisenhower broad front strategy, that stalled all along the thin front from Switzerland to the North Sea.
You are just a stupid Yank.
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German general Günther Blumentritt:
"Field-Marshal Montgomery was the one general who never suffered a reverse."
Blumentritt giving his impression of the different qualities of the British and American troops:
"The Americans attacked with zest, and had a keen sense of mobile action, but when they came under heavy artillery fire they usually fell back, even after they had made a successful penetration. By contrast, once the British had got their teeth in, and had been in a position for twenty-four hours, it proved almost impossible to shift them. To counter-attack the British always cost us very heavy losses. I had many opportunities to observe this interesting difference in the autumn of 1944, when the right half of my corps faced the British, and the left half the American."
The Germans avoided counter attacking Montgomery in 1944/45 instead choosing the American sectors: Mortain in August 1944, The Ardennes in Dec 1944, Alsace in January 1945. Having experienced the British from Alam el Halfa in August 1942 onwards, they avoided direct attacks on Montgomery's forces, unless they had no choice. The Germans knew it was futile.
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oldtanker2
Oh my God! Patton.
Patton was fired for cowardly hitting a sick soldier in a hospital bed. He believed he was re-incarnated a number of times.
1985 US Army report on the Lorraine Campaign.
Patton does not come out well at all.
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a211668.pdf
Combat Studies Institute. The Lorraine Campaign: An Overview, September-December 1944. by Dr. Christopher R. Gabel February, 1985
From the document is in italics:
"Soldiers and generals alike assumed that Lorraine would fall quickly, and unless the war ended first, Patton's tanks would take the war into Germany by summer's end. But Lorraine was not to be overrun in a lightning campaign. Instead, the battle for Lorraine would drag on for more than 3 months."
"Despite its proximity to Germany, Lorraine was not the Allies' preferred invasion route in 1944. Except for its two principal cities, Metz and Nancy, the province contained few significant military objectives." "Moreover, once Third Army penetrated the province and entered Germany, there would still be no first-rate military objectives within its grasp. The Saar industrial region, while significant, was of secondary importance when compared to the great Ruhr industrial complex farther north."
Another Patton chase into un-needed territory, like
he did when running his troops into Brittany.
"With so little going for it, why did Patton bother with Lorraine at all? The reason was that Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, made up his mind to destroy as many German forces as possible west of the Rhine."
In other words a waste of time, as was the broad-front strategy.
"Communications Zone organized the famous Red Ball Express, a non-stop conveyor belt of trucks connecting the Normandy depots with the field armies."
They were getting fuel via 6,000 trucks.
"The simple truth was that although fuel was plentiful in Normandy, there was no way to transport it in sufficient quantities to the leading elements. On 31 August , Third Army received no fuel at all."
In short, Patton overran his supply lines. What was
important was to secure the Port of Antwerp's
approaches. Montgomery approached the US leaders
of the First Airborne Army and they would not drop into
the Scheldt.
"Few of the Germans defending Lorraine could be considered First-rate troops. Third Army encountered whole battalions made up of deaf men, others of cooks, and others consisting entirety of soldiers with stomach ulcers."
Some army wonderboy Patton was going to fight
"Was the Lorraine campaign an American victory' From September through November, Third Army claimed to have inflicted over 180,000 casualties on the enemy. But to capture the province of Lorraine, a problem which involved an advance of only 40 to 60 air miles, Third Army required over 3 months and suffered 50,000 casualties, approximately one-third of the total number of casualties it sustained in the entire European war."
Huge losses for taking unimportant territory,
against a poor German army.
"Ironically, Third Army never used Lorraine as a springboard for an advance into Germany after all. Patton turned most of the sector over to Seventh Army during the Ardennes crisis, and when the eastward advance resumed after the Battle of the Bulge, Third Army based its operations on Luxembourg, not Lorraine. The Lorraine campaign will always remain a controversial episode in American military history."
It's getting worse. One third of all European casualties
in Lorraine and never used the territory to move into Germany.
"Finally the Lorraine Campaign demonstrated that Logistics often drive operations, no matter how forceful and aggressive the commanding general may be." "Patton violated tactical principles" "His discovered that violating logistical principles is an unforgiving and cumulative matter."
Not flattering at all. And Americans state Patton
was the best general they had.
Bradley stated later:
“Patton was developing as an unpopular guy. He steamed about with great convoys of cars and great squads of cameramen … To George, tactics was simply a process of bulling ahead. Never seemed to think out a campaign. Seldom made a careful estimate of the situation. I thought him a shallow commander … I disliked the way he worked, upset tactical plans, interfered in my orders. His stubbornness on amphibious operations, parade plans into Messina sickened me and soured me on Patton. We learned how not to behave from Patton’s Seventh Army.”
Patton? Most German generals had never heard of him because he was a US media creation.
US Army officer Nic Moran giving a talk. Look at the first 4 minutes:
https://youtu.be/bNjp_4jY8pY
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The RAF reccie emphatically stated they found no armour in or around Arnhem prior to the jump. The first armour to attack the paras was on the 2nd day in the evening, that came in from Germany. A myth has risen that when the British 1st Airborne dropped around Arnhem they dropped onto 2 powerful Waffen SS panzer divisions with lots of armour. The two Waffen SS panzer divisions were very understrength with no more than around 3,000 fighting troops each, with a few heavy weapons and no tanks around Arnhem.
There was not a single German tank attack against British 1st Airborne D-Day, the 17th, with Frost's men getting to the Arnhem bridge pretty well unopposed. The Germans could not send tanks in because they didn't have any in the Arnhem area at the time.
The first German tank attack against the British 1st Airborne did not occur until late on the 18th, D-Day+1, using tanks that came in from Germany. The tanks were Panzer IVs from Panzer-Ersatz-Regiment ”Bielefeld”, Panzer Kompanie Mielke which only arrived in the Netherlands earlier on the 18th, via Bocholt in Germany.
The tanks units that attacked the British 1st Airborne around Arnhem were four units that were not there when the paras jumped, being all in Germany and quickly sent to Arnhem in the days following the jump. None of these armoured units were identified by allied intelligence as being around Arnhem:
♦ Panzer-Ersatz-Regiment”Bielefeld” Panzer Kompanie Mielke
was not in Holland on the 17th.
♦ Sturmgeshutz Brigade 280 was also not in Holland
when the paras dropped but was on the way towards Aachen,
Germany when it was ordered diverted to Arnhem arriving at
Arnhem in the early hours of the 19th.
♦ The Tiger Is of Schwere Panzer Kompanie Hummel were
also in Germany and only arriving on the 19th.
♦ The King Tigers of Schwere Panzer Abteilung 506 arrived
between the 22nd and 24th.
♦ The eight Panthers out of the factory on the inventory of the
9th SS did not arrive at Arnhem until the 21st, too late to take
part in the fighting against Frost's men at the bridge, so were
sent to Elst as part of Kampfgruppe Knaust, which blocked
XXX Corps from reaching Arnhem in the following days.
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I will let the Germans have the first say on the Bulge:
Genral Hasso von Manteuffel:
‘The operations of the American First Army had developed into a series of individual holding actions. Montgomery's contribution to restoring the situation was that he turned a series of isolated actions into a coherent battle fought according to a clear and definite plan. It was his refusal to engage in premature and piecemeal counter-attacks which enabled the Americans to gather their reserves and frustrate the German attempts to extend their breakthrough’.
By November 1944, British SHEAF officer, Strong, noted that there was a possibility of a German counter-offensive in the Ardennes or the Vosges. Strong went to personally warn Bradley at his HQ, who said, "let 'em come".
Montgomery on hearing of the attack immediately took British forces to the Meuse to prevent any German forces from making a bridgehead, securing the rear. He was prepared to halt their advance and attack them. This was while Eisenhower and Bradley were doing nothing.
even by 19 December, three days into the offensive, no overall plan had emerged from 12th Army Group or SHAEF, other than the decision to send Patton’s forces north to Bastogne. Overall, the Ardennes battle was in urgent need of grip.
General Hodges had yet to see Bradley or receive more than the sketchiest orders from his Army Group commander.
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
On 20 December, Montgomery had sent a signal to Alanbrooke regarding the US forces:
"Not good... definite lack of grip and control. I have heard nothing from Ike or Bradley and had no orders or requests of any sort. My own opinion is that the American forces have been cut in half and the Germans can reach the Meuse at Namur without opposition."
Omar Bradley, commander of the 12th Army Group, did very little:
16 Dec, the first day, for 12 hours did nothing.
16 Dec, after 12 hours, he sent two armoured divisions from
the flanking Ninth and Third Armies.
17 Dec, after 24 Hours, he then called in two US airborne
divisions from Champagne.
18 Dec, he ordered Patton to halt his pending offensive in
the Saar.
18 Dec, he had still not established contact with the First Army,
while Monty had.
19 Dec, he withdrew divisions from the Aachen front to shore
up the Ardennes.
19 Dec, he had still not produced an overall defensive plan.
19 Dec, the Supreme Commander intervened directly late in the day.
20 Dec, Eisenhower telephoned Montgomery telling him to take
command of the US First and Ninth Armies
While all this dillying by Bradley was going on, German armies were pounding forward into his lines.
British SHEAF officer Whiteley & American officer Betts visited the U.S. First Army HQ seeing the shambles. Strong, Whiteley, and Betts recommended that command of the armies north of the Ardennes be transferred from Bradley to Montgomery. Unfortunately only two British officers approached Beddel Smith of their recommendations, who immediately fired the pair, claiming it was a nationalistic thing. The next morning, Beddel Smith apologized seeing the three were right, recommending to Eisenhower to bring in Monty.
During the Battle of the Bulge Eisenhower was stuck self imprisoned in his HQ in des-res Versailles near Paris in fear of German paratroopers wearing US uniforms with the objective to kill allied generals. He had remained locked up more than 30 days without sending a single message or order to Montgomery, and that is when he thought he was doing ground control of the campaign, when in effect Montgomery was in control as two US armies had to be put under his control after the German attack, the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF had to take control of US air force units. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war, just about.
And yet biased American authors such as Stephen Ambrose said that Eisenhower took control of the Bulge and made the battle his veneering it as an all American victory. Ambrose completely falsified history. The only thing Eisenhower did was tell Monty to get control of two out of control US armies, tell the US 101st to go to Bastogne (who were in northern France after the buffer Market Garden was created) and men under Bradley to counterattack. That is it.
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Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust over other fronts:
On 4 Sept, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen when he issued the directive. Montgomery wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive, devising Operation Comet to be launched on 2 Sept, being cancelled due to German resistance and poor weather.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 Sept had divisions of the US 1st Army and Montgomery's view of taking multiple bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. The British 2nd Army needed some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow). Hodges' would protect the right flank. the Canadians would protect the left flank from the German 15th army. It was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
"the evidence also suggests that certain necessary objectives on the road to Berlin, crossing the Rhine and perhaps even taking the Ruhr, were possible with the existing logistical set-up, provided the right strategy to do so was set in place. Montgomery’s popular and astute Chief of Staff, Freddie de Guingand, certainly thought so: 'If Eisenhower had not taken the steps he did to link up at an early date with Anvil and had held back Patton, and had he diverted the resources so released to the north, I think it possible we might have obtained a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter - but not more.' "
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944.
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again. This northern thrust over the Rhine obviously would not work with the resources starved First Army, so a lesser operation was devised by Montgomery, Market Garden, eliminating the divisions of US First Army, with only ONE crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London wanted eliminating ASAP giving a 60 mile long salient buffer between German forces and the important port of Antwerp. This would only have one corps above Eindhoven, a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time. Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance.
Montgomery, although not liking Eisenhower's broad front strategy, making that clear continuously since the Normandy breakout, being a professional soldier he always obeyed Eisenhower's orders keeping to the laid down strategy, unlike Bradley who also allowed Patton to disobey his own orders.
Montgomery after fixing the operations objectives with Eisenhower to what forces were available, gave Market Garden planning to others, mainly Genl Brereton, an American, of the First Allied Airborne Army. Genl Brereton, who liked the plan, agreed to it with even direct input. Brereton ordered the drops will take place during the day and Brereton oversaw the troop carrier and supply drops schedules. A refusal by Brereton and the operation would never have gone ahead, as he earlier rejected Montgomery's initial plan of a drop into the Scheldt at Walcheren Island.
Montgomery left all the planning to his generals to plan and execute: Brereton, Williams, Browning, Urquhart, Gavin, Taylor, Horrocks, etc. Monty gave them a free run at it with their own discretion and did not interfere. Montgomery had no involvement whatsoever in its execution. Montgomery was an army group commander, in charge of armies. The details were left to 'competent' subordinates.
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oldtanker2
"some of those who knew Patton well had no great faith in his military abilities. Bradley was less than enchanted to have Patton commanding the Third Army in 12th Army Group and admitted as much after the war, writing: ‘He (Patton) had not been my choice for army commander"
-Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
"point Jack Capell of the 4th Infantry Division writes: When we became part of Third Army later in the war we heard this rumour that Patton had actually swum across the Saar river to get at the enemy. I never met anyone who saw this feat which was probably the invention of Patton’s fertile publicity machine. We in the 4th Division were not admirers of General Patton. He was an accomplished battlefield commander but more reckless with the lives of his troops than other generals we had served with."
-Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
"In a paper in the British Defence Studies Journal, Brigadier G. W. Berrigan, considering Patton’s conduct in the 1944 campaign on the Moselle, concludes that he was ‘an over-ambitious, egotistical commander on an economy of effort mission seeking glory at any cost, who refused to live within the available means.’"
-Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Much of Patton’s success in the later stages of the Normandy battle, and the subsequent rush of the Third Army towards Metz and the Saar, stemmed from the fact that the enemy had little on that front to oppose him. Then his troops got to Metz and Lorraine, where the German army promptly stopped Patton in his tracks."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Ike should have gripped Monty and Patton, telling them bluntly and in so many words to obey his orders or face the sack"
-Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"A fair conclusion from all this is that Patton’s efforts from August to December 1944 made no great contribution to the Allied cause and we would be right in that conclusion: his campaign for the Saar and the Rhine was longer on sound and fury than on useful results."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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oldtanker2
As with Montgomery, George Patton’s problem lay in his character. Patton was a war-lover, arrogant and tactless, barely controllable by his superiors, hardly in control of himself, the epitome of the ‘gung-ho’, fighting American general, a latter-day Custer. This was the image Patton loved to portray; he was never seen without his steel helmet and his pearl-handled revolver, always ready for action although, by comparison with his detested rival, Bernard Montgomery, George Patton had not actually seen much action.
This may have been part of the reason for Patton’s deep and open dislike of Monty. By September 1944, without counting active service on the North-west Frontier of India and in Palestine, Montgomery had had nine years of front-line service in two world wars, in every rank from second lieutenant to field marshal. All the American generals put together could not match this experience and Patton for one resented it.
-Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
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Oldtanker2
There you go...
http://www.airpowerstudies.co.uk/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/Arnhem.pdf
"the composition of the German forces at Arnhem was far more complex than most published histories of Market Garden had tended to suggest. The two SS panzer divisions had been operating far below their full strength on the eve of the operation and, while 1st Airborne was ultimately confronted by armour in considerable strength, hardly any tanks were actually present in the Arnhem area on 17 September. The vast majority deployed from Germany or other battle fronts after the airborne landings" - ARNHEM - THE AIR RECONNAISSANCE STORY by the RAF
Some low level pictures of a few Panzer IIIs and IVs were taken in early September for operation Comet. Ryan on speaking to Urquhart got it wrong. "Urquhart’s account is therefore somewhat perplexing. Further problems arise if we seek to document the events he described. Several extensive searches for the photographs have failed to locate them. Ostensibly, this might not seem surprising, as most tactical reconnaissance material was destroyed after the war, but Urquhart insisted that the Arnhem sortie was flown by a Spitfire squadron based at Benson; this would almost certainly mean 541 Squadron. Far more imagery from the Benson squadrons survived within the UK archives, but no oblique photographs showing tanks at Arnhem. In addition, although the Benson missions were systematically recorded at squadron and group level, not one record matches the sortie Urquhart described."
"The low-level missions targeting the bridges on 6 September were scrupulously noted down, but all other recorded reconnaissance sorties over Arnhem were flown at higher altitudes and captured vertical imagery. Equally, it has proved impossible as yet to locate an interpretation report derived from a low-level mission that photographed German armour near Arnhem before Market Garden." "As for Brian Urquhart’s famous account of how a low-level Spitfire sortie took photographs of tanks assumed to belong to II SS Panzer Corps, the reality was rather different. In all probability, the low-level mission that Urquhart recalled photographed the bridges and not the tanks" - ARNHEM - THE AIR RECONNAISSANCE STORY by the RAF
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vick Zx
Montgomery led the Normandy campaign with less casualties than predicted with the allies way ahead by D-Day plus 90. Ground forces command was taken from him and given to Eisenhower, who was also supreme commander. Eisenhower adopted a ridiculous broad front strategy, while Montgomery wanted a 30-40 division thrust to the North to take the Ruhr and onto Berlin over the flat north German plains.
Montgomery at times openly expressed is view of US generals as being little more than inexperienced amateurs. Although the US had some excellent corps commanders, which Monty pointed out. He constantly told Eisenhower to give him ground command while he stayed supreme commander (a political role). Monty had to take control of two US armies at the Battle of the Bulge. He stopped the Germans turning them back. He again insisted on being ground forces commander pointing to the inept performance of US generals. US generals were up in arms over it and Eisenhower was ready to fire Montgomery (the reality was that Eisenhower could not fire a British private). Those he should have fired were US generals for their performance in the Bulge. Most US generals were colonels only a few years before while Monty was a general since 1917. Monty had an impressive track record, while the US generals never.
Bradley took the US First Army into the Hurtgen Forest defeat suffering 33,000 casualties. Patton hardly moved in the Lorraine and suffered over 50,000 casualties.. The US suffered 100,000 in the Battle of the Bulge, then Normandy on top. They were losing men like crazy because of the incompetence of their generals, who appeared not to value the lives of their men. So much so, men destined for the Far East were diverted to Europe to make up the numbers and ensure there was enough troops. They could see the losses mounting at the same rate. The British had nowhere near the casualties of the US armies.
In the end the US had more men in Europe than the British & Canadians. Yet, the British ended up with far more ground troops against the Japanese than the USA. It was supposed to be the reverse. 2.6 million of the British army marched into Burma, plus the Eastern and Pacific fleets and the RAF.
Montgomery did all to reduce casualties of the armies under him, British and US. He knew that a demoralised army can fight below its weight, and seeing 1,000s of killed and wounded coming back from the front is a great downer for troops. Monty understood how soldiers ticked; saving their lives and morale was key.
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@Johnny Carroll
In an interview with Maj Gen G. E. Prier-Palmer, British Joint Services Mission in Washington, in 1955, General Browning said the Grave and Nijmegen Bridges must be seized "as soon as possible", although the wooded Groesbeek Heights on the route to the bridge must be held.
Field Order 11 of 13 Sept is clear in section 2 a), putting the bridges first in the writing, that they were to be seized, then the high ground secured and then the roads. Order 1, of 13 September, written by Lindquist of the 508th, states he will wait at the high ground for a Division Order to move from the Heights to the bridge. In short, wait for an Order from Gavin to move. The heights near De Ploeg, which are really pretty flat being a wooded area but high for Holland, are pretty well between the Drop Zone (DZ) and bridge. The 508th would go through the Heights to reach the bridge.
Browning and Gavin naturally did not want German troops between the LZ and the bridge, so the Heights had to be occupied and secure. The 508th CP would be established at the Heights.Gavin understood the priorities in sending the 508th to the bridge and Groesbeek heights immediately, with Coln Warren's battalion of the 508th assigned the bridge. To get to the bridge from the DZ you have to pass the Groesbeek Heights, so any enemy at the Heights naturally had to be subdued, then secure the area, which could take time, then send Warren's battalion to the bridge.
It took the 665 men of 508th a painfully slow 3.5 hours to march a few miles from the DZ to the heights, reaching the Groesbeek heights at 1730. They encountered only a few Labour troops in opposition. There were no Germans at the Groesbeek Heights as forward scouts relayed back the situation. So, on route Coln Lindquist the head of the 508th could have sent Warren's A and B companies directly to the bridge, bypassing the Groesbeek Heights, immediately via the riverbank as instructed by Gavin. The rest of the battalion could move to the empty Groesbeek Heights setting up defences at De Ploeg on the heights. Dutch resistance men informed the 508th that the Germans had largely cleared out of Nijmegen with only 19 guards on the bridge. So all was easy and fine, so the two companies assigned the bridge could move immediately to their objective without a diversion via the Groesbeek Heights.
Despite hearing the good news from the Dutch Underground, Lindquist in command of the 508th was not moving at all, keeping all his men static at De Ploeg. Lindquist was waiting for a Divisional Order from Gavin informing him that the DZ was secure, then send Warren's battalion to the bridge. When Gavin found out Lindquist was static via a liaison officer he was livid, running over to De Ploeg in a Jeep telling Lindquist to get moving to the bridge. Even then, took Lindquist another two hours to send men in force to the bridge.
Three stray men from a forty man patrol sent to the bridge immediately by Warren to confirm what the Dutch Underground told them on reaching DePloeg, took the guards on the south end of the bridge prisoner. They left when no one turned up. When leaving they saw hundreds of Germans pour from the north onto the previously lightly guarded bridge. Later, a company of Warren's main force became lost when they eventually moved towards the bridge. By the time Warren's two companies did reach the bridge in force, the Germans had reinforcing the bridge with hundreds of men. Too late.
The first attack on the bridge was just before midnight, 10.5 hours after landing. The 82nd were expecting German resistance from the east, however it came from the north via the Nijmegen bridge.
Gavin was expecting Lindquist to secure the Groesbeek heights, which were devoid of enemy forces, then immediately move to the bridge, which meant sending Warren's battalion immediately. Lindquist was expecting Gavin to notify him that the DZ was clear.
Gavin was expecting Lindquist to go to the bridge when it was obvious the Groesbeek heights, on the way to the bridge, were secure. As no Germans were about, the heights were naturally secure. Regarding Lindquist's expected clearing of the LZ before moving from DePloeg. Lindquist did write a Field Order for the 508th on 13 September copied to Gavin, stating that once the heights were secure he would wait for a Divisional Order [from Gavin] to move. Two days later at the jump briefing Gavin verbally overruled Lindquist's Field Order, using a map he told him that he should move to the bridge "without delay".
_ Poor command communications by Gavin. Poulussen, in Lost at Nijmegen discovered that the 508th jumped without any written offensive orders from Gavin. All was verbal from Gavin to Lindquist of the 508. Chester Graham, the 82nd liaison officer, was at the pre jump meeting in England. He said there was no ambiguity amongst anyone there that the bridge was the prime target.
In 1945 Historical Officer, Capt. John Westover of the US Army Centre of Military History, was wanting confirmation that if the capture of the Nijmegen bridge had been part of the objectives. In response, dated 25 July 1945, General Gavin was clear: "About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping well, I personally directed Col Lindquist, commanding the 508 PIR to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen Bridge without delay _after landing but to keep a close watch on it in the event he needed to protect himself against the Reichswald and he was cautioned to send the battalion via the east of the city."
General Browning never knew men were static at De Ploeg. Like Gavin he was expecting men to be seizing the bridge. Being corps commander, he was busy attempting to communicate with all three parachute divisions. The 82nd did launch a few failed attacks on the bridge. In the afternoon of the next day, 18th, Gavin asked permission to launch another attack. Browning, seeing the bridge was well defended, and the failed attacks, refused, opting to wait for XXX Corps to arrive to seize the bridge. Inexplicably Gavin moved _all his men out of Nijmegen town completely to the heights and DZ, giving the town back to the Germans. This made matters worse when XXX Corps arrived who had expended vital time, and ammunition, in flushing them out.
On page 162 of the U.S. Official History: "many documents regarding the extensive combat interviews were conducted with personnel of the 508th Parachute Infantry, they are inexplicably missing _from Department of the Army files.
"_Read:
1) Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History Of The 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment In World War II by Phil Nordyke.
2) Arnhem 1944 by Christer Bergström.
3) Market Garden, Then and Now by Karl Magry.
4) Lost at Nijmegen by R Poulusson
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@manilajohn0182
Yes, me again.
As to the wondrous German army I will let others say it for me. Attacking France...
Prof Adam Tooze, Wage of Destruction:
"There’s always a problem in history of determining after something’s happened what the balance of probabilities was before it happened. And the German plan is a plan which is again a spectacular gamble, and it succeeds because the forces in the German offensive are concentrated in an extraordinarily tight pack which is going to drive through the Ardennes in a single offensive move all the way across northern France to the Channel. This is an operation of unprecedented logistical risk and gives the opponents of Germany - Britain, France, Belgium and Holland - the chance, if they’re sufficiently well organised, to mount a devastating counterattack on Germany and on the pincer moving across northern France. And for this reason the Germans fully understand that if this plan fails they’ve lost the war. So it’s, rather than simply the result of a series of coincidences, more that the Germans are simply taking a very, very high risk gamble. The gamble bears the possibility of total victory, which is what they ultimately achieve over France, but also a risk of catastrophic defeat which they’re fully conscious of."
Wages of Destruction, Page 371.
"The German army that invaded France in May 1940 was far from being a carefully honed weapon of modern armoured warfare. Of Germany's 93 combat ready divisions on May 10 1940, only 9 were Panzer divisions, with a total of 2.438 tanks between them. These units faced a French army that was more heavily motorised, with 3,254 tanks in total."
....Half the German tanks that invaded the west were armed only with a machine gun!! The German Army was not on equal footing with the French when in fact it was vastly inferior.
"By May 1940 Britain had 7 regiments equipped with 28 light tanks plus 44 scout carriers each. There was also 1 regiment of armoured cars with 38 Morris light reconnaissance cars. There was also an Army Tank brigade with two regiments of infantry tanks. That gave a total of 308 tanks 23 of which had a 2pdr gun the rest had machine guns. Ist Armoured Division started to arrive in France from late May. However many of the Cruiser tanks were so recently issued that their crews had only been half trained on them and many lacked wireless sets, sighting telescopes and even armour piercing ammunition."
-Source The Great Tank Scandal, David Fletcher
Dutch, Belgian, UK & French tanks in total were 4,200 tanks.
Prof Tooze, page 371/372.
"Nor should one accept unquestioningly the popular idea that the concentration of the Germans tanks in specialised tank divisions gave them a decisive advantage. Many French tanks were scattered amongst the infantry units, but with their ample stock of vehicles the French could afford to do this. The bulk of France's best tanks were concentrated in armoured units, that, on paper at least, were every bit a match for the Panzer divisions."
Page 377
"The Germans not only committed "all" their tanks and planes. In strictest conformity with the Schwerpunkt principle, they committed them on an astonishingly narrow front"
"the Luftwaffe sacrificed no less than 347 aircraft, including virtually all its transports used in the air landings in Holland and Belgium".
Page 378
"if Allied bombers had penetrated the German fighter screen over the Ardennes they could have wreaked havoc amongst the slow moving traffic"
"highly inflammable fuel tankers were interspersed with the fighting vehicles at the very front with the armoured fighting vehicles"
"The plan called for the German armoured columns to drive for three days and nights without interruption".
....The drivers were put on "speed" pills.
Page 379
"success would not have been possible had it not been for the particular nature of the battlefield. The Channel coastline provided the German army with a natural obstacle to pin their enemies, an obstacle which could be reached within few hundred kilometres of the German border."
"the Germans benefited from the well made network of roads"
"In Poland in 1939 the Wehrmacht had struggled to maintain the momentum of its motorized troops when faced with far more difficult conditions."
"a close analysis of the of the mechanics of the Blitzkrieg reveals the astonishing degree of concentration achieved, but an enormous gamble that Hitler and the Wehrmacht were taking on May 10."
Page 380
"because it involved such a concentrated use of force, Manstein's plan was a "one-shot affair". If the initial assault had failed, and it could have failed in many ways, the Wehrmacht as an offensive force would have been spent. The gamble paid off. But contrary to appearances, the Germans had not discovered a patent recipe for military miracles. The overwhelming success of May 1940, resulting in the defeat of a major European military power in a matter of weeks, was not a repeatable outcome"
Tooze, page 373:
"In retrospect, it suited neither the Allies nor the Germans to expose the amazingly haphazard course through which the Wehrmacht had arrived at its most brilliant military success. The myth of the Blitzkrieg suited the British and French because it provided an explanation other than military incompetence for their pitiful defeat. But whereas it suited the Allies to stress the alleged superiority of German equipment, Germany's own propaganda viewed the Blitzkrieg in less materialistic terms."
Tooze page 380.
"In both campaigns [France & Barbarossa], the Germans gambled on achieving decisive success in the opening phases of the assault. Anything less spelled disaster".
....If the belt broke the whole movement stopped. The Germans thought they had formulated a version of Blitzkrieg in France that was a sure-fire success. They used this in the USSR, just scaling up forces. They did not have the intelligence to assess properly, that the reason for their success was allied incompetence not anything brilliant they did.
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@sean640307
Stopping at Valkernswaard south of Eindhoven was in the plan. The thousands of vehicles had to muster before moving off up the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem.
From 21st Army Group Orders:
Final point of PHASE I:
(f) The Div may conc SOUTH of EINDHOVEN in areas of the CL preparatory to further adv.
conc = concentration area:
Which is an area, usually in the theatre of operations, where troops are assembled before beginning, or continuing, active operations.
It says: preparatory to further adv. adv = advance.
So, on phase 1 they were to concentrate South of Eindhoven before (preparatory) to advancing. That is clear.
When concentrating that is gathering all vehicles in one location. Vehicles will still be moving into this concentration location at 35 vehicles to every mile of the train at a hoped 10 mph. If the vehicles move at 10mph from the starting point the lead vehicles should be south of Eindhoven in 1 hour. But the lead have to stop to concentrate. And 35 vehicles in each mile at a hoped 10 mph are pouring into the concentration location. It does not say how many vehicles have to be in the concentration area before moving off again.
Now onto phase 2. Phase 2 clearly states that it will start at 1st light on D+1. It says:
PHASE II: (a) The Div will continue the adv
That is advance after phase 1 is concluded of course. To continue the advance you have to be stopped. Phase 1 concludes south of Eindhoven as the force concentrated. Clear.
The document says a hoped 10 mih (10mph), but not for phase 1 as the forces are concentrated south of Eindhoven at end of phase 1. South of Eindhoven is approx 11 miles from the start point. It only expects 11 miles of advance in the first 5 hours, which is understandable as German forces formed a line in front of British forces at the northern British front on the Belgian/Dutch border.
So, on D-day XXX Corps have to get to Eindhoven which is 11 miles and depending on tactic conditions it is hoped they will move at 10 mph when moving north from Eindhoven.
XXX Corps were not slow. They maintained the less than a hoped speed of movement, but clearly what was realistically expected. The only times they did not move were due to the US 101st and 82nd, when both failed to seize bridges, which was out of XXX Corp's control. XXX Corps had to seize the bridges themselves or create the bridge (Bailey bridge).
When XXX Corps turned up at Nijmegen at 0820 at D+2, given the approx 11 hour delay at Zon when the 101st failed to seize the bridge, they were near enough at an expected rate of movement. Less than hoped, but clearly adequate to complete the operation.
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General Bodo Zimmermann, Chief of Operations, German Army Group D, said that had the strategy of Montgomery succeeded in the autumn of 1944, there would have been no need to fight for the West Wall, not for the central and upper Rhine, all of 24 which would have fallen automatically.
Indeed, had Monty's idea for a 40 division concentrated thrust towards the Ruhr been accepted by Eisenhower instead of messing about in the Lorraine, Alsace, Vosges etc, it would have all been over for the Germans in the west.
"The best course of the Allies would have been to concentrate a really strong striking force with which to break through past Aachen to the Ruhr area. Germany's strength is in the north. South Germany was a side issue. He who holds northern Germany holds Germany. Such a break-through, coupled with air domination, would have torn in pieces the weak German front and ended the war. Berlin and Prague would have been occupied ahead of the Russians. There were no German forces behind the Rhine, and at the end of August our front was wide open. There was the possibility of an operational break-through in the Aachen area, in September. This would have facilitated a rapid conquest of the Ruhr and a quicker advance on Berlin.
By turning the forces from the Aachen area sharply northward, the German 15th and1st Parachute Armies could have been pinned against the estuaries of the Mass and the Rhine. They could not have escaped eastwards into Germany."- Gunther Blumentritt in, The Other Side Of The Hill by Liddell Hart
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@trevorhart545
The allies had the armour, air forces and men to just steamroll north and onto the North German plains using Monty's plan. The British had destroyed over 90% of the German armour in Normandy.
Market Garden
The state of play on the 17th was that the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was clear. There was concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally. There were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen. Then a few scattered about along the road. There was no armour in Arnhem. That was it.
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 3 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured the bridge.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected.
XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up. The road was still clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump.
XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, at the planned expected time, making up the delay at Zon. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over.
If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
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@rabbit251
Thx.
Read what I wrote. The operation "failed" by a whisker.
1) The road was clear from Zon to Arnhem;
2) The two bridges the US paras failed to seize were easy bridges to secure.
3) The road was still clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump.
4) The Germans were is disarray;
5) The bridge were not properly defended, few tank traps or barbed wire.
6) German resistance only increased when they used the generous time window given to them by the failings of the two US para units.
Market Garden was a success:
♦ It kept Antwerp out of German artillery range.
♦ It split German armies in two, largely isolating their 15th army on the Dutch Coast.
♦ The largest road bridge in Europe was in allied hands on the German border.
♦ It created a 60 mile buffer between Antwerp and German forces. Antwerp was the only port taken intact. This buffer proved itself in the German Bulge attack right through US lines. The German went through a forest rather than the direct route, which would have been through the Market Garden salient.
♦ It created a staging point to move into Germany at Nijmegen, which was used.
♦ It eliminated V rocket launching sites aimed at London.
♦ It isolated the German 15th army in Holland.
♦ They reached the Rhine.
♦ The salient was fleshed out to the Meuse.
♦ The Germans never retook one mm of ground taken.
♦ It captured the important Philips radio factory at Eindhoven.
To flesh out the salient the US 7th Armor was sent into Overloon. They were so bad they were extracted with British forces sent in to take the town.
The Germans never thought Market Garden was a failure. It punched a 60 mile salient right into their lines in a few days, right on their border. They saw it as a staging area to jump into Germany - which it was. In late '44/early '45, the longest allied advance was the 60 mile Market Garden advance. The only operation to fully achieve its goals in that time period was Monty's clearing of the Scheldt.
'It is interesting to consider how far we failed in this operation. It should be remembered that the Arnhem bridgehead was only a part of the whole. We had gained a great deal in spite of this local set-back. The Nijmegen bridge was ours, and it proved of immense value later on. And the brilliant advance by XXX Corps led the way to the liberation of a large part of Holland, not to speak of providing a stepping stone to the successful battles of the Rhineland.'
- OPERATION VICTORY by MAJOR-GENERAL DEGUINGAND, 1947, page 419.
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@dmbeaster
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
“ It was commonly believed at Third Army H.Q. that Montgomery's advance through Belgium was largely maintained by supplies diverted from Patton. (See Butcher, op. cit., p. 667.) This is not true. The amount delivered by the ' air-lift ' was sufficient to maintain only one division. No road transport was diverted to aid Montgomery until September16th. On the other hand, three British transport companies, lent to the Americans on August 6th " for eight days," were not returned until September 4th.' “
- CHESTER WILMOT
THE STRUGGLE FOR EUROPE. 1954
P 589
"Despite objections raised to Montgomery's plan of an assault on a 40 division front, it was more sensible than Eisenhower's insistence on the entire front being in motion at all times, for no better reason than he could not abide the thought that the two American army groups would not participate as entities in the anticipated victory. Not only did Eisenhower fail to heed Montgomery's suggestions, but also he never seemed to understand the possible benefits. He was evidently unable to understand that to supply 40 divisions attacking on one front would have been an easier task than to supply first one army and then the other as each in turn went over to the offensive. It was this concentration of effort which Eisenhower failed to understand and to implement"
- Eisenhower at the Art of Warfare
by DJ Haycock, page 182.
Market Garden was not a very large ground operation. It was limited in size. The well supplied American attack into the Hurtgen Forest started when Market Garden was going on. The US advance on the Hurtgen Forest by First US Army 9th Infantry Division began on 14th September, 3 days before Market Garden began, and was continuing to try and advance into the Hurtgen even when Market Garden began 3 days later, but it was halted by the Germans however.
This was soon followed up by a larger well supplied advance by US First Army towards Aachen at the start of October. Market Garden didn't make a notable dent in allied supplies seeing as the US was able to put on a LARGER ground attack right afterwards.
According to Bradley in his own book there was parity of supplies between the three allied armies, Second British, First and Third US by mid September 1944 and according to the official US Army History as cited in Hugh Cole's book, The Lorraine Campaign page 52..."by 10th September the period of critical (gasoline) shortage had ended". This was a whole week before Market Garden took place. The gasoline drought was the end of August/beginning of September. It was over by the time of Market Garden.
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@dmbeaster
General Bodo Zimmermann, Chief of Operations, German Army Group D, said that had the strategy of Montgomery succeeded in the autumn of 1944, there would have been no need to fight for the West Wall, not for the central and upper Rhine, all of 24 which would have fallen automatically.
Indeed, had Monty's idea for a 40 division concentrated thrust towards the Ruhr been accepted by Eisenhower instead of messing about in the Lorraine, Alsace, Vosges etc, it would have all been over for the Germans in the west.
"The best course of the Allies would have been to concentrate a really strong striking force with which to break through past Aachen to the Ruhr area. Germany's strength is in the north. South Germany was a side issue. He who holds northern Germany holds Germany. Such a break-through, coupled with air domination, would have torn in pieces the weak German front and ended the war. Berlin and Prague would have been occupied ahead of the Russians. There were no German forces behind the Rhine, and at the end of August our front was wide open. There was the possibility of an operational break-through in the Aachen area, in September. This would have facilitated a rapid conquest of the Ruhr and a quicker advance on Berlin.
By turning the forces from the Aachen area sharply northward, the German 15th and1st Parachute Armies could have been pinned against the estuaries of the Mass and the Rhine. They could not have escaped eastwards into Germany."
- Gunther Blumentritt in, The Other Side Of The Hill by Liddell Hart
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@dmbeaster
A prime strategic problem for SHAEF in September 1944 was opening up the approaches to Antwerp and keeping it from German counter-attack - the logistics problem to supply all allied armies. It was:
1) Take Noord Brabant, the land to the north and northeast of Antwerp, or;
2) Take the Schedlt.
Eisenhower had a Northern Thrust strategy. Taking Noord Babant fell in line with the desires for both SHEAF and Eisenhower.
Noord Brabant had to be taken before the Scheldt, as it was essential. It was taken with limited forces, with forces also sent to take the Schedlt. Market Garden had to go ahead regardless of any threat or Northern Thrust strategy, actually being a success. To use Antwerp and control the approaches, the Scheldt, everything up to the south bank of the lower Rhine at Nijmegen needed to be under allied control.
The low-lying lands, boggy ground between Arnhem and Nijmegen with land strewn with rivers and canals, is perfect geography as a barrier against a German counter-attack towards Antwerp. Without control of Noord Brabant German forces would have been in artillery range of Antwerp, and with a build up of forces and supply directly back to Germany in perfect position for a counter-attack.
Market Garden was the offensive SHEAF wanted to secure Antwerp, a prime port for logistics for all allied armies. It made sense as the Germans were in disarray, so should be easy enough to gain. Monty added Arnhem to form a bridgehead over the Rhine to fall in line with Eisenhower's priority Northern Thrust strategy at the time. It made complete sense in establishing a bridgehead over the Rhine as an extra to the operation.
You needed Arnhem for an easier jump into Germany. Everything up to Nijmegen was needed if you wanted to do anything at all - that is, protect Antwerp and have a staging point to move into Germany. Gaining Noord Brabant, was vital, and was successfully seized. Fighting in the low lying mud and waterways of the Schedlt, which will take time, while the Germans a few miles away and still holding Noord Brabant made no sense at all.
SHEAF got what they wanted from a strategic point of view.
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Timeline:
1) John, Paul & George wrongly thought the EMI contract was uncertain because of the drummer, after Epstein told them a sessions man would be brought in if they got the contract. Epstein says nothing to Pete. mmm odd.
2) The three approached Epstein about replacing the drummer, not knowing having a sessions drummer was normal practice.
3) Epstein sees an opportunity to get rid of Mona Best by using her son as the lever. Mona was the ex manager and interfering. Epstein goes along with casting the blame on the three band members.
4) A week or so after the 1st session at EMI on 6 June, Epstein approaches his lawyer, David Harris, on how to get Pete out.
5) In late July a firm contract is secured meaning Pete was fine, no problems with EMI over him. All fears now dissolve over securing a contract. Resistance from the three would now be near zero, as anxieties dissipate.
6) Epstein still goes along with ousting Pete from the band, despite having a secure contract.
7) Three weeks after securing a contract Epstein fires Pete on 15 August 1962.
8) A number of drummers were approached to fill the vacant position, Richard Starkey who was the 4th choice and accepted.
If Mona was not a pain in Epstein's side interfering with the management of the band, Pete would have remained in my opinion. Epstein was the key man in ousting Pete. But my opinion is more leaning to analysis as it is based a lot on facts uncovered by Mark Lewishon and David Bedford.
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Dirus Nigh
The British paras walked up to Arnhem bridge. The first contact with armour was on D-Day+1 in the evening, which was brought in from Germany.
http://www.airpowerstudies.co.uk/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/Arnhem.pdf
"the composition of the German forces at Arnhem was far more complex than most published histories of Market Garden had tended to suggest. The two SS panzer divisions had been operating far below their full strength on the eve of the operation and, while 1st Airborne was ultimately confronted by armour in considerable strength, hardly any tanks were actually present in the Arnhem area on 17 September. The vast majority deployed from Germany or other battle fronts after the airborne landings"
- ARNHEM - THE AIR RECONNAISSANCE STORY by the RAF
Some low level pictures of a few Panzer IIIs and IVs were taken in early September for operation Comet. Ryan on speaking to Urquhart got it wrong. "Urquhart’s account is therefore somewhat perplexing. Further problems arise if we seek to document the events he described. Several extensive searches for the photographs have failed to locate them. Ostensibly, this might not seem surprising, as most tactical reconnaissance material was destroyed after the war, but Urquhart insisted that the Arnhem sortie was flown by a Spitfire squadron based at Benson; this would almost certainly mean 541 Squadron. Far more imagery from the Benson squadrons survived within the UK archives, but no oblique photographs showing tanks at Arnhem. In addition, although the Benson missions were systematically recorded at squadron and group level, not one record matches the sortie Urquhart described."
"The low-level missions targeting the bridges on 6 September were scrupulously noted down, but all other recorded reconnaissance sorties over Arnhem were flown at higher altitudes and captured vertical imagery. Equally, it has proved impossible as yet to locate an interpretation report derived from a low-level mission that photographed German armour near Arnhem before Market Garden." "As for Brian Urquhart’s famous account of how a low-level Spitfire sortie took photographs of tanks assumed to belong to II SS Panzer Corps, the reality was rather different. In all probability, the low-level mission that Urquhart recalled photographed the bridges and not the tanks"
- ARNHEM - THE AIR RECONNAISSANCE STORY by the RAF
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Richard, you forgot about taxing the values of land, eliminating taxes on the buildings (the capital).
The values of land are created by community economic activity, that crystallises into land values. The value is not created by the landowner. The value is not manna from heaven. In short, it is commonly created wealth. It is wealth we all created.
Yet this commonly created wealth is appropriated by private individuals and concerns. Hence why many landowners (the unproductive) are super rich, while the productive penalised.
Reclaiming this commonly created value to pay for common services makes pure sense. The land levy can be increased to eliminate personal income tax, and also eliminating many other taxes, like Council Tax.
Land Value Tax:
- cannot be avoided as land's location is known to the inch;
- land cannot be taken offshore;
- it is cheap to collect,
- eliminating bailiffs, tax snoopers, etc, giving stress to people;
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The US Official History makes the point that even after the Nijmegen bridge had finally been taken:
The Guards Armoured’s Coldstream Guards Group still was needed as a reserve for the Airborne division. This left but two armoured groups to go across the Waal. Even those did not make it until next day, D plus 4, 21 September, primarily because of diehard German defenders who had to be ferreted out from the superstructure and bridge underpinnings. Once on the north bank, much of the British armour and infantry had to be used to help hold and improve the bridgehead that the two battalions of the 504th Parachute Infantry had forged. By the time the Nijmegen bridge fell on D plus 3, it was early evening and it would be dark before an armoured column could be assembled to march on Arnhem. North of Nijmegen the enemy had tanks and guns and infantry of two SS Panzer divisions, in unknown but growing strength, established in country ideal for defence.
This account adds that:
At the village of Ressen, less than three miles north of Nijmegen, the Germans had erected an effective screen composed of an SS battalion reinforced by eleven tanks, another infantry battalion, two batteries of 88mm guns, 20 20mm anti-aircraft guns and survivors of earlier fighting in Nijmegen.
American readers should note that the above comments come from the US Official History, where the notion that Lord Carrington and his five tanks could have penetrated this screen and got up to Arnhem on the night of D plus 3 — even supposing such a move was ever suggested — is revealed as a delusion.
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
A more perceptive analysis comes from Major-General John Frost, commander of the 2nd Parachute Battalion at the Arnhem bridge:
The worst mistake of the Arnhem plan was the failure to give priority to capturing the Nijmegen bridge. The capture would have been a walkover on D-Day, yet the 82nd Division could spare only one battalion as they must at all costs secure the Groesbeek heights where the Corps HQ was to be sited.
These numerous attempts to divert attention from this failure, and pass the blame to a captain in the Guards Armoured Division, have been shameful... and highly successful. The myths surrounding the Nijmegen bridge have persisted and been engraved on the public mind by the media and the cinema. Given the US commanders’ chronic tendency to pass the buck and blame their British allies at every opportunity, it certainly might have been better if some effort had been made to get elements of the Guards Division on the move to Arnhem that night.
That, however, is the romantic view, bolstered by hindsight. In practical terms it takes time to assemble an entire armoured division from a battlefield in the dark streets of a town, issue fresh orders and prepare it for another advance.
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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The Germans had advanced beyond their widest dreams. The panzers were supplied by slow horses behind unable to keep up supplies. They had overstretched their supply lines. Rommel's Panzer column had been stopped by the Briitish at Arras, using the new Matilda 2 tank, which the German standard anti-tank guns could not knock out. Rommel stated that he thought he had been hit by a force three times the size.
German crews were tired. The truck drivers supporting the tanks were put on speed pills to keep them awake. They lacked sleep, fuel, ammunition, water, food, and maintenance of the vehicles (vehicles then were not like they are today).
In front of them were the British, and French, consolidating at Dunkirk, with the new small, nibble and heavily armoured Matilda 2 tank, which could knock out any German tank, but they could not knock it out unless they levelled an AA gun firing a solid shell. A gun useless in Dunkirk's streets. Added to this, the terrain south of Dunkirk was soft and marshy, not tank country. The fast moving panzers, now pretty well static, were now ineffective in a war of attrition. A form of fighting the Germans were not used to. Faced with this situation they had no option but to stop, consolidate, or be mauled. They stopped for only 24 hours.
Hitler issued Directive 13, which stated, to annihilate the forces inside the Dunkirk pocket. Aided by the Luftwaffe, the German troops and tanks continued the fight. A battle ensued called the Battle of Dunkirk. The British won the battle in the air and on the ground.
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cavscout888 wrote:
"The lesson is never accept British control over your military forces."
The fact is the US performed poorly in Europe in WW2, especially at high level. They never had a good general, none. I have not even mentioned vane Mark Clark yet, who disobeyed an order to complete an allied encirclement of the Germans finishing them off in Italy, so he could run off to Rome with his army for a photo shoot and glory. He even had the photographers taken photos of his good side and best facial angle. He allowed the Germans to get away, who went north and formed another line across Italy. So the allied forces had to do it all again. If he was German he would have been shot.
Eisenhower's broad front strategy was near a disaster, of which Montgomery was totally against. Monty wanted a 30-40 division thrust to the north, over the Rhine at multiple crossings, then east across the German plains chasing a disorganised retreating army right to Berlin, while seizing the Ruhr. The only reason why the allies got going again in Feb 1945 was because the Germans expended lots of men and equipment in the Ardennes at the Bulge. If not for the Bulge, under Eisenhower's broad front strategy the allies would not have been over the Rhine until summer 1945. The Americans just stumbled into one embarrassment after another. All because of poor generalship.
- Bradley refusing to use the Funnies at Omaha beach with excessive, needless casualties;
- Patton leaving Falaise on a triumphal parade to Paris instead of going to the Seine to cut off the retreating Germans. Montgomery never went to the victory parade in Paris sending one of his men, as he was too busy trying to win a war;
- Mark Clark, disobeying an order to encircle the Germans and finish them off in Italy so he could run off to Rome with his army for a photo shoot;
- Pattons' Lorraine crawl. 10 miles in 3 months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties for unimportant territory. Read American historian Harry Yeide on Patton;
- The Hurtgen Forest defeat with around 34,000 casualties. They could have just gone around the forest, as Earnest Hemingway observed;
- Bradley and Patton stealing supplies destined for Hodges against Eisenhower's orders, which cut down the Market Garden operation to ridiculously low levels of one Rhine crossing and one corps above Eindhoven;
- The German Ardennes offensive (the Bulge), of which Bradley and Hodges ignored the German build up - they were warned by British SHAEF officers 5 weeks prior to the German attack. The British had noticed the German build up, who were not even on that front. Montgomery had to take control of US armies to get a grip of the shambles. Near 100,000 US casualties;
- Patton stalled at the Bulge continually. It took Patton almost three days just to get through the village of Chaumont. Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' north towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move through American held lines devoid of the enemy. Yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne;
- The US 7th Armor had to be pulled out of Overloon as they could not take the town. The British were sent in and took the town;
- The ordering of a retreat at the Vosges in south eastern France abandoning the city of Strasbourg, which caused a huge row with French military leaders who refused to retreat. The French held onto Strasbourg;
- Under Monty the allies moved 500 km in only three months from D-Day to September 1944. Under Eisenhower they barely moved 100 km in seven months from September 1944 March 1945.
US forces were running out of men at an alarming rate because of clear poor leadership. Men in the US destined for the Far East were diverted to Europe because of the excessive losses. Hence in the Far East the British had more boots on the ground than the USA.
Monty, was a proven army group leader being a success in North Africa and Normandy, which came in with 22% less than predicated casualties and ahead in territory taken at D-Day plus 90. Common sense dictates to keep Monty in charge of all ground operations, not give it to a political man like Eisenhower, who was only a colonel a few years previously and had never been in charge of any army directly, never mind three army groups. The longest advance in 1944/early 1945 was the 60 mile lightening four day advance by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
The eventual clearing the Scheldt, delayed by Eisenhower, didn't change much at all for months. The allies didn't get going anywhere again until Feb 1945, months after the Scheldt was cleared and Antwerp's port fully operational. While the port was fully operational with no problems of supply, the US Army was even forced back into a retreat in the Ardennes.
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The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British under Montgomery. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
▪ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa;
▪ October 1942 - El Alamein;
▪ March 1943 - Medenine;
▪ June 1944 - Normandy;
▪ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands;
▪ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge;
A list of Montgomery’s victories in WW2:
▪ Battle of Alam Halfa;
▪ Second Battle of El Alamein;
▪ Battle of El Agheila;
▪ Battle of Medenine;
▪ Battle of the Mareth Line;
▪ Battle of Wadi Akarit;
▪ Allied invasion of Sicily;
▪ Operation Overlord - the largest amphibious invasion in history;
▪ Market Garden - a 60 mile salient created into German territory;
▪ Battle of the Bulge - while taking control of two shambolic US armies;
▪ Operation Veritable;
▪ Operation Plunder.
Montgomery not once had a reverse.
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Monty's 8th Army advanced the fastest of any army in WW2. From El Alamein to El Agheila from the 4th to 23rd November 1942, 1,300 km in just 17 days. After fighting a major exhausting battle at El Alemein through half a million mines. This was an Incredible feat, unparalleled in WW2. With El Alamein costing just 13,500 casualties.
The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties, with the Lorraine campaign being a failure. Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties. Hodges, head of the US First army, fled from Spa to near Liege on the 18th, despite the Germans never getting anywhere near to Spa. Hodges did not even wait for the Germans to approach Spa. He had already fled long before the Germans were stopped. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British, with Montgomery involved in planning, with also Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
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Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the reason why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak". The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 8 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men in the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself.
XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.
Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm
The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
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@bigwoody4704
Rambo, the Yanks came because their Pacific fleet was wiped out in the most embarrassing act of WW2 - having a fleet wiped out in one swoop. And the European Axis declared war on them.
On the US entering WW2, it was about the British defending the USA and teaching them how to wage war. The British provided vital assistance to the USN. In early 1942 the British had to lend the USN 24 anti-submarine vessels, and crews, a Fleet Air Arm Squadron to protect New York Harbour with the Royal Navy moving over defending the eastern seaboard of the USA, as the Americans concentrated on any perceived follow up attack by the Japanese in the Pacific. The USN was totally unprepared for war, despite every warning, ending up being far more dependent on the Royal Navy than they would have liked. Even the aircraft carrier HMS Victorious was loaned to the USA to operate in the Pacific as they only had one carrier, temporarily renamed USS Robin (after Robin Hood).
The British and Soviets had decided the course of the war with the Battle of Britain and the Battle of Moscow - Germany was stopped in the west and in the east and going nowhere in North Africa. The Germans were going nowhere from Dec 1941, the Battle of Moscow.
The war was essentially won in 1938 and 1940, when in British made a planned switch to a war economy, five years ahead of Germany, and in 1940 the British refused to make peace. In 1941 the British were building more aircraft than Germany, Japan and Italy combined, 5,000 more than the USSR and 5,000 less than the USA.
In 1942 the USA was a liability. Shipping losses to U-boats had fallen steadily throughout 1941 only to reach spectacular levels with the entry of the USA into the war - up to summer of 1942 the US lost 600 vessels from the Caribbean to Newfoundland. All major historical authorities, Morrison, Roskill, Churchill, Bauer and even General Marshall agreed this was entirely due the incompetence of the US Navy and the stupidity of Admiral King. The correspondence between King and Marshall can be found in Bauer's history and ends in effect, with an army general correctly advising a US Admiral on maritime tactics.
The USAAF in the UK was receiving approximately 70% of its supplies locally until 1943 - it is in the USAAF history.
The story of the USA 'coming to the rescue’ of the UK is propaganda story that suited both the British and the USA at the time. The reality was very different, starting with the Arcadia conference in late 1941, where the British subtly forced US to model its war economy and planning on the British system. The reality was the USA knew nothing about managing a modern war learning everything from the British. In 1939 the US army was the 19th largest in the world about the same size of Romania and smaller than Portugal. They never even had a tank, never mind a tank corps.
Had things been different and the British been really up against it, the Tizard mission may have gone to the USSR, not the USA. The British had a workable design for a nuclear bomb from the ‘Tube Alloys’ project. Britain and the USSR would have won, maybe using the A-Bomb with the USA a minor player on the world stage today - similar to China, being a large manufacturing country.
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@johnschmidt1262 At the end of day one all bridges were denied to the German bar one - the Nijmegen bridge.
Market Garden failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. The failure point was not seizing the Nijmegen bridge immediately. At the end of D-Day all crossings were denied to the Germans, except one - the Nijmegen bridge.
General Gavin of the US 82nd was tasked to seize the Nijmegen bridge as soon as landing. Gavin never, he failed with only a few German guards on the bridge. He failed because his 82nd did not seize the Nijmegen bridge immediately. Gavin even de-prioritised the bridge the prime target and focus. The 82nd were ready at 2 pm on the jump day and never moved to the bridge. The gigantic bridge was guarded by only 19 guards. The Germans occupied the bridge at 1900 hrs. Six hours after the 82nd were ready to march.
Events on the 1st day:
♦ "At 1328, the 665 men of US 82nd 1st Battalion began to fall from the sky."
- Poulussen, R. Lost at Nijmegen.
♦ "Forty minutes after the drop, around 1410, the 1st Battalion marched off towards their objective, De Ploeg, three miles away."
-Poulussen,
♦ "The 82nd were digging in and performing recon in the area looking for 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald
- Neillands, R. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
♦ The 82nd were dug in and preparing to defend their newly constructed regimental command post, which they established at 1825. Then Colonel Lindquist "was told by General Gavin, around 1900, to move into Nijmegen."
-Poulussen
Events on the evening of the 1st day:
♦ Having dug in at De Ploeg, Warren's battalion wasn't prepared to move towards Nijmegen at all.
-Poulussen,
♦ Once Lindquist told Lieutenant Colonel Warren that his battalion was to move, Warren decided to visit the HQ of the Nijmegen Underground first - to see what info the underground had on the Germans at the Nijmegen bridge.
- Poulussen,
♦ It was not until 1830hrs that he [Warren] was able to send a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small, just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a radio — say forty men.
- Neillands. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
♦ This was not a direct route to the bridge from Warren's original position, and placed him in the middle of the town. It was also around 2100 when "A" Company left to attempt to capture the Nijmegen road bridge.
♦ "B" Company was not with them because they'd split up due to it being dark with "visibility was less than ten yards".
- Poulussen,
♦ The 82nd attacks were resisted by the Germans until the next day.
Events of the 2nd day:
♦ Gavin drove up in a jeep the next morning and was told by Warren that although they didn't have the bridge yet, another attack was about to go in.
♦ Gavin then told Warren to hold because the Germans were attacking in the southeast portion of the 82nd perimeter.
♦ At around 1100, Warren was ordered to withdraw from Nijmegen completely.
- Poulussen
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@johnlucas8479
Reaching the Zuider Zee was a low secondary target. The prime aims was a pincer on the Ruhr and getting tanks onto the North German Plains getting to Berlin ASAP.
But as Roosevelt had arranged behind Churchill's back with Stalin to sell off eastern Europe to the USSR, that was not going to happen. Roosevelt agreed that the Soviets would occupy eastern Europe, when historically the Soviets, or Russia, had never been in those countries. Then the Cold War started. Churchill then devised Operation Unthinkable, the liberation of the eastern countries from the USSR. This operation was only revealed in the 1970s.
General Bodo Zimmermann, Chief of Operations, German Army Group D, said that had the strategy of Montgomery succeeded in the autumn of 1944, there would have been no need to fight for the West Wall, not for the central and upper Rhine, all of 24 which would have fallen automatically.
Indeed, had Monty's idea for a 40 division concentrated thrust towards the Ruhr been accepted by Eisenhower instead of him messing about in the Lorraine, Alsace, Vosges etc, it would have all been over for the Germans in the west.
"The best course of the Allies would have been to concentrate a really strong striking force with which to break through past Aachen to the Ruhr area. Germany's strength is in the north. South Germany was a side issue. He who holds northern Germany holds Germany. Such a break-through, coupled with air domination, would have torn in pieces the weak German front and ended the war. Berlin and Prague would have been occupied ahead of the Russians. There were no German forces behind the Rhine, and at the end of August our front was wide open. There was the possibility of an operational break-through in the Aachen area, in September. This would have facilitated a rapid conquest of the Ruhr and a quicker advance on Berlin.
By turning the forces from the Aachen area sharply northward, the German 15th and1st Parachute Armies could have been pinned against the estuaries of the Mass and the Rhine. They could not have escaped eastwards into Germany."- Gunther Blumentritt in, The Other Side Of The Hill by Liddell Hart
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@johnlucas8479
If XXX Corps ran over the Nijmegen bridge as they should have, the road was open to Arnhem. Few German forces were there.
If the 40 Division Thrust was undertaken, by the time it ran out if supplies, way into Germany on the North German Plains, Antwerp would have been open, and open earlier as the Scheldt would have been cleared earlier using greater forces. Any halt of the forward positions would have been a matter of a few days, if there was a halt. This does not take into account the swift capture of German ports, which may have been available with such a hard and big fast thrust.
You wrote: "Clearly Eisenhower did give Monty the use of US Div." Are you serious when you write that? That was a part of Operation Aintree, not Market Garden, where no US ground forces were involved.
You wrote: "Even if Lorraine was of limited military value a thrust through Lorraine in support of the Northern Thrust would have forced the Germans to split their limited resource,"
The US Army reports states:
"The Saar industrial region, while significant, was of secondary importance when compared to the great Ruhr industrial complex farther north."
"With so little going for it, why did Patton bother with Lorraine at all?
The Third army was way too far south, facing entreched German defences, going nowhere fast. It was the First army who could form the southern pincer on the Ruhr.
The US Army reports states:
"Patton and his superiors remained convinced that the war could be ended in 1944. On 10 September, 12th Army Group ordered Third Army to advance on a broad front and seize crossings over the Rhine River at Mannheim and Mainz.Patton's forces were already on the move."
Note the words "broad front". The Third army, led by Patton, failed.
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@davidhimmelsbach557 wrote:
"Patton and Bradley both were enraged by Ike's stop order."
Those two turkeys should have been fired for insubordination.
"Post-Normandy Bradley seemed unable to control Patton, who persistently flouted Eisenhower’s directives and went his own way, aided and abetted by Bradley. This part of their relationship quickly revealed itself in matters of supply, where Hodges, the commander of the US First Army, was continually starved of fuel and ammunition in order to keep Patton’s divisions rolling, even when Eisenhower’s strategy required First Army to play the major role in 12th Army Group’s activities."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again, and being bogged down - again. The resources starved First Army could not be a part of northern thrust as Bradley and Patton, against Eisenhower's orders, were syphoning off supplies destined for the First army. This northern thrust over the Rhine, as Eisenhower envisaged, obviously would not work as he thought.
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@davidhimmelsbach557 wrote:
"You do realize that the drop was delayed by a fateful three days so as to allow 2,000 American GMC trucks to be brought to Monty?"
"The situation was not helped by the discovery in [early] September that no fewer than
1,500 three-ton lorries [Austin K5] supplied to the British Second Army to tackle the transportation problem had faulty pistons and could not be used at all."
-Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
These trucks were fixed on site quite quickly with even men from the Austin factories sent to Normandy. It was a piston ring problem. 2,000 US trucks were needed to supply the priority, the Northern Thrust. Your father was in a low priority area, hence why he sat about. They never had enough fuel for rides in the French countryside, as nice as it is.
"A further problem arose over the transportation of petrol. The Allied armies took no fewer than 22 million jerry cans to France in June, yet by August about half of these had disappeared, either sold to French farmers or stolen. The result, says Martin van Creveld, was that ‘the loss of this humble item limited the entire POL ( Petrol, Oil and Lubricants) supply system.’ "
-Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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War Production:
Keegan, World War Two, chapter War Production:
♦ Germany was third behind the USA, then the UK in GDP,
in 1939. Germany = UK in capital goods production in 1939.
♦ UK economy grows 60% during WW2.
♦ Hitler says to Guderian, re: USSR, "had I known they had so
many tanks as that, I would have thought twice before
invading"
Wages of Destruction by Prof Adam Tooze, Preface, xxiii:
"Combined GDP of the UK and France exceeded Germany & Italy by 60%."
Tooze, page 454:
"It was poor because of the incomplete industrial and economic development of Germany".
Interesting:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/workingpapers/publications/twerp603.pdf
Snippets:
"Soviet exceeded German GDP in 1940"
"The Allies won the war because their economies supported a greater volume of war production and military personnel in larger numbers. This was true of the war as a whole, and it was also true on the eastern front where the Soviet economy, of a similar size to Germany's but less developed and also seriously weakened by invasion, supplied more soldiers and weapons."
"the technological key to Soviet superiority in the output of weapons was mass production. At the outbreak of war Soviet industry as a whole was not larger and not more productive than German industry. The non-industrial resources on which Soviet industry could draw were larger than Germany's in the sense of territory and population, but of considerably lower quality, more far-flung, and less well integrated. Both countries had given considerable thought to industrial mobilisation preparations, but the results were of questionable efficacy. In both countries war production was poorly organised at first and productivity in the military-industrial sector had been falling for several years. The most important difference was that Soviet industry had made real strides towards mass production, while German industry was still locked into an artisan mode of production that placed a premium on quality and assortment rather than quantity. Soviet industry produced fewer models of each type of weapon, and subjected them to less modification, but produced them in far larger quantities. Thus the Soviet Union was able to make considerably more effective use of its limited industrial resources than Germany.
"Before the war Soviet defence industry was in a state of permanent technological reorganisation as new models of aircraft, tanks, and other weapons were introduced and old ones phased out at dizzying rate."
The USSR had access to oil from the British refinery in Iran, more natural resources and far more men. Making their ability to produce far greater than Germany, which actually happened.
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@PistonAvatarGuy
At the time the Alison engine was not worth playing about with, wasting time, hoping it will be improved (not guaranteed) when an engine is available that is proven and reliable that does the business. An engine which could also be easily and greatly improved.
Ford made an engine to compete with the Merlin, which was a decent engine when in prototype form. It got nowhere because it was a me-too engine. They wanted Ford to not waste their time, wanting them to spend valuable time, expertise, and energy developing other engines that were urgently needed, like proper tank engines and the likes.
The US forces still persisted with the Merlin way after WW2, not moving towards an improved Alison. Packard stopped making Merlins under licence after around 1952. Posr WW2 Packatds production only went to the USA, even after RR greatly upped the licence fee for each engine after WW2, meaning Merlin prices to Uncle Sam jumped through the ceiling.
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@PistonAvatarGuy
The British assessed the P-38 Lightening rejecting the plane. The British gave it the name Lightening. After Battle of Britain experiences the plane was not up to it. From an initial order of over 650 planes, incorporating the French orders, they cancelled the lot bar three.
That was one of the reasons why the British got North American to build the Mustang for them, giving them the specs and requirements for a new plane. The British Air Ministry agreed to have the Alison engine fitted in the Mustang, as production was not up enough for the Merlin. Shadow factories were being built with Packard in the USA not even approached yet. Under R&D of the Mustang, Roy Harker of RR approached North American regarding a Merlin installation capability.
The plane was plagued with high altitude and turbo problems. In The Lockheed P-38 Lightning by Warren Bodie, he states that there was pressure in the USA to install a Merlin 61 in the Lightening. Nationalistic and company pressures scuppered that. Graham in Allied Aircraft Piston Engines of World War II: History and Development of Frontline Aircraft Piston Engines, stated that pressure from Allison to the USAAF stopped the Merlin being fitted into the Lightening.
They could not produce enough Merlins. Getting production up would have taken time, time the military departments never had. Allison could have made the RR Merlin under licence, as Packard did, but that would have been too much for them. When Packard took up the RR contract, only the janitor and his cat were in the factory.
So a plane that promised so much never realised its potential.
The supercharged Allison had abysmal reliability when mounted in the P-82.
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@PistonAvatarGuy wrote:
" my point is that it was a better design with more potential."
The Allison engine design was OK. The engine was designed from the outset for the military while the Merlin came from a civilian racing engine lineage, being adopted by the military pre WW2. The Merlin's ability to be uprated was a great asset to the military. During WW2 the Allison's potential was limited as it could not easily take the "two-stage, two-speed supercharging.
"I think that you fail to consider that the US was still suffering through the great depression going into WW2"
RR and the British in general got rid of many of the US soup lines dipping into idle US industry to play catchup with Germany, who militarised before the British and French.
No one will take you seriously if you keep barking on that the Alison was superior to the Merlin, which it was not. The Allison never came to the levels of performance the Merlin could give. And BTW, the Merlin was superseded during WW2, with all later Spitfires and Bombers using the Griffon, which was operationally used up until 1991. After WW2 about the only buyer of new Merlins was the US military (apart from the detuned tank version, the Meteor). RR had a section to recon Merlins set up during the war, which continued after. There was enough Merlins about to recon after the war.
The Griffon was used in the Martin Baker MB-5. This plane was faster and more manoeuvrable than a Spitfire or Mustang, reaching 460mph. It was quick, easy and cheap to make having a modular construction of mainly square sections and four cannons. It was ready by early 1944 and could have been operational in months. Jets were coming so it was dropped, as was the Spitfire successor the Spiteful.
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@PistonAvatarGuy
This guy is one Yankee obsessed nut!
He is that mad he thinks the Allison engine was better than the Merlin and Griffon. He keeps repeating the same mantra.
♦ In aviation in WW2 the British outstripped the rest. No one made a plane like Mosquito, or Tempest. No one. The US never had a decent fighter until they adopted the British Mustang with an RR engine.
♦ The British made the first proper dedicated jet fighter,. the Meteor, which just after WW2 set air speed records.
♦ Post war, again the British stripped all others in aviation. No one made a plane like the Harrier or the TRSR2, V bombers, etc.
♦ The British invented the modern turbo jet as well. Read on.....
♦ Whittle's reverse flow design is the basis for almost all turboprop engines in production;
♦ Britain had axial-flow engines running in 1941 - the same time that Geman engineer Franz had his Jumo running. The Metrovick F.2 flew in a Meteor in 1943. The F.2 transpired into the Sapphire which the US built under licence as the J-65 and then modified it as the J-47;
♦ Westinghouse in the US was given a Whittle engine, and plans for improvements. They made such a hash of it that Whittle had to go to the US to assist. The US government gave the project to GE who made the I-16 which transpired into the first US built jet engine. The US licensed the Ghost for the P-80/T-33 and the RR Nene. The Nene was used by the Soviets in the MIG 15;
♦ German engineer Ohain's engine was not produced being shelved by 1943. No engine was built using his design;
♦ Whittle also R&D'd axial-flow engines. The metallurgy was not advanced enough at the time. Whittle's engines produced far more thrust than the German axial-flows and far more reliable;
♦ The PT-6, PWC 100/150 are derivatives of Whittle's designs being still produced;
♦ Whittle's centrifugal-flow engines were built under licence in the US after WW2 - the J-33, J-42 and J-48;
♦ The Olympus was the world's first 2 shaft turbojet and the first to exceed 10,000 pounds of thrust;
♦ The 1950 Avon was the first reliable axial-flow engine. Also the longest produced gas turbine in history being still in production as a land based generator;
♦ The RR Conway was the world's first turbofan;
♦ The RB-211 was the world's first 3 shaft turbofan;
♦ The Rolls Royce Trent was the world's first turboprop to fly;
♦ British axial-flows led the post war world in technology and power;
♦ The axial-flow Sapphire was built in the US as the J-65. The GE J-47 was based on the Sapphire.
Frank Whittle invented the modern turbojet.
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@PistonAvatarGuy
Just for our resident nutball. I doubt any of it will sink in..
There is a myth that the Germans were way ahead of the British in jet engines and planes in WW2, when the opposite is true. The WW2 German jet engines were extremely unreliable with low performances and very high fuel consumption. The German axial-flow turbojets never worked as they wanted being developed up to 1953 by the French to obtain a usable engine. The French lost a lot of time playing around with the German engines, instead of working with the British. The French and Soviets after WW2 tried to improve the German axial-flow engines and largely failed.
The Germans did not invent the axial-flow turbojet, they based everything on Frank Whittle's patents. The British Metropolitan-Vickers F.1 axial-flow engine was running on a test bed in 1941. The F.2 was an axial-flow being an extremely advanced design using a nine-stage axial compressor, annular combustor, and a two-stage turbine. It powered a Meteor in November 1943. It was considered unreliable and never saw use during the war, hence why the British went for the reliability, controllability and quick development of the centrifugal turbojets. The Metro-Vick F.3 was the first ever turbofan in 1943. Metro-Vick developed the F.9 Sapphire, however left the jet business in 1947 giving all their designs to Armstrong Siddeley, who commercially produced the Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire engine, which was licence built in the US as the J-65.
The British in order to get a usable and reliable jet engine, with the technology of the time, went for a centrifugal design rather than the troublesome axial-flow design. This design produced less thrust than an axial-flow but was quicker to develop and reliable outperforming the best piston engines planes at the time. It took 5 months to develop, while the first reliable axial-flow engine was the 1950 Rolls Royce Avon, which took 5 years to get right. The Avon is still in production as a ground based gas turbine, with the aero version in production for 30 years.
In 1945 the French made and tested some German designed turbo jets made with quality steel unavailable to German industry in WW2. They ran for 25 hours instead of the 10 hours of the Germans engines that used poorer quality steel. Not much better. The German axial-flow engines failed because of heavy design flaws. The centrifugal compressor used by the first British Meteor plane was fine and much more reliable, but unable to reach high compression ratios. This limited performances. Centrifugal compressors were used up to the 1960s.
In 1945 the team from the French ATAR laboratory plus some BMW and Junkers engineers, were engaged by the French SNECMA research bureau, with the objective to build a new reliable and performing axial-flow turbojet. The BMW 003/Jumo004 was considered unusable. It was tested on the first French jet aircraft, the 1946 So6000 Triton, overheating and exploding. The plane only flew with a Rolls Royce Nene centrifugal turbojet.
The ATAR project took 6 years to produce the first acceptable axial-flow turbojet (ATAR 101 B1), produced in 1953. So 8 years research and developments by the French using the German jet engines as the base. It was installed on the first French jet fighter, the Dassault Ouragan.
The French lost a lot of time because the German jets had poor efficiency and some concept fails. Essentially in the combustion chambers and fresh air circulation to reduce the external temperature of the engine. The BMW jet was known for overheat problems which precluded fuselage installation.
The question at the end of WW2 was: what is the most efficient way to produce jet fighters? The answer was clearly not adopting the German design of engine and fuselage. The build costs for a jet engine were much higher than a piston engine, with the fuel consumption near 4x. The centrifugal compressor the British adopted in some planes was the best choice with 1944-45 technology, more compression pressure was not an advantage when the hot turbine was unable to resist higher temperatures. The German turbojets had big overheat problems as the engine would not work in an enclosed fuselage for single engined fighters. This defect was immediately noted by the French on the 1946 "SO 6000 Triton" prototype, and by the Soviets on the 1946 Mig 9. The Soviets quickly replaced the BMW 004B2 by the centrifugal Rolls Royce Nene which worked without problems, dismissing the BMW engine for fighter planes. The Rolls Royce Nene was copied to the last nut by the USSR being installed in the Mig 15 being used effectively in the Korean war.
The Meteor was the first proper fully developed jet plane introduced operationally. The 262 was slightly faster than the Meteor F3, but extremely unreliable. The British would never put into the sky such an undeveloped plane as the me262. The British could have had a jet fighter operational in 1941, but it may have been as bad as the me262. The Germans advanced R&D on jets after they interrogated captured British RAF men. They learned the British were advanced in jet technology and flying prototype planes. Until then the Germans had no intention of mass producing jet planes.
The rushed together Me262 started claiming kills on 26 July 1944, the Meteor claimed its first V1 kill a few days later on the 4 August 1944. But the Meteor was a proper fully developed jet plane, not a thrown together desperate effort as the me262 was. The me262 fuselage was similar to a piston plane with the pilot over the wings obscuring downward vision, while the Meteor was a proper new design fuselage specifically for jet fighters with a forward of the wings pilot position giving superior pilot vision, as we see in planes today. The cockpit was very quiet. The sweptback wings of the me262 were to move the engines further back for better weight distribution, not for aerodynamic reasons as is thought the case. The me262's airframe was based on piston engine planes, even with an initial rear tail wheel. The tricycle landing gear was only introduced when it was found the thrust of the jet engines would scorch the runway surface as the exhaust faced downwards.
The Meteor's airframe was designed purely for jet propulsion even with a high tail to prevent thrust interfering with the tail which could affect control.
Centrifugal compressors were not obsolete being used in turboprops. Between a turbo jet and a turboprop, the only difference is the turbine, not the compressor. The last centrifugal compressor jet engine still in service on a handful of commercial aircraft like the Fokker 27, is the Rolls Royce Dart turboprop. A very reliable engine made in 27 versions, but with high fuel consumption to modern engines. The Rolls Royce Dart Turboprop turbo jet engine was produced the longest, being a comparable design turbojet to the likes the Rolls Royce Nene. The rugged engine was produced from 1946 up to 1987.
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@pfarden5836
You have comprehension problems. Again for you......
"The Battle of the Generals" by General Blumenson makes it clear that Bradley, not Montgomery, ordered Patton to stop at Falaise;
1) Bradley, on his own initiative, ordered Patton to stop on August 12 (page. 206-207);
2) Bradley's post-war effort to blame this on Montgomery was "dishonest and anti-British" (page. 211);
3) Despite Bradley stating he ordered it. Patton was running off to Paris, but Bradley failed to stop him from making a long hook encirclement of the Germans towards Dreux at the Sein (page. 223);
4) This was in clear contradiction to Montgomery's suggestion that he do so (page. 218).
In Bradley's memoir A Soldier's Story he says on page 377, "Monty had never prohibited and I never proposed that U.S. forces close the gap from Argentan to Falaise." He gives a number of reasons for not pushing north from Argentan, but Monty forbidding it is not one of them.
In A General's Life Bradley writes, "Montgomery had no part in the decision; it was mine and mine alone. Some writers have suggested that I appealed to Monty to move the boundary north to Falaise and he refused, but, of course, that is not true... I was determined to hold Patton at Argentan and had no cause to ask Monty to shift the boundary."
Nigel Hamilton, Monty's official biographer, states in The War Years that the decision was Bradley's. "Dempsey's diary record of his meeting with Monty and Bradley proves there was certainly no plot to deny Patton glory, since Dempsey specifically recorded: `So long as the Northward move of Third Army meets little opposition, the two leading Corps will disregard inter-Army boundaries'" (page. 788).
There are plenty of secondary sources that pin the blame on Bradley:
a) Russell Weigley, Eisenhower's Lieutenants" page. 216: "Bradley, having set the stage by urging Eisenhower and Montgomery to grasp the opportunity of a short envelopment at Falaise-Argentan, failed to persist in completing his own design. He abandoned the short envelopment before its potential was achieved, and meanwhile he had delayed the long envelopment at the Seine."
b) Peter Mansoor, The GI Offensive in Europe page. 171: "Bradley was slow to concentrate sufficient force to close the Falaise Gap from the south when he had the opportunity to do so."
c) Robin Neillands, The Battle of Normandy 1944 page. 358: "Bradley's memoirs and the British Official History make it abundantly clear this decision was Bradley's."
There are many more sources where these came from. Carlo D'Este states on page 444, "When Dempsey met Bradley and Montgomery there was apparently no restraint placed on further northward movement by XV Corps... the fact that the Third Army did not move north of Argentan appears to have been Bradley's choice rather than a prohibition by Montgomery." On page 448 he writes, "The assertion that Montgomery made no effort to close the gap is without foundation." D'Este also dismisses the view of Strafford on page 451. No reasonable reading of D'Este on Falaise could possibly support blaming Montgomery. The US Official History, the British Official History, BRADLEY HIMSELF (twice!) and a multitude of secondary sources say Monty did not order Patton to halt. Neither Bradley himself, nor Montgomery, nor the senior British Army commander, nor the British or American official historians think Montgomery ordered Bradley to stop. THERE WAS NO HALT ORDER by Monty.
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Dave M A C wrote:
"Field Order No.1 for the 508th PIR, and reproduced in the appendix of his book, was 'the' plan for the Nijmegen operation. My problem is that Field Order No.1 was signed by "LINDQUIST Commanding" and not by Gavin. It was Lindquist's detailed plan for his subordinate battalion commanders to occupy their initial objectives."
So, Field Order No.1, date 13 Sept, was a 508 regiment order from Lindquist to his unit, not a Division Order by Gavin?
If so:
▪Lindquists only orders from Gavin were verbal at the pre-briefing in England, 48 hours before the jump on the 17th.
▪In that meeting it was clear, by two witnesses, that Lindquist was told to go for the bridge after securing the Grosbeak heights.
▪The heights are on the way to the bridge from the DZ.
▪Lindquists advance scouts relayed back to the 508th as they were slowly marching to Groesbeek, that the heights were clear of the enemy.
▪Lindquist was assured by Dutch Resistance men that the town was mainly clear with 19 guards on the bridge.
▪ A patrol was sent to the bridge to confirm what the Dutch Resistance said.
▪Lindquist could send men to take the bridge immediately, while others set up shop at De Ploeg near the heights.
Dave M A C wrote:
"Field Order No.1 for the 508th PIR, and reproduced in the appendix of his book, was 'the' plan for the Nijmegen operation.
This Order was written by Lindquist. Gavin must have read it as it was distributed to the 82nd A/B Div. He must have approved of it, not needing for him to add anything further in writing to Lindquist. Gavin must have thought Lindquist had covered all the bases.
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Patton was an average US general, like Simpson, Patch, Hodges, etc. No more. A media creation, elevating the average beyond their status.
"The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian First Army HQ for the same purpose.
Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation.
"This advance duly began at 0630hrs on August 18 which, as the Canadian Official History remarks, ‘was a day and a half after Montgomery had issued the order for the Canadians to close the gap at Trun, and four and a half days after Patton had been stopped at the Third Army boundary’. During that time, says the Canadian History, the Canadians had been ‘fighting down from the north with painful slowness’ and the Germans had been making their way east through the Falaise gap. They were not, however, unimpeded; the tactical air forces and Allied artillery were already taking a fearful toll of the German columns on the roads heading east past Falaise.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise – Operation Tractable – which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed there with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were re-fitting and rebuilt after the summer 1944 battles. The Panzer Brigades had green crews with little time to train, did not know their tanks properly, had no recon elements and didn't even meet their unit commander until his arrival at the front. These were not elite forces.
The 17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, equipped only with assault guns not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy and not up to strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the best German divisions in the west were NOT.
♦ Who did the 3rd Army engage?
♦ Who did the 3rd Army defeat?
♦ Patton never once faced a full strength Waffen SS panzer division nor a Tiger battalion.
In The Lorraine, the 3rd Army faced a rabble. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said:
"I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Patton was mostly facing a second rate rabble in The Lorraine.
Patton was neither on the advance nor being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. The road from Luxembourg to Bastogne saw few German forces, with Bastogne being on the very southern German flank, their focus was west. Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was not one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, while 26th Volks-Grenadier only had about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind only had a small number of tanks operational. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1.
Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Leading elements were engaging the Americans and British under Montgomery's command near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance and pushed them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons opened up with the American attack stopping and pulling back. The next day fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B retreating once again. It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. Patton's forces arrived at Chaumont late on the 22nd December. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day, the 25th! Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, just 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne.
After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF. Coningham, gave Patton massive ground attack plane support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall.
In Normandy in 1944, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact. This eastern dash devoid of German forces was the ride the US media claimed Patton was some sort master of fast moving armour.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates.
♦ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics Bradley's II Corps were employing
♦ He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division, Truscott of being "afraid to fight".
♦ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps.
♦ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize stalled he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being "very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect".
♦ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in reporting their losses.
Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault, including his subordinates. An unremarkable general who thought he was reincarnated. Oh, and wore cowboy guns.
Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his orders, and Eisenhower's orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read:
Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds and
Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies by Harry Yeide
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@trickylifts
Add to your reading list:
1) Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History Of The 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment In World War II by Phil Nordyke.
2) Arnhem 1944 by Christer Bergström
3) Market Garden, Then and Now by Karl Magry.
Yes, one of these apologist, shift the blame US views, that Nijmegen was heavily manned and even if the 82nd had moved to the bridge immediately in force, instead of 8 hours late, they could not have taken the bridge. Facts say otherwise. The American post war version of events is one that attempts to whitewash their failure at Nijmegen, to capture the bridge on the first day. The film A bridge Too Far, made when Browning had already died, only cemented the false narrative in the minds of the public. Since then many researchers have uncovered the real facts.
"I knew all of the division staff and the other regimental commanders, and was included in the planning of operations and briefings. I was ‘bigoted.’ [This is a WWII military term for being read into/briefed on missions.]
Prior to the Holland jump, I sat in 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.
After we were dropped in Holland, 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 (drop zone) is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.” So I went cross-country through Indian country [slang military term for enemy territory] 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 to, “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.”
- by Chester E Graham, liaison officer between the 508th and the 82nd Division Headquarters.
The 508th did launch some patrols into Nijmegen. A patrol from the 3rd Battalion almost reached the bridge - but only after being delayed by the enemy with the bridge being reinforced in company strength by the time they reached it.
Warren's 1st Bn had launched a patrol or two patrols, yes, just patrols. Nordyke relates two version from Warren and his exec' officer. It, or they, were led by the Bn S-2 Intelligence Section, followed and joined by Lt. Weaver's 3rd Platoon of the Bn reserve C Company, plus two squads from the HQ Company LMG Platoon and C Company's SCR-300 radio set and operator, for communication back to the Battalion. Weaver's patrol met enemy resistance, then withdrawing when they heard the Bn were sending A and B Companies to take the bridge. They only came because of Gavin intervened, running livid to Lindquist's CP in a Jeep, screaming at him to get moving when he found, after many hours, out he was not moving to the bridge.
Bergström states that three of the S-2 Section patrol, got separated reaching the bridge. They managed to capture six or seven German troops and a small artillery weapon. They waited an hour until dark at around 7:30 pm, withdrawing. They could hear heavy equipment approaching from Arnhem, being the SS-Panzer Recon Battalion 9, who just just missed Frost's men at Arnhem bridge at 7pm. Bergström's source is Demolition Platoon, 508th by Zig Burroughs.
This contrasts sharply by Frost's progress in Arnhem, where his whole battalion followed A Company moved away from the Germans, through people's houses, over walls, and back yards, carrying all their equipment, by-passing German positions, reaching the Arnhem bridge. The British First Airborne landed half an hours after the 508. They have an extra 4 or 5 miles march, met more resistance, yet reached the Arnhem bridge before the US paras reached the Nijmegen bridge.
Whether there was 19 or 11 guards on the Nijmegen bridge, could have been 11 or 19, is neither here or there.
Gavin obtained promotion 505th PIR command to Assistant Divisional commander for Normandy, being promoted again to Divisional commander for Holland. Gavin inherited Lindquist as commander of the 508th, who were the least experienced regiment in the division. Yet gave the least experienced regiment the prime task. Gavin says that in England he told Lindquist to go for the bridge "without delay." Lindquist denied Gavin said this.
Gavin chose the most experienced regiment, the 504th, who had just returned from Anzio, to secure the Grave bridge, because it was on the Division's supply line. Without the Grave bridge secured, the 82nd would be in serious trouble. The next most experienced regiment, was Gavin's old unit the 505th. He gave them the defensive task of securing the landing zones from counter-attack from the Reichswald.
The intelligence picture by SHAEF, on 16 September, suspected II.SS-Panzerkorps was drawing new tanks from a depot in the Kleve area of Germany. Gavin had this mythical 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald, so he gave the less experienced 508th the task of securing Nijmegen and its bridges. This was a unit, better suited to the defensive role. The 508th, and Lindquist, were well dug-in on the Groesbeek ridge when Gavin was informed they were not moving on the bridges in Nijmegen. They were not following Gavin's divisional plan, Lindquist was waiting for an order from the division HQ before moving into Nijmegen. This was a clear command failure between Gavin and Lindquist.
When Ridgway was promoted to command XVIII Airborne Corps with Gavin moving up to command 82nd Division, Gavin's old position of assistant Divisional commander was left vacant. During Market Garden he was doing two jobs. Ridgway had no role to play in Market Garden as his two divisions of XVIII Corps were attached to the British First Airborne Corps for the operation, under Browning.
Ridgway paid a visit to Gavin's CP to see why they had not secured the bridge, when XXX Corps made contact with the Division. Gavin entered to find Ridgway in the CP studying a map. Gavin ignored him and immediately left without even acknowledging Ridgway's presence. If Ridgway was still divisional commander for Market Garden operation, the 82nd would have secured the bridge immediately.
There was no German combat troops in Nijmegen on the jump day. None. That is a fact. The low grade aged troops were scared stiff of meeting well armed aggressive paras. The German HQs moved out immediately. Regarding Harmel, when interviewed by Kershaw in the 1970s, he said there was no German armour between the Nijmegen and Arnhem bridge when XXX corps secured the Nijmegen bridge. This was incorrect as German records show German tanks, inc' Tigers, were already crossing south on the Arnhem bridge to form a line at Elst - the British First had capitulated on the Arnhem bridge running out of ammunition, at the same time XXX Corps crossed the Nijmegen bridge. Harmel never knew this, as communications was skant in a fluid situation.
After the event, the last thing the Germans were thinking of was, where, what and what time, as they saw the allies in a few days had punched a 60 mile salient right into their lines on the German border, taking the largest road bridge in Europe at the time. Was there to be a massive push immediately by the allies using the feared Jabos? German minds were elsewhere, not on the details of a bridge secured by the allies and one they failed to secure.
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@trickylifts
The prime planners, Brereton and Williams of the USAAF who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Zon, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak".
The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges.There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. In short, so lightly defended they were undefended.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508th seven hours after they had landed to capture the road bridge. They arrived at 2200hr, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 old non-combat men - a training unit. Men scared stiff of meeting, hard, experienced, well trained paras.
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Market Garden failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. The failure point was not moving to seize the Nijmegen bridge immediately. At the end of D-Day all crossings were denied to the Germans, except two - the Nijmegen bridge and Zon bridge. General Gavin of the US 82nd was supposed to get to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as landing. Gavin never, he failed with only a few German guards on the bridge. He failed because his 82nd did not seize the Nijmegen bridge immediately.
Gavin even de-prioritised the bridge, the prime target and focus. The 82nd were ready at 2 pm on the jump day not moving to the bridge. The gigantic bridge was guarded by only 18 guards. The Germans occupied the bridge at 1900 hrs. Six hours after the 82nd were ready to march. The 82nd's first attack on the bridge was at 2200 hrs, eight hours after being ready to march.
Events on the 1st day:
♦ "At 1328, the 665 men of US 82nd 1st Battalion began to fall from the sky."
- Poulussen, R. Lost at Nijmegen.
♦ "Forty minutes after the drop, around 1410, the 1st Battalion marched off towards their objective, De Ploeg, three miles away."
-Poulussen,
♦ "The 82nd were digging in and performing reconnin the area looking for 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald
- Neillands, R. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
♦ The 82nd were dug in and preparing to defend their newly constructed regimental command post, which they established at 1825. Then Colonel Lindquist "was told by General Gavin, around 1900, to move into Nijmegen."
-Poulussen
Events on the evening of the 1st day:
♦ Having dug in at De Ploeg, Warren's battalion wasn't prepared to move towards Nijmegen at all.
- Poulussen,
♦ Once Lindquist told Lieutenant Colonel Warren that his Battalion was to move, Warren decided to visit the HQ of the Nijmegen Underground first - to see what info the underground had on the Germans at the Nijmegen bridge.
- Poulussen,
♦ It was not until 1830hrs that he [Warren] was able to send a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small, just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a radio — say forty men.
- Neillands. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
♦ This was not a direct route to the bridge from Warren's original position, and placed him in the middle of the town. It was also around 2100 when "A" Company left to attempt to capture the Nijmegen road bridge.
♦ As the scouts neared a traffic circle surrounding a landscaped circular park near the center of Nijmegen, the Keizer Karel Plein, from which a mall-like park led northeast toward the Nijmegen bridge, a burst of automatic weapons fire came from the circle. The time was about two hours before midnight. (2200 hrs)
- US Official History, Siegfried Line Campaign.
♦ The 82nd attacks were resisted by the Germans until the next day.
Events of the 2nd day:
♦ Gavin drove up in a jeep the next morning and was told by Warren that although they didn't have the bridge yet, another attack was about to go in.
♦ Gavin then told Warren to hold because the Germans were attacking in the southeast portion of the 82nd perimeter.
♦ At around 1100, Warren was ordered to withdraw from Nijmegen completely.
- Poulussen
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@trickylifts wrote:
"So again, Harmel and Kershaw were correct: there was a period of up to c.17 hours where XXX Corps with 82AD grunts had a very good chance of taking Elst, pressed right up near Arnhem."
Complete nonsense! More apologist deflect blame from the 82nd. Three Tiger tanks, one heavy gun and two companies of infantry were heading south over the Arnhem bridge to Lent as the Guards tanks crossed the Nijmegen bridge. Do you understand that? Stated in:
♦ Operation Market Garden then and Now, Volume 2, Allies Capture Nijmegen bridge by Karel Margry
♦ Nijmegen: U.S. 82nd Airborne Division – 1944, chapter nine, by Tim Saunders
At nightfall on D plus 3, the British had at Nijmegen only the Guards Armoured Division. Because inclement weather continued to deny arrival of the 82d Airborne Division's glider infantry, the Guards Armoured's Coldstream Guards Group still was needed as a reserve for the [82nd] airborne division. This left but two armored groups to go across the Waal. Even these did not make it until the next day (D plus 4, 21 September), primarily because of die-hard German defenders who had to be ferreted from the superstructure and underpinnings of the bridge.
- US Official history
For all the concern that must have existed about getting to Arnhem, only a small part of the British armor was freed late on D plus 4, 21 September, to start the northward drive. As the attack began, British commanders saw every apprehension confirmed. The ground off the main roads was low-lying, soggy bottomland, denying employment of tanks. A few determined enemy bolstered with antitank guns might delay even a large force. Contrary to the information that had been received, Colonel Frost and his men had been driven away from the north end of the Arnhem bridge the afternoon before, so that since the preceding night the bridge had been open to German traffic.
- US Official History
The German traffic was tanks. Read my posts above. After 2 days fighting, split up, spread out and disjointed, assisting the 82nd, the Guards Armored Division had to regroup, re-arm, re-fuel and give the crews some sleep. It was simply not possible for them to have moved onto Arnhem that night, even if they had wanted to. If a few of them foolishly did move up the road to Arnhem, they would have found the Arnhem bridge in German hands being blocked by Tiger tanks, which would have made them scrap metal on the raised roads.
The task the five tanks that crossed the bridge were given, was to defend the bridge and consolidate against enemy attacks. There was not a 'whole corps' of tanks ready to go. Two of the tanks were hit with one having men killed. Carington's tank was a radio relay, that stood at the northern end of the bridge as a radio link back to Horrocks from the leading tanks at Lent. It was under attack.
Do not get your history from Hollywood. And stop making things up. The reason for not gaining a foothold over the Rhine was that two US para units failed to seize their bridges on d-day.
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@trickylifts
More ad hom attacks, showing that you clearly lost it. You keep saying black is white, even when faced with facts. Burriss was a liar! The embarrassment of failing to seize the Nijmegen bridge has put Americans on a divert blame/lying game since 1945. This vid shows just some of it.
The 82nd had little part in the eventual seizure of the Nijmegen bridge at all, as it was taken in the dark by the British XXX Corps' Guards tanks and infantry. The film A Bridge Too Far has Robert Redford as one of the 82nd men taking the vital road bridge after rowing the river in canvas boats. This never happened. Another part of the film has Redford insisting to a British commander of the British XXX Corps tanks, after the tanks crossed the bridge, to run onto Arnhem and relieve the British paratroopers with the commander refusing, leaving his tanks idle. The reality is very different..
Moffat Burriss of the 82nd, on film stated he ordered the tank captain to run his tanks to Arnhem, saying on film, "I just sacrificed half of my company capturing that bridge". Twenty per cent of the men in the boats were British Sappers. The tank officer was Capt (Lord) Carington, who eventually became head of NATO. Moffatt Burris stated: “I cocked my tommy gun, pointed it at his head and said, ‘Get down that blankety-blank road before I blow your blankety-blank head off." Carington explained politely that Captain Burriss surely didn’t expect him to obey orders of a foreign officer, but then, Burris says, Carington “ducked into his tank and locked the hatch” so, as Burriss recalls, “I couldn’t get at him.”
There is no record of this event occurring and there were many men around, implying Burriss is lying. The tanks were to secure the north end of the bridge after seizing the bridge, not to run off to Arnhem in the dark leaving the bridge vulnerable to counter-attack. Captain Lord Carrington's own autobiography entitled 'Reflect on Things Past':
"My recollection of this meeting is different. Certainly I met an American officer but he was perfectly affable and agreeable. As I said the Airborne were all very glad to see us and get some support, no one suggested we press on to Arnhem. This whole allegation is bizarre, just to begin with I was a captain and second-in-command of my squadron so I was in no position either to take orders from another captain or depart from my own orders which were to take my tanks across the bridge, join up with the US Airborne and form a bridgehead. This story is simple lunacy and this exchange did not take place."
At that stage my job - I was second-in-command of a squadron - was to take a half-squadron of tanks across the bridge. Since everybody supposed the Germans would blow this immense contraption we were to be accompanied by an intrepid Royal Engineer officer to cut the wires and cleanse the demolition chambers under each span. Our little force was led by an excellent Grenadier, Sergeant Robinson, who was rightly awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his action. Two of our tanks were hit not lethally - by anti-tank fire, and we found a number of Germans perched in the girders who tried to drop things on us but without great effect. Sergeant Robinson and the leading tank troop sprayed the opposite bank and we lost nobody, When I arrived at the far end my sense of relief was considerable: the bridge had not been blown, we had not been plunged into the Waal. In fact it seems the Germans never intended to blow the bridge. The demolition chambers were packed with German soldiers, who surrendered. We seemed to have silenced the opposition in the vicinity, we were across one half of the Rhine.
A film representation of this incident has shown American troops as having already secured the far end of the bridge. That is mistaken - probably the error arose from the film-maker's confusion of two bridges, there was a railway bridge with planks placed between the rails and used by the Germans for [light] road traffic, to the west of the main road bridge we crossed; and the gallant American Airborne men reached it. When Sergeant Robinson and his little command crossed our main road bridge, however, only Germans were there to welcome him; and they didn't stay."
Sergeant Peter Robinson, of the of the Guards Armored Division who led the charge over the Nijmegen road bridge in his Firefly tank stated:
"The Nijmegen bridge wasn’t taken [by the 82nd] which was our objective. We reached the far end of the bridge and immediately there was a roadblock. So the troop sergeant covered me through and then I got to the other side and covered the rest of the troop through. We were still being engaged; there was a gun in front of the church three or four hundred yards in front of us. We knocked him out. We got down the road to the railway bridge; we cruised round there very steady. We were being engaged all the time. Just as I got round the corner and turned right I saw these helmets duck in a ditch and run, and gave them a burst of machine gun fire. I suddenly realised they were Americans. They had already thrown a gammon grenade at me so dust and dirt and smoke were flying everywhere. They jumped out of the ditch; they kissed the tank; they kissed the guns because they’d lost a lot of men. They had had a very bad crossing.
Well, my orders were to collect the American colonel who was in a house a little way back, and the first thing he said to me was "I have to surrender." Well I said, 'I'm sorry. My orders are to hold this bridge. I've only got two tanks available but if you'd like to give me ground support for a little while until we get some more orders then we can do it. He said he couldn’t do it, so I said that he had better come back to my wireless and talk to General Horrocks because before I started the job I had freedom of the air. Everybody was off the air except myself because they wanted a running commentary about what was going on - So he came over and had a pow-wow with Horrocks. The colonel said 'Oh very well’ and I told him where I wanted the men, but of course you can't consolidate a Yank and they hadn’t been there ten minutes before they were on their way again."
The 82nd men wanted to surrender! Even though they met the British tanks. And never gave support which was what they were there to do.
The first meeting of the 82nd men (the 2nd wave) and the tanks was 1 km north of the bridge at the village of Lent where the railway embankment from the railway bridge met the north running road running off the main road bridge. The 1st wave of the 82nd men (Burriss) did not reach the north end of the actual road bridge's approach road until 45 minutes after Robinson's tank rolled over, taking out an 88mm gun on the move. The Guards tanks and infantry got there first from the south. Burriss met Carrington's lone tank which came under fire, acting as a radio relay back to Horrocks from the tanks at Lent.
Now you know.
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@marshallmonroe884
There is a myth that the Germans were way ahead of the British in jet engines and planes in WW2, when the opposite is true. The WW2 German jet engines were extremely unreliable with low performances and very high fuel consumption. The German axial-flow turbojets never worked as they wanted being developed up to 1953 by the French to obtain a usable engine. The French lost a lot of time playing around with the German engines, instead of working with the British. The French and Soviets after WW2 tried to improve the German axial-flow engines and largely failed.
The Germans did not invent the axial-flow turbojet, they based everything on Frank Whittle's patents. The British Metropolitan-Vickers F.1 axial-flow engine was running on a test bed in 1941. The F.2 was an axial-flow being an extremely advanced design using a nine-stage axial compressor, annular combustor, and a two-stage turbine. It powered a Meteor in November 1943. It was considered unreliable and never saw use during the war, hence why the British went for the reliability, controllability and quick development of the centrifugal turbojets. The Metro-Vick F.3 was the first ever turbofan in 1943. Metro-Vick developed the F.9 Sapphire, however left the jet business in 1947 giving all their designs to Armstrong Siddeley, who commercially produced the Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire engine, which was licence built in the US as the J-65.
The British in order to get a usable and reliable jet engine, with the technology of the time, went for a centrifugal design rather than the troublesome axial-flow design. This design produced less thrust than an axial-flow but was quicker to develop and reliable outperforming the best piston engines planes at the time. It took 5 months to develop, while the first reliable axial-flow engine was the 1950 Rolls Royce Avon, which took 5 years to get right. The Avon is still in production as a ground based gas turbine, with the aero version in production for 30 years.
In 1945 the French made and tested some German designed turbo jets made with quality steel unavailable to German industry in WW2. They ran for 25 hours instead of the 10 hours of the Germans engines that used poorer quality steel. Not much better. The German axial-flow engines failed because of heavy design flaws. The centrifugal compressor used by the first British Meteor plane was fine and much more reliable, but unable to reach high compression ratios. This limited performances. Centrifugal compressors were used up to the 1960s.
In 1945 the team from the French ATAR laboratory plus some BMW and Junkers engineers, were engaged by the French SNECMA research bureau, with the objective to build a new reliable and performing axial-flow turbojet. The BMW 003/Jumo004 was considered unusable. It was tested on the first French jet aircraft, the 1946 So6000 Triton, overheating and exploding. The plane only flew with a Rolls Royce Nene centrifugal turbojet.
The ATAR project took 6 years to produce the first acceptable axial-flow turbojet (ATAR 101 B1), produced in 1953. So 8 years research and developments by the French using the German jet engines as the base. It was installed on the first French jet fighter, the Dassault Ouragan.
The French lost a lot of time because the German jets had poor efficiency and some concept fails. Essentially in the combustion chambers and fresh air circulation to reduce the external temperature of the engine. The BMW jet was known for overheat problems which precluded fuselage installation.
The question at the end of WW2 was: what is the most efficient way to produce jet fighters? The answer was clearly not adopting the German design of engine and fuselage. The build costs for a jet engine were much higher than a piston engine, with the fuel consumption near 3x. The centrifugal compressor the British adopted in some planes was the best choice with 1944-45 technology, more compression pressure was not an advantage when the hot turbine was unable to resist higher temperatures. The German turbojets had big overheat problems as the engine would not work in an enclosed fuselage for single engined fighters. This defect was immediately noted by the French on the 1946 "SO 6000 Triton" prototype, and by the Soviets on the 1946 Mig 9. The Soviets quickly replaced the BMW 004B2 by the centrifugal Rolls Royce Nene which worked without problems, dismissing the BMW engine for fighter planes. The Rolls Royce Nene was copied to the last nut by the USSR being installed in the Mig 15 being used effectively in the Korean war.
The Meteor was the first proper fully developed jet plane introduced operationally. The 262 was slightly faster than the Meteor F3, but extremely unreliable. The British would never put into the sky such an undeveloped plane as the me262. The British could have had a jet fighter operational in 1941, but it may have been as bad as the me262. The Germans advanced R&D on jets after they interrogated captured British RAF men. They learned the British were advanced in jet technology and flying prototype planes. Until then the Germans had no intention of mass producing jet planes.
The rushed together Me262 started claiming kills on 26 July 1944, the Meteor claimed its first V1 kill a few days later on the 4 August 1944. But the Meteor was a proper fully developed jet plane, not a thrown together desperate effort as the me262 was. The me262 fuselage was similar to a piston plane with the pilot over the wings obscuring downward vision, while the Meteor was a proper new design fuselage specifically for jet fighters with a forward of the wings pilot position giving superior pilot vision, as we see in planes today. The cockpit was very quiet. The sweptback wings of the me262 were to move the engines further back for better weight distribution, not for aerodynamic reasons as is thought the case. The me262's airframe was based on piston engine planes, even with an initial rear tail wheel. The tricycle landing gear was only introduced when it was found the thrust of the jet engines would scorch the runway surface as the exhaust faced downwards. The Meteor's airframe was designed purely for jet propulsion even with a high tail to prevent thrust interfering with the tail which could affect control.
Centrifugal compressors were not obsolete being used in turboprops. Between a turbo jet and a turboprop, the only difference is the turbine, not the compressor. The last centrifugal compressor jet engine still in service on a handful of commercial aircraft like the Fokker 27, is the Rolls Royce Dart turboprop. A very reliable engine made in 27 versions, but with high fuel consumption to modern engines. The Rolls Royce Dart Turboprop turbo jet engine was produced the longest, being a comparable design turbojet to the likes the Rolls Royce Nene. The rugged engine was produced from 1946 up to 1987.
