Comments by "Sar Jim" (@sarjim4381) on "Forgotten History: Vercors - the Climactic Battle of the French Resistance" video.

This was also the last use of gliders by the Germans. Only 12 of the 22 gliders dispatched against Vassieux-en-Vercors actually landed in the right place, with the rest either landing too far to the north or crashing upon landing. Thus, the actual numbers of German troops (who were mostly Russian or Ukrainian) were combat effective upon landing numbered only about 150 of the 400 dispatched. It showed once again why glider operations were just not effective, especially in terms of the numbers of troops lost as part of the operation, and the difficult of piloting gliders to a specific spot. The biggest problem for the Marqui was their almost complete lack of heavy weapons. Air dropping artillery and the attendant ammunition was impossible in 1944, but the air drop operation did include at least 14 British 3" mortars and somewhere between 2 and 5 4.2" mortars, along with at least 150 bombs for each mortar. These should have provided enough mortars to stop or significantly delay the German advance up the Massif. Unfortunately, all those containers, dropped from one B-17, landed among the Germans, who retrieved them and turned the mortars against the Marquis and the civilians in the villages on the plateau. On such events does the turn of many a battle come.
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Emmanuel, in the early years of the war, the French Milieu was the main source of weapons, just as they had been for all organized crime groups before the war. By mid-1944, the main source of weapons was from dead Vichy and German troops plus raiding police stations and isolated arsenals. The Americans and British dropped many thousands of containers of small arms, mainly Sten guns, plus thousands of pounds of plastic explosives. The problem for the Marqui fighters at Vercors was not a lack of small arms, it was the lack of heavy weapons, as I wrote above.
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By heavy weapons in this case I mean light to medium mortars. There was no way to get heavier artillery on the massiv and very few fighters with any training on how to use them anyway. You're correct about the quality of "troops" fighting the Germans. Many of them were excellent guerillas but terrible infantry. The two skill sets are much different. It would have been much better for France, the Allies, and those that died in the battle if they had remained guerrillas. However, that would not have given De Gaulle the propaganda victory he so desperately needed.
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Slaw, that was the most amazing rewriting of Polish WWII history I've ever seen.
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Slaw, let's start with a source that the Polish command, after beating the Germans, was going to then attack the Soviets.
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Mac, I was only referring to the first wave. All the sources I've read say it 12 or 13 gliders that landed close enough to be effective in the inituial fighting. I've seen pictures of several wrecked gliders so they were apparently not all really nice landings. As for the rest of details, I don't really care.
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Mac, has your local museum done any kind of publications or outreach to French historians regarding your and their data about Vercors? What's the name of the museum? Why haven't these rare photos of the battle been published by now? How exactly are you able to do excavations showing the position of landing of every glider 74 years after the event? Are you an archeologist? Since you believe that all books have mistakes based on them using the first book written on the battle (and what is the name of that first book?), what are you doing to correct what you believe is misinformation about the battle? As you can see, now we have another commenter who thinks he has the right information and you don't. We are never going to get anywhere with the history of this battle until we can all agree on which sources have the true and correct information.
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I have seen his book, "Témoignages sur le Vercors Drome Isere". Are you saying his book has all these errors he only corrected in the museum? How did he do that? Did he do some kind of addendum in writing? Is there a way I could get a copy? Can write to the museum? What is the name of the museum? [Corrected typos]
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Ah, so four gliders didn't have a real nice landing then. Your post made it seem as if every one came in nice and soft and all landed exactly where they were supposed to land. As for the rest of the details, I have never seen an order of battle for the forces that landed at Vacours that was that detailed. What is your source for those details?
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Okay, now we have badweetabix coming up with a completely different set of numbers than Mac couy. Bad, I'll ask you the same thing I asked Mac, what is your source for this information and provide me a link.
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