Comments by "TheVilla Aston" (@thevillaaston7811) on "War Stories"
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@Petal4822
Not really...
Half of the 14,000 tanks supplied to Russia were British. This should be set against Soviet tank production of 105,000.
The numbers of aircraft supplied ws 18,000, of which 7,000 came from Britain. Soviet aircraft production amounted to 143,000.
The boots came from Britain - 15 million pairs. The wheeled vehicles amounted to one third of Russian vehicles - in February 1945.
Russia was invaded by Germany, Britain was bombed, blockaded, and it had the Germans 21 miles away for four years. The USA was 3,000 miles from any threat to its homeland.
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@Heathcoatman
Primary sources (do I know what that term means?)
Who can say?.
WINSTON S CHURCHILL.
THE SECOND WORLD WAR.
CASSELL & CO LTD REVISED EDITION NOVEMBER 1950.
VOLUME Vl TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY
P174/5
‘Heavy risks were taken in in the Battle of Arnhem, but they were justified by the great prize so nearly in our grasp. Had we been more fortunate in the weather, which turned against us at critical moments and restricted our mastery of the air, it is probable that we should have succeeded.’
CRUSADE IN EUROPE
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
WILLIAM HEINEMANN LIMITED 1948
P340
'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.'
UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II
The European Theater of Operations
THE SIEGFRIED LINE CAMPAIGN
By Charles B. MacDonald
CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY
UNITED STATES ARMY WASHINGTON, D.C., 1993
P199
Field Marshal Montgomery has written: "We had undertaken a difficult operation, attended by considerable risks. It was justified because, had good weather obtained, there was no doubt that we should have attained full success."
CHESTER WILMOT
THE STRUGGLE FOR EUROPE
WM. COLLINS, SONS AND CO LTD. 1954
P 586
In Gavin's opinion, the performance of Frost's force was " the outstanding
independent parachute battalion action of the war." Frost's " tactical handling " was,
says Gavin, " a model for parachute unit commanders."
P 120.
Montgomery says that " Had good weather obtained, there was no doubt that we should have attained full success." (Op. cit., p. 186.) Student, when interrogated by Liddell Hart, did not go quite so far as this, but gave the weather as the main cause of
the failure.
A DROP TOO MANY
MAJOR GENERAL JOHN FROST CB, DSO, MC
PEN & SWORD BOOKS. 1994
P xiii
‘However, by far the worst mistake was the lack of priority given to the capture of Nijmegen Bridge. The whole essence of the plan was to lay an airborne carpet across the obstacles in southern Holland so that the Army could get motor through, yet the capture of this, perhaps the biggest and most vital bridge in that its destruction would have sounded the death-knell of the troops committed at Arnhem, was not accorded priority. The capture of this bridge would have been a walk-over on D-day, yet the American 82nd Airborne Division could spare only one battalion as they must at all costs secure a feature called the Groesbeek Heights, where, incidentally, the H.Q. of Airborne Corps was to be sited.
It was thought that the retention of this feature would prevent the debouchment of German armour from the Reichwald in Germany. This armour was there courtesy of a rumour only and its presence was not confirmed by the underground. In fact, as a feature it is by no means dominating and its retention or otherwise had absolutely no bearing on what happened at Nijmegen Bridge.
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@smellygoatacres
‘Montgomery didn't defeat Rommel. His loss to kill ratio was disastrous vs Rommel.’ Your words.
Alamein (23 October – 11 November 1942):
195,000 allied troops, 4,810 Killed (2.5%). 116,000 Axis troops, 2,400 – 9,000 killed (2% -7.8%).
Operation OVERLORD (06 June – 30 August 1944):
2,052,299 allied troops, 36,980 killed (1.8%). 640,000 Axis troops, 23,019 (3.6%).
‘You wouldn't follow that man into battle’ Your words
From US General Walter Bedell Smith:
‘22 June 1944
Dear General [Montgomery],
I have just received from a most reliable and intelligent source a report on attitude and state of mind of American troops in action. The writer is completely unbiased, and his report contains the following paragraph, which I hope will give you as much pleasure as it has given me:
Confidence in the high command is absolutely without parallel. Literally dozens of embarking troops talked about General Montgomery with actual hero-worship in every inflection. And unanimously what appealed to them beyond his friendliness, and genuineness, and lack of pomp was the story (or, for all I know, the myth) that the General Visited every one of us outfits going over and told us he was more anxious than any of us to get this thing over and get home/ This left a warm and indelible impression.