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THE SIEGFRIED LINE CAMPAIGN
by Charles B. MacDonald
CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY
UNITED STATES ARMY
WASHINGTON, D.G., 1993
Page 161:
Colonel Lindquist's 508th Parachute Infantry and of Colonel Ekman's 505th Parachute Infantry had assembled within an hour after the D-Day drop.
Page 162:
General Gavin's understanding, as recalled later, was that Warren's battalion was to move "without delay after landing." On the other hand, Colonel Lindquist's understanding, also as recalled later, was that no battalion was to go for the bridge until the regiment had secured its other objectives, that is to say, not until he had established defenses protecting his assigned portion of the high ground and the northern part of the division glider landing zone. Instead of moving immediately toward the Nijmegen bridge, Colonel Warren's battalion was to take an "assigned initial objective" in the vicinity of De Ploeg, a suburb of Nijmegen a mile and a quarter southeast of the city astride the Nijmegen-Groesbeek highway.
It is clear the 82nd did not a have clue what they were doing.
Page 163:
Colonel Warren about 1830 sent into Nijmegen a patrol consisting of a rifle platoon and the battalion intelligence section. This patrol was to make an aggressive reconnaissance, investigate reports from Dutch civilians that only eighteen Germans guarded the big bridge, and, if possible, capture the south end of the bridge.
Colonel Warren directed Companies A and B to rendezvous at a point just south of Nijmegen at I900
As the scouts neared a traffic circle surrounding a landscaped circular park near the center of Nijmegen, the Keizer Karel Plein, from which a mall-like park led northeast toward the Nijmegen bridge, a burst of automatic weapons fire came from the circle. The time was about two hours before midnight. (2200 hrs)
Page 164:
No one could have said so with any finality at the time, but the chance for an easy, speedy capture of the Nijmegen bridge had passed. This was all the more lamentable because in Nijmegen during the afternoon the Germans had had nothing more than the same kind of "mostly low quality" troops encountered at most other places on D Day.
The 82nd hung about for 6 hours allowing the SS troops to enter Nijmegen on the bridge.
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@jb3960
The MIG 15 had a RR Nene jet engine. The Sabre was heavily influenced by the British who had a hand in the design. The Argentine post war jet was designed by the Germans which was a flop and very uninspiring.
The Germans were not years ahead in aviation. That accolade goes to the British,
The Germans went for the problematic, at the time, axial flow design. The British flew a Meteor with an axial-flow Metro-Vick engine in 1943 dropping it in favour of the reliable centrifugal design. There were five turbojet engines in the UK under R&D in WW2:
▪ Centrifugal, by Whittle (Rover);
▪ Centrifugal, by Frank Halford (DeHaviland);
▪ Axial-flow, by Metro-Vick;
▪ Axial-flow by Griffiths (Rolls Royce);
▪ Axial flow compressor, with reverse flow combustion chambers. The ASX by Armstrong Siddeley;
Metro-Vick sold their jet engine division to Armstrong Siddeley. The Metro-Vick engine transpired into the post war Sapphire. Most American engines in the 1940s/50s were of UK design, many made under licence. The US licensed the J-42 (RR Nene) and J-48 (RR Tay), being virtually identical to the British engines. US aircraft used licensed British engines powering the: P-59, P-80, T-33, F9F Panther, F9F-6 Cougar, FJ Fury 3 and 4, Martin B-57 Canberra, F-94 Starfire, A4 Skyhawk and the A7 Corsair.
The US General Electric J-47 turbojet was developed by General Electric in conjunction with Metropolitan Vickers of the UK, who had already developed a 9-stage axial-flow compressor engine licensing the design to Allison in 1944 for the earlier J-35 engine first flying in May 1948. The centrifugal Rolls Royce Nene is one of the highest production jet engines in history with over 50,000 built.
"The me262 was nothing but a bandaid rushed into production."
You got that right.
Swept wing designs were not new. British designer J. W. Dunne was the first to fly a stable swept wing plane.
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@brucetucker4847
You jest of course. The US contribution, although huge, although only right at the end with millions of green troops - it is overrated.
Britain was clearly key in WW2. Britain fought on every front, being in the war on the first day up to the last - the only country at the surrender of Japan in September 1945 to do so - Britain’s war actually ended in 1946 staying on in Viet Nam using Japanese troops alongside British troops to defeat the Viet Minh, but that is another story.
Britain was not attacked or attacked anyone, going into WW2 on principle. The Turkish ambassador to the UK stated that the UK can raise 40 million troops from its empire so it will win the war. This was noted by Franco who indirectly said to Hitler he would not win, fearing British occupation of Spanish islands and territory if Spain joined the war. Spain and Turkey stayed out of the war. The Turkish ambassador’s point was given credence when an army of 2.6 million was assembled in India that moved into Burma to wipe out the Japanese.
From day one the Royal Navy formed a ring around the Axis positioning ships from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Arctic off Norway, blockading the international trade of the Axis. This deprived the Axis of vital human and animal food, oil, rubber, metals, and other vital resources. By 1941 the successful Royal Navy blockade had confined the Italian navy to port due to lack of oil. By the autumn of 1941 Germany's surface fleet was confined to harbour, by the British fleet and the chronic lack of fuel. A potential German invasion from the USSR in the north into the oil rich Middle East entailed expanded British troop deployment to keep the Germans away from the oil fields, until they were defeated at Stalingrad.
Throughout 1942 British Commonwealth troops were fighting, or seriously expecting to be attacked, in:
▪ French North Africa;
▪ Libya;
▪ Egypt;
▪ Cyprus;
▪ Syria: where an airborne assault was expected, with preparations to reinforce Turkey if they were attacked;
▪ Madagascar: fighting the Vichy French to prevent them from inviting the Japanese in as they had done in Indochina;
▪ Iraq;
▪ Iran: the British & Soviets invaded Iran in August 1941.
Those spread-out covering troops were more in combined numbers than were facing Japan and Rommel in North Africa. They were supplied by a massive merchant fleet. They were supplied via the Cape, the equivalent of sailing halfway around the world.
Those spread-out covering troops were more in combined numbers than were facing Japan and Rommel in North Africa. The British Commonwealth fielded over 100 divisions in 1942 alone, compared to the US total of 88 by the end of the war. The Americans and Soviets were Johnny-come-late in WW2, moreso the Americans. Before the USSR entered the conflict the Royal Navy’s blockade had reduced the Italian and German surface navies to the occasional sorties because of a lack of oil, with the British attacking the Germans and Italians in North Africa, also securing Syria, Iraq, the Levant and ridding the Italians from East Africa.
The Germans were on the run by the time the USA had boots on the ground against the Axis.
The Germans had been stopped:
▪ in the west at the Battle of Britain in 1940;
▪ in the east at the Battle of Moscow in 1941. In which Britain provided 40% of the Soviet tanks.
The Germans were on the run after the simultaneous battles in late 1942 of:
▪ El Alemein;
▪ Stalingrad;
The Battle of El Alemein culminated in a quarter of a million Axis prisoners taken in Tunisia - more than taken at Stalingrad. Apart from the US Filipino forces that surrendered in early 1942, the US had a couple of divisions in Gaudalcanal after August 1942, and one in New Guinea by November 1942. In 1943 the US managed to get up to six divisions in the Pacific, but still not matching the British or British Indian armies respectively. Until late 1943 the Australian Army alone deployed more ground fighting troops against the Japanese than the USA.
The Americans never put more ground troops into combat against the Japanese at any point than just the British Indian Army alone, which was 2.6 million strong. The US had nowhere near 2.6 million men on the ground against the Japanese. The Soviets fielded about a million against the Japanese. Most Japanese troops were put out of action by the British and Soviets, not the USA. At the battles of Khohima and Imphal the Japanese suffered their worst defeat in their history up to that point - 60,000 Japanese were killed in hand to hand jungle fighting that made Iwo Jima look like a bar room brawl. Then the British set the armored Eastern and Pacific fleets against the Japanese, not far off in numbers to the rapidly expanded US fleet.
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@brucetucker4847
The tank that stood out in WW2, bedsides the Centurion, was the Churchill. The Churchill was the fastest tank of WW2 as few obstacles stopped it. It had amazing hill climbing ability and was able to cross the muddy ground and force through the forests of the Reichswald in 1944. A contemporary report expressed the belief that no other tank could have managed the same conditions. There is a story of a large queue of tanks waiting to cross a bridge over an anti-tank ditch. The Churchill simply drove into and out of the ditch, much to the other tanker’s amazement. The Churchill could keep going even if it had three wheels on the same side blown off.
The Churchill served not only in WW2 but many American Units were extremely glad of its amazing hill climbing ability in Korea when is could get to place Shermans and Pershings could not dream of.
It had a slow engine - two bus engines mated and laid flat (which did give a lower centre of gravity). No attempt was made to insert the RR Meteor engine. It was to be discontinued but performed well at El Alemein so was kept on. It was also the basis of the Hobart 'Funnies'.
In the fighting in late 1944 the Germans flooded an area so badly that resupply could only be carried out by using DUKW’s. Even the roads were impassable to trucks. Yet the 6th Guards tank brigade equipped with Churchill’s, fought and continued the advance. Apparently, Churchill’s crossed an underwater bridge on the Dneiper river, and operated without problem alongside T-34′s in a swamp.
It could turn on its own length thanks to the innovative Merrit-Brown transmission. It could climb mountains as they found in Tunisia as it had a long chassis which made climbing over obstacle and wide ditches easy. It was a highly versatile tank. During trials the Australians found it a better tank for jungle warfare than even the Matilda II.
The hill climbing ability of the Churchill is legendary. Many times in Italy and Tunisia the Churchill’s would climb hills the Germans thought were utterly tank proof. On one occasion a Colonel Koch of the Herman Goering regiment, transmitted this radio message:
“… been attacked by a mad tank battalion which had scaled impossible heights and forced me to withdraw!”
It had ridiculous amounts of armour, which was near inpenetrable except by the most powerful of guns. It had initially 102mm in front, which was then upgraded to 152mm for the later models. That is more than the Tiger I!
And its larger chassis also allows it to use larger turrets and subsequently larger guns such as the 6-pounder and the QF 75mm, which were the same guns used on the Cromwell. Churchill’s were adequately armed for the job they were meant to do. It was roomy by WW2 standards and the crews liked it. The 4th Grenadier Guards in Churchill’s were the unit that set the record for fastest advance of any armoured unit in Europe.
After WWII a study was carried out on all armoured units in the 21st army group. The 4th Grenadiers had the lowest casualty rate of all of them. There is a report from Italy of a single Churchill getting hit over 100 times by enemy AT weapons. There’s a report from Normandy where a Churchill crested a ridge line and an enemy ATG opened fire, the first round hit the Drivers periscope and concussed the Driver. The Germans then shot at it until darkness. The only effect was to shoot off the Churchill’s external fittings, then at nightfall the Crew were able to escape unharmed apart from headaches from the impacts of shells all day. The Churchill itself was recovered and repaired.
It was the best all round tank of the war, a tank generals would prefer in their arsenal, was probably the antiquated looking Churchill. As an army moves forward, tanks have to do a multitude of tasks. Tank v tank engagements were rare. No other tank accomplished the various tasks better and more comprehensively than the Churchill.
It was heavily armoured could match most tanks in the 6pdr gun version and with APDS ammunition could penetrate a Tiger. It could turn on its own axis and could even climb mountains, as it did in Tunisia. At Dieppe it was the only tank in the world that could get off those pebble beaches. And half got over the sea wall. Attributes that went un-noticed to the Germans.
After Dieppe the Germans tested a Panzer IV on a beach, and got the following results. To quote David Fletcher:
“This showed that on beaches with a slope between 15 and 20 degrees the German tank could manage quite well but where the slope increased to between 30 and 40 degrees the tank started to slip then dug itself in until the tracks ceased to function.”
The Beaches at Dieppe are made of surface called “Chert” which is lots of tiny stones. It’s like driving on ball bearings, and they get into the running gear and cause thrown tracks. But you won’t be able to dig yourself in. The Germans tested on a nice sandy beach. Despite the Chert at Dieppe 15 of the Churchill’s managed get across the beach and clamber over the seawall.
In the Battle of Longstop Hill, Tunisia, one of the German officers noted that when he saw the tanks coming over the summit, "I knew all was over".
Churchill tanks took out four Tigers in Tunisia, with no loss, only armed with 6-pdrs firing standard AP. They also got the first Panther kills by the western allies.
On D-Day the extreme western flank was La Hamel. The Germans had a huge fortress there, which withstood the assault. Although the British had got ashore the Fortress was dominating the beach. By the afternoon this position remained. If Gold Beach had failed then the Germans could roll up both landings from the flank with ease. The Fortress had been pounded by battleships and shrugged off their attentions. Then a single Churchill AVRE appeared. Its shots breached the walls allowing the capture of the fortress.
Churchills took Hill 309 in Normandy. Bocage was no problem to them. They moved into Caen supporting infantry.
An amazing tank.
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@mikemazzola6595
Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust over other fronts:
"On 4 Sept, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr"
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen when he issued the directive. Montgomery wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive, devising Operation Comet to be launched on 2 Sept, being cancelled due to German resistance and poor weather.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 Sept had divisions of the US 1st Army and Montgomery's view of taking multiple bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. The British 2nd Army needed some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow). Hodges' would protect the right flank. the Canadians would protect the left flank from the German 15th army. It was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
"the evidence also suggests that certain necessary objectives on the road to Berlin, crossing the Rhine and perhaps even taking the Ruhr, were possible with the existing logistical set-up, provided the right strategy to do so was set in place. Montgomery’s popular and astute Chief of Staff, Freddie de Guingand, certainly thought so: 'If Eisenhower had not taken the steps he did to link up at an early date with Anvil and had held back Patton, and had he diverted the resources so released to the north, I think it possible we might have obtained a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter - but not more.' "
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944."
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@mikemazzola6595
Eisenhower was out of his depth. He did not even understand the strategy in Normandy.
“If Eisenhower had criticisms of the way his Ground Forces Commander was directing the battle, Brooke therefore stated, he should go to Normandy and put them to Monty, it cavil behind his back. The suggestion was even made that Brooke accompany Eisenhower; but as General Simpson later recalled, the notion ‘was a little worrying to Ike. He knew jolly well that if he went to Monty, Monty would run circles round him with a clear exposition of his strategy and tactic.’ No visit was thus arranged.’”-Hamilton, Nigel. Monty, Master of the Battlefield 1942–1944.
“Brooke, however, was worried that he had not completely stopped the rot, and the next morning penned a long letter to Monty warning him of Eisenhower’s mischief-making’:
My dear Monty
The trouble between you and the P.M. has been satisfactorily settler for the present, but the other trouble I spoke to you about is looming large still and wants watching very carefully.
Ike lunched with P.M. again this week and as a result I was sent for by P.M. and told that Ike was worried at the outlook taken by the American Press that the British were not taking their share of the fighting and of the casualties. There seems to be more in it than that and Ike himself seemed to consider that the British Army could and should be more offensive. The P.M. asked me to meet Ike at dinner with him which I did last night, Beddel was there also.
_It is quite clear that Ike considers that Dempsey should be doing more than he does; it is equally clear that Ike has the very vaguest conception of war! I drew attention to what your basic strategy had been, I.e. to hold with your left and draw the Germans onto the flank while you pushed with your right. I explained how I my mind this conception was being carried out, that the bulk of the Armour had continuously been kept against the British.
He could not refute these arguments, and then asked whether I did not consider that we were in a position to launch major offensives on each Army front simultaneously. I told him that in view of the fact that the German density in Normandy is 2 ½ times that on the Russian front, whilst our superiority in strength was only in the nature of some 25% as compared to 300% on the Russian superiority on the Eastern front, I did not consider that we were in a position to launch an all out offensive along the whole front. Such a procedure would definitely not fit in with our strategy of opening up Brest by swinging forward Western Flank._
-Hamilton, Nigel. Monty. master of the Battlefield, 1942-1944
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@bigwoody4704
Rambo, you have told this many times, Eisenhower stopped any seizing of the Scheldt, not Monty. Now you know.
Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust over other fronts:
"On 4 Sept, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr"
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen when he issued the directive. Montgomery wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive, devising Operation Comet to be launched on 2 Sept, being cancelled due to German resistance and poor weather.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 Sept had divisions of the US First Army and Montgomery's view of taking multiple bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. The British 2nd Army needed some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow). Hodges' would protect the right flank. the Canadians would protect the left flank from the German 15th army. It was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
On the 8th September Monty did actually propose an alternate plan for a para drop into the Scheldt Estuary to clear Antwerp but Brereton, and American, commanding general of First Allied Airborne Army said "no" rejecting this alternate proposal with nothing Monty could do about it. He had to abide by Brereton's decision, Breton preferred Market Garden instead.
Eisenhower stated:
‘At the September 10 conference in Brussels Field-Marshall Montgomery was therefore authorised to defer the clearing out of the Antwerp approaches in an effort to seize the Bridgehead I wanted.’
There you go Rambo. There you go.
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@ToolTimeTabor
It is refreshing to read you posts. To a point. Browning did not prioritise the heights. He gave equal priority. It was Gavin who de-prioritised the bridge after the landings.
"I personally gave an order to Jim Gavin that, although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen Bridges as soon as possible, it was essential that he should capture the Groesbeek Ridge and hold it"
- Lt Gen Browning to Maj Gen G. E. Prier-Palmer, British Joint Services Mission, Washington, D.C., 25 Jan 1955, excerpt in OCMH.
‘Take only the bridges and you probably could not hold them without the high ground. Take only the high ground, the Waal bridge at Nijmegen, and the Maas-Waal Canal bridges, and the ground column could not get across the Maas either to use the other bridges or to relieve the airborne troops.
- US Official History. THE SIEGFRIED LINE CAMPAIGN, Page 157.
Gavin thought that the Groesbeek Heights should be taken before Nijmegen Bridge. Again, the US Official History:
'General Gavin saw no solution at first other than to take first the high ground and the Maas and Maas-Waal-Canal bridges - thereby ensuring juncture with the ground column - then Nijmegen.’-- US Official History. THE SIEGFRIED LINE CAMPAIGN, Page 157.
Gavin took all his men completely out of Nijmegen town after holding on near to the southern part of the bridge overnight. This was a crass decision. He openly said the Second Army could take the bridge to Browning - after the jump. Maybe he thought they had all the time in the world. Browning did not land at the same time as the 82nd men. He was in the air when they should have been moving to the bridge.
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@ToolTimeTabor
Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Monty was over groups of armies. Dempsey was in command on 2nd Army with Horrocks in command of XXX Corps. Brereton in command of the First Allied Airborne Army. Monty wanted the plan cancelled when he saw how under resourced the operation was - only when V1s were dropped on London did he reluctantly agree.
A division of the US First army was supposed to be on the right flank. The operation was reduced to one corps above Eindhoven. A disgrace. Eisenhower approved, and "insisted", the operation proceed. Two American Air Force generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
1) Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
2) Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
3) Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
4) Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
5) Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
6) Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
7) Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Zon, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak".
The above is so bad it is clearly not a Dempsey plan approved by Monty. Monty was meticulous in planning as the Normandy plans show us.
The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgment or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with around 600 non-combat troops in the town - Nijmegen was a HQ who started to immediately pull out. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. The road from Zon to Arnhem was fully clear with no armour in Arnhem. This has been confirmed by German archives.
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@ToolTimeTabor
The state of play on the 17th, the jump day, was that the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was clear. There was concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally. No heavy bridge defences. There were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen. Then a few scattered about along the road. There was no armour in Arnhem. That was it. The Germans were is disarray as they were falling back.
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made "remarkable" progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 3 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or just moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured the bridge.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected. Also, the thousands of vehicles had to be mustered south of Eindhoven before advancing.
XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves made the crossing running over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and to the road where they could, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. The road was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up. The road was still clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump.
XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving and the German occupying all of the town. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over to Arnhem 7 miles to the north.
If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day +1 in the evening. Game, set and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras on the bridge at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
The above is the factual overview.
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@Johnny Carroll
“The 82d Airborne Division will seize and hold the bridges at Nijmegen and Grave (with sufficient bridgeheads to pass formations of the Second Army through). The capture and retention of the high ground between Nijmegen and Grosbeek is imperative in order to accomplish the division's task."
That is a deliberate misquote. You have concatenated two sections into one.
From the US Official History:
"I personally directed Colonel Roy E. Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry," General Gavin recalled later, "to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing"
Gavin did give urgency to the bridge for sure. And clearly equal priority.
US Official History:
As darkness approached, General Gavin ordered Colonel Lindquist "to delay not a second longer and get the bridge as quickly as possible with Warren's battalion."
Gavin's men failed to act with urgency dawdling at DePloge
US Official History:
The assembly and movement to De Ploeg took approximately three and a half hours. After organizing a defense of the objective, Colonel Warren about 1830 sent into Nijmegen a patrol consisting of a rifle platoon and the battalion intelligence section.
Until Gavin told them to move when finding they were doing nothing. About 40 men, a patrol, set off to the bridge about four hours after the jump, reaching the vicinity of the bridge over five hours after the jump. Instead of seizing the bridge, with only 19 guards guarding it and the adjacent rail bridge, they found it was now held by an SS recon battalion who moved down from Arnhem, in the time they were dawdling at DePloge. The SS recon men reached the bridge just prior to the Patrol reaching the bridge - about five hours after the jump.
The 82nd had a five hour window in which to launch an attack on a largely undefended bridge with no significant bridge defenses.
US Official History:
the chance for an easy, speedy capture of the Nijmegen bridge had passed. This was all the more lamentable because in Nijmegen during the afternoon the Germans had had nothing more than the same kind of "mostly low quality" troops encountered at most other places on D Day.
US Official History:
As the scouts neared a traffic circle surrounding a landscaped circular park near the center of Nijmegen, the Keizer Karel Plein, from which a mall-like park led northeast toward the Nijmegen bridge, a burst of automatic weapons fire came from the circle. The time was about two hours before midnight.
The first attack on the bridge was 7.5 hours after the jump.
So blaming Browning for the 82nd men dawdling is a slur on Browning in a poor attempt at defecting blame. Gavin did have the bridge as priority as the text above confirms. Blaming Browning for the incompetence of the 82nd in not moving to the bridge quickly is totally out of order. Browning did not order the 82nd men to dawdle at DePloge.
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@ToolTimeTabor
It is worth noting Chester E Graham, the liaison officer between the 508th and the 82nd Division Headquarters.....
During the Holland operation, I was the liaison officer between the 508th and the 82nd Division Headquarters. I first became the Regimental Liaison Officer after we returned to Nottingham from the Normandy operation.
Prior to the Holland jump, I sat in 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.
After we were dropped in Holland, 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 (drop zone) is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.” So I went cross-country through Indian country [slang military term for enemy territory] 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 to, “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.”
As the jump was unopposed, and other troops were securing the LZ, Lindquist's men could have made their way to the Nijmegen bridge immediately. No excuse not to if you understood the orders given. Instead they all went to DePloge and set up shop.
Instead of moving immediately toward the Nijmegen bridge, Colonel Warren's battalion was to take an "assigned initial objective" in the vicinity of DePloeg, a suburb of Nijmegen a mile and a quarter southeast of the city astride the Nijmegen-Groesbeek highway. Colonel Warren was to organize this objective for defense, tying in with the battalion near Hatert and the other near Hotel Berg en Dal, and then was to "be prepared to go into Nijmegen later." The assembly and movement to DePloge took approximately three and a half hours.
- US Official History
Col. Warren, who was assigned the bridge, was to move when given orders by Lindquist according to the Official History. He spent most of the time setting up shop in and around DePloge. Gavin told Lindquist, Warren's superior, to move without delay to the bridge, prior to the jump, according to the Official History.
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@Johnny Carroll
1) It is clear Browning gave equal priority to the heights and the bridge prior to the jump. He confirmed this in the 1950s.
2) It is clear Gavin gave equal priority to the heights and the bridge prior to the jump, and on D-day, by his actions, actions of his men, and witness accounts.
Gavin sent men off to the bridge immediately after the jump. That his men failed to move to the bridge, staying at DePloeg losing the opportunity to seize the bridge, is a different matter.
The heights were important enough. But the text of the orders put the bridge first - the military way is the text at the top is more important. The heights were between the bridge and landing zones, being nearer to the LZs. Protect the landing zones then you automatically protect the heights from enemy occupation. So there is no need to put most of your force around the LZs and on the Heights.
Gavin de-prioritized the bridge once his men were unable to seize it. Gavin said to Browning that he was to take his troops from the town near the southern approaches to the bridge to the LZs, as he heard there was tanks in a forest and some German troops about. Browning (who was concerned seeing the bridge not seized) has to take the judgment of his trusted and experienced general, so went along with this - but Browning did not de-prioritize the bridge telling Gavin to get it ASAP, and as a must before XXX Corps arrived. Gavin said to Browning that Second Army (XXX Corps ) could seize the bridge. In short, Gavin had given up the bridge. Browning had not.
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@ToolTimeTabor
The largest airborne contribution was the USAs. The 82nd was the largest division. The bridge at Grave was the only bridge to be taken from both ends as per established tactics.
Monty actually signaled Eisenhower’s headquarters postponing the operation. Eisenhower resurrecting it. A cable from the War Office about V2s committed Montgomery to the operation. Tactical Operation Market Garden was based on Operation Comet, with multiple Rhine crossings, which was a quick pursuit operation formed by Monty. He cancelled it due to reformed German resistance.
From Nigel Hamilton’s biography of Monty:
For Monty now to cancel the British part of ‘the main effort of the Allies because of stiffening enemy resistance, even had he wished to do so, would thus have been tantamount to insubordination, leaving him open to charges of timidity at a moment when American forces were thrusting towards the German border. Moreover the Arnhem-Nijmegan axis had been Monty’s proposal, making it doubly hard to rescind.
Eisenhower’s directive was not the only signal committing Monty to the continuation of his planned thrust via Arnhem on 9 September - for during the afternoon a ‘Secret’ cable arrived from the War Office, sent by VCIGS, General Nye, in the absence of Field-Marshal Brooke:
Two rockets so-called V.2 landed in England yesterday. Believed to have been fired from areas near ROTTERDAM and AMSTERDAM. Will you please report urgently by what approximate date you consider you can rope off the Coastal area contained by ANTWERP-UTRECHT-ROTTERDAM. When this area is in our hands the threat from this weapon will probably have disappeared.
By striking north-east from Eindhoven to Arnhem, 21st Army Group would be in a position to ‘rope off’ the whole of Holland, including the 150,000 fleeing German troops and the V2 bomb sites.
Few people are aware that there were supporting units on either flank who set off to the left and right of Hells Highway shortly after and in fact one of these supporting flanks advances pushed the Germans away from cutting the highway near Eindhoven on the 20th after XXX corps had gone through ahead. They even widened the axis of advance with their follow on actions.
It should be borne in mind that promised supplies from SHAEF failed to arrive, leaving VIII Corps, supposed to attack alongside, mostly stranded in place. “Garden” launched with only half the troops it should have had.
Montgomery had also wanted to use Hodges First US Army (and had in fact been promised) as a follow up flanking advance. But Bradley was stealing fuel and other resources from Hodges and giving it to Patton.
Eisenhower:
”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”.
Eisenhower insisted it go ahead who also under-resourced it. Market Garden wasn’t even an army just a corps above Eindhoven. A disgrace.
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@ToolTimeTabor
Gavin ducked and dived after the event and way after WW2 to cover his errors. TIK covered this - Search his channel on Gavin wasn't to blame? 'New' evidence on Operation Market Garden's failure?. The US Official History historians batted a number letters to and fro to Gavin after the event attempting to get the true picture. What stuck in the historians minds was why the bridge was not taken and the events around that. They had to record it.
Chester Graham sides with Gavin, saying Gavin verbally told Lindquist in England to go for the bridge. Post war Lindquist says he never, that is why he stayed at DePloeg awaiting orders. There clearly was a breakdown in Gavin's communications - he never put anything in firm writing to Lindquist. Lindquist was at DePloeg doing not much at all relating to the prime objective, the bridge. Warren, Lindquist's subordinate, who was assigned the bridge according to the Official History was "to be prepared to go into Nijmegen later," under orders by Lindquist his boss. Gavin ran to Lindquist's CP by Jeep balling him out when finding out he was static at DePloeg. Then Lindquist only sent a patrol of around 40 men. When sizable forces were eventually sent one company got lost along the way.
You are right, the bridge was the prime objective. Passing blame onto Browning the Corps commander, for not immediately seizing the bridge, who was in the air when 82nd men should have been moving to the bridge, then in communication with three divisional generals on landing, does not hold under scrutiny. Browning was not there to hold Gavin's hand. Gavin was a trusted general with an impeccable record up to that point. Gavin's record after Market Garden was also excellent - he was praiseworthy of Montgomery's leadership in the Bulge.
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@ToolTimeTabor
From Battle of the Rhine by Neillands. Sergeant Peter Robinson, of the of the Guards Armored Division who led the charge over the Nijmegen road bridge in his Firefly tank stated:
"The Nijmegen bridge wasn’t taken [by the 82nd] which was our objective. We reached the far end of the bridge and immediately there was a roadblock. So the troop sergeant covered me through and then I got to the other side and covered the rest of the troop through. We were still being engaged; there was a gun in front of the church three or four hundred yards in front of us. We knocked him out. We got down the road to the railway bridge [in Lent]; we cruised round there very steady. We were being engaged all the time. Just as I got round the corner and turned right I saw these helmets duck in a ditch and run, and gave them a burst of machine gun fire.
I suddenly realised they were Americans. They had already thrown a gammon grenade at me so dust and dirt and smoke were flying everywhere. They jumped out of the ditch; they kissed the tank; they kissed the guns because they’d lost a lot of men. They had had a very bad crossing."
"Well, my orders were to collect the American colonel who was in a house a little way back, and the first thing he said to me was "I have to surrender" Well I said, 'I'm sorry. My orders are to hold this bridge. I've only got two tanks available but if you'd like to give me ground support for a little while until we get some more orders then we can do it. He said he couldn’t do it, so I said that he had better come back to my wireless and talk to General Horrocks because before I started the job I had freedom of the air. Everybody was off the air except myself because they wanted a running commentary about what was going on - So he came over and had a pow-wow with Horrocks.
The colonel said 'Oh very well’ and I told him where I wanted the men, but of course you can't consolidate a Yank and they hadn’t been there ten minutes before they were on their way again."
The 82nd men wanted to surrender! And never gave support which was what they were there to do.
Robinson says:
"We got down the road to the railway bridge"
This is a small railway bridge over the road bridge approach road at the village of Lent, not the main railway bridge over the Waal.
Five tanks initially crossed the bridge, two were hit.
Captain Lord Carington in the 5th tank:
"A film representation of this incident has shown American troops as having already secured the far end of the bridge. That is mistaken - probably the error arose from the film-maker's confusion of two bridges, there was a railway bridge with planks placed between the rails and used by the Germans for [light] road traffic, to the west of the main road bridge we crossed; and the gallant American Airborne men reached it. When Sergeant Robinson and his little command crossed our main road bridge, however, only Germans were there to welcome him; and they didn't stay."
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@ToolTimeTabor
The plan was good enough - just about. Only one coup de main which was very poor. No reason why it would not have succeeded if everyone did what they were supposed to do quickly.
On landing, all was going well. Linquist and his men immediately went off to the bridge, as Gavin told him to do in England. Lindquist stopped and dawdled at DePloeg, awaiting orders from Gavin.
Chester Graham's account is invaluable in understanding what went on in the crucial first few hours:
After we were dropped in Holland, 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 (drop zone) is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.” So I went cross-country through Indian country [slang military term for enemy territory] 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 to, “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.”
1) Lindquist in DePloge was waiting for confirmation that the DZs were cleared then move to the bridge.
2) Gavin was assuming Lindquist's men were making their way directly to the bridge and even making an attack.
Well Linquist's men could have walked on it as only 19 old men were there. No major bridge defenses either.
As the jump was unopposed, and other troops were securing the DZ, Lindquist's men could have made their way to the Nijmegen bridge immediately. No excuse not to if you understood the orders given. Instead they all went to DePloge and set up shop ..... waiting.
Gavin did not give firm written orders to Lindquist, or get any acknowledgement that he understood the orders on the most vital part of the operation - the seizure of the largest road bridge in Europe.
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@ToolTimeTabor
How Market Garden came about....
The concept was derived from Monty's pursuit operation Comet, which was never presented to Eisenhower. Eisenhower rightly wanted to chase the Germans who were on the retreat. Market Garden was primarily a strategic operation in Eisenhower's eyes, in Monty's it was tactical.
The planning was mainly by Americans Brereton and Williams. Brereton was a no-can-do general, unsuited for risky airborne operations. The end plan had only one corps above Eindhoven - a disgrace.
Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust over other fronts and even seizing Antwerp and clearing the Schedlt. Clearing the Scheldt would take time as the German 15th SS army, highly experienced from the Russian front, had set up shop in the Scheldt not retreating back into Germany, under Hitler's orders. All available supplies would be directed to this northern thrust.
"Since Eisenhower — the Supreme Commander and Ground Force Commander — approved the Arnhem operation rather than a push to clear the Scheldt, then surely he was right, as well as noble, to accept the responsibility and any resulting blame? The choice in early September was the Rhine or Antwerp: to continue the pursuit or secure the necessary facilities to solve the logistical problem? The decision was made to go for the Rhine, and that decision was Eisenhower’s."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"On 4 Sept, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr"
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen to British troops when he issued the northern thrust directive. Montgomery wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive, devising Operation Comet, multiple crossings of the Rhine, to be launched on 2 Sept, being cancelled due to raised German resistance and poor weather. Operation Comet was not presented to Eisenhower for his approval. Montgomery asked Brereton of the First Allied Airborne Army, to drop into the Scheldt in early September - he refused.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 Sept had divisions of the US 1st Army and Montgomery's view of taking multiple bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. The British 2nd Army needed some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow). Hodges' would protect the right flank. the Canadians would protect the left flank from the German 15th army. "the narrow thrust was reduced to the Second Army and two US corps, the XIX and VII of Hodges’ First Army, a total of around eighteen Allied divisions"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
The northern thrust was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944."
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower’s reply of 5 September to Montgomery deserves analysis, not least the part that concerns logistics. The interesting point is that Eisenhower apparently believes that it is possible to cross the Rhine and take both the Ruhr and the Saar — and open the Scheldt — using the existing logistical resources."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp. In thinking this Ike was wrong."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Post-Normandy Bradley seemed unable to control Patton, who persistently flouted Eisenhower’s directives and went his own way, aided and abetted by Bradley. This part of their relationship quickly revealed itself in matters of supply, where Hodges, the commander of the US First Army, was continually starved of fuel and ammunition in order to keep Patton’s divisions rolling, even when Eisenhower’s strategy required First Army to play the major role in 12th Army Group’s activities."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again, and being bogged down - again. The resources starved First Army could not be a part of northern thrust as Bradley and Patton, against Eisenhower's orders, were siphoning off supplies destined for the First army. This northern thrust over the Rhine, as Eisenhower envisaged, obviously would not work as he thought.
A lesser operation was devised by Montgomery, Market Garden, eliminating the contribution of US First Army, with only ONE crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London wanted eliminating ASAP, giving a 60 mile long salient buffer between German forces and the important port of Antwerp. This would only have one corps above Eindhoven, a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time. Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance. Eisenhower should have fired Bradley and Patton for sabotaging the Northern Thrust operation.
Montgomery did not plan or was in involved in Market Garden's execution. Montgomery, after fixing the operations objectives with Eisenhower to the measly forces available, gave Market Garden planning to others, mainly USAAF generals, Brereton and Williams. General Brereton, who liked the plan, agreed to it with even direct input. Brereton ordered the drops will take place during the day with Brereton also overseeing the troop carrier and supply drops schedules. Williams forbid fighter-bombers to be used. A refusal by Brereton and the operation would never have gone ahead; he earlier rejected Montgomery's initial plan of a drop into the Scheldt at Walcheren Island.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time the Canadians had cleared, or were investing, many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Operation MARKET-GARDEN had two major objectives:
to get Allied troops across the Rhine
and to capture the Ruhr.
Three major advantages were expected to accrue:
( I) cutting the land exit of those Germans remaining in western Holland;
(2) outflanking the West Wall, and
(3) positioning British ground forces for a subsequent drive into Germany along the North German Plain."
- US Official History, THE SIEGFRIED LINE CAMPAIGN. Page 120.
"Eisenhower approved the operation with certain conditions. Market Garden would commence on 17 September. Securing the approaches to the port at Antwerp would be delayed until Montgomery seized bridgeheads over the Rhine. His priority after seizing the bridgeheads would be gaining the much needed deep water port. He would not continue the attack to Berlin as he had proposed."
- A FRAMEWORK FOR MILITARY DECISION MAKING UNDER RISKS
by JAMES V. SCHULTZ
AIR UNIVERSITY MAXWELL AIR FORCE BASE,
ALABAMA
JUNE 1996. Page 50.
"later, on 15 September, General Eisenhower himself reopened the wound, perhaps with a view to healing it once and for all through a process of bloodletting. Looking beyond both Arnhem and Antwerp, he named Berlin as the ultimate Allied goal"
- US Official History, THE SIEGFRIED LINE CAMPAIGN. Page 210.
One of the prime aims of Market Garden was to be the northern grip of the the pincer on the Ruhr. Wayward Eisenhower changed yet again his strategy from the Ruhr to Berlin two days before Market Garden.
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@ToolTimeTabor
Monty is far less accountable than Eisenhower, who under resourced the operation. Monty wanted it cancelled seeing what was on offer. He thought it may be worth the risk to eliminate V rockets. London was putting pressure on him and Eisenhower to overrun the Dutch launch sites.
Brereton was one of the planners, who is forgotten. If Monty refused to send in the Second Army it would be insubordination. Eisenhower was his boss. Monty was a good professional soldier, he always obeyed orders. He may not agree with the orders, but would carry them out.
Browning was only a corps commander. His say and power in matters was minimal. Drop zones were selected by Brereton and Williams who cajoled Hollingsworth of the RAF, into accepting the drop zones - eight miles away at Arnhem. Browning was threatening to resign when seeing the drop zones.
Since the end of WW2 the US narrative was that Monty insisted the operation go ahead. Monty Planned it. Monty executed it. XXX Corps was too slow (Brereton even said so), US troops took one end of Nijmegen bridge, the Brits sat around drinking tea instead of running up the road to save the British paras at Arnhem. Then a film came out reinforcing that narrative. All the above was wrong.
Many men who were in the operation were still very much alive, who were disgusted at the film. Since the film many historians delved into the records, and many, many, books have been published on the operation. A different true story emerged.
It may be unpalatable to you, but the operation was insisted upon by Eisenhower. Americans, Brereton & Williams planned it. The failure point in execution was that two easy bridges to seize were not seized by two US para units. XXX Corps were not slow being ahead when the moved. XXX Corps seized Nijmegen road bridge. All recorded fact.
BTW, I knew four guys who were at Market Garden. My Uncle, Jimmy, who was with XXX Corps (he pulled out of the Waal the bodies of the 82nd and British Sappers who rowed over the Waal), Billy Dixon who I worked with, who had little respect for the 82nd, as many were running south away from Nijmegen as they were going north into Nijmegen in trucks. Dick Smullens (an Irishman from Dublin), and Johnny McKnight - both paras in Arnhem.
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@ToolTimeTabor
A prime strategic problem for SHAEF in September 1944 was opening up the approaches to Antwerp and keeping it from German counter-attack - the logistics problem to supply all allied armies. It was:
1) Take Noord Brabant, the land to the north and northeast of Antwerp, or;
2) Take the Schedlt.
Eisenhower had a Northern Thrust strategy. Taking Noord Babant fell in line with the desires for both SHEAF and Eisenhower.
Noord Brabant had to be taken before the Scheldt, as it was essential. It was taken with limited forces, with forces also sent to take the Schedlt. Market Garden had to go ahead regardless of any threat or Northern Thrust strategy, actually being a success. To use Antwerp and control the approaches, the Scheldt, everything up to the south bank of the lower Rhine at Nijmegen needed to be under allied control. The low-lying lands, boggy ground between Arnhem and Nijmegen with land strewn with rivers and canals, is perfect geography as a barrier against a German counter-attack towards Antwerp. Without control of Noord Brabant German forces would have been in artillery range of Antwerp, and with a build up of forces and supply directly back to Germany in perfect position for a counter-attack.
Market Garden was the offensive SHEAF wanted to secure Antwerp, a prime port for logistics for all allied armies. It made sense as the Germans were in disarray, so should be easy enough to gain. As SHAEF wanted territory up to the Rhine, Monty suggested adding a hop over the Rhine at Arnhem to form a bridgehead, falling in line with Eisenhower's priority Northern Thrust strategy at the time. It made complete sense in establishing a bridgehead over the Rhine as an extra to the operation.
You needed Arnhem for an easier jump into Germany. Everything up to Nijmegen was needed if you wanted to do anything at all - that is, protect Antwerp and have a staging point to move into Germany. Gaining Noord Brabant, was vital, and was successfully seized within days. Fighting in the low lying mud and waterways of the Schedlt, which will take time, while the Germans a few miles away and still holding Noord Brabant made no sense at all.
SHEAF got what they wanted from a strategic point of view.
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@ToolTimeTabor wrote:
"placing 10,000 men on the far side of three 1000' spans plus two other meaningful water barriers is NOT a good plan."
It was thought a good plan to jump the Rhine at the time giving the state of German forces. The road from Zon to Arnhem was devoid of German troops. Only non-combat troops in Nijmegen with no bridge defenses. A properly planned operation of speed and surprise using coup de mains would have worked for sure.
SHAEF Intelligence Summary, 26.08 44:
‘Two and a half months of bitter fighting, culminating for the Germans in a blood-bath big enough even for their extravagant tastes, have brought the end of the war in Europe within sight, almost within reach. The strength of the German Armies in the West has been shattered, Paris belongs to France again, and the Allied Armies are streaming towards the frontiers of the Reich’
SHAEF Intelligence Summary, 04.09 44:
[the German forces facing British 2nd Army] ‘are no longer a cohesive force but a number of fugitive battlegroups, disorganised and even demoralised, short of equipment and arms’
SHAEF Intelligence Summary, 16.09 44:
‘the enemy has now suffered , in the West alone, losses in men and equipment that can never be repaired in this war….No force can, then, be built up in the West sufficient for a counteroffensive or even a successful defensive.’
According to the US Official History, the motivation for Market Garden was driven by Gen Marshal, Gen Arnold and others in Washington. The refusal by Gen Bradley to entertain an airborne operation, but use the ground fighting divisions and keep the aircraft maintaining Patton’s Third Army with fuel, meant that the operation was reluctantly passed to Monty.
US Official History:
One of the principal reasons underlying the creation of the First Allied Airborne Army was the insistence by the U.S. War Department on greater strategic use of airborne troops. From February 1944 Generals George C. Marshall, U.S. Chief of Staff, and Henry H. Arnold, commander of the Army Air Forces, had let General Eisenhower know unmistakably that they attached great importance to the employment of airborne units in actual operations deep in enemy territory.
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@ToolTimeTabor wrote:
"Eisenhower, Brereton, Williams, Gavin and Lundquist are to blame... Monty, Horrocks, Browning and Urquhart (whose life was dangling at the end of this plan) had no responsibility at all"
That was about right. The facts are that planning was primarily American, and the failure points were American. I never made it up.
Market Garden was actually a success:
♦ It kept Antwerp out of German artillery range.
♦ It created a 60 mile buffer between Antwerp and German forces. Antwerp was the only port taken intact. This buffer proved itself in the German Bulge attack right through US lines. The German went through a forest rather than the direct route, which would have been through the Market Garden salient.
♦ It created a staging point to move into Germany at Nijmegen, which was used.
♦ It eliminated V rocket launching sites aimed at London.
♦ It split the German armies.
♦ It isolated the German 15th army in Holland.
♦ They reached the Rhine.
♦ The salient was fleshed out to the Meuse.
♦ The Germans never retook one mm of ground taken.
♦ It captured the important Philips radio factory at Eindhoven.
The Germans never thought Market Garden was a failure. It punched a 60 mile salient right into their lines in a few days, right on their border. They saw it as a staging area to jump into Germany - which it was. In late 1944/early 1945, the longest allied advance was the 60 mile Market Garden advance. The only operation to fully achieve its goals in that time period was Monty's clearing of the Scheldt.
'It is interesting to consider how far we failed in this operation. It should be remembered that the Arnhem bridgehead was only a part of the whole. We had gained a great deal in spite of this local set-back. The Nijmegen bridge was ours, and it proved of immense value later on. And the brilliant advance by XXX Corps led the way to the liberation of a large part of Holland, not to speak of providing a stepping stone to the successful battles of the Rhineland.'
- OPERATION VICTORY by MAJOR-GENERAL DEGUINGAND, 1947, page 419.
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@ToolTimeTabor
"Maybe their planning for flank security, but not for speed."
VIII Corps were one of the flanking corps. They could hardly move off the starting blocks because of a lack of supply. A division of the US First army was to flank, but never did because Bradley was peeling off supplies from Hodges to give to Patton who was chasing second rate targets in the Saar.
"The Saar industrial region, while significant, was of secondary importance when compared to the great Ruhr industrial complex farther north."
- The Lorraine Campaign: An Overview, September-December 1944, by Dr. C Gabel, U.S Army Command and General Staff College, February, 1985.
Bradley was disobeying Eisenhower.
It should be borne in mind that promised supplies from SHAEF failed to arrive, leaving VIII Corps, supposed to attack alongside, mostly stranded in place. “Garden” launched with only half the troops it should have had. Montgomery had also wanted to use Hodges First US Army (and had in fact been promised) as a follow up flanking advance.
- Chester Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe.
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@ToolTimeTabor
Hodges was to be on the flank of Market Garden....
"On 4 Sept, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr"
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"the narrow thrust was reduced to the Second Army and two US corps, the XIX and VII of Hodges’ First Army, a total of around eighteen Allied divisions"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Because Hodges was now spread over a 150 miles front because of the broad-front strategy, and short of supplies because Bradley was giving them to Patton, against orders, as the Northern Thrust was priority, he could not give even a division for Market Garden. Patton at least should have been fired.
"Post-Normandy Bradley seemed unable to control Patton, who persistently flouted Eisenhower’s directives and went his own way, aided and abetted by Bradley. This part of their relationship quickly revealed itself in matters of supply, where Hodges, the commander of the US First Army, was continually starved of fuel and ammunition in order to keep Patton’s divisions rolling, even when Eisenhower’s strategy required First Army to play the major role in 12th Army Group’s activities."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
The choice in early September was the Rhine or Antwerp: to continue the pursuit or secure the necessary facilities to solve the logistical problem? The decision was made to go for the Rhine, and that decision was Eisenhower’s."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower's directive of 4 Sept had divisions of the US 1st Army and Montgomery's view of taking multiple bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. The British 2nd Army needed some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow). Hodges' would protect the right flank. the Canadians would protect the left flank from the German 15th army.
"the narrow thrust was reduced to the Second Army and two US corps, the XIX and VII of Hodges’ First Army, a total of around eighteen Allied divisions"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
The northern thrust was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944."
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
My agenda is facts. No excuses to cover rear end of generals.
BTW, I worked with the US Army in the Middle East. Apart from that you will get no more on that.
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@ToolTimeTabor
XXX Corp were to move after the parachute jumps, so as not to alert the Germans who may immediately man the bridges. The 101st and 82nd were to seize the bridge with thunderclap surprise.
From 21st Army Group Orders:
Final point of PHASE I:
(f) The Div may conc SOUTH of EINDHOVEN in areas of the CL preparatory to further adv.
conc = concentration area:
Which is an area, usually in the theatre of operations, where troops are assembled before beginning, or continuing, active operations.
It says: preparatory to further adv. adv = advance. So, on phase 1 they were to concentrate South of Eindhoven before (preparatory) to advancing. That is clear.
When concentrating that is gathering all vehicles in one location. Vehicles will still be moving into this concentration location at 35 vehicles to every mile of the train at a hoped 10 mph. If the vehicles move at 10mph from the starting point the lead vehicles should be south of Eindhoven in 1 hour. But the lead have to stop to concentrate. And 35 vehicles in each mile at a hoped 10 mph are pouring into the concentration location. It does not say how many vehicles have to be in the concentration area before moving off again.
Now onto phase 2.
Phase 2 clearly states that it will start at 1st light on D+1. It says:
PHASE II: (a) The Div will continue the adv
That is advance after phase 1 is concluded of course. To continue the advance you have to be stopped. Phase 1 concludes south of Eindhoven as the force concentrated. Clear.
The document says a hoped 10 mih (10mph), but not for phase 1 as the forces are concentrated south of Eindhoven at end of phase 1. South of Eindhoven is approx 11 miles from the start point. It only expects 11 miles of advance in the first 5 hours, which is understandable as German forces formed a strong line in front of British forces at the northern British front on the Belgian/Dutch border.
So, on D-day XXX Corps have to get to Eindhoven which is 11 miles and depending on tactic conditions it is hoped they will move at 10 mph when moving north from Eindhoven. There are two different points here:
1. Target time -
XXX Corps do not have 100% control of the time to reach targets, except south of Eindhoven. They were depending on airborne units securing bridges for them, which is out of their hands.
2. Rate of Movement, when "moving" -
XXX Corps have near 100% control of this.
XXX Corps when moving were moving as expected, irrespective of the tactical situation. Reaching hoped for vague target times are different - target times were not specific only roughly deducted. Indeed as XXX Corps were dependent on the MARKET side of the operation, the airborne units, to keep up their rate of movement.
XXX Corps were not slow. They maintained the realistically expected speed of advance. The only times they did not move were due to the US 101st and 82nd, when both failed to seize bridges, which was out of XXX Corps' control. XXX Corps had to seize the bridges themselves or create the bridge (Bailey bridge). When XXX Corps turned up at Nijmegen at 0820 at D+2, given the approx 12 hour delay at Zon when the 101st failed to seize the bridge, they were near enough at an expected rate of movement. More than adequate to complete the operation.
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@Johnny Carroll
You do have a point. The less German reinforcement you meet the easier it is to recover from setbacks.
XXX Corp meeting stiff unexpected German resistance, arrived at Zon at 1800hrs on d-day plus 1, unable to cross the waterway. XXX Corps could have been at Nijmegen at at 2045hrs on d-day+1 if the 101st had seized the bridge at Zon, with all vehicles in full flow, as the Germans would not have brought in any significant reinforcements. A few troops would have come in via the ferry onto the island reinforcing the 600 or so non-combat troops in Nijmegen. In short, Nijmegen town would have been easier to clear.
Then the prospect of XXX Corps seizing the Nijmegen bridge. When the ground forces occupied a carpet, they were in command of all troops. XXX Corps saw that the 82nd had failed to seize the bridge so did so themselves, ordering the 82nd to assist in their tanks assisted attacks.
Arriving at the bridge occupied by Germans 12 hours earlier, would it have made it easier to seize the bridge? Probably. By how much quicker than the 36 hours? Six hours quicker, 12 hours quicker? Lets say a total of a 24 hour delay. So that makes it approx a one day delay in total. That gives approx 1900hrs on d-day+2 rolling across the Nijmegen bridge.
Relieving the paras at Arnhem would have occurred, as they were still holding on well on the north end of the bridge, having fought off some some German armour brought in from Germany on d-day+1, the evening before.
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@walterm140
Walter Mitty again!
"I personally gave an order to Jim Gavin that, although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen Bridges as soon as possible, it was essential that he should capture the Groesbeek Ridge and hold it"
- Lt Gen Browning to Maj Gen G. E. Prier-Palmer, British Joint Services Mission, Washington, D.C., 25 Jan 1955, excerpt in OCMH.
‘Take only the bridges and you probably could not hold them without the high ground. Take only the high ground, the Waal bridge at Nijmegen, and the Maas-Waal Canal bridges, and the ground column could not get across the Maas either to use the other bridges or to relieve the airborne troops.
- US Official History. THE SIEGFRIED LINE CAMPAIGN, Page 157.
Gavin thought that the Groesbeek Heights should be taken before Nijmegen Bridge. Again, the US Official History:
'General Gavin saw no solution at first other than to take first the high ground and the Maas and Maas-Waal-Canal bridges - thereby ensuring juncture with the ground column - then Nijmegen.’-- US Official History. THE SIEGFRIED LINE CAMPAIGN, Page 157.
Gavin took all his men completely out of Nijmegen town after holding on near to the southern part of the bridge overnight. This was a crass decision. He openly said the Second Army could take the bridge to Browning, when Browning saw the bridge had not been seized. Maybe he thought they had all the time in the world. Browning did not land at the same time as the 82nd men. He was in the air when they should have been moving to the bridge.
Now you know Mr Mitty.
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Desmond O'Brien
You have been looking at too many Hollywood films haven't you?
Patton?
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed there with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept to try and plug the gaps while the panzer divisions proper were being re-fitted and rebuilt after the summer 1944 battles.
The Panzer Brigades had green crews that never had enough time to train, did not know their tanks properly, did not have any recon elements and didn't even meet their unit commander until his arrival at the front. These were not means elite forces.
17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. The 17th SS was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, only equipped with assault guns, not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy and not up to strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the best German divisions in the west were NOT.
♦ Who did the 3rd Army engage?
♦ Who did 3rd Army defeat?
♦ Patton never once faced a full strength
Waffen SS panzer division nor a
Tiger battalion.
In The Lorraine, the 3rd Army faced a rabble. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took over in September 1944 said:
"I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Patton was facing a second rate rabble in The Lorraine for the most part. Patton was also neither on the advance nor being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines.
The road from Luxembourg to Bastogne pretty well devoid of German forces, as Bastogne was on the very southern German flank. Only when Patton got near to Bastogne did he engage some German armour but it was not a great amount at all. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade wasn't one of the best German armoured units, while 26th Volks-Grenadier only had a dozen Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind only had a small number of tanks operational. Its not as if Patton had to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne, he never. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1.
Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They where were still engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Leading elements were engaging the Americans and British under Montgomery's command near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance and pushed them back.
In Normandy in 1944, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates.
♦ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics
Bradley's II Corps were employing
♦ He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division,
Truscott of being "afraid to fight".
♦ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the
US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps.
♦ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize
stalled he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being
"very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect".
♦ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in
reporting their losses.
After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF. Coningham, gave Patton massive US ground attack plane support and he still stalled. It was Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance that were the reasons for his stall. Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault, including his subordinates. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated. Oh, and wore cowboy guns.
Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his orders, and Eisenhowers orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds
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RED S7VN
"Monty’s abrasive character brought on a no-win situation with his American colleagues. His habit of reducing his orders to simple terms inevitably produced criticism, not least from American historians, that he was patronising his US subordinates. This is not a complaint often heard from those subordinates —including, in moments of stress, subordinates like Simpson or Hodges during the Bulge — or even Bradley in Normandy. The first two generals appreciated the fact that Montgomery was a regular visitor to their headquarters and was always ready with help or advice — if needed. Neither American general has accused Monty of condescension, but it has to be accepted that one barrier to renewing the appointment of Montgomery to the post of Ground Commander was the widespread dislike he had incurred at SHAEF."
"The command styles of these two generals were clearly very different, and that should not be a matter for surprise. The British and US armies had different traditions, experiences and training, and these differences should have been accommodated. The problems arose — and the arguments have continued since 1945 — because the Americans believed, and still believe, that there were only two military command styles, that of the US army, which was the right one, a one-size-fits-all doctrine suitable for every occasion, and all other doctrines which were, quite simply, not just different but wrong. The American experience in a number of post-1945 wars, including Korea and the one that concluded with that unseemly scramble into helicopters from the roof of the US embassy in Saigon, have not greatly dented this perception."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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SHAEF tended to focus on the strategic side of the armies. A prime problem for SHAEF in September 1944 was opening up the approaches to Antwerp - the logistics issue.
It was:
1) Take Noord Brabant, the land to the north and northeast of Antwerp, or;
2) Take the Schedlt.
Noord Branant had to be taken first, as it was essential. It was, with limited forces also sent to start the taking of the Schedlt.
Market Garden had to go ahead regardless of any threat, actually being a success.
To use Antwerp and control the approaches, the Scheldt, you needed to control everything up to the south bank of the lower Rhine at Nijmegen. The low-lying lands and boggy ground between Arnhem and Nijmegen make a perfect geographical feature to stop behind and prepare a defence of Antwerp. Without control of Noord Brabant German forces would have been in artillery range of Antwerp. The Germans were actually directing artillery at Antwerp.
Market Garden was the offensive launched to solve the Antwerp problem, in keeping the Germans away - it made sense as the Germans were is disarray. Monty’s decision to push on to Arnhem may have been one last attempt at his single front northern thrust argument, and making complete sense in establishing a bridgehead over the Rhine as an extra to the operation.
You only needed Arnhem if you wanted to springboard into Germany, but you needed everything up to Nijmegen if you wanted to do anything at all. Gaining Noord Brabant, was vital and accomplished.
Fighting in the low lying mud, canals & waterways and raised roads of the Schedlt, which will take time, while the Germans are still holding Noord Brabant, made no sense at all.
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@wilburfinnigan2142
Again for you. Move your lips as you read as it will make it better for you.
The Mustang was basically a British plane made by an American factory for them. The British Air Ministry directed a six year old inexperienced company, North American Aviation, to the design points they wanted for their plane. They assisted North American who drew it up. As a university lecturer would do in directing students to research various points in a project. The students run off do the research with the lecturer assessing what they did and how it fits into the project as a whole. The Mustang was a British plane made by an American company for them. There was no US forces involvement in the concept, specifications or design. Americans lose sight of these fundamental points.
The Rolls Royce Merlin engine made the Mustang perform superbly. The plane initially used an Allison engine, which was only good at low level, as RR could not meet the supply of Merlins, so the Alison it had to be. The US were behind the British in engine supercharging with Tizard Mission giving the USA details of advanced super charging. Also the cylinder head design of the Alison was not good enough for full supercharging. Stanley Hooker of RR developed the auto controlled twin-speed twin-charger supercharging technology which was given free to the USA. The first use of the Mustang by the US military was for ground attack because of the poor high level performance of the Allison engine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by4lH2whhjk
In the early stages of WW2, the U.S. government allowed the British & French to bi-pass them allowing direct approaches to U.S. aircraft makers, as would the British government approach say Hawker. The British needed all types of planes urgently, even the P-40 which was inferior to their own front line planes. But warplanes they were being useful in certain theatres and for training. In early February 1940 the British asked North American Aviation's President Dutch Kindelberger to supply P-40s made under licence from Curtiss, as Curtiss could not supply demand. Unlike Curtiss North American were far from near full capacity. Kindelberger told the British, without any detailed drawings or plans, "I can build you a better airplane, and I can get it built fast". Contrary to popular belief in the USA, North American did not have a prototype ready design which the British just happened to have snapped up under the noses of the US military.
North American were first approached in Feb 1940, who had no "detailed drawings or plans". The British gave this young inexperienced company a chance but they would have to hold their hands. In May 1940 as France was falling, North American still never presented any detailed plans, mailing a "design concept" to the British delegation in New York. This never had the famed laminar flow wings. The British Air Ministry accepted the inferior Allison engine as Rolls Royce were working flat out 24/7 unable to meet demand for Merlins. New Merlin factories were being set up but not yet fully on-line. In the interim from Feb to May, three months, the British Air Ministry were forming the fundamentals of the design concepts directing North American to Curtiss and the NACA the developer of the laminar flow wings, to ensure a fighter with some leading edge design points, not produce another P-40 fly-alike wasting valuable time. The Air Ministry directed NAA to the Curtiss XP-46 experimental plane which had all the leading edge design points of top European designs, with a few of their own, rolled into one. It never worked as the individual points never complimented each other when merged into one complete whole.
NAA were ordered by the British Air Ministry to buy the plans and test results of the XP-46 plane from Curtiss if they wanted the job, at a whopping $52,000, a lot of money at the time. Curtiss engineers always said the Mustang was their design. Not quite as the British Air Ministry had a lot to say in the leading design points - they were paying and calling the shots as it was their plane. There was a danger the Mustang may end up the same way as the XP-46 - a plane with leading edge points that never performed as expected. The British Air Ministry took a major gamble with NAA so were active in approving the emerging design points.
The Ministry wanted something better than the poor P-40, being prepared to wait, but realistically never expected Spitfire performance. Initially that was the case with the first deliveries using the Allison engine - better than a P-40 but no Spitfire. The initial Allison engined Mustangs filled an RAF niche, so no problems for the British at that point. A niche the plane filled was that the RAF needed a long range reconnaissance plane that could also perform ground attack being able as a low level fighter if the need was there. The Spitfire was a short range fast interceptor. With the fall of France the RAF needed a plane with range to penetrate over the German border from English air bases.
Reading many US books on the Mustang you would think the concept of the plane was to escort US bombers. That is way off from the truth. The last thing the British Air Ministry were thinking of when laying down the points of the plane was US bomber doctrine. The US were not even in the war. Initially the US military overall didn't want to know the plane. The Mustang was not even in U.S. service when it was shooting down FW-190s by the RAF over France. The Air Ministry gave the U.S. military two planes which were left in the corner of a hangar for a long period. They initially never assessed it. Quite amazing, as the USA never had a decent front line fighter at the time.
The excuse not to take up the plane by U.S. forces was that it was liquid cooled being vulnerable to frontal attack. This was a poor excuse to reject the plane because it wasn't theirs. What went over their heads was that the world's two best fighters locked horns in the Battle of Britain, both with liquid cooled engines. With British support, the Mustang finally was noticed by the U.S. Army Air Force. The US military had to go to England to fully assess the plane as it was finished off in Liverpool being flow by the RAF.
The US military did eventually adopt the plane calling it the Apache and P-51 when in U.S. service. UK and U.S. Mustangs for the European war theatre were finished off in Liverpool. They were test flown then delivered to the units by young English girls, many of them teenagers. The Mustang was built to British specification and design guidance without a doubt. They specified and paid for it. It never performed at all like the short range interceptor the Spitfire, not having the manoeuvrability of the Spitfire. It was 'fine' and reasonably fast at low altitude with the Allison engine. It could operate over France and even Germany at a push escorting bombers because of the longer range that the British Air Ministry specified. The Mustang filled a niche role for the British. continued......
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Rommel's tanks did not have enough fuel because of the RN blockade.
Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze: page 411:
"In Feb 1941. The Italian Navy was to drop all naval operations unless Germany provided 25,000 tons of oil. The German surface navy was neutralized in port through lack of fuel. Lack of oil was a big Axis problem."
Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze: Page 439:
"In November 1941 the fuel oil situation of both the Italian and German navies was described by the Wehrmacht as 'catastrophic'. In May 1941 the Royal Navy had sunk the battleship Bismarck as it made a futile bid to escape into the Atlantic shipping lanes. By the autumn the rest of Germany's surface fleet was confined to harbour, not only by the British but also by the chronic lack of fuel."
Wages of Destruction: page 442:
"Shipments of oil to Britain peaked at more than 20 million tons, nine times the maximum figure ever imported by Germany during the war. In January 1941, when Germany is sometimes described as being 'glutted' with oil, stocks came to barely more than 2 million tons. In London, alarm bells went off whenever stocks fell below 7 million tons. So great was the disparity that the British Ministry of Economic Warfare, charged with assessing Germany's economic situation, had difficulty believing its highly accurate estimates of German oil stocks. To the British it seemed implausible that Hitler could possibly have embarked on the war with such a small margin of fuel security, an incredulity shared by both the Soviets and the Americans, who agreed in overestimating Germany's oil stocks by at least 100 per cent."
During 1941, Italy was only able to import 600,000 tons of fuel with 163,000 tons given to the navy. At this point the monthly consumption had to be reduced to 60,000 tons. The total amount of oil fuel available at the end of the year was about 200,000 tons. During this period it was decided to remove from service the older battleships. After the November British attack in Egypt, the high command and Mussolini requested that the Italian fleet defend the Libya-bound convoys. This paid off and was only possible by the special shipment of 80,000 tons of German oil fuel delivered at the end of the year.
On January 10th, 1942 the Italians informed the Germans that their navy’s supplies of fuel had dropped to 90,000 tons. During these months, the bottom was hit with reserves down to 14,000 tons. The situation deteriorated by the shipment of 9,000 tons of German oil fuel of quality too low to use. At the end of April, it was possible to import 50,000 tons of fuel oil per month from Romania. Suspending escort and mining missions by Italian cruisers reduced consumption. These cuts and new shipments allowed for the deployment of the whole Italian fleet during the battle with the British of mid-June. The Germans supplied fuel oil of only 10,000 tons in July 1942 and 23,000 tons in September. At the end of November 1942 the oil fuel reserve was about 70,000 tons plus all which was stored aboard the ships, This was enough for one sortie of the whole fleet. At the end of December, the old battleships Cesare, Duilio and Doria were removed from service.
The allied landing in North Africa in 1943 put the Italian navy in another state of fuel crisis. New missions were made possible by the shipment of 40,000 tons of quality German fuel oil. In January 1943, the fuel oil crisis reached its climax and the three modern battleships had to be removed from service eliminating the Italian battle force. The only naval division still operating was in Sardinia. Only 3,000 tons were received in February 1943 and in March and April the modern destroyers had to be removed from escort missions. By the 10th of April, the only major naval force was annihilated when the Trieste was sunk and the Gorizia seriously damaged by allied air attack. Expecting a possible Allied invasion, the remaining destroyers were reactivated along with the battleships which had only half their bunkers filled with diesel fuel.
In April 1943, the Italian navy was partially active and destroyers were used in escort missions. But there was no reserves of fuel oil left. The Germans "loaned" 60,000 tons of fuel oil captured from the French fleet at Toulon, allowing the three battleships to be reactivated with some cruisers. When Italy surrendered on September 8th 1943, their fleet only had enough fuel to reach Malta to surrender.
Such was the effect of the Royal Navy blockade, the most effective and forgotten operation of WW2.
“Unfortunately, our petrol stocks were badly depleted, and it was with some anxiety that we contemplated the coming British attack [Battleaxe], for we knew that our moves would be decided more by the petrol gauge than by tactical requirements.”
- Rommel in - Hart, L. The Rommel Papers. 1953.
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Patton was an average US general, like Simpson, Patch, Hodges, etc. No more. A US media creation for home hero consumption, elevating the average beyond their status.
"The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian First Army HQ for the same purpose.
Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation.
"This advance duly began at 0630hrs on August 18 which, as the Canadian Official History remarks, ‘was a day and a half after Montgomery had issued the order for the Canadians to close the gap at Trun, and four and a half days after Patton had been stopped at the Third Army boundary’. During that time, says the Canadian History, the Canadians had been ‘fighting down from the north with painful slowness’ and the Germans had been making their way east through the Falaise gap. They were not, however, unimpeded; the tactical air forces and Allied artillery were already taking a fearful toll of the German columns on the roads heading east past Falaise.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise – Operation Tractable – which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed there with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were re-fitting and rebuilt after the summer 1944 battles. The Panzer Brigades had green crews with little time to train, did not know their tanks properly, had no recon elements and didn't even meet their unit commander until his arrival at the front. These were not elite forces.
The 17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, equipped only with assault guns not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy and not up to strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the best German divisions in the west were NOT.
♦ Who did the 3rd Army engage?
♦ Who did the 3rd Army defeat?
♦ Patton never once faced a full strength Waffen SS panzer division nor a Tiger battalion.
In The Lorraine, the 3rd Army faced a rabble. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said:
"I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Patton was mostly facing a second rate rabble in The Lorraine.
Patton was neither on the advance nor being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. The road from Luxembourg to Bastogne saw few German forces, with Bastogne being on the very southern German flank, their focus was west. Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was not one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, while 26th Volks-Grenadier only had about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind only had a small number of tanks operational. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1.
Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Leading elements were engaging the Americans and British under Montgomery's command near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance and pushed them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons opened up with the American attack stopping and pulling back. The next day fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B retreating once again. It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. Patton's forces arrived at Chaumont late on the 22nd December. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day, the 25th! Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, just 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne.
In Normandy in 1944, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact. This eastern dash devoid of German forces was the ride the US media claimed Patton was some sort master of fast moving armour.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates.
♦ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics Bradley's II Corps were employing
♦ He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division, Truscott of being "afraid to fight".
♦ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps.
♦ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize stalled he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being "very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect".
♦ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in reporting their losses.
After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF. Coningham, gave Patton massive ground attack plane support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall. Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault, including his subordinates. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated. Oh, and wore cowboy guns.
Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his orders, and Eisenhower's orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read:
Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds and
Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies by Harry Yeide
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@sandervanderkammen9230
Wankel engines are not unreliable at all. They are perfect;y suited for aviation, moreso than piston engines.
wiki got it right, for once (the Wankel article is good):
In principle, Wankel engines are ideal for light aircraft, being light, compact, almost vibrationless, and with a high power-to-weight ratio. Further aviation benefits of a Wankel engine include:
1. Rotors cannot seize, since rotor casings expand greater than rotors;
2. The engine is less prone to the serious condition known as "engine-knock", which can destroy plane's piston engines in mid-flight.
3. The engine is not susceptible to "shock-cooling" during descent;
4. The engine does not require an enriched mixture for cooling at high power;
5. Having no reciprocating parts, there is less vulnerability to damage when the engine revolves at a higher rate than the designed maximum.
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@Front-Toward-Enemy
The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British under Montgomery. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa;
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein;
♦ March 1943 - Medenine;
♦ June 1944 - Normandy;
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands;
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge;
A list of Montgomery’s victories in WW2:
♦ Battle of Alam Halfa;
♦ Second Battle of El Alamein;
♦ Battle of El Agheila;
♦ Battle of Medenine;
♦ Battle of the Mareth Line;
♦ Battle of Wadi Akarit;
♦ Allied invasion of Sicily;
♦ Operation Overlord - the largest amphibious invasion in history;
♦ Market Garden - a 60 mile salient created into German territory;
♦ Battle of the Bulge - while taking control of two shambolic US armies;
♦ Operation Veritable;
♦ Operation Plunder.
Montgomery not once had a reverse.
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Monty's 8th Army advanced the fastest of any army in WW2. From El Alamein to El Agheila from the 4th to 23rd November 1942, 1,300 km in just 17 days. After fighting a major exhausting battle at El Alemein through half a million mines. This was an Incredible feat, unparalleled in WW2. With El Alamein costing just 13,500 casualties.
The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties, with the Lorraine campaign being a failure.
Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties. Hodges, head of the US First army, fled from Spa to near Liege on the 18th, despite the Germans never getting anywhere near to Spa. Hodges did not even wait for the Germans to approach Spa. He had already fled long before the Germans were stopped. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British, with Montgomery involved in planning, with also Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
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@DonMeaker
The idea was to form a bridgehead over the Rhine at Arnhem until Antwerp is online. A prime strategic problem for SHAEF in September 1944 was opening up the approaches to Antwerp and keeping it from German counter-attack - the logistics problem to supply all allied armies. It was:
1) Take Noord Brabant, the land to the north and northeast of Antwerp, or;
2) Take the Schedlt.
Eisenhower had a weak Northern Thrust strategy at the time. Taking Noord Babant fell in line with the desires for both SHEAF and Eisenhower.
Noord Brabant had to be taken before the Scheldt, as it was essential. It was taken with limited forces, with minimal forces also sent to put pressure on the Schedlt. Market Garden had to go ahead regardless of any threat or Northern Thrust strategy, actually being a success.
To use Antwerp and control the approaches, the Scheldt and everything up to the south bank of the lower Rhine at Nijmegen needed to be under allied control. The low-lying lands, boggy ground between Arnhem and Nijmegen with land strewn with rivers and canals, is perfect geography as a barrier against a German counter-attack towards Antwerp. Without control of Noord Brabant German forces would have been in artillery range of Antwerp, and with a build up of forces and supply directly back to Germany in perfect position for a counter-attack.
Market Garden was the offensive SHEAF wanted to secure Antwerp, a prime port for logistics for all allied armies. It made sense as the Germans were in disarray, so should be easy enough to gain. Monty added Arnhem to form a bridgehead over the Rhine to fall in line with Eisenhower's priority Northern Thrust strategy at the time. It made complete sense in establishing a bridgehead over the Rhine as an extra to the operation.
You needed Arnhem for an easier jump into Germany. Everything up to Nijmegen was needed if you wanted to do anything at all - that is, protect Antwerp and have a staging point to move into Germany. Gaining Noord Brabant, was vital, and was successfully seized. Fighting in the low lying mud and waterways of the Schedlt, which will take time, while the Germans a few miles away and still holding Noord Brabant made no sense at all.
SHEAF got what they wanted from a strategic point of view.
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@DonMeaker
You have no idea. Such confusion. The Normandy plans went as clockwork. So much the operation came in ahead of scheduled. So much that the British wiped out 90% of German armour in the west.
Monty cared nothing of phase lines. Only the start and end points. From Nigel Hamilton’s three volume biography of Montgomery:
”To help illustrate his presentation Monty had asked his MA - Lt Colonel Dawnay, to ink colluded phases onto the maps - as Dawnay later remembered:
’I had the maps prepared and drew on them the D-Day targets for the troops along the invasion front. And the dropping zones of the paratroopers. And the after consulting with Monty I drew the D plus 90 line - showing where he felt we should get by D plus 90 - which included Paris and a line back along the Loire.And I asked Monty how I should draw the lines in between. And he said , ‘Well it doesn’t matter Kit, draw them as you like.’ ‘So I said, ‘ Shall I draw them equally, sir?’ And he said ‘Yes, that’ll do.’
In his opinion it was not of any importance where he would be groundwise between D plus 1 and D plus 90, because he felt sure he could capture the line D plus 90 by the end of 3 months, and he was not going to capture ground, he was going to destroy enemy forces. Using Monty’s presentation notes, Dawnay drew in the arbitrary lines, never dreaming that they would be used in evidence against Monty when the campaign did not go ‘according to plan’…….In his later memoirs, Tedder reported the same Eisenhower allegation that would so infuriate Monty: ‘When a week had passed since D-Day without the capture of Caen it became clear to us at SHAEF that the hopes of a road breakthrough on the left were now remote.’
Yet Monty had never suggested or intended a break-through on the left; only a battle around Caen that would permit him to establish and extend the shield behind which Bradley could take Cherbourg and breakout via St Lo and Avranches to Brittany. Some of the misunderstanding was undoubtedly caused by Monty himself, as his MA, Lt Colonel Dawnay, later recognised: I think he had given the RAF a totally false impression, at St Paul’s and elsewhere, as to when he was going to get the airfields, south of Caen - a totally false impression. Because when we got there [to Normandy] we realized quite quickly that he didn’t care a damn about those airfields, as long as he could draw all the German armour on to the [eastern] side and give a chance for his right swing to break out!”
- Hamilton, Nigel. Monty, Master of the Battlefield 1942-1944.
”As he explained in a letter that evening to Major-General Simpson at the war Office, Caen was only a name; he did not want to waste British and Canadians lives a la Stalingrad: The Germans are doing everything they can to hold on to CAEN. I have decided not to have a lot of casualties by butting up against the place; so I have ordered Second Army to keep up a good pressure at CAEN, and to make its main effort towards VILLERS BOCAGE and EVRECY and thence S.E. towards FALAISE.”
- Hamilton, Nigel. Monty, Master of the Battlefield 1942-1944.
But this had been stated in an address he had given before D-Day. Monty’s actual address, never published before, makes it quite clear that, with the exception of ports, the battle for Normandy would not be conducted with object of capturing towns, but of step by step building up of men and resources until the moment when the Americans would be strong enough to drive south into Brittany and to the Loire. It was a strategy that Monty unfolded with absolute conviction, two months before the new date set for the invasion: the first full moon in June. As in the address to senior officers before Alamein the calm authority with which Monty outlined his plan, the likely enemy response, and the phases through which the battle would go, was almost incredible to those present who did not already know Montgomery.
At no point in this military lecture to Brooke, Churchill and Smuts, did Monty ever suggest that Dempsey was to do more than bring the German forces to battle around Caen, however - and when after the war, Eisenhower wrote that ‘in the east we had been unable to break out towards the Seine’, Monty was furious, for this was a complete travesty of the facts. To Churchill Monty had made it quite clear that there was no question of wild break-outs. How could there be when the Allies had only fourteen divisions ashore, many of which, particularly the parachute and first assault divisions, were inevitably running out of steam?
As Churchill pointed out to Stalin the battle for Normandy would be a slow and deliberate one: _‘I should think it quite likely that we should work up to a battle of about a million a side, lasting throughout June and July. We plan to have about two million there by mid-August.Eisenhower’s unfortunate obfuscation has coloured the military accounts ever since, polarizing chroniclers into nationalistic camps. This was, Monty felt, a tragedy in view of the fact that the battle for Normandy was, at all stages, an Allied battle, in which Allied soldiers gave their lives, conforming to an Allied plan to defeat the German armies in the West - not to ‘break out towards the Seine’ in some mythical Lancelot charge...Dempsey’s brief then was not to ‘break out towards Seine’, but to play his part in a truly Allied undertaking, bringing to battle the mobile German forces that would otherwise - as Rommel wished - destroy the American assault on Cherbourg.”
- Hamilton, Nigel. Monty, Master of the Battlefield 1942–1944.
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@DonMeaker
John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
Montgomery to Alexander on July 19th 1943. A letter regarding Patton and Messina in Sicily: " ..when the Americans have cut the coast road north of Petralia, one American division should develop a strong thrust eastwards towards Messina so as to stretch the enemy who are all Germans and possibly repeat the Bizerte (Tunisia) manoeuvre (i.e cut them off)"
Monty wrote in his diary:
"the Seventh American Army should develop two strong thrusts with (a) two divisions on Highway 120 and (b) two divisions on Highway 113 towards Messina. This was all agreed"
Pages 140/141 of Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory by Michael Reynolds.
"[Monty] sent a message to Patton inviting him to come and discuss the capture of Messina. He offered, “Many congratulations to you and your gallant soldiers on securing Palermo and clearing up the western half of Sicily.” Privately, of course, he believed Patton’s Palermo escapade had been a completely wasted effort."
"Patton met Monty at Syracuse airfield on the 25th. Expecting the worst and mistrusting his comrade’s intentions, he was astounded when Monty suggested that the Seventh Army should use both the major roads north of Mount Etna (Highways 113 and 120) in a drive to capture Messina. In fact, Monty went even further and suggested that his right hand, or southern, thrust might even cross the inter-Army boundary and strike for Taormina, thereby cutting off the two German divisions facing the Eighth Army; the latter would “take a back seat.”
- by Michael Reynolds author of Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory
‘Montgomery was heading for Messina too, but the German forces still on the island threw up a tough defence line and it was late July before Montgomery worked his way through them and resumed his advance. Fans of the movie ''Patton'' think they know what happened next. Montgomery marched into Messina at the head of his triumphant troops - to find a smirking Patton waiting for him. Mr. D'Este assures us it didn't happen that way. Patton was indeed trying to beat Montgomery to Messina, but Montgomery would not make a race of it. He wanted only to keep the Germans from escaping and realized Patton was in the best position to accomplish that. In fact he urged Patton to use roads assigned to the Eighth Army.’
- NY Times, 1988, review book, The Finish Line Was Messina
In Sicily Patton was moving in the west over ground the Germans had abandoned and still made heavy going of it. It was arranged that Patton gets to Messina first with Montgomery. His troops did taking the easy route while the British slogged it out with the Germans, reaching Messina only a few hours after Patton.
"Although Brig. Gen. Maxwell Taylor, the artillery commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, described the provisional corps’ advance into northwestern Sicily as “a pleasure march, shaking hands with Italians asking, ‘How’s my brother Joe in Brooklyn?’ Nicest war I’ve ever been in!” it was in fact extremely unpleasant for many of the GIs who had to march over 100 miles through very rugged country in stifling heat and swirling dust."
- by Michael Reynolds author of Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory
Bradley:
“Patton was developing as an unpopular guy. He steamed about with great convoys of cars and great squads of cameramen … To George, tactics was simply a process of bulling ahead. Never seemed to think out a campaign. Seldom made a careful estimate of the situation. I thought him a shallow commander … I disliked the way he worked, upset tactical plans, interfered in my orders. His stubbornness on amphibious operations, parade plans into Messina sickened me and soured me on Patton. We learned how not to behave from Patton’s Seventh Army.”
The reference to amphibious operations was in relation to three landings made on the north coast of Sicily during the advance to Messina, known to the Americans as end runs. Patton did not in fact interfere in the first successful landing, but he ordered the second to take place earlier than Bradley and Truscott wished, ending in a minor disaster, and he ordered the third to take place despite the fact that the 3rd Division had already advanced beyond the landing site!"
- by Michael Reynolds author of Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory
More amateurism from the Americans, taking towns unnecessarily slowing down the operation:
"On July 19, Monty had signalled Alexander, outlining his axes of advance around either side of Mount Etna and suggesting that “when the Americans have cut the coast road north of Petralia, one American division should develop a strong thrust eastwards towards Messina so as to stretch the enemy who are all Germans and possibly repeat the Bizerta manoeuvre [i.e., cut them off].”
"This made complete military sense, but by the 17th Patton had persuaded Alexander to allow him to drive toward the northwestern part of the island. When Alexander tried to restrain Patton by sending him a new directive on the evening of the 19th, it was too late. The directive, in accordance with Monty’s suggestion, ordered Patton to first cut the coastal road north of Petralia and only then to move on Palermo. However, the Seventh Army Chief of Staff, Brig. Gen. Hobart Gay, kept the first part of the message from Patton, ensured that the remainder took a long time to be decoded, and then asked for it to be repeated on the grounds that it had been garbled! By the time this problem had been resolved, the advance guard of Keyes’ provisional corps was already in Palermo and Monty’s idea of an American division helping him, at least in the short term, had been frustrated."
- by Michael Reynolds author of Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory
Patton was a buffoon!
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On page 47 of Max Hasting's:Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944-45, he makes the point that confusion in the orders from German General Bittrich saved it for the Germans. Bittrich wanted the 9th SS to secure the north and south sides of Arnhem bridge, as he saw this bridge as vital as it was over the Rhine. But, the part of the 9th SS that were supposed to stay on the south side of the Arnhem bridge, by mistake went south to Nijmegen bridge preventing the US 82nd, who dawdled, from seizing that bridge. If the 9th SS did stay at Arnhem on the south side to Bittrich's orders, it would have been probable that XXX Corps would have wiped them out on the south side of the Rhine at Arnhem on the 19th - D-Day plus 2.
After the 9th SS had moved to Nijmegen with the Arnhem bridge uncontested on the south side, the Germans were pointing fingers at each other.
A screw up won it for the Germans, while a screw up for the allies lost it (Gavin not moving onto Nijmegen bridge immediately). This German error proved decisive in the allies not winning 100%. Nevertheless this German error does not detract from the point that the allies should have won, if Gavin had done his job properly. If Gavin had seized Nijmegen bridge immediately, the allies would have won irrespective of what the 9th SS did.
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@jdsaldivar5606
Timeline
Events on the 1st day - D day:
▪ "At 1328, the 665 men of US 82nd 1st Battalion began to fall from the sky."
- R Poulussen, Lost at Nijmegen.
▪ "Forty minutes after the drop, around 1410, the 1st Battalion marched off towards their objective, De Ploeg, three miles away."
- R Poulussen.
"The 82nd were digging in and performing reconn in the area looking for 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald
- Neillands, R. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
▪ "Colonel Warren about 1830 sent into Nijmegen a patrol consisting of a rifle platoon and the battalion intelligence section. This patrol was to make an aggressive reconnaissance, investigate reports from Dutch civilians that only eighteen Germans guarded the big bridge"
- US Official history, page 163.
▪ It was not until 1830hrs that he [col Warren] was able to send a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small, just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a radio — say forty men.
- Neillands. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
▪ The 82nd were dug in and preparing to defend their newly constructed regimental command post, which they established at 1825. Having dug in at De Ploeg, Warren's battalion wasn't prepared to move towards Nijmegen at all.
- R Poulussen.
▪ Then Colonel Lindquist "was told by General Gavin, around 1900, to move into Nijmegen."
- R Poulussen.
▪ Warren sent a patrol of about 40 men to reconnoiter the bridge at 1830. Three strays from the patrol captured seven of the 18 guards and their 20mm cannon who were guarding the south end of the bridge, having to let them go as no reinforcements arrived. The 508th had actually captured the south end of the largely undefended bridge. The three scouts that reached the southern end of the Nijmegen bridge about an hour before the 9th SS arrived. Joe Atkins of the patrol said: "at the bridge, only a few German soldiers were standing around a small artillery weapon... The Germans were so surprised; the six or seven defenders of the bridge gave up without resisting. We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark and none of our other troops showed up. We decided to pull away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge." - The 508th Connection by Zig Boroughs.That was the 9th SS arriving at 1930.
▪ Unfortunately, the patrol's radio failed to function so that Colonel Warren was to get no word from the patrol until the next morning
- US Official History, page 163.
▪ Once Lindquist told Lieutenant Colonel Warren [at 1900] that his Battalion was to move, Warren decided to visit the HQ of the Nijmegen Underground first - to see what info the underground had on the Germans at the Nijmegen bridge.
- R Poulussen,
▪ "Although Company A reached the rendezvous point on time, Company B "got lost en route." After waiting until about 2000, Colonel Warren left a guide for Company B and moved through the darkness with Company A toward the edge of the city. Some seven hours after H-Hour, [2030] the first real move against the Nijmegen bridge began."
- US Official History, page 163.
▪ As the scouts neared a traffic circle surrounding a landscaped circular park near the center of Nijmegen, the Keizer Karel Plein, from which a mall-like park led northeast toward the Nijmegen bridge, a burst of automatic weapons fire came from the circle. The time was about two hours before midnight. [2200 hrs]
- US Official History, page 163.
D Day plus 1
▪ In the meantime Colonel Warren had tried to get a new attack moving toward the highway bridge; but this the Germans thwarted just before dawn with another sharp counterattack.
- US Official History, page 165.
▪ "While the counterattack was in progress, General Gavin arrived at the battalion command post." "General Gavin directed that the battalion "withdraw from close proximity to the bridge and reorganize"." This was to mark the end of this particular attempt to take the Nijmegen bridge"
- US Official History, page 165.
▪ "A new attack to gain the bridge grew out of an early morning conference between General Gavin and Colonel Lindquist." "At 0745 on 18 September, D plus 1, Company G under Capt. Frank J. Novak started toward the bridge."
▪ At around 1100, Warren was ordered to withdraw from Nijmegen completely.
- R Poulussen.
▪ At 1400 on 18 September Colonel Mendez ordered Company G to withdraw from Nijmegen_
- US Official History, page 166._
"the chance for an easy, speedy capture of the Nijmegen bridge had passed. This was all the more lamentable because in Nijmegen during the afternoon the Germans had had nothing more than the same kind of_ "mostly low quality" troops encountered at most other places on D Day."
- US Official History, page 164.
The 82nd completely withdrew from Nijmegen town, allowing the Germans to pour the 10th SS infantry, who went over on the ferry, then south over the Nijmegen bridge to reinforce the bridge and occupy the town. This made matters worse when the 82nd and XXX Corps went into the town to clear them out.
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@Gearparadummies
Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower approved, under resourcing the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak". The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself.
XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.
Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time Monty had the Canadians cleared it, or were investing in many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@rkirby7183
Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower, approved under resourcing the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak". The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself.
XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.
Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden. The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time Monty had the Canadians cleared it, or were investing in many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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From Mazda....
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Mazda MX-30 e-Skyactiv R-EV Edition R
With the R moniker standing for return, just 400 Edition R models will come to the UK to celebrate the return of the rotary engine. The Maroon Rouge colour accent pays homage to the roof colour of the Mazda R360 – Mazda’s first passenger car. Inside, the front seat headrests are embossed with the rotary symbol and Edition R name, while the mats feature the rotary badge and a single white line of 2.6mm stitching matching the width of the rotor apex seal grooves. The same nod to the rotor apex seals can be found on the sculpted sides of the key, which also features horizontal sides that curve at the same angle as the sides of the rotor.
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John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
Montgomery to Alexander on July 19th 1943. A letter regarding to Patton and Messina in Sicily: " ..when the Americans have cut the coast road north of Petralia, one American division should develop a strong thrust eastwards towards Messina so as to stretch the enemy who are all Germans and possibly repeat the Bizerte (Tunisia) manoeuvre (i.e cut them off)"
Monty wrote in his diary:
"the Seventh American Army should develop two strong thrusts with (a) two divisions on Highway 120 and (b) two divisions on Highway 113 towards Messina. This was all agreed"
Pages 140/141 of Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory by Michael Reynolds.
"[Monty] sent a message to Patton inviting him to come and discuss the capture of Messina. He offered, “Many congratulations to you and your gallant soldiers on securing Palermo and clearing up the western half of Sicily.” Privately, of course, he believed Patton’s Palermo escapade had been a completely wasted effort."
"Patton met Monty at Syracuse airfield on the 25th. Expecting the worst and mistrusting his comrade’s intentions, he was astounded when Monty suggested that the Seventh Army should use both the major roads north of Mount Etna (Highways 113 and 120) in a drive to capture Messina. In fact, Monty went even further and suggested that his right hand, or southern, thrust might even cross the inter-Army boundary and strike for Taormina, thereby cutting off the two German divisions facing the Eighth Army; the latter would “take a back seat.”
by Michael Reynolds author of Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory
‘Montgomery was heading for Messina too, but the German forces still on the island threw up a tough defence line and it was late July before Montgomery worked his way through them and resumed his advance. Fans of the movie ''Patton'' think they know what happened next. Montgomery marched into Messina at the head of his triumphant troops - to find a smirking Patton waiting for him. Mr. D'Este assures us it didn't happen that way. Patton was indeed trying to beat Montgomery to Messina, but Montgomery would not make a race of it. He wanted only to keep the Germans from escaping and realized Patton was in the best position to accomplish that. In fact he urged Patton to use roads assigned to the Eighth Army.’
www.nytimes.com/1988/11/27/books/the-finish-line-was-messina.html
In Sicily Patton was moving in the west over ground the Germans had abandoned and still made heavy going of it. It was arranged that Patton gets to Messina first with Montgomery following on. His troops taking the easy route while the British slogged it out with the Germans, reaching Messina only a few hours after Patton.
"Although Brig. Gen. Maxwell Taylor, the artillery commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, described the provisional corps’ advance into northwestern Sicily as “a pleasure march, shaking hands with Italians asking, ‘How’s my brother Joe in Brooklyn?’ Nicest war I’ve ever been in!” it was in fact extremely unpleasant for many of the GIs who had to march over 100 miles through very rugged country in stifling heat and swirling dust."
by Michael Reynolds author of Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory
Bradley:
“Patton was developing as an unpopular guy. He steamed about with great convoys of cars and great squads of cameramen … To George, tactics was simply a process of bulling ahead. Never seemed to think out a campaign. Seldom made a careful estimate of the situation. I thought him a shallow commander … I disliked the way he worked, upset tactical plans, interfered in my orders. His stubbornness on amphibious operations, parade plans into Messina sickened me and soured me on Patton. We learned how not to behave from Patton’s Seventh Army.”
The reference to amphibious operations was in relation to three landings made on the north coast of Sicily during the advance to Messina, known to the Americans as end runs. Patton did not in fact interfere in the first successful landing, but he ordered the second to take place earlier than Bradley and Truscott wished, ending in a minor disaster, and he ordered the third to take place despite the fact that the 3rd Division had already advanced beyond the landing site!"
by Michael Reynolds author of Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory
More amateurism from the Americans, taking towns unnecessarily slowing down the operation:
"On July 19, Monty had signalled Alexander, outlining his axes of advance around either side of Mount Etna and suggesting that “when the Americans have cut the coast road north of Petralia, one American division should develop a strong thrust eastwards towards Messina so as to stretch the enemy who are all Germans and possibly repeat the Bizerta manoeuvre [i.e., cut them off].”
"This made complete military sense, but by the 17th Patton had persuaded Alexander to allow him to drive toward the northwestern part of the island. When Alexander tried to restrain Patton by sending him a new directive on the evening of the 19th, it was too late. The directive, in accordance with Monty’s suggestion, ordered Patton to first cut the coastal road north of Petralia and only then to move on Palermo. However, the Seventh Army Chief of Staff, Brig. Gen. Hobart Gay, kept the first part of the message from Patton, ensured that the remainder took a long time to be decoded, and then asked for it to be repeated on the grounds that it had been garbled! By the time this problem had been resolved, the advance guard of Keyes’ provisional corps was already in Palermo and Monty’s idea of an American division helping him, at least in the short term, had been frustrated."
by Michael Reynolds author of Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory
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@johnlucas8479
For many years you have attempted to say black is white. It has been explained to you in great detail. But the same infactual dross comes back. Then you have been demolished each time, by many people. Each time, like Rambo, you come back with the same dross.
What you are stating is that the bridge was so heavily defended the well trained, with some well experienced, 82nd had no chance of seizing it anyhow.
Again...
The 82nd held overnight the southern approaches with a small scratch team. Henke's old men and the 9th SS were in attendance. The 82nd never made an attack on the bridge, obviously waiting for reinforcements and daylight. Then Gavin ordered them out of the town, and away from the bridge, with them even having a foothold on the circle at the beginning of the southern approach road, despite turning up 7.5 hours late.
If the 82nd had held onto the southern approaches, when XXX Corps arrived, XXX Corps would have taken the whole bridge in a matter of hours. Not 36. Then XXX Corps would have reached the 1st Airborne at Arnhem. Operation a success.
Again...
German amour only was between the bridges after Frost's men capitulated when running out of ammo. That was simultaneously with XXX Corps seizing Nijmegen bridge. The German arrnour ran south over the Anhem bridge to Elst. When XXX Corps' armour ran over the Nijmegen bridge German armour was now between them and Arnhem bridge, which was not there 36 hours earlier.
XXX Corps were delayed 42 hours because two USA para units failed to seize their bridges, with XXX Corps having to secure the crossings themselves. If only one USA unit failed, a bridgehead over the Rhine would have been established. Two failing? No bridgehead. Total failure on the USA contingent.
Stop telling fibs!
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Guy Jordan
"until XXX Corps arrived without being 36 hours late
due to the loss of the Son Bridge"
XXX Corps arrived at Nijmegen just ahead of schedule at around 8:.0 a.m. on the morning of the 19th, D-Day plus 2. The 36 hour delay was because of what happened at Nijmegen, not Son. The 82nd only had to hold the bridge for around 36 hours, defending it complete with artillery against infantry not armour. The well trained 82nd men would have held the bridge. On D-Day plus 2, 3 more battalions were parachuted in.
Being over the Rhine was super important. After the Normandy break out it took six months to cross the Rhine.
Monty wanted the end point to be Kasel not Arnhem. He was overruled by Brereton, an American, of the First Allied Airborne Army. The USAAF said no fighter-bombers to be used.
The idea was to get a foothold over the Rhine while German forces were not re-equipped and re-grouped, then secure the Scheldt.
"Sometimes, the man [Monty] was right."
Monty was the most successful general of WW2 and never suffered a reverse. The Americans ran to him at the Bulge where he took control of two US armies. Every time the German attacked him, he won.
The panzers that were used in the Bulge came from the east and were not there at Market Garden. Armour would have poured over the Rhine to consolidate. If Monty was over the Rhine would have Hitler thought he had a chance of reaching Antwerp? Probably not and the Bulge would not have happened.
The Market Garden salient was 60 miles long with XXX Corps not losing an inch of ground taken, and fleshing out the salient. Bradley in charge of 21st Army Group?
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"The 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Shields Warren, was charged with taking the road bridge over the Waal at Nijmegen: a prime task of Operation Market was being entrusted here to just one battalion from an entire division. According to the US Official History, there was some dispute over exactly when the 1st Battalion should go for the bridge. General Gavin was to claim later that the battalion was to ‘go for the bridge without delay’. However, Colonel Lindquist, the 508th Regimental commander, understood that Warren’s battalion was not to go for the bridge until the other regimental objectives — securing the Groesbeek Ridge and the nearby glider LZs, had been achieved: General Gavin’s operational orders confirm Warren’s version. Warren’s initial objective was ground near De Ploeg, a suburb of Nijmegen, which he was to take and organise for defence: only then was he to ‘prepare to go into Nijmegen later’ and these initial tasks took Lieutenant Colonel Warren most of the day. It was not until 1830hrs that he was able to send a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small, just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a radio — say forty men."
- Robin Neillands
This was all on D-Day. The landing zones were clear by 3.00 pm, with troops ready to roll. Forty men out of 3,000? A disgrace. Browning was expecting the bridge to have been taken immediately. So, Browning was guilty of believing Gavin about the 1,000 tanks, but not in failing to seize the bridge immediately on the 1st day, as he was setting up the HQ and unable communicate withe three generals on the ground in the operation. That vital error was all down to Gavin and only Gavin.
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"on 18 September, the 82nd’s next lift arrived from the UK, 450 gliders bringing in three fresh battalions, one parachute and two glider, and a quantity of artillery."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Knowing 3 battalions were to come, with artillery,
Gavin could have still sent a large force to seize
the bridge. He never.
"The US History points out that there was ‘no incentive for urgency over taking the Nijmegen bridge as XXX Corps were not yet in Eindhoven’ and it might be some time before they arrived at the Nijmegen bridge. In fact, XXX Corps had already passed Eindhoven and were waiting to cross the Bailey bridge at Zon. The US Official Historian, Charles B. MacDonald, dismisses this casual approach to the question of taking the Nijmegen bridge, stating that: ‘According to this theory, General Gavin had another full day to tackle the Germans at Nijmegen.’ This theory also assumes that one day would be sufficient for Gavin to take the bridge — from one side only — having already sacrificed the advantage of surprise and with German strength increasing."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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TIK,
It is clear (read my previous post just above) that Gavin's men did not go to the bridge immediately. You are saying that Gavin may have only acted on orders from Browning in ignoring the bridge. Some facts will tell you that was not the case.....
Before the 82nd took off from England, General Gavin had instructed Colonel Lindquist, commander of the 508th PIR, to send a battalion to the road bridge immediately after landing, and seize it. That is what Gavin says. According to Lindquist, his orders were different; the capture of a strategic location in Nijmegen city centre. No documents were preserved confirming any of this.
According to the 508th Liaison Officer, Chester Graham, Gavin instructed Colonel Lindquist during the briefing in England to proceed to the Waal bridge as soon as possible after the jump (the paras were assembled and ready to move by 3.00 pm). After the jump Chester Graham went to Lindquist's HQ asking him when he was going to send the 3rd battalion to the bridge. Lindquists reaction to Graham was: 'As soon as the DZ [drop zone] is cleared and secured.' Graham then went to Gavin with this info. Gavin immediately took Graham in his Jeep to Lindquist and ordered Lindquist to seize the bridge immediately. That does not sound like Gavin was de-prioritizing the bridge. If Gavin is going by what Browning told him, he would not be in a panic over the bridge. That tells us Browning did not de-prioritize the bridge. Gavin gave muddled and misinterpreted orders to his officers for sure. They were thinking about doing different things to each other.
The Field Order No. 11, 82nd, Sept 13th, 1944 to the 508th: 'Seize, organize and hold key terrain features in areas of responsibility, and be prepared to seize WAAL-River crossing at NIJMEGEN (714633) on order of Div. Comdr.'
Gavin had enough men to secure key terrain features and move to the bridge immediately. Gavin thought any attack would come from the east, it never and came from the north.
Immediately after WW2 Gavin started to cover his arse. Gavin on 25 July 1945 in a letter, Gavin to John Westover of the US Historical Office, stated that the possession of the bridges would be of no value in case the Germans had taken seized the high ground around Groesbeek, since this area dominated the bridges and all the flat terrain around it.
Gavin, stated in his Airborne Warfare (Washington: Infantry Journal Press, 1947, page 75), Brownings instructions were 'clear and emphatic' and such that the division 'was not to attempt the seizure of the Nijmegen Bridge until all other missions had been successfully accomplished and the Groesbeek-Berg en Dal high ground was firmly in our hands."
Gavin was in a panic when he found Linquist had not moved to the bridge and even drove to him telling him to move. That does not sound like the bridge was secondary at all. But after WW2 he was saying it was.
The 82nd started their first assault on the bridge at 10.00 pm on D-Day, after moving towards the bridge at 6.30 (a vital 3.5 hrs late). On D-Day plus 1, Gavin and Browning were planning to launch two battalions on the bridge (the second drop had come with more artillery), but never, concentrating on the mythical 1,000 tanks that Gavin had persuaded Browning existed. There were piecemeal attacks on the bridge, or more like being held down in the town by the SS infantry. Browning is guilty of being sucked-in in Gavin's mythical 1,000 tanks cancelling the large assault on the bridge on D-Day plus 1, which may or may not have succeeded, but not guilty in the delay in moving to the bridge immediately after the jump with only 19 guards on it.
• Gavin's orders were misinterpreted for sure, because
he was not clear to his officers.
• Gavin did not ensure men were moving to the bridge
immediately on being ready, which was 3.00 pm at the latest.
• They moved to the bridge at 6.30 pm and only because Gavin
ordered them to move, but only after he found out they were
not moving via Liaison Officer, Chester Graham.
• Gavin assumed they were moving to the bridge, but never
bothered to check - very unprofessional.
• By 7.00-7.30 pm the SS troops had moved south, secured the
bridge and set up in the park near the bridge. Too late then.
• The element of surprise the 82nd held was wasted.
The above sounds like Gavin never de-prioritized the bridge, not going against the Market Garden plan. The questions are:
Q1. Did Gavin de-prioritize the bridge?
Yes, he did. He semi-de-prioritized the bridge to be
more exact. The force assigned the bridge was tiny
to the force he had on hand.
Q2. Was Gavin guilty in not seizing the bridge immediately?
Yes he was. His poor communication with his officers
and failing to ensure men were moving towards the bridge
at 3.00 pm meant the bridge stayed in German hands.
Q3. Was Browning guilty in the delay in seizing the bridge?
No he was not. Browning was setting up his HQ and unable
to communicate with his 3 generals on the ground while the 82nd
were supposed to be moving to the bridge with a suitable force to
seize.
Page 345 of Market Garden Then and Now:
"Browning had told Gavin on the previous evening [18th September] that the Nijmegen bridge must be taken on the 19th, or at the latest, very early on the 20th".
This dissolves the claim that Browning ordered Gavin to ignore the bridge defending only the flanks. Browning told Gavin the bridge must be taken quickly so that the Guards tanks could move across it.
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Guy Jordan
"The war would not have been over by Christmas
by just taking the Arnhem bridge."
No one was thinking that in late Sept 1944. If Monty was left in charge of all ground forces, he was insisting on a 30 to 40 division thrust into Germany. After the Normandy breakout:
The problem now was not one of availability or storage, or port facilities — the Allies had plenty of supplies. The problem after the breakout was transportation, the sheer difficulty of shifting tons of military stores, particularly petrol and ammunition, from the vast dumps established in Normandy to the Allied armies now advancing across Belgium and eastern France. The situation was compounded by two factors: the armies were advancing much faster and further than anticipated and there were more divisions in the field than the planners had allowed for. The Allied armies had reached the Seine eleven days ahead of schedule"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
The British and Canadian armies moved north with the coast on their left flank not that far away from their supplies. The problem was US armies on their broad front strategy moving too far east, too far ahead of logistical transport. Monty understood logistics more than anyone. He wanted the 30-40 divisions to move north and then west into Germany north and south of the Ardennes, in better reach of supplies.
If Monty had remained ground commander the war may have been over by Christmas. Subsequently Market Garden was not a massive army push, it was three corps to Eindhoven and one for the rest of the way, with more to flesh out the salient. Pretty poor considering all the troops on the Continent.
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The state of play on the 17th was that the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was clear. There was concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally. There were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen. Then a few scattered about along the road. There was no armour in Arnhem. That was it.
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 3 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured the bridge.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected.
XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up. The road was still clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump.
XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, at the planned expected time, making up the delay at Zon. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over.
If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
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@johnlucas8479
Firstly, XXX Corps were to move at night. Secondly, you need to do some easy sums.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. This was after a 10-12 hour delay to erect a Bailey bridge. The road was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter, which the two para units failed to close.
XXX Corps planned to muster all the vehicles south of Eindhoven overnight, with vehicles coming during the night.
Once XXX Corps heard that the Zon bridge was down, they slowed as the urgency had gone out of the operation.
Thirdly, XXX Corps reached the Rhine. They pulled back from the riverbanks for safety reason being away from German cannon fire on the north bank.
If the Zon bridge had not delayed XXX Corps 10-12 hours, XXX Corps would have set off at first light d-day plus 1.
Fourthly, XXX Corps were to move at night.
XXX Corps met up with the 82nd on d-day plus 2 at approx 8 am. Deduct 12 hours, that gives you 8 pm on d-day plus 1. As the urgency of XXX Corps diminished after hearing of the Zon bridge being blown more like reaching Nijmegen at around 6 pm on d-day plus 1, with 7 miles to go to Arnhem on a fully empty road with some Germans near south end of Arnhem bridge.
So, if the two US para units had taken their respective bridges, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on D-day plus 1 late in the evening.
That is simple to figure out. So, stop making things up to exonerate the two US para units from blame. Both screwed up big time.
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@artiz32000
Two American Airforce Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the reason why the Market Garden plan was flawed. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that prevented the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak".
The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends. General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation.
To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, Gavin totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 20 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 8 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men in the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself. XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge.
If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, the Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A failure made possible by General Gavin. Even the US Official War record confirms this.
Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm
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@michaellucas4291
Market Garden failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. The failure point was not seizing the Nijmegen bridge immediately. At the end of D-Day all crossings were denied to the Germans, except one - the Nijmegen bridge.
General Gavin of the US 82nd was tasked to seize the Nijmegen bridge as soon as landing. Gavin never, he failed with only a few German guards on the bridge. He failed because his 82nd did not seize the Nijmegen bridge immediately. Gavin even de-prioritised the bridge the prime target and focus. The 82nd were ready at 2 pm on the jump day and never moved to the bridge. The gigantic bridge was guarded by only 19 guards. The Germans occupied the bridge at 1900 hrs. Six hours after the 82nd were ready to march.
Events on the 1st day:
♦ "At 1328, the 665 men of US 82nd 1st Battalion began
to fall from the sky."
- Poulussen, R. Lost at Nijmegen.
♦ "Forty minutes after the drop, around 1410, the
1st Battalion marched off towards their objective,
De Ploeg, three miles away." Poulussen,
♦ "The 82nd were digging in and performing recon
in the area looking for 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald
- Neillands, R. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
♦ The 82nd were dug in and preparing to defend their
newly constructed regimental command post, which
they established at 1825. Then Colonel Lindquist
"was told by General Gavin, around 1900, to move
into Nijmegen."
-Poulussen
Events on the evening of the 1st day:
♦ Having dug in at De Ploeg, Warren's battalion wasn't prepared
to move towards Nijmegen at all.
-Poulussen,
♦ Once Lindquist told Lieutenant Colonel Warren that his
Battalion was to move, Warren decided to visit the HQ
of the Nijmegen Underground first - to see what info the
underground had on the Germans at the Nijmegen bridge.
- Poulussen,
♦ It was not until 1830hrs that he [Warren] was able to send
a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small,
just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a
radio — say forty men.
- Neillands. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
♦ This was not a direct route to the bridge from Warren's
original position, and placed him in the middle of the town.
It was also around 2100 when "A" Company left to attempt
to capture the Nijmegen road bridge.
♦ "B" Company was not with them because they'd split up
due to it being dark with "visibility was less than ten yards".
- Poulussen,
♦ The 82nd attacks were resisted by the Germans until the
next day.
Events of the 2nd day:
♦ Gavin drove up in a jeep the next morning and
was told by Warren that although they didn't have the bridge
yet, another attack was about to go in.
♦ Gavin then told Warren to hold because the Germans were
attacking in the southeast portion of the 82nd perimeter.
♦ At around 1100, Warren was ordered to withdraw from
Nijmegen completely.
- Poulussen
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@TheImperatorKnight
TIK, you are wrong that the Soviets just wanted territory for the sake of it. Finland proves that. You are giving opinion.
I am putting up a factual timeline. That is all. The Soviets did not want Finland, facts prove that. They could have moved right in and took the lot in 1940. They never. They could have in 1945, they never. Most of the Finnish population was actually born in Russia, as it was part of Russia only 20 years previously. Mannerheim was actually in the Russian army when Finland was part of Russia, he could hardly speak Finnish needing an interpreter.
If the Soviets had incorporated Finland back into Russia, it would have made matters far easier for them to defeat the Germans. The Germans having troops in Finland, needlessly as far as the Soviets could see as they were not hostile to Germany, supplying them with many raw materials.
The Soviets had no intentions of moving into Finland after the 1939-40 winter war. That would also consume military resources. The fact they never proves the Soviets never had intentions of grabbing all territory they could lay their hands on. They did respect the Independence agreement just wanting amendments on territory for defense purposes. A territory exchange.
They walked right in and took all of the other three Baltic states, as they were more strategically important for defense reasons. They stopped once they got what they wanted with Finland for defense reasons, moving back borders.
Apply analysis to the factual timeline, not opinion. ;)
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@Answer Questions
It was d-day plus 2 for the Guards Armoured Division. Through experience the British limited night operations, although they moved at night in Market Garden. If the 101st had taken the Zon bridge and the 82nd the Nijmegen bridge, XXX Corps would have been in Nijmegen on d-day plus 1. Game set and match!
There was nothing of importance between the two bridges at that point. It would have been XXX Corps taking the south end of the bridge while the paras had the north end.
If 101st fail, 82nd succeed - operation succeeds
Despite the 12 hour delay caused by the 101st, if the 82nd had seized the Nijmegen bridge it would still had been game set and match.
If 101st succeed, 82nd fail - operation succeeds
If the 101st had taken the Zon bridge and the 82nd failed to take the Nijmegen bridge (which they never took anyhow), it would have have also been game set and match. The British paras capitulated at the same time the Guards tanks ran over Nijmegen bridge - they would have ran over the bridge 12 hours earlier racing to the south side of the Arnhem bridge.
If 101st fail and 82nd fail - operation fails
Two US Airborne units failing to seize their bridges, scuppered the operation to get a bridgehead over the Rhine. XXX Corps never put a foot wrong, having to erect a bridge and seize a bridge they were not tasked to do.
SAHEF considered operation a 100% success
But SHAEF considered it to a big success as the prime part of the operation, from their point, was achieved. That was running up to the Rhine, giving a huge buffer for Antwerp, solving future logistics problems and a stepping point to move east into Germany.
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@Answer Questions
From 21st Army Group Orders:
Final point of PHASE I:
(f) The Div may conc SOUTH of EINDHOVEN in areas of the CL preparatory to further adv.
conc = concentration area:
Which is an area, usually in the theatre of operations, where troops are assembled before beginning, or continuing, active operations. It says: preparatory to further adv. adv = advance.
So, on phase 1 they were to concentrate South of Eindhoven before (preparatory) to advancing. That is clear.
When concentrating that is gathering all vehicles in one location. Vehicles will still be moving into this concentration location at 35 vehicles to every mile of the train at a hoped 10 mph. If the vehicles move at 10mph from the starting point the lead vehicles should be south of Eindhoven in 1 hour. But the lead have to stop to concentrate. And 35 vehicles in each mile at a hoped 10 mph are pouring into the concentration location. It does not say how many vehicles have to be in the concentration area before moving off again.
Now onto phase 2. Phase 2 clearly states that it will start at 1st light on D+1. It says:
PHASE II: (a) The Div will continue the adv
That is advance after phase 1 is concluded of course. To continue the advance you have to be stopped.
Phase 1 concludes south of Eindhoven as the force concentrated. Clear. Then they have to prepare to move on. The document says a hoped 10 mih (10mph), but not for phase 1 as the forces are concentrated south of Eindhoven at end of phase 1.
South of Eindhoven is approx 11 miles from the start point. It only expects 11 miles of advance in the first 5 hours, which is understandable as German forces formed a line in front of British forces at the northern British front on the Belgian/Dutch border. So, on D-day XXX Corps have to get to Eindhoven which is 11 miles awsy, and depending on tactic conditions it is hoped they will move at 10 mph when moving north from Eindhoven.
There are two different points here:
1. Target time -
XXX Corps do not have 100% control of the time to reach targets, except south of Eindhoven.
2. Rate of Movement, when "moving" -
XXX Corps have near 100% control of this.
XXX Corps when moving were moving not quite as hoped, but rather than expected, irrespective of the tactical situation. The tactical situation was that German resistance had increased due to the 12 hour delay at Zon, with more troops being moved in. Reaching hoped for vague target times (which are not specific only roughly deducted) are different. Indeed to rate of movement, as XXX Corps were dependent on the MARKET side of the operation, the airborne units, to keep up their rate of movement..
XXX Corps were not slow. They maintained the less than a hoped speed of movement, but clearly what was realistically expected. The only times they did not move were due to the US 101st and 82nd, when both failed to seize bridges, which was out of XXX Corp's control. XXX Corps had to seize the bridges themselves or create the bridge (Bailey bridge).
When XXX Corps turned up at Nijmegen at 0820 at D+2, given the approx 12 hour delay at Zon when the 101st failed to seize the bridge, they were near enough at an expected rate of movement. Less than hoped, but clearly adequate to complete the operation.
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@kimoandrews5802
Did the USA turn up for WW1?
Britain was clearly key in WW2. Britain fought on every front, being in the war on the first day up to the last - the only country at the surrender of Japan in September 1945 to do so - Britain’s war actually ended in 1946 staying on in Viet Nam using Japanese troops alongside British troops to defeat the Viet Minh, but that is another story.
Britain was not attacked or attacked anyone, going into WW2 on principle. The Turkish ambassador to the UK stated that the UK can raise 40 million troops from its empire so it will win the war. This was noted by Franco who indirectly said to Hitler he would not win, fearing British occupation of Spanish islands and territory if Spain joined the war. Spain and Turkey stayed out of the war. The Turkish ambassador’s point was given credence when an army of 2.6 million was assembled in India that moved into Burma to wipe out the Japanese.
From day one the Royal Navy formed a ring around the Axis positioning ships from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Arctic off Norway, blockading the international trade of the Axis. This deprived the Axis of vital human and animal food, oil, rubber, metals, and other vital resources. By 1941 the successful Royal Navy blockade had confined the Italian navy to port due to lack of oil. By the autumn of 1941 Germany's surface fleet was confined to harbour, by the British fleet and the chronic lack of fuel. A potential German invasion from the USSR in the north into the oil rich Middle East entailed expanded British troop deployment to keep the Germans away from the oil fields, until they were defeated at Stalingrad.
Throughout 1942 British Commonwealth troops were fighting, or seriously expecting to be attacked, in:
♦ French North Africa;
♦ Libya;
♦ Egypt;
♦ Cyprus;
♦ Syria: where an airborne assault was expected, with preparations to reinforce Turkey if they were attacked;
♦ Madagascar: fighting the Vichy French to prevent them from inviting the Japanese in as they had done in Indochina;
♦ Iraq;
♦ Iran: the British & Soviets invaded Iran in August 1941.
Those spread-out covering troops were more in combined numbers than were facing Japan and Rommel in North Africa. They were supplied by a massive merchant fleet. They were supplied via the Cape, the equivalent of sailing halfway around the world.
Those spread-out covering troops were more in combined numbers than were facing Japan and Rommel in North Africa. The British Commonwealth fielded over 100 divisions in 1942 alone, compared to the US total of 88 by the end of the war. The Americans and Soviets were Johnny-come-late in WW2, moreso the Americans. Before the USSR entered the conflict the Royal Navy’s blockade had reduced the Italian and German surface navies to the occasional sorties because of a lack of oil, with the British attacking the Germans and Italians in North Africa, also securing Syria, Iraq, the Levant and ridding the Italians from East Africa.
The Germans were on the run by the time the USA had boots on the ground against the Axis.
The Germans had been stopped:
♦ in the west at the Battle of Britain in 1940;
♦ in the east at the Battle of Moscow in 1941. In which Britain provided 40% of the Soviet tanks.
The Germans were on the run after the simultaneous battles in late 1942 of:
♦ El Alemein;
♦ Stalingrad;
The Battle of El Alemein culminated in a quarter of a million Axis prisoners taken in Tunisia - more than taken at Stalingrad. Apart from the US Filipino forces that surrendered in early 1942, the US had a couple of divisions in Gaudalcanal after August 1942, and one in New Guinea by November 1942. In 1943 the US managed to get up to six divisions in the Pacific, but still not matching the British or British Indian armies respectively. Until late 1943 the Australian Army alone deployed more ground fighting troops against the Japanese than the USA.
The Americans never put more ground troops into combat against the Japanese at any point than just the British Indian Army alone, which was 2.6 million strong. The US had nowhere near 2.6 million men on the ground against the Japanese. The Soviets fielded about a million against the Japanese. Most Japanese troops were put out of action by the British and Soviets, not the USA. At the battles of Khohima and Imphal the Japanese suffered their worst defeat in their history up to that point - 60,000 Japanese were killed in hand to hand jungle fighting that made Iwo Jima look like a bar room brawl. Then the British set the armored Eastern and Pacific fleets against the Japanese, not far off in numbers to the rapidly expanded US fleet.
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@caelachyt
The First Airbourne seized one end of the Arnhem bridge denying its use to the Germans. The 9th SS and its vehicles were shot up on the Arnhem bridge blocking the bridge. If XXX Corps had arrived, not being delayed two days by two US para units, the whole bridge would have been in British hands.
The 82nd never seized the Nijmegen bridge. Three 82nd 508 scouts took prisoner seven of the 18 bridge guards prisoners on the south end of Nijmegen bridge, together with their 20mm cannon, but had to let them go after an hour as no one turned up.
The 9th SS came south to reinforce the bridge about 6 hours after the 82nd landed. The 82nd had 6 hours to move just six miles then occupy the bridge, but hung around in DePloeg, a mile or so from the DZ.
Browning was not there to hold Gavin's hand. Browning had full faith in Gavin as up until then he had an excellent record. Browning was in the air when the 82nd 508 should have been moving to the bridge. He was two hours after the first jump. Then Browning had to set up his CP when on the ground.
The 82nd met the 9th SS around 2200 hrs at the circle leading to the approach road. Then around midnight made their fist attack on the bridge, staying all night around the southern approaches. Browning was informed they had not seized the bridge in the morning of d day plus 1. Shocked, he ordered Gavin to take the bridge ASAP.
After the 508th debacle Gavin knew the Reichswald was no threat from his scouts, yet he pulled all his men out of Nijmegen. He did this with Brownings approval as he convinced Browning that there was a threat from the Reichswald. But assured Browning that he would have the bridge before XXX Corps arrived. Browning, who respected Gavin because of his record so far in Normandy, North Africa and Italy, trusted his judgement.
If Gavin had kept his men in Nijmegen, the German reinforcements taken over on the ferry could not have crossed south on the bridge, as the the 82nd men being near the southern approaches would have made the bridge unusable. The German troop reinforcements were of higher quality troops than the non-combat men in the town on jump day. These troops gave a fight for the Grenadier Guards and the 82nd in the town.
Gavin said to Browning that if he fails to seize the bridge XXX Corp can take the bridge when they arrive. They did. The resulting two day delay due to the 101st and 82nd failing to seize their bridges precluded a bridgehead over the Rhine.
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@caelachyt
Although poor planning, Market Garden only failed by a whisker. The state of play on the 17th, D day, was:
1) the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was largely clear;
2) there were concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally;
3) there were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen;
4) a few scattered about along the road;
5) there was no armour in Arnhem.
That was it.
i) XXX Corps would deal from the Belgium border to Eindhoven;
ii) 101st from Eindhoven to Grave;
iii) 82nd from Grave to north of Nijmegen;
iv) British and Polish paras from north of Nijmegen to north of the Rhine;
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 2 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured it.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected.
XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and towards the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up. The road was still largely clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump.
XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, making up the delay at Zon. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over.
If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves, after the 82nd tried again and failed again. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
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@gerhardris
What US historian Harry Yeide wrote of what the Germans thought of Patton:
◾ for most of the war the Germans barely took notice [of Patton].
◾ on March 23 at the Battle of El Guettar—the first American victory against the experienced Germans. Patton’s momentum, however, was short-lived: Axis troops held him to virtually no gain until April 7, when they withdrew under threat from British Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army.
◾ There is no indication in the surviving German military records—which include intelligence reports at the theater, army, and division levels—that Patton’s enemies had any idea who he was at the time. Likewise, the immediate postwar accounts of the German commanders in Tunisia, written for the U.S. Army’s History Division, ignore Patton. Those reports show that ground commanders considered II Corps’s attacks under Patton to have been hesitant, and to have missed great opportunities.
◾ In mid-June [1943], another detachment report described Patton as “an energetic and responsibility-loving command personality”—a passing comment on one of the numerous Allied commanders. Patton simply had not yet done anything particularly noteworthy in their eyes.
◾ But his race to Palermo through country they had already abandoned left the commanders unimpressed. Major General Eberhard Rodt, who led the 15th Panzergrenadier Division against Patton’s troops during the Allied push toward Messina, thought the American Seventh Army fought hesitantly and predictably. He wrote in an immediate postwar report on Sicily, “The enemy very often conducted his movements systematically, and only attacked after a heavy artillery preparation when he believed he had broken our resistance. This kept him regularly from exploiting the weakness of our situation and gave me the opportunity to consolidate dangerous situations.” Once again, Patton finished a campaign without impressing his opponents.
◾ General Hermann Balck, who took command of Army Group G in September, thus did not think highly of Patton—or any other opposing commanders—during this time. Balck wrote to his commander, Runstedt, on October 10, “I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans” Looking back on his battles against Patton throughout the autumn, in 1979 Balck recalled, “Within my zone, the Americans never once exploited a success. Often [General Friedrich Wilhelm von] Mellenthin, my chief of staff, and I would stand in front of the map and say, ‘Patton is helping us; he failed to exploit another success.’”
◾ The commander of the Fifth Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel, aimed a dismissive, indirect critique at Patton’s efforts at Bastogne, writing in his memoirs that the Americans did not “strike with full élan.” The commanders who fought against Patton in his last two mobile campaigns in the Saar-Palatinate and east of the Rhine already knew they could not win; their losses from this point forward were inevitable, regardless of the commanding Allied opponent.
◾ the Germans offered Patton faint praise during and immediately after the war.
◾ posterity deserves fact and not myth. The Germans did not track Patton’s movements as the key to Allied intentions. Hitler does not appear to have thought often of Patton, if at all. The Germans considered Patton a hesitant commanding general in the scrum of position warfare. They never raised his name in the context of worthy strategists.
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@gerhardris
A lacklustre US general named Patton in Sicily became infamous for hitting two sick men in hospital beds. So the US public knew his 'name'. Top US generals were of film star status in the USA at the time.
In Normandy nothing much was happening as the allied forces stayed pretty static, with the British drawing onto themselves German armour to grind it up, while keeping it away from the US forces. The British destroyed 90% of German armour in the west. The US media needed a hero and movement as that creates good stories to sell newspapers and newsreels.
Patton was late into Normandy. He was first to breakout after Cobra, of which he had no part in Cobra, after the US First Army did the work, so the US media hailed him as some sort of armoured warfare genius as territory was being gained after many weeks of no movement. As we know the British enabled the breakout, as part of Monty's plan, but that is not how the US media portrayed it.
They now had movement and a name, which people knew, to hang it on. It was easy to laud this man as he accommodated the media gladly, looking after them. Bradley criticized Patton for having teams of cameramen following him, of which he encouraged, of which Cornelius Ryan was one.
So the US media had a hero - a goodie. The hero in typical Hollywood fashion could only be seen to be doing good. He even wore cowboy guns and a chrome tin hat to fill the hero role, so the visuals were good. They also needed a 'baddie', so they made one up as well. The evil Monty. Everything fell into place. The US media had all the ingredients they wanted and some they made up. Anything bad about the goodie was spun the other way.
The leading US media hero who happened to be in a position in Monty's plan to gain ground was kept a hero come what may. It was all of the goodies doing, not Monty's. No other US general did anything of note, so Patton stayed the hero, even though he failed to breach the Westwall, suffering horrendous casualties against 2nd to 3rd rate German opposition. Patton also moved only 10 miles in three months at Metz. But he took north east France in a matter of days - the fact no Germans were there was not emphasized and it was more a triumphal procession than a military advance. When facing German opposition at the German border matters were different.
Patton was wayward in Sicily slowing down the operation, so Monty thought how do I play to this guys ego, which was allowing him to get to Messina first. He was too slow reaching Bastogne, not relieving the 18,000 men inside - even the US 101st commander inside, McAuliffe, said so. He apologized to Eisenhower for being too slow. But Patton was fast and relieved them according to the US media.
OK, in wartime for home propaganda and morale purposes a hero was created. A government does not like its people to know it was telling them lies and never admits to doing so staying quiet. The British spun it so a few Oxbridge RAF pilots won the Battle of Britain with it being a close thing. Backs to the wall and all. The reality was what they spun was wrong on both counts. So post war the governments just forget it.
The people post war still believe the war propaganda angle spun to them. The film industry and book publishers saw there was money to be made in WW2, so they pick up the propaganda then run with it. The US people were led to believe they won the war, well without them the Axis would have won. And also they supplied most of it. Which is all false. All totally wrong but telling them what they want to believe, and believed since children, sells.
So we are in a situation where a few historians are actually stating history as it was by looking at archives and actual accounts. They do not make much money though. If you are a writer, then the huge US market is where the money is. Exaggerating what an average general did, Patton, brings in US dollars.
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@johnlucas8479
Oh Mr Lucas again, attempting to make out the 82nd never screwed up big time, which they did. In previous exchanges with him his angle was that the 82nd could not have seized Nijmegen bridge anyhow. He backed away from that when told that a small force of 82nd men held the southern approaches of Nijmegen bridge overnight. Gavin pulled them out of Nijmegen completely, instead of reinforcing the men then making a second assault. to look for 1,000 mythical tanks.
Now to his new angle. That XXX Corps, who got to Nijmegen ahead of schedule on the morning of the 19th, could not have reached the British paras at the Arnhem bridge in time to secure the bridge, even if the 82nd had secured the Nijmegen bridge ready for them to roll over.
No German armour was in Arnhem on the jump day, the 17th. The first German tank attack was on the evening of the 18th at Arnhem which the British knocked out. The tanks came in from Germany. None were in Arnhem or on the island.
When XXX Corps entered Nijmegen they had a clear route to the Arnhem bridge only seven miles away on the island. There were few German forces between the two bridges. Even the German in charge of that part, Harmel, states that. XXX Corps could have pretty well waltzed to the southern part of the bridge relieving the paras.
XXX Corps had to seize the Nijmegen bridge themselves, putting them back 36 hours. Within this 36 hour delay the British paras could not hold on any longer capitulating. Also, the Germans had brought in armour onto the island between the two bridges which opposed XXX Corps, at Elst, which XXX Cops wiped out. XXX Corps had little resistance before Elst. But by then the Germans had Arnhem town and the bridge secured. All over.
Try again Mt Lucas, this angle also failed.
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Nick Thorp
The US Official History makes the point that even after the Nijmegen bridge had finally been taken:
The Guards Armoured’s Coldstream Guards Group still was needed as a reserve for the Airborne division. This left but two armoured groups to go across the Waal. Even those did not make it until next day, D plus 4, 21 September, primarily because of diehard German defenders who had to be ferreted out from the superstructure and bridge underpinnings. Once on the north bank, much of the British armour and infantry had to be used to help hold and improve the bridgehead that the two battalions of the 504th Parachute Infantry had forged. By the time the Nijmegen bridge fell on D plus 3, it was early evening and it would be dark before an armoured column could be assembled to march on Arnhem. North of Nijmegen the enemy had tanks and guns and infantry of two SS Panzer divisions, in unknown but growing strength, established in country ideal for defence.
This account adds that:
At the village of Ressen, less than three miles north of Nijmegen, the Germans had erected an effective screen composed of an SS battalion reinforced by eleven tanks, another infantry battalion, two batteries of 88mm guns, 20 20mm anti-aircraft guns and survivors of earlier fighting in Nijmegen.
American readers should note that the above comments come from the US Official History, where the notion that Lord Carrington and his five tanks could have penetrated this screen and got up to Arnhem on the night of D plus 3 — even supposing such a move was ever suggested — is revealed as a delusion.
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@johnnyjarrett8166
Britain was key in WW2. Britain fought on every front, being in the war on the first day up to the last - the only country at the surrender of Japan in September 1945 to do so - Britain’s war actually ended in 1946 staying on in Viet Nam using Japanese troops alongside British troops to defeat the Viet Minh, but that is another story. Britain was not attacked or attacked anyone, going into WW2 on principle. The Turkish ambassador to the UK stated that the UK can raise 40 million troops from its empire so will win the war. This was noted by Franco who indirectly said to Hitler he would not win, fearing British occupation of Spanish islands and territory if Spain joined the war. Spain and Turkey stayed out of the war.
The Turkish ambassador’s point was given credence when an army of 2.6 million was assembled in India that moved into Burma to wipe out the Japanese. From day one the Royal Navy formed a ring around the Axis positioning ships from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Arctic off Norway, blockading the international trade of the Axis. This deprived the Axis of vital human and animal food, oil, rubber, metals, and other vital resources. By 1941 the successful Royal Navy blockade had confined the Italian navy to port due to lack of oil. By the autumn of 1941 Germany's surface fleet was confined to harbour, by the British fleet and the chronic lack of fuel. A potential German invasion from the the USSR in the north into the oil rich Middle East entailed expanded British troop deployment to keep the Germans away from the oil fields, until they were defeated at Stalingrad.
Throughout 1942 British Commonwealth troops were fighting, or seriously expecting to be attacked, in:
♦ French North Africa;
♦ Libya;
♦ Egypt;
♦ Cyprus;
♦ Syria: where an airborne assault was expected, with preparations to reinforce Turkey if they were attacked;
♦ Madagascar: fighting the Vichy French to prevent them from inviting the Japanese in as they had done in Indochina;
♦ Iraq;
♦ Iran: the British & Soviets invaded Iran in August 1941.
Those spread-out covering troops were more in combined numbers than were facing Japan and Rommel in North Africa. The British Commonwealth fielded over 100 divisions in 1942 alone, compared to the US total of 88 by the end of the war. The Americans and Soviets were Johnny-come-late in WW2, moreso the Americans. Before the USSR entered the conflict the Royal Navy’s blockade had reduced the Italian and German surface navies to the occasional sorties because of a lack of oil, with the British attacking the Germans and Italians in North Africa, also securing Syria, Iraq, the Levant and ridding the Italians from East Africa. The Germans were on the run by the time the USA had boots on the ground against the Axis.
The Germans had been stopped:
♦ in the west at the Battle of Britain in 1940;
♦ in the east at the Battle of Moscow in 1941. In which Britain provided 40% of the Soviet tanks.
The Germans were on the run after the simultaneous battles in late 1942 of:
♦ El Alemein;
♦ Stalingrad;
The Battle of El Alemein culminated in a quarter of a million Axis prisoners taken in Tunisia - more than taken at Stalingrad. Apart from the US Filipino forces that surrendered in early 1942, the US had a couple of divisions in Gaudalcanal after August 1942, and one in New Guinea by November 1942. In 1943 the US managed to get up to six divisions in the Pacific, but still not matching the British or British Indian armies respectively. Until late 1943 the Australian Army alone deployed more ground fighting troops against the Japanese than the USA. The Americans never put more ground troops into combat against the Japanese at any point than just the British Indian Army alone, which was 2.6 million strong. The US had nowhere near 2.6 million men on the ground against the Japanese. The Soviets fielded about a million against the Japanese.Most Japanese troops were put out of action by the British and Soviets, not the USA. At the battles of Khohima and Imphal the Japanese suffered their worst defeat in their history up to that point.
Then the British set their Eastern and Pacific fleets against the Japanese, not far off in numbers to the US fleet. The British Pacific Fleet assisted US troops protecting the western coast of Okinawa with its armoured carriers - they could operate way nearer to the coast than wooden decked US carriers, as kamikaze's bounced off them. The fleet also bombarded Japan, Sumatra and Taiwan, sinking one Japanese aircraft carrier and disabling another. The massive British merchant fleet greatly assisted the supply of US forces.
The Australian navy assisted the US navy all through the Japanese war. The USA was in the war for four years, yet it was less than 10 months before the Japanese surrender they actually fielded an entire army against the Japanese. That was in the Philippines. Before that it was just divisions fighting on scattered islands for a month or so at a time. In Europe the British planned and ran the D-Day Normandy campaign which came in ahead of schedule with 22% less casualties than predicted, with the British in command of all the air, sea and land forces of all nationalities. Then also destroying 90% of German armour in the west in the process, with constant air raids on German cities and industry culminating with 1,000 bomber raids. The Canadian navy was heavily involved in anti U-Boat operations in the Atlantic. The biggest agents in the defeat of the Nazis and Japanese were the British.
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Zelemenos
Gavin was saying there was 1,000 tanks hidden in a forest. There was also lowish cloud at that point, I doubt the RAF reccie men would have taken any decent photos, even if tanks were there. They took photos before the operation in better conditions and found no armour in Arnhem.
http://www.airpowerstudies.co.uk/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/Arnhem.pdf
"the composition of the German forces at Arnhem was far more complex than most published histories of Market Garden had tended to suggest. The two SS panzer divisions had been operating far below their full strength on the eve of the operation and, while 1st Airborne was ultimately confronted by armour in considerable strength, hardly any tanks were actually present in the Arnhem area on 17 September. The vast majority deployed from Germany or other battle fronts after the airborne landings"
- ARNHEM - THE AIR RECONNAISSANCE STORY by the RAF
"Some low level pictures of a few Panzer IIIs and IVs were taken in early September for operation Comet. Ryan on speaking to Urquhart got it wrong. "Urquhart’s account is therefore somewhat perplexing. Further problems arise if we seek to document the events he described. Several extensive searches for the photographs have failed to locate them. Ostensibly, this might not seem surprising, as most tactical reconnaissance material was destroyed after the war, but Urquhart insisted that the Arnhem sortie was flown by a Spitfire squadron based at Benson; this would almost certainly mean 541 Squadron. Far more imagery from the Benson squadrons survived within the UK archives, but no oblique photographs showing tanks at Arnhem. In addition, although the Benson missions were systematically recorded at squadron and group level, not one record matches the sortie Urquhart described."
"The low-level missions targeting the bridges on 6 September were scrupulously noted down, but all other recorded reconnaissance sorties over Arnhem were flown at higher altitudes and captured vertical imagery. Equally, it has proved impossible as yet to locate an interpretation report derived from a low-level mission that photographed German armour near Arnhem before Market Garden." "As for Brian Urquhart’s famous account of how a low-level Spitfire sortie took photographs of tanks assumed to belong to II SS Panzer Corps, the reality was rather different. In all probability, the low-level mission that Urquhart recalled photographed the bridges and not the tanks"
- ARNHEM - THE AIR RECONNAISSANCE STORY by the RAF
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Zelemenos
Most serious historians have dismissed Ryan's and Beevor's books on Market Garden. None of them can get the simple facts and timeline right. TIK put it pretty well in the video. He got the odd bit wrong, or more omitted parts, like the RAF not seeing any tanks, and none turned up until about 30 hours after the jump, and all came in from Germany. TIK's vid is light on planning as well, however few authors have gone into that in any sort of depth. But John Cornell and myself filled in some missing parts of TIK's vid. Also, most authors miss out how much of a cut down operation it was and that Monty distanced himself from it. He wanted a crossing at Wesel for Market Garden, but Brereton overruled wanting Arnhem. Eventually they did go into Germany via Wesel.
Nevertheless, despite the incompetence of the American planners and starved of resources by Eisenhower, it should have been a success if the 82nd leader on the ground went for the Nijmegen bridge immediately. By the time Browning arrived the bridge should have been swarming with 82nd men with a defensive cordon on the north side complete with dug in 6-pdr anti-tank guns (they did take the odd 17-pdr) that also had HE shells for use against any infantry.
The 82nd did take along an airborne artillery unit, although most of them were on the 2nd jump - this unit would have secured the bridge and even the eastern parts on the heights. By the time XXX Corps got to Nijmegen, in good time as well, they should have just rolled over the bridge and reached Arnhem in a few hours. The 9th SS (infantry) and Kampfgruppe Henke would have been between the bridges as the 82nd would have prevented them falling into Nijmegen town. XXX Corps with it armour and following troops, including 82nd men, would have relieved the paras at Arnhem for sure.
According to Max Hastings, who I take with a pinch of salt, in his book Armageddon, he say the 9th SS misinterpreted orders, and should have manned the south side of the Arnhem bridge not run south into Nijmegen. That made sort of sense as Arnhem bridge was on the Rhine proper. The river the Germans did not want the British to cross. But stopping the advance at Nijmegen made more sense as massed British forces on the south side of Arnhem bridge was more difficult to defend. Hastings says a German blunder worked for them.
The incompetence around Market Garden was primarily by Americans - in planning and execution. Americans think we are biased and anti-US. We are not, we are just seeing it as it was.
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Zelemenos
The Americans constantly carp on about Moffat Burris and the Guards tanks saying they were laying about doing nothing after running over the Nijmegen bridge. Who also were supposed to have sat around drinking tea. My uncle was in XXX Corps and he said, "drinking fkg tea, if only". He pulled the bodies of the 82nd and British Sappers out of the water after their suicide row boat crossing. He said the Americans were big and heavy country boys.
All from the US Official History:
The European Theater of Operations
THE SIEGFRIED LINE CAMPAIGN
by Charles B. MacDonald
CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY
UNITED STATES ARMY
WASHINGTON, D.C., 1993
Page 185.
Page 161:
Colonel Lindquist's 508th Parachute Infantry and of Colonel Ekman's 505th Parachute Infantry had assembled within an hour after the D-Day drop.
Page 162:
General Gavin's understanding, as recalled later, was that Warren's battalion was to move "without delay after landing." On the other hand, Colonel Lindquist's understanding, also as recalled later, was that no battalion was to go for the bridge until the regiment had secured its other objectives, that is to say, not until he had established defenses protecting his assigned portion of the high ground and the northern part of the division glider landing zone. Instead of moving immediately toward the Nijmegen bridge, Colonel Warren's battalion was to take an "assigned initial objective" in the vicinity of De Ploeg, a suburb of Nijmegen a mile and a quarter southeast of the city astride the Nijmegen-Groesbeek highway.
Page 163:
Colonel Warren about 1830 sent into Nijmegen a patrol consisting of a rifle platoon and the battalion intelligence section. This patrol was to make an aggressive reconnaissance, investigate reports from Dutch civilians that only eighteen Germans guarded the big bridge, and, if possible, capture the south end of the bridge.
Colonel Warren directed Companies A and B to rendezvous at a point just south of Nijmegen at I900
As the scouts neared a traffic circle surrounding a landscaped circular park near the center of Nijmegen, the Keizer Karel Plein, from which a mall-like park led northeast toward the Nijmegen bridge, a burst of automatic weapons fire came from the circle. The time was about two hours before midnight. (2200 hrs)
Page 164:
the chance for an easy, speedy capture of the Nijmegen bridge had passed. This was all the more lamentable because in Nijmegen during the afternoon the Germans had had nothing more than the same kind of "mostly low quality" troops encountered at most other places on D Day.
- page 185
For all the concern that must have existed about getting to Arnhem, only a small part of the British armor was freed late on D plus 4, 21 September, to start the northward drive. As the attack began, British commanders saw every apprehension confirmed. The ground off the main roads was low-lying, soggy bottomland, denying employment of tanks. A few determined enemy bolstered with antitank guns might delay even a large force. Contrary to the information that had been received, Colonel Frost and his men had been driven away from the north end of the Arnhem bridge the afternoon before, so that since the preceding night the bridge had been open to German traffic. At the village of Ressen, less than three miles north of Nijmegen, the Germans had erected an effective screen composed of an SS battalion reinforced with I I tanks, another infantry battalion, 2 batteries of 88-mm. guns, 20 20-mm. antiaircraft guns, and survivors of earlier fighting at Nijmegen, all operating under General Bittrich's II SS Panzer Corps.20 Arnhem lay seven miles north of this screen. The British could not pass.
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The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British under Montgomery. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
▪ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa; October 1942 - El Alamein;
▪ March 1943 - Medenine;
▪ June 1944 - Normandy;
▪ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands;
▪ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge;
A list of Montgomery’s victories in WW2:
▪ Battle of Alam Halfa;
▪ Second Battle of El Alamein;
▪ Battle of El Agheila;
▪ Battle of Medenine;
▪ Battle of the Mareth Line;
▪ Battle of Wadi Akarit;
▪ Allied invasion of Sicily;
▪ Operation Overlord - the largest amphibious invasion in history;
▪ Market Garden - a 60 mile salient created into German territory;
▪ Battle of the Bulge - while taking control of two shambolic US armies;
▪ Operation Veritable;
▪ Operation Plunder.
Montgomery not once had a reverse.
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Monty's 8th Army advanced the fastest of any army in WW2. From El Alamein to El Agheila from the 4th to 23rd November 1942, 1,300 km in just 17 days. After fighting a major exhausting battle at El Alemein through half a million mines. This was an Incredible feat, unparalleled in WW2. With El Alamein costing just 13,500 casualties.
The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties, with the Lorraine campaign being a failure. Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties. Hodges, head of the US First army, fled from Spa to near Liege on the 18th, despite the Germans never getting anywhere near to Spa. Hodges did not even wait for the Germans to approach Spa. He had already fled long before the Germans were stopped. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British, with Montgomery involved in planning, with also Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
You need to give respect where it is due.
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What US historian Harry Yeide wrote of what the Germans thought of Patton:
▪ for most of the war the Germans barely took notice [of Patton].
▪ on March 23 at the Battle of El Guettar—the first American victory against the experienced Germans. Patton’s momentum, however, was short-lived: Axis troops held him to virtually no gain until April 7, when they withdrew under threat from British Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army.
▪ There is no indication in the surviving German military records—which include intelligence reports at the theater, army, and division levels—that Patton’s enemies had any idea who he was at the time. Likewise, the immediate postwar accounts of the German commanders in Tunisia, written for the U.S. Army’s History Division, ignore Patton. Those reports show that ground commanders considered II Corps’s attacks under Patton to have been hesitant, and to have missed great opportunities.
▪ In mid-June [1943], another detachment report described Patton as “an energetic and responsibility-loving command personality” —a passing comment on one of the numerous Allied commanders. Patton simply had not yet done anything particularly noteworthy in their eyes.
▪ But his race to Palermo through country they had already abandoned left the commanders unimpressed. Major General Eberhard Rodt, who led the 15th Panzergrenadier Division against Patton’s troops during the Allied push toward Messina, thought the American Seventh Army fought hesitantly and predictably. He wrote in an immediate postwar report on Sicily, “The enemy very often conducted his movements systematically, and only attacked after a heavy artillery preparation when he believed he had broken our resistance. This kept him regularly from exploiting the weakness of our situation and gave me the opportunity to consolidate dangerous situations.” Once again, Patton finished a campaign without impressing his opponents.
▪ General Hermann Balck, who took command of Army Group G in September, thus did not think highly of Patton—or any other opposing commanders—during this time. Balck wrote to his commander, Runstedt, on October 10, “I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans” Looking back on his battles against Patton throughout the autumn, in 1979 Balck recalled, “Within my zone, the Americans never once exploited a success. Often [General Friedrich Wilhelm von] Mellenthin, my chief of staff, and I would stand in front of the map and say, ‘Patton is helping us; he failed to exploit another success.’”
▪ The commander of the Fifth Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel, aimed a dismissive, indirect critique at Patton’s efforts at Bastogne, writing in his memoirs that the Americans did not “strike with full élan.” The commanders who fought against Patton in his last two mobile campaigns in the Saar-Palatinate and east of the Rhine already knew they could not win; their losses from this point forward were inevitable, regardless of the commanding Allied opponent.
▪ the Germans offered Patton faint praise during and immediately after the war.
▪ posterity deserves fact and not myth. The Germans did not track Patton’s movements as the key to Allied intentions. Hitler does not appear to have thought often of Patton, if at all. The Germans considered Patton a hesitant commanding general in the scrum of position warfare. They never raised his name in the context of worthy strategists.
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The British won the Battle of Dunkirk.
The British BEF was only 9% of the total allied forces in France and the Low Countries. The German advance was halted in France as the British with a vastly inferior force stopped them at Arras. Some German soldiers turned and ran. Directive 13, issued by German Supreme Headquarters on 24 May 1940 stated specifically for the annihilation of the French, English and Belgian forces in the Dunkirk pocket. The Luftwaffe was ordered to prevent the escape of the British forces across the English Channel.
The German southern advance was stopped at Arras by the British with a numerically inferior force. The Germans never moved much further after. The Germans could not have taken Dunkirk, they would have been badly beaten in and around the town. The Luftwaffe was defeated over Dunkirk by the RAF with the first showing of the Spitfire en-mass. More German than allied planes were destroyed in the Dunkirk pocket. The first defeat of the Nazis in WW2 was by the British in the air battle over Dunkirk. Only six small warships were sunk at Dunkirk by the Germans as the effectiveness of the Luftwaffe blunted.
The British were retreating after the French collapsed in front of them - a programme already in motion, a programme already in motion before the Germans showed up, as General Gort saw the disjointed performance of the French forces in front of him, and the exceptionally poor leadership. If the French collapsed the small BEF had no hope against the large German force heading west. The French were amongst the British when General Gort decided to take the men back to England, as he did not trust the French in a joint counter-attack. French General Wiegand held a meeting to arrange a counter-attack not inviting General Gort head of the BEF. Gort was under the command of Weigand. Gort heard of the meeting rushing to be there. He got there after the French and Belgians had left. He ordered the evacuation having no faith in the elderly French leaders.
All armies retreat and regroup when the need is there. There happened to be a body of water in the line of the retreat. Were the BEF to move down the English coast and enter France further west with more men from England? The Germans did not know what was to be the next British or allied move. The Germans could not have taken Dunkirk trying for nearly a week failing in the process. The British retreat operation was carried out as planned and in orderly fashion. All bridges to Dunkirk were destroyed by the allies.
The British counter-attack at Arras was with outdated Matilda 1 tanks, which only had machine guns, and a few of the brand new Matilda 2 tanks. The Germans fled in droves. In desperation the Germans turned a 88mm AA gun horizontal successfully against the Matilda 2 - their conventional anti-tank weapons and tanks could not penetrate the tank. The Matilda 2
would roll over German gun emplacements killing the gunners. Rommel thought he had been hit by a force three times the size, which made them stop and rethink. The Germans countered with their superior numbers pushing back the British who fell back consolidating towards Dunkirk.
The British resolve and the new Matilda 2 made the Germans sit up and think about a street fight in Dunkirk against a consolidated force still with its weapons and the new Matilda 2 - the large 88mm would be useless in Dunkirk streets while the Matilda 2 would be in its element, with the Matlida 2 easily destroying the Panzer MkIII & MkIVs. The Matilda 2 could knock out any German tank at the time, while no German tank could knock it out. The Germans were expecting the Matilda 2 to be shipped over in numbers and for all they knew many were in Dunkirk. The
Germans could not stop the tanks coming as the RAF controlled the skies with a CAP and the RN the waters of the Channel. Not a good prospect for the Germans. A Dunkirk street fight was a fight the German troops were untrained and unequipped for and unwise to get involved in.
Von Rundstedt and von Kluge suggested to Hitler that German forces around the Dunkirk pocket cease their advance, consolidating preventing an Allied break out from Dunkirk. Hitler agreed with the support of the Wehrmacht. German preoccupation rightly was with an expected attack from the fluid south of the German lines, by mainly French and some British forces, not from dug-in Dunkirk which was too much of a formidable consolidated opponent, taking substantial resources to seize. The German column had Allied troops to each side with soft marshland to the south west of Dunkirk unsuitable for tanks. If German forces had engaged in a street battle for Dunkirk, they would be vulnerable on their weak flank from the south. In short the fast moving panzers were now static; German forces attacking Dunkirk in a battle of attrition would have been largely wiped out.
The German columns were consolidating their remaining armour for an expected attack by the British and French from the south, and the important resupply from Germany, which was slow as it was via horses - or maybe a combined attack from the south and the Dunkirk pocket. The Germans attacked on a remarkably narrow front. They had over-stretched their supply lines. The Germans had no option but to stop, being more concerned at defending from the mainly French forces in the south which were viewed as a greater threat than Dunkirk. French general Weigand implemented his creation of hedgehogs to attack German lines from the sides, with success - hedgehogs were adopted post war by NATO being a part of the tactics until the 1970s.
What were the Germans thinking? Are the British retreating to England from Dunkirk to move down the English coast and re-enter France further south with fresh forces, including Canadians and the new Matilda 2 tanks, which they feared, and join up with the French forces there? Are they going to reinforce the Dunkirk pocket supplied by the Royal Navy with a 24/7 air CAP? The British could easily do any of these as they controlled the Channel. This would create one large difficult to combat force at Dunkirk. They also saw the resolve of outnumbered British
forces at Arras. German generals were trying to figure out what was happening. None thought that British troops would retreat to England and stay there. The British never did that sort of thing.
The Germans could divert most of their forces south and risk a Dunkirk breakout being attacked from their rear fighting on two fronts, or stay and consolidate, which they needed to do, awaiting a French/British attack from the south and use some forces and the Luftwaffe to attack Dunkirk, which they did. German forces resumed their attack on Dunkirk for over 6 days and failed to seize the port.
The plan to break out of the Dunkirk Pocket using British, Belgian and French forces was abandoned as Gort had no confidence in the French. All military school studies since, knowing what the German and allied positions and situations were in 1940, have shown it would have succeeded.
The Germans were defeated at the Battle of Dunkirk. They tried militarily to seize the port but failed. Only because the British did not trust the French and moved back to England did the Germans eventually occupy the town. The Germans did not let the British get away that is misguided myth, they tried for a week simply not able to seize Dunkirk.
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@abellseaman4114
The Matilda 1 was for infantry support. It had a modern, for the time, heavy, .303 calibre water cooled Vickers machine gun which was used in the British army until 1954. It was well armoured for the time. The Germans did not think it was toothless being superior to the German equivalent. The standard German 37mm anti-tank guns found it difficult to knock it out with many of their shells bouncing off. Its equivalent was the less armoured Panzer 1, which also was machine gun armed. The Matilda 1 had a more powerful engine than the Panzer 1.
58 Matilda I's supported by 16 Matilda II's led the charge that stopped Rommel at Arras in May 1940. The Germans had to level AA guns, personally directed by Rommel, to knock the them out. The new Matilda 2s with their 2-pdr anti-tanks guns gave them a real shock, but that is another story. This shock was one of the reasons the Germans stopped their advance.
Every five British infantry divisions had one armoured division. An armour to man ratio the Germans could only dream of in 1940, or any time in WW2. The armour intensity of the BEF was far greater than the German army in 1940. British infantry had lots of infantry supports tanks quite near them at all times. This was due to the cheapness of manufacture of the Matilda 1.
In 1940 the British tanks, Matilda 1, Matilda 2, and a few rushed into service Cavaliers, were superior to what the Germans pitted against them. A number of Matilda 1s were still made after Dunkirk being ready for an invasion attempt by the Germans.
50 of these so called obsolete Matilda 1 tanks in Malaya would have defeated the Japanese.
The Matilda 1 by definition, with a machine gun, was an anti-personnel tank. In 1940 at that role, it was excellent. The awkward looking Matilda 1 was also cheap to produce using a readily available Ford V8 commercial engine. The Ford V8 was a reliable engine being used by the French until the 1990s.
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@johnlucas8479
"Yes they cover the distance from Zon to Nijmegen on the 19th in quick time."
Good you got it. 26 miles.
"XXX Corp would disobey the standing order from 21 Army Group to only operate during daylight hours."
Nope they were moving at night when the opportunity arose. They moved at night into the concentration area south of Eindhoven.
"one of the reasons XXX Corp stop at Lent on the evening of the 20th because they lack infantry to lead the advance from Lent to Arnhem."
Nope. The tanks were exhausted of fuel & ammunition with the crews needing sleep, because they were aiding the 82nd retake Nijmegen, which the 82nd gifted to the Germans.
For all the concern that must have existed about getting to Arnhem, only a small part of the British armor was freed late on D plus 4, 21 September, to start the northward drive. As the attack began, British commanders saw every apprehension confirmed. The ground off the main roads was low-lying, soggy bottom-land, denying employment of tanks.
A few determined enemy bolstered with antitank guns might delay even a large force. Contrary to the information that had been received, Colonel Frost and his men had been driven away from the north end of the Arnhem bridge the afternoon before, so that since the preceding night the bridge had been open to German traffic. At the village of Ressen, less than three miles north of Nijmegen, the Germans had erected an effective screen composed of an SS battalion reinforced with 11 tanks, another infantry battalion, 2 batteries of 88-mm. guns, 20 20-mm. antiaircraft guns, and survivors of earlier fighting at Nijmegen, all operating under General Bittrich's II SS Panzer Corps. Arnhem lay seven miles north of this screen. The British could not pass.
- US Official History
"That the Germans that occupied and reinforce Nijmegen on the 18th, if the 82nd had captured the bridge would have fortified the island,"
That is a bad excuse for not taking the bridge. Apart from the slow ferry, they could not fortify the island with much at all.
SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 had 16 Mark IV tanks on the books, concentrated in 5.Kompanie of the II.Abteilung. They tried to raft them over the Pannerden canal (the canalised part of the Rijn at the Pannerden ferry location) but the Mark IVs were too heavy for the raft and had to wait for the Arnhem bridge to be cleared. They could raft their remaining 4 StuG III assaut guns, concentrated in 7./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 and sent to reinforce Nijmegen. The StuGs were not on the island on d-day plus 1. The SuGs fought a fighting retreat from Nijmegen northwards over the bridge, and at least one survived to halt Sgt. Robinson's Shermans at the Lent railway viaduct, and again halted the Irish Guards the next day on a defence line established between Oosterhout and Ressen by Kampfgruppe Knaust.
"Montgomery made the decision to proceed on the 17th."
Nope!
"Eisenhower approved the operation with certain conditions. Market Garden would commence on 17 September. Securing the approaches to the port at Antwerp would be delayed until Montgomery seized bridgeheads over the Rhine. His priority after seizing the bridgeheads would be gaining the much needed deep water port. He would not continue the attack to Berlin as he had proposed."
- A FRAMEWORK FOR MILITARY DECISION MAKING UNDER RISKS
by JAMES V. SCHULTZ
AIR UNIVERSITY
MAXWELL AIR FORCE BASE
ALABAMA JUNE 1996. Page 50.
But you knew all this anyhow.
The failure to secure a bridgehead over the Rhine was down to two US para units failing to seize their easy bridges.
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Firstly, Manchester is no Milan or Barcelona. It is a smallish British provincial city not of any real note. I am not insulting Manchester, it is just that way. Manchester has been artificially advanced by government favoritism. The city council constantly big the city up until people go there and are invariably underwhelmed.
Liverpool, the only deep water port on that coast, was snubbed in favour of Manchester. The BBC was taken to Manchester, a political decision, when Liverpool had superior, and attractive, dockside locations for construction. Liverpool could not even tender.
One third of Liverpool's metro was abandoned under construction when Thatcher came to power - over forty years ago. Miles of tunnels and trackbed still await trains. In the meantime public money was poured into adjacent Manchester, like building its highly extensive Metrolink. HS2 High Speed Rail was planned to terminate at Manchester while there is no direct link at Liverpool 30 miles away.
Some of the poorest towns in the UK circle Manchester, like Oldham and Rochdale. No such towns circle Liverpool, with Southport to the north and Chester to the south.
Manchester has been promoted by central government, they have no magic entrepreneurial formula to drag the city up by its bootstraps. It is disingenuous to put across that Manchester did it all by itself. It never.
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Oh no! Not this mythical race to Messia. Hanson even mentions the film as well. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
Montgomery to Alexander on July 19th 1943. A letter regarding Patton and Messina in Sicily: " ..when the Americans have cut the coast road north of Petralia, one American division should develop a strong thrust eastwards towards Messina so as to stretch the enemy who are all Germans and possibly repeat the Bizerte (Tunisia) manoeuvre (i.e cut them off)"
Monty wrote in his diary:
"the Seventh American Army should develop two strong thrusts with (a) two divisions on Highway 120 and (b) two divisions on Highway 113 towards Messina. This was all agreed"
Pages 140/141 of Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory by Michael Reynolds.
"[Monty] sent a message to Patton inviting him to come and discuss the capture of Messina. He offered, “Many congratulations to you and your gallant soldiers on securing Palermo and clearing up the western half of Sicily.” Privately, of course, he believed Patton’s Palermo escapade had been a completely wasted effort."
"Patton met Monty at Syracuse airfield on the 25th. Expecting the worst and mistrusting his comrade’s intentions, he was astounded when Monty suggested that the Seventh Army should use both the major roads north of Mount Etna (Highways 113 and 120) in a drive to capture Messina. In fact, Monty went even further and suggested that his right hand, or southern, thrust might even cross the inter-Army boundary and strike for Taormina, thereby cutting off the two German divisions facing the Eighth Army; the latter would “take a back seat.”
- Michael Reynolds, Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory
‘Montgomery was heading for Messina too, but the German forces still on the island threw up a tough defence line and it was late July before Montgomery worked his way through them and resumed his advance. Fans of the movie ''Patton'' think they know what happened next. Montgomery marched into Messina at the head of his triumphant troops - to find a smirking Patton waiting for him. Mr. D'Este assures us it didn't happen that way. Patton was indeed trying to beat Montgomery to Messina, but Montgomery would not make a race of it. He wanted only to keep the Germans from escaping and realized Patton was in the best position to accomplish that. In fact he urged Patton to use roads assigned to the Eighth Army.’
www.nytimes.com/1988/11/27/books/the-finish-line-was-messina.html
In Sicily Patton was moving in the west over ground the Germans had abandoned and still made heavy going of it. It was arranged that Patton gets to Messina first with Montgomery. His troops did taking the easy route while the British slogged it out with the Germans, reaching Messina only a few hours after Patton.
"Although Brig. Gen. Maxwell Taylor, the artillery commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, described the provisional corps’ advance into northwestern Sicily as “a pleasure march, shaking hands with Italians asking, ‘How’s my brother Joe in Brooklyn?’ Nicest war I’ve ever been in!” it was in fact extremely unpleasant for many of the GIs who had to march over 100 miles through very rugged country in stifling heat and swirling dust."
- Michael Reynolds, Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory
Bradley:
“Patton was developing as an unpopular guy. He steamed about with great convoys of cars and great squads of cameramen … To George, tactics was simply a process of bulling ahead. Never seemed to think out a campaign. Seldom made a careful estimate of the situation. I thought him a shallow commander … I disliked the way he worked, upset tactical plans, interfered in my orders. His stubbornness on amphibious operations, parade plans into Messina sickened me and soured me on Patton. We learned how not to behave from Patton’s Seventh Army.”
The reference to amphibious operations was in relation to three landings made on the north coast of Sicily during the advance to Messina, known to the Americans as end runs. Patton did not in fact interfere in the first successful landing, but he ordered the second to take place earlier than Bradley and Truscott wished, ending in a minor disaster, and he ordered the third to take place despite the fact that the 3rd Division had already advanced beyond the landing site!"
Michael Reynolds, Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory
More amateurism from Patton, taking towns unnecessarily slowing down the operation:
"On July 19, Monty had signalled Alexander, outlining his axes of advance around either side of Mount Etna and suggesting that “when the Americans have cut the coast road north of Petralia, one American division should develop a strong thrust eastwards towards Messina so as to stretch the enemy who are all Germans and possibly repeat the Bizerta manoeuvre [i.e., cut them off].”
"This made complete military sense, but by the 17th Patton had persuaded Alexander to allow him to drive toward the northwestern part of the island. When Alexander tried to restrain Patton by sending him a new directive on the evening of the 19th, it was too late. The directive, in accordance with Monty’s suggestion, ordered Patton to first cut the coastal road north of Petralia and only then to move on Palermo. However, the Seventh Army Chief of Staff, Brig. Gen. Hobart Gay, kept the first part of the message from Patton, ensured that the remainder took a long time to be decoded, and then asked for it to be repeated on the grounds that it had been garbled! By the time this problem had been resolved, the advance guard of Keyes’ provisional corps was already in Palermo and Monty’s idea of an American division helping him, at least in the short term, had been frustrated."
- Michael Reynolds, Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory
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Big Stix
Two American Airforce Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the reason why the Market Garden plan was flawed. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that prevented the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak".
The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends. General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 20 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 8 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men in the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself. XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge.
If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, the Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A failure made possible by General Gavin. Even the US Official War record confirms this.
Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm
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Jason Maquire wrote:
"It is a bit rich of any British person to blame the French for folding when they sent a pitifully small force to a war that they had declared against Germany themselves."
The BEF was 9% of all allied ground troops. The British were primarily to control the Channel, which they did, and contribute to the air forces. But the French
Wages of Destruction by Prof Adam Tooze:
"There’s always a problem in history of determining after something’s happened what the balance of probabilities was before it happened. And the German plan is a plan which is again a spectacular gamble, and it succeeds because the forces in the German offensive are concentrated in an extraordinarily tight pack which is going to drive through the Ardennes in a single offensive move all the way across northern France to the Channel. This is an operation of unprecedented logistical risk and gives the opponents of Germany - Britain, France, Belgium and Holland - the chance, if they’re sufficiently well organised, to mount a devastating counterattack on Germany and on the pincer moving across northern France. And for this reason the Germans fully understand that if this plan fails they’ve lost the war. So it’s, rather than simply the result of a series of coincidences, more that the Germans are simply taking a very, very high risk gamble. The gamble bears the possibility of total victory, which is what they ultimately achieve over France, but also a risk of catastrophic defeat which they’re fully conscious of."
Wages of Destruction, Page 371.
"The German army that invaded France in May 1940 was far from being a carefully honed weapon of modern armoured warfare. Of Germany's 93 combat ready divisions on May 10 1940, only 9 were Panzer divisions, with a total of 2.438 tanks between them. These units faced a French army that was more heavily motorised, with 3,254 tanks in total."
....Half the German tanks that invaded the west were armed only with a machine gun!! The German Army was not on equal footing with the French when in fact it was inferior.
"By May 1940 Britain had 7 regiments equipped with 28 light tanks plus 44 scout carriers each. There was also 1 regiment of armoured cars with 38 Morris light reconnaissance cars. There was also an Army Tank brigade with two regiments of infantry tanks. That gave a total of 308 tanks 23 of which had a 2pdr gun the rest had machine guns. Ist Armoured Division started to arrive in France from late May. However many of the Cruiser tanks were so recently issued that their crews had only been half trained on them and many lacked wireless sets, sighting telescopes and even armour piercing ammunition."
-Source The Great Tank Scandal, David Fletcher
Dutch, Belgian, UK & French tanks in total were 4,200 tanks.
Prof Tooze, page 371/372.
"Nor should one accept unquestioningly the popular idea that the concentration of the Germans tanks in specialised tank divisions gave them a decisive advantage. Many French tanks were scattered amongst the infantry units, but with their ample stock of vehicles the French could afford to do this. The bulk of France's best tanks were concentrated in armoured units, that, on paper at least, were every bit a match for the Panzer divisions."
Page 377
_"The Germans not only committed "all" their tanks and planes. In strictest conformity with the Schwerpunkt principle, they committed them on an astonishingly narrow front"
"the Luftwaffe sacrificed no less than 347 aircraft, including virtually all its transports used in the air landings in Holland and Belgium"._
Page 378
_"if Allied bombers had penetrated the German fighter screen over the Ardennes they could have wreaked havoc amongst the slow moving traffic"
"highly inflammable fuel tankers were interspersed with the fighting vehicles at the very front with the armoured fighting vehicles"_
"The plan called for the German armoured columns to drive for three days and nights without interruption".
....The drivers were put on "speed" pills.
Page 379
"success would not have been possible had it not been for the particular nature of the battlefield. The Channel coastline provided the German army with a natural obstacle to pin their enemies, an obstacle which could be reached within few hundred kilometres of the German border."
"the Germans benefited from the well made network of roads"
"In Poland in 1939 the Wehrmacht had struggled to maintain the momentum of its motorized troops when faced with far more difficult conditions."
" a close analysis of the of the mechanics of the Blitzkrieg reveals the astonishing degree of concentration achieved, but an enormous gamble that Hitler and the Wehrmacht were taking on May 10."
Page 380
"because it involved such a concentrated use of force, Manstein's plan was a *one-shot affair*. If the initial assault had failed, and it could have failed in many ways, the Wehrmacht as an offensive force would have been spent. The gamble paid off. But contrary to appearances, the Germans had not discovered a patent recipe for military miracles. The overwhelming success of May 1940, resulting in the defeat of a major European military power in a matter of weeks, was not a repeatable outcome"
Tooze, page 373:
"In retrospect, it suited neither the Allies nor the Germans to expose the amazingly haphazard course through which the Wehrmacht had arrived at its most brilliant military success. The myth of the Blitzkrieg suited the British and French because it provided an explanation other than military incompetence for their pitiful defeat. But whereas it suited the Allies to stress the alleged superiority of German equipment, Germany's own propaganda viewed the Blitzkrieg in less materialistic terms."
Tooze page 380.
"In both campaigns [France & Barbarossa], the Germans gambled on achieving decisive success in the opening phases of the assault. Anything less spelled disaster".
....If the belt broke the whole movement stopped. The Germans thought they had formulated a version of Blitzkrieg in France that was a sure-fire success. They used this in the USSR, just scaling up forces. They did not have the intelligence to assess properly, that the reason for their success was allied incompetence not anything brilliant they did.
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The state of play on the 17th was:
1) the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was clear;
2) there were concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally;
3) there were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen;
4) then a few scattered about along the road;
5) there was no armour in Arnhem.
That was it.
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 3 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured the bridge.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected.
XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and towards the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up. The road was still clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump.
XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, making up the delay at Zon. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over.
If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
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The British Army saved the Beetles by having British forces in Germany buy them. They bought 20,000 painted British Amy green. Ivan Hirst was the British officer in charge. For a year the factory re-conned and repaired British Army vehicles, under REME, then after made the Beetle.
Hirst admired the design, engineering and use of metals in the Beetle, trying to get British manufacturers interested in the Beetle, with all turning it down. He mocked them, saying, "there probably was not enough cast iron in them." He offered the car to Ford, who said, "the car is not worth a damn". So Hirst took control of the manufacturing.
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@davefrompa5334
Patton was an average US general, like Simpson, Patch, Hodges, etc. No more. A US media creation, elevating the average beyond their status.
"The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian First Army HQ for the same purpose.
Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation.
"This advance duly began at 0630hrs on August 18 which, as the Canadian Official History remarks, ‘was a day and a half after Montgomery had issued the order for the Canadians to close the gap at Trun, and four and a half days after Patton had been stopped at the Third Army boundary’. During that time, says the Canadian History, the Canadians had been ‘fighting down from the north with painful slowness’ and the Germans had been making their way east through the Falaise gap. They were not, however, unimpeded; the tactical air forces and Allied artillery were already taking a fearful toll of the German columns on the roads heading east past Falaise.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise – Operation Tractable – which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed there with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were re-fitting and rebuilt after the summer 1944 battles. The Panzer Brigades had green crews with little time to train, did not know their tanks properly, had no recon elements and didn't even meet their unit commander until his arrival at the front. These were not elite forces.
The 17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, equipped only with assault guns not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy and not up to strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the best German divisions in the west were NOT.
♦ Who did the 3rd Army engage?
♦ Who did the 3rd Army defeat?
♦ Patton never once faced a full strength Waffen SS panzer division nor a Tiger battalion.
In The Lorraine, the 3rd Army faced a rabble. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said:
"I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Patton was mostly facing a second rate rabble in The Lorraine.
Patton was neither on the advance nor being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. The road from Luxembourg to Bastogne saw few German forces, with Bastogne being on the very southern German flank, their focus was west. Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was not one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, while 26th Volks-Grenadier only had about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind only had a small number of tanks operational. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1.
Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Leading elements were engaging the Americans and British under Montgomery's command near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance and pushed them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons opened up with the American attack stopping and pulling back. The next day fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B retreating once again. It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. Patton's forces arrived at Chaumont late on the 22nd December. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day, the 25th! Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, just 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne.
In Normandy in 1944, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact. This eastern dash devoid of German forces was the ride the US media claimed Patton was some sort master of fast moving armour.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates.
♦ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics Bradley's II Corps were employing
♦ He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division, Truscott of being "afraid to fight".
♦ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps.
♦ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize stalled he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being "very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect".
♦ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in reporting their losses.
After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF. Coningham, gave Patton massive ground attack plane support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall. Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault, including his subordinates. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated. Oh, and wore cowboy guns.
Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his orders, and Eisenhower's orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read:
Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds and
Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies by Harry Yeide
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@davefrompa5334 wrote:
"the British were dropped eight or nine miles from the bridge, well guess whose idea that was."
Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower, approved and under resourced the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed - they were the prime planners. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams:
♦ Who ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practiced and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, however rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak". The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself.
XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corps' Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.
Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm
The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
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@heyfitzpablum
British forces were not far away in Belgium and Holland. Market Garden created a 60 mile salient into German territory creating a buffer between Germany and Antwerp. The easiest way to Antwerp was straight across flat Holland through the British lines, not though a Belgium Forest. British forces were between the Germans and Antwerp. So, they went through the US lines via a forest.
I will let the Germans have the first say on the Bulge:
General Hasso von Manteuffel:
‘The operations of the American First Army had developed into a series of individual holding actions. Montgomery's contribution to restoring the situation was that he turned a series of isolated actions into a coherent battle fought according to a clear and definite plan. It was his refusal to engage in premature and piecemeal counter-attacks which enabled the Americans to gather their reserves and frustrate the German attempts to extend their breakthrough’.
By November 1944, British SHEAF officer, Strong, noted that there was a possibility of a German counter-offensive in the Ardennes or the Vosges. Strong went to personally warn Bradley at his HQ, who said, "let 'em come".
Montgomery on hearing of the attack immediately, without consulting Eisenhower, took British forces to the Meuse to prevent any German forces from making a bridgehead, securing the rear. He was prepared to halt their advance and attack them. This was while Eisenhower and Bradley were doing nothing.
even by 19 December, three days into the offensive, no overall plan had emerged from 12th Army Group or SHAEF, other than the decision to send Patton’s forces north to Bastogne. Overall, the Ardennes battle was in urgent need of grip. General Hodges had yet to see Bradley or receive more than the sketchiest orders from his Army Group commander.
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
On 20 December, four days into the attack, Montgomery sent a signal to Alanbrooke regarding the US forces:
"Not good... definite lack of grip and control. I have heard nothing from Ike or Bradley and had no orders or requests of any sort. My own opinion is that the American forces have been cut in half and the Germans can reach the Meuse at Namur without opposition."
Omar Bradley, commander of the 12th Army Group, did very little:
16 Dec, the first day, for 12 hours did nothing.
16 Dec, after 12 hours, he sent two armoured divisions from the flanking Ninth and Third Armies.
17 Dec, after 24 Hours, he then called in two US airborne divisions from Champagne.
18 Dec, he ordered Patton to halt his pending offensive in the Saar.
18 Dec, he had still not established contact with the First Army, while Monty had.
19 Dec, he withdrew divisions from the Aachen front to shore up the Ardennes.
19 Dec, he had still not produced an overall defensive plan.
19 Dec, the Supreme Commander intervened directly late in the day.
20 Dec, Eisenhower telephoned Montgomery telling him to take command of the US First and Ninth Armies
While all this dillying by Bradley was going on, German armies were pounding forward into his lines. Bradley should have been fired. Hodges ran away from his command post.
British officer Whiteley & American officer Betts of SHEAF visited the U.S. First Army HQ after the German attack, seeing the shambles. Strong, Whiteley, and Betts recommended that command of the armies north of the Ardennes be transferred from Bradley to Montgomery. Unfortunately only the two British officers approached Beddel Smith of their recommendations, who immediately fired the pair, claiming it was a nationalistic thing. The next morning, Beddel Smith apologized seeing the three were right, recommending to Eisenhower to bring in Monty.
During the Battle of the Bulge Eisenhower was stuck self imprisoned in his HQ in des-res Versailles near Paris in fear of German paratroopers wearing US uniforms with the objective to kill allied generals. He had remained locked up more than 30 days without sending a single message or order to Montgomery, and that is when he thought he was doing ground control of the campaign, when in effect Montgomery was in control as two US armies had to be put under his control after the German attack, the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF had to take control of US air force units. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war, just about.
The only thing Eisenhower did was tell Monty to get control of two out of control US armies, tell the US 101st to go to Bastogne (who were in northern France after the buffer Market Garden was created) and men under Bradley to counterattack. That is it.
At the end of the Bulge would you believe it, Eisenhower gave Bradley an award. He did! No kidding.
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@heyfitzpablum
Bastogne was merely a southern periphery battle, on the other side of the German 'Bulge'. The majority of the Bulge fighting was by US First Army to the north under the command of Montgomery from the 20th onwards (after five days of fighting in the battle).
Monty saved the US 7th Armored Division and US 82nd Airborne from annihilation around St Vith. The battles in the north were the most important in the Bulge: St Vith, Stoumont, Stavelot, Elsenborn Ridge, Houffalize, Marche, Celles, Manhay, Hotton, etc. This is where the Germans were losing the majority of their men and tanks. Not around Bastogne. Bastogne wasn't of any great importance for the Germans. The Germans left it behind and marched towards the River Meuse leaving only scratch forces to mop up around Bastogne.
This is an excellent American lecture on the battle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd6LrT7Zrjo
The lecturer is correct when he says:
"The decision to give command to Monty was the best decision Eisenhower made. Montgomery is a better battle manager than Bradley. Courtney Hodges needed adult supervision, he can't manage the thing on his own. Eisenhower sensed that Hodges was going to need close supervising authority. Monty could do that. The real reason Ike did it. Monty with his system knew more about what was going on in the Bulge than Hodges knew. He had liaison officers further forward who were giving him reports faster and he started moving XXX Corps down to the Meuse. Monty moved XXX Corps down to the west bank of the Meuse. If you give Monty command of Simpson's Ninth Army and Hodges First Army then Monty is into the battle full thing and you know damn well that XXX Corps is going to be there as well as emergency backstop if it's needed and that's the real reason Eisenhower did it!"
He never went far enough, as the US command was shambolic.
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@heyfitzpablum
Patton at Cobra? Saved the Brits. Are you having a larf? Patton came in at the end of Cobra, the breakout - all in Monty's plan, as laid down at St.Pauls school in London. Then the buffoon went off to Paris from Falaise on a joy ride, instead of cutting the Germans off at the Seine.
Caen was strategically unimportant. The Caen sector had more German tanks per mile than Kursk. In just a dozen miles or so eight Panzer divisions in a very small area of front. Caen had the highest concentration density of German tanks ever seen in WW2, pitted against British armour. At Kursk the panzer divisions were spread out over a much wider area and were not concentrated as densely as around Caen. Caen saw the densest concentration of German armour ever seen in WW2. At Kursk the Germans were attacking over a near 50 mile front. There were certainly not eight panzer divisions within 12 miles.
There were EIGHT Panzer Divisions in the Caen area by end of June 1944 and FIVE lines of anti-tank guns. The Germans kept sending more and more panzer divisions around the Caen area as June went on and into July. These were the panzer divisions deployed to the Caen area.
♦ 21st Panzer Division (117 Panzer IVs).
♦ Panzer Lehr Division ( 101 Panzer IVs, 89 Panthers).
♦ 2nd Panzer Division (89 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers).
♦ 116th Panzer Division (73 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers). In reserve just behind the front.
♦ 1st SS Panzer Division (98 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers).
♦ 9th SS Panzer Division (40 Stugs, 46 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers).
♦ 10th SS Panzer Division (38 Stugs, 39 Panzer IVs)
♦ 12th SS Panzer Division (98 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers).
♦ Tiger Battalion SS101 (45 Tigers).
♦ Tiger Battalion SS102 (45 Tigers).
♦ Tiger Battalion 503 (45 Tigers)
Sources:
- Bernages Panzers and the Battle For Normandy
- Zetterling's Normandy 1944: German Military Organization, Combat Power and Organizational Effectiveness.
On 12th June 1944 the British had no room to sidestep any German divisions before Caen because the Germans totally blocked them. This is why a wide right hook on Caen was attempted. To the south of Panzer Lehr's sector in the vicinity of Villers Bocage there was thought to be an area devoid of German forces, and so this wide right hook was attempted on the morning of 13th June (any wider and it would have overrun into the American lines). Unfortunately, unknown to the British, Schwere SS Panzer Abteilung 101 turned up into this area on the night of the 12/13th June and blocked this right hook with their Tigers and closed the door on Caen.
There was no other room to manoeuvre onto Caen. All attempts had to go right through the German panzer divisions through the rest of June and early July, with the Germans having excellent defensive country (fields broken up by hedgerows everywhere) with which to utilise to their advantage.
The Germans had over 1,500 tanks and assault guns in the British/Canadian sector, including Tiger and Panthers. Even the King Tiger and Jagdpanther made their WW2 combat débuts around Caen in July.
The Americans who were not equipped, or experienced, to face massed German armour, were given primarily an infantry role by Montgomery - the Americans met very little armour in WW2. The US forces didn't face any German armour until June 13th, and that was only a mere battalion of assault guns. The US gave up on capturing St.Lo. If they had not German armour would have been sent there instead of massing at Caen. The British destroyed about 90% of German armour in the west.
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@heyfitzpablum
The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein
♦ March 1943 - Medenine
♦ June 1944 - Normandy
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Montgomery moved over 1,000 km in 17 days from El Alemein to Tunisia, the fastest advance for such a distance in WW2. The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 Lorraine casualties. Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship. Armies under Monty did not have excessive losses.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British with Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
You need to give respect where it is due.
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@davefrompa5334
Have you heard of paragraphs?
Bastogne was on the southern periphery of the German lines - on there extreme flank. It was not in a direct line to Antwerp. The Germans bypassed the town leaving it behind, after meeting some initial heavy US resistance. They had no need for the town itself, not needing the rail infrastructure as the German offensive was motorised, so did not expend resources in eliminating US resistance inside the the town. The Germans wanted to get ahead to get to Antwerp, as their offensive was time critical. They just left the inert US paras inside. A line from the Ardennes to Antwerp, the line the Germans were taking to get to Antwerp quickly, takes you through the north of the Bulge. That is where Monty was in command. That is where the big armoured engagements took place.
By the time Patton relieved the US paras at Bastogne, German forces had already moved 39 miles way to the west, being engaged at Dinant at the Meuse by forces under the British 21st Army Group, under Monty. The Meuse was the furthest the Germans got, not even reaching the banks of the river. In the northern sector under Monty, the Germans got nowhere near the Meuse.
The lmit of the German advance. Bastogne is clearly US forces just to the south of the town, on the periphery of the German advance.
https://mgodejohnbattleofthebulge.weebly.com/battle-and-tactics.html
You have an ability not to see the big picture.
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I advise many to read the ultimate authority on WW2 aero engines, The Great Horsepower Race by Callum Douglas, who is an F1 engine designer and WW2 engine historian. No other book comes close.
Callum Douglas...
"Surely everyone just KNOWS that the good old stories about FORD laughing at the Merlin drawings and that Rolls-Royce engines were all hand built must be true ! Well this document, plus the fact there is a huge parts interchange manual which tells you which Packard part number you need to get to replace a certain Rolls-Royce part in either engine and visa versa.Of course not all parts were interchangeable, Packard did their own supercharger drive gearbox system, and used American sourced accessories like cabin air compressors and magnetos.
But the British bumpkins in sheds with flat caps and files is far too much fun so it is generally preferred over pesky "archive data" to this very day."
Douglas gives the USA credit in supplying the machine tools. But they shared manufacturing out in WW2. The agreement was the USA provide machine tools for the USSR and UK, so as not to duplicate.
New high production Merlin shadow factories were set up by the Air Ministry in Glasgow, Crewe and Manchester. They also used existing plant in Detroit. Douglas again...
Very few people know that Ford [in Manchester] had very little to do with the engineering production setup, the factory was not a Ford factory and was not full of Ford staff, the factory was built brand new for the Merlin, and funded by the Air Ministry, Ford were contracted to organize and run the new plant.
"Hooker wrote half his Autobiography on his death-bed in hospital decades after the war, and I don't think the remark has been very well interpreted. One manufacturing engineer who follows me here on twitter believes that the remark was far more likely to refer to tolerances on things like casting pickup practises and so on, rather than things like the precision of grinding and finishing on the high-precision internal components.I feel that this type of explanation is very likely to be correct."
- Calum Douglas
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@pathfinder767
"Nobody’s perfect but Eisenhower came close. "
You need to do some reading. Eisenhower was an inexperienced buffoon. He should have been fired after the Bulge debacle.
♦ Alan Brooke wrote in his diary:
“At the end of this morning's C.O.S. meeting I put before the committee my views on the very unsatisfactory state of affairs in France, with no one running the land battle. Eisenhower, though supposed to be doing so, is on the golf links at Rheims — entirely detached and taking practically no part in running of the war. Matters got so bad lately that a deputation of Whiteley, Bedell Smith and a few others went up to tell him that he must get down to it and RUN the war, which he said he would."
"We discussed the advisability of getting Marshall to come out to discuss the matter, but we are doubtful if he would appreciate the situation. Finally decided that I am to see the P.M. to discuss the situation with him.”
"November 28th. 1 went to see the P.M. 1 told him I was very worried."
♦ Eisenhower ran to Montgomery at the Bulge having to give him command of two shambolic US armies, the First and the Ninth. Adding British troops, Monty stopped the German advance then turned them back;
♦ Eisenhower did little at the Bulge not communicating with the generals. Montgomery stated:
"I do not believe that Eisenhower ever really understood the strategy of the Normandy campaign. He seemed to me to get the whole thing muddled up."
Alan Brooke had to explain a number times what the strategy in Normandy was to Eisenhower. Alan Brooke described in his daily diary that American generals Eisenhower and Marshall as poor strategists, when they were in jobs were strategy mattered. Brooke wrote to Montgomery about his talks with Eisenhower,
“it is equally clear that Ike has the very vaguest conception of war!”;
♦ Montgomery to Alan Brooke..
"If we want the war to end within any reasonable period you have to get Eisenhower’s hand taken off the land battle. I regret to say that in my opinion he just doesn’t know what he is doing.
♦ Montgomery on Eisenhower:
"He has never commanded anything before in his whole career; now, for the first time, he has elected to take direct command of very large-scale operations and he does not know how to do it."
♦ Montgomery wrote of Eisenhower and Patton on their failing broad-front strategy on 22 January 1945:
“I fear that the old snags of indecision and vacillation and refusal to consider the military problem fairly and squarely are coming to the front again . . . The real trouble is that there is no control and the three army groups are each intent on their own affairs. Patton today issued a stirring order to Third Army, saying the next step would be Cologne . . . One has to preserve a sense of humour these days, otherwise one would go mad.”
♦ etc, etc;
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@JN.0_o
The line is mainly 4-track from London to Stoke Tunnel, south of Grantham.
2-track sections:
1) one between Digswell Jction and Woolmer Green Junction, where the line passes over the Digswell Viaduct;
2) Welwyn North station and the two Welwyn tunnels;
3) between Fletton Junction south of Peterborough and Holme Junction, south of Holme Fen.
Between Holme Junction and Huntingdon is mostly 3-track.
North of Grantham the line is 2-track except for 4-track sections at Retford, near Doncaster, between Colton Junction south of York, Thirsk and Northallerton, and Newcastle.
Not much to do, in terms of saving billions on HS2.
In November 2021 the DfT announced a major upgrade of the ECML. It includes major track improvements and digital signalling, leading to higher speeds, reduced journey times and increases in seat capacity.
The power supply will also be upgraded to allow longer and more frequent trains. Maximum speeds will be increased to 140mph on some sections.
If it was all 4-track to Newcastle with two dedicated fast tracks, trains that can reach 160mph the ECML may improve on HS2s time to Edinburgh and Newcastle.
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@CGen67
Beevor's book is full of inaccuracies. Don't go by him. He is a story teller not a serious historian.
Market Garden failed to be a 100% success by a whisker, despite a plan that could have been better. The failure point was not seizing the Nijmegen bridge immediately. At the end of D-Day all crossings were denied to the Germans, except one - the Nijmegen bridge.
General Gavin of the US 82nd was tasked to seize the Nijmegen bridge as soon as landing. Gavin never, he failed with only a few German guards on the bridge for five hours. He failed because his 82nd did not seize the Nijmegen bridge immediately. Gavin even de-prioritised the bridge the prime target and focus. The 82nd were ready at 2 pm on the jump day and never moved to the bridge. The gigantic bridge was guarded by only 19 guards. The Germans occupied the bridge at 1900 hrs. Five hours after the 82nd were ready to march.
Events on the 1st day:
♦ "At 1328, the 665 men of US 82nd 1st Battalion began
to fall from the sky."
- Poulussen, R. Lost at Nijmegen.
♦ "Forty minutes after the drop, around 1410, _the
1st Battalion marched off towards their objective,
De Ploeg, three miles away." Poulussen,
♦ "The 82nd were digging in and performing recon
in the area looking for 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald
- Neillands, R. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
♦ The 82nd were dug in and preparing to defend their
newly constructed regimental command post, which
they established at 1825. Then Colonel Lindquist
"was told by General Gavin, around 1900, to move
into Nijmegen."
-Poulussen
Events on the evening of the 1st day:
♦ Having dug in at De Ploeg, Warren's battalion wasn't prepared
to move towards Nijmegen at all.
-Poulussen,
♦ Once Lindquist told Lieutenant Colonel Warren that his
Battalion was to move, Warren decided to visit the HQ
of the Nijmegen Underground first - to see what info the
underground had on the Germans at the Nijmegen bridge.
- Poulussen,
♦ It was not until 1830hrs that he [Warren] was able to send
a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small,
just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a
radio — say forty men.
- Neillands. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
♦ This was not a direct route to the bridge from Warren's
original position, and placed him in the middle of the town.
It was also around 2100 when "A" Company left to attempt
to capture the Nijmegen road bridge.
♦ "B" Company was not with them because they'd split up
due to it being dark with "visibility was less than ten yards".
- Poulussen,
♦ The 82nd attacks were resisted by the Germans until the
next day.
Events of the 2nd day:
♦ Gavin drove up in a jeep the next morning and
was told by Warren that although they didn't have the bridge
yet, another attack was about to go in.
♦ Gavin then told Warren to hold because the Germans were
attacking in the southeast portion of the 82nd perimeter.
♦ At around 1100, Warren was ordered to withdraw from
Nijmegen completely.
- Poulussen
General Gavin did not issue pre-jump orders to Colonel Lindquist, meaning there could not have been a misunderstanding. This misunderstanding excuse was used by Gavin for the three day delay in the capture of the Nijmegen bridge. The 508 Parachute Infantry Regiment landed with no offensive orders. General Gavin, not General Browning, shifted the priority to the defence of the landing zones. Although Kampfgruppe Henke and a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) had occupied the bridge and town, the German threat on the 18th of September was not serious enough to order a withdrawal of all the 82nd troops in Nijmegen. General Gavin was extremely defensive, which para commanders are not supposed to be.
Browning landed in the late afternoon. While he was in the air the 82nd men should have been moving towards the bridge. They were not.
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@CGen67
Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust to gain a bridgehead over the Rhine over other fronts, and even seizing Antwerp and clearing the Schedlt. Clearing the Scheldt would take time as the German 15th SS army, highly experienced from the Russian front, had set up shop in the Scheldt under Hitler's orders, not retreating back to Germany,. All available supplies would be directed to this northern thrust, then clearing of the Sheldlt. The opportunity of chasing a beaten army to gain bridgehead made perfect sense - not to would be incompetent.
"Since Eisenhower — the Supreme Commander and Ground Force Commander — approved the Arnhem operation rather than a push to clear the Scheldt, then surely he was right, as well as noble, to accept the responsibility and any resulting blame? The choice in early September was the Rhine or Antwerp: to continue the pursuit or secure the necessary facilities to solve the logistical problem? The decision was made to go for the Rhine, and that decision was Eisenhower’s."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"On 4 Sept, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr"
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen to British troops when he issued the northern thrust directive. Montgomery wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive, devising Operation Comet, multiple crossings of the Rhine, to be launched on 2 Sept, being cancelled due to German resistance and poor weather. Operation Comet was not presented to Eisenhower for his approval. Montgomery asked Brereton, an American, of the First Allied Airborne Army, to drop into the Scheldt in early September - he refused.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 Sept had divisions of the US 1st Army and Montgomery's view of taking multiple bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. The British 2nd Army needed some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow). Hodges' would protect the right flank. the Canadians would protect the left flank from the German 15th army.
"the narrow thrust was reduced to the Second Army and two US corps, the XIX and VII of Hodges’ First Army, a total of around eighteen Allied divisions"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
The northern thrust was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944."
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower’s reply of 5 September to Montgomery deserves analysis, not least the part that concerns logistics. The interesting point is that Eisenhower apparently believes that it is possible to cross the Rhine and take both the Ruhr and the Saar — and open the Scheldt — using the existing logistical resources."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp. In thinking this Ike was wrong."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Post-Normandy Bradley seemed unable to control Patton, who persistently flouted Eisenhower’s directives and went his own way, aided and abetted by Bradley. This part of their relationship quickly revealed itself in matters of supply, where Hodges, the commander of the US First Army, was continually starved of fuel and ammunition in order to keep Patton’s divisions rolling, even when Eisenhower’s strategy required First Army to play the major role in 12th Army Group’s activities."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again, and being bogged down - again. The resources starved First Army could not be a part of northern thrust as Bradley and Patton, against Eisenhower's orders, were syphoning off supplies destined for the First army. This northern thrust over the Rhine, as Eisenhower envisaged, obviously would not work as he thought. A lesser operation was devised by Montgomery, Market Garden, eliminating the divisions of US First Army, with only ONE crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London wanted eliminating ASAP, giving a 60 mile long salient buffer between German forces and the important port of Antwerp. This would only have one corps above Eindhoven, a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time. Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance. Eisenhower should have fired Bradley and Patton for sabotaging the Northern Thrust operation.
Montgomery did not plan in detail or was in involved in Market Garden's execution. Montgomery, after fixing the operations objectives and level of forces with Eisenhower, to the measly forces available, gave Market Garden planning to others, mainly USAAF generals, Brereton and Williams. General Brereton, who liked the plan, agreed to it with even direct input. Brereton ordered the drops will take place during the day and Brereton oversaw the troop carrier and supply drops schedules. Williams forbid fighter-bombers to be used. A refusal by Brereton and the operation would never have gone ahead; he earlier rejected Montgomery's initial plan of a drop into the Scheldt at Walcheren Island.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time the Canadians had cleared, or were investing, many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@dmbeaster
▪ "While the counterattack was in progress, General Gavin arrived at the battalion command post." "General Gavin directed that the battalion "withdraw from close proximity to the bridge and reorganize"." This was to mark the end of this particular attempt to take the Nijmegen bridge" - US Official History, page 165.
▪ "A new attack to gain the bridge grew out of an early morning conference between General Gavin and Colonel Lindquist." "At 0745 on 18 September, D plus 1, Company G under Capt. Frank J. Novak started toward the bridge."
▪ At around 1100, Warren was ordered to withdraw from Nijmegen completely. - R Poulussen.
▪ At 1400 on 18 September Colonel Mendez ordered Company G to withdraw from Nijmegen - US Official History, page 166. "the chance for an easy, speedy capture of the Nijmegen bridge had passed. This was all the more lamentable because in Nijmegen during the afternoon the Germans had had nothing more than the same kind of "mostly low quality" troops encountered at most other places on D Day." - US Official History, page 164.
The 82nd completely withdrew from Nijmegen town, allowing the Germans to pour the 10th SS infantry south over the Nijmegen bridge to reinforce the town, who come over on the ferry. This was after the 508th even had the south end of the bridge. This made matters much worse when the 82nd and XXX Corps went into the town to clear them out.
Gavin informed Browning there was a large German attack against the landing zones. In fact it was small and easily dealt with. He told Browning he wanted to take men out of Nijmegen to deal with the attack. Gavin took all his men out of Nijmegen, de-prioritizing the bridge. No official records of Gavin's and Browning's conversions exist. It is highly unlikely Browning would have approved of taking all men out of Nijmegen. Browning trusted and respected Gavin, as his record so far in Italy and Normandy was excellent. Browning said "yes," trusting in his judgement. Gavin was the man leading this division of US paras, not Browning.
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@dmbeaster
Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower insisted it go ahead, under resourcing the operation. Monty wanted it cancelled. Only the V rockets launched from Holland tipped to go with it. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans, while Garden was mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
▪ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practiced and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
▪ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
▪ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
▪ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
▪ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
▪ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
▪ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak".
The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, compromising the operation. Gavin also totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the 82nd landings there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defenses such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 650 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump.
The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed.XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem.
Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself.XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge.
If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.
Even the US Official War record confirms this. The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
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@dmbeaster
More inane ramblings.
The state of play on the 17th, D day, was:
1) the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was largely clear;
2) there were concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally;
3) there were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen;
4) a few scattered about along the road;
5) there was no armour in Arnhem.
That was it.
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 2 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured it.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected. XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and towards the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up.
The road was still largely clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump. XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, making up the delay at Zon. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over. If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves, after the 82nd tried again and failed again. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
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Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust over other fronts:
"On 4 Sept, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr"
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen when he issued the directive. Montgomery wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive, devising Operation Comet to be launched on 2 Sept, being cancelled due to German resistance and poor weather.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 Sept had divisions of the US 1st Army and Montgomery's view of taking multiple bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. The British 2nd Army needed some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow). Hodges' would protect the right flank. the Canadians would protect the left flank from the German 15th army. It was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
"the evidence also suggests that certain necessary objectives on the road to Berlin, crossing the Rhine and perhaps even taking the Ruhr, were possible with the existing logistical set-up, provided the right strategy to do so was set in place. Montgomery’s popular and astute Chief of Staff, Freddie de Guingand, certainly thought so: 'If Eisenhower had not taken the steps he did to link up at an early date with Anvil and had held back Patton, and had he diverted the resources so released to the north, I think it possible we might have obtained a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter - but not more.' "
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944."
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again. This northern thrust over the Rhine obviously would not work with the resources starved First Army, so a lesser operation was devised by Montgomery, Market Garden, eliminating the divisions of US First Army, with only ONE crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London wanted eliminating ASAP giving a 60 mile long salient buffer between German forces and the important port of Antwerp. This would only have one corps above Eindhoven, a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time. Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance.
Montgomery, although not liking Eisenhower's broad front strategy, making that clear continuously since the Normandy breakout, being a professional soldier he always obeyed Eisenhower's orders keeping to the laid down strategy, unlike Bradley who also allowed Patton to disobey his own orders.
Montgomery after fixing the operations objectives with Eisenhower to what forces were available, gave Market Garden planning to others, mainly General Brereton, an American, of the First Allied Airborne Army. Brereton, who liked the concept, agreed to it with even direct input. Brereton ordered the drops will take place during the day with Brereton overseeing the troop carrier and supply drop schedules. A refusal by Brereton and the operation would never have gone ahead, as his earlier refusal rejecting Montgomery's initial plan of a drop into the Scheldt at Walcheren Island.
Montgomery left all the planning to his generals to plan and execute: Brereton, Williams, Browning, Urquhart, Gavin, Taylor, Horrocks, etc. Monty gave them a free run at it with their own discretion, not interfering. Montgomery had no involvement whatsoever in its execution. Montgomery was an army group commander, in charge of armies. The details were left to 'competent' subordinates.
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Captain Lord Carington's own autobiography entitled 'Reflect on Things Past':
"My recollection of this meeting is different. Certainly I met an American officer but he was perfectly affable and agreeable. As I said the Airborne were all very glad to see us and get some support, no one suggested we press on to Arnhem. This whole allegation is bizarre, just to begin with I was a captain and second-in-command of my squadron so I was in no position either to take orders from another captain or depart from my own orders which were to take my tanks across the bridge, join up with the US Airborne and form a bridgehead. This story is simple lunacy and this exchange did not take place."
"At that stage my job - I was second-in-command of a squadron - was to take a half-squadron of tanks across the bridge. Since everybody supposed the Germans would blow this immense contraption we were to be accompanied by an intrepid Royal Engineer officer to cut the wires and cleanse the demolition chambers under each span. Our little force was led by an excellent Grenadier, Sergeant Robinson, who was rightly awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his action. Two of our tanks were hit not lethally - by anti-tank fire, and we found a number of Germans perched in the girders who tried to drop things on us but without great effect. Sergeant Robinson and the leading tank troop sprayed the opposite bank and we lost nobody, When I arrived at the far end my sense of relief was considerable: the bridge had not been blown, we had not been plunged into the Waal (In fact it seems the Germans never intended to blow the bridge. The demolition chambers were packed with German soldiers, who surrendered), we seemed to have silenced the opposition in the vicinity, we were across one half of the Rhine."
"A film representation of this incident has shown American troops as having already secured the far end of the bridge. That is mistaken - probably the error arose from the film-maker's confusion of two bridges, there was a railway bridge with planks placed between the rails and used by the Germans for [light] road traffic, to the west of the main road bridge we crossed; and the gallant American Airborne men: reached it. When Sergeant Robinson and his little command crossed our main road bridge, however, only Germans were there to welcome him; and they didn't stay."
"The pursuit had ground to a halt. The war was clearly going on. We spent the winter of 1944 in Holland, first near Nijmegen where the Germans had flooded the land between the two great rivers, and there was little activity."
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@JohnPutnamalwayslearning
From day one the Royal Navy formed a ring around the Axis positioning ships from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Arctic off Norway, blockading the international trade of the Axis. This deprived the Axis of vital human and animal food, oil, rubber, metals, and other vital resources. By 1941 the successful Royal Navy blockade had confined the Italian navy to port due to lack of oil. By the autumn of 1941 Germany's surface fleet was confined to harbour, by the British fleet and the chronic lack of fuel.
A potential German invasion from the the USSR in the north into the oil rich Middle East entailed expanded British troop deployment to keep the Germans away from the oil fields, until they were defeated at Stalingrad.
Throughout 1942 British Commonwealth troops were fighting, or seriously expecting to be attacked, in:
♦ French North Africa;
♦ Libya;
♦ Egypt;
♦ Cyprus;
♦ Syria: where an airborne assault was expected, with preparations to reinforce Turkey if they were attacked;
♦ Madagascar: fighting the Vichy French to prevent them from inviting the Japanese in as they had done in Indochina;
♦ Iraq;
♦ Iran: the British & Soviets invaded Iran in August 1941.
Those spread-out covering troops were more in combined numbers than were facing Japan and Rommel in North Africa.
Look up the German Mesopotamia plan. If the Germans did defeat the Soviets in the south of the USSR, the British were waiting to stop them getting at the magic, and vital, oil and linking up with the Japanese.
This documentary is complete garbage.
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@c.d.baumann7286
The Mustang was basically a British plane made by an American manufacturer for them. The British Air Ministry directed a six year old inexperienced company, North American Aviation, to the design points they wanted for their plane. British engineers assisted North American who drew it up, as a university lecturer would do in directing students to research various points in a project. The students run off do the research with the lecturer assessing what they did and how it fits into the project as a whole. The Mustang was a British plane made by an American company for them. There was no US forces involvement in the concept, specifications or design. Many Americans lose sight of these fundamental points.
The Rolls Royce Merlin engine made the Mustang perform superbly. The plane initially used an Allison engine, which was only good at low level, as RR could not meet the supply of Merlins at the time, so the Alison it had to be. The US were behind the British in engine supercharging with the Tizard Mission giving the USA details of advanced super charging. Also the cylinder head design of the Alison was not good enough for full supercharging. Stanley Hooker of RR developed the auto controlled twin-speed twin-charger supercharging technology which was given free to the USA. The first use of the Mustang by the US military was for ground attack because of the poor high level performance of the Allison engine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by4lH2whhjk
In the early stages of WW2, the U.S. government allowed the British & French to by-pass them, allowing direct approaches to U.S. aircraft makers, as would the British government approach say Hawker. The British needed all types of planes urgently, even the P-40 which was inferior to their own front line planes. But warplanes they were, being useful in certain theatres and for training.
In early February 1940 the British asked North American Aviation's President Dutch Kindelberger to supply P-40s made under licence from Curtiss, as Curtiss could not supply demand. Unlike Curtiss, North American's factory was far from operating at capacity. Kindelberger told the British, without any "I can build you a better airplane, and I can get it built fast". Contrary to popular belief in the USA, North American did not have a prototype ready design which the Brits just happened to have snapped up under the noses of the US military. The design was developed over many months with British engineers at the British Air MInistry's office in New York.
North American were first approached in Feb 1940, who had no "detailed drawings or plans". The British gave this young inexperienced company a chance but they would have to hold their hands. In May 1940 as France was falling, North American still never presented any detailed plans, mailing a design concept drawings to the British delegation in New York. This never had the famed laminar flow wings. The Air MInistry accepted the design starting the Mustang project. The British Air Ministry accepted the inferior Allison engine as Rolls Royce were working flat out 24/7 unable to meet demand for Merlins. New Merlin factories were being set up but not yet fully on-line.
In the interim from Feb to May, three months, the British Air Ministry were forming the fundamentals of the design concepts directing North American to Curtiss and NACA the developer of the laminar flow wings, to ensure a fighter with some leading edge design points, not produce another P-40 fly-alike wasting valuable time. The Air Ministry directed NAA to the Curtiss XP-46 experimental plane with all the leading edge design points of top European designs, with a few of their own, rolled into one.
NAA were ordered by the British Air Ministry to buy the plans and test results of the XP-46 plane from Curtiss and study them as they had never built a fighter, if they wanted the job, at a whopping $56,000, a lot of money at the time. Curtiss engineers always said the Mustang was their design. Not quite as the British Air Ministry had a lot to say in the leading design points - they were paying and calling the shots as it was their plane. There was a danger the Mustang may end up the same way as the XP-46 - a plane with leading edge points that never performed as expected. The British Air Ministry took a major gamble with NAA so were active in approving the emerging design points.
The Ministry wanted something better than the poor P-40, being prepared to wait, but realistically never expected Spitfire performance. Initially that was the case with the first deliveries using the Allison engine - better than a P-40 but no Spitfire. The initial Allison engined Mustangs filled an RAF niche, so no problems for the British at that point. A niche the plane filled was that the RAF needed a long range reconnaissance plane that could also perform ground attack being able as a low level fighter if the need was there. The Spitfire was a short range fast interceptor. With the fall of France the RAF needed a plane with range to penetrate over the German border from English air bases.
Reading many US books on the Mustang you would think the concept of the plane was to escort US bombers. That is way off from the truth. The last thing the British Air Ministry were thinking of when laying down the points of the plane was US bomber doctrine. The US were not even in the war. Initially the US military overall didn't want to know the plane. The Mustang was not even in U.S. service when it was shooting down FW-190s by the RAF over France. The Air Ministry gave the U.S. military two planes which were left in the corner of a hangar for a long period, initially not assessed it. Quite amazing, as the USA never had a decent front line fighter at the time.
The excuse not to take up the plane by U.S. forces was that it was liquid cooled and vulnerable in frontal attack. This was a poor excuse to reject the plane because it wasn't theirs. What went over their heads was that the world's two best fighters locked horns in the Battle of Britain, both with liquid cooled engines. With British support, the Mustang finally was noticed by the U.S. Army Air Force. The US military had to go to England to fully assess the plane as it was finished off in Liverpool being flow by the RAF. They did eventually adopt the plane calling it the Apache and P-51 when in U.S. service.
UK and U.S. Mustangs for the European war theatre were finished off in Liverpool. They were test flown then delivered to the units by young English girls, many of them teenagers. The Mustang was built to British specification and design guidance without a doubt. They specified and paid for it. It never performed at all like the short range interceptor the Spitfire, not having the manoeuvrability of the Spitfire. It was 'fine' and reasonably fast at low altitude with the Allison engine. It could operate over France and even Germany at a push, escorting bombers because of the longer range that the British Air Ministry specified. The Mustang filled a niche role for the British. continued......
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...Continued... Rolls Royce. Rolls engineers under Ron Harker went to North American to advise on how to install a Merlin engine in the Mustang. They also gave advice from their work with the RR Mustang X. Rolls-Royce made the first proposal to North American regarding a Merlin 45 engine Mustang in 1940, after Stanley Hooker improved the power by 30%. This was before the plane was operational an still in the R&D stage. The RR Merlin was superior to the Alison engine, also to what it was in February 1940 when North American were first approached by the Air Ministry. The later Merlin 61 had the two-stage auto controlled superchanging developed by again by Stanley Hooker. This gave an extra 70 mph and 15,000 feet of operation to the Merlin. A quantum leap. The pilot just went where he liked without degradation in performance.
RR sent three engineers led by James Ellor to supervise the adaption and manufacture of a Merlin 61, built under licence by Packard, the same type that was already being considered for the Rolls Royce Mustang X experimental series. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Mustang_Mk.X
On 9 June 1942, the first memos from W/C I.R. Campell-Orde of the RAF Air Fighting Development Unit at Duxford, revealed that an effort was being made to convince North American to adopt a Merlin-powered Mustang. Work in the US was setback due to an initial lack of interest and also to mechanical failures of the first Merlin engines built under licence by Packard. Both projects commenced at nearly the same time with the first Mustang X in the air about a month earlier than the North American XP-51B.
The RR Mustang-X programme was 5 or 6 airframes each with different experimentation. RR attempted to have North American accept British Merlin 61s (the two-stage superchargers) in American airframes, it is clear that the prime contractor (NAA) wanted to control the project as control was looking like it was to move over to the UK. NAA was essentially building production-standard aircraft rather than the experimental series that saw each of the RR Mustang Xs trying out new variations of design. An offshoot was the mid-engine RR Griffon engined Mustang that actually made it to the mock-up stage, albeit with a Merlin installed amidships. On the success of the RR Mustang-X built in Nottingham, the Air Ministry ordered hundreds from RR, who declined wanting to remain specialising in engines. NAA remained the prime contractor.
Rolls Royce mass produced Merlins in Crewe, Manchester and Glasgow, also licensing Packard in the USA, using idle US industry. The US made Merlins were to supply the Canadian aircraft factories - to avoid a two-way trans-Atlantic trip and give extra manufacturing when the engine proved very popular with many airframe makers. An agreement was reached in September 1940, with the first Packard built Merlin engine running in August 1941.
Early in 1944 the P-38, P-51B Mustang and P-47C, were dived by the British for compressibility testing at the RAE Farnborough, England at the request of the USAAF. They had trouble when these planes dived onto attacking German fighters when providing top cover for the bombers. The results were that the Mach numbers, the manoeuvring limits, were Mach 0.68 for the P-38, Mach 0.71 for the P-47, and Mach 0.78 for the Mustang. The corresponding figures for the FW-190 and Me109 was Mach 0.75. The tests resulted in the Mustang being chosen for all escort duties. - Page 70, Wings On My Sleeve by Eric Brown, who did the test.
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@dougb1152
The USA thought so.
Germany's biggest mistake was declaring war in the first place. Once they waged war when was the point they could not win? That was when the British refused to make peace in June 1940. With Britain still in the war the Royal Navy blockade starved Germany, and the Axis, of vital resources, including food (animal & human) and oil. Britain was even buying up rare metals from Turkey to ensure the Germans did not have them. The Royal Navy surrounded Europe, controlled freely sailing the eastern Atlantic and the eastern Mediterranean, and controlled both entrances to the Mediterranean. They even held Malta all through WW2, on the doorstep of Axis Italy, halfway from Gibraltar and Suez. Britain's land forces were from the Turkish border to the Libyan border. Essentially the British surrounded Europe, controlling the sea lanes.
The Royal Navy ensured the conflict with Germany would continue. Germany could not win from June 1940 onwards. Being a largely landlocked country, Germany's forces were heavily based on its army, while Britain's was heavily based on its navy and air force with a small highly mobile army. Germany could not remove Britain from the war having pretty well no surface fleet to Britain having the largest navy in the world.
Britain's approach was that every operation was to bleed Germany of resources, especially oil. Operations in Norway and Greece forced the Germans to deploy troops to these areas but also its surface fleet, which mainly was destroyed in Norway. The German occupied countries were also under the blockade, which were also a drain of German resources.
The British, because of its armed forces structure of massive navy, large air force and small highly mobile army were unable to engage the Germans on the European land mass, on which Germany had a massive army. Apart from the air, the two countries could not get at each other. Britain's war then was partially an economic war.
Every German operation against the British had to be decisive whereas the British could lose to the Germans while still asserting economic pressure in its favour. This was the British way of war being very good at it. Britain used similar tactics against Germany in WW1 to devastating effects. This approach was used against the French on multiple occasions over 200 years. Smaller nations in Europe would follow Pax Britannica due British naval dominance. Britain could dictate any war's outcome by blocking trade and resources to one side or another.
The Germans like most of Europe relied on imported oil, raw materials and food (animal & human). For the Germans these resources can only come from two regions - the USSR or the rest of the world. By removing the rest of the world from Axis access, the British forced the Germans to look east to acquire Soviet oil - Romania did not produce enough. Even having access to Soviet and Romanian oil, before the June 1941 attack on the USSR and before the USA was in WW2, the Italian fleet could not be put to sea due to oil shortages, such was the grip of the Royal Navy.
Hitler had no choice but to invade the Soviet Union in June 1941 because of the resources situation. He desperately needed the resources of the USSR to fight the coming air war with Britain. In May 1940 Roosevelt stated the USA would produce 50,000 planes per year. Most of these would be directed towards Germany with British production, which was surpassing Germanys, on top, piloted by British pilots - the British produced more planes than Germany in WW2. In 1941 the British were building more aircraft than Germany, Japan and Italy combined, 5,000 more than the USSR and 5,000 less than the USA.
Germany greatly expanded its U-Boat fleet. The popular, and valid, view was that this fleet was to starve Britain into submission, however a high hope. It was also to divert and lock up Royal Navy resources in convoy protection and U-Boat hunting, allowing merchant ships to enter Germany and the occupied countries more freely providing the vital resources.