The above is an exact quotation. Having spent my life with American soldiers, and knowing only too well their innate distrust of everything foreign, I can appreciate far better than you can what a triumph of leadership you accomplished in inspiring such feeling and confidence.
Faithfully
Bedell’
From US General Omar Bradley:
‘Even Eisenhower with all his engaging ease could never stir American troops to the rapture with which Monty was welcomed by his’
THE MEMOIRS OF FIELD-MARSHAL EARL ALEXANDER OF TUNIS
CASSELL, LONDON
1962
P16
‘Montgomery is a first-class trainer and leader of troops on the battlefield, with a fine tactical sense. He knows how to win the loyalty of his men and has a great flair for raising morale.’
'You wouldn't follow that man into battle knowing your odds of being killed were 10:1.' Your words.
How would a person follow that man into battle know what their odds were of being killed?
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@rsmithajd
Germany slaughter the British?.. With what? And how were they going to get here?
'I think the British were the weakest link in the allies.....'
You do not think, your comments make that clear.
'the Canadian and Australian forces fought good'
Yep, alongside Britain, across SIX years of war
'but British sucked at every battle they were in'
You mean apart from the Battle of Britain, the war at sea, East Africa, Crusader, Alam el Halfa, Alamein, Husky, Italy, Normany, the Scheldt, the Northern half of the Bulge, and the Bulge?..
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@alanle1471
Many of the German formations that fought in the Bulge were created in the Autumn of 1944. After Eisenhower had given the the Germans the two things they most wanted then, time and space.
Montgomery warned that Eisenhower that his policies would leave the allied forces too thinly spread out, one of Bradley's subordinate commanders, Patton specifically warned about the danger in the Ardennes just before the German attack.
Come the battle, Bradley lost control of events, Hodges went to ground. To his credit, Eisenhower seems to have learned by previous mistakes, he went straight to Montgomerey, who postponed Operation Veritable and sorted out the northern half of the bulge. The American troops on the ground seem to have acquitted themselves well.
Here is Alanbrooke's observation on the battle.
‘There was no doubt that the Americans had had a severe shock. Their commanders had chosen to ignore the two most elementary rules of war – concentration and the possession of a reserve to counter the enemy’s moves and keep the initiative.’
German commanders had given the German plan at best a 5% chance of success.
The later successful campaign was British, Canadian, French and US.
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@dennisweidner288
'A fair assessment'
British 2nd army at Caen tied down 6.5 of the 8 German armoured divisions in Normandy, leaving the US 2nd Army free to take the major port that the allies needed - Cherbourg, followed by a break to the south. Capturing Caen, or not capturing Caen made little difference to outcome of the campaign. Montgomery delivered victory in Normandy by D+78, 12 days ahead of schedule, and this with the delays to the allied build up caused by the great storm of 19th -20th June.
CRUSADE IN EUROPE
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
WILLIAM HEINEMANN LIMITED 1948
P282
‘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.’
P288
‘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.’
'From Omar Bradley's book A Soldier's Story':
‘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 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 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 the enemy reserves would race once the alarm was sounded.’
Any questions?
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@broncoteno7181
Have it your own way.
When did the British 'beg America to save them'?..
'Can you name any successful British only WWII campaigns?'
Can you name any successful American only campaigns in the Second World War?
'The British lost every battle other than Battle of Britain (arguably still a loss)'
The idea that the Battle of Britain was 'arguably still a loss' is absurd.
The Germans went into the Battle of Britain with 2,550 aircraft in order to to give Germany the aerial superiority it would need for an invasion of Great Britain. When the Battle of Britain ended on 31st October, 1940, Britain had won a resounding victory, the most important allied victory of the entire war, in which Germany lost 1,977 aircraft. The German airforce would never be as powerful again in relation to its opponents, and the tasks it faced, as it was in the summer of 1940, both in quality and quantity. Half of the German fighter Aces of the entire war fought in the Battle of Britain. By the middle of the SIX war (1942), four of the six aircraft types that the Germans used in the battle were obsolete - a state of affairs that their own Hossbach Memorandum of November 1937 had predicted. Just over eight months after the Battle of Britain ended, Germany invaded Russia with just 2,400 aircraft.