Germany had been forced into a situation by the British that they knew they could not escape from. Even if Germany had seized the Caucasus' oil fields intact (the Soviets sabotaged them to the point new deep bore holes would need to be drilled) the British would have focused them for their bombing campaign operating from the Middle East - there were plans to bomb them as Britain held nearby Iraq, Syria and Iran. The British could even attack the Germans from the east.
This was to drain Germany of vital resources, especially oil. Every British victory in Africa was decisive with every German victory not. Even if Germany won an operation, they were still being bled. Unless Germany could seize the Suez Canal and beyond, the British could just come back year after year and counter attack with new tanks and new men, with resources not being a problem for them.
Germany knew that they could not invade Britain as the Royal Navy was just too powerful. The RAF could replace losses far quicker than they could, as they found out in the air Battle of Britain. Germany could not put their large army on British soil.
After June 1940 Germany has an enemy it can’t defeat, not entertaining peace and economically throttling Germany every day of the war. Germany never had time, the British did. The German invasion of the USSR with an army short of resources due to the Royal Navy blockade, may have quickened the war's end for Germany, however it was not the point that Germany could not win. Germany had already lost the war, it was just a matter of time before Germany collapsed.
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Market Garden failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. The failure point was not seizing the Nijmegen bridge immediately. At the end of D-Day all crossings were denied to the Germans, except one - the Nijmegen bridge.
General Gavin of the US 82nd was tasked to seize the Nijmegen bridge as soon as landing. Gavin never, he failed with only a few German guards on the bridge. He failed because his 82nd did not seize the Nijmegen bridge immediately. Gavin even de-prioritised the bridge the prime target and focus. The 82nd were ready at 2 pm on the jump day and never moved to the bridge. The gigantic bridge was guarded by only 19 guards. The Germans occupied the bridge at 1900 hrs. Six hours after the 82nd were ready to march.
Events on the 1st day:
♦ "At 1328, the 665 men of US 82nd 1st Battalion began
to fall from the sky."
- Poulussen, R. Lost at Nijmegen.
♦ "Forty minutes after the drop, around 1410, the
1st Battalion marched off towards their objective,
De Ploeg, three miles away." Poulussen,
♦ "The 82nd were digging in and performing recon
in the area looking for 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald
- Neillands, R. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
♦ The 82nd were dug in and preparing to defend their
newly constructed regimental command post, which
they established at 1825. Then Colonel Lindquist
"was told by General Gavin, around 1900, to move
into Nijmegen."
-Poulussen
Events on the evening of the 1st day:
♦ Having dug in at De Ploeg, Warren's battalion wasn't prepared
to move towards Nijmegen at all.
-Poulussen,
♦ Once Lindquist told Lieutenant Colonel Warren that his
Battalion was to move, Warren decided to visit the HQ
of the Nijmegen Underground first - to see what info the
underground had on the Germans at the Nijmegen bridge.
- Poulussen,
♦ It was not until 1830hrs that he [Warren] was able to send
a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small,
just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a
radio — say forty men.
- Neillands. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
♦ This was not a direct route to the bridge from Warren's
original position, and placed him in the middle of the town.
It was also around 2100 when "A" Company left to attempt
to capture the Nijmegen road bridge.
♦ "B" Company was not with them because they'd split up
due to it being dark with "visibility was less than ten yards".
- Poulussen,
♦ The 82nd attacks were resisted by the Germans until the
next day.
Events of the 2nd day:
♦ Gavin drove up in a jeep the next morning and
was told by Warren that although they didn't have the bridge
yet, another attack was about to go in.
♦ Gavin then told Warren to hold because the Germans were
attacking in the southeast portion of the 82nd perimeter.
♦ At around 1100, Warren was ordered to withdraw from
Nijmegen completely.
- Poulussen
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@0donny
The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British under Montgomery. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa;
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein;
♦ March 1943 - Medenine;
♦ June 1944 - Normandy;
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands;
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge;
A list of Montgomery’s victories in WW2:
♦ Battle of Alam Halfa;
♦ Second Battle of El Alamein;
♦ Battle of El Agheila;
♦ Battle of Medenine;
♦ Battle of the Mareth Line;
♦ Battle of Wadi Akarit;
♦ Allied invasion of Sicily;
♦ Operation Overlord - the largest amphibious invasion in history;
♦ Market Garden - a 60 mile salient created into German territory;
♦ Battle of the Bulge - while taking control of two shambolic US armies;
♦ Operation Veritable;
♦ Operation Plunder.
Montgomery not once had a reverse.
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Monty's 8th Army advanced the fastest of any army in WW2. From El Alamein to El Agheila from the 4th to 23rd November 1942, 1,300 km in just 17 days. After fighting a major exhausting battle at El Alemein through half a million mines. This was an Incredible feat, unparalleled in WW2. With El Alamein costing just 13,500 casualties.
The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties, with the Lorraine campaign being a failure.
Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties. Hodges, head of the US First army, fled from Spa to near Liege on the 18th, despite the Germans never getting anywhere near to Spa. Hodges did not even wait for the Germans to approach Spa. He had already fled long before the Germans were stopped. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British, with Montgomery involved in planning, with also Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces.
The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
You need to give respect where it is due.
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The state of play on the 17th was that the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was clear. There was concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally. There were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen. Then a few scattered about along the road. There was no armour in Arnhem. That was it.
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 3 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured the bridge.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected.
XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up. The road was still clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump.
XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, at the planned expected time, making up the delay at Zon. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over.
If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
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@KMN-bg3yu
"Despite objections raised to Montgomery's plan of an assault on a 40 division front, it was more sensible than Eisenhower's insistence on the entire front being in motion at all times, for no better reason than he could not abide the thought that the two American army groups would not participate as entities in the anticipated victory.
Not only did Eisenhower fail to heed Montgomery's suggestions, but also he never seemed to understand the possible benefits. He was evidently unable to understand that to supply 40 divisions attacking on one front would have been an easier task than to supply first one army and then the other as each in turn went over to the offensive. It was this concentration of effort which Eisenhower failed to understand and to implement"
- Eisenhower at the Art of Warfare
by DJ Haycock, page 182.
Eisenhower on Montgomery:
‘General Montgomery is a very able, dynamic type of army commander’.
Another Eisenhower view of Montgomery (This time, specifically about D-Day and the battle of Normandy):
'He got us there and he kept us there'.
A view from another American about Montgomery:
'small,very alert, wonderfully conceited, and the best soldier--or so it seems--I have met in this war’.
- General George S Patton.
A German view of Montgomery:
‘Field Marshall Montgomery was the one general who never suffered a reverse’
- General der Infanterie Günther Blumentritt
Another German view of Montgomery (This time with regard to the Battle of the Bulge):
‘The operations of the American 1st Army had developed into a series of individual holding actions. Montgomery's contribution to restoring the situation was that he turned a series of isolated actions into a coherent battle fought according to a clear and definite plan. It was his refusal to engage in premature and piecemeal counter-attacks which enabled the Americans to gather their reserves and frustrate the German attempts to extend their breakthrough’.
- The commander of the 5th Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel.
“I find it difficult to refrain from expressing my indignation at Hodges and Ridgeway and my appreciation of Montgomery whenever I talk about St.Vith. It is my firm opinion that if it hadn't been for Montgomery, the First US Army, and especially the troops in the St. Vith salient, would have ended in a debacle that would have gone down in history.”
“I'm sure you remember how First Army HQ fled from Spa leaving food cooking on the stoves, officers' Xmas presents from home on their beds and, worst of all, top secret maps still on the walls... First Army HQ never contacted us with their new location and I had to send an officer to find them. He did and they knew nothing about us...[Montgomery] was at First Army HQ when my officer arrived. A liaison officer from Montgomery arrived at my HQ within 24 hrs. His report to Montgomery is what saved us...”
- Hasbrouck of 7th Armor - “Generals of the Bulge” by Jerry D. Morelock, page 298.
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@richarddumont5389
Many are so eager to assert that German technological advances were superior to the British, that they forget to read what the Germans actually made, and how useful it actually was.The first jet engine to fly in a plane was von Ohain's project at Heinkel. He had substantial funding from a major industrialist. Von Ohain himself admitted that he studied very closely Whittle's jet engine patents before starting work on his own jet engine.
Ohain's engine had a centrifugal compressor and turbine. It was not an axial-flow turbojet. It was unreliable, inefficient, low power and low life, despite having massive funding from Heinkel - a failure that was not continued. The German jet programme was dropped until they knew the British had prototype jet planes in the air, then it was revived.
Whittle concentrated his very limited funding on the centrifugal compressor because it was well-understood and less problematic than axial-flow designs. He was focused on making a war-usable, reliable and powerful engine - quickly - which would outperform the best piston engine planes of the day. All of these qualities the Jumo and BMW axial jet engines lacked.
With limited funding, Whittle developed a reliable engine which was combat-ready near the end of the war. Within months of the first operational flight, production engines were also more powerful than any of the poor engines turned out by the rushed German programs to the enormous detriment of actual combat - Gloster Meteor's top speed of 600 mph in late 1945, 650mph in mid 1946.
No one can claim that an engine is combat ready with a service life of 10-12 hours, which cannot be rapidly throttled up or down otherwise it stalls, is prone to flame-out and terrifies its pilots. They were underdeveloped and unproven axial-flow jet engines, being near garbage. The British installed axial-flow engines in a Meteor, however dropping them as they were too problematic at the time, requiring years to put right. A war was on, with years in development they could not afford.
The problems with German jet engines were not caused by the scarcity of metals in Germany during WW2, as they had access to enough rare metals. To produce a high performing jet engine high-strength alloys are required resisting high temperature. No iron-based alloy is suitable. Germany had no programme to develop such alloys. The British did, developing the nimonic series of alloys, making use of them in the WW2 jet engine programme. That is one, just one, of the reasons why the British jet program had combat potential, with the German program doomed to failure.
The Me262 airframe had many serious faults:
▪ high landing speed;
▪ difficult to maneuver;
▪ no air brakes;
▪ centre of gravity too far back;
▪ Poor downwards pilot visibility;
Those faults made attacking other aircraft far more difficult - at a time when they were desperately short of pilots, particularly pilots with sufficient skill and experience to fly what was a very difficult plane to fly and fight in.
The sweep-back of the wing of the Me262 was minimal, only in the leading edge, with a part of the trailing edge of the wing being straight. The swept wing was an insufficient correction for the plane's centre of gravity problem, not aerodynamics, that prompted the slight wing sweep. It was not until years later that properly designed swept-back wings were introduced in combat planes.
By contrast the Gloster Meteor was:
▪ handleable;
▪ maneuverable;
▪ a balanced combat plane.
The Meteor was deliberately designed to an airframe of known traditional qualities, as it had a new type of engine. If there was problems in handling they knew it would be the engine, not the airframe. Having an advanced airframe and new type of engine may give confusion and delays in R&D, delaying the final plane. While the Meteor was being developed, the British were also working on the supersonic Miles 52 plane - the project was dropped with the plans given over to the USA, which resulted in Bell X-1.
No one copied the Me262 in the post war rush to get fast jet planes into service. The British also produced new planes - the world's most advanced, in engine and airframe.
After WW2 the leading German plane designer Kurt Tank, and 62 other German engineers, went to Argentina to design and build the FMA IAe 33 Pulqui II jet plane. They used a RR Nene engine. The plane was a flop.
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@mikend02
Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust over other fronts and even seizing Antwerp and clearing the Schedlt. Clearing the Scheldt would take time as the German 15th SS army, highly experienced from the Russian front, had set up shop in the Scheldt and not retreated back into Germany, under Hitler's orders. All available supplies would be directed to this northern thrust.
"Since Eisenhower — the Supreme Commander and Ground Force Commander — approved the Arnhem operation rather than a push to clear the Scheldt, then surely he was right, as well as noble, to accept the responsibility and any resulting blame? The choice in early September was the Rhine or Antwerp: to continue the pursuit or secure the necessary facilities to solve the logistical problem? The decision was made to go for the Rhine, and that decision was Eisenhower’s."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"On 4 Sept, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr"
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen to British troops when he issued the northern thrust directive. Montgomery wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive, devising Operation Comet, multiple crossings of the Rhine, to be launched on 2 Sept, being cancelled due to German resistance and poor weather. Operation Comet was not presented to Eisenhower for his approval. Montgomery asked Brereton, an American, of the First Allied Airborne Army, to drop into the Scheldt in early September - he refused.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 Sept had divisions of the US 1st Army and Montgomery's view of taking multiple bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. The British 2nd Army needed some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow). Hodges' would protect the right flank. the Canadians would protect the left flank from the German 15th army.
"the narrow thrust was reduced to the Second Army and two US corps, the XIX and VII of Hodges’ First Army, a total of around eighteen Allied divisions"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
The northern thrust was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944."
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower’s reply of 5 September to Montgomery deserves analysis, not least the part that concerns logistics. The interesting point is that Eisenhower apparently believes that it is possible to cross the Rhine and take both the Ruhr and the Saar — and open the Scheldt — using the existing logistical resources."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp. In thinking this Ike was wrong."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Post-Normandy Bradley seemed unable to control Patton, who persistently flouted Eisenhower’s directives and went his own way, aided and abetted by Bradley. This part of their relationship quickly revealed itself in matters of supply, where Hodges, the commander of the US First Army, was continually starved of fuel and ammunition in order to keep Patton’s divisions rolling, even when Eisenhower’s strategy required First Army to play the major role in 12th Army Group’s activities."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again, and being bogged down - again. The resources starved First Army could not be a part of northern thrust as Bradley and Patton, against Eisenhower's orders, were syphoning off supplies destined for the First army. This northern thrust over the Rhine, as Eisenhower envisaged, obviously would not work as he thought. A lesser operation was devised by Montgomery, Market Garden, eliminating the divisions of US First Army, with only ONE crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London wanted eliminating ASAP, giving a 60 mile long salient buffer between German forces and the important port of Antwerp. This would only have one corps above Eindhoven, a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time. Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance. Eisenhower should have fired Bradley and Patton for sabotaging the Northern Thrust operation.
Montgomery did not plan or was in involved in Market Garden's execution. Montgomery, after fixing the operations objectives with Eisenhower to the measly forces available, gave Market Garden planning to others, mainly USAAF generals, Brereton and Williams. General Brereton, who liked the plan, agreed to it with even direct input. Brereton ordered the drops will take place during the day with Brereton also overseeing the troop carrier and supply drops schedules. Williams forbid fighter-bombers to be used. A refusal by Brereton and the operation would never have gone ahead; he earlier rejected Montgomery's initial plan of a drop into the Scheldt at Walcheren Island.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time the Canadians had cleared, or were investing, many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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.
The US Official History makes the point that even
after the Nijmegen bridge had finally been taken:
"The Guards Armoured’s Coldstream Guards Group still was needed as a reserve for the Airborne division. This left but two armoured groups to go across the Waal. Even those did not make it until next day, D plus 4, 21 September, primarily because of diehard German defenders who had to be ferreted out from the superstructure and bridge underpinnings. Once on the north bank, much of the British armour and infantry had to be used to help hold and improve the bridgehead that the two battalions of the 504th Parachute Infantry had forged. By the time the Nijmegen bridge fell on D plus 3, it was early evening and it would be dark before an armoured column could be assembled to march on Arnhem. North of Nijmegen the enemy had tanks and guns and infantry of two SS Panzer divisions, in unknown but growing strength, established in country ideal for defence."
- US Official History
The following account by Neillands quoting
the US Official history, adds that:
At the village of Ressen, less than three miles north of Nijmegen, the Germans had erected an effective screen composed of an SS battalion reinforced by eleven tanks, another infantry battalion, two batteries of 88mm guns, 20 20mm anti-aircraft guns and survivors of earlier fighting in Nijmegen.
American readers should note that the above comments come from the US Official History, where the notion that Lord Carrington and his five tanks could have penetrated this screen and got up to Arnhem on the night of D plus 3 — even supposing such a move was ever suggested — is revealed as a delusion.
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Analysis from Major-General John Frost, commander
of the 2nd Parachute Battalion at the Arnhem bridge:
The worst mistake of the Arnhem plan was the failure to give priority to capturing the Nijmegen bridge. The capture would have been a walkover on D-Day.
- John Frost
"These numerous attempts to divert attention from this failure, and pass the blame to a captain in the Guards Armoured Division, have been shameful... and highly successful. The myths surrounding the Nijmegen bridge have persisted and been engraved on the public mind by the media and the cinema. Given the US commanders’ chronic tendency to pass the buck and blame their British allies at every opportunity, it certainly might have been better if some effort had been made to get elements of the Guards Division on the move to Arnhem that night."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
That, however, is the romantic view, bolstered by hindsight. In practical terms it takes time to assemble an entire armoured division from a battlefield in the dark streets of a town, issue fresh orders and prepare it for another advance.
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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The fact is the Americans were a very mediocre army, with not one general that stood out. In Normandy Monty who was in Monty never suffered a reverse moving 1,000 miles through nine countries from Egypt to Denmark taking all in his path. He was a general over generals. Montgomery was by far most successful western allied commander of WW2. Monty fought more battles, took more ground and engaged more elite German divisions than any other general. Monty commanded all the Normandy ground forces, being the man the Americans ran to in the Ardennes offensive. No other general in the western allied armies possessed his experience in dealing with the Germans or his expertise.
Monty stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him.
* August 1942 - Alem el Halfa
* October 1942 - El Alamein March
* 1943 - Medenine
* June 1944 - Normandy
* Sept/Oct 1944 - Holland
* December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge
Not on one occasion were Monty's ground armies, including US armies under his control, pushed back into a retreat by the Germans.
Eisenhower:
‘General Montgomery is a very able, dynamic type of army commander’.
Eisenhower on D-Day and Normandy:
'He got us there and he kept us there'.
General Günther Blumentritt:
‘Field Marshall Montgomery was the one general who never suffered a reverse’
Genral Hasso von Manteuffel on the Bulge:
‘The operations of the American 1st Army had developed into a series of individual holding actions. Montgomery's contribution to restoring the situation was that he turned a series of isolated actions into a coherent battle fought according to a clear and definite plan. It was his refusal to engage in premature and piecemeal counter-attacks which enabled the Americans to gather their reserves and frustrate the German attempts to extend their breakthrough’.
Patton on Monty:
'small,very alert, wonderfully conceited, and the best soldier - or so it seems - I have met in this war’.
American Major General Matt Ridgway commander of the US XVIII Airborne Corps, 17 Jan 1945
"It has been an honored privilege and a very great personal pleasure to have served, even so briefly, under your distinguished leadership [Montgomery]. To the gifted professional guidance you at once gave me, was added to your own consummate courtesy and consideration. I am deeply grateful for both. My warm and sincere good wishes will follow you and with them the hope of again serving with you in pursuit of a common goal".
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Patton was an average US general, like Simpson, Patch, Hodges, etc. No more.
"The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian First Army HQ for the same purpose.
Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation.
"This advance duly began at 0630hrs on August 18 which, as the Canadian Official History remarks,16 ‘was a day and a half after Montgomery had issued the order for the Canadians to close the gap at Trun, and four and a half days after Patton had been stopped at the Third Army boundary’. During that time, says the Canadian History, the Canadians had been ‘fighting down from the north with painful slowness’ and the Germans had been making their way east through the Falaise gap. They were not, however, unimpeded; the tactical air forces and Allied artillery were already taking a fearful toll of the German columns on the roads heading east past Falaise.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise – Operation Tractable – which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed there with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were re-fitting and rebuilt after the summer 1944 battles.
The Panzer Brigades had green crews with little time to train, did not know their tanks properly, had no recon elements and didn't even meet their unit commander until his arrival at the front. These were not elite forces.
17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, equipped only with assault guns not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy and not up to strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the best German divisions in the west were NOT.
♦ Who did the 3rd Army engage?
♦ Who did the 3rd Army defeat?
♦ Patton never once faced a full strength
Waffen SS panzer division nor a
Tiger battalion.
In The Lorraine, the 3rd Army faced a rabble. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said:
"I have never been in command of such irregularly
assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that
we have been able to straighten out the situation
again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating
command of the Americans."
Patton was mostly facing a second rate rabble in The Lorraine.
Patton was neither on the advance nor being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. The road from Luxembourg to Bastogne saw few German forces, with Bastogne being on the very southern German flank, their focus was west. Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was not one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, while 26th Volks-Grenadier only had about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind only had a small number of tanks operational. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1.
Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Leading elements were engaging the Americans and British under Montgomery's command near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance and pushed them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons opened up with the American attack stopping and pulling back. The next day fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B retreating once again. It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. Patton's forces arrived at Chaumont late on the 22nd December. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day, the 25th! Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, just 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne.
In Normandy in 1944, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact. This eastern dash devoid of German forces was the ride the US media claimed Patton was some sort master of fast moving armour.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates.
♦ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics
Bradley's II Corps were employing
♦ He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division,
Truscott of being "afraid to fight".
♦ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the
US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps.
♦ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize
stalled he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being
"very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect".
♦ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in
reporting their losses.
After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF. Coningham, gave Patton massive ground attack plane support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall. Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault, including his subordinates. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated. Oh, and wore cowboy guns.
Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his orders, and Eisenhowers orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read: Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds and
Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies by Harry Yeide
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Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust over other fronts and even seizing Antwerp and clearing the Schedlt. Clearing the Scheldt would take time as the German 15th SS army, highly experienced from the Russian front, had set up shop in the Scheldt and not retreated back into Germany, under Hitler's orders. All available supplies would be directed to this northern thrust.
"Since Eisenhower — the Supreme Commander and Ground Force Commander — approved the Arnhem operation rather than a push to clear the Scheldt, then surely he was right, as well as noble, to accept the responsibility and any resulting blame? The choice in early September was the Rhine or Antwerp: to continue the pursuit or secure the necessary facilities to solve the logistical problem? The decision was made to go for the Rhine, and that decision was Eisenhower’s."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"On 4 Sept, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr"
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen to British troops when he issued the northern thrust directive. Montgomery wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive, devising Operation Comet, multiple crossings of the Rhine, to be launched on 2 Sept, being cancelled due to German resistance and poor weather. Operation Comet was not presented to Eisenhower for his approval. Montgomery asked Brereton, an American, of the First Allied Airborne Army, to drop into the Scheldt in early September - he refused.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 Sept had divisions of the US 1st Army and Montgomery's view of taking multiple bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. The British 2nd Army needed some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow). Hodges' would protect the right flank. the Canadians would protect the left flank from the German 15th army.
"the narrow thrust was reduced to the Second Army and two US corps, the XIX and VII of Hodges’ First Army, a total of around eighteen Allied divisions"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
The northern thrust was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944."
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower’s reply of 5 September to Montgomery deserves analysis, not least the part that concerns logistics. The interesting point is that Eisenhower apparently believes that it is possible to cross the Rhine and take both the Ruhr and the Saar — and open the Scheldt — using the existing logistical resources."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp. In thinking this Ike was wrong."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Post-Normandy Bradley seemed unable to control Patton, who persistently flouted Eisenhower’s directives and went his own way, aided and abetted by Bradley. This part of their relationship quickly revealed itself in matters of supply, where Hodges, the commander of the US First Army, was continually starved of fuel and ammunition in order to keep Patton’s divisions rolling, even when Eisenhower’s strategy required First Army to play the major role in 12th Army Group’s activities."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again, and being bogged down - again. The resources starved First Army could not be a part of northern thrust as Bradley and Patton, against Eisenhower's orders, were syphoning off supplies destined for the First army. This northern thrust over the Rhine, as Eisenhower envisaged, obviously would not work as he thought. A lesser operation was devised by Montgomery, Market Garden, eliminating the divisions of US First Army, with only ONE crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London wanted eliminating ASAP, giving a 60 mile long salient buffer between German forces and the important port of Antwerp. This would only have one corps above Eindhoven, a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time. Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance. Eisenhower should have fired Bradley and Patton for sabotaging the Northern Thrust operation.
Montgomery did not plan or was in involved in Market Garden's execution. Montgomery, after fixing the operations objectives with Eisenhower to the measly forces available, gave Market Garden planning to others, mainly USAAF generals, Brereton and Williams. General Brereton, who liked the plan, agreed to it with even direct input. Brereton ordered the drops will take place during the day with Brereton also overseeing the troop carrier and supply drops schedules. Williams forbid fighter-bombers to be used. A refusal by Brereton and the operation would never have gone ahead; he earlier rejected Montgomery's initial plan of a drop into the Scheldt at Walcheren Island.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time the Canadians had cleared, or were investing, many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@rexfrommn3316
I doubt you read this properly, or at all. I will post it again for you..
Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust over other fronts and even seizing Antwerp and clearing the Schedlt. Clearing the Scheldt would take time as the German 15th SS army, highly experienced from the Russian front, had set up shop in the Scheldt and not retreated back into Germany, under Hitler's orders. All available supplies would be directed to this northern thrust.
"Since Eisenhower — the Supreme Commander and Ground Force Commander — approved the Arnhem operation rather than a push to clear the Scheldt, then surely he was right, as well as noble, to accept the responsibility and any resulting blame? The choice in early September was the Rhine or Antwerp: to continue the pursuit or secure the necessary facilities to solve the logistical problem? The decision was made to go for the Rhine, and that decision was Eisenhower’s."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"On 4 Sept, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr"
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen to British troops when he issued the northern thrust directive. Montgomery wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive, devising Operation Comet, multiple crossings of the Rhine, to be launched on 2 Sept, being cancelled due to German resistance and poor weather. Operation Comet was not presented to Eisenhower for his approval. Montgomery asked Brereton, an American, of the First Allied Airborne Army, to drop into the Scheldt in early September - he refused.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 Sept had divisions of the US 1st Army and Montgomery's view of taking multiple bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. The British 2nd Army needed some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow). Hodges' would protect the right flank. the Canadians would protect the left flank from the German 15th army.
"the narrow thrust was reduced to the Second Army and two US corps, the XIX and VII of Hodges’ First Army, a total of around eighteen Allied divisions"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
The northern thrust was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944."
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower’s reply of 5 September to Montgomery deserves analysis, not least the part that concerns logistics. The interesting point is that Eisenhower apparently believes that it is possible to cross the Rhine and take both the Ruhr and the Saar — and open the Scheldt — using the existing logistical resources."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp. In thinking this Ike was wrong."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Post-Normandy Bradley seemed unable to control Patton, who persistently flouted Eisenhower’s directives and went his own way, aided and abetted by Bradley. This part of their relationship quickly revealed itself in matters of supply, where Hodges, the commander of the US First Army, was continually starved of fuel and ammunition in order to keep Patton’s divisions rolling, even when Eisenhower’s strategy required First Army to play the major role in 12th Army Group’s activities."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again, and being bogged down - again. The resources starved First Army could not be a part of northern thrust as Bradley and Patton, against Eisenhower's orders, were syphoning off supplies destined for the First army. This northern thrust over the Rhine, as Eisenhower envisaged, obviously would not work as he thought. A lesser operation was devised by Montgomery, Market Garden, eliminating the divisions of US First Army, with only ONE crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London wanted eliminating ASAP, giving a 60 mile long salient buffer between German forces and the important port of Antwerp. This would only have one corps above Eindhoven, a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time. Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance. Eisenhower should have fired Bradley and Patton for sabotaging the Northern Thrust operation.
Montgomery did not plan or was in involved in Market Garden's execution. Montgomery, after fixing the operations objectives with Eisenhower to the measly forces available, gave Market Garden planning to others, mainly USAAF generals, Brereton and Williams. General Brereton, who liked the plan, agreed to it with even direct input. Brereton ordered the drops will take place during the day with Brereton also overseeing the troop carrier and supply drops schedules. Williams forbid fighter-bombers to be used. A refusal by Brereton and the operation would never have gone ahead; he earlier rejected Montgomery's initial plan of a drop into the Scheldt at Walcheren Island.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time the Canadians had cleared, or were investing, many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@rexfrommn3316
Patton was an average US general, like Simpson, Patch, Hodges, etc. No more.
"The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian First Army HQ for the same purpose.
Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation.
"This advance duly began at 0630hrs on August 18 which, as the Canadian Official History remarks,16 ‘was a day and a half after Montgomery had issued the order for the Canadians to close the gap at Trun, and four and a half days after Patton had been stopped at the Third Army boundary’. During that time, says the Canadian History, the Canadians had been ‘fighting down from the north with painful slowness’ and the Germans had been making their way east through the Falaise gap. They were not, however, unimpeded; the tactical air forces and Allied artillery were already taking a fearful toll of the German columns on the roads heading east past Falaise.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise – Operation Tractable – which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed there with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were re-fitting and rebuilt after the summer 1944 battles.
The Panzer Brigades had green crews with little time to train, did not know their tanks properly, had no recon elements and didn't even meet their unit commander until his arrival at the front. These were not elite forces.
17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, equipped only with assault guns not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy and not up to strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the best German divisions in the west were NOT.
♦ Who did the 3rd Army engage?
♦ Who did the 3rd Army defeat?
♦ Patton never once faced a full strength
Waffen SS panzer division nor a
Tiger battalion.
In The Lorraine, the 3rd Army faced a rabble. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said:
"I have never been in command of such irregularly
assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that
we have been able to straighten out the situation
again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating
command of the Americans."
Patton was mostly facing a second rate rabble in The Lorraine.
Patton was neither on the advance nor being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. The road from Luxembourg to Bastogne saw few German forces, with Bastogne being on the very southern German flank, their focus was west. Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was not one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, while 26th Volks-Grenadier only had about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind only had a small number of tanks operational. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1.
Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Leading elements were engaging the Americans and British under Montgomery's command near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance and pushed them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons opened up with the American attack stopping and pulling back. The next day fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B retreating once again. It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. Patton's forces arrived at Chaumont late on the 22nd December. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day, the 25th! Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, just 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne.
In Normandy in 1944, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact. This eastern dash devoid of German forces was the ride the US media claimed Patton was some sort master of fast moving armour.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates.
♦ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics
Bradley's II Corps were employing
♦ He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division,
Truscott of being "afraid to fight".
♦ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the
US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps.
♦ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize
stalled he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being
"very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect".
♦ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in
reporting their losses.
After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF. Coningham, gave Patton massive ground attack plane support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall. Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault, including his subordinates. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated. Oh, and wore cowboy guns.
Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his orders, and Eisenhowers orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read: Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds and
Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies by Harry Yeide
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@rexfrommn3316
One problem that has bedevilled any objective study of Anglo-US military history in the post-war decades is the tendency of some US commanders and many US historians to play the ‘British’ or ‘Montgomery’ card in order to conceal some glaring American blunder. Omar Bradley’s disastrous failure to provide adequate armoured support for the US divisions landing on Omaha on D-Day, with the terrible losses thus caused to the infantry companies of the 1st and 29th Divisions, have been largely expunged from the public mind — at least in the United States — by constant harping about the British or ‘Montgomery’s failure to take Caen on D-Day — a failure that turned out to have no strategic significance whatsoever.
Nor is Omaha the only example. As we have seen in earlier chapters, harping on about the ‘slowness’ of XXX Corps or the ‘flawed’ plan of General Urquhart at Arnhem, has successfully diverted critical minds from the cock-up in command that prevented the 82nd Division from either taking the Nijmegen bridge on the first day of the attack or avoiding a frontal attack across the Waal in borrowed boats three days later.
It appears that all that was necessary to avoid critical press comment in the USA and any unwelcome Congressional interest in the competence of any American commander, was to murmur ‘the British’ or — better still — ‘Montgomery’, and critical comment in the USA either subsided or went unvoiced.
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
The fact is, that XXX Corps were not slow, reaching Nijmegen ahead of schedule. Urquart's paras took one end of the Arnhem bridge preventing its use by the Germans. If the US 82nd had taken the Nijmegen bridge immediately XXX Corps would have been in Arnhem on time relieving the paras and fully securing the bridge. The 82nd never, with XXX Corps having to take he bridge themselves.
Caen was a nice to have objective, but Monty saw no need to tie up vital resources on a strategically unimportant target. As Neillands stated it was of "no strategic significance whatsoever."
Neillands highlights the glaring untruths of the US press and historians.
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@rexfrommn3316
The British drew in German armour at Caen to grind it up, to allow the Americans to break out - Operation Cobra. That was Monty's plan and it worked. General Omar Bradley...
While Collins was hoisting his VII Corps flag over Cherbourg, Montgomery was spending his reputation in a bitter siege against the old university city of Caen. For three weeks he had rammed his troops against those panzer divisions he had deliberately drawn towards that city as part of our Allied strategy of diversion in the Normandy Campaign. Although Caen contained an important road junction that Montgomery would eventually need, for the moment the capture of that city was only incidental to his mission. For Monty’s primary task was to attract German troops to the British front that we might more easily secure Cherbourg and get into position for the breakout.
In this diversionary mission Monty was more than successful, for the harder he hammered towards Caen, the more German troops he drew into that sector. Too many correspondents, however, had overrated the importance of Caen itself, and when Monty failed to take it, they blamed him for the delay. But had we attempted to exonerate Montgomery by explaining how successfully he had hoodwinked the German by diverting him toward Caen from the Cotentin, we would have also given our strategy away. We desperately wanted the German to believe this attack on Caen was the main Allied effort.
But while this diversion of Monty’s was brilliantly achieved, he never the less left himself open to criticism by overemphasizing the importance of his thrust toward Caen. Had he limited himself simply to the containment without making Caen a symbol of it, he would have been credited with success instead of being charged, as he was, with failure at Caen. For Monty’s success should have been measured in the panzer divisions the enemy rushed against him whilst Collins sped on toward Cherbourg. Instead, the Allied newspaper readers clammered for a place name called Caen which Monty had once promised but failed to win for them.
The containment mission that had been assigned Monty in the Overlord plan was not calculated to burnish British pride in the accomplishments of their troops. For in the minds of most people, success in battle is measured in the rate and length of advance. They found it difficult to realise that the more successful Monty was in stirring up German resistance, the less likely he was to advance. For another four weeks it fell to the British to pin down superior enemy forces in that sector while we maneuvered into position for the US breakout. With the Allied world crying for blitzkrieg the first week after we landed, the British endured their passive role with patience and forbearing.
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@rexfrommn3316
Caen was strategically unimportant, initially not worth expending valuable resources on. The Caen sector had more German tanks per mile than Kursk. In just a dozen miles or so right Panzer divisions in a very small area of front. Caen had the highest concentration density of German tanks ever seen in WW2, pitted against British armour. At Kursk the panzer divisions were spread out over a much wider area and were not concentrated as densely as around Caen. Caen saw the densest concentration of German armour ever seen in WW2. At Kursk the Germans were attacking over a near 50 mile front. There were certainly not right panzer divisions within 12 miles.
There were EIGHT Panzer Divisions in the Caen area by end of June 1944 and FIVE lines of anti-tank guns. The Germans kept sending more and more panzer divisions around the Caen area as June went on and into July. These were the panzer divisions deployed to the Caen area.
♦ 21st Panzer Division (117 Panzer IVs).
♦ Panzer Lehr Division ( 101 Panzer IVs, 89 Panthers).
♦ 2nd Panzer Division (89 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers).
♦ 116th Panzer Division (73 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers). In reserve just behind the front.
♦ 1st SS Panzer Division (98 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers).
♦ 9th SS Panzer Division (40 Stugs, 46 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers).
♦ 10th SS Panzer Division (38 Stugs, 39 Panzer IVs)
♦ 12th SS Panzer Division (98 Panzer IVs, 79 Panthers).
♦ Tiger Battalion SS101 (45 Tigers).
♦ Tiger Battalion SS102 (45 Tigers).
♦ Tiger Battalion 503 (45 Tigers)
Sources.
Bernages Panzers and the Battle For Normandy
Zetterling's Normandy 1944: German Military Organization, Combat Power and Organizational Effectiveness.
On 12th June 1944 the British had no room to sidestep any German divisions before Caen because the Germans totally blocked them. This is why a wide right hook on Caen was attempted. To the south of Panzer Lehr's sector in the vicinity of Villers Bocage there was thought to be an area devoid of German forces, and so this wide right hook was attempted on the morning of 13th June - any wider and it would have overrun into the American lines. Unfortunately, unknown to the British, Schwere SS Panzer Abteilung 101 turned up into this area on the night of the 12/13th June and blocked this right hook with their Tigers and closed the door on Caen.
There was no other room to manoeuvre onto Caen. All attempts had to go right through the German panzer divisions through the rest of June and early July, with the Germans having excellent defensive country (fields broken up by hedgerows everywhere) with which to utilise to their advantage.
The Germans had over 1,500 tanks and assault guns in the British/Canadian sector, including Tiger and Panthers. Even the King Tiger and Jagdpanther made their WW2 combat débuts around Caen in July.
The Americans who were not equipped, or experienced, to face massed German armour, were given primarily an infantry role by Montgomery - the Americans met very little armour in WW2. The US forces didn't face any German armour until June 13th, and that was only a mere battalion of assault guns. The British destroyed about 90% of German armour in the west.
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@rexfrommn3316
1985 US report on the Lorraine Campaign.
Patton does not come out well.
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a211668.pdf
Combat Studies Institute. The Lorraine Campaign: An Overview, September-December 1944. by Dr. Christopher R. Gabel February, 1985
From the document is in italics:
"Soldiers and generals alike assumed that Lorraine would fall quickly, and unless the war ended first, Patton's tanks would take the war into Germany by summer's end. But Lorraine was not to be overrun in a lightning campaign. Instead, the battle for Lorraine would drag on for more than 3 months."
"Despite its proximity to Germany, Lorraine was not the Allies' preferred invasion route in 1944. Except for its two principal cities, Metz and Nancy, the province contained few significant military objectives." "Moreover, once Third Army penetrated the province and entered Germany, there would still be no first-rate military objectives within its grasp. The Saar industrial region, while significant, was of secondary importance when compared to the great Ruhr industrial complex farther north."
Another Patton chase into un-needed territory, full of vineyards like he did when running his troops into Brittany.
"With so little going for it, why did Patton bother with Lorraine at all? The reason was that Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, made up his mind to destroy as many German forces as possible west of the Rhine."
In other words a waste of time.
"Communications Zone organized the famous Red Ball Express, a non-stop conveyor belt of trucks connecting the Normandy depots with the field armies."
They were getting fuel via 6,000 trucks.
"The simple truth was that although fuel was plentiful in Normandy, there was no way to transport it in sufficient quantities to the leading elements. On 31 August , Third Army received no fuel at all."
In short, Patton overran his supply lines. What was important was to secure the Port of Antwerp's approaches. Montgomery approached the US leaders of the First Airborne Army who would not drop into the Scheldt.
"Few of the Germans defending Lorraine could be considered First-rate troops. Third Army encountered whole battalions made up of deaf men, others of cooks, and others consisting entirety of soldiers with stomach ulcers."
Some army the Americans were going to fight
"Was the Lorraine campaign an American victory? From September through November, Third Army claimed to have inflicted over 180,000 casualties on the enemy. But to capture the province of Lorraine, a problem which involved an advance of only 40 to 60 air miles, Third Army required over 3 months and suffered 50,000 casualties, approximately one-third of the total number of casualties it sustained in the entire European war."
The US Army does not think it was a victory. Huge losses for taking unimportant territory, against a poor German army.
"Ironically, Third Army never used Lorraine as a springboard for an advance into Germany after all. Patton turned most of the sector over to Seventh Army during the Ardennes crisis, and when the eastward advance resumed after the Battle of the Bulge, Third Army based its operations on Luxembourg, not Lorraine. The Lorraine campaign will always remain a controversial episode in American military history."
It's getting worse. One third of all European casualties in Lorraine and never used the territory to move into Germany.
"Finally the Lorraine Campaign demonstrated that Logistics often drive operations, no matter how forceful and aggressive the commanding general may be." "Patton violated tactical principles" "His discovered that violating logistical principles is an unforgiving and cumulative matter."
Not flattering at all. And Americans state Patton was the best general they had.
Bradley stated later:
“Patton was developing as an unpopular guy. He steamed about with great convoys of cars and great squads of cameramen … To George, tactics was simply a process of bulling ahead. Never seemed to think out a campaign. Seldom made a careful estimate of the situation. I thought him a shallow commander … I disliked the way he worked, upset tactical plans, interfered in my orders. His stubbornness on amphibious operations, parade plans into Messina sickened me and soured me on Patton. We learned how not to behave from Patton’s Seventh Army.”
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Market Garden failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. The failure point was not seizing the Nijmegen bridge immediately. At the end of D-Day all crossings were denied to the Germans, except one - the Nijmegen bridge. General Gavin of the US 82nd was supposed to get to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as landing. Gavin never, he failed with only a few German guards on the bridge. He failed because his 82nd did not seize the Nijmegen bridge immediately.
Gavin even de-prioritised the bridge the prime target and focus. The 82nd were ready at 2 pm on the jump day and never moved to the bridge. The gigantic bridge was guarded by only 19 guards. The Germans occupied the bridge at 1900 hrs. Six hours after the 82nd were ready to march.
Events on the 1st day:
♦ "At 1328, the 665 men of US 82nd 1st Battalion began to fall from the sky."
- Poulussen, R. Lost at Nijmegen.
♦ "Forty minutes after the drop, around 1410, the 1st Battalion marched off towards their objective, De Ploeg, three miles away."
-Poulussen,
♦ "The 82nd were digging in and performing reconnin the area looking for 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald
- Neillands, R. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
♦ The 82nd were dug in and preparing to defend their newly constructed regimental command post, which they established at 1825. Then Colonel Lindquist "was told by General Gavin, around 1900, to move into Nijmegen."
-Poulussen
Events on the evening of the 1st day:
♦ Having dug in at De Ploeg, Warren's battalion wasn't prepared to move towards Nijmegen at all.
- Poulussen,
♦ Once Lindquist told Lieutenant Colonel Warren that his Battalion was to move, Warren decided to visit the HQ of the Nijmegen Underground first - to see what info the underground had on the Germans at the Nijmegen bridge.
- Poulussen,
♦ It was not until 1830hrs that he [Warren] was able to send a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small, just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a radio — say forty men.
- Neillands. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
♦ This was not a direct route to the bridge from Warren's original position, and placed him in the middle of the town. It was also around 2100 when "A" Company left to attempt to capture the Nijmegen road bridge.
♦ "B" Company was not with them because they'd split up due to it being dark with "visibility was less than ten yards".
- Poulussen,
♦ The 82nd attacks were resisted by the Germans until the next day.
Events of the 2nd day:
♦ Gavin drove up in a jeep the next morning and was told by Warren that although they didn't have the bridge yet, another attack was about to go in.
♦ Gavin then told Warren to hold because the Germans were attacking in the southeast portion of the 82nd perimeter.
♦ At around 1100, Warren was ordered to withdraw from Nijmegen completely.
- Poulussen
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The British won the Battle of Dunkirk.
The British BEF was only 9% of the total allied forces in France and the Low Countries. The German advance was halted in France as the British with a vastly inferior force stopped them at Arras. Some German soldiers turned and ran. Directive 13, issued by German Supreme Headquarters on 24 May 1940 stated specifically for the annihilation of the French, English and Belgian forces in the Dunkirk pocket. The Luftwaffe was ordered to prevent the escape of the British forces across the English Channel.
The German southern advance was stopped at Arras by the British with a numerically inferior force. The Germans never moved much further after. The Germans could not have taken Dunkirk, they would have been badly beaten in and around the town. The Luftwaffe was defeated over Dunkirk by the RAF with the first showing of the Spitfire en-mass. More German than allied planes were destroyed in the Dunkirk pocket. The first defeat of the Nazis in WW2 was by the British in the air battle over Dunkirk. Only six small warships were sunk at Dunkirk by the Germans as the effectiveness of the Luftwaffe blunted.
The British were retreating after the French collapsed in front of them - a programme already in motion, a programme already in motion before the Germans showed up, as General Gort saw the disjointed performance of the French forces in front of him, and the exceptionally poor leadership. If the French collapsed the small BEF had no hope against the large German force heading west. The French were amongst the British when General Gort decided to take the men back to England, as he did not trust the French in a joint counter-attack. French General Wiegand held a meeting to arrange a counter-attack not inviting General Gort head of the BEF. Gort was under the command of Weigand. Gort heard of the meeting rushing to be there. He got there after the French and Belgians had left. He ordered the evacuation having no faith in the elderly French leaders.
All armies retreat and regroup when the need is there. There happened to be a body of water in the line of the retreat. Were the BEF to move down the English coast and enter France further west with more men from England? The Germans did not know what was to be the next British or allied move. The Germans could not have taken Dunkirk trying for nearly a week failing in the process. The British retreat operation was carried out as planned and in orderly fashion. All bridges to Dunkirk were destroyed by the allies.
The British counter-attack at Arras was with outdated Matilda 1 tanks, which only had machine guns, and a few of the brand new Matilda 2 tanks. The Germans fled in droves. In desperation the Germans turned a 88mm AA gun horizontal successfully against the Matilda 2 - their conventional anti-tank weapons and tanks could not penetrate the tank. The Matilda 2
would roll over German gun emplacements killing the gunners. Rommel thought he had been hit by a force three times the size, which made them stop and rethink. The Germans countered with their superior numbers pushing back the British who fell back consolidating towards Dunkirk.
The British resolve and the new Matilda 2 made the Germans sit up and think about a street fight in Dunkirk against a consolidated force still with its weapons and the new Matilda 2 - the large 88mm would be useless in Dunkirk streets while the Matilda 2 would be in its element, with the Matlida 2 easily destroying the Panzer MkIII & MkIVs. The Matilda 2 could knock out any German tank at the time, while no German tank could knock it out. The Germans were expecting the Matilda 2 to be shipped over in numbers and for all they knew many were in Dunkirk. The
Germans could not stop the tanks coming as the RAF controlled the skies with a CAP and the RN the waters of the Channel. Not a good prospect for the Germans. A Dunkirk street fight was a fight the German troops were untrained and unequipped for and unwise to get involved in.
Von Rundstedt and von Kluge suggested to Hitler that German forces around the Dunkirk pocket cease their advance, consolidating preventing an Allied break out from Dunkirk. Hitler agreed with the support of the Wehrmacht. German preoccupation rightly was with an expected attack from the fluid south of the German lines, by mainly French and some British forces, not from dug-in Dunkirk which was too much of a formidable consolidated opponent, taking substantial resources to seize. The German column had Allied troops to each side with soft marshland to the south west of Dunkirk unsuitable for tanks. If German forces had engaged in a street battle for Dunkirk, they would be vulnerable on their weak flank from the south. In short the fast moving panzers were now static; German forces attacking Dunkirk in a battle of attrition would have been largely wiped out.
The German columns were consolidating their remaining armour for an expected attack by the British and French from the south, and the important resupply from Germany, which was slow as it was via horses - or maybe a combined attack from the south and the Dunkirk pocket. The Germans attacked on a remarkably narrow front. They had over-stretched their supply lines. The Germans had no option but to stop, being more concerned at defending from the mainly French forces in the south which were viewed as a greater threat than Dunkirk. French general Weigand implemented his creation of hedgehogs to attack German lines from the sides, with success - hedgehogs were adopted post war by NATO being a part of the tactics until the 1970s.
What were the Germans thinking? Are the British retreating to England from Dunkirk to move down the English coast and re-enter France further south with fresh forces, including Canadians and the new Matilda 2 tanks, which they feared, and join up with the French forces there? Are they going to reinforce the Dunkirk pocket supplied by the Royal Navy with a 24/7 air CAP? The British could easily do any of these as they controlled the Channel. This would create one large difficult to combat force at Dunkirk. They also saw the resolve of outnumbered British
forces at Arras. German generals were trying to figure out what was happening. None thought that British troops would retreat to England and stay there. The British never did that sort of thing.
The Germans could divert most of their forces south and risk a Dunkirk breakout being attacked from their rear fighting on two fronts, or stay and consolidate, which they needed to do, awaiting a French/British attack from the south and use some forces and the Luftwaffe to attack Dunkirk, which they did. German forces resumed their attack on Dunkirk for over 6 days and failed to seize the port.
The plan to break out of the Dunkirk Pocket using British, Belgian and French forces was abandoned as Gort had no confidence in the French. All military school studies since, knowing what the German and allied positions and situations were in 1940, have shown it would have succeeded.
The Germans were defeated at the Battle of Dunkirk. They tried militarily to seize the port but failed. Only because the British did not trust the French and moved back to England did the Germans eventually occupy the town. The Germans did not let the British get away that is misguided myth, they tried for a week simply not able to seize Dunkirk.
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...Continued... Rolls Royce. Rolls engineers under Ron Harker went to North American to advise on how to install a Merlin engine in the Mustang. They also gave advice from their work with the RR Mustang X. Rolls-Royce made the first proposal to North American regarding a Merlin 45 engine Mustang in 1940, after Stanley Hooker improved the power by 30%. This was before the plane was operational an still in the R&D stage. The RR Merlin was superior to the Alison engine, also to what it was in February 1940 when North American were first approached by the Air Ministry. The later Merlin 61 had the two-stage auto controlled superchanging developed by again by Stanley Hooker. This gave an extra 70 mph and 15,000 feet of operation to the Merlin. A quantum leap. The pilot just went where he liked without degradation in performance.
RR sent three engineers led by James Ellor to supervise the adaption and manufacture of a Merlin 61, built under licence by Packard, the same type that was already being considered for the Rolls Royce Mustang X experimental series. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Mustang_Mk.X
On 9 June 1942, the first memos from W/C I.R. Campell-Orde of the RAF Air Fighting Development Unit at Duxford, revealed that an effort was being made to convince North American to adopt a Merlin-powered Mustang. Work in the US was setback due to an initial lack of interest and also to mechanical failures of the first Merlin engines built under licence by Packard. Both projects commenced at nearly the same time with the first Mustang X in the air about a month earlier than the North American XP-51B.
The RR Mustang-X programme was 5 or 6 airframes each with different experimentation. RR attempted to have North American accept British Merlin 61s (the two-stage superchargers) in American airframes, it is clear that the prime contractor (NAA) wanted to control the project as control was looking like it was to move over to the UK. NAA was essentially building production-standard aircraft rather than the experimental series that saw each of the RR Mustang Xs trying out new variations of design. An offshoot was the mid-engine RR Griffon engined Mustang that actually made it to the mock-up stage, albeit with a Merlin installed amidships. On the success of the RR Mustang-X built in Nottingham, the Air Ministry ordered hundreds from RR, who declined wanting to remain specialising in engines. NAA remained the prime contractor.
Rolls Royce mass produced Merlins in Crewe, Manchester and Glasgow, also licensing Packard in the USA, using idle US industry. The US made Merlins were to supply the Canadian aircraft factories - to avoid a two-way trans-Atlantic trip and give extra manufacturing when the engine proved very popular with many airframe makers. An agreement was reached in September 1940, with the first Packard built Merlin engine running in August 1941.
Early in 1944 the P-38, P-51B Mustang and P-47C, were dived by the British for compressibility testing at the RAE Farnborough, England at the request of the USAAF. They had trouble when these planes dived onto attacking German fighters when providing top cover for the bombers. The results were that the Mach numbers, the manoeuvring limits, were Mach 0.68 for the P-38, Mach 0.71 for the P-47, and Mach 0.78 for the Mustang. The corresponding figures for the FW-190 and Me109 was Mach 0.75. The tests resulted in the Mustang being chosen for all escort duties. - Page 70, Wings On My Sleeve by Eric Brown, who did the test.
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@CA-kn8pb
Britain was key in WW2. Britain fought on every front, being in the war on the first day up to the last - the only country at the surrender of Japan in September 1945 to do so - Britain’s war actually ended in 1946 staying on in Viet Nam using Japanese troops alongside British troops to defeat the Viet Minh, but that is another story. Britain was not attacked or attacked anyone, going into WW2 on principle.
The Turkish ambassador to the UK stated that the UK can raise 40 million troops from its empire so will win the war. This was noted by Franco who indirectly said to Hitler he would not win, fearing British occupation of Spanish islands and territory if Spain joined the war. Spain and Turkey stayed out of the war. The Turkish ambassador’s point was given credence when an army of 2.6 million was assembled in India that moved into Burma to wipe out the Japanese.
From day one the Royal Navy formed a ring around the Axis positioning ships from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Arctic off Norway, blockading the international trade of the Axis. This deprived the Axis of vital human and animal food, oil, rubber, metals, and other vital resources. By 1941 the successful Royal Navy blockade had confined the Italian navy to port due to lack of oil.
By the autumn of 1941 Germany's surface fleet was confined to harbour, by the British fleet and the chronic lack of fuel. A potential German invasion from the the USSR in the north into the oil rich Middle East entailed expanded British troop deployment to keep the Germans away from the oil fields, until they were defeated at Stalingrad.
Throughout 1942 British Commonwealth troops were fighting, or seriously expecting to be attacked, in:
♦ French North Africa;
♦ Libya;
♦ Egypt;
♦ Cyprus;
♦ Syria: where an airborne assault was expected, with preparations to reinforce Turkey if they were attacked;
♦ Madagascar: fighting the Vichy French to prevent them from inviting the Japanese in as they had done in Indochina;
♦ Iraq;
♦ Iran: the British & Soviets invaded Iran in August 1941.
Those spread-out covering troops were more in combined numbers than were facing Japan and Rommel in North Africa.
The British Commonwealth fielded over 100 divisions in 1942 alone, compared to the US total of 88 by the end of the war. The Americans and Soviets were Johnny-come-late in WW2, moreso the Americans.
Before the USSR entered the conflict the Royal Navy’s blockade had reduced the Italian and German surface navies to the occasional sorties because of a lack of oil, with the British attacking the Germans and Italians in North Africa, also securing Syria, Iraq, the Levant and ridding the Italians from East Africa.
The Germans were on the run by the time the USA had boots on the ground against the Axis.
The Germans had been stopped:
♦ in the west at the Battle of Britain in 1940;
♦ in the east at the Battle of Moscow in 1941. In which Britain provided 40% of the Soviet tanks.
The Germans were on the run after the simultaneous battles in late 1942 of:
♦ El Alemein;
♦ Stalingrad; The Battle of El Alemein culminated in a quarter of a million Axis prisoners taken in Tunisia - more than taken at Stalingrad.
Apart from the US Filipino forces that surrendered in early 1942, the US had a couple of divisions in Gaudalcanal after August 1942, and one in New Guinea by November 1942. In 1943 the US managed to get up to six divisions in the Pacific, but still not matching the British or British Indian armies respectively. Until late 1943 the Australian Army alone deployed more ground fighting troops against the Japanese than the USA.
The Americans never put more ground troops into combat against the Japanese at any point than just the British Indian Army alone, which was 2.6 million strong. The US had nowhere near 2.6 million men on the ground against the Japanese. The Soviets fielded about a million against the Japanese. Most Japanese troops were put out of action by the British and Soviets, not the USA.
At the battles of Khohima and Imphal the Japanese suffered their worst defeat in their history up to that point. Then the British set the Eastern and Pacific fleets against the Japanese, not far off in numbers to the US fleet.
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The reason for not achieving 100% success in the operation was completely down to the failure of the 82nd Airborne in not seizing the Nijmegen bridge on the first day they dropped into Nijmegen. The man responsible was General Gavin. The 101st Airborne failed to take the bridge at Son in the south of Holland with the Germans destroying the bridge. XXX Corps ran over a Bailey bridge which delayed the advance for 12 hours. XXX Corps made up the time reaching Nijmegen on schedule only being disappointed at seeing the bridge still in German hands and the 82nd still fighting in and around the town. The 82nd had made no real attempt to seize the bridge.
When ground forces ran into an airborne carpet, the command automatically reverted to Horrocks. In fact the 82nd had no part in the eventual seizure of the bridge at all, as it was taken in the dark by the British XXX Corps tanks and Irish Guards infantry. The Irish Guards cleared out 180 Germans from the bridge girders. Only 5 tanks crossed the bridge with two being knocked out and one got operational again by a lone sergeant who met up with the rest of the tanks in the village of Lent 1 km north of the bridge. So, only four operational tanks were available on the north side of the bridge. Strangely, Gavin's plan was to take one of Europe's largest road bridges only from one end, taking no boats with him.
The film A Bridge Too Far has Robert Redford (playing Capt Cook) as one of the 82nd men taking the vital road bridge after rowing the river in canvas boats. This never happened. Another part of the film has Redford (Cook) insisting to a British commander of the British XXX Corps tanks, after the tanks crossed the bridge, to run onto Arnhem and relieve the British paratroopers and the commander refusing, leaving his tanks idle. Moffat Burris of the 82nd, on film stated he ordered the tank captain to run his tanks to Arnhem, saying on film, "I just sacrificed half of my company capturing that bridge". The tank officer was Capt (Lord) Carington, who eventually became head of NATO. Moffatt Burris stated: “I cocked my tommy gun, pointed it at his head and said, ‘Get down that blankety-blank road before I blow your blankety-blank head off." Carrington explained politely that Captain Burriss surely didn’t expect him to obey orders of a foreign officer, but then, Burris says, Carington “ducked into his tank and locked the hatch” so, as Burris recalls, “I couldn’t get at him.” There is no record of this event occurring and there were many men around, implying Buffet is lying, maybe to save the face of the 82nd, as they played no part in seizing the bridge.
The tanks were to secure the north end of the bridge after seizing the bridge, not to run off to Arnhem in the dark leaving the bridge vulnerable. The Irish Guards after seizing the bridge and removing the 180 bodies from the girders with themselves used the 82nd men to form a defensive line around the bridge. The Irish Guards infantry advanced no further than the immediate vicinity of the bridge that night.
Sergeant Peter Robinson, of the of the Guards Armored Division who led the charge over the Nijmegen road bridge in his Firefly tank stated:
"The Nijmegen bridge wasn’t taken [by the 82nd] which was our objective. We reached the far end of the bridge and immediately there was a roadblock. So the troop sergeant covered me through and then I got to the other side and covered the rest of the troop through. We were still being engaged; there was a gun in front of the church three or four hundred yards in front of us. We knocked him out. We got down the road to the railway bridge; we cruised round there very steady. We were being engaged all the time. Just as I got round the corner and turned right I saw these helmets duck in a ditch and run, and gave them a burst of machine gun fire. I suddenly realised they were Americans. They had already thrown a gammon grenade at me so dust and dirt and smoke were flying everywhere. They jumped out of the ditch; they kissed the tank; they kissed the guns because they’d lost a lot of men. They had had a very bad crossing."
Sgt Robinson again....
"Well, my orders were to collect the American colonel who was in a house a little way back, and the first thing he said to me was "I have to surrender"
"Well I said, 'I'm sorry. My orders are to hold this bridge. I've only got two tanks available but if you'd like to give me ground support for a little while until we get some more orders then we can do it. He said he couldn’t do it, so I said that he had better come back to my wireless and talk to General Horrocks because before I started the job I had freedom of the air. Everybody was off the air except myself because they wanted a running commentary about what was going on - So he came over and had a pow-wow with Horrocks. The colonel said 'Oh very well’ and I told him where I wanted the men, but of course you can't consolidate a Yank and they hadn’t been there ten minutes before they were on their way again."
The 82nd men wanted to surrender! And never gave support which was what they were there to do.
Captain Lord Carrington's own autobiography entitled 'Reflect on Things Past':
"My recollection of this meeting is different. Certainly I met an American officer but he was perfectly affable and agreeable. As I said the Airborne were all very glad to see us and get some support, no one suggested we press on to Arnhem. This whole allegation is bizarre, just to begin with I was a captain and second-in-command of my squadron so I was in no position either to take orders from another captain or depart from my own orders which were to take my tanks across the bridge, join up with the US Airborne and form a bridgehead. This story is simple lunacy and this exchange did not take place."
continued.......
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....contuniued.....
Lord Carrington again...
"At that stage my job - I was second-in-command of a squadron - was to take a half-squadron of tanks across the bridge. Since everybody supposed the Germans would blow this immense contraption we were to be accompanied by an intrepid Royal Engineer officer to cut the wires and cleanse the demolition chambers under each span. Our little force was led by an excellent Grenadier, Sergeant Robinson, who was rightly awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his action. Two of our tanks were hit not lethally - by anti-tank fire, and we found a number of Germans perched in the girders who tried to drop things on us but without great effect. Sergeant Robinson and the leading tank troop sprayed the opposite bank and we lost nobody. When I arrived at the far end my sense of relief was considerable: the bridge had not been blown, we had not been plunged into the Waal (In fact it seems the Germans never intended to blow the bridge. The demolition chambers were packed with German soldiers, who surrendered), we seemed to have silenced the opposition in the vicinity, we were across one half of the Rhine."
"A film representation of this incident has shown American troops as having already secured the far end of the bridge. That is mistaken - probably the error arose from the film-maker's confusion of two bridges, there was a railway bridge with planks placed between the rails and used by the Germans for [light] road traffic, to the west of the main road bridge we crossed; and the gallant American Airborne men: reached it. When Sergeant Robinson and his little command crossed our main road bridge, however, only Germans were there to welcome him; and they didn't stay."
"The pursuit had ground to a halt. The war was clearly going on. We spent the winter of 1944 in Holland, first near Nijmegen where the Germans had flooded the land between the two great rivers, and there was little activity."
The meeting of the 82nd men and the tanks was 1 km north of the bridge at the village of Lent where the railway embankment from the railway bridge met the north running road running off the main road bridge. The 82nd men did not reach the north end of the actual road bridge, the Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry got there first from the south.
Historians get confused. There are two bridges at Nijmegen. a railway bridge to the west and and road bridge to the east. They are about 1km apart. The 82nd men rowed the river west of the railway bridge and seized that bridge. The railway bridge was not suitable for running tanks over of course. After seizing the north end of the unimportant rail bridge the 82nd men moved along the railway embankment north to where the embankment meets the road approach to the road bridge at Lent.
Heinz Harmel (played by Hardy Kruger in the film A Bridge too Far), the 10th SS Panzer Division commander who was between Arnhem and Nijmegen, says it was the British tanks who raced across the bridge seizing the bridge. Harmel did not know of that three Tiger tanks that had crossed the Arnhem bridge running south, the German communications was disjointed. Harmel stated that there was little German armor between Nijmegen and Arnhem. That was not correct. The three powerful Tiger tanks would have made scrap metal out of the British Shermans. By the time the Guards tanks crossed Nijmegen bridge Johnny Frost and the British paratroopers at the Arnhem bridge were being overrun because of the long delay in seizing the Nijmegen bridge.
Only 4 tanks were available at the north end of the bridge to secure it. No tanks were available to run on any further to Arnhem and any that did would have been sitting ducks on the raised road. The Guards tanks were split up and spread out over 20 miles, supporting the 82nd all over the place around Nijmegen. Which was supposed to have already been taken by the 82nd. All over Nijmegen, Mook, Groosbeek, Grave etc. Some even had to go back down the road towards Eindhoven when Panzer Brigade 107 tried to cut the road.
Only five British tanks were able to cross the bridge that night, and two of them were damaged. 4 tanks initially went across then Carrington's lone tank followed, guarding the northern end of the bridge by itself for nearly an hour before he was relieved by infantry.
Nor did the 82nd take the southern end of the bridge in Nijmegen town. Lt Col Ben Vandervoort of the 82nd was in the southern approaches to the bridge, alongside the Grenadier Guards tanks as the Royal Engineers were removing charges on the bridge. Vandervoort and his men never went onto the bridge to take it. He remained at the southern approaches to the bridge with the rest of the 82nd and also the Grenadier Guards infantry, as Sgt Robinson and his four tanks raced on up the main road, up onto the bridge, and across it. Vandervoort was full of praise for the tankers of the Grenadier Guards. Here are his own words: "The 2nd Battalion 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment was attached to the famed Guards Armoured Division on Tuesday 19th September. We were honoured to be a momentary part of their distinguished company....The clanking steel monsters were a comfort to the foot slogging paratroopers.....
Morale was high....For soldiers of different Allied armies it was amazing how beautifully the tankers and troopers teamed together. It was testimony to their combat acumen as seasoned veterans, both Yanks and Tommies...The battalion had fought with tanks before, but never in such lavish quantities. The tanks were the 2nd Battalion Grenadier Guards, the Grenadier Group as a whole being commanded by Lt Col Edward Goulburn....Col Goulburn, a perceptive commander, more or less turned individual tanks loose and let them go. The Guards tanks gave us all the tank support we needed. Some Shermans and their crews were lost as we went along. Usually it happened when the tank was employed too aggressively."
After 2 days fighting, split up, spread out and disjointed, the Guards Armored Division had to regroup, re-arm and re-fuel. It was simply not possible for them to have moved onto Arnhem that night. The task the five tanks that crossed the bridge were given was to defend the bridge and consolidate against enemy attacks. Moffat Burris of the 82nd is mistaken, there was not a 'whole corps' of tanks ready to go.
Browning, joint head of the 1st Airborne Army, who parachuted into Nijmegen and seeing the bridge untaken told General Gavin of the 82nd on the evening of 18th September that the Nijmegen bridge must be taken on the 19th, or at the latest, very early on the 20th. The Nijmegen bridge was not captured on the 17th because there was a foul up in communication between General Gavin and Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th PIR of the 82nd Airborne. Gavin allegedly verbally told Lindquist during the pre-drop talk to take a battalion of the 508th and make a quick strike to the bridge on the 17th and to "move without delay" but Lindquist understood it that Gavin had told him that his 508th should only move for the bridge once his regiment had secured the assigned 508th's portion of the defensive perimeter for the 82nd Division. So Lindquist didn't move his battalion towards the Nijmegen bridge until after this had been done, and by that time it was too late.
This was passing the buck, in an attempt to shift blame due to the 82nd totally failing to take the Nijmegen road bridge, casting aspersions on the British tankers who's job it was to defend the bridge and prevent the Germans from taking it back. Had the 82nd done the job it was supposed to have done, the bridge would have been taken 3 days before and XXX Corps would have reached Arnhem and relived the beleaguered British paras.
Sources:
It Never Snows in September by Robert Kershaw. The Battle For The Rhine by Robin Neilands. Reflect on Things Past by Peter Carington. Market Garden Then and Now by Karel Magry (a Dutchman). Poulussen (a Durchman), Lost at Nijmegen.
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@johnlucas8479
1. "Due to other task only I battalion was available to capture the Nijmegen Bridge"
This meant Gavin de-prioritised the bridge. Appalling decision.
2. The German troops in Nijmegen were low quality training men. Only 19 of these old men were guarding two bridges. The bridges had no barbed wire or defense ditches around them. Easy to assault. The 82nd would have walked on the whole bridge approaching via the riverbank. There were no Germans on the north bank. They only had 19 old men to fight off.
3. Once the paras dropped, Arnhem, not Nijmegen, was the priority for the Germans. The SS men who moved across the bridge at Nijmegen were to reinforce the south of Arnhem bridge - the priority - to stop the Allies getting over the Rhine. Sound logic. That is why the few troops between the two bridges were concentrated on Arnhem. To the Germans there could be another imminent 82nd jump south of Arnhem. So Arnhem bridge, the Rhine, was the German priority. The SS infantry commander misunderstood his orders going to Nijmegen instead of Arnhem. He had no armour. If he had gone to Arnhem, as he was to, the 82nd men would have walked onto the Nijmegen bridge despite being horrendously late arriving.
4. If the 82nd men had occupied the bridge they would have formed a cordon on the north bank. This would have been enough to fend off any German infantry attack until the full compliment of airborne artillery arrived on d-day plus 1.
5. The 82nd men were to approach the bridge via the country (riverbank), not the town. Due to the 82nds inaction, a few SS men came from the north via the ferry to the east occupying both bridges setting up shop in the small park on the south side, but no further. More were to come in dribs and drabs via the ferry. The few 82nd men who did eventually attack the bridge were driven off by these men.
6. The 82nd men reached the approaches to the bridge, holding their position around the south side of the bridge throughout the night, ready to launch another attack at daybreak. The old German men in the town were no problem to the small group of 82nd men, who were confident to launch another attack. A problem you think was there, which was not. Gavin arrived in the morning seeing the situation, then told Warren to get out of Nijmegen completely. Another appalling decision.
7. The 82nd men leaving allowed the SS men that accumulated north of the bridge and in the adjacent park, to move south over the two bridges and into the town, fully occupying the town, forming good defensive positions in the rubble (The USAAF bombed the town by mistake months earlier killing 600 civilians creating the rubble). During the day more SS men were arriving by the ferry to the east filling up the town, making matters worse.
8. XXX Corps arrived ahead of schedule. At this point there was no armour between the two bridges. If XXX Corps were able to move over the bridge they would have cruised up to Arnhem bridge virtually unopposed. German armour came over the ferry, then set up between the bridges as XXX Corps were preparing and seizing the bridge. Also the British paras were capitulating having been holding their position too long. Once the Germans had Arnhem bridge they moved tanks south over the bridge to Elst, between Arnhem and Nijmegen, to form a shield for Arnhem bridge.
9. XXX Corps seeing the shambles in Nijmegen had to take the bridge themselves having no faith in the US troops as they had completely failed. The 82nd men fell under the command of XXX Corps. XXX Corps also had to clear the SS men from the rubble using all men available. This delayed them 36 hours, also consuming fuel in the tanks. The delay was so great it prevented forming a bridgehead over the Rhine.
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@mikeainsworth4504
Monty did not plan Market Garden, coming up with the idea and broad outline only. Montgomery was largely excluded from the planning process. It was planned mainly by the USAAF commanders, Brereton and Williams.
The failure points that two US para units, the 101st and the 82nd, failed to seize their bridges. It was Bereton and Williams who:
1) decided that there would be drops spread over three days, defeating the object of para jumps by losing all surprise, which is their major asset;
2) rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-day on the Pegasus Bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
3) chose the drop and and landing zones so far from the Bridges;
4) Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to take on the flak positions and attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports, thereby allowing them to bring in reinforcements with impunity;
5) Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that they said would prevent the capture of the bridges at Zon, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of “possible flak“;
The state of play on the 17th, D day, was:
1) the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was largely clear;
2) there were concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally;
3) there were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen;
4) the 'band' was guarding the Waal bridge;
5) a few scattered about along the road; 6) there was no armour in Arnhem.
That was it.
i) XXX Corps would deal from the Belgium border to Eindhoven;
ii) 101st from Eindhoven to Grave;
iii) 82nd from Grave to north of Nijmegen;
iv) British and Polish paras from north of Nijmegen to north of the Rhine;
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 2 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition, hanging around, spending 2 hours in the village. The Germans blew the bridge when they finally reached it. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured it.
Evidently expecting that Major La Prade's flanking battalion would have captured the highway bridge, these two battalions made no apparent haste in moving through Zon. They methodically cleared stray Germans from the houses, so that a full two hours had passed before they emerged from the village. Having at last overcome the enemy 88mm south of the Zonsche Forest, Major LaPrade's battalion caught sight of the bridge at about the same time. Both forces were within fifty yards of the bridge when their objective went up with a roar.
- US Official History.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected. XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In a time critical operation, in this gift of a time window for the Germans they were running armour into Arnhem, and towards the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They failed to meet up. The road was still largely clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump. XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, making up the delay at Zon, being right on time.
XXX Corps reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the Waal bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over. If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves, after the 82nd tried again and failed again. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem. XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective.
A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
The failure of US 82nd Airborne to assault the lightly defended Waal bridge at Nijmegen immediately upon jumping sounded the death knell for the men at Arnhem.
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@mikeainsworth4504
“With supplies needing to be built up, Monty sent off a signal on the next day advising Eisenhower that he would have to delay the operation until 23 September. The response was immediate. On 12 September, Bedell Smith arrived in Brussels to tell Monty that Eisenhower had now agreed to divert the transport of three American divisions to supporting the new operation, to halt the Saar thrust, to give priority within 12th US Army Group to Hodges’s First US Army on Monty’s right flank and to allow Monty to deal directly with Hodges, rather than through Bradley.
It seemed that the Northern Thrust was now becoming a reality and an exultant Monty advanced D-Day for MARKET GARDEN to 17 September. It all proved to be an illusion. Bradley, who visited Monty on 13 September and heard all about the proposals, then lobbied Eisenhower, with the result than none of the promised support materialized. With Monty, Dempsey and Browning all completely unaware of this, preparations for the operation continued.”
— The Men Behind Monty by Richard Mead
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@mikeainsworth4504
“With supplies needing to be built up, Monty sent off a signal on the next day advising Eisenhower that he would have to delay the operation until 23 September. The response was immediate. On 12 September, Bedell Smith arrived in Brussels to tell Monty that Eisenhower had now agreed to divert the transport of three American divisions to supporting the new operation, to halt the Saar thrust, to give priority within 12th US Army Group to Hodges’s First US Army on Monty’s right flank and to allow Monty to deal directly with Hodges, rather than through Bradley."
"It seemed that the Northern Thrust was now becoming a reality and an exultant Monty advanced D-Day for MARKET GARDEN to 17 September. It all proved to be an illusion. Bradley, who visited Monty on 13 September and heard all about the proposals, then lobbied Eisenhower, with the result than none of the promised support materialized. With Monty, Dempsey and Browning all completely unaware of this, preparations for the operation continued.”
— The Men Behind Monty by Richard Mead
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The comments on UK Ring Circuits (sometimes called Ring Mains) for socket outlets shows great ignorance. Plug-in portable domestic appliances in the UK cannot draw more than 13A (approx 3kW) as the plug has a maximum of a 13A fuse - can be less right down to 1A, depending on the appliance. Subsequently washing machines, dishwashers, etc are limited to 13A - most draw far less. The rings were designed during WW2 anticipating the post war construction boom, being limited to 32A on the ring. A ring takes less cable than a number of radials and less breakers at the main panel. One ring can replace four or five radial circuits.
The 13A fuse in the plug is specifically designed for rings. In the UK you do not have to use rings, nothing says you have to. Many install radials, but the appliance off the ring is still limited to the 13A plug. If you say want a 16A appliance (usually brought in by an individual), it has to be a permanently fixed, not using a plug. A ring also can be installed in any country.
One down side of a ring is that if the two cables forming the ring on the rear of a socket become loose, as the screws loosen over time (expansion-contraction). The current may be sent predominately down one cable (one side of the ring) with a max rating of 27A on a 32A ring circuit. The use of push in Wago service free, screwless connectors eliminates this problem, making rings even more attractive. Germany now is selling sockets that have push in connectors behind - expected in the UK soon. This means that apart from the main panel's breakers, no screwed wire connections are used. Many electrical fires are because of loose connections.
Rings are only generally feasible when the plugs and spurs off them used have fuses. In the UK the plugs ensures rings are safe.
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On 4 September, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr
- Robin Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Antwerp was already seized, so the directive was easier. Market Garden was starved of resources by Eisenhower. The operation initially was to be much larger with two corps of the US First Army on the right flank, with multiple crossings of the Rhine - as Operation Comet had. Bradley and Patton, against Eisenhower's orders, were starving the First Army of supplies. So much, the First Army could not be in the operation.
Montgomery obviously did not have confidence in this under-resourced operation. In other operations he was more deeply involved. He stood back allowing others to plan Market Garden, mainly by two USAAF generals, Brereton and Williams, who ignored nearly all the airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established and performed in previous operations in: Sicily, Italy and Normandy. Eisenhower and Brereton approved of the plan, with Eisenhower signing it off. Montgomery took no part in its execution either. Montgomery must have assessed there was a big chance of not getting over the Rhine with only one crossing point and only one corps above Eindhoven. The operation was under the 21st Army Group, however Monty distanced himself from the massively cut down operation.
After the operation Montgomery stated that it was under-resourced.
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T Green
Patton was a creation of US propaganda. His record is average at best. The US needed a hero for home consumption, so they made one up.
Patton was in the Lorraine and advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept deployed there was with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept to try and plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were being re-fitted and rebuilt after the summer 1944 battles.
The Panzer Brigades had green crews that never had enough time to train, did not know their tanks properly, did not have any recon' elements and didn't even meet their unit commander until his arrival at the front. These were clearly not elite forces.
17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. In fact 17th SS was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, only equipped with assault guns, not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy and was not up to strength at Arracourt in the Lorraine. Patton never even once faced a full strength Waffen SS panzer division nor a Tiger battalion.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the best German divisions in the west were not. What great army did the 3rd Army engage? What great army did the 3rd Army defeat? In the Lorraine, the 3rd Army faced a rabble. Even the German commander of Army Group G in the Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took over in September 1944 said:
"I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Patton was facing a second rate rabble in the Lorraine for the most part. Patton was also neither on the advance nor being heavily engaged at the time he was ordered by Montgomery turned north to Bastogne after the Germans pounded through US lines.
The road from Luxembourg to Bastogne was largely devoid of German forces, as Bastogne was on the very southern German lines. Only when Patton got near to Bastogne did he face 'some' German armour but it wasn't a great deal. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade wasn't one of the best armoured units, while 26th Volks-Grenadier only had a dozen Hetzers, and the tiny element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind only had a small number of tanks operational. Its not as if Patton had to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1.
Patton faced comparatively very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in the rear and moved westwards to the River Meuse, where they were still engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Leading elements were engaging the Americans and British under Montgomery's command near Dinant by the Meuse.
In Normandy in 1944, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton faced very little opposition in his break out (operation Cobra) performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September.
Patton repeatedly lambasted his subordinates. In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics Bradley's II Corps were employing while he also accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division, Lucian Truscott of being "afraid to fight". In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps. When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize stalled he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being "very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect" and called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in reporting their losses. It was Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his own decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance that were the reasons for his stall. After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under RAF command, Coningham. Coningham, gave Patton massive ground attack plane support and he still stalled. Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures, which were many. It was always somebody else at fault, including his subordinates.
Read Monty and Patton:Two Paths to Victory
by Michael Reynolds
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Timeline
Events on the 1st day - D day:
▪ "At 1328, the 665 men of US 82nd 1st Battalion began to fall from the sky." - R Poulussen, Lost at Nijmegen.
▪ "Forty minutes after the drop, around 1410, the 1st Battalion marched off towards their objective, De Ploeg, three miles away." - R Poulussen.
▪ "The 82nd were digging in and performing reconn in the area looking for 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald - Neillands, R. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
▪ "Colonel Warren about 1830 sent into Nijmegen a patrol consisting of a rifle platoon and the battalion intelligence section. This patrol was to make an aggressive reconnaissance, investigate reports from Dutch civilians that only eighteen Germans guarded the big bridge"- US Official history, page 163.
▪ It was not until 1830hrs that he [Warren] was able to send a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small, just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a radio — say forty men. - Neillands. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
▪ The 82nd were dug in and preparing to defend their newly constructed regimental command post, which they established at 1825. Having dug in at De Ploeg, Warren's battalion wasn't prepared to move towards Nijmegen at all. - R Poulussen.
▪ Then Colonel Lindquist "was told by General Gavin, around 1900, to move into Nijmegen." - R Poulussen.
▪Warren sent a patrol of about 40 men to reconnoiter the bridge at 1830. Three strays from the patrol captured seven of the 18 guards and their 20mm cannon who were guarding the south end of the bridge, having to let them go as no reinforcements arrived. The 508th had actually captured the south end of the largely undefended bridge. The three scouts that reached the southern end of the Nijmegen bridge about an hour before the 9th SS arrived. Joe Atkins of the patrol said:
"at the bridge, only a few German soldiers were standing around a small artillery weapon... The Germans were so surprised; the six or seven defenders of the bridge gave up without resisting. We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark and none of our other troops showed up. We decided to pull away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge." - The 508th Connection by Zig Boroughs.
That was the 9th SS arriving at 1930.
▪ Unfortunately, the patrol's radio failed to function so that Colonel Warren was to get no word from the patrol until the next morning - US Official History, page 163.
▪ Once Lindquist told Lieutenant Colonel Warren [at 1900] that his Battalion was to move, Warren decided to visit the HQ of the Nijmegen Underground first - to see what info the underground had on the Germans at the Nijmegen bridge. - R Poulussen,
▪ "Although Company A reached the rendezvous point on time, Company B "got lost en route." After waiting until about 2000, Colonel Warren left a guide for Company B and moved through the darkness with Company A toward the edge of the city. Some seven hours after H-Hour, [2030] the first real move against the Nijmegen bridge began." - US Official History, page 163.
▪ As the scouts neared a traffic circle surrounding a landscaped circular park near the center of Nijmegen, the Keizer Karel Plein, from which a mall-like park led northeast toward the Nijmegen bridge, a burst of automatic weapons fire came from the circle. The time was about two hours before midnight. [2200 hrs] - US Official History, page 163.
D Day plus 1
▪ In the meantime Colonel Warren had tried to get a new attack moving toward the highway bridge; but this the Germans thwarted just before dawn with another sharp counterattack. - US Official History, page 165.
▪ "While the counterattack was in progress, General Gavin arrived at the battalion command post." "General Gavin directed that the battalion "withdraw from close proximity to the bridge and reorganize"." This was to mark the end of this particular attempt to take the Nijmegen bridge" - US Official History, page 165.
▪ "A new attack to gain the bridge grew out of an early morning conference between General Gavin and Colonel Lindquist." "At 0745 on 18 September, D plus 1, Company G under Capt. Frank J. Novak started toward the bridge." - US Official History, page 165.
▪ At around 1100, Warren was ordered to withdraw from Nijmegen completely. - R Poulussen.
▪ At 1400 on 18 September Colonel Mendez ordered Company G to withdraw from Nijmegen_ - US Official History, page 166.
"the chance for an easy, speedy capture of the Nijmegen bridge had passed. This was all the more lamentable because in Nijmegen during the afternoon the Germans had had nothing more than the same kind of "mostly low quality" troops encountered at most other places on D Day." - US Official History, page 164.
The 82nd completely withdrew from Nijmegen town, allowing the Germans to pour the 10th SS infantry, who come over on the ferry, south over the Nijmegen bridge to reinforce the town. This made matters worse when the 82nd and XXX Corps went into the town to clear them out.
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Arcamemnon
General Gavin of the US 82nd was supposed to get to the Nijmegen bridge as soon as landing. He failed. Market Garden failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. Because the 82nd did not seize the Nijmegen bridge immediately. They were ready at 2 pm on the jump day and never moved to the bridge. The gigantic bridge was guarded by 19 guards. Germans occupied the bridge at 1900 hrs. Six hours after the 82nd were ready to march.
Events on the 1st day:
♦ "At 1328, the 665 men of US 82nd 1st Battalion began
to fall from the sky." Poulussen, R. Lost at Nijmegen.
♦ "Forty minutes after the drop, around 1410, _the
1st Battalion marched off towards their objective,
De Ploeg, three miles away." Poulussen,
♦ "The 82nd were digging in and performing recon
in the area looking for 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald
- Neillands, R. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
♦ The 82nd were dug in and preparing to defend their
newly constructed regimental command post, which
they established at 1825. Then Colonel Lindquist
"was told by General Gavin, around 1900, to move
into Nijmegen." Poulussen
Events on the evening of the 1st day:
♦ Having dug in at De Ploeg, Warren's battalion wasn't prepared
to move towards Nijmegen at all. Poulussen,
♦ Once Lindquist told Lieutenant Colonel Warren that his
Battalion was to move, Warren decided to visit the HQ
of the Nijmegen Underground first - to see what info the
underground had on the Germans at the Nijmegen bridge.
- Poulussen,
♦ It was not until 1830hrs that he [Warren] was able to send
a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small,
just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a
radio — say forty men.
- Neillands. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
♦ This was not a direct route to the bridge from Warren's
original position, and placed him in the middle of the town.
It was also around 2100 when "A" Company left to attempt
to capture the Nijmegen road bridge.
♦ "B" Company was not with them because they'd split up
due to it being dark with "visibility was less than ten yards".
- Poulussen,
♦ The 82nd attacks were resisted by the Germans until the
next day.
Events of the 2nd day:
♦ Gavin drove up in a jeep the next morning and
was told by Warren that although they didn't have the bridge
yet, another attack was about to go in.
♦ Gavin then told Warren to hold because the Germans were
attacking in the southeast portion of the 82nd perimeter.
♦ At around 1100, Warren was ordered to withdraw from
Nijmegen completely. - Poulussen
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@arnepietruszewski9255
British industrial output was equal to Germany's.
The British produced more planes than Germany in WW2. In 1941 the British were building more aircraft than Germany, Japan and Italy combined, 5,000 more than the USSR and 5,000 less than the USA. Overall the planes they produced were superior. Canada alone produced more wheeled vehicles than Germany.
The first 1,000 bomber raid was in May 1942, a few months after the USA came into WW2. Lend lease only started to make an impact in 1943.
The two largest economies in the world were the British empire and the USA. The USA supplies about 11% if British supplies, mainly raw materials and machines tools and about 5% of Soviet - British War Production by Postan 1951. Hardly earth shattering.
If Germany and Italy thought they could seize Malta they would have. Planes based in Malta were reaking havoc with Italy's merchant fleet. Try to seize Malta then the RN comes in from two directions.
On the US entering WW2, it was about the British defending the USA and teaching them how to wage war. The British provided vital assistance to the USN. In early 1942 the British had to lend the USN 24 anti-submarine vessels, and crews, a Fleet Air Arm Squadron to protect New York Harbour with the Royal Navy moving over defending the eastern seaboard of the USA, as the Americans concentrated on any perceived follow up attack by the Japanese in the Pacific.
The USN was totally unprepared for war, despite every warning, ending up being far more dependent on the Royal Navy than they would have liked. Even the aircraft carrier HMS Victorious was loaned to the USA to operate in the Pacific as they only had one carrier, temporarily renamed USS Robin (after Robin Hood).
The British and Soviets had decided the course of the war with the Battle of Britain and the Battle of Moscow - Germany was stopped in the west and in the east and going nowhere in North Africa. The Germans were going nowhere from Dec 1941, the Battle of Moscow.
The war was essentially won in 1938 and 1940, when in British made a planned switch to a war economy, five years ahead of Germany, and in 1940 the British refused to make peace. In 1941 the British were building more aircraft than Germany, Japan and Italy combined, 5,000 more than the USSR and 5,000 less than the USA.
In 1942 the USA was a liability. Shipping losses to U-boats had fallen steadily throughout 1941 only to reach spectacular levels with the entry of the USA into the war - up to summer of 1942 the US lost 600 vessels from the Caribbean to Newfoundland. All major historical authorities, Morrison, Roskill, Churchill, Bauer and even General Marshall agreed this was entirely due the incompetence of the US Navy and the stupidity of Admiral King. The correspondence between King and Marshall can be found in Bauer's history and ends in effect, with an army general correctly advising a US Admiral on maritime tactics.
The USAAF in the UK was receiving approximately 70% of its supplies locally until 1943 - it is in the USAAF history.
The story of the USA 'coming to the rescue’ of the UK is propaganda story that suited both the British and the USA at the time. The reality was very different, starting with the Arcadia conference in late 1941, where the British subtly forced US to model its war economy and planning on the British system. The reality was the USA knew nothing about managing a modern war learning everything from the British. In 1939 the US army was the 19th largest in the world about the same size of Romania and smaller than Portugal. They never even had a tank, never mind a tank corps.
Had things been different and the British been really up against it, the Tizard mission may have gone to the USSR, not the USA. The British had a workable design for a nuclear bomb from the ‘Tube Alloys’ project. Britain and the USSR would have won, maybe using the A-Bomb with the USA a minor player on the world stage today - similar to China, being a large manufacturing country.
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@
BZZZZZT! Wrong answer.
doktorbimmer, the man who wrote:
"The first patent of a turbojet engine, which was later developed and produced, was that of Frank Whittle, now Sir Frank. His patent was applied for in January 1930. This patent shows a multistage, axial-flow compressor followed by a radial compressor stage, a combustor, an axial-flow turbine driving the compressor, and an exhaust nozzle. Such configurations are still used today..." and "From the beginning of his jet propulsion activities, Frank Whittle had been seeking means for improving the propulsive efficiency of turbojet engines. He conceived novel ideas for which he filed a patent application in 1936, which can be called a bypass engine or turbofan. To avoid a complete new design, Whittle sought an interim solution that could be merely "tacked on" to a jet engine. This configuration was later known as the aft fan. Whittle's work on fan jets or bypass engines and aft fans was way ahead of his time. It was of greatest importance for the future or turbopropulsion." and "In April 1937, Whittle had his bench-test jet engine ready for the first test run. It ran excellently; however, it ran out of control because liquid fuel had collected inside the engine and started to vaporize as the engine became hot, thereby adding uncontrolled fuel quantities to the combustion process. The problem was easily overcome. This first test run was the world's first run of a bench-test jet engine operating with liquid fuel.".
was ....
🍾🎉🎊 German engineer, Ohain 🍾🎉🎊
Zero points bimmer. Zero. Better luck next time.
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Jason, Tooze answers a lot.....
The Wages of Destruction - The Making and Breaking of the NAZI Economy by Prof Adam Tooze - 2006
Tooze: Preface xxiiv:
"America should provide the pivot for our understanding of the Third Reich. In seeking to explain the urgency of Hitler's aggression, historians have underestimated his acute awareness of the threat posed to Germany, along with the rest of the European powers, by the emergence of the USA as the global superpower." On the basis of contemporary economic trends. Hitler predicted already in the 1920s that the European powers had only a few more years to organize themselves against this inevitability."
"Germany would carve
out its own imperial hinterland; by one last great land grab in the East it would create the self-sufficient basis both for domestic affluence and
the platform necessary to prevail in the coming superpower competition with the United States."
"In Hitler's mind, the threat posed to the Third Reich
by the United States was not just that of conventional superpower rivalry. The threat was existential and bound up with Hitler's abiding fear of the world Jewish conspiracy, manifested in the shape of 'Wall street Jewry' and the 'Jewish media' of the United States. It was this fantastical interpretation of the real balance of power that gave Hitler's decision-making its volatile, risk-taking quality. Germany could not simply settle down to become an affluent satellite of the United States,
as had seemed to be the destiny of the Weimar Republic in the 1920s, because this would result in enslavement to the world Jewish conspiracy, and ultimately race death."
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Jason, Tooze again...
Page 431:
"the strongest arguments for rushing to conquer the Soviet Union in 1941 were precisely the growing shortage of grain and the need to knock Britain out of the war before it could pose a serious air threat."
"Meanwhile, the rest of the German military-industrialised complex began to gird itself for the aerial confrontation with Britain and America."
Germany rushed to invade the Soviet Union, with an ill-equipped army with no reserves in anticipation of a massive air war with Britain and the USA, hoping they could win the Soviet war within weeks.
The coming air war:
Roosevelt promised 50,000 plane per year production in May 1940, of which a substantial amount would be in the RAF. Germany could not compete with the level of aircraft at the UKs disposal. Whether the planes had US and UK pilots or just UK pilots they were coming Germany's way. And the only way they could really get at each other was by air. Germany feared mass bombing, which came - the bomber in the late 1930s was perceived as a war winning weapon.
The Germans knew the lead time for aircraft was 18 months from order to delivery. That meant in late 1941/early 1942, these planes would be starting to come in service in great numbers. Germany needed the resources of the east to compete.
Tooze...
"Britain inherited France's orders in the United States. Combined with the contracts Britain itself had placed since the start of the war, London by the end of June 1940 was expecting delivery from the United States of no less than 10,800 aircraft and 13,000 aero-engines over the next eighteen months. This was in addition to Britain's own production of 15,000 military aircraft. At the same time, the British Ministry of Aircraft Production was negotiating with the Americans to order many thousands more. By way of comparison, total German aircraft production in 1940 came to only 10,826 aircraft and in 1941 it expanded to only 12,000
Tooze goes on that German war production was shifting from the army to the Luftwaffe even as the troops were rolling towards the USSR on 21 June 1941. Once Hitler had the USSR in a lightening gamble, he could then concentrate on the masses of aircraft about to attack him from the west.
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@dongilleo9743
The state of play on the 17th was:
1) the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was clear.
2) there was concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally. T
3) there were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen.
4) A few German troops scattered about along the road.
5) there was no armour in Arnhem.
That was it.
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 3 km to the Zon bridge north of Eindhoven, with little opposition. The Germans had time to blow the bridge. If the 101st had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, they would have secured the bridge.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected.
XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up. The road was still clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump.
XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, at the planned expected time, making up the delay at Zon. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over.
If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
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Britain was clearly key in WW2. Britain fought on every front, being in the war on the first day up to the last - the only country at the surrender of Japan in September 1945 to do so - Britain’s war actually ended in 1946 staying on in Viet Nam using Japanese troops alongside British troops to defeat the Viet Minh, but that is another story.
Britain was not attacked or attacked anyone, going into WW2 on principle. The Turkish ambassador to the UK stated that the UK can raise 40 million troops from its empire so it will win the war. This was noted by Franco who indirectly said to Hitler he would not win, fearing British occupation of Spanish islands and territory if Spain joined the war. Spain and Turkey stayed out of the war. The Turkish ambassador’s point was given credence when an army of 2.6 million was assembled in India that moved into Burma to wipe out the Japanese.
From day one the Royal Navy formed a ring around the Axis positioning ships from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Arctic off Norway, blockading the international trade of the Axis. This deprived the Axis of vital human and animal food, oil, rubber, metals, and other vital resources. By 1941 the successful Royal Navy blockade had confined the Italian navy to port due to lack of oil. By the autumn of 1941 Germany's surface fleet was confined to harbour, by the British fleet and the chronic lack of fuel. A potential German invasion from the USSR in the north into the oil rich Middle East entailed expanded British troop deployment to keep the Germans away from the oil fields, until they were defeated at Stalingrad.
Throughout 1942 British Commonwealth troops were fighting, or seriously expecting to be attacked, in:
♦ French North Africa;
♦ Libya;
♦ Egypt;
♦ Cyprus;
♦ Syria: where an airborne assault was expected, with preparations to reinforce Turkey if they were attacked;
♦ Madagascar: fighting the Vichy French to prevent them from inviting the Japanese in as they had done in Indochina;
♦ Iraq;
♦ Iran: the British & Soviets invaded Iran in August 1941.
Those spread-out covering troops were more in combined numbers than were facing Japan and Rommel in North Africa. They were supplied by a massive merchant fleet. They were supplied via the Cape, the equivalent of sailing halfway around the world.
Those spread-out covering troops were more in combined numbers than were facing Japan and Rommel in North Africa. The British Commonwealth fielded over 100 divisions in 1942 alone, compared to the US total of 88 by the end of the war. The Americans and Soviets were Johnny-come-late in WW2, moreso the Americans. Before the USSR entered the conflict the Royal Navy’s blockade had reduced the Italian and German surface navies to the occasional sorties because of a lack of oil, with the British attacking the Germans and Italians in North Africa, also securing Syria, Iraq, the Levant and ridding the Italians from East Africa.
The Germans were on the run by the time the USA had boots on the ground against the Axis.
The Germans had been stopped:
♦ in the west at the Battle of Britain in 1940;
♦ in the east at the Battle of Moscow in 1941. In which Britain provided 40% of the Soviet tanks.
The Germans were on the run after the simultaneous battles in late 1942 of:
♦ El Alemein;
♦ Stalingrad;
The Battle of El Alemein culminated in a quarter of a million Axis prisoners taken in Tunisia - more than taken at Stalingrad. Apart from the US Filipino forces that surrendered in early 1942, the US had a couple of divisions in Gaudalcanal after August 1942, and one in New Guinea by November 1942. In 1943 the US managed to get up to six divisions in the Pacific, but still not matching the British or British Indian armies respectively. Until late 1943 the Australian Army alone deployed more ground fighting troops against the Japanese than the USA.
The Americans never put more ground troops into combat against the Japanese at any point than just the British Indian Army alone, which was 2.6 million strong. The US had nowhere near 2.6 million men on the ground against the Japanese. The Soviets fielded about a million against the Japanese. Most Japanese troops were put out of action by the British and Soviets, not the USA. At the battles of Khohima and Imphal the Japanese suffered their worst defeat in their history up to that point - 60,000 Japanese were killed in hand to hand jungle fighting that made Iwo Jima look like a bar room brawl. Then the British set the armored Eastern and Pacific fleets against the Japanese, not far off in numbers to the rapidly expanded US fleet
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Although Germany had access to the industrial plant of Northern Italy, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands they were not able to use it to match either the Soviets or the British in war production. Ironically, the 1940 conquests only burdened the German war economy since Western Europe was a net importer of food and raw materials and Germany had to support them - the Royal Navy blockade was effective. French aircraft production aimed for Germany was minuscule. France had access to manufacturing plant and supplies of bauxite but it was not able to produce as coal was imported from Britain for its electricity production. With the RN blockade the main source of coal for France became Germany, who could not afford to give it, but did. However, Germany was not able to increase its coal production sufficiently to overcome the short fall.
The amount of food produced in Europe fell. Previously the production of meat and dairy products in countries such as Denmark had been dependant on the import of grain and animal feed from the Americas. That was not available and the amount of food available for the dairy industry collapsed as did food production. The Danes slaughtered their animals from lack of feed. In the rest of Europe food production had been based on the widespread use of chemical fertilizer. Apart from the issues of the Royal Navy blockade, huge amounts of the chemicals used for fertilizer production was diverted to the making of explosives affecting agriculture.
French workers were moved on to subsistence rations as the country had been dependant on motorized transportation. Most of France's oil imports came from abroad. Agricultural produce could not be distributed because a lack of fuel, and vehicles taken by the Germans, with milk being literally being poured away. In Germany on the outbreak of war the only available oil products came from Romania or a small amount from synthetic oil made in Germany. This was barely enough for the needs of the German armed forces and not enough to keep the Italian Navy operational. France reverted to a pre-petroleum transport economy.
This economic background partially influenced Hitler's decision to invade the USSR. The USSR had the natural resources that would enable European industry to out-produce Britain and America and face the coming air war. Had Hitler won against Stalin, he would have gained unrestricted access to resources he needed to fight the British. The conquest of the Soviets was a key step in Hitler's strategy and not irrational. However the Soviets were able stand up to an invasion and better able to marshal their resources so that they could outlast the Germans. The USSR in 1942 out-produced even the USA in arms.
Germany had 2.5 times the per capita GDP of the USSR. Invading the USSR was critical because Western European industry was dependent upon imports, with the RN blockade cutting them off.
The British were able to out-produce the Germans in aircraft even prior to the German invasion of the Soviet Union. The British outproduced the Germans in all war production in WW2.
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@billelkins994 wrote:
"In recent years the British standard for new ring installations requires a wire size equivalent to a radial run so the ring's big advantage of using smaller wire is no more."
Nonsense, you made that up.
Many clearly do not understand what a final ring circuit is. The ultimate system is to have a radial circuit to each socket outlet on its own fuse at the main panel - the optimum solution of course. This means you will need a very large expensive main panel and lots of fuses/MCBs (one for each socket) in the main panel. Impractical of course.
🎊🎈 BINGO 🎊🎈
A ring gives this by distributing the main panel around the house via a ring cable, distributing the fuses from the main panel around the building to each socket. The ring is a busbar. This saves the vast expense of a plethora of radial cables back to the main panel and also a plethora of expensive fuses/MCB's/RCBO/AFDDs at a very large expensive main panel and expensive labour to install.
a) A ring uses less cable and gives a longer route.
b) No limit to sockets on the ring, but total is limited to typically 32A.
c) A ring uses less copper for a given load/area.
d) Rings rarely have voltage drop as it is fed from both ends.
e) Rings have lower impedance, less volt drop is less waste! They are more efficient.
f) No single point of failure for the protective earth.
g) If you are covering all rooms in one floor then a ring can do it.
h) An appliance and its flexible cable may have a fuse sized to its rating inside its plug.
1. Ring final 2.5mm cable, 32A B-curve MCB, length 106m on TN-C-S.
2. Ring final 4mm cable, 32A B-curve MCB, length 171m.
3. Radial final 2.5mm cable, 25A B-curve MCB, length 33m.
4. Radial final circuit, 4mm cable, 32A B-curve MCB, length 43m.
If a ring is in 4mm cable protected by a 32A MCB/RCBO, then no problems if the cable is broken - which is a very rare thing. The ring can be partially 4mm to heavy current appliance sockets and 2.5mm for the rest
The ring final circuit is safe, simple, and highly effective after 80 years of use. The introduction of MCBs/RCBOs/RCDs/AFDDs, and Wagos on the ring, has made the ring even safer.
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@michaelschmid9567
A prime strategic problem for SHAEF in September 1944 was opening up the approaches to Antwerp and keeping it from German counter-attack - the logistics problem to supply all allied armies. It was:
1) Take Noord Brabant, the land to the north and northeast of Antwerp, or;
2) Take the Schedlt.
Eisenhower had a Northern Thrust strategy. Taking Noord Babant fell in line with the desires of both SHEAF and Eisenhower.
Noord Brabant had to be taken before the Scheldt, as it was essential. It was taken with limited forces, with limited forces also sent to take the Schedlt. Market Garden had to go ahead regardless of any threat or Northern Thrust strategy, actually being a success. To use Antwerp and control the approaches, the Scheldt, everything up to the south bank of the lower Rhine at Nijmegen needed to be under allied control. The low-lying lands, boggy ground between Arnhem and Nijmegen with land strewn with rivers and canals, is perfect geography as a barrier against a German counter-attack towards Antwerp. Without control of Noord Brabant German forces would have been in artillery range of Antwerp, and with a build up of forces and supply directly back to Germany in perfect position for a counter-attack.
Market Garden was the offensive SHEAF wanted to secure Antwerp, a prime port for logistics for all allied armies. It made sense as the Germans were in disarray, so should be easy enough to gain. Monty added Arnhem to form a bridgehead over the Rhine to fall in line with Eisenhower's priority Northern Thrust strategy at the time.
It made complete sense in establishing a bridgehead over the Rhine as an extra to the operation. You needed Arnhem for an easier jump into Germany. Everything up to Nijmegen was needed if you wanted to do anything at all - that is, protect Antwerp and have a staging point to move into Germany. Gaining Noord Brabant, was vital, and was successfully seized. Fighting in the low lying mud and waterways of the Schedlt, which will take time, while the Germans a few miles away and still holding Noord Brabant made no sense at all.
SHEAF got what they wanted from a strategic point of view.
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@michaelschmid9567
Basic facts. The state of play on the 17th was:
1) the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was clear;
2) there were concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally;
3) there were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen;
4) a few scattered Germans along the road;
5) there was no armour in Arnhem.
That was it.
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 2 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured the bridge.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected.
XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and towards the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up. The road was still clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump.
XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, making up the delay at Zon. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over.
If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves, after the 82nd tried again and failed again. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
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The impact of the Japanese entering war was a great gift for Rommel. The British supplied armies in North Africa and the Middle East via the Cape, the equivalent of sailing half way around the world. Many of the essential supply ships were removed from the North African theatre, as were essential troops. Also the British were sending convoys of tanks to the USSR at the time. So Rommel had it easy ...again. From near being wiped out of Africa, Rommel had a second wind.
The Germans attempted to get the Japanese to attack the British in the Far East to divert the British away from Europe and North Africa. The UK was amassing a large air fleet and also had the world's largest navy. They would not sit by for long only fighting in the desert. The reason Germany attacked the USSR was to get their resources to fight the coming air war with the British. The Japanese repeatedly refused to declare war. Only when the Japanese thought the USSR was about to fall they joined in. Japan received assurances from Germany in the Spring of 1941, that they would declare war on the USA.
The real nightmare of German strategy pre the Barbarossa attack was the possibility that Japan might come to terms with the USA, leaving Germany to fight Britain and maybe the USA alone. To forestall this possibility, Hitler had offered to declare war on the USA in conjunction with Japan already in the Spring of 1941.
Germany had offered to declare war on the US before their June 1941 attack on the USSR, but the Japanese had refused to commit themselves then instead entered into a last round of negotiations with the USA. It was not until October 1941 and the fall of the Konoe government that Berlin could feel sure that the Japanese-USA talks were going nowhere. When in November 1941 Tokyo began to signal that Japan was about to commit itself against the West, it was the cause of relief in Berlin. Without prior knowledge of the Japanese timetable for a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hitler pledged himself to following Japan in a declaration of war on the USA. The Germans were informed by the Japanese in November 1941 that they were to declare war.
If the Soviet counter attack at Moscow, pushing the Germans right back, had been one month earlier the Japanese would not have attacked the British and the USA - and almost a probable certainty signed a pact with the USA which was in ongoing talks virtually to the attack on the British, Dutch and Americans. Then no German tanks would have been sent to North Africa. Then Rommel would not have been so successful and most probably been wiped out.
The Japanese attack gave the Germans hope, as they saw the British would pull and divert men and materials from the region. That hope meant they sent vital tanks, which arguably would better used against the Soviets, to secure vital oil in the Middle East, attacking the depleted British, who only weeks previously had given them a hiding.
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@stephenmccartneyst3ph3nm85
In an interview with General Browning in the NY Times he said he gave equal priority to the Nijmegen bridge and the Groesbeek heights. The heights near De Ploeg, which are really pretty flat being a wooded area but high for Holland, are pretty well between the Drop Zone (DZ) and bridge. Browning and Gavin naturally did not want German troops between the DZ and the bridge, so the heights had to be occupied and secure.
Gavin understood the priorities in sending the 508th to the bridge and Groesbeek heights immediately, with Coln Warren's battalion of the 508th assigned the bridge. To get to the bridge from the DZ you have to pass the Groesbeek heights, so any enemy at the heights naturally had to be subdued, then secure the area, which could take time, then send Warren's battalion to the bridge.
It took the 508th a painfully slow 3.5 hours to march a few miles from the DZ to the heights, reaching the Groesbeek heights at 1730. There were no Germans at the Groesbeek heights as forward scouts relayed back the situation. So, on route Coln Lindquist could have sent Warren's battalion directly to the bridge, bypassing the Groesbeek heights, immediately via the riverbank as instructed by Gavin. The rest of the 508th could move to the empty Groesbeek heights setting up defences at De Ploeg on the heights. Dutch resistance men informed the 508th that the Germans had largely cleared out of Nijmegen with only 19 guards on the bridge. So all was easy and fine, men could move immediately to the bridge without a diversion via the Groesbeek heights.
Despite hearing the good news from the Dutch Underground, Lindquist in command of the 508th was not moving at all, staying static at De Ploeg. Lindquist was waiting for a Divisional Order from Gavin that the DZ was secure, then send Warren's battalion to the bridge. When Gavin found out via a liaison officer he was livid, speeding over to De Ploeg in a Jeep telling Lindquist to get moving to the bridge.
Gavin did give the bridge equal priority on d-day. Gavin (and Browning) was expecting Lindquist to secure the Groesbeek heights, which were devoid of enemy forces, then immediately move to the bridge. If the heights were devoid of the enemy Warren's men did not have to go to the heights, which meant directing Warren's battalion immediately to the bridge, as Gavin verbally told Lindquist in England, Lindquist never.
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@TheImperatorKnight
Private monopolies are not public monopolies. The state may permit them but private they are.
Commonly created wealth is appropriated by private concerns, instead of being used for public services. Because the state allows legalised theft of common wealth does not make the wealth end up in public coffers.
Some industries/networks only work properly as monopolies - telcoms, power, gas, rail, etc. These when run by private organisations fail miserably far too often. The rail industry in the UK is a prime example over 150 years. The Capitalists cream off, neglecting the network with inevitably the network falling into the arms of the state. We, the taxpayers pick up the tab while they run off. Also the rail men made sure the lucrative land around the stations and terminals were in their hands. The high value was because of the proximity of the rail tracks.
The London Underground Jubilee Line extension costed £3.4 bn, yet the land values around the station rose by £14bn. All this publicly created value ended up in private pockets. The increased value could have paid for three or four badly needed rail line extensions.
Read:
Wheels of Fortune by Fred Harrison.
If we want the state to stop stealing the fruits of our labours, we have to stop private organisations, and individuals, from stealing from the state.
We:
- Allow commonly created wealth to be appropriated by private concerns. Legalised theft.
- Allow privately created wealth to be appropriated by the state (income & sales taxes, etc). Legalised theft
We should do the opposite.
Do not confuse the free market with privately run.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPbJYJYCge0&feature=youtu.be&t=1
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If Montgomery's forty division thrust to the north, then east on the North German Plains, had been adopted, instead of the ridiciuous broad-front of Eisenhower, the war would have been over in 1944. Allied forces stretched from the North Sea to Switzerland. They were too thinly spread with no real punch anywhere along the line to break through.
General Bodo Zimmermann, Chief of Operations, German Army Group D, said that had the strategy of Montgomery succeeded in the autumn of 1944, there would have been no need to fight for the West Wall and the central and upper Rhine, all of 24 would have fallen automatically.
If Montgomery's proposal for a 40 division concentrated thrust towards the Ruhr been accepted by Eisenhower instead of aimlessly moving about in the Lorraine, Alsace, Vosges etc, it would have all been over for the Germans in the west, and most probably completely.
"The best course of the Allies would have been to concentrate a really strong striking force with which to break through past Aachen to the Ruhr area. Germany's strength is in the north. South Germany was a side issue. He who holds northern Germany holds Germany. Such a break-through, coupled with air domination, would have torn in pieces the weak German front and ended the war. Berlin and Prague would have been occupied ahead of the Russians. There were no German forces behind the Rhine, and at the end of August our front was wide open. There was the possibility of an operational break-through in the Aachen area, in September. This would have facilitated a rapid conquest of the Ruhr and a quicker advance on Berlin.
By turning the forces from the Aachen area sharply northward, the German 15th and1st Parachute Armies could have been pinned against the estuaries of the Mass and the Rhine. They could not have escaped eastwards into Germany."
- Gunther Blumentritt quoted in, The Other Side Of The Hill by Liddell Hart
After Bagration and Normandy, the Germans had a thin line to their west with the Soviets to their east who extended their supply lines, needing quite a time to regroup and resupply. They could handle that, as no steamroller was coming their way. They were gently squeezed from both sides then they collapsed.
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@lincolnpork9357
Firstly, economic rent is when there is:
a) no costs of production;
b) no enterprise;
♦ Land Value Tax does not socially/community exclude anyone. It reclaims commonly created wealth to use for common services. What we create we use to pay for our services. Simple. While leaving private wealth in private pockets. Currently we do the opposite. It is that simple. Land tax is cheap and easy to collect, with huge tax office employing swathes of people, and snoopers. Land, unlike money, cannot be taken offshore. The location of land is known to the inch.
♦ When levied at 100% of land rental value, LVT will eliminate personal income tax and maybe sales taxes.
♦ LVT near eradicates harmful land speculation.
♦ LVT creates a stable economy with speculation near gone.
♦ LVT promotes enterprise, as it makes matters easier for small businesses, as they do not get bogged down in income and sales taxes. In the late 1950s/early 1960s, Denmark found that enterprise was boosted by LVT as investment went into enterprise not locked up in land. The economy grew with zero unemployment.
♦ Of course we charge for use and extraction of what is commonly owned, to reduce, or eliminate income & sales taxes.
♦ Pigovian taxes do not reclaim economic rent, as does LVT, or charge for use or extraction of what is _commonly owned. They are disincentive taxes. They can also penalise polluters, such as fossil fuel taxes. You pollute our environment then you pay.
♦ If people earn money through pure enterprise in an unrigged and unmonoplolised market, let them keep all they earned, as they did good for many along the way. They also took nothing out of society, only putting something in.
♦ Economic parasitical activity has to be eliminated.
♦ Promote productive activities.
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@unitedwestand5100
Two panzer divisions eh? The remnants of the 9th who had no armour. Again for you..
1) Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution;
2) Gavin was totally responsible, as he never seized Nijmegen bridge. XXX Corps had to take it for him;
...
4) You are guessing about Gavin and casualties;
5) No amour in the Arnhem area on the 17th;
6) The operation mainly planned by two Americans, Brereton and Williams;
Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower, approved and under resourced the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak". The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself.
XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.
Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time Monty had the Canadians cleared it, or were investing in many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@unitedwestand5100
Montgomery to Alan Brooke..
"If we want the war to end within any reasonable period you have to get Eisenhower’s hand taken off the land battle. I regret to say that in my opinion he just doesn’t know what he is doing.
Montgomery wrote of Eisenhower and his ridiculous broad-front strategy on 22 January 1945:
“I fear that the old snags of indecision and vacillation and refusal to consider the military problem fairly and squarely are coming to the front again . . . The real trouble is that there is no control and the three army groups are each intent on their own affairs. Patton today issued a stirring order to Third Army, saying the next step would be Cologne . . . One has to preserve a sense of humour these days, otherwise one would go mad.”
Alanbrooke wrote in his diary about buffoon Einsenhower:
“At the end of this morning's C.O.S. [Chief of Staff] meeting I put before the committee my views on the very unsatisfactory state of affairs in France, with no one running the land battle. Eisenhower, though supposed to be doing so, is on the golf links at Rheims — entirely detached and taking practically no part in running of the war. Matters got so bad lately that a deputation of Whiteley, Bedell Smith and a few others went up to tell him that he must get down to it and RUN the war, which he said he would."
"We discussed the advisability of getting Marshall to come out to discuss the matter, but we are doubtful if he would appreciate the situation. Finally decided that I am to see the P.M. to discuss the situation with him.”
"November 28th I went to see the P.M. I told him I was very worried."
Alan Brooke described in his daily diary that American generals Eisenhower and Marshall as poor strategists, when they were in jobs were strategy mattered. Brooke wrote to Montgomery about his talks with Eisenhower, “it is equally clear that Ike has the very vaguest conception of war!”
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BBC News story from 2013. How prophetic...
A leading business lobby group has called on the government to abandon its controversial high-speed rail project. The Institute of Directors (IoD) said a survey of its members showed businesses were unconvinced by the economic case for HS2. The IoD's director general, Simon Walker, described the project as "one grand folly". In response the government said the HS2 project was forecast to generate billions in economic benefits.
HS2, which stands for High Speed Two, is intended to allow trains to run at 250mph (400km/h) from London to Birmingham from 2026, with branches to Manchester and Leeds via Sheffield planned by 2032. The government says it expects the project to cost £42.6bn. But the Institute of Economic Affairs, a think tank, has suggested it could rise to more than £80bn. The Department for Transport (DfT) also claims the project will generate £50bn in benefits to the UK economy, helping job creation and creating investment opportunities.
But the IoD said a survey of its members showed that just 27% felt the project represented good value for money. Some 70% said the scheme would have no impact on the productivity of their business. Fewer than half (41%) rated HS2 as important to their business - that is down from 54% in a similar survey conducted in August 2011. "Businesses up and down the country know value for money when they see it, and our research shows that they don't see it in the government's case for HS2," said Mr Walker. "Overall there appears to be little enthusiasm amongst IoD members, not even in the regions where the benefits are supposed to be strongest. "We agree with the need for key infrastructure spending, but the business case for HS2 simply is not there... it is time for the government to look at a thousand smaller projects instead of falling for one grand folly." He added that the cost-benefit analysis was conducted before laptops and tablet computers became commonplace, and as a result suggested time spent on trains was wasted. "The fact is more than half our members say they spend all of their time on trains working," Mr Walker told the BBC's Today programme. "For many of them it's as productive as the time they spend in the office."
HS2 has divided opinion, even among the business community. The British Chambers of Commerce, another business lobby group, said it remained supportive of the project, though a spokesperson told the BBC it was "critical" that costs were kept under control. The CBI has also voiced lukewarm support. Director general John Cridland said it supported HS2 "in principle" but that "it must be demonstrably clear that the benefits outweigh the costs".
A DfT spokesman said the HS2 Growth Taskforce would "work with city and business leaders to ensure we are capitalising on every opportunity to help regeneration, job creation, investment opportunities and in building a skilled UK economy". Without HS2, he said, "our existing rail network will be full by the mid-2020s at a cost to passengers and businesses up and down country".
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@waynes.3380
The first armour into Arnhem was in the evening of d-day plus 1 - shot up by the British paras.
There are a lot of inaccurate myths written claiming that Montgomery ignored intelligence reports of German tanks ready and waiting around Arnhem. In fact there was not even a single German tank attack against the British paras on the day they dropped, the 17th September Frost's men reached the Arnhem bridge without facing any German tanks whatsoever, because none were there.
The tanks and other armour that caused the paras around Arnhem problems were those that were SENT IN FROM GERMANY in the days that followed. They were not in the Netherlands prior to Market Garden. They were not identified by Dutch intelligence or by SHAEF. They were in Germany and they detrained in Bocholt, Germany and then they road marched towards Arnhem in the days that followed.
The first actual tank supported attack against the British paras around Arnhem did not take place until late on the 18th and this attack was stopped by 6 pounder anti tank guns and PIATS by the British paras. Tanks from Panzer-Ersatz-Regiment ”Bielefeld” Panzer Kompanie Mielke which was not even in the Netherlands on the 17th.
Sturmgeshutz Brigade 280, a unit that was instrumental in the German defence of Arnhem, was also not in the Netherlands when the paras dropped but was on the way towards Aachen, Germany when it was ordered to divert to Arnhem arriving at Arnhem in the early hours of the 19th. The Tiger Is of Schwere Panzer Kompanie Hummel were also in Germany and only arrived on the 19th. The King Tigers of Schwere Panzer Abteilung 506 arrived between the 22nd and 24th.
It was THESE armoured units that caused the problems for the British paras. NONE of these armoured units were in the Arnhem area prior to the paras dropping and NONE of them were identified by any allied intelligence reports. The famous pictures of the Sturmgeschutz assault guns alongside Waffen SS troops in the streets of Arnhem actually shows Stugs of Sturmgeshutz Brigade 280. They aren't Waffen SS stugs, as many believe.
This myth that the paras dropped onto two well equipped Waffen SS panzer divisions with lots of tanks is completely wrong. Even the two Waffen SS 'panzer' divisions (9th and 10th SS) were at half strength and numbered no more than 6,000 to 7,000 men each and only around half of those were actual combat troops. The other half were service and supply units. They had no armour.
1st Airborne actually brought along enough 6 pounder and 17 pounder anti tanks guns to deal with the armored situation that allied and Dutch intelligence said was there at the time. It was actually SHAEF's intelligence in the week ending September 4th that persuaded Monty and others to go for Market Garden. SHAEF's Intelligence Summary for 4th September assured Monty that the German forces in the way of 21st Army Group was "no longer a cohesive force, disorganised and demoralised, short of equipment and arms." They were correct.
The time window created by the US 101st and 82nd not seizing vital bridges, resulted in German armour being brought in from Germany, being heavily used against British paras.
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@waynes.3380
In an interview with Maj Gen G. E. Prier-Palmer, British Joint Services Mission in Washington, in 1955, General Browning said the Grave and Nijmegen Bridges must be seized "as soon as possible", although the wooded Groesbeek Heights on the route to the bridge must be held.
Field Order 11 of 13 Sept is clear in section 2 a), putting the bridges first in the writing, that they were to be seized, then the high ground secured and then the roads. Order 1, of 13 September, written by Lindquist of the 508th, states he will wait at the high ground for a Division Order to move from the Heights to the bridge. In short, wait for an Order from Gavin to move.
The heights near De Ploeg, which are really pretty flat being a wooded area but high for Holland, are pretty well between the Drop Zone (DZ) and bridge. The 508th would go through the Heights to reach the bridge. Browning and Gavin naturally did not want German troops between the LZ and the bridge, so the Heights had to be occupied and secure. The 508th CP would be established at the Heights.
Gavin understood the priorities in sending the 508th to the bridge and Groesbeek heights immediately, with Coln Warren's battalion of the 508th assigned the bridge. To get to the bridge from the DZ you have to pass the Groesbeek Heights, so any enemy at the Heights naturally had to be subdued, then secure the area, which could take time, then send Warren's battalion to the bridge.
It took the 665 men of 508th a painfully slow 3.5 hours to march a few miles from the DZ to the heights, reaching the Groesbeek heights at 1730. They encountered only a few Labour troops in opposition. There were no Germans at the Groesbeek Heights as forward scouts relayed back the situation. So, on route Coln Lindquist the head of the 508th could have sent Warren's A and B companies directly to the bridge, bypassing the Groesbeek Heights, immediately via the riverbank as instructed by Gavin. The rest of the battalion could move to the empty Groesbeek Heights setting up defences at De Ploeg on the heights.
Dutch resistance men informed the 508th that the Germans had largely cleared out of Nijmegen with only 19 guards on the bridge. So all was easy and fine, so the two companies assigned the bridge could move immediately to their objective without being involved with securing the Groesbeek Heights.
Despite hearing the good news from the Dutch Underground, Lindquist in command of the 508th was not moving at all, keeping all his men static at De Ploeg. Lindquist was waiting for a Divisional Order from Gavin informing him that the DZ was secure, then send Warren's battalion to the bridge. When Gavin found out Lindquist was static via a liaison officer he was livid, running over to De Ploeg in a Jeep telling Lindquist to get moving to the bridge. Even then, took Lindquist another two hours to send men in force to the bridge.
Three stray men from a forty man patrol sent to the Nijmegen bridge immediately by Warren to confirm what the Dutch Underground told them on reaching DePloeg, took the guards on the south end of the bridge prisoner. They left when no one turned up. When leaving they saw hundreds of Germans pour from the north onto the previously lightly guarded bridge. Later, a company of Warren's main force became lost when they eventually moved towards the bridge. By the time Warren's two companies did reach the bridge in force, the Germans had reinforcing the bridge with hundreds of men. Too late. The first attack on the bridge was just before midnight, 10.5 hours after landing.
The 82nd were expecting German resistance from the east, however it came from the north via the Nijmegen bridge.
▪ Gavin was expecting Lindquist to secure the Groesbeek heights, which were devoid of enemy forces, then immediately move to the bridge, which meant sending Warren's battalion immediately.
▪ Lindquist was expecting Gavin to notify him that the DZ was clear.
Gavin was expecting Lindquist to go to the bridge when it was obvious the Groesbeek heights, on the way to the bridge, were secure. As no Germans were about, the heights were naturally secure.
Regarding Lindquist's expected clearing of the LZ before moving from DePloeg. Lindquist did write a Field Order for the 508th on 13 September copied to Gavin, stating that once the heights were secure he would wait for a Divisional Order [from Gavin] to move. Two days later at the jump briefing Gavin verbally overruled Lindquist's Field Order, using a map he told him that he should move to the bridge "without delay". Poor command communications by Gavin. Poulussen, in Lost at Nijmegen discovered that the 508th jumped without any written offensive orders from Gavin. All was verbal from Gavin to Lindquist of the 508. Chester Graham, the 82nd liaison officer, was at the pre jump meeting in England. He said there was no ambiguity amongst anyone there that the bridge was the prime target.
In 1945 Historical Officer, Capt. John Westover of the US Army Centre of Military History, was wanting confirmation that if the capture of the Nijmegen bridge had been part of the objectives. In response, dated 25 July 1945, General Gavin was clear: "About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping well, I personally directed Col Lindquist, commanding the 508 PIR to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen Bridge without delay after landing but to keep a close watch on it in the event he needed to protect himself against the Reichswald and he was cautioned to send the battalion via the east of the city."
General Browning never knew men were static at De Ploeg. Like Gavin he was expecting men to be seizing the bridge. Being corps commander, he was busy attempting to communicate with all three parachute divisions. The 82nd did launch a few failed attacks on the bridge. In the afternoon of the next day, 18th, Gavin asked permission to launch another attack. Browning, seeing the bridge was well defended, and the failed attacks, refused, opting to wait for XXX Corps to arrive to seize the bridge. Inexplicably Gavin moved all his men out of Nijmegen town completely to the heights and DZ, giving the town back to the Germans. This made matters worse when XXX Corps arrived who had expended vital time, and ammunition, in flushing them out.
On page 162 of the U.S. Official History:
"many documents regarding the extensive combat interviews were conducted with personnel of the 508th Parachute Infantry, they are inexplicably missing from Department of the Army files."
Read:
1) Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History Of The 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment In World War II by Phil Nordyke.
2) Arnhem 1944 by Christer Bergström.
3) Market Garden, Then and Now by Karl Magry.
4) Lost at Nijmegen by R Poulusson
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@stevepowsinger733
1985 US Army report on the Lorraine Campaign.
Patton does not come out well.
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a211668.pdf
Combat Studies Institute. The Lorraine Campaign: An Overview, September-December 1944. by Dr. Christopher R. Gabel February, 1985
From the document is in italics:
Soldiers and generals alike assumed that Lorraine would fall quickly, and unless the war ended first, Patton's tanks would take the war into Germany by summer's end. But Lorraine was not to be overrun in a lightning campaign. Instead, the battle for Lorraine would drag on for more than 3 months." "Despite its proximity to Germany, Lorraine was not the Allies' preferred invasion route in 1944. Except for its two principal cities, Metz and Nancy, the province contained few significant military objectives." "Moreover, once Third Army penetrated the province and entered Germany, there would still be no first-rate military objectives within its grasp.
The Saar industrial region, while significant, was of secondary importance when compared to the great Ruhr industrial complex farther north."
Another Patton chase into un-needed territory, full of vineyards like he did when running his troops into Brittany.
"With so little going for it, why did Patton bother with Lorraine at all? The reason was that Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, made up his mind to destroy as many German forces as possible west of the Rhine."
In other words a waste of time.
"Communications Zone organized the famous Red Ball Express, a non-stop conveyor belt of trucks connecting the Normandy depots with the field armies."
They were getting fuel via 6,000 trucks.
"The simple truth was that although fuel was plentiful in Normandy, there was no way to transport it in sufficient quantities to the leading elements. On 31 August , Third Army received no fuel at all."
In short, Patton overran his supply lines. What was important was to secure the Port of Antwerp's approaches, which Eisenhower deprioritised. Montgomery approached the US leaders of the First Airborne Army who would not drop into the Scheldt.
"Few of the Germans defending Lorraine could be considered First-rate troops. Third Army encountered whole battalions made up of deaf men, others of cooks, and others consisting entirety of soldiers with stomach ulcers."
Some army the Americans were going to fight
"Was the Lorraine campaign an American victory? From September through November, Third Army claimed to have inflicted over 180,000 casualties on the enemy. But to capture the province of Lorraine, a problem which involved an advance of only 40 to 60 air miles, Third Army required over 3 months and suffered 50,000 casualties, approximately one-third of the total number of casualties it sustained in the entire European war."
The US Army does not think it was a victory. Huge losses for taking unimportant territory, against a poor German army.
"Ironically, Third Army never used Lorraine as a springboard for an advance into Germany after all. Patton turned most of the sector over to Seventh Army during the Ardennes crisis, and when the eastward advance resumed after the Battle of the Bulge, Third Army based its operations on Luxembourg, not Lorraine. The Lorraine campaign will always remain a controversial episode in American military history."
It's getting worse. One third of all European casualties in Lorraine and never used the territory to move into Germany.
"Finally the Lorraine Campaign demonstrated that Logistics often drive operations, no matter how forceful and aggressive the commanding general may be." "Patton violated tactical principles" "His discovered that violating logistical principles is an unforgiving and cumulative matter."
Not flattering at all. And Americans state Patton was the best general they had. Bradley stated later:
“Patton was developing as an unpopular guy. He steamed about with great convoys of cars and great squads of cameramen … To George, tactics was simply a process of bulling ahead. Never seemed to think out a campaign. Seldom made a careful estimate of the situation. I thought him a shallow commander … I disliked the way he worked, upset tactical plans, interfered in my orders. His stubbornness on amphibious operations, parade plans into Messina sickened me and soured me on Patton. We learned how not to behave from Patton’s Seventh Army.”
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@stevepowsinger733
Patton was an average US general, like Simpson, Patch, Hodges, etc. No more. A US media creation, elevating the average beyond their status. "The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian First Army HQ for the same purpose.
Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation.
"This advance duly began at 0630hrs on August 18 which, as the Canadian Official History remarks, ‘was a day and a half after Montgomery had issued the order for the Canadians to close the gap at Trun, and four and a half days after Patton had been stopped at the Third Army boundary’. During that time, says the Canadian History, the Canadians had been ‘fighting down from the north with painful slowness’ and the Germans had been making their way east through the Falaise gap. They were not, however, unimpeded; the tactical air forces and Allied artillery were already taking a fearful toll of the German columns on the roads heading east past Falaise.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise – Operation Tractable – which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed there with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were re-fitting and rebuilt after the summer 1944 battles. The Panzer Brigades had green crews with little time to train, did not know their tanks properly, had no recon elements and didn't even meet their unit commander until his arrival at the front. These were not elite forces.
The 17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, equipped only with assault guns not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy and not up to strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the best German divisions in the west were NOT.
♦ Who did the 3rd Army engage?
♦ Who did the 3rd Army defeat?
♦ Patton never once faced a full strength Waffen SS panzer division nor a Tiger battalion.
In The Lorraine, the 3rd Army faced a rabble. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said:
"I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Patton was mostly facing a second rate rabble in The Lorraine.
Patton was neither on the advance nor being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. The road from Luxembourg to Bastogne saw few German forces, with Bastogne being on the very southern German flank, their focus was west. Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was not one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, while 26th Volks-Grenadier only had about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind only had a small number of tanks operational. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1.
Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Leading elements were engaging the Americans and British under Montgomery's command near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance and pushed them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons opened up with the American attack stopping and pulling back. The next day fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B retreating once again. It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. Patton's forces arrived at Chaumont late on the 22nd December. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day, the 25th! Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, just 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne.
In Normandy in 1944, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact. This eastern dash devoid of German forces was the ride the US media claimed Patton was some sort master of fast moving armour.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates.
♦ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics Bradley's II Corps were employing
♦ He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division, Truscott of being "afraid to fight".
♦ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps. ♦ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize stalled he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being "very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect".
♦ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in reporting their losses.
After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF. Coningham, gave Patton massive ground attack plane support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall. Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault, including his subordinates. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated. Oh, and wore cowboy guns.
Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his orders, and Eisenhower's orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read:
Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds and
Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies by Harry Yeide
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If I recall, an armoured bulldozer was available, which could just push away the light skinned vehicle wreckage on the bridge.
You also have to take into account that the Germans were in a panic retreat from Normandy, being very disorganized and demoralised. Thousands of Allied troops had just dropped in on them. They would be expecting the feared fighter-bombers, which were rarely were seen, but they would not think that. It would be viewed as they are at our heels again, shoot then keep running.
The Germans in Arnhem could see XXX Corps tanks, and troops, entering the town via the bridge and with paras to the west of the town and the paras already at the bridge. They would not stand and fight to the last man for sure. They would pull back and then attempt the usual, and predictable, counter-attack. BY trnhem coudl be in British hands.
A big fight on the outers of the town for sure, but by then the fighter-bombers could be active as the skies lifted. Student said it failed because of bad weather.
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By Chester Graham. Liaison officer between the 508th and the 82nd Division Headquarters.
During the Holland operation, I was the liaison officer between the 508th and the 82nd Division Headquarters. I first became the Regimental Liaison Officer after we returned to Nottingham from the Normandy operation.
This assignment as Regimental Liaison Officer was a most enjoyable and interesting duty. I spent the nights with the Division, and each morning, I picked up reports and left in my jeep with my driver for Regimental Headquarters to pass the reports to the Regimental staff.
While at Division, I visited with various staff members and helped out in the G3 Section, and at the end of the day I returned to Regimental Headquarters with reports from Division. I saw places I would never have seen if I just stayed in the regimental area, and I met some very interesting people at the higher echelon. I knew all of the division staff and the other regimental commanders, and was included in the planning of operations and briefings. I was ‘bigoted.’ [This is a WWII military term for being read into/briefed on missions.]
Prior to the Holland jump, I sat in 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.
After we were dropped in Holland, 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 (drop zone) is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.” So I went cross-country through Indian country [slang military term for enemy territory] 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 to, “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. The Germans are coming”
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@gasmonkey1000
Patton was an average US general, no more, after WW2 most German generals had never heard of him. A US media creation, elevating the average beyond their status.
_"The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer.
Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian First Army HQ for the same purpose._Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
In Normandy, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton who came in late in Normandy, faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role.
Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact. This eastern dash devoid of German forces was the ride the US media claimed Patton was some sort of master of fast moving armour.
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed in The Lorraine with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were re-fitting and rebuilt after the Normandy battles. The Panzer Brigades had green crews with little time to train, unfamiliar with their tanks, had no recon elements only meeting their unit commander on his arrival at the front.
These were not elite forces. The 17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, equipped only with assault guns not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy being below strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine. In The Lorraine, the Third Army faced a rabble full of eyes and ears units. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said:_"I have never been in command of such irregularly_ assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Patton failed to reach the Westwall.
Patton was not advancing or being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. Bastogne was on the very southern German flank, their focus being west. The strategic significance of the stand at Bastogne, is over exaggerated. The 18,000 did not change the course of the battle. The German's bypassed Bastogne, placing a containment force around the town.
Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory, with the road from Luxembourg to Bastogne having few German forces. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was far from being one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, 26th Volks-Grenadier having about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind with a small number of operational tanks. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne.
Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1. Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance pushing them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons stopped the American attack who pulled back. The next day, fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B again retreating. It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day. Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne. After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF, who gave Patton massive ground attack support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall. US historian Roger Cirillo said, "Patton launched attack, after attack, after attack, after attack, that failed. Because he never waited to concentrate".
The 18,000 men in Bastogne pretty well walked out, even the commander of the US 101st stated that. The Germans had vacated the area heading west.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the weakest German divisions in the west where.
1) Who did the 3rd Army engage?
2) Who did the 3rd Army defeat?
3) Patton never once faced a full strength premier Waffen SS panzer division nor a Tiger battalion.
4) Patton was not at E Alamein, D-Day or the main area of the Bulge.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates:
i) In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics Bradley's II Corps were employing;
ii) He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division, Truscott of being "afraid to fight";
iii) In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps;
iv) When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize stalled, he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being "very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect";
v) He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in reporting their losses;
Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated, had incestual relationships and wore cowboy guns. Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his and Eisenhower's orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read:
Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds and_Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies_ by Harry Yeide
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@LostMyMojo100
I would say read my posts on this vid.
US author & historian Harry Yeide wrote that few Germans had ever heard of him when interviewed after WW2. Do not get your history from Hollywood and bad History Channel documentaries.
I have read many books on Patton and not found anything exceptional that Patton did. I have read a lot of poor generalship though. A US media creation as they needed a hero to film and write about - they never had one, so made one up.
1985 US Army report on the Lorraine Campaign.
Patton does not come out well at all.
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a211668.pdf
Combat Studies Institute.
The Lorraine Campaign: An Overview, September-December 1944
by Dr. Christopher R. Gabel. February, 1985
From the document is in italics:
Soldiers and generals alike assumed that Lorraine would fall quickly, and unless the war ended first, Patton's tanks would take the war into Germany by summer's end. But Lorraine was not to be overrun in a lightning campaign. Instead, the battle for Lorraine would drag on for more than 3 months." "Despite its proximity to Germany, Lorraine was not the Allies' preferred invasion route in 1944. Except for its two principal cities, Metz and Nancy, the province contained few significant military objectives." "Moreover, once Third Army penetrated the province and entered Germany, there would still be no first-rate military objectives within its grasp.
The Saar industrial region, while significant, was of secondary importance when compared to the great Ruhr industrial complex farther north."
Another Patton chase into un-needed territory, full of vineyards like he did when running his troops into Brittany.
"With so little going for it, why did Patton bother with Lorraine at all? The reason was that Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, made up his mind to destroy as many German forces as possible west of the Rhine."
In other words the broad front strategy was a waste of time.
"Communications Zone organized the famous Red Ball Express, a non-stop conveyor belt of trucks connecting the Normandy depots with the field armies."
They were getting fuel via 6,000 trucks.
"The simple truth was that although fuel was plentiful in Normandy, there was no way to transport it in sufficient quantities to the leading elements. On 31 August , Third Army received no fuel at all."
In short, Patton overran his supply lines. What was important was to secure the Port of Antwerp's approaches, which Eisenhower deprioritised. Montgomery approached the US leaders of the First Airborne Army who would not drop into the Scheldt.
"Few of the Germans defending Lorraine could be considered First-rate troops. Third Army encountered whole battalions made up of deaf men, others of cooks, and others consisting entirety of soldiers with stomach ulcers."
Some army the Americans were going to fight
"Was the Lorraine campaign an American victory? From September through November, Third Army claimed to have inflicted over 180,000 casualties on the enemy. But to capture the province of Lorraine, a problem which involved an advance of only 40 to 60 air miles, Third Army required over 3 months and suffered 50,000 casualties, approximately one-third of the total number of casualties it sustained in the entire European war."
The US Army does not think it was a victory. Huge losses for taking unimportant territory, against a poor German army.
"Ironically, Third Army never used Lorraine as a springboard for an advance into Germany after all. Patton turned most of the sector over to Seventh Army during the Ardennes crisis, and when the eastward advance resumed after the Battle of the Bulge, Third Army based its operations on Luxembourg, not Lorraine. The Lorraine campaign will always remain a controversial episode in American military history."
It's getting worse. One third of all European casualties in Lorraine and never used the territory to move into Germany.
"Finally the Lorraine Campaign demonstrated that Logistics often drive operations, no matter how forceful and aggressive the commanding general may be." "Patton violated tactical principles" "His discovered that violating logistical principles is an unforgiving and cumulative matter."
Not flattering at all. And Americans state Patton was the best general they had. Bradley stated later:
“Patton was developing as an unpopular guy. He steamed about with great convoys of cars and great squads of cameramen … To George, tactics was simply a process of bulling ahead. Never seemed to think out a campaign. Seldom made a careful estimate of the situation. I thought him a shallow commander … I disliked the way he worked, upset tactical plans, interfered in my orders. His stubbornness on amphibious operations, parade plans into Messina sickened me and soured me on Patton. We learned how not to behave from Patton’s Seventh Army.”
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@nspr9721
Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower approved, under resourcing the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak". The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself.
XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.
Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time Monty had the Canadians cleared it, or were investing in many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@thomassenbart
What US historian Harry Yeide wrote of what the Germans thought of Patton:
♦ for most of the war the Germans barely took notice [of Patton].
♦ on March 23 at the Battle of El Guettar—the first American victory against the experienced Germans. Patton’s momentum, however, was short-lived: Axis troops held him to virtually no gain until April 7, when they withdrew under threat from British Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army.
♦ There is no indication in the surviving German military records—which include intelligence reports at the theater, army, and division levels—that Patton’s enemies had any idea who he was at the time. Likewise, the immediate postwar accounts of the German commanders in Tunisia, written for the U.S. Army’s History Division, ignore Patton. Those reports show that ground commanders considered II Corps’s attacks under Patton to have been hesitant, and to have missed great opportunities.
♦ In mid-June [1943], another detachment report described Patton as “an energetic and responsibility-loving command personality”—a passing comment on one of the numerous Allied commanders. Patton simply had not yet done anything particularly noteworthy in their eyes.
♦ But his race to Palermo through country they had already abandoned left the commanders unimpressed. Major General Eberhard Rodt, who led the 15th Panzergrenadier Division against Patton’s troops during the Allied push toward Messina, thought the American Seventh Army fought hesitantly and predictably. He wrote in an immediate postwar report on Sicily, “The enemy very often conducted his movements systematically, and only attacked after a heavy artillery preparation when he believed he had broken our resistance. This kept him regularly from exploiting the weakness of our situation and gave me the opportunity to consolidate dangerous situations.” Once again, Patton finished a campaign without impressing his opponents.
♦ General Hermann Balck, who took command of Army Group G in September, thus did not think highly of Patton—or any other opposing commanders—during this time. Balck wrote to his commander, Runstedt, on October 10, “I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans” Looking back on his battles against Patton throughout the autumn, in 1979 Balck recalled, “Within my zone, the Americans never once exploited a success. Often [General Friedrich Wilhelm von] Mellenthin, my chief of staff, and I would stand in front of the map and say, ‘Patton is helping us; he failed to exploit another success.’”
♦ The commander of the Fifth Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel, aimed a dismissive, indirect critique at Patton’s efforts at Bastogne, writing in his memoirs that the Americans did not “strike with full élan.” The commanders who fought against Patton in his last two mobile campaigns in the Saar-Palatinate and east of the Rhine already knew they could not win; their losses from this point forward were inevitable, regardless of the commanding Allied opponent.
♦ the Germans offered Patton faint praise during and immediately after the war.
♦ posterity deserves fact and not myth. The Germans did not track Patton’s movements as the key to Allied intentions. Hitler does not appear to have thought often of Patton, if at all. The Germans considered Patton a hesitant commanding general in the scrum of position warfare. They never raised his name in the context of worthy strategists.
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@thomassenbart
Patton was an average US general, no more, after WW2 most German generals had never heard of him. The US never had a top general, not one. The US had some decent corps commanders like Collins. Eisenhower had to run to Montgomery to command two US armies in the German Bulge attack. The US needed a hero for home consumption, so made one up. Patton encouraged film crews and reporter, accommodating them and having them follow him.
The British are amazed at the hero worship of Patton - a general who did not do much at all as facts prove. He was a US media creation, elevating the average beyond their status.
"The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian First Army HQ for the same purpose.
Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
In Normandy, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton who came in late in Normandy, faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact.This eastern dash devoid of German forces was the ride the US media claimed Patton was some sort of master of fast moving armour.
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed in The Lorraine with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were re-fitting and rebuilt after the Normandy battles. The Panzer Brigades had green crews with little time to train, unfamiliar with their tanks, had no recon elements only meeting their unit commander on his arrival at the front. These were not elite forces. The 17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, equipped only with assault guns not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy being below strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine.
In The Lorraine, the Third Army faced a rabble full of eyes and ears units. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said:_"I have never been in command of such irregularly_ assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Patton failed to reach the Westwall.
Patton was not advancing or being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. Bastogne was on the very southern German left flank, their focus being west.
The strategic significance of the stand at Bastogne, is over exaggerated. The 18,000 did not change the course of the battle. The German's bypassed Bastogne, placing a containment force around the town.
Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory, with the road from Luxembourg to Bastogne having few German forces. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was far from being one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, 26th Volks-Grenadier having about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind with a small number of operational tanks. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne.
Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1. Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance pushing them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons stopped the American attack who pulled back. The next day, fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B again retreating. It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day. Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne. After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF, who gave Patton massive ground attack support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall.
The 18,000 men in Bastogne pretty well walked out, even the commander of the US 101st stated that. The Germans had vacated the area heading west.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the weakest German divisions in the west where.
* Who did the 3rd Army engage?
* Who did the 3rd Army defeat?
* Patton never once faced a full strength premier Waffen SS panzer division nor a Tiger battalion.
* Patton was not at E Alamein, D-Day or the main area of the Bulge.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates:
* In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics Bradley's II Corps were employing;
* He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division, Truscott of being "afraid to fight";
* In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps;
* When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize stalled, he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being "very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect";
* He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in reporting their losses;
Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated, had incestual relationships and wore cowboy guns. Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his and Eisenhower's orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read:
Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds and_Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies_ by Harry Yeide
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@thomassenbart
You never read what I posted. What Harry Yeide wrote:
The Germans considered Patton a hesitant commanding general in the scrum of position warfare. They never raised his name in the context of worthy strategists.
The opposite of what you claim.
Patton couldn't even take Metz for months. And that had nothing to do with lack of supplies, as this 1985 US Army report explains in great detail.
1985 US Army report on the Lorraine Campaign.
Patton does not come out well at all.
Combat Studies Institute.
The Lorraine Campaign: An Overview, September-December 1944.
by Dr. Christopher R. Gabel February, 1985
From the document is in italics:
Soldiers and generals alike assumed that Lorraine would fall quickly, and unless the war ended first, Patton's tanks would take the war into Germany by summer's end. But Lorraine was not to be overrun in a lightning campaign. Instead, the battle for Lorraine would drag on for more than 3 months." "Despite its proximity to Germany, Lorraine was not the Allies' preferred invasion route in 1944. Except for its two principal cities, Metz and Nancy, the province contained few significant military objectives." "Moreover, once Third Army penetrated the province and entered Germany, there would still be no first-rate military objectives within its grasp.
The Saar industrial region, while significant, was of secondary importance when compared to the great Ruhr industrial complex farther north."
Another Patton chase into un-needed territory, full of vineyards.
"With so little going for it, why did Patton bother with Lorraine at all? The reason was that Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, made up his mind to destroy as many German forces as possible west of the Rhine."
In other words a waste of time.
"Communications Zone organized the famous Red Ball Express, a non-stop conveyor belt of trucks connecting the Normandy depots with the field armies."
They were getting fuel via 6,000 trucks.
"The simple truth was that although fuel was plentiful in Normandy, there was no way to transport it in sufficient quantities to the leading elements. On 31 August , Third Army received no fuel at all."
In short, Patton overran his supply lines. What was important was to secure the Port of Antwerp's approaches, which Eisenhower de-prioritised. Montgomery approached the US leader of the First Allied Airborne Army, who refused to drop into the Scheldt.
"Few of the Germans defending Lorraine could be considered First-rate troops. Third Army encountered whole battalions made up of deaf men, others of cooks, and others consisting entirety of soldiers with stomach ulcers."
Some army Patton was going to fight
"Was the Lorraine campaign an American victory? From September through November, Third Army claimed to have inflicted over 180,000 casualties on the enemy. But to capture the province of Lorraine, a problem which involved an advance of only 40 to 60 air miles, Third Army required over 3 months and suffered 50,000 casualties, approximately one-third of the total number of casualties it sustained in the entire European war."
The US Army does not think it was a victory. Huge losses for taking unimportant territory, against a poor German army.
"Ironically, Third Army never used Lorraine as a springboard for an advance into Germany after all. Patton turned most of the sector over to Seventh Army during the Ardennes crisis, and when the eastward advance resumed after the Battle of the Bulge, Third Army based its operations on Luxembourg, not Lorraine. The Lorraine campaign will always remain a controversial episode in American military history."
It's getting worse. One third of all European casualties in Lorraine and never used the territory to move into Germany.
"Finally the Lorraine Campaign demonstrated that Logistics often drive operations, no matter how forceful and aggressive the commanding general may be." "Patton violated tactical principles" "His discovered that violating logistical principles is an unforgiving and cumulative matter."
Not flattering at all. And Americans state Patton was the best general they had. Bradley stated later:
“Patton was developing as an unpopular guy. He steamed about with great convoys of cars and great squads of cameramen … To George, tactics was simply a process of bulling ahead. Never seemed to think out a campaign. Seldom made a careful estimate of the situation. I thought him a shallow commander … I disliked the way he worked, upset tactical plans, interfered in my orders. His stubbornness on amphibious operations, parade plans into Messina sickened me and soured me on Patton. We learned how not to behave from Patton’s Seventh Army.”
On 5 November 1944 Patton told Bradley he would be over the Westwall in three days. He failed to get over the Westwall in Saar/Lorraine.
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@FromPovertyToProgress
If Monty was left in command of ground forces it would have been over by Xmas.
General Bodo Zimmermann, Chief of Operations, German Army Group D, said that had the strategy of Montgomery succeeded in the autumn of 1944, there would have been no need to fight for the West Wall, not for the central and upper Rhine, all of 24 which would have fallen automatically.
Indeed, had Monty's idea for a 40 division concentrated thrust towards the Ruhr been accepted by Eisenhower instead of messing about in the Lorraine, Alsace, Vosges etc, it would have all been over for the Germans in the west.
"The best course of the Allies would have been to concentrate a really strong striking force with which to break through past Aachen to the Ruhr area. Germany's strength is in the north. South Germany was a side issue. He who holds northern Germany holds Germany. Such a break-through, coupled with air domination, would have torn in pieces the weak German front and ended the war. Berlin and Prague would have been occupied ahead of the Russians. There were no German forces behind the Rhine, and at the end of August our front was wide open. There was the possibility of an operational break-through in the Aachen area, in September. This would have facilitated a rapid conquest of the Ruhr and a quicker advance on Berlin.
By turning the forces from the Aachen area sharply northward, the German 15th and1st Parachute Armies could have been pinned against the estuaries of the Mass and the Rhine. They could not have escaped eastwards into Germany."- Gunther Blumentritt in, The Other Side Of The Hill by Liddell Hart
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You are wrong on most points.
Just one.....
“Patton finally began receiving adequate supplies on September 4, after a week’s excruciating pause”
- Harry Yeide
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp. In thinking this Ike was wrong."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
“ It was commonly believed at Third Army H.Q. that Montgomery's advance through Belgium was largely maintained by supplies diverted from Patton. (See Butcher, op. cit., p. 667.) This is not true. The amount delivered by the ' air-lift ' was sufficient to maintain only one division. No road transport was diverted to aid Montgomery until September 16th. On the other hand, three British transport companies, lent to the Americans on August 6th " for eight days," were not returned until September 4th.' “
- CHESTER WILMOT
THE STRUGGLE FOR EUROPE. 1954
P 589
"Despite objections raised to Montgomery's plan of an assault on a 40 division front, it was more sensible than Eisenhower's insistence on the entire front being in motion at all times, for no better reason than he could not abide the thought that the two American army groups would not participate as entities in the anticipated victory. Not only did Eisenhower fail to heed Montgomery's suggestions, but also he never seemed to understand the possible benefits. He was evidently unable to understand that to supply 40 divisions attacking on one front would have been an easier task than to supply first one army and then the other as each in turn went over to the offensive. It was this concentration of effort which Eisenhower failed to understand and to implement"
- Eisenhower at the Art of Warfare
by DJ Haycock, page 182.
Land supplies were not taken from Patton and given to Monty. It is a complete myth to claim otherwise. Monty didn't even have a full army for his attack at Market Garden, just a Corps and supporting elements, with much flow in from England.
Market Garden was not a very large ground operation. It was limited in size. The American attack into the Hurtgen Forest started when Market Garden was going on. The US advance on the Hurtgen Forest by First US Army 9th Infantry Division began on 14th September, 3 days before Market Garden began, and was continuing to try and advance into the Hurtgen even when Market Garden began 3 days later, but it was halted by the Germans however.
This was soon followed up by a larger advance by US First Army towards Aachen at the start of October. Market Garden didn't make a notable dent in allied supplies seeing as the US was able to put on a LARGER ground attack right afterwards. According to Bradley in his own book there was parity of supplies between the three allied armies, Second British, First and Third US by mid September 1944 and according to the official US Army History as cited in Hugh Cole's book, The Lorraine Campaign page 52... "by 10th September the period of critical (gasoline) shortage had ended". This was a whole week before Market Garden took place. The gasoline drought was the end of August/beginning of September. It was over by the time of Market Garden.
As far as Montgomery, Patton and all that stuff goes, USA media has sold you a pup and their version of events continues to unravel as the years go by. It ain't like Ben Affleck, Ronald Reagan, Steven Spielberg and John Wayne told it.
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"The 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Shields Warren, was charged with taking the road bridge over the Waal at Nijmegen: a prime task of Operation Market was being entrusted here to just one battalion from an entire division. According to the US Official History, there was some dispute over exactly when the 1st Battalion should go for the bridge. General Gavin was to claim later that the battalion was to ‘go for the bridge without delay’. However, Colonel Lindquist, the 508th Regimental commander, understood that Warren’s battalion was not to go for the bridge until the other regimental objectives — securing the Groesbeek Ridge and the nearby glider LZs, had been achieved: General Gavin’s operational orders confirm Warren’s version. Warren’s initial objective was ground near De Ploeg, a suburb of Nijmegen, which he was to take and organise for defence: only then was he to ‘prepare to go into Nijmegen later’ and these initial tasks took Lieutenant Colonel Warren most of the day. It was not until 1830hrs that he was able to send a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small, just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a radio — say forty men."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
This was all on D-Day. The landing zones were clear by 1410 hrs with troops ready to roll. Forty men out of 3,000? A disgrace. Browning was expecting the bridge to have been taken immediately. So, Browning was guilty of believing Gavin about the 1,000 tanks, but not in failing to seize the bridge immediately on the 1st day, as he was setting up the HQ and unable communicate with three generals on the ground in the operation. That vital error was all down to Gavin and only Gavin.
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Paragraph from a letter to Eisenhower in March 1945 (letter below). All too late:
"Tank, Medium: The M4A3E8 has comparable speed and manoeuvrability to any German tank. The 76-mm gun is reasonably satisfactory, provided sufficient HVAP ammunition were available. If it were possible to design and substitute a long barrel piece with muzzle brake and approximately 3400-3500 feet per second muzzle velocity, similar to the German 75-mm HV tank gun, this tank would be equal to anything our enemies have to offer."
The E8 never reached that expectation of equality in WW2. Yet, the Germans had operational tanks of this specification in 1942. The Germans were able to punch holes in Shermans while the Sherman could not even reply as it was out of range. Even if a Sherman got a hit on a big German tank it was rare it penetrated. That was the gripe of allied tankers. They wanted better than the German tanks. They knew allied industry could do it but it never.
British industry did produce the fast Comet in 1944 which was the equivalent to a Panther with the ability to knock out Panthes, Tigers and anti-tank guns at range. They also produced a better tank than the Germans in the Centurion, which was actually deployed in WW2 but never fired a shot in anger. It was in the victory parade in Berlin. The US produced the Pershing at the very end of WW2 in which a few were introduced, but far too early as it was mechanically troublesome being troublesome all its life way into the 1950s.
So the US had to make do with only one tank all through WW2, with tart ups, a tank which was outdated when introduced. The British did better with the heavily armoured Churchill, fast Cromwells and Comets, etc. And even uprated the Sherman chassis by mounting a 17-pdr gun on it. US tank crews were not so blessed as the British tankers.
--------------------------------------
A.P.O. 252
20 March 1945
Supreme Commander
Supreme Headquarters
Allied Expeditionary Force
My dear General Eisenhower:
In this letter I am setting forth my personal convictions as to the quality of our tanks and certain other items of equipment in comparison with the German, as you requested in your letter of 18 March 1945.
I have enclosed a separate document giving a digest of the opinions of officers and enlisted men who have had much experience and in whom I have great confidence. I have also included a large number of the actual statements made by them. Allowing for the traditional enthusiasm displayed by the American soldier when he is given (or takes!) the opportunity to express himself in regard to any possible shortcomings in his rations, clothing and equipment, I think they are sincere, reasonably factual, indicate considerable thought and knowledge of the subject, and above all, they are most refreshing. I have not edited them in any way and I believe they are a true cross-section of opinion of the command.
I feel that many criticisms made by tank crews would not appear had we been equipped with a larger proportion of M4A3E8 tanks for Operation “Grenade.” Only two or three tanks of this type actually saw combat. During this operation only twenty-nine percent of our medium tanks mounted 76-mm guns, and only four rounds of HVAP ammunition per 76-mm gun was available. Incidentally, rounds of this type expended in this operation have not been replaced. However, the 76-mm gun, even with HVAP ammunition, is not effective at the required ranges at which we must be able to effectively engage enemy armor.
The following are my personal convictions pertaining to the items listed:
Ordnance Equipment
The major items of ordnance equipment are sound in design from a mechanical standpoint, particularly with the changes in suspension of the M24 light tank and M4A3E8 and M26 medium tanks. Any increase in armor plate thickness would decrease speed and maneuverability and it is felt that these highly desirable characteristics should not be sacrificed. The main armament of our tanks, including sights, is not comparable to that of the Germans.
Tank, Light: The M5 light tank should be replaced with the M24 light tank as soon as possible. The latter is a highly satisfactory tank in every respect. Every effort should be made to improve the gun, sights and ammunition. The M5 light tank is obsolete in every respect as a fighting tank.
Tank, Medium: The M4A3E8 has comparable speed and maneuverability to any German tank. The 76-mm gun is reasonably satisfactory, provided sufficient HVAP ammunition were available. If it were possible to design and substitute a long barrel piece with muzzle brake and approximately 3400-3500 feet per second muzzle velocity, similar to the German 75-mm HV tank gun, this tank would be equal to anything our enemies have to offer.
The M26 medium tank has not as yet been issued to this division and consequently no comments can be made. Experience with the M36 tank destroyer with 90-mm gun indicates that this should be a highly effective tank when HVAP ammunition becomes available. Its issue to this division is eagerly awaited.
Tank Destroyer, M36: Has not lived up to expectations, but when HVAP ammunition becomes available it is hoped that it will be more effective. Fighting compartment precludes efficient service of the piece and available ammunition is not effective at required long range.
M4A3E8 Assault Tank with 105-mm Howitzer: An ideal weapon for purpose for which designed. Turret should have power traverse.
…
The most important point, and upon which there is universal agreement, is our lack of a tank gun and anti-tank gun with which we can effectively engage enemy armor at the required range. The correction of this deficiency has made progress, but the problem has not as yet been satisfactorily solved.
I would like to express my sincere appreciation for this opportunity to write you informally on these matters which are of such immediate concern and importance.
Sincerely yours,
[signed]
Isaac D. White""
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If the Germans circled the Mediterranean, controlling the Suez Canal, they would have won. They aimed to meet up with the Japanese. There would be no barrier to that. BTW, over 30 U-Boats operated from the Japanese base in Penang, indicating this link up was serious. Look up the German Mesopotamia plan. Scarce oil would not be a problem to them once in the Middle East. The British deprived Germany and Italy of oil. In 1942 the Germans concentrated on the south of the USSR to get the oil.
Prof Adam Tooze:
"By February
1941, the Italian navy was threatening to halt its operations in the Mediterranean altogether unless Germany supplied at least 250,000 tons of fuel. And the problems were by no means confined to the Reich's satellites. Germany itself coped only by dint of extreme economy. In late May 1941, General Adolf von Schell, the man responsible for the motor vehicle industry, seriously suggested that in light of the chronic shortage of oil it would be advisable to carry out a partial 'demotorization' of the Wehrmacht."
Prof Adam Tooze:
"In
fact, however, tank production by the end of the war comfortably exceeded the quantities specified in the army's Mesopotamian fantasy. And this increase in production was only possible because the army's post-Barbarossa planning did not remain on paper. In 1941 hundreds of millions of Reichsmarks were invested in the tank industry. In Kassel, Henschel & Sohn added almost a hundred thousand square metres of new floor space. A gigantic new plant, the Nibelungen works, was opened at Sankt Valentin, Austria, and two new factories - Vomag at Plauen and the Maschinenfabrik Niedersachsen - were converted to tank production."
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The application of a constant speed generator (range extender) is ideal for a Scotch Yolk. As a range extender, the engine by nature will be a part time engine, giving longevity. The problem with a Scotch Yolk is the lubrication of the yolk at high revs and varying speeds. This problem can be eliminated using it at a constant speed, with revs as low as can be. Lower constant revving is possible as the engine generates more torque at lower revs.
A lot of oil is lost from the yolk bearing to the sump pan, as oil drops from the yolk bearing to the bottom of the engine, compared to traditional big end bearings, so a larger pan of oil may be needed. Unlike traditional big end bearings where a small amount of oil gathers in the bottom of the bearing when the engine is off ready for turning over the engine, no oil gathers in the Scotch Yolk's sliding bearings. The oil pressure may need to be primed, with a small electric priming pump, before the engine turns over, to get sufficient oil to the yolk bearing before movement.
This gives a small light package for fitting in out of the way locations in vehicles. The only other engine of this size and weight will be the new Wankel engine being used as a constant speed range extender in the new Mazda MX-30
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The Americans have been brainwashed that Patton was some wonder general as they had no outstanding high command generals. They were poor. Patton was an average US general, like Simpson, Patch, Hodges, etc. No more.
"The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian First Army HQ for the same purpose.
Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation.
"This advance duly began at 0630hrs on August 18 which, as the Canadian Official History remarks,16 ‘was a day and a half after Montgomery had issued the order for the Canadians to close the gap at Trun, and four and a half days after Patton had been stopped at the Third Army boundary’. During that time, says the Canadian History, the Canadians had been ‘fighting down from the north with painful slowness’ and the Germans had been making their way east through the Falaise gap. They were not, however, unimpeded; the tactical air forces and Allied artillery were already taking a fearful toll of the German columns on the roads heading east past Falaise.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise – Operation Tractable – which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed there with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were re-fitting and rebuilt after the summer 1944 battles.
The Panzer Brigades had green crews with little time to train, did not know their tanks properly, had no recon elements and didn't even meet their unit commander until his arrival at the front. These were not elite forces.
17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, equipped only with assault guns not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy and not up to strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the best German divisions in the west were NOT.
♦ Who did the 3rd Army engage?
♦ Who did the 3rd Army defeat?
♦ Patton never once faced a full strength
Waffen SS panzer division nor a
Tiger battalion.
In The Lorraine, the 3rd Army faced a rabble. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said:
"I have never been in command of such irregularly
assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that
we have been able to straighten out the situation
again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating
command of the Americans."
Patton was mostly facing a second rate rabble in The Lorraine.
Patton was neither on the advance nor being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. The road from Luxembourg to Bastogne saw few German forces, with Bastogne being on the very southern German flank, their focus was west. Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was not one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, while 26th Volks-Grenadier only had about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind only had a small number of tanks operational. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1.
Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Leading elements were engaging the Americans and British under Montgomery's command near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance and pushed them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons opened up with the American attack stopping and pulling back. The next day fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B retreating once again. It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. Patton's forces arrived at Chaumont late on the 22nd December. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day, the 25th! Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, just 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne.
In Normandy in 1944, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact. This eastern dash devoid of German forces was the ride the US media claimed Patton was some sort master of fast moving armour.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates.
♦ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics
Bradley's II Corps were employing
♦ He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division,
Truscott of being "afraid to fight".
♦ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the
US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps.
♦ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize
stalled he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being
"very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect".
♦ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in
reporting their losses.
After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF. Coningham, gave Patton massive ground attack plane support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall. Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault, including his subordinates. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated. Oh, and wore cowboy guns.
Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his orders, and Eisenhowers orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read: Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds and
Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies by Harry Yeide
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@johnremaklus1137
Eisenhower should have gone. He was a colonel only a few years previously. An amateur, in a professional game.
Below is Monty's letter to Ike requesting he is reinstated as all ground armies commander, as the US generals were incompetent, as the Bulge proved.
The next day, 29th December, I sent Eisenhower the following letter:
My dear Ike, It was very pleasant to see you again yesterday and to have a talk on the battle situation.
2. I would like to refer to the matter of operational control of all forces engaged in the northern thrust towards the Ruhr, i.e. 12 and 21 Army Groups.
I think we want to be careful, because we have had one very definite failure when we tried to produce a formula that would meet this case; that was the formula produced in SHAEF FWD 15510 dated 23-9-44, which formula very definitely did not work.
3. When you and Bradley and myself met at Maastricht on 7 December, it was very clear to me that Bradley opposed any idea that I should have operational control over his Army Group; so I did not then pursue the subject. I therefore consider that it will be necessary for you to be very firm on the subject, and any loosely worded statement will be quite useless.
4. I consider that if you merely use the word ‘co-ordination’ it will not work. The person designated by you must have powers of operational direction and control of the operations that will follow on your directive.
5. I would say that your directive will assign tasks and objectives to the two Army Groups, allot boundaries, and so on. Thereafter preparations are made and battle is joined. It is then that one commander must have powers to direct and control the operations; you cannot possibly do it yourself, and so you would have to nominate someone else.
6. I suggest that your directive should finish with this sentence: ‘12 and 21 Army Groups will develop operations in accordance with the above instructions. From now onwards full operational direction, control, and co-ordination of these operations is vested in the C.-in-C. 21 Army Group, subject to such instructions as may be issued by the Supreme Commander from time to time’
7. I put this matter up to you again only because I am so anxious not to have another failure. I am absolutely convinced that the key to success lies in:
(a) all available offensive power being assigned to the northern line of advance to the Ruhr;
(b) a sound set-up for command, and this implies one man directing and controlling the whole tactical battle on the northern thrust. I am certain that if we do not comply with these two basic conditions, then we will fail again.
8. I would be grateful if you would not mention to Bradley the point I have referred to in para. 3. I would not like him to think that I remembered that point and had brought it up.
Yours always, and your very devoted friend Monty”
-Montgomery of Alamein. Memoirs of Field-Marshal Montgomery
The failure was the Bulge, when German forces pounded into US armies, with the US First and Ninth armies put under Montgomery. Parts of the USAAF was put under RAF command.
.
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@johnremaklus1137
I quoted reputable authors. Patton pissed off from Falaise to Paris on a jolly to Paris leaving the rest to do the fighting, as Ellis pointed out. He should have moved to shut off the retreating Germans at the Seine, but went on a joy ride to Paris and photo shoots. These Germans fought again against the allies at Market Garden and the Bulge. Monty was in charge of all armies. The responsibility of Falaise initially went to the head of the 12th army group, Bradley.
The U.S. Army Official History - Martin Blumenson's "Breakout and Pursuit" - attributes the decision not to close the gap to Bradley. Thus the title of the section is BRADLEY'S DECISION (pp. 506-509). He states directly: "Montgomery did not prohibit American advance beyond the boundary." And on page 509: "Bradley himself made the decision to halt." You will note that in Bradley's memoir "A Soldier's Story" he says on page 377, "Monty had never prohibited and I never proposed that U.S. forces close the gap from Argentan to Falaise." He gives a number of reasons for not pushing north from Argentan, but Monty forbidding it is not one of them. In "A General's Life" Bradley writes, "Montgomery had no part in the decision; it was mine and mine alone. Some writers have suggested that I appealed to Monty to move the boundary north to Falaise and he refused, but, of course, that is not true... I was determined to hold Patton at Argentan and had no cause to ask Monty to shift the boundary."
The British Official History (L. F. Ellis, Victory in the West, Vol. 1) attributes the decision to Bradley on page 429. Nigel Hamilton, Monty's official biographer, states in The War Years that the decision was Bradley's. Furthermore, Dempsey's diary record of his meeting with Monty and Bradley proves there was certainly no plot to deny Patton glory, since Dempsey specifically recorded: "So long as the Northward move of Third Army meets little opposition, the two leading Corps will disregard inter-Army boundaries" (p. 788).
There are plenty of secondary sources that pin the blame on Bradley. Russell Weigley, Eisenhower's Lieutenants page. 216: "Bradley, having set the stage by urging Eisenhower and Montgomery to grasp the opportunity of a short envelopment at Falaise-Argentan, failed to persist in completing his own design. He abandoned the short envelopment before its potential was achieved, and meanwhile he had delayed the long envelopment at the Seine." Peter Mansoor, The GI Offensive in Europe p. 171: "Bradley was slow to concentrate sufficient force to close the Falaise Gap from the south when he had the opportunity to do so." Robin Neillands, The Battle of Normandy 1944 p. 358: "Bradley's memoirs and the British Official History make it abundantly clear this decision was Bradley's." There are many more sources where these came from.
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@johnremaklus1137
No another Yankee idiot. They breed them.
Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust over other fronts and even seizing Antwerp and clearing the Schedlt. Clearing the Scheldt would take time as the German 15th SS army, highly experienced from the Russian front, had set up shop in the Scheldt and not retreated back into Germany, under Hitler's orders. All available supplies would be directed to this northern thrust.
"Since Eisenhower — the Supreme Commander and Ground Force Commander — approved the Arnhem operation rather than a push to clear the Scheldt, then surely he was right, as well as noble, to accept the responsibility and any resulting blame? The choice in early September was the Rhine or Antwerp: to continue the pursuit or secure the necessary facilities to solve the logistical problem? The decision was made to go for the Rhine, and that decision was Eisenhower’s."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"On 4 Sept, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr"
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen to British troops when he issued the northern thrust directive. Montgomery wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive, devising Operation Comet, multiple crossings of the Rhine, to be launched on 2 Sept, being cancelled due to German resistance and poor weather. Operation Comet was not presented to Eisenhower for his approval. Montgomery asked Brereton, an American, of the First Allied Airborne Army, to drop into the Scheldt in early September - he refused.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 Sept had divisions of the US 1st Army and Montgomery's view of taking multiple bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. The British 2nd Army needed some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow). Hodges' would protect the right flank. the Canadians would protect the left flank from the German 15th army.
"the narrow thrust was reduced to the Second Army and two US corps, the XIX and VII of Hodges’ First Army, a total of around eighteen Allied divisions"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
The northern thrust was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944."
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower’s reply of 5 September to Montgomery deserves analysis, not least the part that concerns logistics. The interesting point is that Eisenhower apparently believes that it is possible to cross the Rhine and take both the Ruhr and the Saar — and open the Scheldt — using the existing logistical resources."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp. In thinking this Ike was wrong."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Post-Normandy Bradley seemed unable to control Patton, who persistently flouted Eisenhower’s directives and went his own way, aided and abetted by Bradley. This part of their relationship quickly revealed itself in matters of supply, where Hodges, the commander of the US First Army, was continually starved of fuel and ammunition in order to keep Patton’s divisions rolling, even when Eisenhower’s strategy required First Army to play the major role in 12th Army Group’s activities."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again, and being bogged down - again. The resources starved First Army could not be a part of northern thrust as Bradley and Patton, against Eisenhower's orders, were syphoning off supplies destined for the First army. This northern thrust over the Rhine, as Eisenhower envisaged, obviously would not work as he thought. A lesser operation was devised by Montgomery, Market Garden, eliminating the divisions of US First Army, with only ONE crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London wanted eliminating ASAP, giving a 60 mile long salient buffer between German forces and the important port of Antwerp. This would only have one corps above Eindhoven, a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time. Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance. Eisenhower should have fired Bradley and Patton for sabotaging the Northern Thrust operation.
Montgomery did not plan or was in involved in Market Garden's execution. Montgomery, after fixing the operations objectives with Eisenhower to the measly forces available, gave Market Garden planning to others, mainly USAAF generals, Brereton and Williams. General Brereton, who liked the plan, agreed to it with even direct input. Brereton ordered the drops will take place during the day and Brereton oversaw the troop carrier and supply drops schedules. Williams forbid fighter-bombers to be used. A refusal by Brereton and the operation would never have gone ahead; he earlier rejected Montgomery's initial plan of a drop into the Scheldt at Walcheren Island.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time the Canadians had cleared, or were investing, many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@johnremaklus1137
The fact is the Americans were a very mediocre army, with not one general that stood out. In Normandy Monty who was in charge of all armies, assessed the US armies giving them the infantry role. If they faced mass German armour they would have been annihilated. The Brits took on the German heavy armour and destroyed 90% of it.
Patton moved 10 miles in three months in Lorraine taking 52,000 casualties against a 2nd rate army with the result being a German defensive victory. Hurtgen Forest was a defeat. The only retreat in WW2 in 1944/45 by any Allied army was the US in the Ardennes offensive, taking 100,000 casualties. Monty had to take control of the US First and Ninth armies, keeping the 9th until the end of WW2. XXX Corps advanced 60 miles in a few days in Market Garden. No other army in 1944-45 moved so fast.
Monty never suffered a reverse moving 1,000 miles through nine countries from Egypt to Denmark taking all in his path. He was a general over generals. Montgomery was by far most successful western allied commander of WW2. Monty fought more battles, took more ground and engaged more elite German divisions than any other general. Monty commanded all the Normandy ground forces, being the man the Americans ran to in the Ardennes offensive. No other general in the western allied armies possessed his experience in dealing with the Germans or his expertise.
Monty stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him.
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein
♦ March 1943 - Medenine
♦ June 1944 - Normandy
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - Holland
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge
Not on one occasion were Monty's ground armies, including US armies under his control, pushed back into a retreat by the Germans.
Eisenhower:
‘General Montgomery is a very able, dynamic type of army commander’.
Eisenhower on D-Day and Normandy:
'He got us there and he kept us there'.
General Günther Blumentritt:
‘Field Marshall Montgomery was the one general who never suffered a reverse’
Genral Hasso von Manteuffel on the Bulge:
‘The operations of the American 1st Army had developed into a series of individual holding actions. Montgomery's contribution to restoring the situation was that he turned a series of isolated actions into a coherent battle fought according to a clear and definite plan. It was his refusal to engage in premature and piecemeal counter-attacks which enabled the Americans to gather their reserves and frustrate the German attempts to extend their breakthrough’.
Patton on Monty:
'small,very alert, wonderfully conceited, and the best soldier - or so it seems - I have met in this war’.
American Major General Matt Ridgway commander of the US XVIII Airborne Corps, 17 Jan 1945
"It has been an honored privilege and a very great personal pleasure to have served, even so briefly, under your distinguished leadership [Montgomery]. To the gifted professional guidance you at once gave me, was added to your own consummate courtesy and consideration. I am deeply grateful for both. My warm and sincere good wishes will follow you and with them the hope of again serving with you in pursuit of a common goal".
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Timeline
Events on the 1st day - D day:
▪ "At 1328, the 665 men of US 82nd 1st Battalion began to fall from the sky." - R Poulussen, Lost at Nijmegen.
▪ "Forty minutes after the drop, around 1410, the 1st Battalion marched off towards their objective, De Ploeg, three miles away." - R Poulussen.
▪ "The 82nd were digging in and performing reconn in the area looking for 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald - Neillands, R. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
▪ "Colonel Warren about 1830 sent into Nijmegen a patrol consisting of a rifle platoon and the battalion intelligence section. This patrol was to make an aggressive reconnaissance, investigate reports from Dutch civilians that only eighteen Germans guarded the big bridge"- US Official history, page 163.
▪ It was not until 1830hrs that he [Warren] was able to send a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small, just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a radio — say forty men. - Neillands. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
▪ The 82nd were dug in and preparing to defend their newly constructed regimental command post, which they established at 1825. Having dug in at De Ploeg, Warren's battalion wasn't prepared to move towards Nijmegen at all. - R Poulussen.
▪ Then Colonel Lindquist "was told by General Gavin, around 1900, to move into Nijmegen." - R Poulussen.
▪Warren sent a patrol of about 40 men to reconnoiter the bridge at 1830. Three strays from the patrol captured seven of the 18 guards and their 20mm cannon who were guarding the south end of the bridge, having to let them go as no reinforcements arrived. The 508th had actually captured the south end of the largely undefended bridge. The three scouts that reached the southern end of the Nijmegen bridge about an hour before the 9th SS arrived. Joe Atkins of the patrol said:
"at the bridge, only a few German soldiers were standing around a small artillery weapon... The Germans were so surprised; the six or seven defenders of the bridge gave up without resisting. We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark and none of our other troops showed up. We decided to pull away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge." - The 508th Connection by Zig Boroughs.
That was the 9th SS arriving at 1930.
▪ Unfortunately, the patrol's radio failed to function so that Colonel Warren was to get no word from the patrol until the next morning - US Official History, page 163.
▪ Once Lindquist told Lieutenant Colonel Warren [at 1900] that his Battalion was to move, Warren decided to visit the HQ of the Nijmegen Underground first - to see what info the underground had on the Germans at the Nijmegen bridge. - R Poulussen,
▪ "Although Company A reached the rendezvous point on time, Company B "got lost en route." After waiting until about 2000, Colonel Warren left a guide for Company B and moved through the darkness with Company A toward the edge of the city. Some seven hours after H-Hour, [2030] the first real move against the Nijmegen bridge began." - US Official History, page 163.
▪ As the scouts neared a traffic circle surrounding a landscaped circular park near the center of Nijmegen, the Keizer Karel Plein, from which a mall-like park led northeast toward the Nijmegen bridge, a burst of automatic weapons fire came from the circle. The time was about two hours before midnight. [2200 hrs] - US Official History, page 163.
D Day plus 1
▪ In the meantime Colonel Warren had tried to get a new attack moving toward the highway bridge; but this the Germans thwarted just before dawn with another sharp counterattack. - US Official History, page 165.
▪ "While the counterattack was in progress, General Gavin arrived at the battalion command post." "General Gavin directed that the battalion "withdraw from close proximity to the bridge and reorganize"." This was to mark the end of this particular attempt to take the Nijmegen bridge" - US Official History, page 165.
▪ "A new attack to gain the bridge grew out of an early morning conference between General Gavin and Colonel Lindquist." "At 0745 on 18 September, D plus 1, Company G under Capt. Frank J. Novak started toward the bridge." - US Official History, page 165.
▪ At around 1100, Warren was ordered to withdraw from Nijmegen completely. - R Poulussen.
▪ At 1400 on 18 September Colonel Mendez ordered Company G to withdraw from Nijmegen - US Official History, page 166.
"the chance for an easy, speedy capture of the Nijmegen bridge had passed. This was all the more lamentable because in Nijmegen during the afternoon the Germans had had nothing more than the same kind of "mostly low quality" troops encountered at most other places on D Day." - US Official History, page 164.
The 82nd completely withdrew from Nijmegen town, allowing the Germans to pour the 10th SS infantry, who come over on the ferry, south over the Nijmegen bridge to reinforce the town. This made matters worse when the 82nd and XXX Corps went into the town to clear them out.
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Charles Lathrop wrote:
"the British bailed the Americans out of the Bulge? Again... wut?"
I will let the Germans have a say on the Bulge:
Genral Hasso von Manteuffel:
‘The operations of the American First Army had developed into a series of individual holding actions. Montgomery's contribution to restoring the situation was that he turned a series of isolated actions into a coherent battle fought according to a clear and definite plan. It was his refusal to engage in premature and piecemeal counter-attacks which enabled the Americans to gather their reserves and frustrate the German attempts to extend their breakthrough’.
By November 1944, British SHEAF officer, Strong, noted that there was a possibility of a German counter-offensive in the Ardennes or the Vosges. Strong went to personally warn Bradley at his HQ, who said, "let 'em come".
Montgomery on hearing of the attack immediately took British forces to the Meuse to prevent any German forces from making a bridgehead, securing the rear. He was prepared to halt their advance and attack them. This was while Eisenhower and Bradley were doing nothing.
even by 19 December, three days into the offensive, no overall plan had emerged from 12th Army Group or SHAEF, other than the decision to send Patton’s forces north to Bastogne. Overall, the Ardennes battle was in urgent need of grip.
General Hodges had yet to see Bradley or receive more than the sketchiest orders from his Army Group commander.
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
On 20 December, Montgomery had sent a signal to Alanbrooke regarding the US forces:
"Not good... definite lack of grip and control. I have heard nothing from Ike or Bradley and had no orders or requests of any sort. My own opinion is that the American forces have been cut in half and the Germans can reach the Meuse at Namur without opposition."
Omar Bradley, commander of the 12th Army Group, did very little:
16 Dec, the first day, for 12 hours did nothing.
16 Dec, after 12 hours, he sent two armoured divisions from
the flanking Ninth and Third Armies.
17 Dec, after 24 Hours, he then called in two US airborne
divisions from Champagne.
18 Dec, he ordered Patton to halt his pending offensive in
the Saar.
18 Dec, he had still not established contact with the First Army,
while Monty had.
19 Dec, he withdrew divisions from the Aachen front to shore
up the Ardennes.
19 Dec, he had still not produced an overall defensive plan.
19 Dec, the Supreme Commander intervened directly late in the day.
20 Dec, Eisenhower telephoned Montgomery telling him to take
command of the US First and Ninth Armies
While all this dillying by Bradley was going on, German armies were pounding forward into his lines.
British SHEAF officers Whiteley (British) & Betts (US) visited the U.S. First Army HQ seeing the shambles. Strong, Whiteley, and Betts recommended that command of the armies north of the Ardennes be transferred from Bradley to Montgomery. Unfortunately only two British officers approached Beddel Smith of their recommendations, who immediately fired the pair, claiming it was nationalistic. The next morning, Beddel Smith apologized seeing the three were right, recommending to Eisenhower to bring in Monty.
During the Battle of the Bulge Eisenhower was stuck self imprisoned in his HQ in des-res Versailles near Paris in fear of German troops wearing US uniforms attempting to kill allied generals. He had remained locked up more than 30 days without sending a single message or order to Montgomery, and that is when he thought he was doing ground control of the campaign, when in effect Montgomery was in control as two US armies were put under his command after the German attack, the US First and Ninth. Coningham of the RAF had to take control of US air force units. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war, just about.
And yet biased American authors such as Stephen Ambrose said that Eisenhower took control of the Bulge and made the battle his veneering it as an all American victory. Ambrose completely falsified history. The only thing Eisenhower did was tell Monty to get control of two out of control US armies, tell the US 101st to go to Bastogne (who were in northern France after the buffer Market Garden was created) and men under Bradley to counterattack. That is it.
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Peter Michalski
Two American Airforce Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the reason why the Market Garden plan was flawed. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that prevented the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak".
The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 20 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 8 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men in the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself. XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge.
If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, the Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A failure made possible by General Gavin. Even the US Official War record confirms this.
Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm
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grahamt33
Patton was fired for cowardly hitting a sick soldier in a hospital bed. An utter coward. A nutball who believed he was re-incarnated many times.
1985 US Army report on the Lorraine Campaign.
Patton does not come out well.
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a211668.pdf
Combat Studies Institute. The Lorraine Campaign: An Overview, September-December 1944. by Dr. Christopher R. Gabel February, 1985
From the document is in italics:
"Soldiers and generals alike assumed that Lorraine would fall quickly, and unless the war ended first, Patton's tanks would take the war into Germany by summer's end. But Lorraine was not to be overrun in a lightning campaign. Instead, the battle for Lorraine would drag on for more than 3 months."
"Despite its proximity to Germany, Lorraine was not the Allies' preferred invasion route in 1944_._ Except for its two principal cities, Metz and Nancy, the province_ contained few significant military objectives." "Moreover, once Third Army penetrated the province and entered Germany, there would still be no first-rate military objectives within its grasp. The Saar industrial region, while significant, was of secondary importance when compared to the great Ruhr industrial complex farther north."
Another Patton chase into un-needed territory, like
he did when running his troops into Brittany.
"With so little going for it, why did Patton bother with Lorraine at all? The reason was that Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, made up his mind to destroy as many German forces as possible west of the Rhine."
In other words a waste of time.
"Communications Zone organized the famous Red Ball Express, a non-stop conveyor belt of trucks connecting the Normandy depots with the field armies."
They were getting fuel via 6,000 trucks.
"The simple truth was that although fuel was plentiful in Normandy, there was no way to transport it in sufficient quantities to the leading elements. On 31 August , Third Army received no fuel at all."
In short, Patton overran his supply lines. What was
important was to secure the Port of Antwerp's
approaches. Montgomery approached the US leaders
of the First Airborne Army and they would not drop into
the Scheldt.
"Few of the Germans defending Lorraine could be considered First-rate troops. Third Army encountered whole battalions made up of deaf men, others of cooks, and others consisting entirety of soldiers with stomach ulcers."
Some army the Americans were going to fight
"Was the Lorraine campaign an American victory' From September through November, Third Army claimed to have inflicted over 180,000 casualties on the enemy. But to capture the province of Lorraine, a problem which involved an advance of only 40 to 60 air miles, Third Army required over 3 months and suffered 50,000 casualties, approximately one-third of the total number of casualties it sustained in the entire European war."
Huge losses for taking unimportant territory,
against a poor German army.
"Ironically, Third Army never used Lorraine as a springboard for an advance into Germany after all. Patton turned most of the sector over to Seventh Army during the Ardennes crisis, and when the eastward advance resumed after the Battle of the Bulge, Third Army based its operations on Luxembourg, not Lorraine. The Lorraine campaign will always remain a controversial episode in American military history."
It's getting worse. One third of all European casualties
in Lorraine and never used the territory to move into Germany.
"Finally the Lorraine Campaign demonstrated that Logistics often drive operations, no matter how forceful and aggressive the commanding general may be." "Patton violated tactical principles" "His discovered that violating logistical principles is an unforgiving and cumulative matter."
Not flattering at all. And Americans state Patton
was the best general they had.
Bradley stated later:
“Patton was developing as an unpopular guy. He steamed about with great convoys of cars and great squads of cameramen … To George, tactics was simply a process of bulling ahead. Never seemed to think out a campaign. Seldom made a careful estimate of the situation. I thought him a shallow commander … I disliked the way he worked, upset tactical plans, interfered in my orders. His stubbornness on amphibious operations, parade plans into Messina sickened me and soured me on Patton. We learned how not to behave from Patton’s Seventh Army.”
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@thevillaaston7811
"‘Eisenhower's Armies,by Dr Niall Barr,page 454 By April 1945 the 61 American divisions formed the bulk of the Allied Armies,supported by 13 British,11 French,5 Canadian and one Polish."
The USA in the ETO were losing so many troops against the Germans they panicked. Their performance was so bad they thought they may be wiped out. Casualties: Bulge: 90,000, Queen: 12,000, Hurtgen Forest: 33,000, Lorraine: 55,000, etc. They diverted troops to the ETO that were destined to face the Japanese.
These US troops in the ETO came in mainly at the last minute when the war was over because of the panic in Washington, inflating the US contribution. They were all green, with green troops, officers and generals, with second rate tanks. Most, if any, never saw the enemy in action. A German force a quarter to one third of the size of one of those green US forces would have wiped it out.
Yet the British outnumbered US ground forces by a long margin against the Japanese. 2.6 million in the British Indian Army alone.
In 1942 alone the British fielded 100 divisions compare to the USAs 88 in total in WW2.
This Barr geezer has not a clue.
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From a personal point of view, reading about the sinking of the ship my uncle was killed on. It was a Belgian mechantman, the Gandia, sunk by U135 in January 1942 in the North Atlantic. Of a crew of 78, all took to the lifeboats with none killed by the explosion. Two of the four lifeboats were wrecked as the ship rapidly turned on sinking, with the men being sucked under with the ship.
46 were in two lifeboats in below freezing temperatures, snowstorms and little fresh water & food. One lifeboat was spotted after 14 days by a American destroyer, the USS Bernadou. The other lifeboat was spotted by a Portuguese trawler after 26 days. Four survived in one lifeboat of 28 men, 10 in the other of 18 men. The dead men froze to death, one being a 15 year old cabin boy from Liverpool. Survivors had frostbite.
As men died they stripped them of their clothes and handed them around the surviving men, placing the naked bodies overboard. The crew was mainly Belgian with English, Dutch, Canadian and French. Seeing a photo of the lifeboat brings it home.
Albert Mr. Hubert, the officer in charge of one lifeboat said to the the New York Times:
"It was a gallant but doomed band of men. The twenty eight men in our boat...knew there wasn't enough food and water. But we prayed and sang hymns and refused to give up hope. There were eighteen Belgians, one Frenchman and nine Englishmen at the beginning. But those of us who lived saw wounds, hunger, thirst and cold take twenty four men, one by one....But men willingly gave up their rations to those weaker than themselves. They say there is an animal streak in all men. That's a damn lie."
The story:
http://gandiaship.com/index.htm
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@michaellucas4291 wrote:
"John I agree that the 82nd as you say screwed up the assignment to capture the Nijmegen Bridge. "
Some logic at last.
"The obsession with the supposed attack from the Reichswald seems to have dominated Gavin’s thinking from the start and continued to do so, even though it was increasingly clear that the main threat to his position in Nijmegen came down the road from Arnhem — and over the road bridge. Quite apart from the fact that taking the bridges was the prime aim of the entire Market operation, taking the Nijmegen bridge was essential to the security of the 82nd’s position.
"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Self-interest alone should have dictated that Gavin took the Nijmegen bridge as quickly as
possible, but the bridge and much of the town was still in German hands when the Guards Armoured arrived on the morning of 19 September — D plus 2 — and linked up with the main body of the 82nd Airborne.
"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"The US Official History remarks that General Gavin was ‘considering how to take the bridge with the limited forces available’, but Gavin’s forces were in fact not all that limited. He could surely have spared more than a company for taking a bridge he was now very anxious to take — not least because soon after midday on 18 September, the 82nd’s next lift arrived from the UK, 450 gliders bringing in three fresh battalions, one parachute and two glider, and a quantity of artillery."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
If Gavin had moved to the bridge immediately, he would have taken both ends. He had enough men, and artillery, to defend the bridge, until XXX Corps came along.
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John Cornell
It was clear Eisenhower only had half a clue what he was doing.
"I explained my situation fully. I told him about the V2 rockets which had started to land in England, and from whence they came. He said he had always intended to give priority to the Ruhr thrust and the northern route of advance, and that this was being done. I said that it was not being done. He then said that by priority he did not mean “absolute priority,” and he could not in any way scale down the Saar thrust. I told him that enemy resistance was stiffening on the line of the Albert Canal; that there was a steady consumption of petrol and ammunition; and that we were outstripping our maintenance. It was becoming clear that I would not be able to launch the large-scale operation towards
Arnhem as soon as I had hoped and that this would give the enemy more time to recover."
"Since crossing the Seine my headquarters had moved northwards, and Bradley's eastwards. The land battle was becoming jerky and disjointed. I said that so long as he continued with two thrusts, with the maintenance split between the two, neither could succeed. I pointed out that Antwerp, and the approaches to the port which we had not yet got, lay behind the thrust on the left flank which I had advocated on the 23rd August—nearly three weeks ago.
There were two possible plans—Bradley's and mine. It was essential “to back” one of them. If he tried to back both, we couldn’t possibly gain any decisive results quickly. The quickest way to open up Antwerp was to back my plan of concentration on the left — which plan would not only help our logistic and maintenance situation but would also keep up the pressure on the stricken Germans in the area of greatest importance, thus helping to end the war quickly.
"
- Montgomery of Alamein. Memoirs of Field-Marshal Montgomery
Neillands on Eisenhower and the debating point with Monty......
"This is baffling. If the Allied armies could actually do all this, then there was no logistical problem — though everyone said there was. Then, having come out in favour of a broad front strategy, Eisenhower said that he still intended to give priority to the northern route — though with his resources so widely dispersed it is hard to see how he could do so."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
.
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John Cornell
"Post-Normandy Bradley seemed unable to control Patton, who persistently flouted Eisenhower’s directives and went his own way, aided and abetted by Bradley. This part of their relationship quickly revealed itself in matters of supply, where Hodges, the commander of the US First Army, was continually starved of fuel and ammunition in order to keep Patton’s divisions rolling, even when Eisenhower’s strategy required First Army to play the major role in 12th Army Group’s activities."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again - being bogged down - again. The resources starved US First Army could not be a part of northern thrust as Bradley and Patton, against Eisenhower's orders, were syphoning off supplies destined for the First army. This northern thrust over the Rhine, as Eisenhower envisaged, obviously would not work as he thought.
A lesser operation was devised by Montgomery, Market Garden, eliminating the divisions of US First Army, with only ONE crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London, and Monty, wanted eliminating immediately, giving a 60 mile long salient buffer between German forces and the important port of Antwerp.
This under-resourced operation would only have one corps above Eindhoven, a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time. Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance. Eisenhower should have fired Bradley and Patton for sabotaging the vital Northern Thrust operation.
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TheJamesthe13
Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust over other fronts and even seizing Antwerp and clearing the Schedlt. Clearing the Scheldt would take time as the German 15th SS army, highly experienced from the Russian front, had set up shop in the Scheldt not retreating back into Germany, under Hitler's orders. Hitler wanted to deny the use of the port of Antwerp for as long as possible. All available allied supplies would be directed to this northern thrust.
"Since Eisenhower — the Supreme Commander and Ground Force Commander — approved the Arnhem operation rather than a push to clear the Scheldt, then surely he was right, as well as noble, to accept the responsibility and any resulting blame? The choice in early September was the Rhine or Antwerp: to continue the pursuit or secure the necessary facilities to solve the logistical problem? The decision was made to go for the Rhine, and that decision was Eisenhower’s."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"On 4 Sept, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr"
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen to British troops when he issued the northern thrust directive. Montgomery wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive, devising Operation Comet, multiple crossings of the Rhine, to be launched on 2 Sept, being cancelled due to German resistance and poor weather. Operation Comet was not presented to Eisenhower for his approval.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 Sept had divisions of the US 1st Army and Montgomery's view of taking multiple bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. The British 2nd Army needed some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow). Hodges' would protect the right flank. the Canadians would protect the left flank from the German 15th army.
"the narrow thrust was reduced to the Second Army and two US corps, the XIX and VII of Hodges’ First Army, a total of around eighteen Allied divisions"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
The northern thrust was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944."
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower’s reply of 5 September to Montgomery deserves analysis, not least the part that concerns logistics. The interesting point is that Eisenhower apparently believes that it is possible to cross the Rhine and take both the Ruhr and the Saar — and open the Scheldt — using the existing logistical resources."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp. In thinking this Ike was wrong."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Post-Normandy Bradley seemed unable to control Patton, who persistently flouted Eisenhower’s directives and went his own way, aided and abetted by Bradley. This part of their relationship quickly revealed itself in matters of supply, where Hodges, the commander of the US First Army, was continually starved of fuel and ammunition in order to keep Patton’s divisions rolling, even when Eisenhower’s strategy required First Army to play the major role in 12th Army Group’s activities."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again, and being bogged down - again. The resources starved First Army could not be a part of northern thrust as Bradley and Patton, against Eisenhower's orders, were syphoning off supplies destined for the First army. This northern thrust over the Rhine, as Eisenhower envisaged, obviously would not work as he thought. A lesser operation was devised by Montgomery, Market Garden, eliminating the divisions of US First Army, with only ONE crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London wanted eliminating ASAP, giving a 60 mile long salient buffer between German forces and the important port of Antwerp. This would only have one corps above Eindhoven, a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time. Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance. Eisenhower should have fired Bradley and Patton for sabotaging the Northern Thrust operation.
Montgomery after fixing the Market Garden Operation's objectives with Eisenhower to the measly forces available, gave the planning to others, mainly General Brereton, an American, of the First Allied Airborne Army. General Brereton, who liked the plan, agreed to it with even direct input. Brereton ordered the drops will take place during the day and Brereton oversaw the troop carrier and supply drops schedules. A refusal by Brereton and the operation would never have gone ahead, as he earlier rejected Montgomery's initial plan of a drop into the Scheldt at Walcheren Island.
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@ToolTimeTabor
XXX Corp were to move after the parachute jumps, so as not alert the Germans who may immediately man the bridges.
From 21st Army Group Orders:
Final point of PHASE I:
(f) The Div may conc SOUTH of EINDHOVEN in areas of the CL preparatory to further adv.
conc = concentration area:
Which is an area, usually in the theatre of operations, where troops are assembled before beginning, or continuing, active operations.
It says: preparatory to further adv. adv = advance. So, on phase 1 they were to concentrate South of Eindhoven before (preparatory) to advancing. That is clear.
When concentrating that is gathering all vehicles in one location. Vehicles will still be moving into this concentration location at 35 vehicles to every mile of the train at a hoped 10 mph. If the vehicles move at 10mph from the starting point the lead vehicles should be south of Eindhoven in 1 hour. But the lead have to stop to concentrate. And 35 vehicles in each mile at a hoped 10 mph are pouring into the concentration location. It does not say how many vehicles have to be in the concentration area before moving off again.
Now onto phase 2.
Phase 2 clearly states that it will start at 1st light on D+1. It says:
PHASE II: (a) The Div will continue the adv
That is advance after phase 1 is concluded of course. To continue the advance you have to be stopped. Phase 1 concludes south of Eindhoven as the force concentrated. Clear.
The document says a hoped 10 mih (10mph), but not for phase 1 as the forces are concentrated south of Eindhoven at end of phase 1. South of Eindhoven is approx 11 miles from the start point. It only expects 11 miles of advance in the first 5 hours, which is understandable as German forces formed a strong line in front of British forces at the northern British front on the Belgian/Dutch border.
So, on D-day XXX Corps have to get to Eindhoven which is 11 miles and depending on tactic conditions it is hoped they will move at 10 mph when moving north from Eindhoven. There are two different points here:
1. Target time -
XXX Corps do not have 100% control of the time to reach targets, except south of Eindhoven.
2. Rate of Movement, when "moving" -
XXX Corps have near 100% control of this.
XXX Corps when moving were moving as expected, irrespective of the tactical situation. Reaching hoped for vague target times (which are not specific only roughly deducted) are different. Indeed as XXX Corps were dependent on the MARKET side of the operation, the airborne units, to keep up their rate of movement.
XXX Corps were not slow. They maintained the realistically expected speed of advance. The only times they did not move were due to the US 101st and 82nd, when both failed to seize bridges, which was out of XXX Corps' control. XXX Corps had to seize the bridges themselves or create the bridge (Bailey bridge). When XXX Corps turned up at Nijmegen at 0820 at D+2, given the approx 12 hour delay at Zon when the 101st failed to seize the bridge, they were near enough at an expected rate of movement. More than adequate to complete the operation.
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The imminent concern of Germany was to get resources to fend off the coming air war with Britain. Hence the attack on the USSR. An aid to taking the British empire out of the war.
Wages of Destruction. Prof Adam Tooze:
Planning for Barbarossa.
Tooze Page 454:
"Critical stores would be reserved above all for the main strike force of 33 tank and motorised infantry divisions. If the battle extended much beyond the first months of the attack, the fighting power of the rest of the German army would dwindle rapidly."
"Fundamentally the Wehrmacht was a "poor army". The fast striking motorised element of the German army in 1941 consisted of only 33 divisions of 130. Three-quarters of the German army continued to rely on more traditional means of traction: foot and horse. The German army in 1941 invaded the Soviet Union with somewhere between 600,000 and 740,000 horses. The horses were not for riding. They were for moving guns, ammunition and supplies."
"The vast majority of Germany's soldiers marched into Russia, as they had in France, on foot."
"But to imagine a fully motorised Wehrmacht, poised for an attack on the Soviet Union is a fantasy of the Cold War, not a realistic vision of the possibilities of 1941. To be more specific, it is an American fantasy. The Anglo-American invasion force of 1944 was the only military force in WW2 to fully conform to the modern model of a motorised army."
Page 455:
"the chronic shortage of fuel and rubber"
"the fuel shortage of 1941 was so expected to be so severe that the Wehrmacht was seriously considering demotorisation as a way of reducing its dependency on scarce oil."
"Everything therefore depended on the assumption that the Red Army would crack under the impact of the first decisive blow."
Page 456:
"a new Soviet industrial base to the east of the Urals, which had the capacity to sustain a population of at least 40 million people."
"Soviet industrial capacity was clearly very substantial."
"Franz Halder recorded Hitler's ruminations about the Soviets' immense stock of tanks and aircraft."
Reading further Tooze gives the misgivings of the German generals of the invasion. All were negative.
Page 460:
"As late as the Spring of 1941, the Foreign Ministry was still opposing the coming war, preferring to continue the alliance with the Soviet Union against the British Empire."
"If the shock of the initial assault does not destroy Stalin's regime, it was evident in February 1941 that the Third Reich would find itself facing a strategic disaster."
Page 452:
"the Germans had already conscripted virtually all their prime manpower. By contrast, the Red Army could call up millions of reservists."
Why did Germany invade the USSR in a rushed ill-conceived plan?
Page 431:
"the strongest arguments for rushing to conquer the Soviet Union in 1941 were precisely the growing shortage of grain and the need to knock Britain out of the war before it could pose a serious air threat."
"Meanwhile, the rest of the German military-industrialised complex began to gird itself for the aerial confrontation with Britain and America."
Germany rushed to invade the Soviet Union, with an ill-equipped army with no reserves in anticipation of a massive air war with Britain and the USA, hoping they could win the Soviet war within weeks.
The coming air war:
Roosevelt promised 50,000 plane per year production in May 1940, of which a substantial amount would be in the RAF. Germany could not compete with the level of aircraft at the UKs disposal. Whether the planes had US and UK pilots or just UK pilots they were coming Germany's way. And the only way they could really get at each other was by air. Germany feared mass bombing, which came - the bomber in the late 1930s was perceived as a war winning weapon. The Germans knew the lead time for aircraft was 18 months from order to delivery. That meant in late 1941/early 1942, these planes would be starting to come into service in great numbers. Germany needed the resources of the east to compete. If the population was too big they would eliminate the population - the precedence was the American move to the west expanding the USA, taking lands from the natives population and Mexican and eliminating the population.
War Production:
Keegan, World War Two, chapter War Production:
- Germany was third behind the USA, then the UK in GDP, in 1939. Germany = UK in capital goods production in 1939.
- UK economy grows 60% during WW2.
- Hitler says to Guderian, re: USSR, "had I known they had so many tanks as that, I would have thought twice before invading"
Tooze, Preface, xxiii:
Combined GDP of the UK and France exceeded Germany & Italy by 60%.
- page 454:
"It was poor because of the incomplete industrial and economic development of Germany".
Before the war the Soviet defence industry was in a state of permanent technological reorganisation as new models of aircraft, tanks, and other weapons were introduced and old ones phased out at dizzying rate.
The USSR had access to oil and more natural resources and far more men. Making their ability to produce far greater than Germany, which actually happened.
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@scotty2877
U.S. 82nd Division records state that the first troop of British tanks, four of them, crossed the Waal road bridge at 1830 hours. Two tanks were hit with the crews taken POW bar one, Sgt Knight. The tanks charged across at full speed approaching 30 mph firing against German guns all the way, with a few hundred high in the girders. Gunner Leslie Johnson in the lead tank said:
“They were falling like nine-pins. The incoming fire was so heavy that I swear to this day that Jesus Christ rode on the front of our tank. The Germans were so close that I didn’t bother to look through my sights. We could feel the tracks going over them as we shot them down, and there was blood and gore all over the tank.”
Once the two leading tanks of Pacey and Robinson got past the bridge obstacles at the northern end, Pacey stopped. The War Office report states:
“At this point, Pacey stopped, he was not sure where to go as no Americans were seen, so Sergeant Robinson passed him and led on. Much to their surprise, they could not see any Americans so having passed through the concrete chicane they pushed on. Having crossed the road bridge, the four tanks moved down the northern embankment, where they destroyed another anti tank gun. Robinson and Pacey found themselves in a running battle against more guns, and against German infantry who poured out of the church in Lent, and then 1,500 yards further down the road from the bridge, where the main road goes under the railway line, contact was at last made with some Americans, both were very happy to see each other."
The 82nd men at Lent reached Lent following the railway embankment from the riverbank using it for cover. The first American troops that arrived at the bridge approaches/waterside after moving along the riverbank from their river landing point with Burriss’ company of about sixteen men, was at 1915 hours, 45 minutes after the first tanks had already crossed. This was not the main bridge span, just the raised approach road over land. Official U.S. records confirm that 82nd troops from the 504th arrived at the northern road bridge approaches at 1938 hours. This would be the time they arrived in any real strength to consolidate, one hour 8 mins after the first tank crossed. The records state at 1938 hours:
“All seemed quiet at this point, with the enemy disorganised and in great confusion, suffering heavy losses. Prior to the physical occupation of the northern end of the bridge by 504th PIR, eight British light tanks had [already] crossed. Two of these were destroyed just north of the bridge”.
The second troop of tanks crossed at least half an hour after the first. Burris was there under the approach road when the second troop rolled over, thinking they were the first tanks over. Lord Carington's tank was one of them. Eight rolled over the bridge, with two hit, being there to consolidate the bridgehead and ensure the Germans did not take the bridge back.
Horrock of XXX Corps in his plan had the 43 Wessex infantry to seize the ground from Nijmegen bridge to Arnhem, destroying anti-tank weapons. It was not tank country. The tanks were to follow behind the infantry. The tanks would have been sitting ducks if they went first. The 43rd Wessex were to do the river crossing in two columns. There was a contingency planned if the bridge was blown. The Wessex were to use dedicated assault boats, which they had in Nijmegen, and DUKW and Buffalo amphibious craft. But to save face as they failed to seize the bridge, Gavin of the 82nd pestered Horrocks for his men to do the crossing, Horrocks agreed. It appears that the 82nd did not know of the Buffalo amphibious craft using collapsible bridge engineers boats to cross the Waal. Or the Wessex did not want to give them fearing the valuable craft would be lost with an 82nd river assault failure - that needs more research.
Not one 82nd man was on the bridge when the first troop of four tanks crossed at 1830, or at 1915 when the second troop of four went over. Official XXX Corps records from the War Office highlight that the successful tank attack on the road bridge was at 1830 hours.
Thirty-four machine guns, an 88mm gun, and two 20mm cannons were found to be on the road bridge itself, and at least six anti-tank guns and a few 88mm guns were situated around the northern end.
All this nonsense of drinking tea by the British tankers disinterested in the battle seems to have started as an American diversion, after inquiries by the Official US historian Charles MacDonald into why the Nijmegen bridges were not taken on the first day.
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William Eaton
Patton was in the Lorraine and advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept deployed there with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept to try and plug the gaps while the panzer divisions proper were being re-fitted and rebuilt after the summer 1944 battles.
The Panzer Brigades had green crews that never had enough time to train, did not know their tanks properly, did not have any recon elements and didn't even meet their unit commander until his arrival at the front. These were by no means elite forces.
17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divsions. In fact 17th SS was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, only equipped with assault guns, not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy and was not up to strength at Arracourt in he Lorraine. Patton never even once faced a full strength Waffen SS panzer division nor a Tiger battalion.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the best German divisions in the west were NOT. Who did the 3rd Army engage? Who did 3rd Army defeat? In the Lorraine, 3rd Army faced a rabble. Even the German commander of Army Group G in the Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took over in September 1944 said:
"I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Patton was facing a second rate rabble in the Lorraine for the most part. Patton was also neither on the advance nor being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the German pounded through US lines.
The road from Luxembourg to Bastogne was largely devoid of German forces, as Bastogne was on the very southern German periphery. Only when Patton got near to Bastogne did he face 'some' German armour but it wasn't a great deal of armour. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade wasn't one of the best armoured units, while 26th Volks-Grenadier only had a dozen Hetzers, and the tiny element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind only had a small number of tanks operational. Its not as if Patton had to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1.
Patton faced comparatively very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in the rear and moved westwards to the River Meuse, where they were still engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Leading elements were engaging the Americans and British under Montgomery's command near Dinant by the Meuse.
In Normandy in 1944, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton faced very little opposition in his break out (operation Cobra) performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September.
There is is no comparison between Mantueffel's failed relief attempt on Stalingrad and Patton's successful relief of Bastogne. Manstein's forces were completely outnumbered by the Soviet forces who had an iron ring around Stalingrad. During Winter Storm, the Soviets outnumbered the Germans roughly 3 times in men and tanks. Manstein's task was also nearly twice the distance of Patton's and through deep snow the whole time.
Patton repeatedly lambasted his subordinates. In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics Bradley's II Corps were employing while he also accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division, Lucian Truscott of being "afraid to fight". In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps. When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize stalled he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being "very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect" and called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in reporting their losses. It was Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his own decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance that were the reasons for his stall. After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under RAF command, Coningham. Coningham, gave Patton massive US ground attack plane support and he still stalled. Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault, including his subordinates.
Read Monty and Patton:Two Paths to Victory
by Michael Reynolds
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William Eaton
At Caen the Germans had five lines of defence with dug in 88mm's and heavy Tiger and fast Panther tanks for mobility. Operation Goodwood was mostly 'not' bocage but open ground more suitable for tank battles, where the German long range 88mm's would be at an advantage.
Monty's plan was not for British forces to take territory. He specifically wanted to draw in German armour onto British forces to grind them up to keeping them away from the US forces for them to break out (Operation Cobra). That was even stated at St.Paul's school in Fulham. To do that he was confident British armour could match German armour - US armour would struggle or most likely be overwhelmed. A 12 mile sector around Caen saw more concentrated German armour in all of WW2. Goodwood was not British forces taking territory, as the plan was for the US forces to do that, Monty specifically states this here in this link in an interview with Edward R Murrow. Transcript....
"The acquisition of territory on the eastern flank of the beachhead in the Caen sector was not really important. What was important there was to draw the maximum number of German divisions, and especially the armour, into that flank. The acquisition of territory was important on the western flank [the US sector]." ...."an accusation drawn at me, that I ought to have taken Caen in the programme on D-Day! And we didn't. I didn't mind about that because....The air force would get very het up because I didn't go further down towards Falaise and get the ground suitable for airfields. I didn't bother about that, it would have meant enormous casualties in doing it and it wasn't necessary."
"I could reply to that criticism that on the American front the line from which the breakout was finally launched was a line the St.Lo-Periers road, should have been captured in the initial plan by the American 1st Army on D-Day plus 5, that was the 11th June. But they didn't actually capture it until the 18th July. But I have never returned the charge with that accusation. ...until now"
"I have never understood why Ike said in his dispatches that, when the British failed to break out towards Paris on the eastern flank. The Americans were able [to break out], because of our flexibility, to take it on, on our western flank. I have always thought that was an unfair criticism of Dempsey and the 2nd British Army."
- Field Marshall Montgomery (1959)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_TB9wHRRSw
The RAF chief Tedder, wanted Monty fired as he wanted open territory to the south towards Falaise to setup his airfields saying Monty was not pursing territory aggressively enough. Monty would have none of it. Operation Goodwood was engaging the massed armoured German defences drawing them in to British lines, grinding them up moving slowly. Here is a 1970s objective British Army Sandhurst internal video analysing Operation Goodwood, with even German commanders who were there taking part. At the beginning it specifically states Monty told Generals O'Connor and Dempsey not to run south to Falaise, not to take territory. Look at 6 mins:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udW1UvSHXfY
Monty was not too concerned with Caen as it would consume too many resources to take. He was more concerned with grinding up German armour in the field. Although by the time of Goodwood only the southern suburbs were in German hands.
Monty was in charge of all of Operation Overlord. He wanted the German armour away from US forces, to allow them to break out. It worked. That is what he wanted and planned. Monty never saw Caen as important but never criticised US forces..... until 1959 when they were at him about Caen, he criticised them for taking St.Lo a month late - with little German armour around for a month. The Germans did send some armour to St.Lo with the US forces making it worse for themselves to capture the place.
Even Bradley agreed with Monty. Bradley wrote that:
"The British and Canadian armies were to decoy the enemy reserves and draw them to their front on the extreme eastern edge of the Allied beachhead. Thus, while Monty taunted the enemy at Caen, we (the Americans)were to make our break on the long roundabout road to Paris. When reckoned in terms of national pride, this British decoy mission became a sacrificial one, for while we tramped around the outside flank, the British were to sit in place and pin down the Germans. Yet strategically it fitted into a logical division of labors, for it was towards Caen that the enemy reserves would race once the alarm was sounded".
The Bulge was stopped by British 21st Army Group and absolutely the US 1st and 9th Armies were part of that army group under British control. Monty was very diplomatic, wise and clever and never put British armies in the front, putting the US armies up there. But he was clever in putting British forces 'in' the US 9th army under US army command. So, British forces were at the front answerable to US commanders who were answerable to British commanders. Sounds very allied to me. He did not want to humiliate US forces by putting them at the rear, which would have been the sensible thing to do if the armies were of all one nationality. That would be counter to allied cooperation.