Before you decide to answer this comment, consider this... What do you think the chances are that you will know more about this subject than me?
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Why should Eisenhower have fired Montgomery? Eisenhower approved MARKET GARDEN, which freed a fifth of the Dutch population, hindered German rocket attacks on London, stretched German defences another fifty miles, and left the allies well placed to attack into Germany in the months ahead. MARKET GARDEN’s casualties (17,000), should be compared to allied failures in the same period at Aachen (20,000 casualties), Metz (45,000 casualties), and the Hurtgen Forest (55,000 casualties).
In any case, Montgomery's appointment came from the Imperial General Staff in london, not Eisenhower.
As for Patton, what did he ever do?
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@KrisBurns22
'You really think after Russia left the battlefield in WW1 Britain and france could stop Germany without the American expedition force ???'
The US contribution to the allied war effort in the First World War was miniscule, and did not even make any sort of impact until September 1918 with the Meuse–Argonne offensive, which has been described thus:
'The offensive was the principal engagement of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in World War I. It was one of a series of Allied attacks, known as the Hundred Days Offensive, which brought the war to an end. It was the largest and bloodiest operation of World War I for the AEF even though, given the scale of other battles on the Western Front, its size was limited and the operation itself secondary, being far from the main offensive axis.'
The sacrifice of British, French, and Russian troops, along with the Royal Navy blockade of Germany did for the Kaiser. The USA turned up when it was time for the victory parades, and the sharing out of the spoils of victory.
Harsh but fair.
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'-Montgomery's victory in El Alamein was nothing to write home about. Rommel was short on fuel and half of his armored force were useless Italian tanks. Of course Monty won the battle, any commander with such an advantage is going to win, isn't he? Your words.
Appointed to command of the ground forces in ‘Torch’, Montgomery was moved across to command Eighth Army after the death of Gott. In his first big command, Montgomery acted quicky and decisively as he reorganized and rejuvenated Eighth Army to make it fit to take on and defeat the Axis forces led by Rommel. There is plenty of evidence of Montgomery’s effect on his new command, here is some:
‘I have always considered that Montgomery’s first two or three days with his Army was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life, and the way in which he put over his personality, right through the Army, was really remarkable. Besides talking to the staff and laying down what he called his ‘military philosophy’, he met all Commanders and their troops and, of course, examined in great detail the ground now held and that over which we would have to fight.’
DE GUINGAND
‘I was dumfounded by the rapidity with which he had grasped the situation facing him, the ability with which had grasped the essentials, the clarity of his plans , and above all his unbounded self-confidence—a self-confidence with which he inspired all those that he came into contact with.’
ALANBROOKE
‘Everybody said what a change there was since Montgomery had taken command. I could feel the truth of this with joy and comfort.’
CHURCHILL
Montgomery, with four divisions defeated Rommel with his six divisions at Alam-el-Halfa and then defeated Rommel again at the Second Battle of El Alamein.
For Alamein, Montgomery set about re-training the entire Eighth Army, regrouping divisions that had been broken down into smaller units and creating an armoured reserve to exploit a breakthrough in the enemy front. Further, he resisted political pressure to attack before he was satisfied that everything he required for victory was in place – including extensive medical care facilities for his troops.
Alamein ended the war in North Africa as a contest at the cost of 13,500 (6.9%) casualties. Victory in North Africa freed up a million of allied shipping for use elsewhere and led to the campaign in Italy, which together with the allied threat to the Balkans tied down 50 German divisions. Troops that the Germans could not deploy in Normandy or Russia.
Further, Montgomery showed how the allies could beat the Germans in the future: thorough preparation and concentration of resources, which paid off in Normandy and would have paid off in the autumn of 1944 in the advance on Germany if Eisenhower had heeded these lessons instead of allowing political considerations to dictate strategy.
'-Montgomery bungled his pursuit of Rommel - almost any other general, with more fuel, more troops, chasing a defeated foe, could have brought the Afrika Korps to bay. He just herded the enemy along.' Your words.
Cairo to Tripoli by Road is 1600 miles. The same London to Moscow.
Rommel outran his supply lines. Montgomery did not make that mistake.
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'-Montgomery's only objective was to capture the town of Caen. He and his forces were repelled three times and when they finally entered the town the Germans had already left for a higher defense position. He was supposed to drive toward Germany in the left flank of the allies and caused more delays for the Americans to get to Germany.
-Montgomery utterly failed in Market Garden. Lots of things went wrong but ultimately Monty needs to take the blame here. And Monty’s refusal to admit that German panzer divisions were in Arnhem was all on him. Market Garden was Monty’s brainchild. How do you forgive him for that mess?' Your words.
France 1944 (Operation Overlord)
The then existing plan for Overlord that Montgomery saw comprised three invasion beaches with a target date of 1st May 1944 for D-Day. Montgomery immediately urged that the plan be expanded to five beaches by the addition of Utah and Sword beaches. This was agreed to, but the change created a one-month delay to the start of the operation as the additional shipping was gathered for the additional landings.
Montgomery presented his plan for the land campaign to allied leaders at St Paul’s School in West London on 15th May 1944. The plan showed British 2nd Army holding down the bulk of German forces on the allied left while the US 1st Army broke out on the allied right to capture Cherbourg and other ports, leading to the allies reaching the river Seine by D+90. Overlord began on the 6th June (D-Day), with all allied beaches liking up within a week, despite US mistakes at Omaha beach. Montgomery’s plan coped with the delay to the allied build-up caused by the great storm of 19th-20th June which wrecked the US ‘Mulberry Harbour’, the vast concentration of German forces in front of British 2nd Army, the delay to the US 1st Army break-out which led to the need for several operation in the Caen sector to keep Germans off balance, and the constant badgering of glory hungry, greenhorn US generals.
Montgomery inflicted a defeat of the Germans as big as Stalingrad and that ended with 22% fewer than expected allied casualties, and ahead of schedule, on D+78.
CRUSADE IN EUROPE
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
WILLIAM HEINEMANN LIMITED 1948
P282
‘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.’
P288
‘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.
P333
‘All along the front we pressed forward in hot pursuit of the fleeing enemy. In four days the British spearheads, paralleled by equally forceful American advances on their right, covered a distance of 195 miles, one of the many feats of marching by our formations in the great pursuit across France.’
‘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 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 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 the enemy reserves would race once the alarm was sounded.’
From Omar Bradley's book A Soldier's Story
Market Garden
With the allied advance at a standstill, with the Germans still reeling from their defeat in France and with V weapons being launched at Britain in sight of British troops. Montgomery sought to depoly the First Allied Airborne Army that Eisenhowert had made available for Montgomery's use, without Montgomery having full control of.
The operation was a risky undertaking, but Eisenhower and Bradley agreed that the possible gains were worth taking the chance. Montgomery had no final say in the airborne (Market) part of the operation, which was under the control of the US General Brereton. Virtually all of the problems with the operation came out the airborne plan. There is a body of opinion that the weather, which defied allied forecasts was the decisive factor in Arnhem not being taken:
'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.'
EISENHOWER
‘Heavy risks were taken in in the Battle of Arnhem, but they were justified by the great prize so nearly in our grasp. Had we been more fortunate in the weather, which turned against us at critical moments and restricted our mastery of the air, it is probable that we should have succeeded.'
CHURCHILL
German General Karl Student gave the weather as the main cause of the failure at Arnhem.
Market Garden did not succeed in reaching Arnhem but it did free up to a fifth of the Dutch population, stretched the German forces another 50 miles, hindered V weapon attacks on Britain and gave the allies a launching point for Operation Veritable in early 1945. The losses incurred (17,000) should be compared to allied failures in the same period at Aachen (20,000 casualties), Metz (45,000 casualties) and the Hurtgen Forest (55,000 casualties).
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@aesop8694
As an army and army group commander, Montgomery won in North Africa, Sicily, Normandy, The Scheldt, the Northern half of the Bulge and the Rhine.
As a single division commander, Montgomery had performed with distinction in trying circumstances in France in 1940. Montgomery served in the front line in France in the First World War, being wounded twice, and being awarded the DSO.
Eisenhower had zero personal combat experience, he had not even seen a dead body until April 1943. He made a mess of US operations in Tunisia, having to seek help from Alexander, he made a mess of the invasion of Italy. He kept out of the way in Normandy and the Germans suffered a defeat as big as Stalingrad. Eisenhower took over the land battle in September 1944 and the allies went nowhere.