General Hasso von Manteuffel on the Bulge:
‘The operations of the American 1st Army had developed into a series of individual holding actions. Montgomery's contribution to restoring the situation was that he turned a series of isolated actions into a coherent battle fought according to a clear and definite plan. It was his refusal to engage in premature and piecemeal counter-attacks which enabled the Americans to gather their reserves and frustrate the German attempts to extend their breakthrough’.
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@marksummers463
Most German German generals had never heard of Patton. Patton was an average US general, like Simpson, Patch, Hodges, etc. No more. A US media creation, elevating the average beyond their status.
"The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian First Army HQ for the same purpose.
Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation.
"This advance duly began at 0630hrs on August 18 which, as the Canadian Official History remarks, ‘was a day and a half after Montgomery had issued the order for the Canadians to close the gap at Trun, and four and a half days after Patton had been stopped at the Third Army boundary’. During that time, says the Canadian History, the Canadians had been ‘fighting down from the north with painful slowness’ and the Germans had been making their way east through the Falaise gap. They were not, however, unimpeded; the tactical air forces and Allied artillery were already taking a fearful toll of the German columns on the roads heading east past Falaise.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise – Operation Tractable – which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed there with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were re-fitting and rebuilt after the summer 1944 battles. The Panzer Brigades had green crews with little time to train, did not know their tanks properly, had no recon elements and didn't even meet their unit commander until his arrival at the front. These were not elite forces.
The 17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, equipped only with assault guns not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy and not up to strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the best German divisions in the west were NOT.
♦ Who did the 3rd Army engage?
♦ Who did the 3rd Army defeat?
♦ Patton never once faced a full strength Waffen SS panzer division nor a Tiger battalion.
In The Lorraine, the 3rd Army faced a rabble. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said:
"I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Patton was mostly facing a second rate rabble in The Lorraine.
Patton was neither on the advance nor being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. The road from Luxembourg to Bastogne saw few German forces, with Bastogne being on the very southern German flank, their focus was west. Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was not one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, while 26th Volks-Grenadier only had about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind only had a small number of tanks operational. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1.
Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Leading elements were engaging the Americans and British under Montgomery's command near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance and pushed them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons opened up with the American attack stopping and pulling back. The next day fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B retreating once again. It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. Patton's forces arrived at Chaumont late on the 22nd December. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day, the 25th! Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, just 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne.
In Normandy in 1944, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact. This eastern dash devoid of German forces was the ride the US media claimed Patton was some sort master of fast moving armour.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates.
♦ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics Bradley's II Corps were employing
♦ He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division, Truscott of being "afraid to fight".
♦ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps.
♦ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize stalled he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being "very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect".
♦ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in reporting their losses.
After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF. Coningham, gave Patton massive ground attack plane support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall. Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault, including his subordinates. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated. Oh, and wore cowboy guns.
Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his orders, and Eisenhower's orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read:
Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds and
Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies by Harry Yeide
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@Richard
1985 US Army report on the Lorraine Campaign.
Patton does not come out well at all.
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a211668.pdf
Combat Studies Institute. The Lorraine Campaign: An Overview, September-December 1944. by Dr. Christopher R. Gabel February, 1985
From the document is in italics:
Soldiers and generals alike assumed that Lorraine would fall quickly, and unless the war ended first, Patton's tanks would take the war into Germany by summer's end. But Lorraine was not to be overrun in a lightning campaign. Instead, the battle for Lorraine would drag on for more than 3 months." "Despite its proximity to Germany, Lorraine was not the Allies' preferred invasion route in 1944. Except for its two principal cities, Metz and Nancy, the province contained few significant military objectives." "Moreover, once Third Army penetrated the province and entered Germany, there would still be no first-rate military objectives within its grasp.
The Saar industrial region, while significant, was of secondary importance when compared to the great Ruhr industrial complex farther north."
Another Patton chase into un-needed territory, full of vineyards like he did when running his troops into Brittany.
"With so little going for it, why did Patton bother with Lorraine at all? The reason was that Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, made up his mind to destroy as many German forces as possible west of the Rhine."
In other words a waste of time.
"Communications Zone organized the famous Red Ball Express, a non-stop conveyor belt of trucks connecting the Normandy depots with the field armies."
They were getting fuel via 6,000 trucks.
"The simple truth was that although fuel was plentiful in Normandy, there was no way to transport it in sufficient quantities to the leading elements. On 31 August , Third Army received no fuel at all."
In short, Patton overran his supply lines. What was important was to secure the Port of Antwerp's approaches, which Eisenhower deprioritised. Montgomery approached the US leaders of the First Airborne Army who would not drop into the Scheldt.
"Few of the Germans defending Lorraine could be considered First-rate troops. Third Army encountered whole battalions made up of deaf men, others of cooks, and others consisting entirety of soldiers with stomach ulcers."
Some army the Americans were going to fight
"Was the Lorraine campaign an American victory? From September through November, Third Army claimed to have inflicted over 180,000 casualties on the enemy. But to capture the province of Lorraine, a problem which involved an advance of only 40 to 60 air miles, Third Army required over 3 months and suffered 50,000 casualties, approximately one-third of the total number of casualties it sustained in the entire European war."
The US Army does not think it was a victory. Huge losses for taking unimportant territory, against a poor German army.
"Ironically, Third Army never used Lorraine as a springboard for an advance into Germany after all. Patton turned most of the sector over to Seventh Army during the Ardennes crisis, and when the eastward advance resumed after the Battle of the Bulge, Third Army based its operations on Luxembourg, not Lorraine. The Lorraine campaign will always remain a controversial episode in American military history."
It's getting worse. One third of all European casualties in Lorraine and never used the territory to move into Germany.
"Finally the Lorraine Campaign demonstrated that Logistics often drive operations, no matter how forceful and aggressive the commanding general may be." "Patton violated tactical principles" "His discovered that violating logistical principles is an unforgiving and cumulative matter."
Not flattering at all. And Americans state Patton was the best general they had. Bradley stated later:
“Patton was developing as an unpopular guy. He steamed about with great convoys of cars and great squads of cameramen … To George, tactics was simply a process of bulling ahead. Never seemed to think out a campaign. Seldom made a careful estimate of the situation. I thought him a shallow commander … I disliked the way he worked, upset tactical plans, interfered in my orders. His stubbornness on amphibious operations, parade plans into Messina sickened me and soured me on Patton. We learned how not to behave from Patton’s Seventh Army.”
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http://www.airpowerstudies.co.uk/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/Arnhem.pdf
"the composition of the German forces at Arnhem was far more complex than most published histories of Market Garden had tended to suggest. The two SS panzer divisions had been operating far below their full strength on the eve of the operation and, while 1st Airborne was ultimately confronted by armour in considerable strength, hardly any tanks were actually present in the Arnhem area on 17 September. The vast majority deployed from Germany or other battle fronts after the airborne landings"
- ARNHEM - THE AIR RECONNAISSANCE STORY by the RAF
Some low level pictures of a few Panzer IIIs and IVs were taken in early September for operation Comet. Ryan on speaking to Urquhart got it wrong. "Urquhart’s account is therefore somewhat perplexing. Further problems arise if we seek to document the events he described. Several extensive searches for the photographs have failed to locate them. Ostensibly, this might not seem surprising, as most tactical reconnaissance material was destroyed after the war, but Urquhart insisted that the Arnhem sortie was flown by a Spitfire squadron based at Benson; this would almost certainly mean 541 Squadron. Far more imagery from the Benson squadrons survived within the UK archives, but no oblique photographs showing tanks at Arnhem. In addition, although the Benson missions were systematically recorded at squadron and group level, not one record matches the sortie Urquhart described."
"The low-level missions targeting the bridges on 6 September were scrupulously noted down, but all other recorded reconnaissance sorties over Arnhem were flown at higher altitudes and captured vertical imagery. Equally, it has proved impossible as yet to locate an interpretation report derived from a low-level mission that photographed German armour near Arnhem before Market Garden." "As for Brian Urquhart’s famous account of how a low-level Spitfire sortie took photographs of tanks assumed to belong to II SS Panzer Corps, the reality was rather different. In all probability, the low-level mission that Urquhart recalled photographed the bridges and not the tanks"
- ARNHEM - THE AIR RECONNAISSANCE STORY by the RAF
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@charlietipton8502
Lindquist should have been moving towards the bridge immediately on landing. I never made it up.
-----
By Chester Graham. Liaison officer between the 508th and the 82nd Division Headquarters.
During the Holland operation, I was the liaison officer between the 508th and the 82nd Division Headquarters. I first became the Regimental Liaison Officer after we returned to Nottingham from the Normandy operation.
This assignment as Regimental Liaison Officer was a most enjoyable and interesting duty. I spent the nights with the Division, and each morning, I picked up reports and left in my jeep with my driver for Regimental Headquarters to pass the reports to the Regimental staff.
While at Division, I visited with various staff members and helped out in the G3 Section, and at the end of the day I returned to Regimental Headquarters with reports from Division. I saw places I would never have seen if I just stayed in the regimental area, and I met some very interesting people at the higher echelon. I knew all of the division staff and the other regimental commanders, and was included in the planning of operations and briefings. I was ‘bigoted.’ [This is a WWII military term for being read into/briefed on missions.]
Prior to the Holland jump, I sat in 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.
After we were dropped in Holland, 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 (drop zone) is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.” So I went cross-country through Indian country [slang military term for enemy territory] 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 to, “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. The Germans are coming”
.
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@brucenadeau1280
"Eisenhower’s reply of 5 September to Montgomery deserves analysis, not least the part that concerns logistics. The interesting point is that Eisenhower apparently believes that it is possible to cross the Rhine and take both the Ruhr and the Saar — and open the Scheldt — using the existing logistical resources."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp. In thinking this Ike was wrong."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Post-Normandy Bradley seemed unable to control Patton, who persistently flouted Eisenhower’s directives and went his own way, aided and abetted by Bradley. This part of their relationship quickly revealed itself in matters of supply, where Hodges, the commander of the US First Army, was continually starved of fuel and ammunition in order to keep Patton’s divisions rolling, even when Eisenhower’s strategy required First Army to play the major role in 12th Army Group’s activities."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again, and being bogged down - again. The resources starved First Army could not be a part of northern thrust as Bradley and Patton, against Eisenhower's orders, were siphoning off supplies destined for the First army.
This northern thrust over the Rhine, as Eisenhower envisaged, obviously would not work as he thought. A lesser operation was devised by Montgomery, Market Garden, eliminating the divisions of US First Army, with only ONE crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London wanted eliminating ASAP, giving a 60 mile long salient buffer between German forces and the important port of Antwerp. This would only have one corps above Eindhoven, a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time. Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance. Eisenhower should have fired Bradley and Patton for sabotaging the Northern Thrust operation.
Brereton, the US general in charge of the First Allied Airborne Army, rejected Montgomery's initial plan of a drop into the Scheldt at Walcheren Island.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time the Canadians had cleared, or were investing, many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@bigwoody4704
Rambo, is see you are Big Woody today - fantastic Rambo. XXX Corps got up that road on time. You know that Rambo, we have all told you that over the years. The problem was that the US 82nd were a total disgrace.
You also know this...
http://www.airpowerstudies.co.uk/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/Arnhem.pdf
"the composition of the German forces at Arnhem was far more complex than most published histories of Market Garden had tended to suggest. The two SS panzer divisions had been operating far below their full strength on the eve of the operation and, while 1st Airborne was ultimately confronted by armour in considerable strength, hardly any tanks were actually present in the Arnhem area on 17 September. The vast majority deployed from Germany or other battle fronts after the airborne landings"
- ARNHEM - THE AIR RECONNAISSANCE STORY by the RAF
Some low level pictures of a few Panzer IIIs and IVs were taken in early September for operation Comet. Ryan on speaking to Urquhart got it wrong. "Urquhart’s account is therefore somewhat perplexing. Further problems arise if we seek to document the events he described. Several extensive searches for the photographs have failed to locate them. Ostensibly, this might not seem surprising, as most tactical reconnaissance material was destroyed after the war, but Urquhart insisted that the Arnhem sortie was flown by a Spitfire squadron based at Benson; this would almost certainly mean 541 Squadron. Far more imagery from the Benson squadrons survived within the UK archives, but no oblique photographs showing tanks at Arnhem. In addition, although the Benson missions were systematically recorded at squadron and group level, not one record matches the sortie Urquhart described."
"The low-level missions targeting the bridges on 6 September were scrupulously noted down, but all other recorded reconnaissance sorties over Arnhem were flown at higher altitudes and captured vertical imagery. Equally, it has proved impossible as yet to locate an interpretation report derived from a low-level mission that photographed German armour near Arnhem before Market Garden." "As for Brian Urquhart’s famous account of how a low-level Spitfire sortie took photographs of tanks assumed to belong to II SS Panzer Corps, the reality was rather different. In all probability, the low-level mission that Urquhart recalled photographed the bridges and not the tanks"
- ARNHEM - THE AIR RECONNAISSANCE STORY by the RAF
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Wiki.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Canaris
"Hitler sent Canaris to Spain to conclude an agreement (through strong coercion if necessary) with Franco for Spanish support in the war against the Allies, but instead of prompting the Spaniard to acquiesce to Hitler's desire, Canaris reported that Franco would not commit Spanish forces until Great Britain was defeated. Conversations from this period between Franco and Admiral Canaris remain a mystery since none were recorded, but the Spanish government later expressed gratitude to the widow of Canaris at the conclusion of the Second World War by paying her a pension."
The source is:
Rich, Norman (1973). Hitler’s War Aims: Ideology, the Nazi State, and the Course of Expansion. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-05454-3.
page 173
Preston, Paul (1995). The Politics of Revenge: Fascism and the Military in Twentieth-century Spain. Routledge. pp. 69–70. ISBN 0-415-12000-4.
Spanish say Franco said Germany can only continue the war, not win it.
Franco and Hitler: Spain, Germany, and World War II
By Stanley G. Payne
page 247
The British bribed Spanish officials to keep Spain out of the war, as well.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/may/23/mi6-spain-200m-bribes-ww2
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Yes, there are advantages to the British final ring circuit. They have been widespread in the UK for 80 years. They have been found to be very safe.
♦ Cheapness, as smaller, easier to install, wires can be used;
♦ Two ways for the earth back to the consumer unit;
♦ Another is a large number of sockets can be off one cheap ring;
♦ Having the same number of sockets using radials would mean multiple radials and multiple extra expensive breakers at the main panel - MCBs/RCBOs/AFDDs. Far more cable, expense, labour and hassle;
♦ The 32A breaker and 13A fuse in the plug ensures safety.
♦ Portable plug-in appliances on a ring cannot exceed approx 3kW. Some plug-in ovens are on rings;
♦ Rings usually have a 32A breaker at the main panel - can be a smaller value;
♦ Using push-fit maintenance free Wago type connectors to connect up the ring makes them a lot safer as not being screwed connections they do not work loose. The ring's current does not run through the socket terminals;
♦ The British plugs are designed with rings in mind having a max 13A fuse in them - can be as low as a 1A fuse in the plug to suit the appliance. Small flex and appliance? Then a smaller fuse;
♦ Rings in the UK are limited by square metres of floor space, with no limit to the number of sockets on the ring. 100 square metres of floor space for 2.5mm cable for a 32 amp protected final ring .
Radials are also used in the UK. Rings are not mandatory, but used because they are generally trouble free and safe. They can be installed using rule-of-thumb. These days a ring will be on an RCD or RCBO - RCBOs now are becoming double pole so safer again. In one job in an office, they wanted more socket outlets for extra desk computers. It was a simple matter of extending the existing ring with the extra sockets as the current draw was low. Also no vopltageb drop as the socket outlets are fed from two directions. Cheap and easy. If radials were used three radial circuits would be needed, which would mean an extra main panel, breakers, wire, etc, then far more labour.
Some disadvantages are:
♦ Rings are more difficult to fault find. But electricians have no problem once the ring is fully understood. Instrumenet are avaikable test them;
♦ Another is that if a number of high current drawing appliances are on one side of the ring, say near to the main panel, most of the current draw may be down one leg of the ring which is rated below the main 32A breaker. 2.5mm cable is rated at 27A max. Although tests have proven the cables do not exceed their current capacity, just an imbalance in distribution of the two cables from the main panel (consumer unit). Good circuit design will prevent this, negating this disadvantage. Balanced rings can be installed by daisy chaining to alternative socket outlets on the ring. That is the first socket will draw from one side of the ring, the second socket will draw from the other side, and so on round-robin. Or use 4mm cable to the point where heavy current drawing appliances are, then 2.5mm for the rest, if it is that troubling for some. Using 4mm cable on one side of a ring and 2.5mm on the other, is still cheaper than a bunch of radial circuits.
Overall I consider one ring superior to a bunch of radials needing their own breakers at the main panel. They are simpler, cheaper, being proven to be safe and worked well over the past 80 years. You will have to give a very convincing argument for me to give up rings. I have not heard of one yet.
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The Mustang was basically a British plane made by the Americans for them. The British Air Ministry directed a six year old inexperienced company, North American Aviation, to the design points they wanted for their plane. They assisted North American who drew it up. As a university lecturer would do in directing students to research various points in a project. The students run off do the research with the lecturer assessing what they did and how it fits into the project as a whole. The Mustang was a British plane made by an American company for them. There was no US forces involvement in the concept, specifications or design. Americans lose sight of these fundamental points.
The Rolls Royce Merlin engine made the Mustang perform superbly. The plane initially used an Allison engine, which was only good at low level, as RR could not meet the supply of Merlins, so the Alison it had to be. The US were behind the British in engine supercharging with Tizard Mission giving the USA details of advanced super charging. Also the cylinder head design of the Alison was not good enough for full supercharging. Stanley Hooker of RR developed the auto controlled twin-speed twin-charger supercharging technology which was given free to the USA. The first use of the Mustang by the US military was for ground attack because of the poor high level performance of the Allison engine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by4lH2whhjk
In the early stages of WW2, the U.S. government allowed the British & French to bi-pass them allowing direct approaches to U.S. aircraft makers, as would the British government approach say Hawker. The British needed all types of planes urgently, even the P-40 which was inferior to their own front line planes. But warplanes they were being useful in certain theatres and for training. In early February 1940 the British asked North American Aviation's President Dutch Kindelberger to supply P-40s made under licence from Curtiss, as Curtiss could not supply demand. Unlike Curtiss North American were far from near full capacity. Kindelberger told the British, without any detailed drawings or plans, "I can build you a better airplane, and I can get it built fast". Contrary to popular belief in the USA, North American did not have a prototype ready design which the Brits just happened to have snapped up under the noses of the US military.
North American were first approached in Feb 1940, who had no "detailed drawings or plans". The British gave this young inexperienced company a chance but they would have to hold their hands. In May 1940 as France was falling, North American still never presented any detailed plans, mailing a "design concept" to the British delegation in New York. This never had the famed laminar flow wings. The British Air Ministry accepted the inferior Allison engine as Rolls Royce were working flat out 24/7 unable to meet demand for Merlins. New Merlin factories were being set up but not yet fully on-line. In the interim from Feb to May, three months, the British Air Ministry were forming the fundamentals of the design concepts directing North American to Curtiss and the NACA the developer of the laminar flow wings, to ensure a fighter with some leading edge design points, not produce another P-40 fly-alike wasting valuable time. The Air Ministry directed NAA to the Curtiss XP-46 experimental plane with all the leading edge design points of top European designs, with a few of their own, rolled into one. It never worked as the individual points never complimented each other when merged into one complete whole.
NAA were ordered by the British Air Ministry to buy the plans and test results of the XP-46 plane from Curtiss if they wanted the job, at a whopping $52,000, a lot of money at the time. Curtiss engineers always said the Mustang was their design. Not quite as the British Air Ministry had a lot to say in the leading design points - they were paying and calling the shots as it was their plane. There was a danger the Mustang may end up the same way as the XP-46 - a plane with leading edge points that never performed as expected. The British Air Ministry took a major gamble with NAA so were active in approving the emerging design points.
The Ministry wanted something better than the poor P-40, being prepared to wait, but realistically never expected Spitfire performance. Initially that was the case with the first deliveries using the Allison engine - better than a P-40 but no Spitfire. The initial Allison engined Mustangs filled an RAF niche, so no problems for the British at that point. A niche the plane filled was that the RAF needed a long range reconnaissance plane that could also perform ground attack being able as a low level fighter if the need was there. The Spitfire was a short range fast interceptor. With the fall of France the RAF needed a plane with range to penetrate over the German border from English air bases.
Reading many US books on the Mustang you would think the concept of the plane was to escort US bombers. That is way off from the truth. The last thing the British Air Ministry were thinking of when laying down the points of the plane was US bomber doctrine. The US were not even in the war. Initially the US military overall didn't want to know the plane. The Mustang was not even in U.S. service when it was shooting down FW-190s by the RAF over France. The Air Ministry gave the U.S. military two planes which were left in the corner of a hangar for a long period. They initially never assessed it. Quite amazing, as the USA never had a decent front line fighter at the time.
The excuse not to take up the plane by U.S. forces was that it was liquid cooled and vulnerable in frontal attack. This was a poor excuse to reject the plane because it wasn't theirs. What went over their heads was that the world's two best fighters locked horns in the Battle of Britain, both with liquid cooled engines. With British support, the Mustang finally was noticed by the U.S. Army Air Force. The US military had to go to England to fully assess the plane as it was finished off in Liverpool being flow by the RAF. They did eventually adopt the plane calling it the Apache and P-51 when in U.S. service. UK and U.S. Mustangs for the European war theatre were finished off in Liverpool. They were test flown then delivered to the units by young English girls, many of them teenagers. The Mustang was built to British specification and design guidance without a doubt. They specified and paid for it. It never performed at all like the short range interceptor the Spitfire, not having the manoeuvrability of the Spitfire. It was 'fine' and reasonably fast at low altitude with the Allison engine. It could operate over France and even Germany at a push escorting bombers because of the longer range that the British Air Ministry specified. The Mustang filled a niche role for the British. continued......
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....Continued... North American were not working on installing a Merlin engine before Rolls Royce. Rolls engineers under Ron Harker went to North American to advise on what to do. They also gave advice from their work with the RR Mustang X. Rolls-Royce made the first proposal to North American about a Merlin 45 engine Mustang in 1940, after Stanley Hooker improved the power by 30%. This was before the plane was operational an still in the R&D stage. The RR Merlin now was greatly superior to the Alison engine, to what it was in February 1940 when North American were approached by the Air Ministry. The later Merlin 61 had the two-stage auto controlled superchanging developed by again by Stanley Hooker. This gave an extra 70 mph and 15,000 feet of operation to the Merlin. A quantum leap. The pilot just went where he liked without degradation in performance.
RR sent three engineers led by James Ellor to supervise the adaption and manufacture of a Packard built Merlin 61, the same type that was already being considered for the Rolls Royce Mustang X experimental series. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Mustang_Mk.X
On 9 June 1942, the first memos from W/C I.R. Campell-Orde of the RAF Air Fighting Development Unit at Duxford, reveal that an effort was being made to convince North American to adopt a Merlin-powered Mustang. Work in the US was setback due to an initial lack of interest and also to mechanical failures of the first Merlin engines built under licence by Packard. Both projects commenced at nearly the same time with the first Mustang X in the air about a month earlier than the North American XP-51B.
The RR Mustang-X programme was 5 or 6 airframes each with different experimentation. RR attempted to have North American accept British Merlin 61s (the two-stage superchargers) in American airframes, it is clear that the prime contractor (NAA) wanted to control the project as control was looking like it was to move over to the UK. NAA was essentially building production-standard aircraft rather than the experimental series that saw each of the RR Mustang Xs trying out new variations of design. An offshoot was the mid-engine RR Griffon engined Mustang that actually made it to the mock-up stage, albeit with a Merlin installed amidships. On the success of the RR Mustang-X built in Nottingham, the Air Ministry ordered hundreds from RR, who declined wanting to remain specialising in engines. NAA remained the prime contractor.
Rolls Royce mass produced Merlins in Crewe, Manchester and Glasgow, licensing Packard in the USA to make them supplying the Canadian aircraft factories - to avoid a two-way trans-Atlantic trip using idle US industry. An agreement was reached in September 1940, with the first Packard built Merlin engine running in August 1941. Early in 1944 the P-38, P-51B Mustang and P-47C, were dived by the British for compressibility testing at the RAE Farnborough, England at the request of the USAAF. They had trouble when these planes dived onto attacking German fighters when providing top cover for the bombers. The results were that the Mach numbers, the manoeuvring limits, were Mach 0.68 for the P-38, Mach 0.71 for the P-47, and Mach 0.78 for the Mustang. The corresponding figures for the FW-190 and Me109 was Mach 0.75. The tests resulted in the Mustang being chosen for all escort duties. - Page 70, Wings On My Sleeve by Eric Brown, who did the test.
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Coffice
Wages of Destruction by Prof Adam Tooze:
page 442:
"Shipments of oil to Britain peaked at more than 20 million tons, nine times the maximum figure ever imported by Germany during the war. In January 1941, when Germany is sometimes described as being 'glutted' with oil, stocks came to barely more than 2 million tons. In London, alarm bells went off whenever stocks fell below 7 million tons. So great was the disparity that the British Ministry of Economic Warfare, charged with assessing Germany's economic situation, had difficulty believing its highly accurate estimates of German oil stocks. To the British it seemed implausible that Hitler could possibly have embarked on the war with such a small margin of fuel security, an incredulity shared by both the Soviets and the Americans, who agreed in overestimating Germany's oil stocks by at least 100 per cent."
"During 1941, Italy was only able to import 600,000 tons of fuel with 163,000 tons given to the navy. At this point the monthly consumption had to be reduced to 60,000 tons. The total amount of oil fuel available at the end of the year was about 200,000 tons. During this period it was decided to remove from service the older battleships. After the November 1941 British attack in Egypt, the high command and Mussolini requested that the Italian fleet defend the Libya-bound convoys. This paid off and was only possible by the special shipment of 80,000 tons of German oil fuel delivered at the end of the year."
"On January 10th, 1942 the Italians informed the Germans that their navy’s supplies of fuel had dropped to 90,000 tons. During these months, the bottom was hit with reserves down to 14,000 tons. The situation deteriorated by the shipment of 9,000 tons of German oil fuel of quality too low to use. At the end of April, it was possible to import 50,000 tons of fuel oil per month from Romania. Suspending escort and mining missions by Italian cruisers reduced consumption. These cuts and new shipments allowed for the deployment of the whole Italian fleet during the battle with the British of mid-June. The Germans supplied fuel oil of only 10,000 tons in July 1942 and 23,000 tons in September. At the end of November 1942 the oil fuel reserve was about 70,000 tons plus all which was stored aboard the ships, This was enough for one sortie of the whole fleet. At the end of December, the old battleships Cesare, Duilio and Doria were removed from service."
"The allied landing in North Africa in 1943 put the Italian navy in another state of fuel crisis. New missions were made possible by the shipment of 40,000 tons of quality German fuel oil. In January 1943, the fuel oil crisis reached its climax and the three modern battleships had to be removed from service eliminating the Italian battle force. The only naval division still operating was in Sardinia. Only 3,000 tons were received in February 1943 and in March and April the modern destroyers had to be removed from escort missions. By the 10th of April, the only major naval force was annihilated when the Trieste was sunk and the Gorizia seriously damaged by allied air attack. Expecting a possible Allied invasion, the remaining destroyers were reactivated along with the battleships which had only half their bunkers filled with diesel fuel."
"In April 1943, the Italian navy was partially active and destroyers were used in escort missions. But there was no reserves of fuel oil left. The Germans "loaned" 60,000 tons of fuel oil captured from the French fleet at Toulon, allowing the three battleships to be reactivated with some cruisers. When Italy surrendered on September 8th 1943, their fleet only had enough fuel to reach Malta to surrender."
Such was the effect of the Royal Navy blockade, the most effective and forgotten operation of WW2.
“Unfortunately, our petrol stocks were badly depleted, and it was with some anxiety that we contemplated the coming British attack [Battleaxe], for we knew that our moves would be decided more by the petrol gauge than by tactical requirements.”
- Rommel in - Hart, L. The Rommel Papers. 1953.
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In 1945 the Historical Officer, John Westover of the US Army Centre of Military History, was wondering if the capture of the Nijmegen Bridge had been part of the objectives. General Gavin of the US 82nd responded on 25 July 1945. Gavin:
"About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping well, I personally directed Col Lindquist, Commanding the 508 PIR to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen Bridge without delay after landing but to keep a close watch on it in the event he needed to protect himself against the Reichswald and he was cautioned to send the battalion via the east of the City."
A direct and clear order to immediately attempt to capture the bridge with one battalion while the rest of the regiment defended against a possible attack from the Reichswald.
Then Gavin obfuscated. In his 1947 book Airborne Warfare Gavin was not so clear regarding the failure: "Just before take-off, I discussed the situation with Col Lindquist and directed him to commit not more than one battalion to the seizure of the Nijmegen Bridge as soon as possible after landing, so as to take advantage of surprise and darkness". Gavin using the words "soon as possible" created the illusion responsibility was with Col Lindquist to decide when to send troops to the Nijmegen Bridge. Gavin successfully created the myth that the failure to immediately attack the bridge was a misunderstanding. This absolved Gavin of the failure so Gavin thought.
The official US History written by Charles MacDonald in 1963 also noticed the conflicting statements. Capt Westover, US Army Historical officer, who had access to the 82nds records found no record of these orders. The Official US history determined that Col Lindquist and Lt Col Warren were not aware of any pre jump orders. The only guidance for the men of the 508 battalion was Field Order No 1 which was defensive in content. Capt. Westover when preparing the official US history being in possession of the after action reports, unit diaries and official reports, etc., still found unexplained discrepancies in the shift in priorities from the bridge to Groebeek Heights. Westover asked Gen Gavin. "What person, staff or headquarters made the decision to apportion the weight of the 82nd AD to the high ground rather than the bridge at Nijmegen?" Gavin replied, "This decision was made by myself and approved by my Corps Commander." There is no record of their conversation. Anglo phobe US historians since have suggested that the decision was made by Browning.
In short, Gavin deflected all the way - until now. Poulusson asserts: Gavin did not have a plan of attack, panicked on the 18th withdrawing all his forces from the Nijmegen bridge and town completely, then after the battle made up pre-jump orders.
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LVT reclaims commonly created wealth to use for common services
The value of land is created by the surrounding community not the landowner. Land on a desert island with one person on it is worth zero. Have many people on the island then land has value.
LVT reclaims this commonly created wealth to use for common services. What wealth we create, we use for us. Ideal! Currently we use privately created wealth to pay for common services using income tax. Currently we penalise the productive, allowing the unproductive, landowners for e.g., to appropriate commonly created wealth.
LVT cannot be passed onto the tenant
Market forces come into play, as happens right now. Landlords try to get as much rent at all times. Raise the rent too high? The tenant moves. Implying they can up the rent without any care implies they are undercharging, which they are not.
LVT must fall on the landowner
The owner should not pay the levy? How odd. Someone else should pay for what someone else owns? Very odd. The landowner owns the land, his responsibility, so he/she should pay.
Land values are easy to assess
Ask an estate agent, they will tell you. In other countries the property tax bill tells you how much you pay for the land and the building. Not difficult.
LVT must tax all land
Taxing all land by it value with a building on it or not, or occupied or not, stops harmful land speculation (2008 crash was down to land speculation). Buy land and keep for years on end, but you pay. Few will keep the land, then sell it to someone who will put the land to good productive use.
LVT will eliminate personal Income Tax
The late Mark Wadsworth did the calculations for the UK.
Those in favour of LVT also want all commonly created resources charged for. Use, or extract, what we all own you pay us.
Taxing land has had great benefits in the world where it is done. It is what they did before Income Tax, a temporary tax for the Napoleonic wars. Landowners, via the House of (Land)Lords, etc, realized they could push the burden of taxation onto the poor, so it was kept.
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As for 3 fully operational XXX Corps' tanks running onto Arnhem after taking the bridge.
SS man Harmel:
"The four panzers [Carrington's five tank troop] who crossed the bridge made a mistake when they stayed in Lent. If they had carried on their advance, it would have been all over for us.'
But Harmel also contradictory stated:
"what is seldom understood, that the Arnhem battle was lost in Nijmegen. If the allies had taken the [Nijmegen] bridge on the first day, it would have been all over for us. Even if we had lost it on the second day we would have had difficulty stopping them. By the time the English tanks had arrived, the matter was already decided".
♦ 17th at 14.50 hrs, XXX Corps started to roll.
It took them 42 hours to reach the Nijmegen bridge,
Just ahead of schedule.
♦ 19th a.m. XXX Corps reached Nijmegen.
♦ 19th at 20.00 hrs , about eleven hours after XXX Corps
arrived at Nijmegen, the first two Tigers driven in from Germany,
drove up onto the ramp leading to the Arnhem bridge then
systematically shelled houses occupied by the British paras.
The 2 Tigers were hit and taken to be repaired.
♦ 20th at 19,00 hrs, XXX Corps take NIjmegen bridge in the dark
with only five tanks crossing the bridge with two hit by enemy fire.
The British 1st Airborne had already capitulated. Schwere
Panzerkompanie Hummel with 12 Tigers had already ran
south over the Arnhem bridge blocking any route north.
XXX Corps were now 36 hrs behind schedule because they
had to seize the Nijmegen bridge which should have been
done by the US 82nd.
If the US 82nd had taken the Nijmegen bridge on the 1st day, the 17th, XXX Corps would have been over the bridge on the morning of the 19th about 10 hrs before any Tiger entered Arnhem. The 82nd's 6pdr anti-tanks guns could have easily dealt with any German armour that arrived at Lent, the north end of the bridge, in the first 42 hours.
SS Man Harmel who said there was no German opposition between Nijmegen and Arnhem on the evening of the 20th, did not know about the Tiger tanks that ran south. The route to Arnhem was already closed. He never knew this until decades after the war. Five Shermans, with two of them damaged, that crossed the Nijmegen bridge would have been made scrap metal by the 12 Tigers between Nijmegen and Arnhem.
http://www.defendingarnhem.com/schpzkphummel.htm
Harmel had no knowledge this Tiger unit had arrived on the 19th. When he says that nothing was between Nijmegen and Arnhem he was totally wrong. He never knew this until the 1970s.
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@altair458
On the US entering WW2, it was about the British defending the USA and teaching them how to wage war. The British provided vital assistance to the USN. In early 1942 the British had to lend the USN 24 anti-submarine vessels, and crews, a Fleet Air Arm Squadron to protect New York Harbour with the Royal Navy moving over defending the eastern seaboard of the USA, as the Americans concentrated on any perceived follow up attack by the Japanese in the Pacific. The USN was totally unprepared for war, despite every warning, ending up being far more dependent on the Royal Navy than they would have liked. Even the aircraft carrier HMS Victorious was loaned to the USA to operate in the Pacific as they only had one carrier, temporarily renamed USS Robin (after Robin Hood).
The British and Soviets had decided the course of the war with the Battle of Britain and the Battle of Moscow - Germany was stopped in the west and in the east and going nowhere in North Africa. The Germans were going nowhere from Dec 1941, the Battle of Moscow.
The war was essentially won in 1938 and 1940, when in British made a planned switch to a war economy, five years ahead of Germany, and in 1940 the British refused to make peace. In 1941 the British were building more aircraft than Germany, Japan and Italy combined, 5,000 more than the USSR and 5,000 less than the USA.
In 1942 the USA was a liability. Shipping losses to U-boats had fallen steadily throughout 1941 only to reach spectacular levels with the entry of the USA into the war - up to summer of 1942 the US lost 600 vessels from the Caribbean to Newfoundland. All major historical authorities, Morrison, Roskill, Churchill, Bauer and even General Marshall agreed this was entirely due the incompetence of the US Navy and the stupidity of Admiral King. The correspondence between King and Marshall can be found in Bauer's history and ends in effect, with an army general correctly advising a US Admiral on maritime tactics.
The USAAF in the UK was receiving approximately 70% of its supplies locally until 1943 - it is in the USAAF history.
The story of the USA 'coming to the rescue’ of the UK is propaganda story that suited both the British and the USA at the time. The reality was very different, starting with the Arcadia conference in late 1941, where the British subtly forced US to model its war economy and planning on the British system. The reality was the USA knew nothing about managing a modern war learning everything from the British. In 1939 the US army was the 19th largest in the world about the same size of Romania and smaller than Portugal. They never even had a tank, never mind a tank corps.
Had things been different and the British been really up against it, the Tizard mission may have gone to the USSR, not the USA. The British had a workable design for a nuclear bomb from the ‘Tube Alloys’ project. Britain and the USSR would have won, maybe using the A-Bomb with the USA a minor player on the world stage today - similar to China being a large manufacturing country.
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@johnlucas8479
Market, the air side was mainly two Americans who planned it. The RAF were responsible for the too wide jumps at Arnhem. Garden, the ground side, was mainly British, Horrocks. The concept was Monty's, which was sound, but vastly under resourced by Eisenhower. Eisenhower gave the go ahead. Monty distanced himself from it.
Wrong about Browning. Browning was astonished, and concerned, when he heard the bridge had not been secured. He told Gavin to take the bridge ASAP, and clearly before XXX Corps turned up. Gavin said 1,000 tanks were still there so he will have to go and see. Browning, believing Gavin said OK, but he never said at the expense of the bridge, by taking all men out of Nijmegen. Pulling out of Nijmegen completely was Gavin's decision. The Germans SS men had the rail and road bridges and immediate southern approach ramps, no more. The 82nd men overnight kept them to the southern bridge approaches - a small amount of ground. Abandoning Nijmegen allowing the Germans to flood the town with SS infantry troops was Gavin's idea. It took a lot of effort by XXX Corps using some 82nd men to get them out.
For Gavin to have stopped assaults on the bridge, he must have been confident (or foolish) to think his men, many of them first time in battle against hardened SS men, could seize the bridge before XXX Corps arrived. But common sense would dictate that leaving 82nd men on the south of the bridge prevents the Germans from using it. He pulled his troops out with the Germans having full use of the bridge. Madness.
The fact remains that the 82nd should have moved to the bridge immediately after the jump, as they were supposed to. If the did they would have occupied the bridge and kept it ready for XXX Corps' arrival. The operation would then be a success.
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1. Gavin of the 82nd de-prioritised the Nijmegen bridge. Appalling decision.
2. The German troops in Nijmegen were low quality training men. Only 19 of these old men were guarding two bridges. The bridges had no barbed wire or defense ditches around them. Easy to assault. The 82nd would have walked on the whole bridge approaching via the riverbank. There were no Germans on the north bank. They only had 19 old men to fight off.
3. Once the paras dropped, Arnhem, not Nijmegen was the priority for the Germans. The SS men who moved across the bridge at Nijmegen were to reinforce the south of Arnhem bridge - the priority - to stop the Allies getting over the Rhine. Sound logic. That is why the few troops between the two bridges were concentrated on Arnhem. To the Germans there could be another imminent jump south of Arnhem. So Arnhem bridge, the Rhine, was the German priority. The SS infantry commander misunderstood his orders going to Nijmegen. He had no armour. If he had gone to Arnhem, the 82nd men would have walked onto the Nijmegen bridge despite being very late arriving.
4. If the 82nd men had occupied the bridge they would have formed a cordon on the north bank. This would have been enough to fend off any German infantry attack until the full compliment of airborne artillery arrived the next day.
5. The 82nd men were to approach the bridge via the country (riverbank), not the town. Due to the 82nds inaction, a few SS men came from the north occupying both bridges setting up shop in the small park on the south side. More were to come in dribs and drabs via the ferry. The few 82nd men who did eventually attack the bridge were driven off by these men.
6. The 82nd men held their position around the south side of the bridge throughout the night, ready to launch another attack at daybreak. The old German men in the town were no problem to the small group of 82nd men. A problem you think was there, which was not. Gavin arrived in the morning seeing the situation, then told Warren to get out of Nijmegen completely. Another appalling decision.
7. The 82nd men leaving allowed the SS men that accumulated north of the bridge to move south over the two bridges, fully occupying the town, forming good defensive positions in the rubble (The USAAF bombed the town by mistake months earlier killing 600 civilians). During the day more SS men were arriving by the ferry to the east filling up the town, making matters worse.
8. XXX Corps arrived ahead of schedule at Nijmegen. At this point there was no armour between the two bridges. If XXX Corps were able to move over the bridge they would have cruised up to Arnhem bridge virtually unopposed. German armour came over the ferry, then set up between the bridges as XXX Corps were preparing and seizing the bridge. XXX Corps seeing the shambles in Nijmegen had to take the bridge themselves, having no faith in the US troops as they had completely failed. The 82nd men fell under the command of XXX Corps. XXX Corps also had to clear the SS men from the rubble using all men available. This delayed them 36 hours. The delay was so great in such a time critical operation, it prevented forming a bridgehead over the Rhine.
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SuperCaratacus & TIK,
This vid TIK linked to. I am sure he took a lot from it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgxEBGAXNRU&t=17s
Anand Toprani left a lot out on oil production clouding his analysis. The British refineries at Suez and Haifa and a pipeline all along the canal in case the canal is out of action by air bombing, he was not aware of. The refineries at Suez and Haifa were small but could easily be expanded. Haifa was supplied by pipeline from Iran, but the RN insisted it have crude oil tanker facilities to cope if the pipeline is cut. These refineries gave the same sailing distance from the Caribbean. Also pre WW2, a coal fed UK, got its small needs of oil from Scottish shale oil and crude found in Derbyshire in 1919.
Oil was discovered at Kelham Hills in Nottinghamshire in the 1920s. In 1939 oil was discovered Eakring in Sherwood Forest, also oil was found at Caunton. US oil men were brought over in secrecy setting up the equipment. The locals never knew what was happening with the men housed in a monastery. It produced a modest 700 barrels per day. By the end of 1942 demand for 100-octane fuel would grow to more than 150,000 barrels every day. By the end of WW2, 1.5 million barrels had been extracted from English oil fields. A fair amount, the equivalent of about 14 WW2 T2 tankers carrying 16,000 tons of oil. The oil was high quality and used in lubricants and plastic, etc.
Refineries opened at Grangemouth in Scotland (1924), Fawley on the south coast (1921) and Stanlow near Liverpool (1924). The UK was not totally reliant on oil from the USA, as Toprani suggests. Venezuela was an independent country and today still has the greatest oil reserves in the world. If only being 100% energy independent gave great riches, then post WW2 Japan would have been one of the poorest countries in the world.
Toprani did get it right in that the Royal Navy blockade was instrumental in determining the direction of WW2.
He did get it right, as did Prof Adam Tooze in Wages of Destruction, that the clear driver for Hitler's aggression being the rise of the USA very quickly into an economic super power. The USA had access to vast resources inside the USA, a land stolen from indigenous people and the Mexicans by moving west. Hitler took this precedence and looked east to emulate the USA, and match them economically. The Americans had few people in the land to the west of them, whereas the Germans had fully populated lands to their east. They had the Hunger Plan to de-populate and colonise the land with Germans. However this was long term. Hitler's immediate concerns from May 1940 were resources to build planes to fight the coming air war.
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“Patton finally began receiving adequate supplies on September 4, after a week’s excruciating pause”
- Harry Yeide
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp. In thinking this Ike was wrong."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
“ It was commonly believed at Third Army H.Q. that Montgomery's advance through Belgium was largely maintained by supplies diverted from Patton. (See Butcher, op. cit., p. 667.) This is not true. The amount delivered by the ' air-lift ' was sufficient to maintain only one division. No road transport was diverted to aid Montgomery until September16th. On the other hand, three British transport companies, lent to the Americans on August 6th " for eight days," were not returned until September 4th.' “
- CHESTER WILMOT
THE STRUGGLE FOR EUROPE. 1954
P 589
"Despite objections raised to Montgomery's plan of an assault on a 40 division front, it was more sensible than Eisenhower's insistence on the entire front being in motion at all times, for no better reason than he could not abide the thought that the two American army groups would not participate as entities in the anticipated victory. Not only did Eisenhower fail to heed Montgomery's suggestions, but also he never seemed to understand the possible benefits. He was evidently unable to understand that to supply 40 divisions attacking on one front would have been an easier task than to supply first one army and then the other as each in turn went over to the offensive. It was this concentration of effort which Eisenhower failed to understand and to implement"
- Eisenhower at the Art of Warfare
by DJ Haycock, page 182.
Land supplies were not taken from Patton and given to Monty. It is a complete myth to claim otherwise. Monty didn't even have a full army for his attack at Market Garden, just a Corps and supporting elements, with much flow in from England.
Market Garden was not a very large ground operation. It was limited in size. The American attack into the Hurtgen Forest started when Market Garden was going on. The US advance on the Hurtgen Forest by First US Army 9th Infantry Division began on 14th September, 3 days before Market Garden began, and was continuing to try and advance into the Hurtgen even when Market Garden began 3 days later, but it was halted by the Germans however.
This was soon followed up by a larger advance by US First Army towards Aachen at the start of October. Market Garden didn't make a notable dent in allied supplies seeing as the US was able to put on a LARGER ground attack right afterwards. According to Bradley in his own book there was parity of supplies between the three allied armies, Second British, First and Third US by mid September 1944 and according to the official US Army History as cited in Hugh Cole's book, The Lorraine Campaign page 52..."by 10th September the period of critical (gasoline) shortage had ended". This was a whole week before Market Garden took place. The gasoline drought was the end of August/beginning of September. It was over by the time of Market Garden.
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@Delogros
Your Granddad must have been grateful to Montgomery. Without Monty you may not have been here.
Ridgway wanted St. Vith’s defenders to stay east of the Salm, but Montgomery ruled otherwise. The 7th Armored Division, its ammunition and fuel in short supply and perhaps two-thirds of its tanks destroyed, and the battered elements of the 9th Armored, 106th, and 28th Divisions could not hold the extended perimeter in the rolling and wooded terrain. Meanwhile, Dietrich’s second wave of tanks entered the fray. The II SS Panzer Corps immediately threatened the Salm River line north and west of St. Vith, as did the LVIII Panzer Corps circling to the south, adding the 2d SS Panzer Division to its drive. Ordering the St. Vith defenders to withdraw through the 82d Airborne Division line to prevent another Schnee Eifel disaster, Montgomery signaled them that “they come back with all honor.”
- Ardennes-Alsace by Roger Cirillo. US Army Center of MIlitary History
“I find it difficult to refrain from expressing my indignation at Hodges and Ridgeway and my appreciation of Montgomery whenever I talk about St. Vith. It is my firm opinion that if it hadn't been for Montgomery, the First US Army, and especially the troops in the St. Vith salient, would have ended in a debacle that would have gone down in history.”
“I'm sure you remember how First Army HQ fled from Spa leaving food cooking on the stoves, officers' Xmas presents from home on their beds and, worst of all, top secret maps still on the walls... First Army HQ never contacted us with their new location and I had to send an officer to find them. He did and they knew nothing about us...(Montgomery) was at First Army HQ when my officer arrived. A liaison officer from Montgomery arrived at my HQ within 24 hrs. His report to Montgomery is what saved us...”
- Hasbrouck of 7th Armor - “Generals of the Bulge” by Jerry D. Morelock, page 298.
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Germany's biggest mistake was declaring war in the first place. Once they waged war when was the point they could not win? That was when the British refused to make peace in June 1940. With Britain still in the war the Royal Navy blockade starved Germany, and the Axis, of vital resources, including food (animal & human) and oil. Britain was even buying up rare metals from Turkey to ensure the Germans did not have them. The Royal Navy controlled and freely sailed the eastern Atlantic and the eastern Mediterranean, and controlled both entrances to the Mediterranean. They even had Malta all through WW2, on the doorstep of Axis Italy. Britain's land forces were from Turkey to Libya. Essentially the British surrounded Europe, controlling the sea lanes.
The Royal Navy ensured the conflict with Germany would continue. Germany could not win from June 1940 onwards. Being a largely landlocked country, Germany's forces were heavily based on its army, while Britain's was heavily based on its navy and air force with a small highly mobile army. Germany could not remove Britain from the war having pretty well no surface fleet to Britain having the largest navy in the world.
Britain's approach was that every operation was to bleed Germany of resources, especially oil. Operations in Norway and Greece forced the Germans to deploy troops to these areas but also its surface fleet, which mainly was destroyed in Norway. The German occupied countries were also under the blockade, which were also a drain of German resources.
The British, because of its armed forces structure of massive navy, large air force and small highly mobile army were unable to engage the Germans on the European land mass, on which Germany had a massive army. Apart from the air, the two countries could not get at each other. Britain's war then was partially an economic war. Every German operation against the British had to be decisive whereas the British could lose to the Germans while still asserting economic pressure in its favour. This was the British way of war being very good at it. Britain used similar tactics against Germany in WW1 to devastating effects. This approach was used against the French on multiple occasions over 200 years. Smaller nations in Europe would follow Pax Britannica due British naval dominance. Britain could dictate any war's outcome by blocking trade and resources to one side or another.
The Germans like most of Europe relied on imported oil, raw materials and food (animal & human). For the Germans these resources can only come from two regions - the USSR or the rest of the world. By removing the rest of the world from the grasp of the Axis, the British forced the Germans to acquire Soviet oil - Romania did not produce enough. Hitler had no choice but to invade the Soviet Union in June 1941 because of the resources situation. He needed the resources of the USSR to fight the coming air war with Britain. In May 1940 Roosevelt stated the USA would produce 50,000 planes per year. Most of these would be directed towards Germany with British production on top.
Germany greatly expanded its U-Boat fleet. The popular view was that this fleet was to starve Britain into submission. That was valid but a high hope, however, it was also to divert and lock up Royal Navy resources in convoy protection and U-Boat hunting, allowing merchant ships to enter Germany and the occupied countries more freely.
Germany had been forced into a situation by the British that they knew they could not escape from. Even if Germany had seized the Caucuses' oil fields intact (the Soviets sabotaged them to the point new deep bore holes would need to be drilled) the British would have focused them for their bombing campaign operating from the Middle East - there were plans to bomb them as Britain held nearby Iraq and occupied Iran. This was to drain Germany of vital oil. Every British victory in Africa was decisive and every German victory was not, even if Germany won an operation, they were still being bled. Unless Germany could seize the Suez Canal and beyond, the British could just come back year after year and counter attack with new tanks and new men, with resources not being a problem for them.
Germany knew that they could not invade Britain as the Royal Navy was just too powerful. The RAF could replace losses far quicker than they could, as they found out in the air Battle of Britain. Germany could not put their large army on British soil.
After June 1940 Germany has an enemy it can’t defeat not entertaining peace, economically throttling the Germans every day of the war. Germany never had time, the British did. The German invasion of the USSR with an army short of resources due to the Royal Navy blockade, may have quickened the war's end for Germany, however it was not the point that Germany was doomed. Germany had already lost the war it was just a matter of time when Germany collapsed.
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@laurencethornblade1195
Roosevelt was duplicitous. Changing his mind, saying one thing and meaning another. He even demanded, and got, territory for supplying "aid" which was paid for. Unbelievable. He had no intention of committing the US to the war against Hitler. Britain went into WW2 on principle thinking the US should do the same. Britain was the only country that was not attacked or attacked anyone that went all through WW2. To Churchill it was obvious what Hitler wanted and was doing which the US could not get away from. Mein Kampf was full of bile towards the USA. Roosevelt was naïve in thinking the USA was immune. The Germans developed the Amerkia bomber specifically to attack the USA. A number were built.
British and French orders for raw materials and goods from the USA just before and in the early part of WW2 alleviated the US soup lines for sure. Both countries never re-armed quick enough, using USA industry as a cushion. Even though, only 80% of US industry was active in 1941. Postan in "British War Production", states that the French suggested to primarily use the massive and idle US industry for supplies, to common British & French specifications, and the British & French use their own men to fight. One man in a factory is one man less at the front. The idea never got far. Postan states that most of the "arms" supplied was mainly raw materials and machine tools. Much of these raw materials were normal trade in peace time.
The UK owned substantial parts of US industry and land with pre-war import much from the USA, like cereals. The UK used other continents for food as a hedge against famine. The Irish famine left a big mark. Most of Argentina's meat production was British owned - all the canned meats the British army used was from Argentinia. When war broke out this peace time trade was now the USA supplying Britain, in USA eyes. The US also made Britain sell many of these organisations at knock down prices as well.
Churchill was naive in relying on the USA too much, pre Dec 1941 they came across as opportunists - the demanding of territory should have made Churchill weary of the USA. Niall Ferguson in The War of the World, page 333, states:
"In Asia, the USA had already established a pattern of calling on others to take stands against aggression, while pursuing its own economic interest".
"When Roosevelt began to do the same in Europe too, Chamberlain concluded that Americans were "a nation of cads". He said "it is best and safest to count on nothing from the Americans except words".
Chamberlain, distrusted the Americans to a degree viewing them as economic opportunists. He wasn't far wrong as the USA made a profit on WW2, demanded territory and had the cheek to meddle in internal British Empire affairs, in order to get at the markets. Chamberlain was right in only words coming from the USA, as Roosevelt showed. The British did not insist that the USA give territory back to Mexico. Churchill would have been fully aware of Chamberlain's view, which was being enacted before him.
At Churchill's insistence, an American was supreme commander in NW Europe, as a lever by Churchill in order to get them to adopt Germany First, which was the correct strategy for the USA. The Americans were flattered. The Americans had zero experience at this level, which was an appalling suggestion by Churchill. The Americans naturally thought the British would be in charge as it was their own backyard. That was a poor move by Churchill, as progress post Normandy proved, with the US generals only being colonels when WW2 broke out. This was akin to the Germans putting an Italian in charge of the Afrika Korps.
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@laurencethornblade1195
Some facts for you. The British were the single biggest agents in the defeat of Nazi Germany. They were there from day one until the end. They did not enter because they attacked another country or were attacked. The so-called "invincible" Germans army tried and failed, with their allies, for two years in WW2 to defeat the British army in North Africa. The British drove the Axis out of North Africa.
The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery had to give the US armies an infantry role as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein
♦ March 1943 - Medenine
♦ June 1944 - Normandy
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British or US, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. The US Army were struggling in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months with over 50,000 casualties. The Battle of the Bulge took all the US effort, with Montgomery having top be put in command, and the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line, with nearly 100,000 US casualties. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British with Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was command of all naval forces with the RAF all air forces.
The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against the panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) having to give them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
Then the ignored British naval blockade on the Axis economy, which was so successful the substantial Italian navy could not put to sea in full strength, or even at all on some occasions, because of a lack of oil. Then the British bomber offensive on the German economy, taking the war right into German cities, wiping out Hamburg in one night.
You need to give respect where it is due.
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@nickdanger3802
Rambo, Caen was strategically unimportant. You been repeatedly told this...
“the timings, when all this was going to happen. The answer is again found in the strategic plan, which states that the Allied armies would have driven the Germans back to the Seine on or about D plus 90, say September 1. Various intermediate targets, phase lines, were introduced into the plan but these were largely, as stated above, for administrative reasons, to give the logistical planners some time frame. Indeed when Lt Colonel C.P. Dawnay, Monty’s military assistant, was helping his chief prepare for the first presentation of plans on April 7, 8 weeks before D-Day, he asked Montgomery where the phase lines should be drawn between D-day and D plus 90. Monty replied, ‘Well, it doesn’t matter, Kit - draw them where you like.’ ‘Shall I draw them equally, Sir?, ‘asked Dawnay. ‘Yes, that’ll do’, replied Montgomery.
-Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944.
This is also stated in Nigel Hamilton’s three volume biography of Montgomery:
”To help illustrate his presentation Monty had asked his MA - Lt Colonel Dawnay, to ink colluded phases onto the maps - as Dawnay later recalled: ’I had the maps prepared and drew on them the D-Day targets for the troops along the invasion front. And the dropping zones of the paratroopers. And after consulting with Monty I drew the D plus 90 line - showing where he felt we should get by D plus 90 - which included Paris and a line back along the Loire. And I asked Monty how I should draw the lines in between. And he said , ‘*Well it doesn’t matter Kit, draw them as you like.’ ‘So I said, ‘ Shall I draw them equally, sir?’ And he said ‘Yes, that’ll do.’ In his opinion it was not of any importance where he would be groundwise between D plus 1 and D plus 90, because he felt sure he could capture the line D plus 90 by the end of 3 months, and he was not going to capture ground, he was going to destroy enemy forces. Using Monty’s presentation notes, Dawnay drew in the arbitrary lines, never dreaming that they would be used in evidence against Monty when the campaign did not go ‘according to plan.’
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@freddieclark
In an interview with Maj Gen G. E. Prier-Palmer, British Joint Services Mission in Washington, in 1955, General Browning said the Grave and Nijmegen Bridges must be seized "as soon as possible", although the wooded Groesbeek Heights on the route to the bridge must be held.
Field Order 11 of 13 Sept is clear in section 2 a), putting the bridges first in the writing, that they were to be seized, then the high ground secured and then the roads. Order 1, of 13 September, written by Lindquist of the 508th, states he will wait at the high ground for a Division Order to move from the Heights to the bridge. In short, wait for an Order from Gavin to move. The Heights near De Ploeg, which are really pretty flat being a wooded area but high for Holland, are pretty well between the Drop Zone (DZ) and bridge. The 508th would go through the Heights to reach the bridge. Gavin overrode any written Order, and fully emphasized verbally to Lindquist in England that the bridge was to be priority. Chester Graham, witnessed this.
Browning and Gavin naturally did not want German troops between the LZ and the bridge, so the Heights had to be occupied and secure. The 508th CP would be established at the Heights. Gavin understood the priorities in sending the 508th to the bridge and Groesbeek heights immediately, with Coln Warren's battalion of the 508th assigned the bridge. To get to the bridge from the DZ you have to pass the Groesbeek Heights, so any enemy at the Heights naturally had to be subdued, then secure the area, which could take time, then send Warren's battalion to the bridge. It took the 665 men of 508th a painfully slow 3.5 hours to march a few miles from the DZ to the Heights, reaching the Groesbeek heights at 1730. They encountered only a few Labour troops in opposition.
There were no Germans at the Groesbeek Heights as forward scouts relayed back the situation. So, on route Coln Lindquist the head of the 508th could have sent Warren's A and B companies directly to the bridge, bypassing the Groesbeek Heights, immediately via the riverbank as instructed by Gavin. The rest of the battalion could move to the empty Groesbeek Heights setting up defences at De Ploeg on the Heights. Dutch resistance men informed the 508th that the Germans had largely cleared out of Nijmegen with only 19 guards on the bridge. So all was easy and fine, so the two companies assigned the bridge could move immediately to their objective without a diversion via the Groesbeek Heights. Despite hearing the good news from the Dutch Underground, Lindquist in command of the 508th was not moving at all, keeping all his men static at De Ploeg.
Lindquist was waiting for a Divisional Order from Gavin informing him that the DZ was secure, then send Warren's battalion to the bridge. When Gavin found out Lindquist was static via a liaison officer he was livid, running over to De Ploeg in a Jeep telling Lindquist to get moving to the bridge. Even then, took Lindquist another two hours to send men in force to the bridge. Three stray men from a forty man patrol led by Trooper Atkins sent to the bridge immediately by Warren to confirm what the Dutch Underground told them on reaching DePloeg, took the guards on the south end of the bridge prisoner. They left when no one turned up. When leaving they saw hundreds of Germans pour from the north onto the previously lightly guarded bridge. Later, a company of Warren's main force became lost when they eventually moved towards the bridge. By the time Warren's two companies did reach the bridge in force, the Germans had reinforcing the bridge with hundreds of men. Too late. The first attack on the bridge was just before midnight, 10.5 hours after landing.
The 82nd were expecting German resistance from the east, however it came from the north via the Nijmegen bridge.
Gavin was expecting Lindquist to secure the Groesbeek Heights, which were devoid of enemy forces, then immediately move to the bridge, which meant sending Warren's battalion immediately. Lindquist was expecting Gavin to notify him that the DZ was clear. Gavin was expecting Lindquist to go to the bridge when it was obvious the Groesbeek heights, on the way to the bridge, were secure. As no Germans were about, the heights were naturally secure. Regarding Lindquist's expected clearing of the LZ before moving from DePloeg. Lindquist did write a Field Order for the 508th on 13 September copied to Gavin, stating that once the heights were secure he would wait for a Divisional Order [from Gavin] to move. Two days later at the jump briefing Gavin verbally overruled Lindquist's Field Order, using a map he told him that he should move to the bridge "without delay". Poor command communications by Gavin.
Poulussen, in Lost at Nijmegen discovered that the 508th jumped without any written offensive orders from Gavin. All was verbal from Gavin to Lindquist of the 508. Chester Graham, the 82nd liaison officer, was at the pre jump meeting in England. He said there was no ambiguity amongst anyone there that the bridge was the prime target.
In 1945 Historical Officer, Capt. John Westover of the US Army Centre of Military History, was wanting confirmation that the capture of the Nijmegen bridge had been part of the objectives. In response, dated 25 July 1945, General Gavin was clear: "About 48 hours prior to take-off, when the entire plan appeared to be shaping well, I personally directed Col Lindquist, commanding the 508 PIR to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen Bridge without delay after landing but to keep a close watch on it in the event he needed to protect himself against the Reichswald and he was cautioned to send the battalion via the east of the city." General Browning never knew men were static at De Ploeg. Like Gavin he was expecting men to be seizing the bridge. Being corps commander, he was busy attempting to communicate with all three parachute divisions.
The 82nd did launch a few failed attacks on the bridge. In the afternoon of the next day, 18th, Gavin asked permission to launch another attack. Browning, seeing the bridge was well defended, and the failed attacks, refused, opting to wait for XXX Corps to arrive to seize the bridge. Inexplicably Gavin moved all his men out of Nijmegen town completely to the heights and DZ, giving the town back to the Germans. This made matters worse when XXX Corps arrived who had expended vital time, and ammunition, in flushing them out. On page 162 of the U.S. Official History: "many documents regarding the extensive combat interviews were conducted with personnel of the 508th Parachute Infantry, they are inexplicably missing from Department of the Army files."
Read:
1) Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History Of The 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment In World War II by Phil Nordyke.
2) Arnhem 1944 by Christer Bergström.
3) Market Garden, Then and Now by Karl Magry.
4) Lost at Nijmegen by R Poulussen
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In both campaigns [France & Barbarossa], the Germans gambled on achieving decisive success in the opening phases of the assault. Anything less spelled disaster.
...If the Blitzkrieg's belt broke the whole movement stopped. The Germans thought they had formulated a version of Blitzkrieg in France that was a sure-fire success. They used this in the USSR, just scaling up forces. They did not have the intelligence to assess properly, that the reason for their success was allied incompetence not anything brilliant they did.
Wages of Destruction - Adam Tooze, Page 380:
_because it involved such a concentrated use of force, Manstein's plan was a one-shot affair. If the initial assault had failed, and it could have failed in many ways, the Wehrmacht as an offensive force would have been spent. The gamble paid off. But contrary to appearances, the Germans had not discovered a patent recipe for military miracles. The overwhelming success of May 1940, resulting in the defeat of a major European military power in a matter of weeks, was not a repeatable outcome.
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This book is drivel. This book is aimed at a US audience to give them what they want to hear to sell a book. Avoid if you want to know how matters really progressed.
Spitfires used "grass" runways. He was on about filling in "concrete" runways. At no time during the Battle for Britain was the RAF near finished as he is putting across. Spitfire production increased, the RAF was never short of fighters, while Me109 production decreased and the Germans were losing pilots like crazy, while British pilots who bailed out went back into battle - sometimes the same day. The British early warning system of radar, and visual spotters was the first ever "intranet". The Battle was rather one sided and stacked hopelessly against the Germans. The Luftwaffe had first been defeated over Dunkirk, the first German defeat, when the Spitfire made its first appearance. The RAF, and a few French, kept the Luftwaffe largely away from the evacuation beaches hence why it was such a success. More German planes were lost than British. He goes on about that the RAF was nearly defeated. The RAF were far from defeated. They easily won.
"Germany First" was Churchill's idea and his statesmanship and powers of persuasion convinced the USA that was the right way. He suggested appointing an American as the head to lead the European campaign, to soften them up. The US assumed a Brit would be in charge. This author is saying it was the US politicians and generals who came up with the idea.
Roosevelt stated he was to make 50,000 planes per year in May 1940. On top of UK production, UK industry was about the same size as Germany's, Hitler knew this mass of planes were to come his way with or without US pilots in them. The lead to a full operational plane from order was 18 months and Hitler knew that, hence the gamble to invade the USSR to gain the resources of the east. No resources came from the rest of the world as the RN blockaded Germany. Hitler was preparing for the coming air war with the UK. It came - he was right. This author never knew this.
The Japanese took a hiding from the Soviets in 1939 at the Battles of Khalkhin Gol in which the Japanese took 45,000 casualties. The Soviets kept 40 armoured divisions facing the Kwantung army in the Soviet Far East. The Japanese only had poor light tanks. The Japanese were not going to advance on the USSR, with almost certain defeat, when they needed resources for the battles in the south. Again this author is wrong.
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Logistics was the major issue but Antwerp wasn’t the only option. If Eisenhower had let Monty go for a Rhine crossing in late August/early September - Operation Comet - with the intent of making the inland sea in Holland they could have got Rotterdam and even Amsterdam instead.
Antwerp was an awkward port, being 80km inland with a warren of tidal inlets, islands and estuaries covering the approaches. Many an army came to grief in that part of the world - a British one was destroyed there in 1809. If Monty was all for bypassing the problems of Antwerp and gaining Rotterdam it wouldn't have been the worst judgement, it was very sound. The Germans were still reeling, the paras were on standby with fuel in the tanks. Rotterdam was possible. Stopping to open up Antwerp was always going to take considerable time. Eisenhower, felt it was better to concentrate on Antwerp as the supply head before pressing on - operation Market Garden was that plan. And then the endless operations from Hurtgen Forest to Walcheren.
Antwerp would not be fully open to allied shipping until early January 1945. The first ships entered in October 1944, but the majority of supplies would come from Normandy until November. That was three months from Antwerp's capture. Twice the time it took to break out of Normandy. By that time the French railway service had been largely rebuilt with stores coming in from Normandy and LeHavre, for Bradley’s 12th Army Group, and Marseilles, for Devers’ 6th Army Group. The supplies could be shifted faster.
Monty was for pushing on in early September,, Eisenhower was cautious. Eisenhower's caution allowed the Germans breathing space to reinforce gifting them an opportunity to consolidate then strike back. Pushing Monty into Holland and then going for caution was sound - you get Rotterdam and possibly Antwerp .
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@nheather
Germany had no realistic ability to overrun the UK. The British knew what sort of chance the Germans had. The reason the Germans had no chance was that the British were ready and waiting with factories turning out the latest equipment 24/7. During the so-called _Battle of Britain_, the Royal Navy had a mass of ships at Gibraltar ready for offensive operations against the Italians, they took the invasion of Britain really so seriously.
The German Navy was near non-existent. The single battleship the British kept in Portsmouth was quite able to handle everything the Germans had on the surface, together with the four flotillas of destroyers. I'm not counting the Home Fleet, which had additional powerful ships. In other words, the British kept plenty of naval force at home. All they needed to deal with the Germans with a good deal to spare. Also, 55 Matilda 2 tanks, which was immune to German anti-tank guns, were sent to North Africa, the Brits took the invasion so seriously.
Admiral Raeder said he could not guarantee putting down an invasion force, even with German air superiority, when the Royal Navy was still there. General Jodl talked of his men going through a British _mincing machine_.
In Churchill's memoirs, he says that he was prepared to defeat tens of thousands of Germans if they invaded (take that as slaughter). Presumably even if they arrived with weapons and not half-dead from seasickness in a 24 hour sea trip in barges being attacked from sea, land and air. The British kept plenty of force at home, all they needed.
And what were the Germans supposed to do? Sortie with two or three heavy cruisers, and blast their way through the Home Fleet or the Channel defences? At that point in the war, Bismarck was still under construction, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were under repair from the Norway operation, two of six heavy cruisers sunk, two of six light cruisers sunk, and only five of those could be considered modern warships, a large number of their destroyers were sunk at Narvik. The repair status on the rest of the ships wasn't real good. The Germans never even had an effective torpedo plane. The Stuka dive bomber was predictable in that it dived vertically. It was easily shot down and suffered so many losses in the Battle of Britain it was withdrawn from the battle.
So, with the German navy whittled to almost nothing, and the army incapable of crossing with enough force to win, the only threats was the then small U-boats force and the Luftwaffe. The British were therefore sparing about sending the RAF overseas. I don't know of any significant deployment of Spitfires outside the UK until the second half of 1942, and escort vessels kept on being built. The RAF defeated the Luftwaffe over Dunkirk, so the Germans knew they were no push over.
If anyone thinks that operation Sealion was a serious attempt at an invasion they are deluded. Even German generals never took it seriously. An invasion in concrete barges towed by tugs and no navy to speak of? The Germans knew the UK had a large industry working 24/7, the same size as Germany's, and the largest navy in the world to their virtually none.
The RAF was large with a large bomber force, which the Germans could not knock out. Any invasion at the few suitable invasion beaches would be met at the beaches by all types of aircraft. These could be based out of Me 109 range. State-of-the-art fighters would still be produced 24/7. There would always be top line fighters around.
According to Guderian in "Panzer Leader", and by pretty much any historian to follow, Sealion (Zee Lowe?) could succeed only with complete air superiority over the invasion areas, and at least naval equality in the Channel. Hence the air Battle of Britain, hard fought and clearly won by Britain. Naval equality was a pipe dream for Germany, but a pipe smoked only if the Luftwaffe could attain a decisive victory. Given the failure of the prerequisite, there is really no point in debating the if Germans could invade the UK.
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HemlockRidge
You are prattling balls getting your history from Hollywood and those laughable History Channel documentaries. Patton was fired for cowardly hitting a sick soldier in a hospital bed. An utter coward. A nutball who believed he was re-incarnated. He moved 10 miles in three moths at Metz. He was creation of the US media machine.
1985 US Army report on the Lorraine Campaign.
Patton does not come out well.
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a211668.pdf
From the document is in italics:
"Soldiers and generals alike assumed that Lorraine would fall quickly, and unless the war ended first, Patton's tanks would take the war into Germany by summer's end. But Lorraine was not to be overrun in a lightning campaign. Instead, the battle for Lorraine would drag on for more than 3 months."
"Despite its proximity to Germany, Lorraine was not the Allies' preferred invasion route in 1944_._ Except for its two principal cities, Metz and Nancy, the province_ contained few significant military objectives." "Moreover, once Third Army penetrated the province and entered Germany, there would still be no first-rate military objectives within its grasp. The Saar industrial region, while significant, was of secondary importance when compared to the great Ruhr industrial complex farther north."
Another Patton chase into un-needed territory, like
he did when running his troops into Brittany.
"With so little going for it, why did Patton bother with Lorraine at all? The reason was that Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, made up his mind to destroy as many German forces as possible west of the Rhine."
In other words a waste of time.
"Communications Zone organized the famous Red Ball Express, a non-stop conveyor belt of trucks connecting the Normandy depots with the field armies."
They were getting fuel via 6,000 trucks.
"The simple truth was that although fuel was plentiful in Normandy, there was no way to transport it in sufficient quantities to the leading elements. On 31 August , Third Army received no fuel at all."
In short, Patton overran his supply lines. What was
important was to secure the Port of Antwerp's
approaches. Montgomery approached the US leaders
of the First Airborne Army and they would not drop into
the Scheldt.
"Few of the Germans defending Lorraine could be considered First-rate troops. Third Army encountered whole battalions made up of deaf men, others of cooks, and others consisting entirety of soldiers with stomach ulcers."
Some army the Americans were going to fight.
"Was the Lorraine campaign an American victory' From September through November, Third Army claimed to have inflicted over 180,000 casualties on the enemy. But to capture the province of Lorraine, a problem which involved an advance of only 40 to 60 air miles, Third Army required over 3 months and suffered 50,000 casualties, approximately one-third of the total number of casualties it sustained in the entire European war."
Huge losses for taking unimportant territory,
against a poor German army.
"Ironically, Third Army never used Lorraine as a springboard for an advance into Germany after all. Patton turned most of the sector over to Seventh Army during the Ardennes crisis, and when the eastward advance resumed after the Battle of the Bulge, Third Army based its operations on Luxembourg, not Lorraine. The Lorraine campaign will always remain a controversial episode in American military history."
It's getting worse. One third of all European casualties
in Lorraine and never used the territory to move into Germany.
"Finally the Lorraine Campaign demonstrated that Logistics often drive operations, no matter how forceful and aggressive the commanding general may be." "Patton violated tactical principles" "His discovered that violating logistical principles is an unforgiving and cumulative matter."
Not flattering at all. And Americans state Patton
was the best general they had.
Bradley stated later:
“Patton was developing as an unpopular guy. He steamed about with great convoys of cars and great squads of cameramen … To George, tactics was simply a process of bulling ahead. Never seemed to think out a campaign. Seldom made a careful estimate of the situation. I thought him a shallow commander … I disliked the way he worked, upset tactical plans, interfered in my orders. His stubbornness on amphibious operations, parade plans into Messina sickened me and soured me on Patton. We learned how not to behave from Patton’s Seventh Army.”
I never made any of that up.
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HemlockRidge
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed there with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept to try and plug the gaps while the panzer divisions proper were being re-fitted and rebuilt after the summer 1944 battles.
The Panzer Brigades had green crews that never had enough time to train, did not know their tanks properly, did not have any recon elements and didn't even meet their unit commander until his arrival at the front. These were not means elite forces.
17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. The 17th SS was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, only equipped with assault guns, not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy and not up to strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the best German divisions in the west were NOT.
♦ Who did the 3rd Army engage?
♦ Who did 3rd Army defeat?
♦ Patton never once faced a full strength
Waffen SS panzer division nor a
Tiger battalion.
In The Lorraine, the 3rd Army faced a rabble. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took over in September 1944 said:
"I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Patton was facing a second rate rabble in The Lorraine for the most part. Patton was also neither on the advance nor being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines.
The road from Luxembourg to Bastogne pretty well devoid of German forces, as Bastogne was on the very southern German flank. Only when Patton got near to Bastogne did he engage some German armour but it was not a great amount at all. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade wasn't one of the best German armoured units, while 26th Volks-Grenadier only had a dozen Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind only had a small number of tanks operational. Its not as if Patton had to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne, he never. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1.
Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They where were still engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Leading elements were engaging the Americans and British under Montgomery's command near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance and pushed them back.
In Normandy in 1944, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates.
♦ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics
Bradley's II Corps were employing
♦ He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division,
Truscott of being "afraid to fight".
♦ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the
US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps.
♦ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize
stalled he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being
"very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect".
♦ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in
reporting their losses.
After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF. Coningham, gave Patton massive US ground attack plane support and he still stalled. It was Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance that were the reasons for his stall. Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault, including his subordinates. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated. Oh, and wore cowboy guns.
Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his orders, and Eisenhowers orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds
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Oh Nicholas!
Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden (Arnhem), only proposing the concept. Eisenhower, approved under resourcing the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was US generals Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak". The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself.
XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.
Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time Monty had the Canadians cleared it, or were investing in many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@TheChieftainsHatch
Oh Nicholas! Montgomery was more than just a "fairly good general" for sure. Montgomery was the finest western general by a country mile. Just look at facts...
The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British under Montgomery. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa;
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein;
♦ March 1943 - Medenine;
♦ June 1944 - Normandy;
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands;
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge;
A list of Montgomery’s victories in WW2:
♦ Battle of Alam Halfa;
♦ Second Battle of El Alamein;
♦ Battle of El Agheila;
♦ Battle of Medenine;
♦ Battle of the Mareth Line;
♦ Battle of Wadi Akarit;
♦ Allied invasion of Sicily;
♦ Operation Overlord - the largest amphibious invasion in history;
♦ Market Garden - a 60 mile salient created into German territory;
♦ Battle of the Bulge - while taking control of two shambolic US armies;
♦ Operation Veritable;
♦ Operation Plunder.
Montgomery not once had a reverse.
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Monty's 8th Army advanced the fastest of any army in WW2. From El Alamein to El Agheila from the 4th to 23rd November 1942, 1,300 km in just 17 days. After fighting a major exhausting battle at El Alemein through half a million mines. This was an Incredible feat, unparalleled in WW2. With El Alamein costing just 13,500 casualties.
The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties, with the Lorraine campaign being a failure.
Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties. Hodges, head of the US First army, fled from Spa to near Liege on the 18th, despite the Germans never getting anywhere near to Spa. Hodges did not even wait for the Germans to approach Spa. He had already fled long before the Germans were stopped. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British, with Montgomery involved in planning, with also Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
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@williestyle35
Caen! Americans have a thing about Caen. Caen was not a first rate objective. If it could be taken on the first day or two then fine. Monty wanted his forces not to be driven back into the sea in the early days of D-Day. He was not going to to tie up limited resources, resources that were slowly coming ashore on beaches, in street fighting for a 2nd tier objective.
From Nigel Hamilton’s three volume biography of Montgomery:
”To help illustrate his presentation Monty had asked his MA - Lt Colonel Dawnay, to ink colluded phases onto the maps - as Dawnay later remembered: ’I had the maps prepared and drew on them the D-Day targets for the troops along the invasion front. And the dropping zones of the paratroopers. And the after consulting with Monty I drew the D plus 90 line - showing where he felt we should get by D plus 90 - which included Paris and a line back along the Loire.And I asked Monty how I should draw the lines in between. And he said, Well it doesn’t matter Kit, draw them as you like.’ So I said, ‘ Shall I draw them equally, sir?’ And he said ‘Yes, that’ll do.’ In his opinion it was not of any importance where he would be groundwise between D plus 1 and D plus 90, because he felt sure he could capture the line D plus 90 by the end of three months, and he was not going to capture ground, he was going to destroy enemy forces. Using Monty’s presentation notes, Dawnay drew in the arbitrary lines, never dreaming that they would be used in evidence against Monty when the campaign did not go ‘according to plan’…….
In his later memoirs, Tedder reported the same Eisenhower allegation that would so infuriate Monty: ‘When a week had passed since D-Day without the capture of Caen it became clear to us at SHAEF that the hopes of a road breakthrough on the left were now remote.’Yet Monty had never suggested or intended a break-through on the left; only a battle around Caen that would permit him to establish and extend the shield behind which Bradley could take Cherbourg and breakout via St Lo and Avranches to Brittany. Some of the misunderstanding was undoubtedly caused by Monty himself, as his MA, Lt Colonel Dawnay, later recognised: I think he had given the RAF a totally false impression, at St Paul’s and elsewhere, as to when he was going to get the airfields, south of Caen - a totally false impression.
Because when we got there [to Normandy] we realized quite quickly that he didn’t care a damn about those airfields, as long as he could draw all the German armour on to the [eastern] side and give a chance for his right swing to break out!”
-Hamilton, Nigel. Monty, Master of the Battlefield 1942-1944.
”As he explained in a letter that evening to Major-General Simpson at the war Office, Caen was only a name; he did not want to waste British and Canadians lives a la Stalingrad: The Germans are doing everything they can to hold on to CAEN. I have decided not to have a lot of casualties by butting up against the place; so I have ordered Second Army to keep up a good pressure at CAEN, and to make its main effort towards VILLERS BOCAGE and EVRECY and thence S.E. towards FALAISE.”
-Hamilton, Nigel. Monty, Master of the Battlefield 1942-1944.
But this had been stated in an address he had given before D-Day. ”Monty’s actual address, never published before, makes it quite clear that, with the exception of ports, the battle for Normandy would not be conducted with object of capturing towns, but of step by step building up of men and resources until the moment when the Americans would be strong enough to drive south into Brittany and to the Loire. It was a strategy that Monty unfolded with absolute conviction, two months before the new date set for the invasion: the first full moon in June. As in the address to senior officers before Alamein the calm authority with which Monty outlined his plan, the likely enemy response, and the phases through which the battle would go, was almost incredible to those present who did not already know Montgomery. At no point in this military lecture to Brooke, Churchill and Smuts, did Monty ever suggest that Dempsey was to do more than bring the German forces to battle around Caen, however - and when after the war, Eisenhower wrote that ‘in the east we had been unable to break out towards the Seine’, Monty was furious, for this was a complete travesty of the facts. To Churchill Monty had made it quite clear that there was no question of wild break-outs. How could there be when the Allies had only fourteen divisions ashore, many of which, particularly the parachute and first assault divisions, were inevitably running out of steam? As Churchill pointed out to Stalin the battle for Normandy would be a slow and deliberate one:
‘I should think it quite likely that we should work up to a battle of about a million a side, lasting throughout June and July. We plan to have about two million there by mid-August. Eisenhower’s unfortunate obfuscation has coloured the military accounts ever since, polarizing chroniclers into nationalistic camps. This was, Monty felt, a tragedy in view of the fact that the battle for Normandy was, at all stages, an Allied battle, in which Allied soldiers gave their lives, conforming to an Allied plan to defeat the German armies in the West - not to ‘break out towards the Seine’ in some mythical Lancelot charge...Dempsey’s brief then was not to ‘break out towards Seine’, but to play his part in a truly Allied undertaking, bringing to battle the mobile German forces that would otherwise - as Rommel wished - destroy the American assault on Cherbourg.”
-Hamilton, Nigel. Monty, Master of the Battlefield 1942–1944.
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@BobSmith-dk8nw
I prefer facts myself. The US army in the ETO was a poor army, its record speaks for itself. Big and well supplied but poor, especially in leadership. We have had 75 years of US propaganda from Hollywood and TV 'documentaries' making out US forces were key and superior, when the truth is quite the opposite. Any historian looking at the ETO cannot come out with any other conclusion.
The British made them, look what they were - amateurs, especially in leadership. So much the US developed Anglophobia. The mention of Montgomery sends Americans wild. The words ass-hole are liberally used, as they have been told this for 75 years. But just look at my posts on his achievements - the finest general in the world. Even when confronted with facts, like you, they do not believe them the indoctrination is so strong.
Even US screw ups, they point at the Brits, to hide their own embarrassment. Market Garden was planned by Americans, not Monty. He was not involved in its execution. Two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges precluding a bridgehead over the Rhine. US propaganda blames Monty and XXX Corps. XXX Corps never put a foot wrong, having to seize a bridge for the US 82nd. Laughable.
Another is Caen, which is really laughable. A second tier objective of no strategic value. Ports were the priority not cities. At the 11 hour Monty directed a US 82nd jump from Caen to Cherbourg, indicating the priority. Monty ran Normandy bringing it in ahead of schedule with less than predicted casualties.
When the US were by themselves, not with other forces, they were poor. Operation Queen, the Battle of the Bulge (Monty had to take command of two shambolic US armies to save it):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvcJfXtkCW8
Then Lorraine when the US myth of Patton said to Bradley on 5 Nov 1944 that he would be over the German Westwall in three days. He never got over it via Lorraine, also moving 10 miles in three months at Metz.
I could go on and on.
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@BobSmith-dk8nw
Britain was key in WW2. Britain fought on every front, being in the war on the first day up to the last - the only country at the surrender of Japan in September 1945 to do so - Britain’s war actually ended in 1946 staying on in Viet Nam using Japanese troops alongside British troops to defeat the Viet Minh, but that is another story. Britain was not attacked or attacked anyone, going into WW2 on principle. The Turkish ambassador to the UK stated that the UK can raise 40 million troops from its empire so will win the war. This was noted by Franco who indirectly said to Hitler he would not win, fearing British occupation of Spanish islands and territory if Spain joined the war. Spain and Turkey stayed out of the war.
The Turkish ambassador’s point was given credence when an army of 2.6 million was assembled in India that moved into Burma to wipe out the Japanese. From day one the Royal Navy formed a ring around the Axis positioning ships from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Arctic off Norway, blockading the international trade of the Axis. This deprived the Axis of vital human and animal food, oil, rubber, metals, and other vital resources. By 1941 the successful Royal Navy blockade had confined the Italian navy to port due to lack of oil. By the autumn of 1941 Germany's surface fleet was confined to harbour, by the British fleet and the chronic lack of fuel. A potential German invasion from the the USSR in the north into the oil rich Middle East entailed expanded British troop deployment to keep the Germans away from the oil fields, until they were defeated at Stalingrad.
Throughout 1942 British Commonwealth troops were fighting, or seriously expecting to be attacked, in:
♦ French North Africa;
♦ Libya;
♦ Egypt;
♦ Cyprus;
♦ Syria: where an airborne assault was expected, with preparations to reinforce Turkey if they were attacked;
♦ Madagascar: fighting the Vichy French to prevent them from inviting the Japanese in as they had done in Indochina;
♦ Iraq;
♦ Iran: the British & Soviets invaded Iran in August 1941.
A million British troops in the Middle East and North Africa, supplied around the Cape - the equivalent to half way around the world, supplied by a massive merchant fleet. Those spread-out covering troops were more in combined numbers than were facing Japan and Rommel in North Africa. The British Commonwealth fielded over 100 divisions in 1942 alone, compared to the US total of 88 by the end of the war. The Americans and Soviets were Johnny-come-late in WW2, moreso the Americans.
Before the USSR entered the conflict the Royal Navy’s blockade had reduced the Italian and German surface navies to the occasional sorties because of a lack of oil, with the British attacking the Germans and Italians in North Africa, also securing Syria, Iraq, the Levant and ridding the Italians from East Africa. After the USSR came into the war the British secured Iran and the British refinery at Aberdan.
The Germans were on the run by the time the USA had boots on the ground against the Axis.
The Germans had been stopped:
♦ in the west at the Battle of Britain in 1940;
♦ in the east at the Battle of Moscow in 1941. In which Britain provided 40% of the Soviet tanks.
The Germans were on the run after the simultaneous battles in late 1942 of:
♦ El Alemein;
♦ Stalingrad;
The Battle of El Alemein culminated in a quarter of a million Axis prisoners taken in Tunisia - more than taken at Stalingrad.
Apart from the US Filipino forces that surrendered in early 1942, the US had a couple of divisions in Gaudalcanal after August 1942, and one in New Guinea by November 1942. In 1943 the US managed to get up to six divisions in the Pacific, but still not matching the British or British Indian armies respectively. Until late 1943 the Australian Army alone deployed more ground fighting troops against the Japanese than the USA. The Americans never put more ground troops into combat against the Japanese at any point than just the British Indian Army alone, which was 2.6 million strong. The US had nowhere near 2.6 million men on the ground against the Japanese. The Soviets fielded about a million against the Japanese.
Most Japanese troops were put out of action by the British and Soviets, not the USA. At the battles of Khohima and Imphal the Japanese suffered their worst defeat in their history up to that point.
Then the British set their Eastern and Pacific fleets against the Japanese, not far off in numbers to the US fleet. The British Pacific Fleet assisted US troops protecting the western coast of Okinawa with its armoured carriers - they could operate way nearer to the coast than wooden decked US carriers, as kamikaze's bounced off them. The fleet also bombarded Japan, Sumatra and Taiwan, sinking one Japanese aircraft carrier and disabling another. The massive British merchant fleet greatly assisted the supply of US forces.
The Australian navy assisted the US navy all through the Japanese war. The USA was in the war for four years, yet it was less than 10 months before the Japanese surrender they actually fielded an entire army against the Japanese. That was in the Philippines. Before that it was just divisions fighting on scattered islands for a month or so at a time. Even the island hopping was heavily assissted by the massive British merchant fleet, over the horizon ready to move in.
In Europe the British planned and ran the D-Day Normandy campaign which came in ahead of schedule with 22% less casualties than predicted, with the British in command of all the air, sea and land forces of all nationalities. Then also destroying 90% of German armour in the west in the process, with constant air raids on German cities and industry culminating with 1,000 bomber raids. The Canadian navy was heavily involved in anti U-Boat operations in the Atlantic. The biggest agents in the defeat of the Nazis and Japanese were the British.
You will not get that information from Hollywood.
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@BobSmith-dk8nw
Montgomery to Alan Brooke..
"If we want the war to end within any reasonable period you have to get Eisenhower’s hand taken off the land battle. I regret to say that in my opinion he just doesn’t know what he is doing.
Montgomery wrote of Eisenhower and his ridiculous broad-front strategy on 22 January 1945:
“I fear that the old snags of indecision and vacillation and refusal to consider the military problem fairly and squarely are coming to the front again . . . The real trouble is that there is no control and the three army groups are each intent on their own affairs. Patton today issued a stirring order to Third Army, saying the next step would be Cologne . . . One has to preserve a sense of humour these days, otherwise one would go mad.”
Alanbrooke wrote in his diary about Einsenhower:
“At the end of this morning's C.O.S. [Chief of Staff] meeting I put before the committee my views on the very unsatisfactory state of affairs in France, with no one running the land battle. Eisenhower, though supposed to be doing so, is on the golf links at Rheims —entirely detached and taking practically no part in running of the war. Matters got so bad lately that a deputation of Whiteley, Bedell Smith and a few others went up to tell him that he must get down to it and RUN the war, which he said he would."
"We discussed the advisability of getting Marshall to come out to discuss the matter, but we are doubtful if he would appreciate the situation. Finally decided that I am to see the P.M. to discuss the situation with him.”
"November 28th I went to see the P.M. I told him I was very worried."
Alan Brooke described in his daily diary that American generals Eisenhower and Marshall as poor strategists, when they were in jobs were strategy mattered. Brooke wrote to Montgomery about his talks with Eisenhower, “it is equally clear that Ike has the very vaguest conception of war!”
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@michaeldunne338
Elsenborn Ridge went onto the 26 December.
To try and spin it that the US forces would have defeated the Germans at the Bulge without British intervention and command, is pure fantasy.
“I find it difficult to refrain from expressing my indignation at Hodges and Ridgeway and my appreciation of Montgomery whenever I talk about St. Vith. It is my firm opinion that if it hadn't been for Montgomery, the First US Army, and especially the troops in the St. Vith salient, would have ended in a debacle that would have gone down in history.”
“I'm sure you remember how First Army HQ fled from Spa leaving food cooking on the stoves, officers' Xmas presents from home on their beds and, worst of all, top secret maps still on the walls... First Army HQ never contacted us with their new location and I had to send an officer to find them. He did and they knew nothing about us...(Montgomery) was at First Army HQ when my officer arrived. A liaison officer from Montgomery arrived at my HQ within 24 hrs. His report to Montgomery is what saved us...”
- Hasbrouck of 7th Armor - “Generals of the Bulge” by Jerry D. Morelock, footnote 91,92, page 298.
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@michaeldunne338
Patton was not advancing or being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. Bastogne was on the very southern German flank, their focus being west. The strategic significance of the stand at Bastogne, is over exaggerated. The 18,000 inside did not change the course of the battle.
The German's bypassed Bastogne, placing a containment force around the town.
Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory, with the road from Luxembourg to Bastogne having few German forces. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was far from being one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, 26th Volks-Grenadier having about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind with a small number of operational tanks. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne.
Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1. Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance pushing them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons stopped the American attack who pulled back. The next day, fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B again retreating. It took Patton almost three days just to get through the village of Chaumont. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day. Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne.
After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF, who gave Patton massive ground attack support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall.
The 18,000 men in Bastogne pretty well walked out, even the commander of the US 101st stated that. The Germans had vacated the area heading west.
The commander of the Fifth Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel, aimed a dismissive, indirect critique at Patton’s efforts at Bastogne, writing in his memoirs that the Americans did not “strike with full élan.”
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@michaeldunne338
♦ Only the Americans criticise Monty, in a veiled attempt to disguise their inept performance in Europe. Monty never retreated, not once.
♦ Bradley felt humiliated having two of his three armies taken from him and giving to Monty in the Bulge.
♦ The depleted and demoralised US armies should have been pushed to the rear of the British 21st Army Group. Monty never humiliated them. He kept them at the front.
♦ Monty filled the losses of the two US armies with British troops. British troops under US command with the US command under British command. It worked.
When the US First and Ninth armies were given to Monty at the Bulge, Monty chose the right option. Instead of joining a grindmeat where the Americans lost almost 100,000 and the Germans around 75,000, Monty decided to choose his own ground, and not commit too many of his troops in the Ardennes, using US troops for that.
The result was that more than 100,000 Germans were made casualties in Operation Veritable and Grenade, British and American casualties were less than 20.000. In Operation Plunder the British went further to make 30,000 German casualties, for an remarkable number of only 4,000 allied casualties. Monty's operations were on the offensive, and yet the Germans suffered a gigantic number of casualties compared to the minimum of the British.
Of the three main powers, the British managed the most cost effective advances in the war, while still keeping up the pace, and even facing the majority of the Germans in Normandy, while advancing faster than everyone else after the break out reaching Belgium. Patton was stuck in Metz for three months suffering 50.000 casualties failing to reach the Westwall. Bradley had 42.000 casualties in the Hurtgen Forest defeat.
The Americans were having manpower troubles after the Bulge. - mostly because of their head on tactics and complete lack of interest in keeping their soldiers alive. They counterattacked in the Bulge not because it was the most sane thing to do, but just to try make Bradley and the Americans at large less humiliated. Monty in the Bulge had the same thinking as in Operation Luttich, the German counter-attack against US forces in Normandy. Let the Germans go as far as west as possible while minimizing casualties.
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@michaeldunne338
Bastogne was merely a southern periphery battle, on the other side of the German 'Bulge'. The majority of the Bulge fighting was by US First Army to the north under the command of Montgomery from the 20th onwards (the 5th day of the battle).
Monty saved the US 7th Armored Division and US 82nd Airborne from annihilation around St Vith. The battles in the north were the most important in the Bulge. St Vith, Stoumont, Stavelot, Elsenborn Ridge, Houffalize, Marche, Celles, Manhay, Hotton etc etc. This is where the Germans were losing the majority of their men and tanks. Not around Bastogne.
Bastogne wasn't of any great importance for the Germans. The Germans left it behind and marched towards the River Meuse leaving only scratch forces to mop up around Bastogne.
An excellent American lecture on the battle. Search "Corps Commanders of the Bulge: Six American Generals and Victory in the Ardennes" on Utube.
The lecturer is correct when he says:
"The decision to give command to Monty was the best decision Eisenhower made. Montgomery is a better battle manager than Bradley. Courtney Hodges needed adult supervision, he can't manage the thing on his own. Eisenhower sensed that Hodges was going to need close supervising authority. Monty could do that."
"The real reason Ike did it. Monty with his system knew more about what was going on in the Bulge than Hodges knew. He had liaison officers further forward who were giving him reports faster and he started moving XXX Corps down to the Meuse. Monty moved XXX Corps down to the west bank of the Meuse. If you give Monty command of Simpson's Ninth Army and Hodges' First Army then Monty is into the battle full thing and you know damn well that XXX Corps is going to be there as well as emergency backstop if it's needed and that's the real reason Eisenhower did it!"
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@michaeldunne338
Patton was an average US general, no more, after WW2 most German generals had never heard of him. A US media creation, elevating the average beyond their status.
"The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian First Army HQ for the same purpose.
Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
In Normandy, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton who came in late in Normandy, faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact.This eastern dash devoid of German forces was the ride the US media claimed Patton was some sort of master of fast moving armour.
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed in The Lorraine with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were re-fitting and rebuilt after the Normandy battles. The Panzer Brigades had green crews with little time to train, unfamiliar with their tanks, had no recon elements only meeting their unit commander on his arrival at the front. These were not elite forces. The 17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, equipped only with assault guns not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy being below strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine. In The Lorraine, the Third Army faced a rabble full of eyes and ears units. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said:_"I have never been in command of such irregularly_ assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Patton failed to reach the Westwall.
Patton was not advancing or being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. Bastogne was on the very southern German flank, their focus being west. The strategic significance of the stand at Bastogne, is over exaggerated. The 18,000 did not change the course of the battle. The German's bypassed Bastogne, placing a containment force around the town.
Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory, with the road from Luxembourg to Bastogne having few German forces. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was far from being one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, 26th Volks-Grenadier having about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind with a small number of operational tanks.
Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1. Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance pushing them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons stopped the American attack who pulled back. The next day, fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B again retreating. It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day. Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne. After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF, who gave Patton massive ground attack support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall.
The 18,000 men in Bastogne pretty well walked out, even the commander of the US 101st stated that. The Germans had vacated the area heading west.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the weakest German divisions in the west where.
* Who did the 3rd Army engage?
* Who did the 3rd Army defeat?
* Patton never once faced a full strength premier Waffen SS panzer division nor a Tiger battalion.
* Patton was not at E Alamein, D-Day or the main area of the Bulge.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates:
* In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics Bradley's II Corps were employing;
* He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division, Truscott of being "afraid to fight";
* In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps;
* When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize stalled, he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being "very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect";
* He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in reporting their losses;
Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated, had incestual relationships and wore cowboy guns. Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his and Eisenhower's orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read:
Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds and_Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies_ by Harry Yeide
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@yiyangli2749
Ryan's book borders on fiction at times. Also a lot is left out. There were a few Tigers there as well. Only in the late 1970s, after his book and the film, when records were checked did the real picture emerge. Even Harmel, in command of the German forces there, did not know when interviewed in the 1970s that Tigers were between the bridges. The situation was very fluid. They were not noting in diaries what was happening by the hour, they were hanging on for life more concerned about what they did next to survive.
There were few German forces between the bridges on the 19th, when XXX Corps should have ran across the Nijmegen bridge. 36 hours later, as XXX Corps seized the bridge for the 82nd, rolling over it for the first time:
1) The 1st Airborne at Arnhem bridge had capitulated;
2) German armour and greater levels of troops were between the two bridges.
It was game over, the 36 hour delay, caused by Gavin not seizing the Nijmegen bridge, meant the opportunity to form a bridgehead over the Rhine had passed.
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@bigwoody4704
Rambo,
What US historian Harry Yeide wrote of what the Germans thought of Patton:
♦ for most of the war the Germans barely took notice [of Patton].
♦ on March 23 at the Battle of El Guettar—the first American victory against the experienced Germans. Patton’s momentum, however, was short-lived: Axis troops held him to virtually no gain until April 7, when they withdrew under threat from British Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army. [Monty saved Patton's ass again]
♦ There is no indication in the surviving German military records—which include intelligence reports at the theater, army, and division levels—that Patton’s enemies had any idea who he was at the time. Likewise, the immediate postwar accounts of the German commanders in Tunisia, written for the U.S. Army’s History Division, ignore Patton. Those reports show that ground commanders considered II Corps’s attacks under Patton to have been hesitant, and to have missed great opportunities.
♦ In mid-June [1943], another detachment report described Patton as “an energetic and responsibility-loving command personality”—a passing comment on one of the numerous Allied commanders. Patton simply had not yet done anything particularly noteworthy in their eyes.
♦ But his race to Palermo through country they had already abandoned left the commanders unimpressed. Major General Eberhard Rodt, who led the 15th Panzergrenadier Division against Patton’s troops during the Allied push toward Messina, thought the American Seventh Army fought hesitantly and predictably. He wrote in an immediate postwar report on Sicily, “The enemy very often conducted his movements systematically, and only attacked after a heavy artillery preparation when he believed he had broken our resistance. This kept him regularly from exploiting the weakness of our situation and gave me the opportunity to consolidate dangerous situations.” Once again, Patton finished a campaign without impressing his opponents.
♦ General Hermann Balck, who took command of Army Group G in September, thus did not think highly of Patton—or any other opposing commanders—during this time. Balck wrote to his commander, Runstedt, on October 10, “I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans” Looking back on his battles against Patton throughout the autumn, in 1979 Balck recalled, “Within my zone, the Americans never once exploited a success. Often [General Friedrich Wilhelm von] Mellenthin, my chief of staff, and I would stand in front of the map and say, ‘Patton is helping us; he failed to exploit another success.’”
♦ The commander of the Fifth Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel, aimed a dismissive, indirect critique at Patton’s efforts at Bastogne, writing in his memoirs that the Americans did not “strike with full élan.” The commanders who fought against Patton in his last two mobile campaigns in the Saar-Palatinate and east of the Rhine already knew they could not win; their losses from this point forward were inevitable, regardless of the commanding Allied opponent.
♦ the Germans offered Patton faint praise during and immediately after the war.
♦ posterity deserves fact and not myth. The Germans did not track Patton’s movements as the key to Allied intentions. Hitler does not appear to have thought often of Patton, if at all. The Germans considered Patton a hesitant commanding general in the scrum of position warfare. They never raised his name in the context of worthy strategists.
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Market Garden failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. The failure point was not seizing the Nijmegen bridge immediately. At the end of D-Day all crossings were denied to the Germans, except one - the Nijmegen bridge. General Gavin of the US 82nd was tasked to seize the Nijmegen bridge as soon as landing. Gavin never, he failed with only a few German guards on the bridge. He failed because his 82nd did not seize the Nijmegen bridge immediately. Gavin even de-prioritised the bridge the prime target and focus. The 82nd were ready at 2 pm on the jump day and never moved to the bridge. The gigantic bridge was guarded by only 19 guards. The Germans occupied the bridge at 1900 hrs. Six hours after the 82nd were ready to march.
Events on the 1st day:
♦ "At 1328, the 665 men of US 82nd 1st Battalion began
to fall from the sky."
- Poulussen, R. Lost at Nijmegen.
♦ "Forty minutes after the drop, around 1410, the
1st Battalion marched off towards their objective,
_De Ploeg, three miles away."
_ Poulussen,
♦ "The 82nd were digging in and performing recon
in the area looking for 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald
- Neillands, R. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
♦ The 82nd were dug in and preparing to defend their
newly constructed regimental command post, which
they established at 1825. Then Colonel Lindquist
"was told by General Gavin, around 1900, to move
into Nijmegen."
-Poulussen
Events on the evening of the 1st day:
♦ Having dug in at De Ploeg, Warren's battalion wasn't prepared
to move towards Nijmegen at all.
-Poulussen,
♦ Once Lindquist told Lieutenant Colonel Warren that his
Battalion was to move, Warren decided to visit the HQ
of the Nijmegen Underground first - to see what info the
underground had on the Germans at the Nijmegen bridge.
- Poulussen,
♦ It was not until 1830hrs that he [Warren] was able to send
a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small,
just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a
radio — say forty men.
- Neillands. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
♦ This was not a direct route to the bridge from Warren's
original position, and placed him in the middle of the town.
It was also around 2100 when "A" Company left to attempt
to capture the Nijmegen road bridge.
♦ "B" Company was not with them because they'd split up
due to it being dark with "visibility was less than ten yards".
- Poulussen,
♦ The 82nd attacks were resisted by the Germans until the next day.
Events of the 2nd day:
♦ Gavin drove up in a jeep the next morning and
was told by Warren that although they didn't have the bridge
yet, another attack was about to go in.
♦ Gavin then told Warren to hold because the Germans were
attacking in the southeast portion of the 82nd perimeter.
♦ At around 1100, Warren was ordered to withdraw from
Nijmegen completely.
- Poulussen
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@BaronsHistoryTimes
The reason for not achieving 100% success in the operation was completely down to the failure of the 82nd Airborne in not seizing the Nijmegen bridge on the first day they dropped into Nijmegen. The man responsible was General Gavin.
The 101st Airborne failed to take the bridge at Son in the south of Holland with the Germans destroying the bridge. XXX Corps ran over a Bailey bridge which delayed the advance for 12 hours. XXX Corps made up the time reaching Nijmegen on schedule only being disappointed at seeing the bridge still in German hands and the 82nd still fighting in and around the town.
The 82nd had made no real attempt to seize the bridge. When ground forces ran into an airborne carpet, the command automatically reverted to Horrocks. In fact the 82nd had no part in the eventual seizure of the bridge at all, as it was taken in the dark by the British XXX Corps tanks and Grenadier Guards infantry. The Irish Guards cleared out 180 Germans from the bridge girders.
Only 5 tanks crossed the bridge with two being knocked out with one got operational again by a lone sergeant who met up with the rest of the tanks in the village of Lent 1 km north of the bridge. So, only four operational tanks were available on the north side of the bridge.
Strangely, Gavin's plan was to take one of Europe's largest road bridges only from one end, taking no boats with him.The film A Bridge Too Far has Robert Redford (playing Capt Cook) as one of the 82nd men taking the vital road bridge after rowing the river in canvas boats. This never happened. Another part of the film has Redford (Cook) insisting to a British commander of the British XXX Corps tanks, after the tanks crossed the bridge, to run onto Arnhem and relieve the British paratroopers with the tank commander refusing, leaving his tanks idle. Moffat Burris of the 82nd, on film stated he ordered the tank captain to run his tanks to Arnhem, saying on film, "I just sacrificed half of my company capturing that bridge". The tank officer was Capt (Lord) Carington, who eventually became head of NATO. Moffatt Burris stated: “I cocked my tommy gun, pointed it at his head and said, ‘Get down that blankety-blank road before I blow your blankety-blank head off." Carrington explained politely that Captain Burriss surely didn’t expect him to obey orders of a foreign officer, but then, Burris says, Carington “ducked into his tank and locked the hatch” so, as Burris recalls, “I couldn’t get at him.” There is no record of this event occurring and there were many men around, implying Buffet is lying, maybe to save the face of the 82nd, as they played no part in seizing the bridge.
continued.....