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@WardenWolf
Not really...
British Aircraft in the Berlin airlift:
Avro Lancaster 2, Avro Lincoln 1, Avro York 209, Avro Tudor 5,
Avro Lancastrian 15, Bristol Type 170 Freighter2,
Douglas DC-3 (Dakota) 107 (All brought, and paid for),
Handley Page Hastings 32,
Handley Page Halifax / Halton 41,
Short Sunderland 12,
Vickers VC.1 Viking 2
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MONTY
The Field-Marshal
1944-1976
NIGEL HAMILTON
HAMISH HAMILTON
LONDON
1986
P64
'General Browning, Corps Commander of the three and a half divisions designated to participate in the carpet-drop on Zon, Vegel, Graves, Nijmegen and Arnhem, is supposed to have remarked to Monty that Arnhem might be a 'bridge too far'. This is inherently unlikely, since Browning saw Dempsey, not Monty, on the day the revised 'Comet' operation, re-named Operation 'Market Garden', was resurrected.'
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@lyndoncmp5751
The Lorraine Campaign:
An Overview,
September-December 1944
by Dr. Christopher R. Gabel
February, 1985
THIRD ARMY
Introduction
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 discovered that violating logistical principles is an unforgiving and cumulative matter.
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@michaelhenry7638
Nope. The MARKET air plan was down to the the US General Brereton, head of the FAAA (First Allied Airborne Army, to save you looking it up). Montgomery had no final say on MARKET. On his, he evidence is clear:
CHESTER WILMOT
THE STRUGGLE FOR EUROPE
WM. COLLINS, SONS AND CO LTD. 1954
CHAPTER XXVII. THE LOST OPPORTUNITY
P 588
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 GUNS AT LAST LIGHT
THE WAR IN WESTERN EUROPE, 1944-1945
Rick Atkinson
LITTLE BROWN 2013.
This paperback edition published in 2013.
P 265
‘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, despite analysis that showed transporting the entire combat force at a deliberate rate could take up to four days.’
UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II
The European Theater of Operations
THE SIEGFRIED LINE CAMPAIGN
By Charles B. MacDonald
CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY
UNITED STATES ARMY WASHINGTON, D.C., 1993
P132
‘Naturally anxious that all their strength arrive on D-Day, the division commanders asked that the planes fly more than one mission the first day. They pointed to the importance of bringing all troops into the corridor before the enemy could reinforce his antiaircraft defenses or launch an organized ground assault. For their part, the troop carrier commanders dissented. Flying more than one mission per aircraft, they said, would afford insufficient time between missions for spot maintenance, repair of battle damage, and rest for the crews. High casualties among the airmen might be the result. If weather remained favorable, they pointed out, and if combat aircraft assumed some of the resupply missions, the troop carriers might fly but one mission daily and still transport three and a half divisions by D plus 2. Although it meant taking a chance on enemy reaction and on the weather, General Brereton sided with the troop carrier commanders. He decided on one lift per day. Although subsequent planning indicated that it would in fact take four days to convey the divisions, General Brereton stuck by his decision.’
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@iemjgf
'Positive intelligence provided by Prince Bernard of SS units in the area was ignored. '
The SS man Prince Bernard was shown the door by both British and US intelligence services.
Anything purporting to come from the Dutch underground at that time was routinely ignored, due to the German 'Englanspiel' penetration of the Dutch underground at that time.
MARKET GARDEN was no different to any other matter in that.
'The correct plan would have been to take the Scheldt and open up the port of Antwerp. The Navy thought this was the best idea'
Taking the Scheldt would have taken a month, even starting in early September even if the entire weight of 21st Army Group could have been brought to bear on the matter. There would still have been the three week delay in making Antwerp operational while the Scheldt was cleared of mines. This would still have left the V2 rocket campaign against London unattended to.
Major Brian Urquhart presented his case to his superiors, but it was far from conclusive. The aerial photographs he presented (if such a presentation ever took place), were far from being a smoking gun in intelligence evidence.
'I believe that someone should have been held to account for the needless deaths of our fine young men.'
And why would you believe that?..
MARKET GARDEN was an undertaking to take allied forces to the Ruhr, to stop V2 rocket attacks on London, to stop German reinforcements reaching the German 15th Army. The undertaking was given the go-ahead by Eisenhower, Montgomery, and Brereton on the basis that it was most likely to succeed.
who should be held to account? And on what basis should they be judged? The outcome? If so, then hindsight would apply. The decision making to go-ahead? If so, then any judgement would have on what the decision makers knew at that time. Any comparative judgement against other allied failures in that period? AACHEN cost 20,000 casualties, METZ cost 45,000 casualties, the HURTGEN FOREST cost 55,000 casualties. Who gets held to account?.. The one senior person with involvement in MARKET GARDEN, AACHEN, METZ, and the HURTGEN FOREST was Eisenhower.
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ronald smith
Wall to wall rubbish.
If anyone lost France, it was the French. Britain supplied about 10% of he allied land forces campaign.
As too who were the first to retreat:
15th May 1940. Reynaud telephoned Churchill and said that it was all over and that the Battle was lost.
16th May. Churchill flew to Paris. He met French leaders at the Quai d’Orsay. As the meeting went on, they ccould see French officials burning archives in the garden.
16th May 1940, Dowding wrote to Churchill. His letter ended:
‘I believe that, if an adequate fighter force is kept in this country, if the fleet remains in being, and if Home Forces are suitably organised to resist invasion, we should be able to carry on the war single handed for some time, if not indefinitely. But, if the Home Defence Force is drained away in desperate attempts to remedy the situation in France, defeat in France will involve the
final, complete and irremediable defeat of this country.
I have the honour to be, Sir, Your obedient Servant,
Air Chief Marshal,
Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief,
Fighter Command, Royal Air Force.’
21st May 1940. British forces attacked German formations at Arras and then on the 22nd, Gort was ordered to attack German forces as per the Weygand Plan.
25th May 1940. British troops fell back, with the French towards the coast.
On the 25th May in response to the failure of a French attack from the Somme, Gort informed Blanchard of his intention to withdraw to the coast. On the 26th may Gort and Blanchard drew up plans for the withdrawal to the coast.
26th May 1940. (6.57pm), an Admiralty signal put
Operation Dynamo in hand.
Later on the 26th, the decision to evacuate the BEF was taken and this decision was passed onto the French Government on that same day.
At 1pm on the 27th, a War Office telegram to Gort instructed him that henceforth his task is to evacuate the maximum force possible.
28th May 1940. Belgium capitulated at 1 hours’ notice leaving the BEF to cover the undefended left of the Allied flank.
29th May 1940. Before any complaint or request was received from the French, Churchill ordered that the French should have a full share in evacuation and that they should have full access to British shipping during the evacuation.
31st May 1940. Churchill flew to Paris for a meeting with the French Government at the French War Office at the Rue Saint-Dominique. At that meeting, attended by amongst others, Reynaud, Petain, Churchill and Attlee, Churchill pointed out that at up to that point, French forces had been given no orders to evacuate.
4th June1940. Operation Dynamo ended with approximately 220,000
British troops and approximately 110,000 French troops evacuated. A total of 861 allied have taken part in the operation of which 693 are British. Over 100,000 French troops have evacuated by British ships.
All clear now?
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Montgomery had served with distinction in the First World War, being wounded twice and being awarded the DSO.
In trying circumstances, in France in 1940, in command of a single division Montgomery had performed with distinction as he trained his division to the highest pitch of efficiency. His work proved its worth as he led his troops on the famous night march to close the gap on the allied left after the Belgian capitulation. When so ordered, he brought his division back to Britain almost intact.
As a single army commander, in his first major command, he reorganized 8th Army, won against Rommel with inferior numbers at Alam el Halfa, and then went on to end the war in North Africa as a contest at Alamein. For HUSKY, Montgomery tore up Patton’s lunatic plan to land all around the island to shreds and concentrated allied forces in one place, the campaign was over in six weeks. Montgomery finished OVERLORD ahead of schedule (D+78, instead of D+90), with 22% fewer than expected casualties, and gave the Germans a defeat as big as Stalingrad. Montgomery sorted out the Northern half of the Bulge, carried out the crossing of the Rhine with six divisions suffering just 1,200 casualties, and saved Denmark from Soviet occupation.
Of his American colleagues, Bradley, Eisenhower and Devers did not have a single day of personal combat experience between them. Eisenhower had not even seen a dead body until April 1943.