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Captain Lord Carrington's own autobiography entitled 'Reflect on Things Past': "My recollection of this meeting is different. Certainly I met an American officer but he was perfectly affable and agreeable. As I said the Airborne were all very glad to see us and get some support, no one suggested we press on to Arnhem. This whole allegation is bizarre, just to begin with I was a captain and second-in-command of my squadron so I was in no position either to take orders from another captain or depart from my own orders which were to take my tanks across the bridge, join up with the US Airborne and form a bridgehead. This story is simple lunacy and this exchange did not take place. At that stage my job - I was second-in-command of a squadron - was to take a half-squadron of tanks across the bridge. Since everybody supposed the Germans would blow this immense contraption we were to be accompanied by an intrepid Royal Engineer officer to cut the wires and cleanse the demolition chambers under each span. Our little force was led by an excellent Grenadier, Sergeant Robinson, who was rightly awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his action. Two of our tanks were hit not lethally - by anti-tank fire, and we found a number of Germans perched in the girders who tried to drop things on us but without great effect. Sergeant Robinson and the leading tank troop sprayed the opposite bank and we lost nobody, When I arrived at the far end my sense of relief was considerable: the bridge had not been blown, we had not been plunged into the Waal (In fact it seems the Germans never intended to blow the bridge. The demolition chambers were packed with German soldiers, who surrendered), we seemed to have silenced the opposition in the vicinity, we were across one half of the Rhine."
"A film representation of this incident has shown American troops as having already secured the far end of the bridge. That is mistaken - probably the error arose from the film-maker's confusion of two bridges, there was a railway bridge with planks placed between the rails and used by the Germans for [light] road traffic, to the west of the main road bridge we crossed; and the gallant American Airborne men: reached it. When Sergeant Robinson and his little command crossed our main road bridge, however, only Germans were there to welcome him; and they didn't stay."
The meeting of the 82nd men and the tanks was 1 km north of the bridge at the village of Lent where the railway embankment from the railway bridge met the north running road running off the main road bridge. The 82nd men did not reach the north end of the actual road bridge, the Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry got there first from the south. Historians get confused. There are two bridges at Nijmegen. a railway bridge to the west and and road bridge to the east. They are about 1km apart. The 82nd men rowed the river west of the railway bridge. The railway bridge was not suitable for running tanks over of course. The 82nd men moved along the railway embankment north to where the embankment meets the road approach to the road bridge at Lent.
continued....
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Heinz Harmel (played by Hardy Kruger in the film A Bridge too Far), the 10th SS Panzer Division commander who was between Arnhem and Nijmegen, says it was the British tanks who raced across the bridge seizing the bridge. Harmel did not know of that three Tiger tanks that had crossed the Arnhem bridge running south, the German communications was disjointed. Harmel stated that there was little German armor between Nijmegen and Arnhem. That was not correct. The three powerful Tiger tanks would have made scrap metal out of the British Shermans.
By the time the Guards tanks crossed Nijmegen bridge in the dark, Johnny Frost and the British paratroopers at the Arnhem bridge were being overrun because of the long delay in seizing the Nijmegen bridge. Only 4 tanks were available at the north end of the bridge to secure it. No tanks were available to run on any further to Arnhem and any that did would have been sitting ducks on the raised road. The Guards tanks were split up and spread out over 20 miles, supporting the 82nd all over the place around Nijmegen. Which was supposed to have already been taken by the 82nd. All over Nijmegen, Mook, Groosbeek, Grave etc. Some even had to go back down the road towards Eindhoven when Panzer Brigade 107 tried to cut the road.
Only five British tanks were able to cross the bridge that night, and two of them were damaged. 4 tanks initially went across then Carrington's lone tank followed, guarding the northern end of the bridge by itself for nearly an hour before he was relieved by infantry. Nor did the 82nd take the southern end of the bridge in Nijmegen town. Lt Col Ben Vandervoort of the 82nd was in the southern approaches to the bridge, alongside the Grenadier Guards tanks as the Royal Engineers were removing charges on the bridge. Vandervoort and his men never went onto the bridge to take it. He remained at the southern approaches to the bridge with the rest of the 82nd and also the Grenadier Guards infantry, as Sgt Robinson and his four tanks raced on up the main road, up onto the bridge, and across it. Vandervoort was full of praise for the tankers of the Grenadier Guards. Here are his own words: "The 2nd Battalion 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment was attached to the famed Guards Armoured Division on Tuesday 19th September. We were honoured to be a momentary part of their distinguished company....The clanking steel monsters were a comfort to the foot slogging paratroopers.....Morale was high....For soldiers of different Allied armies it was amazing how beautifully the tankers and troopers teamed together. It was testimony to their combat acumen as seasoned veterans, both Yanks and Tommies...The battalion had fought with tanks before, but never in such lavish quantities. The tanks were the 2nd Battalion Grenadier Guards, the Grenadier Group as a whole being commanded by Lt Col Edward Goulburn....Col Goulburn, a perceptive commander, more or less turned individual tanks loose and let them go. The Guards tanks gave us all the tank support we needed. Some Shermans and their crews were lost as we went along. Usually it happened when the tank was employed too aggressively."
After 2 days fighting, split up, spread out and disjointed, the Guards Armored Division had to regroup, re-arm and re-fuel. It was simply not possible for them to have moved onto Arnhem that night. The task the five tanks that crossed the bridge were given was to defend the bridge and consolidate against enemy attacks. Moffat Burris of the 82nd is mistaken, there was not a 'whole corps' of tanks ready to go.
Browning, joint head of the 1st Airborne Army, who parachuted into Nijmegen and seeing the bridge untaken told General Gavin of the 82nd on the evening of 18th September that the Nijmegen bridge must be taken on the 19th, or at the latest, very early on the 20th. The Nijmegen bridge was not captured on the 17th because there was a foul up in communication between General Gavin and Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th PIR of the 82nd Airborne. Gavin allegedly verbally told Lindquist during the pre-drop talk to take a battalion of the 508th and make a quick strike to the bridge on the 17th and to "move without delay" but Lindquist understood it that Gavin had told him that his 508th should only move for the bridge once his regiment had secured the assigned 508th's portion of the defensive perimeter for the 82nd Division. So Lindquist didn't move his battalion towards the Nijmegen bridge until after this had been done, and by that time it was too late.
This misunderstanding/miscommunication, which had disastrous ramifications for the overall Market Garden operation, has been the subject of much debate and controversy ever since. This was passing the buck, in an attempt to shift blame due to the 82nd totally failing to take the Nijmegen road bridge, casting aspersions on the British tankers who's job it was to defend the bridge and prevent the Germans from taking it back. Had the 82nd done the job it was supposed to have done, the bridge would have been taken 3 days before and XXX Corps would have reached Arnhem and relieved the beleaguered British paras.
Sources:
- It Never Snows in September by Robert Kershaw.
- The Battle For The Rhine by Robin Neilands - Reflect on Things Past by Peter Carington.
- Market Garden Then and Now by Karel Magry (a Dutchman).
- Poulussen (a Durchman), Lost at Nijmegen.
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@BaronsHistoryTimes
Beevors's book in parts is just pain wrong. Get to teh crux, what was teh reason for not getting across the Rhine? The reason is two US para units failed to seize their bridges. If they had, XXX Corps would have been in Arnhem in d-day+1. It is that simple. Beevor could not even get that, blaming Horrocks, and everyone who was not American.
He makes his money, lots of it, touring the USA, making talks, telling them how wonderful they are. He is heavily criticised in the UK. He is a story writer, going into small personal aspects, dragging people into the book, missing the big picture and the root of failing to get over the Rhine.
SHAEF through Market Garden a total success.
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@BaronsHistoryTimes
Operation Comet was to pursue a disjointed retreating army - using coup-de-mains. The gung-ho aspect. But Monty found German resitance had increased so it was shelved. Market Garden was pushed by SHEAF to gain Noord Brabant protecting Antwerp from German counter-attack, also keeping them out of range. The extra jump over the Rhine was a cherry on the top, put in as a part of Operation Comet.
The concept of the daring operation was brilliant and well worth doing. The planning was poor by Brereton and Williams for sure, but despite them, and the 101st screw ups, it still should have succeeded. Incompetence, not German resistance, scuppered the taking of the Nijmegen bridge immediately. It had a handful of guards with no bridge defences such as barbed wire, ditches, etc. If General Gavin was not so inept the operation would have been a General's success - the taking of ground. To SHAEF it was a strategic success, as a part of guaranteeing the logistics supply train.
From SHAEF's viewpoint they got what they wanted the buffer - Noord Barbant.
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@BaronsHistoryTimes
To SHEAF, if the gung-ho generals wanted to gain some ground, or sacrifice some of their men in an attempt, that was a small price to pay for getting Noord Brabant, giving protection of Antwerp.
The British paras, held the north end of the bridge at Arnhem, the Germans, with no armour, were to the south side. If XXX Corps had reached Arnhem at d-day+1, they would have linked up. If XXX Corps had reached Arnhem at d-day+2, they would have linked up. Two US airborne units failing to seize their bridges was too much to gain that bridgehead, but more than enough for SHEAF.
Get the time line right of when German armour came in and where it was. The first German tanks around Arnhem, beside some old French training tanks that were knocked out, was on the evening of d-day+1 - they came in from Germany - also being knocked out.
If the 101st and 82nd had taken their bridges, XXX corps would have reached Arnhem before any German armour was around on d-day+1.
SHEAF did not waste the airborne men. The bridgehead was over and above what they required to ensure logistics for all armies. A bridgehead was not their immediate concern.
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SuperCaratacus
"Yay a TIK documentary. Very enjoyable and agree with almost everything you said about oil."
Having studied the economic side of WW2 I was disappointed in TIK in this vid. Others have been very good in research and analysis. The Dunkirk side was way out. The Germans never let the British off, they actually lost the Battle of Dunkirk. All points that Germany's prime concern was obtaining all types of resources, primarily food, as the prime motivators in invading the USSR.
Hitler's focus was on the coming air war with Britain. The bulk of the 50,000 per year US made planes promised by Roosevelt were to come his way, even if the USA does not enter WW2. Then British made planes on top of that - and Britain was out-producing Germany in planes. Hitler needed to build up the Luftwaffe urgently. As the armies were starting to roll into the USSR, German industry was changing to plane production.
Wages of Destruction by Prof Adam Tooze:
Page 431:
"the strongest arguments for rushing to conquer the Soviet Union in 1941 were precisely the growing shortage of grain and the need to knock Britain out of the war before it could pose a serious air threat."
"Meanwhile, the rest of the German military-industrialised complex began to gird itself for the aerial confrontation with Britain and America."
Germany rushed to invade the Soviet Union, with an ill-equipped army with no reserves to gain the eastern resources, in anticipation of a massive air war with Britain and maybe USA, hoping they could win the Soviet war within weeks.
Hitler's prime concern was what Britain was going to do next. Hitler was constantly attempting to get the Japanese to attack the British empire to divert the British away from Europe and North Africa.
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As to the wondrous German army I will let others say it for me.
The German army about to invade the USSR......
Wages of Destruction Prof Adam Tooze:
Page 454:
"Fundamentally the Wehrmacht was a poor army. The fast striking motorised element of the Germans army in 1941 consisted of only 33 divisions of 130. Three-quarters of the German army continued to rely on more traditional means of traction: foot and horse. The German army in 1941 invaded the Soviet Union with somewhere between 600,000 and 740,000 horses. The horses were not for riding. They were for moving guns, ammunition and supplies."
"The vast majority of Germany's soldiers marched into Russia, as they had in France, on foot."
"But to imagine a fully motorised Wehrmacht, poised for an attack on the Soviet Union is a fantasy of the Cold War, not a realistic vision of the possibilities of 1941. To be more specific, it is an American fantasy. The Anglo-American invasion force of 1944 was the only military force in WW2 to fully conform to the modern model of a motorised army."
........The reality was that the German Army was no super army with advanced equipment, as propaganda portrayed. The Allies attempted to cover their pitiful, inept defeats, and that includes the Americans at the Bulge, Metz and Hurtgen Forest.
The German army attacking the USSR......
The Germans thought they had formulated a version of Blitzkrieg in France that was a sure-fire success. If the belt broke the whole movement stopped. They used this in the USSR, just scaling up forces. They did not have the intelligence to assess properly, that the reason for their success in France was allied incompetence not anything brilliant they did.
The Germans vastly underestimated the quality of design and make of Soviet weapons. The T-34 took them by surprise and they knew they were fighting an army they had hopelessly underestimated in all aspects. The Germans did not take into account the British supplying the USSR - 40% of the tanks used at the vital battle of Moscow were British supplied. The USSR had more tanks than the rest of the world combined in 1940.
The Germans underestimated the Soviets so much they decided to attack them with no reserves, all the German forces were involved in Barbarossa, lack of proper logistics to re-supply, short of steel, rubber, oil, an industry that could not re-supply at the rate required, short of fuel for industry and the forces, etc, etc. The Germans were so inept at assessing the Soviets they did not envisage fighting in the 1941/1942 Russian winter thinking they would have overcome the USSR in three months. When the Germans did not break the USSRs back they did not have enough winter clothes and equipment designed for such low temperatures. It was not just the logistics of getting to the troops, they just did not have the equipment. The Germans thought the Soviets could field 360 divisions, they fielded over 600.
Soviet industry was large and had moved to the east. Much was in the east anyhow. This was working 24/7 to re-supply. The T-34 tank by Dec 1941 was well established and available in numbers. The Germans first faced The T-34 in October 41, reducing a German division to a few tanks. The Soviet counter-attack at Moscow in Dec 1941 was well supplied, and heavily with T-34s. There was still 1,400 Soviet aircraft available in Dec 1941.
The Soviet's mistake was attacking on a broad front and not aiming the the weakest point and pushing them right back, nevertheless they mauled the Germans. By Dec 1941 the Germans were exhausted in fuel, men and equipment. They could do no more. As early as In July 1941, many German armies were at the end of their effective supply lines. As Prof Tooze said, most say the Germans failed to take Moscow, the reality was that they could not take Moscow as they were on their last legs. The large Soviet air force was still attacking German supply lines as well, exasperating the situation. The Germans foolishly thought most supplies could be taken along three very long rail rail line, which were easily ripped up by the Soviets and bombed via the air. Thousands of German rail men worked to get lines partially operation. The Soviets evacuated lots of rail trucks.
Prof Tooze: Wages of Destruction, page 453:
'Halder wrote, Barbarossa needed speed and motorized transport for supply. No waiting for railways. The Germans planned for three rail lines and 740,000 horses.'
...the Germans never had enough motorised transport to supply all the fast moving armies. Pre June 1941, they were considering de-motorising because of a shortage of rubber inflicted by the Royal Navy blockade.
Tooze: page 454:
'Three rail lines were used. The existing Soviet rail network was not even good enough to supply the German army if taken intact. It was also of a narrower gauge. The retreating Soviets took most wagons with them and destroyed the rail infrastructure on retreating.
The Soviets had taken massive losses, but being so big they could absorb so many losses. The Soviets also had inflicted great losses on the Germans by Dec 1941. The only large power Germany conquered was France. This gave them a sense of superiority - their technique was now known, so succeeding twice was unlikely.'
The Germans largely dropped the blitzkrieg of coordinated air and ground attacks.
Prof Tooze: page 487.
'In July, all three German Army groups had reached the limit of resupply and stopped. The Soviets had taken devastating losses but not defeated. The Soviets saw the halt of the German armies and the re-supply problem and launched 17 armies against them forcing the Germans to dig in and defend.'
The UK & US can be forgiven in underestimating the Red Army, which they did, not so the Germans as they would have to assess this force in detail as they were to fight it, unlike the UK & US. Soviet industry was turning out the arms and to advanced designs. I don't want to go into what ifs, but if the T-34 was in place in summer 1941 the Germans would never have had such spectacular progress. Stalin knew what was being produced. They knew once the weaponry was in place, they could defeat the Germans who would be operating over 1000 km along a few supply lines they could not fully supply.
Apart from Stalingrad, which the Germans and the Soviets had an obsession with, the Soviets became less reckless as the UK and USA were in the fight and arms, and some well advanced arms, were building up. The Germans would not win, and the Soviets knew that. Once a western second front was in place, it was clear the Germans would quickly crumble, and they did. On D-Day 1944, the Germans were still way inside the USSR. The end came quickly once hit from both sides. It can be argued that the Soviets should have pushed the Germans out of the USSR by 1943 or even 1942, however they were inept in most levels. But the Soviets knew in a war of attrition the Germans were doomed.
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Андрей Борцов
In 1940 France was stronger than Germany.
Wages of Destruction, by Prof Adam Tooze.
Page 371.
"The German army that invaded France in May 1940 was far from being a carefully honed weapon of modern armoured warfare. Of Germany's 93 combat ready divisions on May 10 1940, only 9 were Panzer divisions, with a total of 2.438 tanks between them. These units faced a French army that was more heavily motorised, with 3,254 tanks in total."
....Half the German tanks that invaded the west were armed only with a machine gun!! The German Army was not on equal footing with the French when in fact it was vastly inferior.
"That gave a total of 308 [British] tanks"
-Source The Great Tank Scandal, David Fletcher
Dutch, Belgian, UK & French tanks in total were 4,200 tanks against 2.438 German tanks.
Prof Tooze, page 371/372.
"Nor should one accept unquestioningly the popular idea that the concentration of the Germans tanks in specialised tank divisions gave them a decisive advantage. Many French tanks were scattered amongst the infantry units, but with their ample stock of vehicles the French could afford to do this. The bulk of France's best tanks were concentrated in armoured units, that, on paper at least, were every bit a match for the Panzer divisions."
Page 377
"The Germans not only committed "all" their tanks and planes. In strictest conformity with the Schwerpunkt principle, they committed them on an astonishingly narrow front"
"The Luftwaffe sacrificed no less than 347 aircraft, including virtually all its transports used in the air landings in Holland and Belgium".
Page 378
"if Allied bombers had penetrated the German fighter screen over the Ardennes they could have wreaked havoc amongst the slow moving traffic"
"highly inflammable fuel tankers were interspersed with the fighting vehicles at the very front with the armoured fighting vehicles"
"The plan called for the German armoured columns to drive for three days and nights without interruption".
....The drivers were put on "Speed" pills.
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Андрей Борцов
Keegan, World War Two, chapter War Production:
♦ Germany was third behind the USA, then the UK in
GDP, in 1939.
♦ Germany = UK in capital goods production in 1939.
♦ UK economy grows 60% during WW2.
♦ Hitler says to Guderian, re: USSR, "had I known they
had so many tanks as that, I would have thought twice
before invading"
wages of Destruction by Prof Adam Tooze.
Preface, xxiii:
Combined GDP of the UK and France exceeded Germany & Italy by 60%.
page 454:
"It was poor because of the incomplete industrial and economic development of Germany".
Interesting.....
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/workingpapers/publications/twerp603.pdf
Snippets:
"Soviet exceeded German GDP in 1940"
"The Allies won the war because their economies supported a greater volume of war production and military personnel in larger numbers. This was true of the war as a whole, and it was also true on the eastern front where the Soviet economy, of a similar size to Germany's but less developed and also seriously weakened by invasion, supplied more soldiers and weapons."
"the technological key to Soviet superiority in the output of weapons was mass production. At the outbreak of war Soviet industry as a whole was not larger and not more productive than German industry. The non-industrial resources on which Soviet industry could draw were larger than Germany's in the sense of territory and population, but of considerably lower quality, more far-flung, and less well integrated. Both countries had given considerable thought to industrial mobilisation preparations, but the results were of questionable efficacy. In both countries war production was poorly organised at first and productivity in the military-industrial sector had been falling for several years. The most important difference was that Soviet industry had made real strides towards mass production, while German industry was still locked into an artisan mode of production that placed a premium on quality and assortment rather than quantity. Soviet industry produced fewer models of each type of weapon, and subjected them to less modification, but produced them in far larger quantities. Thus the Soviet Union was able to make considerably more effective use of its limited industrial resources than Germany.
"Before the war Soviet defence industry was in a state of permanent technological reorganisation as new models of aircraft, tanks, and other weapons were introduced and old ones phased out at dizzying rate."
The USSR had access to oil, more natural resources and far more men, giving their ability to produce far greater than Germany, which actually happened.
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After the fall of France, the Germans had access to the industry of Northern Italy, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, however were not able to use it to match either the Soviets or the British in war production. The success of the Royal Navy blockade was instrumental in starving Germany of vital resources and food both animal and human. French production of planes destined for Germany was minuscule. France was not capable to produce as pre-war as the French imported coal from Britain for its power generation. With the successful Royal Navy blockade the main source of coal was from Germany. Germany could not increase its production to overcome the French shortfall.
The amount of food produced in continental Europe fell. The production of meat and dairy products in countries such as Denmark was dependant on imported grain and animal feed from the Americas. This was now not available. The level of food available from the dairy industry collapsed as did food production in general. In the rest of Europe food production had been based on chemical fertilizer. Huge levels of the chemicals used for fertilizer production were diverted to the manufacturing of explosives. Hence food production fell.
French workers were on subsistence rations. Electricity was widely not available in France. The country had been dependant on motorized transportation. With no fuel and road & rail vehicles seized by the Germans, milk was poured away in farms and other produce put back into the ground unable to reach towns or cities. Most of French oil imports came from abroad. Once France fell oil products came from Romania and synthetic oil made in Germany, and so little it made little difference to the dire situation. The oil output was not enough for the needs of the German forces alone. France reverted to a horse and cart economy. The occupied countries were a drain on the German economy.
The Italian navy threatened to suspend all operations in February 1941, well before the USSR and USA were in the war, unless Germany provided 250,000 tons of fuel oil due to the dire shortage because of the Royal Navy blockade on Europe. One point Prof Adam Tooze mentions, dismissing the myth that the USA provided all with everything, that in 1942 the USSR outproduced the USA.
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@looinrims
Most USA production, which was enormous, went to the USA. Get it out if your head that without USA production Britain and the USSR would not have won. Britain' output was phenomenal. Out-producing Germany on most counts, then Empire production on top - Canada's production was nothing sniff at.
The British and Americans told the USSR to not bother with heavy bombers, or ships, as they would do that, so concentrate on the land war.
The British had ample sticks of 100-octane fuel pre and early war, from its own sources, not USA, but the USA expanded its production so much it was not worth producing it in the UK. Britain over imported grain from the US that it created a rat problem. Secial poisons had to be developed to kerb the problem.
Britain provided 31% of USA materials in the ETO, with 71% in 1942. The USA was a liability in 1942. The RAF had to curtail its bombing offensive as the had give bases over to the USAAF.
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They knew of the intel reports. Regarding generals:
♦ USAAF generals, Brereton and Williams, mainly planned Market Garden;
♦ US General Fredendal at Kasserine in Tunisia. Facing annihilation until the 8th Army turned up;
♦ US Admiral King of the US Navy allowing 600 vessels in six months to be sunk off the US eastern seaboard, not protecting the vessels. The British insisted they take 24 corvettes with British crews;
♦ US General Clark. The Germans were to be finished off in Italy. Clark was ordered to take his US troops to complete the encirclement. He never running off to Rome for a photo shoot, allowing the Germans to get away reforming the Gothic Line further north. If he was German Clark would have been shot;
♦ US General Lucas who was ordered to move fast inland after the Anzio landing. He kept the troops on the beaches who came under heavy German artillery. Churchill said, "I though we were releasing a wildcat, but found we had a beached whale.";
♦ Then the American ineptitude after D-Day. US forces were 5 weeks late in seizing St.Lo in Normandy, which was a high priority target. Despite little German armour being in the US sector;
♦ Eisenhower ran to Montgomery at the Bulge having to give command of two shambolic US armies, the First and the Ninth. Adding British troops, Monty stopped the German advance then turned them back;
♦ US general Hodges fled in the Bulge. His HQ at Spa was not under threat when he fled. A group of British officers from the British 21st Army Group went to Hodges HQ wanting to know the situation then report back to Monty. When they got there no one was about. The place was deserted. They ran away so quick they left the maps still on the walls. The British officers then asked the Belgian civilians living around where they had gone. They pointed to another village much further west, thinking the Americans might have fled there. So the officers went up that road to find the fleeing Americans HQ and its generals. The account by US General Hasbrouck says a lot….
“I find it difficult to refrain from expressing my indignation at Hodges and Ridgeway and my appreciation of Montgomery whenever I talk about St. Vith. It is my firm opinion that if it hadn't been for Montgomery, the First US Army, and especially the troops in the St. Vith salient, would have ended in a debacle that would have gone down in history.” “I'm sure you remember how First Army HQ fled from Spa leaving food cooking on the stoves, officers' Xmas presents from home on their beds and, worst of all, top secret maps still on the walls... First Army HQ never contacted us with their new location and I had to send an officer to find them. He did and they knew nothing about us...(Montgomery) was at First Army HQ when my officer arrived. A liaison officer from Montgomery arrived at my HQ within 24 hrs. His report to Montgomery is what saved us...”
- General Hasbrouck of US 7th Armor. Generals of the Bulge by Jerry D. Morelock. page 298
There was 22,000 men at St.Vith, with Hodges HQ not even knowing they were there. Monty knew they were there. When Monty got command they first thing he did was pull them out to save them, otherwise annihilation;
♦ Then US General Bradley doing nothing at the Bulge;
♦ Eisenhower did little at the Bulge; Montgomery stated: "I do not believe that Eisenhower ever really understood the strategy of the Normandy campaign. He seemed to me to get the whole thing muddled up." Alan Brooke had to explain a number times what the strategy in Normandy was to Eisenhower. Alan Brooke described in his daily diary that American generals Eisenhower and Marshall as poor strategists, when they were in jobs were strategy mattered. Brooke wrote to Montgomery about his talks with Eisenhower, “it is equally clear that Ike has the very vaguest conception of war!”
♦ Montgomery to Alan Brooke..
"If we want the war to end within any reasonable period you have to get Eisenhower’s hand taken off the land battle. I regret to say that in my opinion he just doesn’t know what he is doing._
♦ Montgomery on Eisenhower:
"He has never commanded anything before in his whole career; now, for the first time, he has elected to take direct command of very large-scale operations and he does not know how to do it."
♦ Montgomery wrote of Eisenhower and Patton on their failing broad-front strategy on 22 January 1945:
“I fear that the old snags of indecision and vacillation and refusal to consider the military problem fairly and squarely are coming to the front again . . . The real trouble is that there is no control and the three army groups are each intent on their own affairs. Patton today issued a stirring order to Third Army, saying the next step would be Cologne . . . One has to preserve a sense of humour these days, otherwise one would go mad.”
♦ etc, etc;
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Rambo, the bridges, also the railways bridge, had only 19 guards between them. XXX Corps had to seize both of them as the 82nd failed to do so on landing.
US Official History:
The European Theater of Operations
THE SIEGFRIED LINE CAMPAIGN
by Charles B. MacDonald
CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY
UNITED STATES ARMY
WASHINGTON, D.C., 1993
https://history.army.mil/html/books/007/7-7-1/CMH_Pub_7-7-1.pdf
Page 161:
Colonel Lindquist's 508th Parachute Infantry and of Colonel Ekman's 505th Parachute Infantry had assembled within an hour after the D-Day drop.
Page 162:
General Gavin's understanding, as recalled later, was that Warren's battalion was to move "without delay after landing." On the other hand, Colonel Lindquist's understanding, also as recalled later, was that no battalion was to go for the bridge until the regiment had secured its other objectives, that is to say, not until he had established defenses protecting his assigned portion of the high ground and the northern part of the division glider landing zone. Instead of moving immediately toward the Nijmegen bridge, Colonel Warren's battalion was to take an "assigned initial objective" in the vicinity of De Ploeg, a suburb of Nijmegen a mile and a quarter southeast of the city astride the Nijmegen-Groesbeek highway.
Rambo, it is clear the Yanks did not a have clue what they were doing.
Page 163:
Colonel Warren about 1830 sent into Nijmegen a patrol consisting of a rifle platoon and the battalion intelligence section. This patrol was to make an aggressive reconnaissance, investigate reports from Dutch civilians that only eighteen Germans guarded the big bridge, and, if possible, capture the south end of the bridge.
Colonel Warren directed Companies A and B to rendezvous at a point just south of Nijmegen at * I900*
As the scouts neared a traffic circle surrounding a landscaped circular park near the center of Nijmegen, the Keizer Karel Plein, from which a mall-like park led northeast toward the Nijmegen bridge, a burst of automatic weapons fire came from the circle. The time was about two hours before midnight. (2200 hrs)
Page 164:
the chance for an easy, speedy capture of the Nijmegen bridge had passed. This was all the more lamentable because in Nijmegen during the afternoon the Germans had had nothing more than the same kind of "mostly low quality" troops encountered at most other places on D Day.
Rambo, I am sure you agree that the Yanks were a total disgrace.
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@steveosullivan5262
If Ike had let Monty go for a Rhine crossing in force in late August/early September in force, instead of the under resourced Market Garden, with the intent of making the inland sea in Holland they could have got Rotterdam and even Amsterdam instead, and in a position to launch tanks east on the North German Plains.
Antwerp is an awkward port, being 80km inland with a warren of tidal inlets, islands and estuaries covering its approaches. It would take many weeks to get the 80km river cleared of mines and wrecks. Monty half wrote off the port. Many armies came to grief in that part of the world - the British did in 1809 in the Walcheren Campaign. Monty would be aware of that.
Monty was all for bypassing the problems of Antwerp and gaining Rotterdam. The Germans were still reeling, the paras were on standby and there was fuel in the tanks. Rotterdam was possible. Stopping to open up Antwerp was always going to take considerable time at the fastest. Ike felt it was better to secure the line and concentrate on Antwerp as the supply head before pressing on - operation Market Garden was that plan to secure Noord Brabant to protect Antwerp, and then the endless operations from Hurtgen Forest, Operation Queen and to Walcheren.
Antwerp wouldn't be fully open to allied shipping until early January 1945. The first ships entered in October 1944, but the majority of supplies came from Normandy until November. That was three months from Antwerp's capture. Twice the time it took to break out of Normandy. By that time the French railway service had been largely rebuilt with supplies coming in from Normandy, for Bradley’s 12th Army Group, and Marseilles, for Devers’ 6th Army Group, could be shifted faster.
In August 1944 Monty was for pushing on, his 40 Division Thrust to the North, Ike was for caution. Ike’s caution allowed the Germans breathing space to reinforce gifting them an opportunity to strike back, as we saw in the Bulge attack.
.
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Rail lines assist in creating economic growth. The growth they create has to be poured back into the rails that greatly assisted. The answer is Land Value Taxation, Taxing only the land not the buildings on the land. Hong Kong built a full metro by taxing land.
One railway in Shropshire, England, the Bishops Castle Railway, ran for 69 years under the administrators. It just about ran itself. The great beneficiaries were the land owners around the railway, who benefited from increased land values cascading into higher rents. Railways do not make that much money, it is the land around them that makes the money. Land values are not taxed. Land Value Tax (LVT) can reclaim that added value to cycle back and run the railways. LVT is a tax on the value of the land, not the bricks on the land. Full LVT is not having income tax, so effort and productivity is not taxed. Those who put into the economy are not taxed, those who take out such as land values, are taxed.
Fast railways boost the economy. It is reclaiming the values they create to maintain them that needs addressing. One needs the other. In isolation many railways are supposedly uneconomical, In reality, overall to the community they are far from that. They create economic growth. Imagine New York without the Subway.
Rapid-transit rail stations increase property prices around, and attracts investors, while buses never do such a thing. The cost of infrastructure can be got from Land Value Tax, which US cities are using, as is Hong Kong, Singapore, etc, to fund transport
infrastructure. Harrisburgh in the USA, amongst others, use LVT to finance infrastructure. Sydney did it in a cut-down to fund the Olympics.
Read Wheels of Fortune by Fred Harrison.
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@juke699
Some facts for you. The British were the single biggest agents in the defeat of Nazi Germany. They were there from day one until the end. They did not enter because they attacked another country or were attacked. The so-called "invincible" Germans army tried and failed, with their allies, for two years in WW2 to defeat the British army in North Africa. The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery had to give the US armies an infantry role as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein
♦ March 1943 - Medenine
♦ June 1944 - Normandy
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British or US, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. The US Army were struggling in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months with over 50,000 casualties. The Battle of the Bulge took all the US effort, with Montgomery in command and the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line, with nearly 100,000 casualties. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe. The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British with Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces with the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against the panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) and had to give them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
Then the ignored British naval blockade on the Axis economy, which was so successful the substantial Italian navy could not put to sea in full strength, or even at all on some occasions, because of a lack of oil. Then the British bomber offensive on the German economy, taking the war right into German cities, wiping out Hamburg in one night.
You need to give respect where it is due.
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The fact is the Americans were a very mediocre army, with not one general that stood out. In Normandy Monty who was in charge of all armies, assessed the US armies giving them the infantry role. If they faced mass German armour they would have been annihilated. The Brits took on the German heavy armour and destroyed 90% of it.
Patton moved 10 miles in three months in Lorraine taking 52,000 casualties against a 2nd rate army with the result being a German defensive victory. Hurtgen Forest was a defeat. The only retreat in WW2 in 1944/45 by any Allied army was the US in the Ardennes offensive, taking 100,000 casualties. Monty had to take control of the US First and Ninth armies, keeping the Ninth until the end of WW2. XXX Corps advanced 60 miles in a few days in Market Garden. No other army in 1944-45 moved so fast.
Monty never suffered a reverse moving 1,000 miles through nine countries from Egypt to Denmark taking all in his path. He was a general over generals. Montgomery was by far most successful western allied commander of WW2. Monty fought more battles, took more ground and engaged more elite German divisions than any other general. Monty commanded all the Normandy ground forces, being the man the Americans ran to in the Ardennes offensive. No other general in the western allied armies possessed his experience in dealing with the Germans or his expertise.
Not on one occasion were Monty's ground armies, including US armies under his control, pushed back into a retreat by the Germans.
Eisenhower:
‘General Montgomery is a very able, dynamic type of army commander’.
Eisenhower on D-Day and Normandy:
'He got us there and he kept us there'.
General Günther Blumentritt:
‘Field Marshall Montgomery was the one general who never suffered a reverse’
Genral Hasso von Manteuffel on the Bulge:
‘The operations of the American 1st Army had developed into a series of individual holding actions. Montgomery's contribution to restoring the situation was that he turned a series of isolated actions into a coherent battle fought according to a clear and definite plan. It was his refusal to engage in premature and piecemeal counter-attacks which enabled the Americans to gather their reserves and frustrate the German attempts to extend their breakthrough’.
Patton on Monty:
'small,very alert, wonderfully conceited, and the best soldier - or so it seems - I have met in this war’.
American Major General Matt Ridgway commander of the US XVIII Airborne Corps, 17 Jan 1945
"It has been an honored privilege and a very great personal pleasure to have served, even so briefly, under your distinguished leadership [Montgomery]. To the gifted professional guidance you at once gave me, was added to your own consummate courtesy and consideration. I am deeply grateful for both. My warm and sincere good wishes will follow you and with them the hope of again serving with you in pursuit of a common goal".
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Germany's biggest mistake was declaring war in the first place. Once they waged war when was the point they could not win? That was when the British refused to make peace in June 1940. With Britain still in the war the Royal Navy blockade starved Germany, and the Axis, of vital resources, including food (animal & human) and oil. Britain was even buying up rare metals from Turkey to ensure the Germans did not have them. The Royal Navy controlled and freely sailed the eastern Atlantic and the eastern Mediterranean, and both entrances to the Mediterranean. They even had Malta all through WW2, on the doorstep of Axis Italy. Britain's land forces were from Turkey to Libya. Essentially the British surrounded Europe, controlling the sea lanes.
The Royal Navy ensured the conflict with Germany would continue. Germany could not win from June 1940 onwards. Being a largely landlocked country, Germany's forces were heavily based on its army, while Britain's was heavily based on its navy and air force with a small highly mobile army. Germany could not remove Britain from the war having pretty well no surface fleet to Britain having the largest navy in the world.
Britain's approach was that every operation was to bleed Germany of resources, especially oil. Operations in Norway and Greece forced the Germans to deploy troops to these areas but also its surface fleet, which mainly was destroyed in Norway. The German occupied countries were also under the blockade, which were also a drain of German resources.
The British, because of its armed forces structure of massive navy, large air force and small highly mobile army were unable to engage the Germans on the European land mass, on which Germany had a massive army. Apart from the air, the two countries could not get at each other. Britain's war then was partially an economic war. Every German operation against the British had to be decisive whereas the British could lose to the Germans while still asserting economic pressure in its favour. This was the British way of war being very good at it. Britain used similar tactics against Germany in WW1 to devastating effects. This approach was used against the French on multiple occasions over 200 years. Smaller nations in Europe would follow Pax Britannica due British naval dominance. Britain could dictate any war's outcome by blocking trade and resources to one side or another.
The Germans like most of Europe relied on imported oil, raw materials and food (animal & human). For the Germans these resources can only come from two regions - the USSR or the rest of the world. By removing the rest of the world from the grasp of the Axis, the British forced the Germans to acquire Soviet oil - Romania did not produce enough. Hitler had no choice but to invade the Soviet Union in June 1941 because of the resources situation. He needed the resources of the USSR to fight the coming air war with Britain. In May 1940 Roosevelt stated the USA would produce 50,000 planes per year. Most of these would be directed towards Germany with British production on top.
Germany greatly expanded its U-Boat fleet. The popular view was that this fleet was to starve Britain into submission. That was valid but a high hope, however, it was also to divert and lock up Royal Navy resources in convoy protection and U-Boat hunting, allowing merchant ships to enter Germany and the occupied countries more freely.
Germany had been forced into a situation by the British that they knew they could not escape from. Even if Germany had seized the Caucuses' oil fields intact (the Soviets sabotaged them to the point new deep bore holes would need to be drilled) the British would have focused them for their bombing campaign operating from the Middle East - there were plans to bomb them as Britain held nearby Iraq and occupied Iran. This was to drain Germany of vital oil. Every British victory in Africa was decisive and every German victory was not, even if Germany won an operation, they were still being bled. Unless Germany could seize the Suez Canal and beyond, the British could just come back year after year and counter attack with new tanks and new men, with resources not being a problem for them.
Germany knew that they could not invade Britain as the royal Navy was just too powerful. The RAF could replace losses far quicker than they could, as they found out in the air Battle of Britain. Germany could not put their large army on British soil.
After June 1940 Germany has an enemy it can’t defeat not entertaining peace, economically throttling the Germans every day of the war. Germany never had time, the British did. The German invasion of the USSR with an army short of resources due to the Royal Navy blockade, may have quickened the war's end for Germany, however it was not the point that Germany was doomed. Germany had already lost the war it was just a matter of time when Germany collapsed.
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@juke699 our Hollywood history fanatic wrote:
"Ever hear of General Patton or MacArthur"
Here is Patton for you....
Patton was an average US general, like Simpson, Patch, Hodges, etc. No more.
"The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian First Army HQ for the same purpose.
Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation.
"This advance duly began at 0630hrs on August 18 which, as the Canadian Official History remarks,16 ‘was a day and a half after Montgomery had issued the order for the Canadians to close the gap at Trun, and four and a half days after Patton had been stopped at the Third Army boundary’. During that time, says the Canadian History, the Canadians had been ‘fighting down from the north with painful slowness’ and the Germans had been making their way east through the Falaise gap. They were not, however, unimpeded; the tactical air forces and Allied artillery were already taking a fearful toll of the German columns on the roads heading east past Falaise.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise – Operation Tractable – which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed there with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were re-fitting and rebuilt after the summer 1944 battles.
The Panzer Brigades had green crews with little time to train, did not know their tanks properly, had no recon elements and didn't even meet their unit commander until his arrival at the front. These were not elite forces.
17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, equipped only with assault guns not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy and not up to strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the best German divisions in the west were NOT.
♦ Who did the 3rd Army engage?
♦ Who did the 3rd Army defeat?
♦ Patton never once faced a full strength
Waffen SS panzer division nor a
Tiger battalion.
In The Lorraine, the 3rd Army faced a rabble. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said:
"I have never been in command of such irregularly
assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that
we have been able to straighten out the situation
again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating
command of the Americans."
Patton was mostly facing a second rate rabble in The Lorraine.
Patton was neither on the advance nor being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. The road from Luxembourg to Bastogne saw few German forces, with Bastogne being on the very southern German flank, their focus was west. Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was not one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, while 26th Volks-Grenadier only had about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind only had a small number of tanks operational. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1.
Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Leading elements were engaging the Americans and British under Montgomery's command near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance and pushed them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons opened up with the American attack stopping and pulling back. The next day fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B retreating once again. It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. Patton's forces arrived at Chaumont late on the 22nd December. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day, the 25th! Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, just 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne.
In Normandy in 1944, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact. This eastern dash devoid of German forces was the ride the US media claimed Patton was some sort master of fast moving armour.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates.
♦ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics
Bradley's II Corps were employing
♦ He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division,
Truscott of being "afraid to fight".
♦ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the
US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps.
♦ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize
stalled he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being
"very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect".
♦ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in
reporting their losses.
After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF. Coningham, gave Patton massive ground attack plane support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall. Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault, including his subordinates. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated. Oh, and wore cowboy guns.
Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his orders, and Eisenhowers orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read: Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds and
Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies by Harry Yeide
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@juke699
The British took Antwerp intact. Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust over other fronts:
"On 4 Sept, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr"
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen when he issued the directive. Montgomery wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive, devising Operation Comet to be launched on 2 Sept, being cancelled due to German resistance and poor weather.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 Sept had divisions of the US 1st Army and Montgomery's view of taking multiple bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. The British 2nd Army needed some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow). Hodges' would protect the right flank. the Canadians would protect the left flank from the German 15th army. It was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
"the evidence also suggests that certain necessary objectives on the road to Berlin, crossing the Rhine and perhaps even taking the Ruhr, were possible with the existing logistical set-up, provided the right strategy to do so was set in place. Montgomery’s popular and astute Chief of Staff, Freddie de Guingand, certainly thought so: 'If Eisenhower had not taken the steps he did to link up at an early date with Anvil and had held back Patton, and had he diverted the resources so released to the north, I think it possible we might have obtained a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter - but not more.' "
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944."
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again. This northern thrust over the Rhine obviously would not work with the resources starved First Army, so a lesser operation was devised by Montgomery, Market Garden, eliminating the divisions of US First Army, with only ONE crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London wanted eliminating ASAP giving a 60 mile long salient buffer between German forces and the important port of Antwerp. This would only have one corps above Eindhoven, a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time. Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance.
Montgomery, although not liking Eisenhower's broad front strategy, making that clear continuously since the Normandy breakout, being a professional soldier he always obeyed Eisenhower's orders keeping to the laid down strategy, unlike Bradley who also allowed Patton to disobey his own orders.
Montgomery after fixing the operations objectives with Eisenhower to what forces were available, gave Market Garden planning to others, mainly General Brereton, an American, of the First Allied Airborne Army. Brereton, who liked the concept, agreed to it with even direct input. Brereton ordered the drops will take place during the day and Brereton oversaw the troop carrier and supply drops schedules. A refusal by Brereton and the operation would never have gone ahead, as he earlier rejected Montgomery's initial plan of a drop into the Scheldt at Walcheren Island.
Montgomery left all the planning to his generals to plan and execute: Brereton, Williams, Browning, Urquhart, Gavin, Taylor, Horrocks, etc. Monty gave them a free run at it with their own discretion not interfering. Montgomery had no involvement whatsoever in its execution. Montgomery was an army group commander, in charge of armies. The details were left to 'competent' subordinates.
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@Avalanche041
The Americans wanted a full landing in 1942. Very odd as they first had boots on the ground against the Germans after 13 months. The British had to tell them about seaborne invasions and that it would be suicide. Churchill wanted to move up Italy though the gap into Austria to get into the heart of Germany. The US view won over with a cross Channel invasion.
The British then planned the D-Day operation, and as I wrote, ran it. Of course some US men were involved in the planning where it concerned their forces, however the prime planners and those who decided what and where, were the British. D-Day was a British operation for sure.
British landing craft were superior to the wooden US Higgin's boats. The helmsman was behind an armoured shield.
As the advance inland progressed at a snail's pace due to Eisenhower's broad-front strategy (taken from the US civil war - no kidding) US forces were sustaining exceptionally high casualties, mainly due to poor generalship. US generals cared little about the lives of their men, unlike the British and Canadians who developed armoured personnel carriers in WW2 - the US rejected them when offered.
100,000 casualties at the Bulge (Montgomery had to take control of two shambolic US armies), 52,000 at Lorraine, 12,000 Operation Queen, 33,000 at the Hurtgen Forest defeat, etc. US chiefs of staff in Washing fearing embarrassing US defeats being pushed right back, poured more troops into the ETO. Most of the US forces sent over were poorly trained, green and luckily never saw any action whatsoever. They were immediately taken back to prepare for the invasion of Japan.
At the end of WW2 in Europe the forces were half American because of this panic by their Chiefs of staff, with British, Commonwealth, French (they had over one million), and other contributors making up the rest. BTW, the British and its empire fielded 100 divisions in 1942 alone while US overall in WW2 fielded 88. An army of 2.6 million moved into Burma, dwarfing the US boots on the ground against the Japanese.
Churchill gave the green Americans initially too much rope. He suggested an American be supreme commander, flattering them to get them to adopt Germany First. The US assumed the British would be in full control as it was ther backyard. Churchill had an obsession about Hitler over estimating the Germans. The Americans should not have have been in control of any part of the ETO. When were in control of planning (Market Garden comes to mind) it nearly always went pear shaped.
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A prime strategic problem for SHAEF in September 1944 was opening up the approaches to Antwerp and keeping it from German counter-attack - the logistics problem to supply all allied armies. It was:
1) Take Noord Brabant, the land to the north and northeast of Antwerp, or;
2) Take the Schedlt.
Eisenhower had a Northern Thrust strategy, a push to the north on his stretched broad front lines. Taking Noord Babant fell in line with the desires for both SHEAF and Eisenhower.
Noord Brabant had to be taken before the Scheldt, as it was essential. It was taken with limited forces, with forces also sent to take the Schedlt. Market Garden had to go ahead regardless of any threat or Northern Thrust strategy, and was actually a success. To use Antwerp and control the approaches, the Scheldt, everything up to the south bank of the lower Rhine at Nijmegen needed to be under allied control. The low-lying lands, boggy ground between Arnhem and Nijmegen with land strewn with rivers and canals, is perfect geography as a barrier against a German counter-attack towards Antwerp. Without control of Noord Brabant German forces would have been in artillery range of Antwerp, and with a build up of forces and supply directly back to Germany in perfect position for a counter-attack.
Market Garden was the offensive SHEAF wanted to secure Antwerp, a prime port for logistics for all allied armies. It made sense as the Germans were in disarray, so should be easy enough to gain. Monty added Arnhem to form a bridgehead over the Rhine to fall in line with Eisenhower's priority Northern Thrust strategy at the time. It made complete sense in establishing a bridgehead over the Rhine as an extra to the operation. You needed Arnhem for an easier jump into Germany. Everything up to Nijmegen was needed if you wanted to do anything at all - that is, protect Antwerp and have a staging point to move into Germany. Gaining Noord Brabant, was vital, and was successfully seized. Fighting in the low lying mud and waterways of the Schedlt, which will take time, while the Germans a few miles away and still holding Noord Brabant made no sense at all.
SHEAF got what they wanted from a strategic point of view.
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Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust over other fronts and even seizing Antwerp and clearing the Schedlt. Clearing the Scheldt would take time as the German 15th SS army, highly experienced from the Russian front, had set up shop in the Scheldt and not retreated back into Germany, under Hitler's orders. All available supplies would be directed to this northern thrust.
"Since Eisenhower — the Supreme Commander and Ground Force Commander — approved the Arnhem operation rather than a push to clear the Scheldt, then surely he was right, as well as noble, to accept the responsibility and any resulting blame? The choice in early September was the Rhine or Antwerp: to continue the pursuit or secure the necessary facilities to solve the logistical problem? The decision was made to go for the Rhine, and that decision was Eisenhower’s."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"On 4 Sept, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr"
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen to British troops when he issued the northern thrust directive. Montgomery wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive, devising Operation Comet, multiple crossings of the Rhine, to be launched on 2 Sept, being cancelled due to German resistance and poor weather. Operation Comet was not presented to Eisenhower for his approval. Montgomery asked Brereton, an American, of the First Allied Airborne Army, to drop into the Scheldt in early September - he refused.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 Sept had divisions of the US 1st Army and Montgomery's view of taking multiple bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. The British 2nd Army needed some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow). Hodges' would protect the right flank. the Canadians would protect the left flank from the German 15th army. "the narrow thrust was reduced to the Second Army and two US corps, the XIX and VII of Hodges’ First Army, a total of around eighteen Allied divisions"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
The northern thrust was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944."
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower’s reply of 5 September to Montgomery deserves analysis, not least the part that concerns logistics. The interesting point is that Eisenhower apparently believes that it is possible to cross the Rhine and take both the Ruhr and the Saar — and open the Scheldt — using the existing logistical resources."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp. In thinking this Ike was wrong."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Post-Normandy Bradley seemed unable to control Patton, who persistently flouted Eisenhower’s directives and went his own way, aided and abetted by Bradley. This part of their relationship quickly revealed itself in matters of supply, where Hodges, the commander of the US First Army, was continually starved of fuel and ammunition in order to keep Patton’s divisions rolling, even when Eisenhower’s strategy required First Army to play the major role in 12th Army Group’s activities."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again, and being bogged down - again. The resources starved First Army could not be a part of northern thrust as Bradley and Patton, against Eisenhower's orders, were syphoning off supplies destined for the First army. This northern thrust over the Rhine, as Eisenhower envisaged, obviously would not work as he thought. A lesser operation was devised by Montgomery, Market Garden, eliminating the divisions of US First Army, with only ONE crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London wanted eliminating ASAP, giving a 60 mile long salient buffer between German forces and the important port of Antwerp. This would only have one corps above Eindhoven, a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time. Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance. Eisenhower should have fired Bradley and Patton for sabotaging the Northern Thrust operation.
Montgomery did not plan or was in involved in Market Garden's execution. Montgomery, after fixing the operations objectives with Eisenhower to the measly forces available, gave Market Garden planning to others, mainly USAAF generals, Brereton and Williams. General Brereton, who liked the plan, agreed to it with even direct input. Brereton ordered the drops will take place during the day with Brereton also overseeing the troop carrier and supply drops schedules. Williams forbid fighter-bombers to be used. A refusal by Brereton and the operation would never have gone ahead; he earlier rejected Montgomery's initial plan of a drop into the Scheldt at Walcheren Island.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time the Canadians had cleared, or were investing, many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@danwelch8547
The Battleships over shot the Omaha beach. Bradley never used the Funnies. Big mistake.
Operation Goodwood's focus was not specifically tanks, as the Germans had five lines of defence with dug in 88mm's and heavy Tiger and fast Panther tanks for mobility. Goodwood was mostly 'not' bocage but open ground more suitable for tank battles, where the German long range 88mm's would be at an advantage.
Monty's plan was not for British forces to take territory. He specifically wanted to draw in German armour onto British forces to grind them up to keeping them away from the US forces for them to break out (Operation Cobra). That was even stated at St.Paul's school in Fulham. To do that he was confident British armour could match German armour - US armour would struggle or most likely be overwhelmed. A 12 mile sector around Caen saw more concentrated German armour in all of WW2. Goodwood was not British forces taking territory, as the plan was for the US forces to do that, Monty specifically states this here in this link in an interview with Edward R Murrow. Transcript....
"The acquisition of territory on the eastern flank of the beachhead in the Caen sector was not really important. What was important there was to draw the maximum number of German divisions, and especially the armour, into that flank. The acquisition of territory was important on the western flank [the US sector]." ...."an accusation drawn at me, that I ought to have taken Caen in the programme on D-Day! And we didn't. I didn't mind about that because....The air force would get very het up because I didn't go further down towards Falaise and get the ground suitable for airfields. I didn't bother about that, it would have meant enormous casualties in doing it and it wasn't necessary."
"I could reply to that criticism that on the American front the line from which the breakout was finally launched was a line the St.Lo-Periers road, should have been captured in the initial plan by the American 1st Army on D-Day plus 5, that was the 11th June. But they didn't actually capture it until the 18th July. But I have never returned the charge with that accusation. ...until now"
"I have never understood why Ike said in his dispatches that, when the British failed to break out towards Paris on the eastern flank. The Americans were able [to break out], because of our flexibility, to take it on, on our western flank. I have always thought that was an unfair criticism of Dempsey and the 2nd British Army."
- Field Marshall Montgomery (1959)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_TB9wHRRSw
The RAF chief Tedder, wanted Monty fired as he wanted open territory to the south towards Falaise to setup his airfields saying Monty was not pursing territory aggressively enough. Monty would have none of it. Operation Goodwood was engaging the massed armoured German defences drawing them in to British lines, grinding them up moving slowly. Here is a 1970s objective British Army Sandhurst internal video analysing Operation Goodwood, with even German commanders who were there taking part. At the beginning it specifically states Monty told Generals O'Connor and Dempsey not to run south to Falaise, not to take territory. Look at 6 mins:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udW1UvSHXfY
Monty was not too concerned with Caen as it would consume too many resources to take, being a strategically unimportant target. He was more concerned with grinding up German armour in the field. Although by the time of Goodwood only the southern suburbs were in German hands.
Monty was in charge of all of Operation Overlord. He wanted the German armour away from US forces, to allow them to break out. It worked. That is what he wanted and planned. Monty never saw Caen as important but never criticised US forces..... until 1959 when they were at him about Caen, he criticised them for taking St.Lo a month late - with little German armour around for a month. The Germans did send some armour to St.Lo with the US forces making it worse for themselves to capture the place.
Even Bradley agreed with Monty. Bradley wrote that:
"The British and Canadian armies were to decoy the enemy reserves and draw them to their front on the extreme eastern edge of the Allied beachhead. Thus, while Monty taunted the enemy at Caen, we (the Americans)were to make our break on the long roundabout road to Paris. When reckoned in terms of national pride, this British decoy mission became a sacrificial one, for while we tramped around the outside flank, the British were to sit in place and pin down the Germans. Yet strategically it fitted into a logical division of labors, for it was towards Caen that the enemy reserves would race once the alarm was sounded".
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@bigwoody4704
Rambo, within three months british forces were in Brussels with US forces in The Lorraine. Monty was superb!
Eisenhower:
‘General Montgomery is a very able, dynamic type of army commander’.
Eisenhower on D-Day and Normandy:
'He got us there and he kept us there'.
General Günther Blumentritt:
‘Field Marshall Montgomery was the one general who never suffered a reverse’
Genral Hasso von Manteuffel on the Bulge:
‘The operations of the American 1st Army had developed into a series of individual holding actions. Montgomery's contribution to restoring the situation was that he turned a series of isolated actions into a coherent battle fought according to a clear and definite plan. It was his refusal to engage in premature and piecemeal counter-attacks which enabled the Americans to gather their reserves and frustrate the German attempts to extend their breakthrough’.
Patton on Monty:
'small,very alert, wonderfully conceited, and the best soldier - or so it seems - I have met in this war’.
American Major General Matt Ridgway liked and praised Monty.
- Major General Matt Ridgway, commander of the US XVIII Airborne Corps, 17 Jan 1945
"It has been an honored privilege and a very great personal pleasure to have served, even so briefly, under your distinguished leadership [Montgomery]. To the gifted professional guidance you at once gave me, was added to your own consummate courtesy and consideration. I am deeply grateful for both. My warm and sincere good wishes will follow you and with them the hope of again serving with you in pursuit of a common goal".
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It was a Monty concept, not plan. Americans planned it. You are right the US did not support it. The First Allied Airborne Army was under Monty so American had to be involved. Bradley and Patton were peeling off supplies.
"Post-Normandy Bradley seemed unable to control Patton, who persistently flouted Eisenhower’s directives and went his own way, aided and abetted by Bradley. This part of their relationship quickly revealed itself in matters of supply, where Hodges, the commander of the US First Army, was continually starved of fuel and ammunition in order to keep Patton’s divisions rolling, even when Eisenhower’s strategy required First Army to play the major role in 12th Army Group’s activities."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again - and being bogged down - again. The resources starved First Army could not be a part of northern thrust as Bradley and Patton, against Eisenhower's orders, were syphoning off supplies destined for the First Army. This northern thrust over the Rhine, as Eisenhower envisaged, obviously would not work as he thought. A lesser operation was devised by Montgomery, Market Garden, eliminating the divisions of US First Army, with only ONE crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London wanted eliminating ASAP, giving a 60 mile long salient buffer between German forces and the important port of Antwerp.
This operation would only have one corps above Eindhoven, a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time. Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance. Eisenhower should have fired Bradley and Patton for sabotaging the Northern Thrust operation.
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@bigwoody4704
Thank you Rambo...
Lt Gen Browning to Maj Gen G. E. Prier-Palmer, British Joint Services Mission, Washington, D.C., 25 Jan 55, excerpt in OCMH....
"I personally gave an order to Jim Gavin that, although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen Bridges as soon as possible"
Rambo, they left to seize the bridge about seven hours after landing. Seven hours is not as soon as possible.
The 82nd men who rowed over teh Waal to take the north end approaches of the bridge while XXX took the main structure, also failed. They met the XXX Corps tank 1km north of the bridge in Lent, not getting near the bridge.
A complete failure by the 82nd Rambo, a complete failure. Sad but true.
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@bigwoody4704 ~
Rambo,
Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Montgomery was an army group leader over armies, with Dempsey in command of the Second Army and Horrocks in command of XXX Corps.
Eisenhower, approved and under resourced the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak". The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself.
XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and using some 82nd men cleared the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.
Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time Monty had the Canadians cleared it, or were investing in many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@johnlucas8479
From US Official History....
Against five German battalions, including two SS battalions that 30 Corps intelligence had failed to detect, the spearhead Guards Armoured Division had made steady progress. In view of the fact that woods and marshy ground confined the attack to a front not much wider than the highway leading to Eindhoven, progress was remarkable
From US Offcial history....
As night came the British stopped in Valkenswaard, their "formal" objective. The objective of Eindhoven, which General Horrocks had indicated he hoped to reach on D-Day, lay six miles to the north.
So, despite heavy German resistance they never expected, XXX Corps was on schedule meeting their objective, mustering the vehicles for the next phase. XXX Corps knew the 101st failed to seize the bridge at Zon. They were preparing overnight the Bailey bridge teams. The lead elements of XXX Corps reached Eindhoven at 1230 hrs, [d-day+1], with the main body arriving at 1900hrs, running through Eindhoven without stopping, only to be stopped at the Zon bridge north of Eindhoven, which the US 101st failed to seize.
From US Official History...
about 1900 the paratroopers [101st] at last spotted the head of the main British column.
From US Official history...
at 0645 (D plus 2, 19 September) the armor rumbled across [the Zon bridge].
That is about 12 hour delay. A 12 hour delay because the US 101st failed to seize their objective.
From US Official history....
Spearheading the 30 Corps ground column, reconnaissance troops of the Guards Armoured Division linked with Colonel Tucker's 504th Parachute Infantry at Grave at 0820 the morning of D plus 2, 19 September. Major formations of the British armor were not far behind.
XXX Corps covered over 26 miles in 2 hr 45 mins from Zon to Nijmegen, averaging about 8 mph. They got to Zon at about 1900hrs d-day+1, So they would have reached the 82nd at 2145hrs d-day+1, at the latest. More like an hour earlier as less German resistance, or as fast as the vehicles could go.
If the 101st and 82nd had secured their bridges at Zon and Nijmegen, XXX Corps would have linked up with the British paras late on d-day+1, at the latest.
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@johnlucas8479
When XXX Corps knew the 101st failed to seize the Zon bridge they dropped a gear, they were fully capable of getting to Zon quicker.
Nevertheless looking at what we know, and happened, they could have reached Arnhem from Zon very quickly.
Facts:
♦ Zon to Arnhem is 37 miles.
♦ We know XXX Corps cautiously did 8 mph from Zon to Nijmegen doing it in 2 hrs 45 mins.
Then say another hour to Arnhem, that is: 3 hrs 45 mins. That is reaching Arnhem at 2245hrs on d-day+1. This is based on facts. I gave a wide margin of an hour in travelling the six miles from Nijmegen to Arnhem.
But! The forward fast vehicles could have done the 37 miles in 2 hours relieving the paras at Arnhem bridge. Horrocks had no southbound traffic on the road, with vehicles two abreast running north. A 40 mph Cromwell and a Sherman, can both average 20 mph easily on that run. Fast forward scout cars would pave the way.
So, XXX Corps leaving Zon at 1900hrs averaging 20mph - they would have been in Arnhem at approx 2100hrs. OK, say an hour later, still well inside d-day+1. XXX Corp would have found only a handful of German tanks in Arnhem, knocked out by the paras, then they would splay out beyond, assisting the paras to the west of Arnhem, securing the town and beyond.
The reality is that two US para units failed, resulting in a bridgehead not being established over the Rhine. Despite that failure on the US side, Market Garden was a success in its prime aim.
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Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust over other fronts:
On 4 September, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr
- Robin Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen when he issued the directive. Montgomery also wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive. He devised Operation Comet to be launched on 2 September 1944. It was cancelled due to German resistance and poor weather.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 September incorporating divisions of the US 1st Army, incorporated Montgomery's view of a thrust taking multiple bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. To do this the British 2nd Army, some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow) would clearly be needed. Hodges' would protect the right flank. The Canadians would be on the coast of Belgium and Holland protecting the left flank from the German 15th army. The idea was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy, preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
Neillands on this point...
"the evidence also suggests that certain necessary objectives on the road to Berlin, crossing the Rhine and perhaps even taking the Ruhr, were possible with the existing logistical set-up, provided the right strategy to do so was set in place. Montgomery’s popular and astute Chief of Staff, Freddie de Guingand, certainly thought so: 'If Eisenhower had not taken the steps he did to link up at an early date with Anvil and had held back Patton, and had he diverted the resources so released to the north, I think it possible we might have obtained a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter - but not more.' "
- Robin Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944.
- Robin Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again. This northern thrust over the Rhine obviously would not work with the resources starved First Army, so a lesser operation was devised by Montgomery, Market Garden, eliminating the resource starved divisions of US First Army, with only one crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London wanted eliminating ASAP, and give a 60 mile long salient buffer between German forces and the important port of Antwerp. This would only have one corps above Eindhoven. This was a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time. Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance.
Montgomery, although not liking Eisenhower's broad front strategy, making that clear continuously since the Normandy breakout, being a professional soldier he always obeyed Eisenhower's orders keeping to the laid down strategy, unlike Bradley who also allowed Patton to disobey his own orders.
Montgomery after fixing the operations objectives with Eisenhower to what forces were available, gave Market Garden planning to others, mainly Brereton, an American, of the First Allied Airborne Army. Montgomery had no involvement whatsoever in its execution. Montgomery was an army group commander, in charge of armies. The details were left to competent subordinates.
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@pmpcpmpc4737
Britain was key in WW2. Britain fought on every front, being in the war on the first day up to the last - the only country at the surrender of Japan in September 1945 to do so - Britain’s war actually ended in 1946 staying on in Viet Nam using Japanese troops alongside British troops to defeat the Viet Minh, but that is another story. Britain was not attacked or attacked anyone, going into WW2 on principle. The Turkish ambassador to the UK stated that the UK can raise 40 million troops from its empire so will win the war. This was noted by Franco who indirectly said to Hitler he would not win, fearing British occupation of Spanish islands and territory if Spain joined the war. Spain and Turkey stayed out of the war.
The Turkish ambassador’s point was given credence when an army of 2.6 million was assembled in India that moved into Burma to wipe out the Japanese. From day one the Royal Navy formed a ring around the Axis positioning ships from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Arctic off Norway, blockading the international trade of the Axis. This deprived the Axis of vital human and animal food, oil, rubber, metals, and other vital resources. By 1941 the successful Royal Navy blockade had confined the Italian navy to port due to lack of oil. By the autumn of 1941 Germany's surface fleet was confined to harbour, by the British fleet and the chronic lack of fuel. A potential German invasion from the the USSR in the north into the oil rich Middle East entailed expanded British troop deployment to keep the Germans away from the oil fields, until they were defeated at Stalingrad.
Throughout 1942 British Commonwealth troops were fighting, or seriously expecting to be attacked, in:
▪ French North Africa;
▪ Libya;
▪ Egypt;
▪ Cyprus;
▪ Syria: where an airborne assault was expected, with preparations to reinforce Turkey if they were attacked;
▪ Madagascar: fighting the Vichy French to prevent them from inviting the Japanese in as they had done in Indochina;
▪ Iraq;
▪ Iran: the British & Soviets invaded Iran in August 1941.
Those spread-out covering troops were more in combined numbers than were facing Japan and Rommel in North Africa. The British Commonwealth fielded over 100 divisions in 1942 alone, compared to the US total of 88 by the end of the war. The Americans and Soviets were Johnny-come-late in WW2, moreso the Americans. Before the USSR entered the conflict the Royal Navy’s blockade had reduced the Italian and German surface navies to the occasional sorties because of a lack of oil, with the British attacking the Germans and Italians in North Africa, also securing Syria, Iraq, the Levant and ridding the Italians from East Africa. The Germans were on the run by the time the USA had boots on the ground against the Axis.
The Germans had been stopped:
▪ in the west at the Battle of Britain in 1940;
▪ in the east at the Battle of Moscow in 1941. In which Britain provided 40% of the Soviet tanks.
The Germans were on the run after the simultaneous battles in late 1942 of:
▪ El Alemein;
▪ Stalingrad;
The Battle of El Alemein culminated in a quarter of a million Axis prisoners taken in Tunisia - more than taken at Stalingrad. Apart from the US Filipino forces that surrendered in early 1942, the US had a couple of divisions in Gaudalcanal after August 1942, and one in New Guinea by November 1942. In 1943 the US managed to get up to six divisions in the Pacific, but still not matching the British or British Indian armies respectively. Until late 1943 the Australian Army alone deployed more ground fighting troops against the Japanese than the USA. The Americans never put more ground troops into combat against the Japanese at any point than just the British Indian Army alone, which was 2.6 million strong. The US had nowhere near 2.6 million men on the ground against the Japanese. The Soviets fielded about a million against the Japanese. Most Japanese troops were put out of action by the British and Soviets, not the USA. At the battles of Khohima and Imphal the Japanese suffered their worst defeat in their history up to that point.
Then the British set their Eastern and Pacific fleets against the Japanese, not far off in numbers to the US fleet. The British Pacific Fleet assisted US troops protecting the western coast of Okinawa with its armoured carriers - they could operate way nearer to the coast than wooden decked US carriers, as kamikaze's bounced off them. The fleet also bombarded Japan, Sumatra and Taiwan, sinking one Japanese aircraft carrier and disabling another. The massive British merchant fleet greatly assisted the supply of US forces.
The Australian navy assisted the US navy all through the Japanese war. The USA was in the war for four years, yet it was less than 10 months before the Japanese surrender they actually fielded an entire army against the Japanese. That was in the Philippines. Before that it was just divisions fighting on scattered islands for a month or so at a time. In Europe the British planned and ran the D-Day Normandy campaign which came in ahead of schedule with 22% less casualties than predicted, with the British in command of all the air, sea and land forces of all nationalities. Then also destroying 90% of German armour in the west in the process, with constant air raids on German cities and industry culminating with 1,000 bomber raids. The Canadian navy was heavily involved in anti U-Boat operations in the Atlantic.
The biggest agents in the defeat of the Nazis and Japanese were the British.
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@davemac1197
ORDER
508- Prcht Infantry will:
(a) Land on DZ "T"
(b) Seize, organise and hold key terrain features in area of responsibility, and be prepared to seize Waal River crossing at NIJMEGEN (714633) on order of Div Comdr.
Let us assume pre-jump in England Gavin did not verbally tell Lindquist to go for the Waal bridge overriding the Order. So we have to go by the written Order which is freely available and a section coped above.
Regimental Liaison Officer of the 508th was Chester Graham: "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.'
Two battalions of the 508th were marching for just under three hours from the DZ to the empty Heights, arriving at *5 pm*. One battalion remained at the DZ securing it. The DZ was secure when they left. As soon as they were in the Heights with no Germans in sight the Heights were secure. All secure. Lindquist should have had his two companies prepared which was written in the Order.
Lindquist should have contacted Gavin 'immediately', by radio or messenger, to get the Divisional Order to go to the bridge on reaching the vacant and secure Heights. Lindquist could not move to the bridge without it.
Lindquist:
1) was way too late in obtaining the Order to proceed by radio or messenger;
2) never had the two companies prepared to move to the bridge.
When informed Lindquist was not moving to the bridge, Gavin sped personally to Lindquist screaming at him to move to the bridge at 7 pm, two hours after the 508 arrived at the Heights. Half an hour later the Germans reinforced the bridge. It took another two hours to muster the two companies spread over the Heights under Cnl Warren before they started to march at 9 pm. Far too late.
Lindquist failed on two important points.
Again, this is all assuming Gavin never gave verbal orders to Lindquist in England, only going by the written Order.
Whichever way you cut it, Lindquist was amateurish and to blame. Gavin also takes blame as he never had Lindquist trained and alert enough.
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Rambo
Eisenhower was a political man not a full ground forces commander, of which he was very poor at. After Normandy the American generals thought the Germans were finished, so in their naive minds they never needed the expertise of Monty any longer, wanting to take the thunder when sweeping up the remnants of the Germans army.
They monopolised ego and vanity. How wrong they were when they ran to Monty when the Germans pounded through US lines at the Bulge. Eisenhower's inexperience in his broad-front strategy was clear for all to see. Monty wanted a 40 division thrust into Germany after Normandy, which Eisenhower rejected who went for a ridiculous broad-front strategy. It was foolish to put Eisenhower in command of all ground forces. He did not have the experience.
Montgomery outlined his ideas on future strategy in a letter to the Chief of Staff Alanbrooke. He suggested the two Army Groups, the U.S. 12th and the British 21st, should: ‘keep together as a solid mass of forty divisions, which would be so strong that it need fear nothing.’ This force would advance northwards with the 21st Army Group on the western flank to clear the Channel coast, the Pas de Calais, West Flanders, and secure the vital port of Antwerp and south Holland before moving across the Rhine in the north and so to the Ruhr. The U.S. 12th Army Group would form the eastern flank of this manoeuvre and move with their right flank on the Ardennes, being directed via the Aachen Gap towards Cologne and the Rhine. The move would lead to a pincer-like thrust on the Ruhr, the industrial centre of the German Reich.
The above was actually common sense when looking at the situation in late August/early Sept 1944. Chase a defeated army to its industrial strong point that supplies the military ending the war quickly. Montgomery's approach was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full thrust would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since the Germans had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr and deep into Germany.
Despite Eisenhower we won. BTW, Tedder was second in command.
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Rambo
Patton was an average US general, like Simpson, Patch, Hodges, etc. No more.
"The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian First Army HQ for the same purpose.
Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation.
"This advance duly began at 0630hrs on August 18 which, as the Canadian Official History remarks,16 ‘was a day and a half after Montgomery had issued the order for the Canadians to close the gap at Trun, and four and a half days after Patton had been stopped at the Third Army boundary’. During that time, says the Canadian History, the Canadians had been ‘fighting down from the north with painful slowness’ and the Germans had been making their way east through the Falaise gap. They were not, however, unimpeded; the tactical air forces and Allied artillery were already taking a fearful toll of the German columns on the roads heading east past Falaise.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise – Operation Tractable – which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed there with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were re-fitting and rebuilt after the summer 1944 battles.
The Panzer Brigades had green crews with little time to train, did not know their tanks properly, had no recon elements and didn't even meet their unit commander until his arrival at the front. These were not elite forces.
17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, equipped only with assault guns not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy and not up to strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the best German divisions in the west were NOT.
♦ Who did the 3rd Army engage?
♦ Who did the 3rd Army defeat?
♦ Patton never once faced a full strength
Waffen SS panzer division nor a
Tiger battalion.
In The Lorraine, the 3rd Army faced a rabble. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said:
"I have never been in command of such irregularly
assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that
we have been able to straighten out the situation
again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating
command of the Americans."
Patton was mostly facing a second rate rabble in The Lorraine.
Patton was neither on the advance nor being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. The road from Luxembourg to Bastogne saw few German forces, with Bastogne being on the very southern German flank, their focus was west. Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was not one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, while 26th Volks-Grenadier only had about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind only had a small number of tanks operational. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1.
Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Leading elements were engaging the Americans and British under Montgomery's command near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance and pushed them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons opened up with the American attack stopping and pulling back. The next day fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B retreating once again. It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. Patton's forces arrived at Chaumont late on the 22nd December. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day, the 25th! Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, just 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne.
In Normandy in 1944, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact. This eastern dash devoid of German forces was the ride the US media claimed Patton was some sort master of fast moving armour.
Patton constantly denigrated his subordinates.
♦ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics
Bradley's II Corps were employing
♦ He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division,
Truscott of being "afraid to fight".
♦ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the
US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps.
♦ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize
stalled he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being
"very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect".
♦ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in
reporting their losses.
After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF. Coningham, gave Patton massive ground attack plane support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall. Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault, including his subordinates. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated. Oh, and wore cowboy guns.
Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his orders, and Eisenhowers orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read: Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds and
Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies by Harry Yeide
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Rambo
Patton was a media creation.
1985 US Army report on the Lorraine Campaign.
Patton does not come out well.
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a211668.pdf
Combat Studies Institute. The Lorraine Campaign: An Overview, September-December 1944. by Dr. Christopher R. Gabel February, 1985
From the document is in italics:
"Soldiers and generals alike assumed that Lorraine would fall quickly, and unless the war ended first, Patton's tanks would take the war into Germany by summer's end. But Lorraine was not to be overrun in a lightning campaign. Instead, the battle for Lorraine would drag on for more than 3 months."
"Despite its proximity to Germany, Lorraine was not the Allies' preferred invasion route in 1944. Except for its two principal cities, Metz and Nancy, the province contained few significant military objectives." "Moreover, once Third Army penetrated the province and entered Germany, there would still be no first-rate military objectives within its grasp. The Saar industrial region, while significant, was of secondary importance when compared to the great Ruhr industrial complex farther north."
Another Patton chase into un-needed territory, full of vineyards like
he did when running his troops into Brittany.
"With so little going for it, why did Patton bother with Lorraine at all? The reason was that Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, made up his mind to destroy as many German forces as possible west of the Rhine."
In other words a waste of time.
"Communications Zone organized the famous Red Ball Express, a non-stop conveyor belt of trucks connecting the Normandy depots with the field armies."
They were getting fuel via 6,000 trucks.
"The simple truth was that although fuel was plentiful in Normandy, there was no way to transport it in sufficient quantities to the leading elements. On 31 August , Third Army received no fuel at all."
In short, Patton overran his supply lines. What was
important was to secure the Port of Antwerp's
approaches. Montgomery approached the US leaders
of the First Airborne Army and they would not drop into
the Scheldt.
"Few of the Germans defending Lorraine could be considered First-rate troops. Third Army encountered whole battalions made up of deaf men, others of cooks, and others consisting entirety of soldiers with stomach ulcers."
Some army the Americans were going to fight
"Was the Lorraine campaign an American victory? From September through November, Third Army claimed to have inflicted over 180,000 casualties on the enemy. But to capture the province of Lorraine, a problem which involved an advance of only 40 to 60 air miles, Third Army required over 3 months and suffered 50,000 casualties, approximately one-third of the total number of casualties it sustained in the entire European war."
The US Army does not think it was a victory.
Huge losses for taking unimportant territory,
against a poor German army.
"Ironically, Third Army never used Lorraine as a springboard for an advance into Germany after all. Patton turned most of the sector over to Seventh Army during the Ardennes crisis, and when the eastward advance resumed after the Battle of the Bulge, Third Army based its operations on Luxembourg, not Lorraine. The Lorraine campaign will always remain a controversial episode in American military history."
It's getting worse. One third of all European casualties
in Lorraine and never used the territory to move into Germany.
"Finally the Lorraine Campaign demonstrated that Logistics often drive operations, no matter how forceful and aggressive the commanding general may be." "Patton violated tactical principles" "His discovered that violating logistical principles is an unforgiving and cumulative matter."
Not flattering at all. And Americans state Patton
was the best general they had.
Bradley stated later:
“Patton was developing as an unpopular guy. He steamed about with great convoys of cars and great squads of cameramen … To George, tactics was simply a process of bulling ahead. Never seemed to think out a campaign. Seldom made a careful estimate of the situation. I thought him a shallow commander … I disliked the way he worked, upset tactical plans, interfered in my orders. His stubbornness on amphibious operations, parade plans into Messina sickened me and soured me on Patton. We learned how not to behave from Patton’s Seventh Army.”
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Rambo
The Turning point of WW2 was the Battle of Moscow in Dec 1941. That was when Germany and Japan were doomed.
♦ Japan thought Germany would definitely win
defeating the USSR soon after. The German
defeat at Moscow would ensure Germany
would not defeat the USSR.
♦ The Japanese entered WW2 on a presumption they
would be linking up with Germany, transpiring they
were alone fighting two massive powers with another
pinning their forces down and eventually fightin
all three. Not what they wanted.
Japan would not attack the British empire, Dutch empire and the US unless Germany declared war on the USA. If Germany said no to declaring war on the USA, Japan would never have attacked and there would be no Pacific war. The two theatres were linked.
Japan did not want to face alone the USA and the British empire. the worst case scenario. And that is what happened. The Germans attempted to get the Japanese to attack the British in the Far East to divert the British away from Europe. The UK was amassing a large air fleet and also had the world's largest navy. They would not sit by for long only fighting in the desert. The reason Germany attacked the USSR was to get their resources to fight the coming air war with the British. The Japanese repeatedly refused to declare war. Only when the Japanese thought the USSR was about to fall they joined in. The USSR kept 40 divisions opposite the Japanese Kwantung army all though WW2. With superior armour to the Japanese.
Japan received assurances from Germany in the Spring of 1941. that they would declare war on the USA. Japan, economically could not sustain war of any length of time against any major power by itself, either the UK or the USA. Especially a war strung over a vast front. They imported most raw materials with their industry primarily artisan based, with little mass production. If going it alone, what the hell attacking the USA and British Empire was to achieve with no back up occupation force at Pearl Harbor defies belief. The Pearl Harbor attack was to fend off the US navy while they gain as much resource rich territory as possible in the south while the USSR threat is moved away from their north in China by the Germans. To Japan the key was the defeat of the USSR, which by Oct/Nov 1941 they thought was a foregone conclusion.
All through WW2 the Soviets had approx 40 divisions (most armoured) in Siberia and the Soviet Far East facing the Japanese. Without Germany fighting the USSR anticipating a quick German win, the Japanese would never had attacked the USA and the British Empire. It was madness to do so unilaterally and would entail certain defeat - even the Japanese knew that.
The Japanese were to eliminate the US Pacific fleet. The US Atlantic fleet would be occupied by the German U-Boats. The carriers got away at Pearl Harbor. If the carriers were sunk, they would not have been on the defensive by June 1942, giving them far more breathing space and lots more with the anticipated defeat of the USSR within months by the Germans. If the US carriers were sunk along with the US Pacific fleet, and the USSR defeated by summer 1942 by the Germans, Japan would be in very strong position.
The Japanese gained far more territory than they gambled on. They were one day away in Singapore from surrendering, but the British beat them to the white flag. They were expecting more protracted battles in Malaya/Burma and even maybe in the Philippines.
Using some common sense tells you the Japanese were not banking on being alone fighting the world's two largest economic powers. They were expecting at least the USSR to be neutralised or eliminated. And then some military aid from the Germans would be nice if it came. The link was enacted with 41 U-Boats operating from Penang. The Germans then would engage the British diverting them away from fighting the Japanese in Burma. Getting rid of the British and the Soviets was a major prize for Japan, and Germany could do the latter and both they thought the former. So was the notion.
Wages of Destruction by Prof Adam Tooze in quotes:
• The tripartite pact was signed in Sept 1940. If one is
attacked the others come to their aid.
• "The real nightmare of German strategy was the
possibility that Japan might come to terms with the
United States, leaving Germany to fight Britain and
maybe America alone. To forestall this possibility,
Hitler had offered to declare war on the United
States in conjunction with Japan already in the
Spring of 1941."
• Germany had offered to declare war on the US
before the June 1941 attack on the USSR.
• "But the Japanese had refused to commit
themselves and instead entered into a last
round of negotiations with the USA."
• "It was not until October and the fall of the Konoe
government that Berlin could feel sure that the
Japanese-USA talks were going nowhere."
• "When in November 1941 Tokyo began to signal that
Japan was about to commit itself against the West,
it was the cause of relief, bordering on euphoria in
Berlin. Finally Hitler and Ribbentrop had the chance
to complete the global strategic alliance they had
been hoping for since 1938. And they did not
hesitate."
• The Germans immediately started to revise the
Tripartite pact, knowing of the Japanese
commitment to war, at the German's insistence.
• "Without prior knowledge of the Japanese timetable for a surprise attack
on Pearl Harbor, Hitler pledged himself to following Japan in a declaration
of war on the United States."
• 7 Dec 1941, Japanese attack the USA at Pearl Harbor
and British territories in Malaya and Hong Kong.
• The amended Tripartite pact was signed by all,
between the 7 Dec 1941, the attacks on the USA
and British Empire, and Germany declaring war
on the USA on 11 Dec 1941.
• 11 Dec 1941 Germany declares war on the USA.
Wages of Destruction is clear that the Germans were informed by the Japanese in November 1941 that they were to declare war. The attacks on the US and British Empire was no surprise to Hitler.
Wages of Destruction also states that Germany was repeatedly attempting to get Japan to declare war on the British empire. The Japanese knew exactly what the Germans wanted and what they would do. It all fits.
As it turned out:
♦ The USSR was not defeated and maintained a large army opposite the
Japanese - the Japanese had already been mauled by the Soviets in
Manchuria in 1939.
♦ Japan was facing the worst case scenario, the scenario it feared - fighting
alone against the British empire and USA, the world's two largest economic
superpowers.
♦ This was not in the forecasting. The German army defeated militarily superior
France within weeks and since June 1941 were mauling the USSR so badly it
was obvious to the Japanese in late 1941 the USSR would be defeated.
♦ The week in which the Japanese attacked the USA and British Empire, the
Soviets counter attacked at Moscow with a battering ram of superior T-34
tanks pushing the Germans back taking 30,000 prisoners, so ending any
chance of Germany defeating the USSR in one swoop. A protracted war
against the USSR would ensue.
♦ In Spring 1941, the Germans feared fighting the USA & the British alone - a
worst case scenario for them. They were desperately worse off, fighting the
British, USA and the USSR alone.
♦ If the Soviet counter attack had been one month earlier the Japanese would
not have attacked the British and the USA - and most probably signed a pact
with the USA which was in ongoing talks virtually to the attack on the British,
Dutch and Americans.
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@seth1422
Market Garden failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. The failure point was not seizing the Nijmegen bridge immediately. At the end of D-Day all crossings were denied to the Germans, except one - the Nijmegen bridge.
General Gavin of the US 82nd was tasked to seize the Nijmegen bridge as soon as landing. Gavin never, he failed with only a few German guards on the bridge. He failed because his 82nd did not seize the Nijmegen bridge immediately. Gavin even de-prioritised the bridge the prime target and focus. The 82nd were ready at 2 pm on the jump day and never moved to the bridge. The gigantic bridge was guarded by only 19 guards. The Germans occupied the bridge at 1900 hrs. Six hours after the 82nd were ready to march.
Events on the 1st day:
♦ "At 1328, the 665 men of US 82nd 1st Battalion began
to fall from the sky."
- Poulussen, R. Lost at Nijmegen.
♦ "Forty minutes after the drop, around 1410, the
1st Battalion marched off towards their objective,
De Ploeg, three miles away." Poulussen,
♦ "The 82nd were digging in and performing recon
in the area looking for 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald
- Neillands, R. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
♦ The 82nd were dug in and preparing to defend their
newly constructed regimental command post, which
they established at 1825. Then Colonel Lindquist
"was told by General Gavin, around 1900, to move
into Nijmegen."
-Poulussen
Events on the evening of the 1st day:
♦ Having dug in at De Ploeg, Warren's battalion wasn't prepared
to move towards Nijmegen at all.
-Poulussen,
♦ Once Lindquist told Lieutenant Colonel Warren that his
Battalion was to move, Warren decided to visit the HQ
of the Nijmegen Underground first - to see what info the
underground had on the Germans at the Nijmegen bridge.
- Poulussen,
♦ It was not until 1830hrs that he [Warren] was able to send
a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small,
just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a
radio — say forty men.
- Neillands. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
♦ This was not a direct route to the bridge from Warren's
original position, and placed him in the middle of the town.
It was also around 2100 when "A" Company left to attempt
to capture the Nijmegen road bridge.
♦ "B" Company was not with them because they'd split up
due to it being dark with "visibility was less than ten yards".
- Poulussen,
♦ The 82nd attacks were resisted by the Germans until the
next day.
Events of the 2nd day:
♦ Gavin drove up in a jeep the next morning and
was told by Warren that although they didn't have the bridge
yet, another attack was about to go in.
♦ Gavin then told Warren to hold because the Germans were
attacking in the southeast portion of the 82nd perimeter.
♦ At around 1100, Warren was ordered to withdraw from
Nijmegen completely.
- Poulussen
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The Colonel
You are stating the obvious that Percival was a buffoon. It is laughable that anyone quotes anything by Gordon Bennett.
Once the level of thinly spread Japanese forces was known, it was clear they could not invade Australia. The US was guaranteeing Australian protection.
Taking seasoned troops, familiar with the desert, out of that theatre was foolish. The prime enemy was Germany. The level of Japanese industry, and their economy, dictated that were second in line being dealt with firmly when Germany was defeated. Which happened.
Look up the German Mesopotamia plan, to link up with the Japanese after taking the Middle East and its oil. Germany, and Japan, were desperately short of oil. The pair of them linking up, well supplied, had to be stopped. And that meant stopping Germany. That is why London preferred to send tanks to the USSR rather than the Far East.
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@chainz8573
XXX Corps never had red berets. The state of play on the 17th, D day, was:
1) the road from Eindhoven to Arnhem was largely clear;
2) there were concentrated German forces on the Dutch/Belgian border facing the British on the front line - naturally;
3) there were around 600 non-combat troops in Nijmegen;
4) a few scattered about along the road;
5) there was no armour in Arnhem.
That was it.
i) XXX Corps would deal from the Belgium border to Eindhoven;
ii) 101st from Eindhoven to Grave;
iii) 82nd from Grave to north of Nijmegen;
iv) British and Polish paras from north of Nijmegen to north of the Rhine;
XXX Corps moved off on H hour on d-day meeting stiffer resistance than they expected. The US official history states they made remarkable progress. The US 101st took 3-4 hours to move about 2 km to the Zon bridge with little opposition. The Germans blew the bridge. If they had done a coup de main or moved faster to the bridge, the 101st would have secured it.
XXX Corps heard that the bridge ahead was blown so slowed up, getting the Bailey bridge ready. Urgency had gone out of the advance until a bridge was erected. XXX Corps were delayed 10-12 hours at Zon while they themselves ran over a Bailey bridge. In this gift of a time window the Germans were running armour into Arnhem, and towards the road, which would make matters worse.
XXX Corps moved out of Zon on D-day plus 2 first light. It took them 2hrs 45 mins to travel 26 miles on that road. It was clear except for some Germans on the road in the gap between the southern 82nd perimeter and the northern 101st's perimeter. The two airborne units were to lay a continuous carpet for XXX Corps to power up. They never met up.
The road was still largely clear from Zon to Arnhem 40 hours after the first jump. XXX Corps reached Nijmegen about 0820hrs on d-day plus 2, making up the delay at Zon. They reached Nijmegen seeing the Germans still on the bridge when arriving. A bridge the 82nd were supposed to have secured for them to speed over. If the 101st and 82nd had seized their bridges immediately, XXX Corps would have been at the Arnhem bridge on d-day plus one in the evening. Game, set, and match.
On arriving at Nijmegen XXX Corps took control, then immediately worked to seize the bridge themselves, after the 82nd tried again and failed again. This delayed them another 36 hours. This was now a total delay of nearly two days. In this massive and unexpected gift of a time window, the Germans ran armour into Arnhem from Germany overpowering the British paras at Arnhem.
XXX Corps could only reach the southern end of Arnhem bridge on the Rhine, only yards away from their objective. A bridgehead was precluded because two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges - easy to seize bridges at that, if they had bothered to move with any speed.
According to the official AMERICAN Army historian, Forrest Pogue, he stated that the failure of US 82nd Airborne to assault the lightly defended Nijmegen bridge immediately upon jumping 'sounded the death knell' for the men at Arnhem.
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The Mustang was basically a British plane they had made in an American factory as UK factories were working 24/7. The British Air Ministry directed a six year old inexperienced company, North American Aviation, to the design points they wanted for their plane. British engineers assisted North American engineers who formulated the design in the British office in New York City over three months. Its prime aim was range so large fuel tank were designed as a part of the plane's structure. The Mustang was a British plane made by an American company for them. There was no US forces involvement in the concept, specifications or design. Many Americans lose sight of these fundamental points.
The Rolls Royce Merlin engine made the Mustang perform superbly. The plane initially used an Allison engine, which was only good at low level. The US were behind the British in engine supercharging with the Tizard Mission giving the USA details of advanced super charging. Also the cylinder head design of the Alison was not good enough for full supercharging. Stanley Hooker of RR developed the auto controlled twin-speed twin-charger supercharging technology which was given free to the USA. The first use of the Mustang by the US military was for ground attack because of the poor high level performance of the Allison engine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by4lH2whhjk
In the early stages of WW2, the U.S. government allowed the British & French to by-pass them, allowing direct approaches to U.S. aircraft makers, as would the British government approach say Hawker. The British needed all types of planes urgently, even the P-40 which was inferior to their own front line planes. But warplanes they were, being useful in certain theatres and for training.
In early February 1940 the British asked North American Aviation's President Dutch Kindelberger to supply P-40s made under licence from Curtiss, as Curtiss could not supply demand. Unlike Curtiss, North American's factory was far from operating at full capacity. Kindelberger told the British, without any detailed design drawing, "I can build you a better airplane, and I can get it built fast". Contrary to popular belief in the USA, North American did not have a prototype ready design which the Brits just happened to have snapped up under the noses of the US military. The design was developed over three months with British engineers at the British Air Ministry's offices in New York City.
North American were first approached in Jan 1940, who had no "detailed drawings or plans". The British gave this young inexperienced company, who had never designed and built a complete combat plane a chance, but they would have to hold their hands. In Feb 1940 North American still never presented any detailed plans, mailing a design concept drawings to the British delegation in New York. This never had the famed laminar flow wings. The Air Ministry accepted the concept starting the Mustang project. The British Air Ministry accepted the inferior Allison engine as Rolls Royce were working flat out 24/7 unable to meet demand for Merlins. New Merlin shadow factories were being set up, and one in the USA, but not yet fully on-line.
In the interim from Feb to May, three months, the British Air Ministry were forming the fundamentals of the design concepts directing North American to Curtiss and NACA the developer of the laminar flow wings, to ensure a fighter with some leading edge design points, not produce another P-40 fly-alike wasting valuable time. The Air Ministry directed NAA to the Curtiss XP-46 experimental plane with all the leading edge design points of top European designs, with a few of their own, rolled into one.
NAA were ordered by the British Air Ministry to buy the plans and test results of the XP-46 plane from Curtiss and study them as they had never built a fighter, if they wanted the job, at a whopping $56,000, a lot of money at the time. Curtiss engineers always said the Mustang was their design. Not quite as the British Air Ministry had a lot to say in the leading design points - they were paying and calling the shots as it was their plane. There was a danger the Mustang may end up the same way as the XP-46 - a plane with leading edge points that never performed as expected. The plane needed to have long range built into the design. The British Air Ministry took a major gamble with NAA so were active in approving the emerging design points.
The Ministry wanted something better than the poor P-40, being prepared to wait, but realistically never expected Spitfire performance. Initially that was the case with the first deliveries using the Allison engine - better than a P-40 but no Spitfire. The initial Allison engined Mustangs filled an RAF niche, so no problems for the British at that point. A niche the plane filled was that the RAF needed a long range reconnaissance plane that could also perform ground attack being able as a low level fighter if the need was there. The Spitfire was a short range fast interceptor. With the fall of France the RAF needed a plane with range to penetrate over the German border from English air bases, they would now have one.
Reading many US books on the Mustang you would think the concept of the plane was to escort US bombers. That is way off from the truth. The last thing the British Air Ministry were thinking of when laying down the points of the plane was US bomber doctrine. The US were not even in the war. Initially the US military overall didn't want to know the plane. The British gave a handful to the Soviets before the USA was in the war who turned their noses up at it. The Mustang was not even in U.S. service when it was shooting down FW-190s by the RAF over France. The Air Ministry gave the U.S. military two planes which were left in the corner of a hangar for a long period, initially not assessed it. Quite amazing, as the USA never had a decent front line fighter at the time.
The excuse not to take up the plane by U.S. forces was that it was liquid cooled and vulnerable in frontal attack. This was a poor excuse to reject the plane because it wasn't theirs. What went over their heads was that the world's two best fighters locked horns in the Battle of Britain, both with liquid cooled engines. With British support, the Mustang finally was noticed by the U.S. Army Air Force. The US military had to go to England to fully assess the plane as it was finished off in Liverpool being flow by the RAF. They did eventually adopt the plane calling it the Apache and P-51 when in U.S. service.
UK and U.S. Mustangs for the European war theatre were finished off in Liverpool. They were test flown then delivered to the units by young English girls, many of them teenagers. The Mustang was built to British specification and design guidance without a doubt. They specified and paid for it. It never performed at all like the short range interceptor the Spitfire, not having the maneuverability of the Spitfire and was about useless above 15,000 feet. It was 'fine' and reasonably fast at low altitude with the Allison engine. It could operate over France and even Germany at a push, escorting bombers because of the longer range that the British Air Ministry specified. The Mustang filled an initial niche role for the British. continued......
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...Continued...
Rolls Royce. Rolls engineers under Ron Harker went to North American to advise on how to install a Merlin engine in the Mustang. They also gave advice from their work with the RR Mustang X. Rolls-Royce made the first proposal to North American regarding a Merlin 45 engine Mustang in 1940, after Stanley Hooker improved the power by 30%. This was before the plane was operational an still in the R&D stage. The RR Merlin was superior to the Alison engine, also to what it was in February 1940 when North American were first approached by the Air Ministry. The later Merlin 61 had the two-stage auto controlled supercharging developed by again by Stanley Hooker. This gave an extra 70 mph and 15,000 feet of operation to the Merlin. A quantum leap. The pilot just went where he liked without degradation in performance.
RR sent three engineers led by James Ellor to supervise the adaption and manufacture of a Merlin 61, built under licence in Detroit, the same type that was already being considered for the Rolls Royce Mustang X experimental series.
On 9 June 1942, the first memos from W/C I.R. Campell-Orde of the RAF Air Fighting Development Unit at Duxford, revealed that an effort was being made to convince North American to adopt a Merlin-powered Mustang. Work in the US was setback due to an initial lack of interest and also to mechanical failures of the first Merlin engines built under licence in the USA. Both projects commenced at nearly the same time with the first Mustang X in the air about a month earlier than the North American XP-51B.
The RR Mustang-X programme was 5 or 6 airframes each with different experimentation. RR attempted to have North American accept British Merlin 61s (the two-stage superchargers) in American airframes, it is clear that the prime contractor (NAA) wanted to control the project as control was looking like it was to move over to the UK. NAA was essentially building production-standard aircraft rather than the experimental series that saw each of the RR Mustang Xs trying out new variations of design. An offshoot was the mid-engine RR Griffon engined Mustang that actually made it to the mock-up stage, albeit with a Merlin installed amidships. On the success of the RR Mustang-X built in Nottingham, the Air Ministry ordered hundreds from RR, who declined wanting to remain specialising in engines. NAA remained the prime contractor.
Rolls Royce mass produced Merlins in Crewe, Manchester and Glasgow, also licensing Packard in the USA, using idle US industry. The US made Merlins were to supply the Canadian aircraft factories - to avoid a two-way trans-Atlantic trip and give extra manufacturing when the engine proved very popular with many airframe makers. An agreement was reached in September 1940, with the first Packard built Merlin engine running in August 1941.
Early in 1944 the P-38, P-51B Mustang and P-47C, were dived by the British for compressibility testing at the RAE Farnborough, England at the request of the USAAF. They had trouble when these planes dived onto attacking German fighters when providing top cover for the bombers. The results were that the Mach numbers, the maneuvering limits, were Mach 0.68 for the P-38, Mach 0.71 for the P-47, and Mach 0.78 for the Mustang. The corresponding figures for the FW-190 and Me109 was Mach 0.75. The tests resulted in the Mustang being chosen for all escort duties. - Page 70, Wings On My Sleeve by Eric Brown, who did the test.
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@michaeldorsey2858
Rambo posts total inacurate drivel.
The 82nd crossed the Waal in boats, with 20% in the boats British Sappers. The river crossing was to the west of the rail bridge. The road bridge was to the east of the rail bridge, which was between the 82nd men and road vital road bridge. The 82nd men overcome the German river defenders in front of them taking no prisoners.
The 82nd men landed on the north of the river, west of the railway embankment. They then moved north, following the side of the embankment giving themselves cover. Where the railway embankment crosses the road bridge access road, via a small bridge 1 km to the north of the two bridges, was the point the 82nd men met the tanks that took the road bridge with the Grenadier Guards.
Two or three lost 82nd men were around the bridge approaches, not the road bridge making no impact whatsoever on the seizing of the road bridge. They would not be on the approach road as they would have been mowed down.
The 82nd men did not clear the north bank approaches to the Nijmegen road bridge. If they had, two of the five tanks that crossed would not have been hit. The leading tank knocked out, when on the move, an 88mm gun and a self propelled gun, and infantry with its BESA machine gun.
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@michaeldorsey2858
At nightfall on D plus 3, the British had at Nijmegen only the Guards Armoured Division. Because inclement weather continued to deny arrival of the 82d Airborne Division's glider infantry, the Guards Armoured's Coldstream Guards Group still was needed as a reserve for the airborne division. This left but two armored groups to go across the Waal. Even these did not make it until the next day (D plus 4, 2I September), primarily because of die-hard German defenders who had to be ferreted from the superstructure and underpinnings of the bridge.
Once on the north bank, much of the British armor and infantry was used to help hold and improve the bridgehead that the two battalions of the 504th Parachute Infantry had forged.
At the village of Ressen, less than three miles north of Nijmegen, the Germans had erected an effective screen composed of an SS battalion reinforced with 11 tanks, another infantry battalion, 2 batteries of 88-mm. guns, 20 20-mm. anti aircraft guns, and survivors of earlier fighting at Nijmegen, all operating under General Bittrich's II SS Panzer Corps. Arnhem lay seven miles north of this screen. The British could not pass.
- US Official History
The British 1st Airborne capitulated when running out of ammunition at Arnhem, simultaneously to XXX Corps seizing Nijmegen bridge. This was relayed to the British high command who saw it was pointless taking risks to seize a bridge now in German hands. They secured and consolidated north of Nijmegen bridge, to face now German Tiger tanks that were run south over Arnhem bridge.
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@michaeldorsey2858
Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower approved, under resourcing the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak".
The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed. XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem. This was excellent progress by XXX Corps.
Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself. XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves also clearing the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, and seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge and mopped up after. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge.
The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden. The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time Monty had the Canadians clear it, or were investing in many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@michaeldorsey2858
The British 1st Airborne made it to Arnhem bridge, taking the north end of the bridge, denying its use to the Germans. The other two airborne units, both US, failed to seize their assigned bridges immediately. If they had XXX Corps would have been in Arnhem on d-day+1, before any armour came in from Germany. Game set and match. The Germans would not have known what had hit them.
The 12 hour delay caused by the 101st not seizing the Zon bridge, meant the Germans for 12 hours had a critical time window to pour in troops and get armour moving towards Arnhem. The longer the time delay the more Germans poured in, hence more resistance, hence a slower XXX Corps. Obvious.
On top of the 12 hour delay, the 82nd not seizing their bridge at Nijmegen (XXX Corps had to take it for them), caused an additional 36 hour delay. This meant another longer time window for the Germans to keep up the reinforcing. The extra 36 hour delay created by the 82nd, meant a bridgehead over the Rhine was precluded, as the two day time window in total given to the Germans was far too long.
The British paras did their part in securing a crossing over its assigned waterway, the Rhine. The two US para units failed in theirs. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
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@michaeldorsey2858
The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British under Montgomery. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa;
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein;
♦ March 1943 - Medenine;
♦ June 1944 - Normandy;
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands;
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge;
A list of Montgomery’s victories in WW2:
♦ Battle of Alam Halfa;
♦ Second Battle of El Alamein;
♦ Battle of El Agheila;
♦ Battle of Medenine;
♦ Battle of the Mareth Line;
♦ Battle of Wadi Akarit;
♦ Allied invasion of Sicily;
♦ Operation Overlord - the largest amphibious invasion in history;
♦ Market Garden - a 60 mile salient created into German territory;
♦ Battle of the Bulge - while taking control of two shambolic US armies;
♦ Operation Veritable;
♦ Operation Plunder.
Montgomery not once had a reverse.
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Monty's 8th Army advanced the fastest of any army in WW2. From El Alamein to El Agheila from the 4th to 23rd November 1942, 1,300 km in just 17 days. After fighting a major exhausting battle at El Alemein through half a million mines. This was an Incredible feat, unparalleled in WW2. With El Alamein costing just 13,500 casualties.
The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties, with the Lorraine campaign being a failure. Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties. Hodges, head of the US First army, fled from Spa to near Liege on the 18th, despite the Germans never getting anywhere near to Spa. Hodges did not even wait for the Germans to approach Spa. He had already fled long before the Germans were stopped. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British, with Montgomery involved in planning, with also Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
You need to give respect where it is due.
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@michaeldorsey2858
Patton was an average US general, no more, after WW2 most German generals had never heard of him. A US media creation, elevating the average beyond their status.
"The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian First Army HQ for the same purpose.
Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
In Normandy, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St.Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton who came in late in Normandy, faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role.
Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact. This eastern dash devoid of German forces was the ride the US media claimed Patton was some sort of master of fast moving armour.
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed in The Lorraine with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were re-fitting and rebuilt after the Normandy battles. The Panzer Brigades had green crews with little time to train, unfamiliar with their tanks, had no recon elements only meeting their unit commander on his arrival at the front. These were not elite forces. The 17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, equipped only with assault guns not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy being below strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine.
In The Lorraine, the Third Army faced a rabble full of eyes and ears units. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said: "I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Patton failed to reach the Westwall.
Patton was not advancing or being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. Bastogne was on the very southern German flank, their focus being west. The strategic significance of the stand at Bastogne, is over exaggerated. The 18,000 did not change the course of the battle. The German's bypassed Bastogne, placing a containment force around the town.
Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory, with the road from Luxembourg to Bastogne having few German forces. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was far from being one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, 26th Volks-Grenadier having about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind with a small number of operational tanks. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1. Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance pushing them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons stopped the American attack who pulled back. The next day, fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B again retreating. It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day. Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne. After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF, who gave Patton massive ground attack support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall.
The 18,000 men in Bastogne pretty well walked out, even the commander of the US 101st stated that. The Germans had vacated the area heading west.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the weakest German divisions in the west where.
♦ Who did the 3rd Army engage?
♦ Who did the 3rd Army defeat?
♦ Patton never once faced a full strength premier Waffen SS panzer division nor a Tiger battalion.
♦ Patton was not at E Alamein, D-Day or the main area of the Bulge.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates:
♦ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics Bradley's II Corps were employing;
♦ He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division, Truscott of being "afraid to fight";
♦ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps;
♦ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize stalled, he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being "very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect";
♦ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in reporting their losses;
Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated, had incestual relationships and wore cowboy guns. Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his and Eisenhower's orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read:
Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds and_Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies_ by Harry Yeide
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@michaeldorsey2858
What US historian Harry Yeide wrote of what the Germans thought of Patton:
♦ for most of the war the Germans barely took notice [of Patton].
♦ on March 23 at the Battle of El Guettar—the first American victory against the experienced Germans. Patton’s momentum, however, was short-lived: Axis troops held him to virtually no gain until April 7, when they withdrew under threat from British Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army.
♦ There is no indication in the surviving German military records—which include intelligence reports at the theater, army, and division levels—that Patton’s enemies had any idea who he was at the time. Likewise, the immediate postwar accounts of the German commanders in Tunisia, written for the U.S. Army’s History Division, ignore Patton. Those reports show that ground commanders considered II Corps’s attacks under Patton to have been hesitant, and to have missed great opportunities.
♦ In mid-June [1943], another detachment report described Patton as “an energetic and responsibility-loving command personality”—a passing comment on one of the numerous Allied commanders. Patton simply had not yet done anything particularly noteworthy in their eyes.
♦ But his race to Palermo through country they had already abandoned left the commanders unimpressed. Major General Eberhard Rodt, who led the 15th Panzergrenadier Division against Patton’s troops during the Allied push toward Messina, thought the American Seventh Army fought hesitantly and predictably. He wrote in an immediate postwar report on Sicily, “The enemy very often conducted his movements systematically, and only attacked after a heavy artillery preparation when he believed he had broken our resistance. This kept him regularly from exploiting the weakness of our situation and gave me the opportunity to consolidate dangerous situations.” Once again, Patton finished a campaign without impressing his opponents.
♦ General Hermann Balck, who took command of Army Group G in September, thus did not think highly of Patton—or any other opposing commanders—during this time. Balck wrote to his commander, Runstedt, on October 10, “I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans” Looking back on his battles against Patton throughout the autumn, in 1979 Balck recalled, “Within my zone, the Americans never once exploited a success. Often [General Friedrich Wilhelm von] Mellenthin, my chief of staff, and I would stand in front of the map and say, ‘Patton is helping us; he failed to exploit another success.’”
♦ The commander of the Fifth Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel, aimed a dismissive, indirect critique at Patton’s efforts at Bastogne, writing in his memoirs that the Americans did not “strike with full élan.” The commanders who fought against Patton in his last two mobile campaigns in the Saar-Palatinate and east of the Rhine already knew they could not win; their losses from this point forward were inevitable, regardless of the commanding Allied opponent.
♦ the Germans offered Patton faint praise during and immediately after the war.
♦ posterity deserves fact and not myth. The Germans did not track Patton’s movements as the key to Allied intentions. Hitler does not appear to have thought often of Patton, if at all. The Germans considered Patton a hesitant commanding general in the scrum of position warfare. They never raised his name in the context of worthy strategists.
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@MRich
Timeline
Events on the 1st day - D day:
▪ "At 1328, the 665 men of US 82nd 1st Battalion began to fall from the sky."
- R Poulussen, Lost at Nijmegen.
▪ "Forty minutes after the drop, around 1410, the 1st Battalion marched off towards their objective, De Ploeg, three miles away."
- R Poulussen.
"The 82nd were digging in and performing reconn in the area looking for 1,000 tanks in the Reichswald
- Neillands, R. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
▪ "Colonel Warren about 1830 sent into Nijmegen a patrol consisting of a rifle platoon and the battalion intelligence section. This patrol was to make an aggressive reconnaissance, investigate reports from Dutch civilians that only eighteen Germans guarded the big bridge"
- US Official history, page 163.
▪ It was not until 1830hrs that he [Warren] was able to send a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small, just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a radio — say forty men.
- Neillands. The Battle for the Rhine 1944.
▪ The 82nd were dug in and preparing to defend their newly constructed regimental command post, which they established at 1825. Having dug in at De Ploeg, Warren's battalion wasn't prepared to move towards Nijmegen at all.
- R Poulussen.
▪ Then Colonel Lindquist "was told by General Gavin, around 1900, to move into Nijmegen."
- R Poulussen.
▪ Warren sent a patrol of about 40 men to reconnoiter the bridge at 1830. Three strays from the patrol captured seven of the 18 guards and their 20mm cannon who were guarding the south end of the bridge, having to let them go as no reinforcements arrived. The 508th had actually captured the south end of the largely undefended bridge. The three scouts that reached the southern end of the Nijmegen bridge about an hour before the 9th SS arrived. Joe Atkins of the patrol said: "at the bridge, only a few German soldiers were standing around a small artillery weapon... The Germans were so surprised; the six or seven defenders of the bridge gave up without resisting. We held the prisoners at the entrance to the bridge for about an hour. It began to get dark and none of our other troops showed up. We decided to pull away from the bridge, knowing we could not hold off a German attack. The German prisoners asked to come with us, but we refused, having no way to guard them. As we were leaving, we could hear heavy equipment approaching the bridge."
- The 508th Connection by Zig Boroughs.
That was the 9th SS arriving at 1930.
▪ Unfortunately, the patrol's radio failed to function so that Colonel Warren was to get no word from the patrol until the next morning
- US Official History, page 163.
▪ Once Lindquist told Lieutenant Colonel Warren [at 1900] that his Battalion was to move, Warren decided to visit the HQ of the Nijmegen Underground first - to see what info the underground had on the Germans at the Nijmegen bridge.
- R Poulussen,
▪ "Although Company A reached the rendezvous point on time, Company B "got lost en route." After waiting until about 2000, Colonel Warren left a guide for Company B and moved through the darkness with Company A toward the edge of the city. Some seven hours after H-Hour, [2030] the first real move against the Nijmegen bridge began."
- US Official History, page 163.
▪ As the scouts neared a traffic circle surrounding a landscaped circular park near the center of Nijmegen, the Keizer Karel Plein, from which a mall-like park led northeast toward the Nijmegen bridge, a burst of automatic weapons fire came from the circle. The time was about two hours before midnight. [2200 hrs]
- US Official History, page 163.
D Day plus 1
▪ In the meantime Colonel Warren had tried to get a new attack moving toward the highway bridge; but this the Germans thwarted just before dawn with another sharp counterattack.
- US Official History, page 165.
▪ "While the counterattack was in progress, General Gavin arrived at the battalion command post." "General Gavin directed that the battalion "withdraw from close proximity to the bridge and reorganize"." This was to mark the end of this particular attempt to take the Nijmegen bridge"
- US Official History, page 165.
▪ "A new attack to gain the bridge grew out of an early morning conference between General Gavin and Colonel Lindquist." "At 0745 on 18 September, D plus 1, Company G under Capt. Frank J. Novak started toward the bridge."
▪ At around 1100, Warren was ordered to withdraw from Nijmegen completely.
- R Poulussen.
▪ At 1400 on 18 September Colonel Mendez ordered Company G to withdraw from Nijmegen_
- US Official History, page 166.
"the chance for an easy, speedy capture of the Nijmegen bridge had passed. This was all the more lamentable because in Nijmegen during the afternoon the Germans had had nothing more than the same kind of "mostly low quality" troops encountered at most other places on D Day."
- US Official History, page 164.
The 82nd completely withdrew from Nijmegen town, allowing the Germans to pour the 10th SS infantry, who went over on the ferry, south over the Nijmegen bridge to reinforce the town. This made matters worse when the 82nd and XXX Corps went into the town to clear them out.
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@johnlucas8479
XXX Corps got to Nijmegen bridge just ahead of schedule. The 82nd failed to seize the bridge, which is FACT with XXX Corps having to take it for them, which is FACT. If the bridge was taken with XXX Corps speeding over, as they should have if the 82nd had done their job properly, The 1st Airborne at Arnhem would have been relieved. But you have had this explained to you many times.
4,000 German troops were sitting in Nijmegen? Complete nonsense! About 700 old men of a training unit. They were no problem to the 82nd as the 82nd brushed them to one side, actually sitting on the southern approaches to the bridge overnight of the 17/18th, before Gavin pulled them out of Nijmegen completely, allowing the 10th SS infantry to pour south over the bridge into Nijmegen reinforcing the town.
TIK proved that the failure point was the US 82nd at Nijmegen. Look again. He went into it in great detail.
Days after the jump Gavin was still obsessed with 1,000 tanks in a forest. No one else thought a 1,000 tanks were there. Gavin's own recccie men on the 17th never saw any. 1,000 tanks are difficult to hide.
1) The prime planners were Brereton and Williams of the USAAF;
2) Eisenhower insisted the operation was to go ahead despite reservations by Montgomery;
3) Gavin of the US 82nd failed to seize the Nijmegen bridge, scuppering any chance of a bridgehead over the Rhine;
Those in 1), 2) and 3) above were all Americans.
But you know all this, having repeatedly been told. Do you like telling yourself lies and believing them?
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@dennisdempsey6011
Two American Airforce Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the reason why the plan was flawed. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that prevented the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak".
The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends. General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 20 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory as it was rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 8 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men in the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself. XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge.
If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, the Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A failure made possible by General Gavin. Even the US Official War record confirms this.
Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden:
https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm
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@dennisdempsey6011
Montgomery after fixing the operations objectives with Eisenhower to what forces were available, gave Market Garden planning to others. Montgomery left all the planning to his generals to plan and execute: Brereton, Williams, Browning, Urquhart, Gavin, Taylor, Horrocks, etc. The airborne element dictated the plan, Brereton, Williams. Monty gave them a free run at it using their own discretion not interfering. Montgomery had no involvement whatsoever in its execution. Montgomery was an army group commander, in charge of armies. The details were left to 'competent' subordinates.
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1. Gavin of the 82nd de-prioritised the Nijmegen bridge. Appalling decision.
2. The German troops in Nijmegen were low quality training men. Only 19 of these old men were guarding two bridges. The bridges had no barbed wire or defense ditches around them. Easy to assault. The 82nd would have walked on the whole bridge approaching via the riverbank. There were no Germans on the north bank. They only had 19 old men to fight off.
3. Once the paras dropped, Arnhem, not Nijmegen was the priority for the Germans. The SS men who moved across the bridge at Nijmegen were to reinforce the south of Arnhem bridge - the priority - to stop the Allies getting over the Rhine. Sound logic. That is why the few troops between the two bridges were concentrated on Arnhem. To the Germans there could be another imminent jump south of Arnhem. So Arnhem bridge, the Rhine, was the German priority. The SS infantry commander misunderstood his orders going to Nijmegen instead of Arnhem. He had no armour. If he had gone to Arnhem, the 82nd men would have walked onto the Nijmegen bridge despite being very late arriving.
4. If the 82nd men had occupied the bridge they would have formed a cordon on the north bank. This would have been enough to fend off any German infantry attack until the full compliment of airborne artillery arrived the next day.
5. The 82nd men were to approach the bridge via the country (riverbank), not the town. Due to the 82nds inaction, a few SS men came from the north occupying both bridges setting up shop in the small park on the south side. More were to come in dribs and drabs via the ferry. The few 82nd men who did eventually attack the bridge were driven off by these men.
6. The 82nd men held their position around the south side of the bridge throughout the night, ready to launch another attack at daybreak. The old German men in the town were no problem to the small group of 82nd men. Gavin arrived in the morning seeing the situation, then told Warren of the 508th to get out of Nijmegen completely. Another appalling decision.
7. The 82nd men leaving allowed the SS men that accumulated north of the bridge to move south over the two bridges, fully occupying the town, forming good defensive positions in the rubble (The USAAF bombed the town by mistake months earlier killing 600 civilians). During the day more SS men were arriving by the ferry to the east filling up the town, making matters worse.
8. XXX Corps arrived ahead of scheduled at Nijmegen. At this point there was no armour between the two bridges. If XXX Corps were able to move over the bridge they would have cruised up to Arnhem bridge virtually unopposed. German armour came over the ferry, then set up between the bridges as XXX Corps were preparing and seizing the bridge. XXX Corps seeing the shambles in Nijmegen had to take the bridge themselves having no faith in the US troops as they had completely failed. The 82nd men fell under the command of XXX Corps. XXX Corps also had to clear the SS men from the rubble using all men available. This delayed them 36 hours. The delay was so great it prevented forming a bridgehead over the Rhine.
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@johnho7422
◾Market Garden was planned badly by mainly Americans, Brereton and Williams.
◾US 82nd failed to seize vital the Waal bridge
◾US 101st failed to seize the vital Zon bridge
◾British 1st Airborne moved onto the Arnhem bridge denying its use to the Germans.
◾XXX Corps powered up the road from Belgium reaching the Waal bridge at Nijmegen on schedule.
The British hardly put a for wrong having to take the Waal bridge for the 82nd. Ever since the operation the Americans have tried to whitewash their incompetency. In the US Official history they noted documents were inexplicably MISSING on Market Garden. They obviously smelled something and mentioned it in the history. ......
"Although extensive combat interviews were conducted with personnel of the 508th Parachute Infantry, they are inexplicably missing from Department of the Army files. The story has been reconstructed from unit records; Gavin's letters to Westover and OCMH; letters to OCMH from Colonel Warren, 5 July 1955, Colonel Lindquist, 9 September 1955, Col. Thomas J. B. Shanley formerly Executive Officer, 508th Parachute Infantry, 2 Sep 55, and Rev. Bestebreurtje, 25 Oct 56; a postwar interview with Colonel Lindquist by Westover, 14 Sep 45, copy in 82d Airborne Division Combat Interview file; and Westover, The American Divisions in Operation MARKET, a preliminary narrative written in the European theater shortly after the war, copy in OCMH. Captain Westover had access to all the combat interviews when writing his narrative."
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@Jerry-sw8cz
The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British under Montgomery. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa;
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein;
♦ March 1943 - Medenine;
♦ June 1944 - Normandy;
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands;
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge;
A list of Montgomery’s victories in WW2:
♦ Battle of Alam Halfa;
♦ Second Battle of El Alamein;
♦ Battle of El Agheila;
♦ Battle of Medenine;
♦ Battle of the Mareth Line;
♦ Battle of Wadi Akarit;
♦ Allied invasion of Sicily;
♦ Operation Overlord - the largest amphibious invasion in history;
♦ Market Garden - a 60 mile salient created into German territory;
♦ Battle of the Bulge - while taking control of two shambolic US armies;
♦ Operation Veritable;
♦ Operation Plunder.
Montgomery not once had a reverse.
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Monty's 8th Army advanced the fastest of any army in WW2. From El Alamein to El Agheila from the 4th to 23rd November 1942, 1,300 km in just 17 days. After fighting a major exhausting battle at El Alemein through half a million mines. This was an Incredible feat, unparalleled in WW2. With El Alamein costing just 13,500 casualties.
The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties, with the Lorraine campaign being a failure.
Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties. Hodges, head of the US First army, fled from Spa to near Liege on the 18th, despite the Germans never getting anywhere near to Spa. Hodges did not even wait for the Germans to approach Spa. He had already fled long before the Germans were stopped. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British, with Montgomery involved in planning, with also Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces.
The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
You need to give respect where it is due.
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Mark uncovered that The Beatles were signed up to EMI before Martin ever met them. The first session at Abbey Rd with Pete Best was not an audition, it was an artists test. An artists test is when the artist is on contract. Artist's tests were also for established artists that have been on contract for a number of years - to re-assess them, as they may have improved with experience, or worsened. The Beatles, including Best, were paid the musicians union fee for the session, proof they were on contract. They were going to release a record whether Best was with them or not.
One theory why The Beatles were signed before Martin met them was that Epstein was threatening not to sell EMI records in his music stores. The top managers said give them a recording contract and if they fail we still have the record sales, so nothing lost. They appointed a lowly producer, George Martin.
Martin described The Beatles as rubbish. He mainly produced comedy records not really understanding popular and rock music. This rubbish band were writing their own material and were so bad they turned down a sure fire hit, How Do You Do, because they never wrote it. What new rubbish band turns down a sure fire hit? Martin's role in The Beatles is overstated, and the likes of Geoff Emerick's, the sound engineers, understated.
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@mussman717word
Martin heard the DECCA tapes, recorded at West Hampstead studio at the other end of Abbey Rd.
On their first session at Abbey Rd, Martin was not there, only arriving at the end, listening to the tape they just recorded, getting feedback from the EMI men in the studio. Martin still thought they were rubbish. He was loaded with this band by EMI. He had to record a single or two whether he wanted to or not. Then, when with them in the studio he realised they were a lot different, not having a lead singer front man, with all taking turns to sing lead and do harmonies. He couldn't make them out.
They wrote their own music insisting the recorded singles to be their own compositions, which was unheard of in a new band new to recording. Most would not say "boo" to a producer. Martin probably went along with it as he thought they would go nowhere. Andy White the sessions drummer called in to sit in for Pete Best and Ringo, noticed they were different in that they wrote their own songs. The Beatles were pushing it, not Martin. The Beatles were Martin's chance of getting out of novelty and comedy records.
Martin's only previous No.1 was a year before meeting The Beatles, with a novelty semi-comedy band, playing 1920s jazz types of music, the Temperance Seven:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz_2Lekc098
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USA Official History
THE SIEGFRIED LINE CAMPAIGN
by Charles B. MacDonald
CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY
UNITED STATES ARMY
WASHINGTON, D.G., 1993
Page 161:
Colonel Lindquist's 508th Parachute Infantry and of Colonel Ekman's 505th Parachute Infantry had assembled within an hour after the D-Day drop.
Page 162:
General Gavin's understanding, as recalled later, was that Warren's battalion was to move "without delay after landing." On the other hand, Colonel Lindquist's understanding, also as recalled later, was that no battalion was to go for the bridge until the regiment had secured its other objectives, that is to say, not until he had established defenses protecting his assigned portion of the high ground and the northern part of the division glider landing zone. Instead of moving immediately toward the Nijmegen bridge, Colonel Warren's battalion was to take an "assigned initial objective" in the vicinity of De Ploeg, a suburb of Nijmegen a mile and a quarter southeast of the city astride the Nijmegen-Groesbeek highway.
It is clear the 82nd did not a have clue what they were doing.
Page 163:
Colonel Warren about 1830 sent into Nijmegen a patrol consisting of a rifle platoon and the battalion intelligence section. This patrol was to make an aggressive reconnaissance, investigate reports from Dutch civilians that only eighteen Germans guarded the big bridge, and, if possible, capture the south end of the bridge.
Colonel Warren directed Companies A and B to rendezvous at a point just south of Nijmegen at I900
As the scouts neared a traffic circle surrounding a landscaped circular park near the center of Nijmegen, the Keizer Karel Plein, from which a mall-like park led northeast toward the Nijmegen bridge, a burst of automatic weapons fire came from the circle. The time was about two hours before midnight. (2200 hrs)
Page 164:
No one could have said so with any finality at the time, but the chance for an easy, speedy capture of the Nijmegen bridge had passed. This was all the more lamentable because in Nijmegen during the afternoon the Germans had had nothing more than the same kind of "mostly low quality" troops encountered at most other places on D Day.
The 82nd hung about for 6 hours allowing the SS troops to enter Nijmegen over the bridge, then reinforce the town and bridge.
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The choice of drop zones was the gift to the US Air Force commanders, not the airborne commanders — and the factor that governed the Air Force commanders’ choice of parachute drop zones ( DZs) or glider landing zones (LZs) was the presence, actual or feared, of anti-aircraft batteries around the bridges. Since the US Air Force commanders considered that these bridges would be surrounded by flak guns, they selected landing zones that were, in the main, well away from the bridges.
This decision had some dire effects. The obvious one is that it gave some airborne units — most notably 1st Airborne — a long way to go through enemy territory before they even got to their prime objective. If that were all it would have been bad enough, but there was more. It also deprived the airborne soldiers of that other airborne asset, surprise. Once on the ground, airborne units lack mobility: instead of swooping from the sky onto their objectives in a matter of minutes, the men of 1st Airborne had to march there from distant DZs, and this took hours. Long before they reached the bridges over the Neder Rijn the enemy were fully alert.
In addition, one of the other prime assets of an airborne division is that it can leap over obstacles that would hinder a ground force by landing on both sides of a river bridge at once, which the 82nd Airborne did at the Grave bridge, but not at the Nijmegen bridge. At Arnhem both these assets were lost by the Air Force commanders choice of DZs, but the choice of the Arnhem drop and landing zones was not made by Major-General Roy Urquhart, commander of the British 1st Airborne Division.
Nor was this the only error committed by the air planners. Another was their decision that ground-attack fighters were not to be sent over the battlefield while escort fighters were in the air protecting supply drops. This decision denied the airborne units the vital assistance that these ground-attack aircraft had been giving to the troops in Normandy just a month before, and a lack of air support exacerbated the problems of the airborne units. Among other tasks, these ground-attack aircraft could have taken on the flak positions around the bridges, those anti-aircraft guns the air planners were so wary of.
But the truly dire effect was, as Julian Thompson relates: ‘that the 1st Airborne Division was denied the use of a weapon the Germans, after their Normandy experience, dreaded. The enemy was able to bring reinforcements into Arnhem in broad daylight, with impunity, a move which would have been fraught with risk in Normandy a few weeks earlier.’
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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1985 US Army report on the Lorraine Campaign.
Patton does not come out well.
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a211668.pdf
Combat Studies Institute. The Lorraine Campaign: An Overview, September-December 1944. by Dr. Christopher R. Gabel February, 1985
From the document is in italics:
Soldiers and generals alike assumed that Lorraine would fall quickly, and unless the war ended first, Patton's tanks would take the war into Germany by summer's end. But Lorraine was not to be overrun in a lightning campaign. Instead, the battle for Lorraine would drag on for more than 3 months." "Despite its proximity to Germany, Lorraine was not the Allies' preferred invasion route in 1944. Except for its two principal cities, Metz and Nancy, the province contained few significant military objectives." "Moreover, once Third Army penetrated the province and entered Germany, there would still be no first-rate military objectives within its grasp.
The Saar industrial region, while significant, was of secondary importance when compared to the great Ruhr industrial complex farther north."
Another Patton chase into un-needed territory, full of vineyards like he did when running his troops into Brittany.
"With so little going for it, why did Patton bother with Lorraine at all? The reason was that Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, made up his mind to destroy as many German forces as possible west of the Rhine."
In other words a waste of time.
"Communications Zone organized the famous Red Ball Express, a non-stop conveyor belt of trucks connecting the Normandy depots with the field armies."
They were getting fuel via 6,000 trucks.
"The simple truth was that although fuel was plentiful in Normandy, there was no way to transport it in sufficient quantities to the leading elements. On 31 August , Third Army received no fuel at all."
In short, Patton overran his supply lines. What was important was to secure the Port of Antwerp's approaches, which Eisenhower deprioritised. Montgomery approached the US leaders of the First Airborne Army who would not drop into the Scheldt.
"Few of the Germans defending Lorraine could be considered First-rate troops. Third Army encountered whole battalions made up of deaf men, others of cooks, and others consisting entirety of soldiers with stomach ulcers."
Some army Patton was going to fight
"Was the Lorraine campaign an American victory? From September through November, Third Army claimed to have inflicted over 180,000 casualties on the enemy. But to capture the province of Lorraine, a problem which involved an advance of only 40 to 60 air miles, Third Army required over 3 months and suffered 50,000 casualties, approximately one-third of the total number of casualties it sustained in the entire European war."
The US Army does not think it was a victory. Huge losses for taking unimportant territory, against a poor German army.
"Ironically, Third Army never used Lorraine as a springboard for an advance into Germany after all. Patton turned most of the sector over to Seventh Army during the Ardennes crisis, and when the eastward advance resumed after the Battle of the Bulge, Third Army based its operations on Luxembourg, not Lorraine. The Lorraine campaign will always remain a controversial episode in American military history."
It's getting worse. One third of all European casualties in Lorraine and never used the territory to move into Germany.
"Finally the Lorraine Campaign demonstrated that Logistics often drive operations, no matter how forceful and aggressive the commanding general may be." "Patton violated tactical principles" "His discovered that violating logistical principles is an unforgiving and cumulative matter."
Not flattering at all. And Americans state Patton was the best general they had. Bradley stated later:
“Patton was developing as an unpopular guy. He steamed about with great convoys of cars and great squads of cameramen … To George, tactics was simply a process of bulling ahead. Never seemed to think out a campaign. Seldom made a careful estimate of the situation. I thought him a shallow commander … I disliked the way he worked, upset tactical plans, interfered in my orders. His stubbornness on amphibious operations, parade plans into Messina sickened me and soured me on Patton. We learned how not to behave from Patton’s Seventh Army.”
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In Wages of Destruction - The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy by Prof Adam Tooze, he does go into the German pre-Barbarossa economic objective.
Tooze page: 420
"In fact, in the short term the only way to sustain Germany's Western European Grossraum at anything like its pre-war level of economic activity was to secure a vast increase in fuel and raw material deliveries from the Soviet Union. Only the Ukraine produced the net agricultural surpluses necessary to support the densely packed animal populations of Western Europe. only in the Soviet Union were there the coal, iron and metal ores needed to sustain the military-industrial complex. Only in the Caucasus was there the oil necessary to make Europe independent of overseas supply."
Some were against invading the USSR....
Tooze Page 457:
"Halder noted in his diary: Barbarossa: purpose not clear, We do not hurt the English. Our economic base is not significantly improved."
Page 460:
"As late as the Spring of 1941, the Foreign Ministry was still opposing the coming war, preferring to continue the alliance with the Soviet Union against the British Empire."
Page 459:
"State Secretary Backe of the Agriculture Ministry...had long been an advocate of expansion towards the east."
"On 22 January 1941 Thomas had informed his boss, Keitel, that he was planning to submit a report urging caution with regard to the military-economic benefits of the invasion. Now he reversed direction. ... Thomas submitted a report to Hitler on 20 February that was completely unprecedented in its optimism."
page 459:
Tooze emphasises that Hitler misinterpreted Backe's comments about the Ukraine grain. A region that had little surplus and had a substantial population increase from WW1.
Backe of the Agriculture Ministry, who had long been an advocate of expansion towards the east. What precisely Backe said to Hitler in January 1941 was not clear even to insiders such as General Thomas. As one OKW memo put it: 'it is said that State Secretary Backe has informed the Fuhrer that possession of the Ukraine would relieve us of any economic worry. Actually what Backe is supposed to have said is that if any territory could help us, it was the Ukraine.
Hitler did interpreted the fact that the Ukraine was a food-producing region. The Germans had plans to further curb consumption in other areas - the Hunger Plan. Backe was only interested in food, being in the Ministry of Agriculture, but Hitler knew about other problems in the German economy like shortages of oil, coal, steel and non-ferrous ores.
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The British won the Battle of Dunkirk. No miracles involved. The British BEF was only 9% of the total allied forces in France and the Low Countries. The huge French army collapsed in front of the British small army, which manned mainly the coastal areas. Nevertheless the German advance was halted in France as the British with a vastly inferior force stopped them at Arras. Some German soldiers turned and ran. Directive 13, issued by German Supreme Headquarters on 24 May 1940 stated specifically for the annihilation of the French, English and Belgian forces in the Dunkirk pocket. The Luftwaffe was ordered to prevent the escape of the British forces across the English Channel.
The German southern advance was stopped at Arras by the British with a numerically inferior force. The Germans never moved much further after. The Germans could not have taken Dunkirk, they would have been badly beaten in and around the town. The Luftwaffe was defeated over Dunkirk by the RAF with the first showing of the Spitfire en-mass. More German than allied planes were destroyed in the Dunkirk pocket. The first defeat of the Nazis in WW2 was by the British in the air battle over Dunkirk. Only six small warships were sunk at Dunkirk by the Germans as the effectiveness of the Luftwaffe blunted.
The British were retreating after the French collapsed in front of them - a programme already in motion, a programme already in motion before the Germans showed up, as General Gort saw the disjointed performance of the French forces in front of him, and the exceptionally poor leadership. If the French collapsed the small BEF had no hope against the large over two million strong German force heading west. French forces were amongst the British when General Gort decided to take the men back to England, as he did not trust the French in a joint counter-attack. French General Wiegand held a meeting to arrange a counter-attack not inviting General Gort head of the BEF. Gort was under the command of Weigand. Gort heard of the meeting rushing to be there. He got there after the French and Belgians had left. He ordered the evacuation, having no faith in the elderly French leaders.
All armies retreat and regroup when the need is there. There happened to be a body of water in the line of the retreat. Were the BEF to move down the English coast and enter France further west with more men from England? The Germans did not know what was to be the next British or allied move. The Germans could not have taken Dunkirk trying for nearly a week failing in the process. The British retreat operation was carried out as planned and in orderly fashion. All bridges to Dunkirk were destroyed by the allies.
The British counter-attack at Arras was with outdated Matilda 1 tanks, which only had machine guns, and a few of the brand new Matilda 2 tanks. The Germans fled in droves. In desperation the Germans turned a 88mm AA gun horizontally successfully against the Matilda 2 - their conventional anti-tank weapons and tanks could not penetrate the tank. The 88mm had hard shell shells made for it, to use against the Maginot Line's bunkers. The Matilda 2 would roll over German gun emplacements killing the gunners, not even using the guns. Rommel thought he had been hit by a force three times the size, which made them stop and rethink. The Germans countered with their superior numbers pushing back the British who fell back consolidating towards Dunkirk.
The British resolve and the new Matilda 2 tank made the Germans sit up and think about a street fight in Dunkirk against a consolidated force still with its weapons and the new Matilda 2 - the large 88mm would be useless in Dunkirk streets while the Matilda 2 would be in its element, with the Matilda 2 easily destroying the Panzer MkIII & MkIVs. The Matilda 2 could knock out any German tank at the time, while no German tank could knock it out. The Germans were expecting the Matilda 2 to be shipped over in numbers and for all they knew many were in Dunkirk, and some were. The Germans could not stop the tanks coming as the RAF controlled the skies with a CAP and the RN the waters of the Channel. Not a good prospect for the Germans. A Dunkirk street fight was a fight the German troops were untrained and unequipped for and unwise to get involved in.
Von Rundstedt and von Kluge suggested to Hitler that German forces around the Dunkirk pocket cease their advance, consolidating preventing an Allied breakout from Dunkirk. Hitler agreed with the support of the Wehrmacht. German preoccupation rightly was with an expected attack from the fluid south of the German lines, by mainly French and some British forces, not from dug-in Dunkirk which was too much of a formidable consolidated opponent, taking substantial resources to seize. The German column had Allied troops to each side with soft marshland to the south west of Dunkirk unsuitable for tanks. If German forces had engaged in a street battle for Dunkirk, they would be vulnerable on their weak flank from the south. In short the fast moving panzers were now static; German forces attacking Dunkirk in a battle of attrition would have been largely wiped out.
The German columns were consolidating their remaining armour for an expected attack by the British and French from the south, and the important resupply from Germany, which was slow as it was via horses - or maybe a combined attack from the south and the Dunkirk pocket. The Germans attacked on a remarkably narrow front. They had over-stretched their supply lines. The Germans had no option but to stop, being more concerned at defending from the mainly French forces in the south which were viewed as a greater threat than Dunkirk. French general Weigand implemented his creation of hedgehogs to attack German lines from the sides, with success - hedgehogs were adopted post war by NATO being a part of the tactics until the 1970s.
What were the Germans thinking? Are the British retreating to England from Dunkirk to move down the English coast and re-enter France further south with fresh forces, including Canadians and the new Matilda 2 tanks, which they feared, and join up with the French forces there to hit the Germans from the south? Are the British going to reinforce the Dunkirk pocket supplied by the Royal Navy with a 24/7 air CAP? The British did reinforce Dunkirk by taking over from England the 30th Tank Regiment and 20th Guards Brigade on the 25th and 26th May, with the Germans fully aware of this. Canadians landed further south. The British could easily do any of these as they controlled the Channel.
Reinforcing Dunkirk would create one large difficult to combat force. The Germans also saw the resolve of outnumbered British forces at Arras. German generals were trying to figure out what was happening. None thought that British troops would retreat to England and stay there. The British never did that sort of thing.
The Germans could divert most of their forces south to engage the French forces, then risk a Dunkirk breakout. This would mean being attacked from their rear fighting on two fronts. Or stay and consolidate, which they needed to do anyhow, awaiting a French/British attack from the south and use some forces and the Luftwaffe to attack Dunkirk. Which what they did. German forces resumed their attack on Dunkirk, after only a 36 hour delay, for over 6 days failing to seize the port.
The plan to break out of the Dunkirk Pocket using British, Belgian and French forces was abandoned as Gort had no confidence in the French. All military school studies since, knowing what the German and allied positions and situations were in 1940, have shown it would have succeeded.
The Germans were defeated at the Battle of Dunkirk. They tried militarily to seize the port but failed. Only because the British did not trust the French and moved back to England did the Germans eventually occupy the town. The Germans did not let the British get away that is misguided myth, they tried for a week simply not able to seize Dunkirk.
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Two American Airforce Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the reason why the Market Garden plan was flawed. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that prevented the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak".
The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends. General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 20 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 8 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men in the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself. XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge.
If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, the Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A failure made possible by General Gavin. Even the US Official War record confirms this.
Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm
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@seth1422
Drivel. The British Army went through a big change in: equipment, training and doctrine after Dunkirk. Specialist units were formed like the Paratroopers, Commandos, SAS, SOE, etc. The finest army in the world after August/Sept 1942. They took all in their path through nine countries and not one reverse. Its top generals even commanded other armies as well.
Churchill's biggest mistake was allowing an American to be supreme commander in NW Europe - Churchill's suggestion. We went from buffoonery to buffoonery through North Africa and Europe with Americans in charge. Rome, Sicily, Lorraine, Hurtgen Forest, the Ardennes, etc - some horrendous setbacks. In NW Europe a ridiculous broad-front strategy was adopted. Then the naval and US Admiral King in allowing 600 US vessels be sunk on its eastern seaboard in six months by U-Boats. The British gave them 43 anti-sub vessels with the Royal Navy protecting the approaches to New York harbour. And the Royal Navy having to lend the carrier HMS Victorious for Pacific duty in the US fleet as they ran out of carriers - they code named it USS Robin.
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The British 1st Airborne made it to Arnhem bridge, taking the north end of the bridge, denying its use to the Germans.
The other two airborne units, both US, failed to seize their assigned bridges immediately. If they had XXX Corps would have been in Arnhem on d-day+1, before any armour came in from Germany. Game set and match.
The Germans would not have known what had hit them.
The 12 hour delay caused by the 101st not seizing the Zon bridge, meant the Germans for 12 hours had a critical time window to pour in troops and get armour moving towards Arnhem.
The 36 hour delay, on top of the 12 hour delay, caused by the 82nd not seizing their bridge at Nijmegen (XXX Corps had to take it for them), meant another longer time window for the Germans to keep up the reinforcing. The 36 hour delay created by the 82nd, meant a bridgehead over the Rhine was precluded, as the two day time window given to the Germans was far too long.
The British paras did their part in securing a crossing over its assigned waterway, the Rhine. The two US para units failed in theirs. XXX Corps never put a foot wrong.
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In 1941 the Ark Royal class was considered superior to Japanese designs. The Illustrious class from 1940, had an armoured flight deck and hurricane bows, being considered the leading carrier design at the time. Japanese carriers, as US carriers, had wooden flight decks. Japanese and US carriers were bigger as they operated in the vast Pacific. They used planes as the "attack". British carriers were a part of a fleet with the battleships being the 'attack', performing a recon role and occasional torpedo attack.
British carriers were smaller, only meant to operate at around 10-14 days sea, as they were always near a friendly port. British carriers were envisaged to operate closer to shore, meeting more potent land based aircraft, so were armoured. Hence why they were used close in to Okinawa, where kamikazes bounced off them. British carriers had a control room that coordinated carrier and land based planes - the US adopted this design.
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@Franky46Boy
Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust over other fronts and even seizing Antwerp and clearing the Schedlt. Clearing the Scheldt would take time as the German 15th SS army, highly experienced from the Russian front, had set up shop in the Scheldt and not retreated back into Germany, under Hitler's orders. All available supplies would be directed to this northern thrust.
"Since Eisenhower — the Supreme Commander and Ground Force Commander — approved the Arnhem operation rather than a push to clear the Scheldt, then surely he was right, as well as noble, to accept the responsibility and any resulting blame? The choice in early September was the Rhine or Antwerp: to continue the pursuit or secure the necessary facilities to solve the logistical problem? The decision was made to go for the Rhine, and that decision was Eisenhower’s."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"On 4 Sept, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr"
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944."
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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oldtanker2
Patton was an average US general promoted to superstar status by the US media - the US never had any exceptional generals. Montgomery said Patton would be good as a Corps commander.
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed there with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were re-fitting and rebuilt after the summer 1944 battles.
The Panzer Brigades had green crews with little time to train, did not know their tanks properly, had no recon elements and didn't even meet their unit commander until his arrival at the front. These were not elite forces.
17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, only equipped with assault guns, not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy and not up to strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the best German divisions in the west were NOT.
♦ Who did the 3rd Army engage?
♦ Who did 3rd Army defeat?
♦ Patton never once faced a full strength
Waffen SS panzer division nor a
Tiger battalion.
In The Lorraine, the 3rd Army faced a rabble. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took over in September 1944 said:
"I have never been in command of such irregularly
assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we
have been able to straighten out the situation again…
can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating
command of the Americans."
Patton was mostly facing a second rate rabble in The Lorraine. Patton was neither on the advance nor being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines.
The road from Luxembourg to Bastogne was pretty well devoid of German forces, with Bastogne being on the very southern German flank. Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great amount at all. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade wasn't one of the best German armoured units, while 26th Volks-Grenadier only had a dozen Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind only had a small number of tanks operational. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1.
Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were still engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Leading elements were engaging the Americans and British under Montgomery's command near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance and pushed them back.
In Normandy in 1944, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates.
♦ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics
Bradley's II Corps were employing
♦ He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division,
Truscott of being "afraid to fight".
♦ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the
US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps.
♦ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize
stalled he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being
"very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect".
♦ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in
reporting their losses.
After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF. Coningham, gave Patton massive ground attack plane support and he still stalled. Patton failed to concentrate his forces on a narrow front, committing two green divisions to battle and inadequate reconnaissance resulted in him stalling. Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault, including his subordinates. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated. Oh, and wore cowboy guns.
Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his orders, and Eisenhowers orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds
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oldtanker2
The US never had any exceptional top generals. Most were mediocre at best. Eisenhower was a political man in a field role, who knew little about strategy to Montgomery's annoyance. Look at their performance at the Battle of the Bulge when the US armies retreated. Monty had to take control of two US armies and parts of the USAAF put under RAF control.
The US media elevated an average US general to superstar status. Bradley stated of Patton:
“Patton was developing as an unpopular guy. He
steamed about with great convoys of cars and
great squads of cameramen
A self publicist as well. Look at that idiot, General Clark, at Rome. If he was German he would have been shot. Read what I wrote about Patton. Montgomery was in charge of many armies, Patton, the US wonderboy, was in charge of one army that hardly went anywhere fast - look at Lorraine. The US media put across during and after WW2, that Patton was some fast moving general - the reality was very different. Montgomery was two levels above Patton in Normandy rarely dealing with him.
Your knowledge of Falaise is little more than nil. Bradley stopped the forces so they would not collide with each other head on. Montgomery was in charge of all armies in Normandy, he got Demsey to draw in and hold the Germans around Caen destroying their armour allowing the US armies, given an infantry role by Montgomery, to break out. That was his plan and it worked. The US did not break out because they were wonder generals, Monty's plan allowed that. The Brits and Canadians held the Germans down allowing the US forces to break out.
Montgomery constantly complained about the amateurism of the green US generals. He was also with his men a lot knowing all about their supplies and morale, sending is No.2 to meaningless meetings with the Americans. he constantly told Eisenhower, and Churchill, to give him back the ground forces commander role and Eisenhower was incompetent. He told Eisenhower to give him the job near the end of the Battle of the Bulge, as the US performance showed they had to. Incompetent generals like Bradley were screaming blue murder. For Bradley's role in the Bulge Eisenhower gave him a medal, when he should have been fired for such incompetence. You couldn't make up.
Montgomery did not like the poor inter-forces cooperation in Sicily allowing the Germans to move over the Straights of Medina. He changed all that for Normandy.
"Montgomery was a hands-on commander who issued clear orders via his staff, orders based on his estimate of the situation, a commander who gripped his subordinates, kept in close touch with their actions — and expected his orders to be obeyed. Eisenhower — not least because of his wide-ranging responsibilities as Supreme Commander — had a more remote style, relying on consultation and discussion before the issuing of orders that often resembled a wish-list rather than a precise series of commands."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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oldtanker2
Is your name Finnigan?
"if England was to get in a major war they would either have to rely on nukes or havwe the US bail them out again."
Will you tell us where the US bailed the British out? I am lost where. I can give you examples of where the British bailed the Yanks out.
Only two countries can put down forces at a moments notice anywhere in the world, the British and US. The British are so professional they could take on Russian forces and initially wipe them out. The greater number of the Russian over time would then prevail.
"The problems arose — and the arguments have continued since 1945 — because the Americans believed, and still believe, that there were only two military command styles, that of the US army, which was the right one, a one-size-fits-all doctrine suitable for every occasion, and all other doctrines which were, quite simply, not just different but wrong. The American experience in a number of post-1945 wars, including Korea and the one that concluded with that unseemly scramble into helicopters from the roof of the US embassy in Saigon, have not greatly dented this perception."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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Larry Brown
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed there with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept to try and plug the gaps while the panzer divisions proper were being re-fitted and rebuilt after the summer 1944 battles.
The Panzer Brigades had green crews that never had enough time to train, did not know their tanks properly, did not have any recon elements and didn't even meet their unit commander until his arrival at the front. These were not means elite forces.
17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. The 17th SS was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, only equipped with assault guns, not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy and not up to strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the best German divisions in the west were NOT.
♦ Who did the 3rd Army engage?
♦ Who did 3rd Army defeat?
♦ Patton never once faced a full strength
Waffen SS panzer division nor a
Tiger battalion.
In The Lorraine, the 3rd Army faced a rabble. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took over in September 1944 said:
"I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Patton was facing a second rate rabble in The Lorraine for the most part. Patton was also neither on the advance nor being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines.
The road from Luxembourg to Bastogne pretty well devoid of German forces, as Bastogne was on the very southern German flank. Only when Patton got near to Bastogne did he engage some German armour but it was not a great amount at all. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade wasn't one of the best German armoured units, while 26th Volks-Grenadier only had a dozen Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind only had a small number of tanks operational. Its not as if Patton had to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne, he never. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1.
Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They where were still engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Leading elements were engaging the Americans and British under Montgomery's command near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance and pushed them back.
In Normandy in 1944, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates.
♦ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics
Bradley's II Corps were employing
♦ He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division,
Truscott of being "afraid to fight".
♦ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the
US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps.
♦ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize
stalled he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being
"very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect".
♦ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in
reporting their losses.
After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF. Coningham, gave Patton massive US ground attack plane support and he still stalled. It was Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance that were the reasons for his stall. Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault, including his subordinates. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated. Oh, and wore cowboy guns.
Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his orders, and Eisenhowers orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds
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Larry Brown
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed there with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were re-fitting and rebuilt after the summer 1944 battles.
The Panzer Brigades had green crews with little time to train, did not know their tanks properly, had no recon elements and didn't even meet their unit commander until his arrival at the front. These were not elite forces.
17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, only equipped with assault guns, not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy and not up to strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the best German divisions in the west were NOT.
♦ Who did the 3rd Army engage?
♦ Who did 3rd Army defeat?
♦ Patton never once faced a full strength
Waffen SS panzer division nor a
Tiger battalion.
In The Lorraine, the 3rd Army faced a rabble. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took over in September 1944 said:
"I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Patton was mostly facing a second rate rabble in The Lorraine. Patton was neither on the advance nor being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines.
The road from Luxembourg to Bastogne was pretty well devoid of German forces, with Bastogne being on the very southern German flank. Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great amount at all. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade wasn't one of the best German armoured units, while 26th Volks-Grenadier only had a dozen Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind only had a small number of tanks operational. Its not as if Patton had to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne, he never. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1.
Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were still engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Leading elements were engaging the Americans and British under Montgomery's command near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance and pushed them back.
In Normandy in 1944, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates.
♦ In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics
Bradley's II Corps were employing
♦ He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division,
Truscott of being "afraid to fight".
♦ In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the
US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps.
♦ When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize
stalled he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being
"very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect".
♦ He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in
reporting their losses.
After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF. Coningham, gave Patton massive ground attack plane support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall. Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault, including his subordinates. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated. Oh, and wore cowboy guns.
Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his orders, and Eisenhowers orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds
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Mocsk
The sources on the economies I gave are sound. A university, Keegan and Prof Adam Tooze. Tooze is correct. In 1939 Germany was inferior to all major nations, inc France (half the German tanks that attacked France only had machine guns). That is why people always referred to Hitler as a madman. The USSR wanted a pact with the UK and France. Mainly the UK said "no". So, to keep away Germany from Soviet land, as the USSR was not fully prepared for war at that time, after Stalin murdered all his officers, nice chap that he is, the USSR entered into one of the most unlikely pacts ever. The act suited the USSR, as they were not ready, and also Germany as they then could attack small nations without Soviet interference.
The pact gave Germany the freedom to attack almost any small country in Europe without USSR interference. Less than a year before the Royal Navy and the USSR were on a war footing during the Munch talks. Germany backed down as Chamberlain and the French diplomatically said you can have war if you want it.
Up until June 1941 Germany was not short of oil, as the Soviets supplied as much as they wanted - and even refined aviation fuel which was used against the British in the Battle of Britain.
The German-Soviet pact of 1939 accelerated the advance of German aggression. The pact gave the German war machine the oil and raw materials it needed while neutralising the USSR. The German attack on the USSR in June 1941 was brought on the Soviets. They only had themselves to blame.
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In The Lorraine, Patton faced a rabble. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said:
"I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Balck clocked Patton in Lorraine inflicting 50,000 casualties - Patton did not move much at all. Patton only moved when the Germans expended their forces at the Bulge. Contrary to what Victor Hanson says, Patton was well supplied, with supplies scarce only for around a week.
The Market Garden plan was drawn up by First Allies Airborne Army HQ, Gen. Brereton USAAF and the commander IX US Carrier Command, Gen. Williams USAAF being based on Montgomery's Operation Comet, but without the Coupe de Maine and attacks on both ends of the bridges at the same time, a highlight of Monty’s previous airborne operations. It also doubled the number of airborne troops allocated to the operation. Eisenhower was very much involved with supervising the planning stage. So much so he reduced the capture of Antwerp to a secondary objective, again something that US historians in particular, blamed on the British, especially Montgomery. Eisenhower was however on the horns of a dilemma in that the withdrawal of the USAAF transport aircraft from delivering fuel to Patton would put the ill-conceived broad front strategy at risk and obviously high casualties among the transport aircraft would put this already weak strategy in total jeopardy.
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The octane myth.......
"One particular example is the claim that the US supplied 100-octane fuel to British fighters in the Battle of Britain, giving them a crucial edge: this is a double myth in that the impact of the new fuel was not as great as implied and because Britain had huge stocks of 100-octane, and supplies from many sources, mainly British."
"In 1940 it was estimated Britain would need, in the future, 850,000 tons of 100-octane fuel per annum. British-controlled resources, from plants in Britain, the Caribbean, Persia and the Dutch East Indies, would produce up to 500,000 tons, leaving a deficit of 350,000 tons. The new plants, it was hoped, would avoid the need to buy from the USA. Work on the first hydrogenation plant, at Heysham in Lancashire, started in the spring of 1939."
- Britain's War Machine by David Edgerton
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@johnlucas8479
The British were fighting, at one time, a global war in the Middle East, the Far East, the Indian subcontinent, the Pacific, North Africa, West Africa, East Africa, the North Atlantic, the South Atlantic, the North Sea, the Barents and Arctic seas, the Mediterranean, the Adriatic and of course mainland Western Europe, Eastern Europe and Scandinavia too.
By early 1942 Britain was for the third year running, attempting to prop up a blitzkrieged ally - France, then Russia, then the United States. The incapacity of the U.S. Navy to provide any convoy protection on its east coast almost lost the allies the Battle of the Atlantic. Even after the British hastily deployed 60 escort vessels to cover the US coast with the RAF even posting planes to protect New York harbour, shipping losses climbed to a level that undermined the Atlantic link, keep the Russians in the war, keep the reinforcements flowing to the Middle East and Asia, and pander to a panicked Australian government.
For most of 1942 the British Commonwealth held the line, kept back the combined efforts of Germany & Italy and Japan, with fairly minimal input from the United States compared to her potential power, and kept the Atlantic and Indian oceans open and supplies flowing to the vital armies in the Middle East, Asia, and to the Soviets. No other empire in the history of the world had been capable of such a sustained multi-continent and multi-ocean operation.
Britain could have sent more resources to the east had she not been transporting the Americans, and supplying the Russians. Similarly Australia had plenty of resources, food and troops for supporting British Commonwealth operations, except they were deployed to feed, house and support American operations. Indeed according to the US Chiefs of Staff in 1943, America lacked the power to invade Japan without a British fleet, Australian troops, and a Russian Army intervening on the mainland in Asia. The US Chiefs of Staff had a brief hubris in late 1944 when they decided they could manage alone, but by mid 1945 they were busy requesting Britain get 50 aircraft carriers assembled to support 120 of theirs for the invasion of Japan.
The British were also about to retake Malaya. See Operation Zipper and Operation Malifist. There was a British fleet circling off the coast of Malaya even before the Japanese surrendered, but couldn’t invade because McArthur was still technically responsible for Malaya.
Throughout 1942 British Commonwealth troops were fighting, or seriously expecting to be attacked, in French North Africa, Libya, Egypt, Cyprus, Syria (torn between expecting airborne assault, and preparing to reinforce Turkey if that country was attacked), Iraq and Iran (German invasion from the north was attracting more British troop deployment until after Stalingrad than those facing Japan and Rommel combined), Madagascar (fighting the Vichy French to prevent them from inviting the Japanese in as they had done in Indochina), Ceylon (at the time of the Japanese naval raid that looked like it might prefigure and invasion), India, Burma, outposts of the East Indies, New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, and other Pacific Islands.
In 1942 the British Empire and Commonwealth was fighting a three continent, 4 ocean campaign, against three major powers and keeping the Soviets supplied and in the war, by providing thousands of tanks and aircraft that would have saved Singapore.
Nonetheless the total British losses of territory and people were - one third of the territory the Soviets lost, and one half of the people the Americans (Philippines) even though those nations were fighting only on one front and only against one of the three powers.
For the next two years the British Commonwealth and Empire had far more ground troops in action against the Japanese than the Americans. And again the British were supposed to maintain sea control over the North & South Atlantics, the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean - and provided aircraft carriers and cruisers to help in the Pacific - while the Americans primarily concentrated on just one of those powers.
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@johnlucas8479
The Japanese fleet had zero radar, they were short of fuel and beating it back out of the Indian Ocean chased by Somerville. Somerville's ploy was to detect the Japanese fleet, then keep it out of range during the day using ship radar. The IJN would not know the RN was about. Then at night close in guided by ship radar, with the radar guided torpedo planes homing in on major ships. All using stealth.
If Somerville had located the Japaneses fleet, the fleet that destroyed much of the US Pacific fleet would have been largely destroyed. The Battle of Midway would have been in the Indian Ocean.
The Japanese were fleeing. They were short of fuel having to get out of the Indian Ocean fast, or be in serious trouble. Even if the IJN had detected Somerville's chasing fleet, which they had not, they could not turn to fight as they had to be keep sailing east to safety because of the fuel situation. Somerville could always stay out of range.
The IJN Indian Ocean raid was a second Pearl Harbor to the west of Japan. Unlike Pearl Harbor this raid failed to achieve its aims. The British fleet was not destroyed with the Royal Navy still commanding the Indian ocean. The Japanese admirals in the fleet thought it was a waist of time, as they lost valuable planes and pilots, making little impact on the huge Royal Navy overall.
British convoys still used the Indian Ocean to supply North Africa, the Middle East, USSR and the Indian sub continent. From July 1942 the British Eastern Fleet was scaled back.
Once again.....
If Somerville made contact with the Japanese fleet, its radar equipped ships and torpedo planes would have sunk major ships during the night. The Japanese had no capability to hit back during the dark. During the day the British fleet would pull back out of range, with the Japanese not knowing where the British fleet was. Understand now?
Now you can go back to saying the US 82nd never failed to seize the Waal bridge, being a part of the plan to allow the Germans to reinforce the bridge. Did the British order them to stay at DePloeg to finish their coffee and donuts?
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@johnlucas8479
A prime problem for SHAEF in September 1944 was opening up the approaches to Antwerp - the logistics issue.
It was:
1) Take Noord Brabant, the land to the north and northeast of Antwerp, or;
2) Take the Schedlt.
Noord Branant had to be take first, as it was essential. It was with limited forces sent to start the taking of the Schedlt.
Market Garden had to go ahead regardless of any threat, actually being a success.
To use Antwerp and control the approaches, the Scheldt, you needed to control everything up to the south bank of the lower Rhine at Nijmegen. The low-lying lands and boggy ground between Arnhem and Nijmegen make a perfect geographical feature to stop behind and prepare a defence of Antwerp. Without control of Noord Brabant German forces would have been in artillery range of Antwerp.
Market Garden was the offensive launched to solve the Antwerp problem, in keeping the Germans away - it made sense as the Germans were is disarray falling back to Germany. Monty’s decision to push on to Arnhem may have been one last attempt at his single front argument, and making sense in establishing a bridgehead over the Rhine as an extra to the operation.
You only needed Arnhem if you wanted to springboard into Germany, but you needed everything up to Nijmegen if you wanted to do anything at all. Gaining Noord Brabant, was vital and accomplished.
Fighting in the low lying mud and waterways of the Schedlt, which will take time, while the Germans are still hold Noord Brabant made no sense.
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Dick Wansink
Monty did want a 30 division thrust. All armies pushing one way. It would be too big and powerful to stop.
"the evidence also suggests that certain necessary objectives on the road to Berlin, crossing the Rhine and perhaps even taking the Ruhr, were possible with the existing logistical set-up, provided the right strategy to do so was set in place. Montgomery’s popular and astute Chief of Staff, Freddie de Guingand, certainly thought so: 'If Eisenhower had not taken the steps he did to link up at an early date with Anvil and had held back Patton, and had he diverted the resources so released to the north, I think it possible we might have obtained a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter - but not more.' "
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944.
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Instead we ended up with under resourced Market Garden, which, as we know, only failed by a whisker because one airborne unit never focused on its prime task, the Nijmegen bridge.
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@nucl3arfamily906
You need to read up on the history of the Buick/Rover engine. In 1960 Buick made a superb short block lightweight engine for the time - even a cast iron version was made. Users did not put the right radiator inhibitor in the engines - it is aluminium - causing problems. So Buick decided to drop this economical and advanced for the time engine, as it was misunderstood in the USA. Also as fuel in the USA was too cheap - pennies - economy never mattered in the USA.
Rover was looking at producing a new engine in 1963, saw, and were baffled, that Buick was discontinuing the engine, which was exactly what they wanted fitting their engine family. They pretty well sealed the deal on the floor of a motor show, saving Rover a fortune, and time, on R&D.
Rover took the engine and then proceeded to change it to their requirements, even having the head engineer of the Buick engine project in England while this was going on, so he could be referred to as a consultant - he was bored stiff not doing much. As time went on, little of the Buick design was left. Even the casting was changed as well.
When BMW bought Rover, the Rover engineers were told to design cars to accommodate BMW engines and put BMW engines into the existing range. Rover engineers were not that impressed with BMW engines, knowing their own V-8 inside out. The Rover engineers knew how to fine tune the engine for various applications, with most BMW engines not having that flexibility. They would design car engine bays not to take BMW engines, to the annoyance of BMW in Munich.
The Rover V-8 is the finest V-8 ever made. It was also used by Range Rover, Land Rover, Rover cars, MG, Morgan, TVR, etc, in saloon cars, SUVs, sports cars, rugged 4x4 vehicles (the US Rangers have Land Rovers with the engine) - the lot. It was also made under licence in Australia by Leyland.
When it was discontinued, critics said it had another 10 years of life left in it, the design was still sound. Replacing the tooling was a reason why the engine was discontinued in 2006. It was made for 46 years.
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In The Lorraine, the Third Army faced a German rabble full of eyes and ears units. Patton move 10 iles in three months at Metz. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said: "I have never been in command of such irregularly assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans." Patton failed to reach the Westwall in the Lorraine.
Below is from:
The Lorraine Campaign, An Overview, September-December 1944,
by Dr. Christopher R. Gabel,
February, 1985,
U.S Army Command and General Staff College.
The document states:
Few of the Germans defending Lorraine could be considered First-rate troops. Third Army encountered whole battalions made up of deaf men, others of cooks, and others consisting entirety of soldiers with stomach ulcers. Soldiers and generals alike assumed that Lorraine would fall quickly, and unless the war ended first, Patton's tanks would take the war into Germany by summer's end. But Lorraine was not to be overrun in a lightning campaign. Instead, the battle for Lorraine would drag on for more than 3 months. He [Patton] discovered that violating logistical principles is an unforgiving and cumulative matter.
The US Army study highlighted Patton's tendency to overstretch his supply lines, then stall.
The American armored elements in Lorraine were not at their best either.
..
Patton's reluctance to mass his armor came as a pleasant surprise to the Germans, who believed that their panzer divisions were just as useful in creating breakthroughs as they were in exploiting them.
..
In addition, American tank crews repeatedly paid a heavy price for a doctrinal decisions made before the war that declared tanks to be offensive weapons not intended as defensive combat against other tanks. As a result of this official policy, the M-4 Sherman tanks in Lorraine were badly outgunned by German panzers that mounted superb anti-tank pieces. The tank-stopping task was officially assigned to the tank destroyers, which were supposed to be thinly armoured, highly mobile, heavily armed anti-tank destroyers.
..
Third Army didn't need an antitank reserve in Lorraine because German tanks usually appeared a few at a time.
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The Struggle for Europe by Chester Wilmot......
Fighter Command had been able to deal with such widespread and sustained attacks only because of radar, and yet on that very day in a special directive Göring declared: “It is doubtful whether there is any point in continuing the attacks on radar stations, since not one of those attacked has so far been put out of action.”
..
Germans had discovered the chain of stations on the English coast, but they had no idea how sensitive and accurate the British equipment was. Their own experiments, especially during the occupation of Czechoslovakia, had brought little success, and their scientists, fondly believing themselves to be the best in the world, scoffed at the suggestion that the British might have discovered some secret which had eluded them. Yet their own sets were primitive by comparison and their demonstrations made so little impression on Göring, the C.-in-C. of the Luftwaffe, that they could obtain no special resources for research from Göring, the Director of the Four-Year Plan.
..
Nor had German science produced any high-frequency radio-telephone suitable for use by fighters in action. The ground-to-air control system which the R.A.F. had brought to a high degree of efficiency by 1939, was not adopted by the Luftwaffe until two years later! In 1940 it was outclassed in scientific knowledge and equipment.
..
It was only after the Battle of Britain had begun that the Germans discovered the extent of their handicap. During July, says Galland, “we realised that R.A.F. fighter formations must be controlled from the ground by some new procedure, because we heard commands skilfully and accurately directing Spitfires and Hurricanes on to German formations. We had no radio fighter control at the time...and no way of knowing what the British were doing with their forces as each battle progressed.
The British had:
1) Radio fighter control.
2) Radar (A type the Germans never knew existed).
3) Chain Home. All information directed to a central control: radar, air & ground observations.
Every German deviation and manoeuvre could be plotted by radar or spotted by the Observer Corps, traced and then projected on the map tables of the control rooms, then passed by fighter radio control to the squadrons in the air. It was a battle of chance and force by the Germans and one of science and skill by the British.
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The 508th also had a vital task — ‘a special destiny’, says the US Official History. The 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Shields Warren, was charged with taking the road bridge over the Waal at Nijmegen: a prime task of Operation Market was being entrusted here to just one battalion from an entire division.
According to the US Official History, there was some dispute over exactly when the 1st Battalion should go for the bridge. General Gavin was to claim later that the battalion was to ‘go for the bridge without delay’. However, Colonel Lindquist, the 508th Regimental commander, understood that Warren’s battalion was not to go for the bridge until the other regimental objectives — securing the Groesbeek Ridge and the nearby glider LZs, had been achieved: General Gavin’s operational orders confirm Warren’s version. Warren’s initial objective was ground near De Ploeg, a suburb of Nijmegen, which he was to take and organise for defence: only then was he to ‘prepare to go into Nijmegen later’ and these initial tasks took Lieutenant Colonel Warren most of the day. It was not until 1830hrs that he was able to send a force into Nijmegen. This force was somewhat small, just one rifle platoon and an intelligence section with a radio — say forty men.
"Unfortunately, Company ‘B’ got lost on its way to the rendezvous so only Company ‘A’ moved on the bridge — the efforts of an entire airborne division were now reduced to just one company. It was now around 2000hrs on D-Day, H-Hour plus seven."
Company ‘A’ entered Nijmegen — a city of some 100,000 people in 1944 —and moved cautiously up the main road, the Groesbeekscheweg. After two hours they reached a traffic island near the centre of the town and immediately came under automatic fire from directly ahead. As they went to ground and deployed, a German convoy arrived in one of the side streets on their flank and they heard the clatter of boots and kit as enemy soldiers leapt from their trucks. Company ‘A’ was just a few minutes too late: the Germans were moving troops into Nijmegen from the north and the fight for the road bridge was on. The US Official History mourns this fact, pointing out that ‘the time for the easy, speedy capture of Nijmegen had passed’, which was all the more lamentable because during the afternoon, when the division had been engaged on other tasks, the Germans had ‘nothing in the town but mostly low quality troops’ — and not many of those.
- Neillands
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The First Airbourne seized one end of the Arnhem bridge denying its use to the Germans. The 9th SS and its vehicles were shot up on the Arnhem bridge. If XXX Corps had arrived, not being delayed by two US para units, the whole bridge would have been in British hands.
Gavin did prioritize the Nijmegen bridge. He sent a battalion, the 508, headed by Lindquist immediately on landing. They set off around 1400 hrs. Lindquist stopped at DePloeg setting up shop digging in for an attack from the bridge. Gavin found out around 1830 hrs, driving over hopping mad telling Lindquits to move to the bridge. The stop at DePloeg was too long to secure the bridge.
The 82nd never seized the Nijmegen bridge. Three 82nd scouts took prisoner seven of the 18 bridge guards on the south end of Nijmegen bridge, together with their 20mm cannon, but had to let them go after an hour as no one turned up.
The 9th SS came south to reinforce the bridge about 6 hours after the 82nd landed. The 82nd had 6 hours to move and occupy the bridge but hung around in DePloeg. They could have walked on the bridge whistling Dixie.
Browning was not there to hold Gavin's hand. Browning had full faith in Gavin as up until then he had an excellent record. Browning was in the air when the 82nd 508 should have been moving to the bridge. He was two hours after the first jump. Then Browning had to set up his CP when on the ground. He was to communicate with three airborne generals, not focus on the 82nd.
The 82nd around midnight on d day made their fist attack on the bridge, staying all night around the southern approaches. Browning was informed they had not seized the bridge in the morning of d day plus 1. He ordered Gavin to take the bridge ASAP. Gavin deprioritized the bridge, moving all his men out of Nijmegen town and the bridge approaches, after being near the southern approaches all night. Gavin said to Browning that XXX Corp can take the bridge when they arrive. They did. The resulting two day delay due to the 101st and 82nd failing to seize key bridges precluded a bridgehead over the Rhine.
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Reading Prof Adam Tooze in Wages of Destruction, Tooze gives the misgivings of the German generals of the invasion. All were negative.
Page 457:
"Halder noted in his diary: Barbarossa: purpose not clear, We do not hurt the English. Our economic base is not significantly improved."
At the top of page 459 Tooze emphasises that Hitler misinterpreted Backe's comments about the Ukraine grain. A region that had little surplus and had a substantial population increase from WW1.
Page 459: "On 22 January 1941 Thomas had informed his boss, Keitel, that he was planning to submit a report urging caution with regard to the military-economic benefits of the invasion. Now he reversed directions. As it became clear that Hitler was justifying Barbarossa first and foremost as a campaign of economic conquest, Thomas began systematically working towards the Fuehrer."
Thomas was head of the OKW economic planning staff. He modified his reports from negative to positive, presenting the Ukraine as an economic breadbasket. Thomas was an insider and it is assumed he had heard of the misinterpreted Backe's comments to Hitler.
Page 459: "The OKW now claimed that in the first thrust the Wehrmacht would be able to seize control of at least 70% of the Soviet Union's industrial potential."
Page 460: "As late as the Spring of 1941, the Foreign Ministry was still opposing the coming war, preferring to continue the alliance with the Soviet Union against the British Empire." "If the shock of the initial assault does not destroy Stalin's regime, it was evident in February 1941 that the Third Reich would find itself facing a strategic disaster."
Page 452: "the Germans had already conscripted virtually all their prime manpower. By contrast, the Red Army could call up millions of reservists."
Why did Germany invade the USSR in a rushed ill-conceived plan?
Page 431: "the strongest arguments for rushing to conquer the Soviet Union in 1941 were precisely the growing shortage of grain and the need to knock Britain out of the war before it could pose a serious air threat."
"Meanwhile, the rest of the German military-industrialised complex began to gird itself for the aerial confrontation with Britain and America."
Germany rushed to invade the Soviet Union, with an ill-equipped army with no reserves in anticipation of a massive air war with Britain and the USA, hoping they could win the Soviet war within weeks.
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Hitler had considered the Germans had failed in Summer of 1941, way before any snow came....
"Hitler succumbed to doubt even before his generals. As early as the end of July he began to consider the possibility that the Red Army might not be destroyed in 1941. On his instruction, Wehrmacht high command issued a strategic directive openly acknowledging this possibility. Indeed, Hitler's moment of strategic realism appears to have gone further than this. When Goebbels visited the Hauptquartier in Rastenburg on 18 August 1941, he was shocked to find his Fuehrer talking of a negotiated peace with Stalin. For Hitler, furthermore, the possibility of a stalemate in the East had immediate operational implications. Ever since the first staff studies of Barbarossa, Hitler and the Wehrmacht high command had assumed that, if the initial assault failed to destroy the Red Army, strategic economic considerations would take priority. If Germany was to face a long war on two fronts it was essential to secure full control of the grain and raw materials of the Ukraine, as well as complete command of the Baltic, without which Germany could not guarantee its deliveries of iron ore from Scandinavia."
- Wages of Destruction by Prof Adam Tooze.
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@tubaman500
A prime strategic problem for SHAEF in September 1944 was opening up the approaches to Antwerp and keeping it from German counter-attack - the logistics problem to supply all allied armies. It was:
1) Take Noord Brabant, the land to the north and northeast of Antwerp, or;
2) Take the Schedlt.
Eisenhower had a Northern Thrust strategy. Taking Noord Babant fell in line with the desires for both SHEAF and Eisenhower.
Noord Brabant had to be taken before the Scheldt, as it was essential. It was taken with limited forces, with forces also sent to take the Schedlt. Market Garden had to go ahead regardless of any threat or Northern Thrust strategy, actually being a success. To use Antwerp and control the approaches, the Scheldt, everything up to the south bank of the lower Rhine at Nijmegen needed to be under allied control. The low-lying lands, boggy ground between Arnhem and Nijmegen with land strewn with rivers and canals, is perfect geography as a barrier against a German counter-attack towards Antwerp. Without control of Noord Brabant German forces would have been in artillery range of Antwerp, and with a build up of forces and supply directly back to Germany in perfect position for a counter-attack.
Market Garden was the offensive SHEAF wanted to secure Antwerp, a prime port for logistics for all allied armies. It made sense as the Germans were in disarray, so should be easy enough to gain. Monty added Arnhem to form a bridgehead over the Rhine to fall in line with Eisenhower's priority Northern Thrust strategy at the time. It made complete sense in establishing a bridgehead over the Rhine as an extra to the operation. You needed Arnhem for an easier jump into Germany. Everything up to Nijmegen was needed if you wanted to do anything at all - that is, protect Antwerp and have a staging point to move into Germany. Gaining Noord Brabant, was vital, and was successfully seized. Fighting in the low lying mud and waterways of the Schedlt, which will take time, while the Germans a few miles away and still holding Noord Brabant made no sense at all.
SHEAF got what they wanted from a strategic point of view.
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Montgomery to Alan Brooke..
"If we want the war to end within any reasonable period you have to get Eisenhower’s hand taken off the land battle. I regret to say that in my opinion he just doesn’t know what he is doing.
Montgomery wrote of Eisenhower and his ridiculous broad-front strategy on 22 January 1945:
“I fear that the old snags of indecision and vacillation and refusal to consider the military problem fairly and squarely are coming to the front again . . . The real trouble is that there is no control and the three army groups are each intent on their own affairs. Patton today issued a stirring order to Third Army, saying the next step would be Cologne . . . One has to preserve a sense of humour these days, otherwise one would go mad.”
Alanbrooke wrote in his diary about buffoon Einsenhower:
“At the end of this morning's C.O.S. [Chief of Staff] meeting I put before the committee my views on the very unsatisfactory state of affairs in France, with no one running the land battle. Eisenhower, though supposed to be doing so, is on the golf links at Rheims — entirely detached and taking practically no part in running of the war. Matters got so bad lately that a deputation of Whiteley, Bedell Smith and a few others went up to tell him that he must get down to it and RUN the war, which he said he would."
"We discussed the advisability of getting Marshall to come out to discuss the matter, but we are doubtful if he would appreciate the situation. Finally decided that I am to see the P.M. to discuss the situation with him.”
"November 28th I went to see the P.M. I told him I was very worried."
Alan Brooke described in his daily diary that American generals Eisenhower and Marshall as poor strategists, when they were in jobs were strategy mattered. Brooke wrote to Montgomery about his talks with Eisenhower, “it is equally clear that Ike has the very vaguest conception of war!”
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@silarpac
“The plan upon which the Americans were to uncurl and deliver their great thrust southwards towards Brittany and the Loire was set out before Brooke and General Simpson (the DMO, to whom a copy was sent), in simple, clear English, a month and a half before it was enacted. ‘The First US Army,’ Monty declared under the heading: ‘Para 14. Future intentions’, was:
e) To hold on firmly to Caumont; to recapture CARENTAN and to hold it firmly.
f) To capture ST LO and then COUTANCE
g) To thrust southwards from CAUMONT towards VIRE and MORTAIN; and from ST LO towards VILLEDIEU and AVRANCHES
h) All the time to exert pressure towards LA HAYE DU PUITS and VOLOGNES, and to capture CHERBOURG.
A glance at the map will show that this was, town for town, the layout of Operation ‘Cobra’ - the great American offensive that paved the way for Patton to be unleashed into Brittany and the Loire in August 1944.”
- Hamilton, Nigel. Monty, Master of the Battlefield 1942-1944.
”PLAN IN OUTLINE
To hold the maximum number of enemy divisions on our eastern flank between CAEN and VILLERS BOCAGE, and to swing the [American] western or right flank of the Army Group southwards and eastwards in a wide sweep so as to threaten the line of withdrawal of such enemy divisions to the south of PARIS.
Later historians, particularly the American Official Historian Dr Martin Blumenson, would try to appropriate the credit for this plan for their heroes General Patton and to a lesser extent, General Bradley. In his edition of Patton’s papers, Dr Blumenson quoted Patton’s diary entry of 2 July 1944, in which Patton noted his own new ‘Schlieffen’ plan for a ‘rear attack on the Germans confronting the First U.S. Army, and then driving on to the line Alençon-Argentan, and thereafter on on Evreux or Chartres, depending on circumstances, we will really pull a coup’. Commenting, Blumenson remarked on Patton’s ‘remarkable’ intuition and stated that some weeks later ‘Bradley would come up with an interesting idea’ for such a coup, ‘an operation called Cobra’.
That ‘Cobra’ was in fact the plan given out by Montgomery at his headquarters on 30 June 1944 was to become a fact which some American historians hated to credit, preferring to take at face value Patton’s misrepresentation, penned in frustration in his English headquarters, that the Allies were merely pursuing ‘phase lines’ and that ‘we will die of old age before we finish’.
However unpalatable to such writers, the fact remains that Bradley, Dempsey and Crerar all attended Monty’s conference on 30 June, all concurred in Monty’s strategy, and that Eisenhower, Brooke, the War Office and Main Headquarters of 21st Army Group at Portsmouth all had copies of Monty’s plan. Nor was it some vague notion, for Monty laid down at the conference how he wished the plan to be executed in the coming weeks. Originally, in England before D-Day, he had intended to push the British Second Army south of Caen to secure space for airfields and provide the shield he needed for Bradley’s southern thrust to Brittany. Rommel’s fierce reaction at Caen had, however, made this unnecessary. Indeed a British thrust too far from it’s present sector would open up Second Army to a German counter-thrust by extending the front to be defended, whereas although it was greatly congested, the British front was currently almost impregnable.
……..Bradley’s break-out via Brittany had originally been conceived in England before D-Day, and throughout the long bitter weeks of fighting in June and July, Dempsey had been instructed to lock in combat the main enemy formations. Six thousand British and Canadian soldiers had fallen, even before ‘Goodwood’, to make possible the expansion of the American sector behind them, first to Cherbourg, and now towards Brittany.”
- Hamilton, Nigel. Monty, Master of the Battlefield 1942-1944.
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@silarpac
The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British under Montgomery. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa;
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein;
♦ March 1943 - Medenine;
♦ June 1944 - Normandy;
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands;
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge;
A list of Montgomery’s victories in WW2:
♦ Battle of Alam Halfa;
♦ Second Battle of El Alamein;
♦ Battle of El Agheila;
♦ Battle of Medenine;
♦ Battle of the Mareth Line;
♦ Battle of Wadi Akarit;
♦ Allied invasion of Sicily;
♦ Operation Overlord - the largest amphibious invasion in history;
♦ Market Garden - a 60 mile salient created into German territory;
♦ Battle of the Bulge - while taking control of two shambolic US armies;
♦ Operation Veritable;
♦ Operation Plunder.
Montgomery not once had a reverse.
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Monty's 8th Army advanced the fastest of any army in WW2. From El Alamein to El Agheila from the 4th to 23rd November 1942, 1,300 km in just 17 days. After fighting a major exhausting battle at El Alemein through half a million mines. This was an Incredible feat, unparalleled in WW2. With El Alamein costing just 13,500 casualties.
The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties, with the Lorraine campaign being a failure.
Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties. Hodges, head of the US First army, fled from Spa to near Liege on the 18th, despite the Germans never getting anywhere near to Spa. Hodges did not even wait for the Germans to approach Spa. He had already fled long before the Germans were stopped. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British, with Montgomery involved in planning, with also Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers.
Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
You need to give respect where it is due.
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@silarpac
Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower, approved and under resourced the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak". The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself.
XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.
Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time Monty had the Canadians cleared it, or were investing in many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@silarpac
You are a historian? My God!
The British drew in German armour at Caen to grind it up, to allow the Americans to break out - Operation Cobra.
General Omar Bradley...
While Collins was hoisting his VII Corps flag over Cherbourg, Montgomery was spending his reputation in a bitter siege against the old university city of Caen. For three weeks he had rammed his troops against those panzer divisions he had deliberately drawn towards that city as part of our Allied strategy of diversion in the Normandy Campaign. Although Caen contained an important road junction that Montgomery would eventually need, for the moment the capture of that city was only incidental to his mission. For Monty’s primary task was to attract German troops to the British front that we might more easily secure Cherbourg and get into position for the breakout.
In this diversionary mission Monty was more than successful, for the harder he hammered towards Caen, the more German troops he drew into that sector. Too many correspondents, however, had overrated the importance of Caen itself, and when Monty failed to take it, they blamed him for the delay. But had we attempted to exonerate Montgomery by explaining how successfully he had hoodwinked the German by diverting him toward Caen from the Cotentin, we would have also given our strategy away. We desperately wanted the German to believe this attack on Caen was the main Allied effort.
But while this diversion of Monty’s was brilliantly achieved, he never the less left himself open to criticism by overemphasizing the importance of his thrust toward Caen. Had he limited himself simply to the containment without making Caen a symbol of it, he would have been credited with success instead of being charged, as he was, with failure at Caen. For Monty’s success should have been measured in the panzer divisions the enemy rushed against him whilst Collins sped on toward Cherbourg. Instead, the Allied newspaper readers clammered for a place name called Caen which Monty had once promised but failed to win for them.
The containment mission that had been assigned Monty in the Overlord plan was not calculated to burnish British pride in the accomplishments of their troops. For in the minds of most people, success in battle is measured in the rate and length of advance. They found it difficult to realise that the more successful Monty was in stirring up German resistance, the less likely he was to advance. For another four weeks it fell to the British to pin down superior enemy forces in that sector while we maneuvered into position for the US breakout. With the Allied world crying for blitzkrieg the first week after we landed, the British endured their passive role with patience and forbearing.
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@silarpac
Monty's first battle against Rommel was at Alem el Halfa. The Germans had equal men, superior armour with new Mk 4 long gun tank, with enough fuel to reach Suez. They were beaten. Rommel was outfoxed.
" he still could not finish off Rommel in N. Africa."
Is this guy serious? Is he on this planet? Monty ran Rommel into Tunisia and out of Africa. Monty had the fastest advance in WW2, 1,000km in 17 days. A quarter of a million Axis troops were POWs, more than taken at Stalingrad.
The Bulge was an allied victory in the end, thanks to Montgomery having to take command of two shambolic US armies and Coningham of the RAF taking command of USAAF units, with British forces ensuring they never got over the Meuse.
In the 1944-45 timeframe the only allied retreat was the US at the Bulge, with 90,000 casualties. The largest number of allied POWs taken in that time frame was US troops taken by Germans at the Bulge.
Read:
The Battle of the Bulge by Whitting
The US Third army took more casualties than any other western allied army - also for little gain. They failed to reach the westwall, suffering 52,000 casualties in the attempt.
The US army in the ETO was a moving disaster area. When by themselves they stalled. The Third Army abandoned reaching the westwall in Lorraine, Operation Queen was a stall with a defeat at Hurtgen Forest. Then the Bulge with the British having to bail them out.
They only got anywhere when the British, Canadians and French were with them - approx one million men were in the French First Army who were with Devers moving into the Saar.
You are a historian? Please!
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@silarpac
Beevor is a mercenary buffoon. He is not worth giving the time of day.
Browning, second in command of the First Allied Airborne Army who parachuted into Nijmegen, seeing the bridge untaken told General Gavin of the 82nd on the evening of 18th September that the Nijmegen bridge must be taken on the 19th, or at the latest, very early on the 20th. The Nijmegen bridge was not captured on the 17th because there was a foul up in communication between General Gavin and Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th PIR of the 82nd Airborne.
Gavin allegedly verbally told Lindquist during the pre-drop talk to take a battalion of the 508th and make a quick strike to the bridge on the 17th and to "move without delay" but Lindquist understood it that Gavin had told him that his 508th should only move for the bridge once his regiment had secured the assigned 508th's portion of the defensive perimeter for the 82nd Division. So Lindquist didn't move his battalion towards the Nijmegen bridge until after this had been done, and by that time it was too late.
This misunderstanding/miscommunication, which had disastrous ramifications for the overall Market Garden operation, has been the subject of much debate and controversy ever since.This was passing the buck, in an attempt to shift blame due to the 82nd totally failing to take the Nijmegen road bridge, which the Guards had to take for them, casting aspersions on the British tankers who's job it was to defend the bridge and prevent the Germans from taking it back.
Had the 82nd done the job it was supposed to have done, the bridge would have been taken 3 days before and XXX Corps would have reached Arnhem and relived the beleaguered British paras.
Sources:
It Never Snows in September by Robert Kershaw.
The Battle For The Rhine by Robin Neilands.
Reflect on Things Past by Peter Carington.
Market Garden Then and Now by Karel Magry (a Dutchman).
Lost at Nijmegen by Poulussen (a Dutchman).
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@silarpac
At Alam El Halfa Montgomery and the British were outnumbered:
Corps (Eighth Army)
- 4 divisions
Panzer Army Africa
- 6 divisions
Rommel had 500 tanks, 200 being modern PZ IV Ausf F and long barreled PZ IUI, and 700 airplanes, while Monty who had just arrived, had 450 tanks, 370 being outdated Matilda, Valentine and Crusader with the 2 pounder and 500 planes.
Result? Complete British victory,
Montgomery was often outnumbered in his pursuit of Rommel’s across North Africa:
He [Rommel] had now blundered by abandoning the best natural defensive position between Alamein and Tunisia to counter a daring but comparatively weak threat by the New Zealand Division to his flank.
Montgomery’s plan, laid down on 28th December 1942, had been spectacularly vindicated. While Rommel gasped at Mussolini’s criticism, the forward troops of Eighth Army were equally amazed at the way the Axis forces surrendered such easily defensible territory....
……he [Montgomery] penned his own secret confession of amazement that Rommel, falling back on his well-established lines of communication, often with superior forces and in ideal defensive positions, had failed to counter Eight Army’s bluff.
…..Monty had cause Rommel to adopt such a rapid withdrawal by a mixture of initial ruthlessness in battle at close quarters followed by dexterity and bluff. With only a minimum of forward troops he had forced Rommel not only to surrender almost one and a half thousand miles of territory, but to give up two excellent defensive positions in which he could have and why checked Eight Army sharply.
….In fact Montgomery had no intention of risking his meagre forward units in a premature attack on prepared defences without even proper air support. In artillery and men Eighth Army was vastly outnumbered in the Gulf of Sirte...
In fact the proof of Montgomery’s stretched administrative position was the way in which his foremost units / of 7th Armoured Division - were severely bombed and strafed by the Luftwaffe once they had hustled Rommel’s rearguard our of Agedabia, on the approach road to Agheila. There were a number of casualties, but until the last week in November the RAF was powerless to help, for only on 26 November did it manage to get two fighter wings operational at Msus.
…He would have found there that, apart from Fourth Light Armoured Brigade, which took the vital Martuba airfields on 15 November ( and thus saved Malta from starvation), Eighth Army could only support one division beyond Torbruk. This was Harding’s Seventh Armoured - of whose 47 medium tanks not even five were considered capable of making the 350- mile trans-desert journey to Benghazi, so worn out had they become.
- Hamilton, Nigel. Monty, Master of the Battlefield 1942- 1944
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1) I take a £30,000 loan for a car over three years.
2) The bank creates the money out of thin air.
3) Money put into my account.
4) Car dealer is paid - he takes his cut and pays the wages of his staff, property taxes, other taxes and car manufacturer. That money is circulated into the economy.
5) The car manufacturer pays his staff, taxes and suppliers. That money is circulated into the economy.
6) I pay back the loan to the bank each month, with interest.
7) The bank pays its staff and taxes with that money. The money circulates into the economy.
8) When I fully repay the £30,000 loan after three years, the bank destroys the money, as they never had the money in the first place as it was created from thin air. If they do not destroy the money, they are printing money for themselves, so it has to be destroyed.
9) So I work and the money (£30,000) which I got up front from a bank goes directly into the economy, doing good. I pay for this money circulating into the economy, over three years.
But what an earner for the banks. They create £30,000 out of thin air, do get to keep the £30,000, then charge interest on £30,000. £30,000 they never had in the first place. Money for nothing.
So, HMG, via banks, creates the money for a loan out of thin air. I pay the loan back, then this money created out of thin air is destroyed. It is only in existence during the loan period. If there is no debt there is little money floating around.
If HMG wants to create money out of thin air, maybe it will be better for society to use it for a Universal Basic Income (UBI). Then maybe fewer loans, with less use of banks.
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The concept was Monty's coming from his pursuit operation Comet, which was never presented to Eisenhower. Eisenhower wanted to chase the Germans who were on the retreat. Market Garden was primarily a strategic operation.
The plan was mainly by Americans Brereton and Williams. Brereton was a no-can-do general, unsuited for risky airborne operations. The plan had only one corps in the end above Eindhoven - a disgrace.
Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust over other fronts and even seizing Antwerp and clearing the Schedlt. Clearing the Scheldt would take time as the German 15th SS army, highly experienced from the Russian front, had set up shop in the Scheldt and not retreated back into Germany, under Hitler's orders. All available supplies would be directed to this northern thrust.
"Since Eisenhower — the Supreme Commander and Ground Force Commander — approved the Arnhem operation rather than a push to clear the Scheldt, then surely he was right, as well as noble, to accept the responsibility and any resulting blame? The choice in early September was the Rhine or Antwerp: to continue the pursuit or secure the necessary facilities to solve the logistical problem? The decision was made to go for the Rhine, and that decision was Eisenhower’s."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"On 4 Sept, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr"
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen to British troops when he issued the northern thrust directive. Montgomery wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive, devising Operation Comet, multiple crossings of the Rhine, to be launched on 2 Sept, being cancelled due to German resistance and poor weather. Operation Comet was not presented to Eisenhower for his approval. Montgomery asked Brereton, an American, of the First Allied Airborne Army, to drop into the Scheldt in early September - he refused.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 Sept had divisions of the US 1st Army and Montgomery's view of taking multiple bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. The British 2nd Army needed some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow). Hodges' would protect the right flank. the Canadians would protect the left flank from the German 15th army. "the narrow thrust was reduced to the Second Army and two US corps, the XIX and VII of Hodges’ First Army, a total of around eighteen Allied divisions"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
The northern thrust was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944."
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower’s reply of 5 September to Montgomery deserves analysis, not least the part that concerns logistics. The interesting point is that Eisenhower apparently believes that it is possible to cross the Rhine and take both the Ruhr and the Saar — and open the Scheldt — using the existing logistical resources."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp. In thinking this Ike was wrong."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Post-Normandy Bradley seemed unable to control Patton, who persistently flouted Eisenhower’s directives and went his own way, aided and abetted by Bradley. This part of their relationship quickly revealed itself in matters of supply, where Hodges, the commander of the US First Army, was continually starved of fuel and ammunition in order to keep Patton’s divisions rolling, even when Eisenhower’s strategy required First Army to play the major role in 12th Army Group’s activities."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again, and being bogged down - again. The resources starved First Army could not be a part of northern thrust as Bradley and Patton, against Eisenhower's orders, were syphoning off supplies destined for the First army. This northern thrust over the Rhine, as Eisenhower envisaged, obviously would not work as he thought. A lesser operation was devised by Montgomery, Market Garden, eliminating the divisions of US First Army, with only ONE crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London wanted eliminating ASAP, giving a 60 mile long salient buffer between German forces and the important port of Antwerp. This would only have one corps above Eindhoven, a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time. Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance. Eisenhower should have fired Bradley and Patton for sabotaging the Northern Thrust operation.
Montgomery did not plan or was in involved in Market Garden's execution. Montgomery, after fixing the operations objectives with Eisenhower to the measly forces available, gave Market Garden planning to others, mainly USAAF generals, Brereton and Williams. General Brereton, who liked the plan, agreed to it with even direct input. Brereton ordered the drops will take place during the day with Brereton also overseeing the troop carrier and supply drops schedules. Williams forbid fighter-bombers to be used. A refusal by Brereton and the operation would never have gone ahead; he earlier rejected Montgomery's initial plan of a drop into the Scheldt at Walcheren Island.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time the Canadians had cleared, or were investing, many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Operation MARKET-GARDEN had two major objectives:
to get Allied troops across the Rhine
and to capture the Ruhr.
Three major advantages were expected to accrue:
( I) cutting the land exit of those Germans remaining in western Holland;
(2) outflanking the West Wall, _and
(3) positioning British ground forces for a subsequent drive into Germany along the North German Plain."
- US Official History, THE SIEGFRIED LINE CAMPAIGN. Page 120.
"Eisenhower approved the operation with certain conditions. Market Garden would commence on 17 September. Securing the approaches to the port at Antwerp would be delayed until Montgomery seized bridgeheads over the Rhine. His priority after seizing the bridgeheads would be gaining the much needed deep water port. He would not continue the attack to Berlin as he had proposed."
- A FRAMEWORK FOR MILITARY DECISION MAKING UNDER RISKS
by JAMES V. SCHULTZ
AIR UNIVERSITY MAXWELL AIR FORCE BASE, ALABAMA J. JUNE 1996. Page 50.
"later, on 15 September, General Eisenhower himself reopened the wound, perhaps with a view to healing it once and for all through a process of bloodletting. Looking beyond both Arnhem and Antwerp, he named Berlin as the ultimate Allied goal"
- US Official History, THE SIEGFRIED LINE CAMPAIGN. Page 210.
One of the prime aims of Market Garden was to be the northern grip of the the pincer on the Ruhr. Wayward Eisenhower changed yet again his strategy from the Ruhr to Berlin two days before Market Garden.
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@davidrendall2461
Monty was not particularly interested in Antwerp as it would take many, many, week to become operational, being accessed down a 40 mile river. By chasing a retreating army north, Monty could get Amsterdam or Rotterdam on the coast, getting them operational quite quickly.
As you pointed out, Eisenhower wanted Antwerp to supply his broad front.
As an aside. There is a book to be published soon, by Christian Wolmar, a railway expert. His upcoming book is on the rebuilding of the bombed French railways directly after D-Day. He is astonished at the rate of rebuilding to supply the allied armies. He says:
In the book i'm writing about railway rebuilding in France etc after Normandy landings, I relate how many far larger bridges were rebuilt in 10 days or less...time to call in the Royal Engineers
It negates this obsession by Eisenhower to get Antwerp online, as the likes of Le Havre, opened 6 October, etc, were supplying the front via the repaired French railways.
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Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower, approved and under resourced the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak". The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself.
XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.
Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time Monty had the Canadians cleared it, or were investing in many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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The finest general in WW2 was Montgomery.
From Alem el Halfa Montgomery moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa;
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein;
♦ March 1943 - Medenine;
♦ June 1944 - Normandy;
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands;
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge;
A list of Montgomery’s victories in WW2:
♦ Battle of Alam Halfa;
♦ Second Battle of El Alamein;
♦ Battle of El Agheila;
♦ Battle of Medenine;
♦ Battle of the Mareth Line;
♦ Battle of Wadi Akarit;
♦ Allied invasion of Sicily;
♦ Operation Overlord - the largest amphibious invasion in history;
♦ Market Garden - a 60 mile salient created into German territory;
♦ Battle of the Bulge - while taking control of two shambolic US armies;
♦ Operation Veritable;
♦ Operation Plunder.
Montgomery not once had a reverse.
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Monty's 8th Army advanced the fastest of any army in WW2. From El Alamein to El Agheila from the 4th to 23rd November 1942, 1,300 km in just 17 days. After fighting a major exhausting battle at El Alemein through half a million mines. This was an Incredible feat, unparalleled in WW2. With El Alamein costing just 13,500 casualties.
The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties, with the Lorraine campaign being a failure. Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties. Hodges, head of the US First army, fled from Spa to near Liege on the 18th, despite the Germans never getting anywhere near to Spa. Hodges did not even wait for the Germans to approach Spa. He had already fled long before the Germans were stopped. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British, with Montgomery involved in planning, with also Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
You need to give respect where it is due.
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@waynepatterson5843
What dyslexic opinionated drivel.
Britain was key in WW2. Britain fought on every front, being in the war on the first day up to the last - the only country at the surrender of Japan in September 1945 to do so - Britain’s war actually ended in 1946 staying on in Viet Nam using Japanese troops alongside British troops to defeat the Viet Minh, but that is another story. Britain was not attacked or attacked anyone, going into WW2 on principle. The Turkish ambassador to the UK stated that the UK can raise 40 million troops from its empire so will win the war. This was noted by Franco who indirectly said to Hitler he would not win, fearing British occupation of Spanish islands and territory if Spain joined the war. Spain and Turkey stayed out of the war.
The Turkish ambassador’s point was given credence when an army of 2.6 million was assembled in India that moved into Burma to wipe out the Japanese. From day one the Royal Navy formed a ring around the Axis positioning ships from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Arctic off Norway, blockading the international trade of the Axis. This deprived the Axis of vital human and animal food, oil, rubber, metals, and other vital resources. By 1941 the successful Royal Navy blockade had confined the Italian navy to port due to lack of oil.
By the autumn of 1941 Germany's surface fleet was confined to harbour, by the British fleet and the chronic lack of fuel. A potential German invasion from the the USSR in the north into the oil rich Middle East entailed expanded British troop deployment to keep the Germans away from the oil fields, until they were defeated at Stalingrad.
Throughout 1942 British Commonwealth troops were fighting, or seriously expecting to be attacked, in:
♦ French North Africa;
♦ Libya;
♦ Egypt;
♦ Cyprus;
♦ Syria: where an airborne assault was expected, with preparations to reinforce Turkey if they were attacked;
♦ Madagascar: fighting the Vichy French to prevent them from inviting the Japanese in as they had done in Indochina;
♦ Iraq;
♦ Iran: the British invaded Iran in August 1941.
Those spread-out covering troops were more in combined numbers than were facing Japan and Rommel in North Africa. The British Commonwealth fielded over 100 divisions in 1942 alone, compared to the US total of 88 by the end of the war. The Americans and Soviets were Johnny-come-late in WW2, moreso the Americans. Before the USSR entered the conflict the Royal Navy’s blockade had reduced the Italian and German surface navies to the occasional sorties because of a lack of oil, with the British attacking the Germans and Italians in North Africa, also securing Syria, Iraq, the Levant and ridding the Italians from East Africa. The Germans were on the run by the time the USA had boots on the ground against the Axis.
The Germans had been stopped:
♦ in the west at the Battle of Britain in 1940;
♦ in the east at the Battle of Moscow in 1941. In which Britain provided 40% of the Soviet tanks.
The Germans were on the run after the simultaneous battles in late 1942 of:
♦ El Alemein;
♦ Stalingrad;
The Battle of El Alemein culminated in a quarter of a million Axis prisoners taken in Tunisia - more than taken at Stalingrad. Apart from the US Filipino forces that surrendered in early 1942, the US had a couple of divisions in Gaudalcanal after August 1942, and one in New Guinea by November 1942. In 1943 the US managed to get up to six divisions in the Pacific, but still not matching the British or British Indian armies respectively.
Until late 1943 the Australian Army alone deployed more ground fighting troops against the Japanese than the USA. The Americans never put more ground troops into combat against the Japanese at any point than just the British Indian Army alone, which was 2.6 million strong. The US had nowhere near 2.6 million men on the ground against the Japanese. The Soviets fielded about a million against the Japanese.
Most Japanese troops were put out of action by the British and Soviets, not the USA. At the battles of Khohima and Imphal the Japanese suffered their worst defeat in their history up to that point.
Then the British set the Eastern and Pacific fleets against the Japanese, not far off in numbers to the US fleet. The British Pacific Fleet assisted US troops protecting the western coast of Okinawa with its armoured carriers - they could operate way nearer to the coast than wooden decked US carriers, as kamikaze's bounced off them. The fleet also bombarded Japan, Sumatra and Taiwan, sinking one Japanese aircraft carrier and disabling another.
The Australian navy assisted the US navy all through the Japanese war. The USA was in the war for four years, yet it was less than 10 months before the Japanese surrender they actually fielded an entire army against the Japanese. That was in the Philippines. Before that it was just divisions fighting on scattered islands for a month or so at a time.
In Europe the British planned and ran the D-Day Normandy campaign which came in ahead of schedule with 22% less casualties than predicted, with the British in command of all the air, sea and land forces of all nationalities. Then also destroying 90% of German armour in the west in the process, with constant air raids on German cities and industry culminating with 1,000 bomber raids. The Canadian navy was heavily involved in anti U-Boat operations in the Atlantic.
The biggest agents in the defeat of the Nazis and Japanese were the British.
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@WandererRTF
My logic is sound. The Finns did not prevent the Soviets reincorporating Finland back into Russia by some action in 1944. All points to that the Soviets did not want Finland at any time, only a territory exchange, otherwise Finland would have been in the USSR. After allowing German troops onto their soil in 1940 then attacking the USSR, in Soviet eyes the Finns were not to be trusted.
How Finland was never reincorporated into the USSR after their actions with the Germans is an oddity. To get that front benign, then concentrate Soviet forces west directly towards Germany, the Soviets in 1944 did agree in a peace deal with the Finns for them to retain sovereignty over the territory. The Soviets kept to that deal. In 1945 they could have said screw you we do not trust you with recently history on our side in that, walking into the whole country. The Soviets did have a plan to reoccupy Finland quickly if they thought Finland was any sort of threat, or a staging land for others to use.
Only Finlandization, now an official term to describe where a smaller country is allowed nominal independence if it follows the foreign policy of an adjacent larger country, kept Finland appearing to be in the west. In the 1950s/60s Finland was full of Soviet made cars. If they did not tow the line post WW2 adhering to Finlandization they would be a full Soviet republic.
Finland was one of the four Baltic states. It was accepted into the Nordic Council, so has projected to the world (successfully) that it is a part of Scandinavia, with the Baltic states becoming three. It is not in Scandinavia. It was a part of Russia only 100 years ago, with its people, culture and its very non-western language emanating from the east. There are still people alive today who were born in Finland when it was part of Russia. Geography dictates that Finland is no more a part of the west than what Belarus is.
.
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As a rule of thumb, German logistical experts liked to assign at least one high-capacity
railway line to each army-sized unit. But for the ten armies with which they invaded the Soviet Union, the Wehrmacht was able to assign only three main railway lines, one for each army group. 81 And the situation for Army Group Centre, where the bulk of the German forces were to be concentrated, was particularly bad. From the outset, therefore, the German army had to assume that not all units would be equally well supplied. Critical stores were to be reserved above all for the main strike force of 33 tank and motorized infantry divisions. If the battle extended much beyond the first months of the attack, the fighting power of the rest of the German army would dwindle rapidly. Fundamentally, the Wehrmacht was a 'poor army'.
The fast-strikingmotorized element of the German army in 1941 consisted of only 33 divisions out of 130. Three-quarters of the German army continued to rely on more traditional means of traction: foot and horse. The German army in 1941 invaded the Soviet Union with somewhere between 600,000 and 750,000 horses. The horses were not for riding. They were for moving guns, ammunition and supplies. Weeks prior to the invasion, 15,000 Panje carts were issued to the infantry units that would trail behind the fast-moving Panzers. The vast majority of Germany's soldiers marched into Russia, as they had into France, on foot.
- Wages of Destruction by Prof Adam Tooze.
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Browning DID NOT de-prioritised the bridge.
"I personally gave an order to Jim Gavin that, although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen Bridges as soon as possible, it was essential that he should capture the Groesbeek Ridge and hold it—for … painfully obvious reasons …. If this ground had been lost to the enemy the operations of the 2nd Army would have been dangerously prejudiced as its advance across the Waal and Neder Rhein would have been immediately outflanked. Even the initial advance of the Guards Armoured Division would have been prejudiced and on them the final outcome of the battle had to depend."
- Lt Gen Browning to Maj Gen G. E. Prier-Palmer, British Joint Services Mission, Washington, D.C., 25 Jan 55, excerpt in OCMH.
Browning said.. it was essential that he should capture the Groesbeek Ridge and hold it. He did not say it was priority.
Browning did not de-prioritise the bridge, initially neither did Gavin, until he pulled all his men entirely out of Nijmegen after failing to seize the bridge.
Gavin told Lindquist to go to the bridge, "without delay". Gavin was clearly going for the bridge as a matter of urgency. The problem was the incompetent delay to move to the bridge - that is why the 82nd failed to seize the bridge. Gavin's command structure failed. He never gave written orders to the 508th.
After receiving General Gavin's pre jump verbal orders in regard to the Nijmegen bridge, Colonel Lindquist had earmarked Colonel Warren's battalion as one of two battalions from which he intended to choose one to move to the bridge, depending upon the developing situation. General Gavin's understanding, as recalled later, was that Warren's battalion was to move "without delay after landing." On the other hand, Colonel Lindquist's understanding, also as recalled later, was that no battalion was to go for the bridge until the regiment had secured its other objectives, that is to say, not until he had established defenses protecting his assigned portion of the high ground and the northern part of the division glider landing zone.
- US Official History
Prior to the Holland jump, I sat in 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.
After we were dropped in Holland, 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 (drop zone) is cleared and secured. Tell General Gavin that.”
..
I never saw Gavin so mad. As he climbed into his jeep, he told me to, “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.”
- by Chester E Graham, liaison officer between the 508th and the 82nd Division Headquarters.
As darkness approached, General Gavin ordered Colonel Lindquist "to delay not a second longer and get the bridge as quickly as possible with Warren's battalion."
- US Official History
"I personally directed Colonel Roy E. Lindquist, commanding the 508th Parachute Infantry," General Gavin recalled later, "to commit his first battalion against the Nijmegen bridge without delay after landing
- US Official History
As the jump was unopposed, and other troops were securing the LZ, some of Lindquist's men made their way towards the Nijmegen bridge immediately.
Instead of moving immediately toward the Nijmegen bridge, Colonel Warren's battalion was to take an "assigned initial objective" in the vicinity of DePloeg, a suburb of Nijmegen.
..
then was to "be prepared to go into Nijmegen later." The assembly and movement to DePloeg took approximately three and a half hours.
- US Official History
Col. Warren, who was assigned the bridge, was to move when given orders, spent most of the time setting up shop in a hotel.
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@michaellucas4291
US Official History:
page 163
"Colonel Warren about 1830 sent into Nijmegen a patrol consisting of a rifle platoon and the battalion intelligence section. This patrol was to make an aggressive reconnaissance, investigate reports from Dutch civilians that only eighteen Germans guarded the big bridge"
Warren sent about 40 men to reconnoitre the bridge.
"Warren was to get no word from the patrol until the next morning. As darkness approached, General Gavin ordered Colonel Lindquist "to delay not a second longer and get the bridge as quickly as possible with Warren's battalion." "
"Although Company A reached the rendezvous point on time, Company B "got lost en route." After waiting until about 2000, Colonel Warren left a guide for Company B and moved through the darkness with Company A toward the edge of the city. Some seven hours after H-Hour, the first real move against the Nijmegen bridge began."
They started to move towards the bridge after seven hours,
reaching the bridge and starting their first attack at 2200 hrs.
The 9th SS had already moved south over the bridge reinforcing the
bridge and town.
page 164
"the chance for an easy, speedy capture of the Nijmegen bridge had passed. This was all the more lamentable because in Nijmegen during the afternoon the Germans had had nothing more than the same kind of "mostly low quality" troops encountered at most other places on D Day."
"Field
Marshal Model, had entrusted Corps Feldt under Wehrkreis VI with responsibility for Nijmegen, he apparently had recognized the dire necessity of getting a more mobile and effective force to the Nijmegen bridge immediately. Sometime during late afternoon or early evening of 17 September Model had dispatched an advance guard from the 9th SS Panzer Division's Reconnaissance Battalion [infantry] to defend the highway bridge."
"The 9th SS Reconnaissance Battalion apparently had gotten across the Neder Rijn at Arnhem before British paratroopers reached the Arnhem bridge." "they had arrived in time to stop the first American thrust toward the Nijmegen bridge"
" but the men of the 10th SS Panzer Division were too late. They subsequently crossed the Neder Rijn at a ferry near Huissen, southeast of Arnhem."
The 10th SS could not get to Nijmegen over the Arnhem bridge.
They got to Nijmegen the next day via the ferry eight miles from
Nijmegen.
"It was not until 2000hrs, some seven hours after the landing, that Frost got his first sight of the Arnhem road bridge."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
The British paras had already denied the Arnhem bridge to the Germans
at the same time Warren's men started to move towards Nijmegen bridge.
Page 166:
"At 1400 on 18 September Colonel Mendez ordered Company G to withdraw from Nijmegen to Hill 64. Nijmegen and the highway bridge so vital to relief of the British airborne troops farther north at Arnhem remained in German hands. Of three attempts to capture the bridge on D-Day and D plus I, one of patrol size had failed because it was too weak and lacked communications; another of two-company size, because the Germans had had time to reinforce their garrison; and the third of company size, for the same reason."
The 82nd completely withdrew from Nijmegen town,
allowing the Germans to pour the 10th SS infantry
south into reinforcing the town. This made matters
worse when they and XXX Corps went into the town.
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@seth1422
You are barking. Too much Christmas whiskey. The evidence is that the 82nd men faced little opposition if the went to the bridge immediately. Only low quality troops were there. After the SS infantry men moved south over the bridge reinforcing the bridge and town, the 82nd got to the bridge and stayed there all night and most of the next day until Gavin pulled them out of Nijmegen completely, allowing even more SS men to pour into Nijmegen, making the situation even worse.
According to you the 82nd men who fought at the bridge against the SS and lower quality troops, should have been slaughtered. They were not, fighting and staying there about 20 hours before being dragged out to face the mythical 1,000 tanks. When they were pulled out Warren was about to launch another attack on the bridge. If they had launched an attack at 4 pm on d-day they would have secured the bridge, or more likely just walked on it.
You are some sort of nut wanting believe black is white. The failure point was the US 82nd at Nijmegen.
U.S. Official History Page 164
"the chance for an easy, speedy capture of the Nijmegen bridge had passed. This was all the more lamentable because in Nijmegen during the afternoon the Germans had had nothing more than the same kind of "mostly low quality" troops encountered at most other places on D Day."
Kampfgruppe Henke. Henke was in charge of the Herman Goring training unit. He had reservist, men from a training school, military policemen, and few flak guns. That is all the 82nd would have met if they went directly to the bridge.
Nijmegen Defence Force 17 September:
Kampfgruppe Henke:
- HQ "Henke" Fallschirmjäger Training Regiment;
- 6 Ersatz Battalion (3 coys) (from Wehrkreis V1);
- Herman Göring Company "Runge";
- NCO School Company;
- Railway Guards/Police Reservists;
- Flak Battery (two 88mm & 20mm guns, dispersed);
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@bigwoody4704
Rambo that Youtube you linked to. I commented on that a year ago. Did you read it? Here it is:
The British were the single biggest agents in the defeat of Nazi Germany. They were there from day one until the end. They never did not enter because they attacked another country or were attacked. The so-called "invincible" Germans army tried and failed, with their allies, for two years in WW2 to defeat the British army in North Africa. The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery had to give the US armies an infantry role as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein
♦ March 1943 - Medenine
♦ June 1944 - Normandy
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British or US, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. The US Army were struggling in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months with over 50,000 casualties. The Battle of the Bulge took all the US effort, with Montgomery in command and the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line, with nearly 100,000 casualties. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe. The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British with Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against the panzers. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) and had to give them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
Then the ignored British naval blockade on the Axis economy, which was so successful the substantial Italian navy could not put to sea in full strength, or even at all on some occasions, because of a lack of oil. Then the British bomber offensive on the German economy, taking the war right into German cities, wiping out Hamburg in one night.
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