Any questions?
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CHESTER WILMOT
THE STRUGGLE FOR EUROPE
WM. COLLINS, SONS AND CO LTD. 1954
P 588
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 GUNS AT LAST LIGHT
THE WAR IN WESTERN EUROPE, 1944-1945
Rick Atkinson
LITTLE BROWN 2013.
P 265
‘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, despite analysis that showed transporting the entire combat force at a deliberate rate could take up to four days.’
UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II
The European Theater of Operations
THE SIEGFRIED LINE CAMPAIGN
By Charles B. MacDonald
CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY
UNITED STATES ARMY WASHINGTON, D.C., 1993
P132
‘Naturally anxious that all their strength arrive on D-Day, the division commanders asked that the planes fly more than one mission the first day. They pointed to the importance of bringing all troops into the corridor before the enemy could reinforce his antiaircraft defenses or launch an organized ground assault. For their part, the troop carrier commanders dissented. Flying more than one mission per aircraft, they said, would afford insufficient time between missions for spot maintenance, repair of battle damage, and rest for the crews. High casualties among the airmen might be the result. If weather remained favorable, they pointed out, and if combat aircraft assumed some of the resupply missions, the troop carriers might fly but one mission daily and still transport three and a half divisions by D plus 2. Although it meant taking a chance on enemy reaction and on the weather, General Brereton sided with the troop carrier commanders. He decided on one lift per day. Although subsequent planning indicated that it would in fact take four days to convey the divisions, General Brereton stuck by his decision.’
Where is the ego in that?
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@akgeronimo501
R
'The broad front, by the way, a bone thrown to England, was designed to not allow the Germans to reorganize. They were pushed everywhere.'
Your words.
Get real. Eisenhower's broad front gave the Germans just what they wanted, time and space to rebuold their forces and defences. 'A bone thrown to England.'
You cannot be serious...Montgomery offered to stop British forces and let the USA armies advance together, south of the Ardennes, providing a decision was made to concentrate allied resources.
The germans agreed that a concentrated allied thrust would have been the best policy:
'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
And also, it seems, at least one American who was there:
'if Eisenhower had not been so "wishy washy" and had backed either Montgomery or Bradley in the fall of 1944, the war would have been over by Christmas. Instead he [Eisenhower] hesitated, then backed Montgomery when it was too late'
Ralph Ingersoll.
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'Let's stay serious and objective! Montgomery won El Alamein because the German military situation was busy turning around.'
Montgomery won at El Alamein because his previous victory at Alam el Halfa ensured thst the battle be foight where he wished it to be fought. He then reorganized and retrained the Eighth Army to make it fit for battle and then resisted political pressure to attack before everything was in place. for just 13,500 casualties he ended the war in North Africa as a contest.
'The Allied submarines sank the Italian ships responsible for bringing essential supplies to the Afrika Corps while, at the same time, the Allies ensured a predominance in supply and airspace ... these "special" circumstances, everything was in place to obtain victory ...'
So what was Monmtgomery supposed to do? Say stop, let the Africa Corps get all of their supplies so that everything is equal and we can ensure that there are no stupid comments on YouTube 79 years later?
'Let us recall that, during the landing of June 6, Montgomery was stuck for a month in front of Caen while the Americans were progressing elsewhere and the same failed miserably in Arnhem.'
Montgomery drew the overwhelming bulk of German forces onto his front at Caen, including 84% of German armour. Montgomery delivered victory by D+78, instead of the scheduled completed date of D+90, with 22% fewer than expected casualties and delivered in Normandy, a defeat for the Germans as big as Stalingrad.
The failure at Arnhem freed a fifth of the Dutch population, hindered German V2 attacks on Britain, stretched the German defences another 50 miles and gave the allies an excellent starting point for attacking the Rhine in the following months.
Other allied operations have failed more miserably than that.
What was your country doing while all this was going on?
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Yes wimbardi laksono, the Royal Navy performed with distinction throughout the Second World War. British sea power, and the expertise and courage of its men blunted German land victories in Norway, France and Greece by extricating large numbers of troops from those places. The Royal Navy defeated the German surface fleet, almost all of its sub-surface fleet, with 67% of all U-Boats destroyed being accounted for by British forces. It accounted for the Italian Navy, the neutering of the French fleet, and for keeping the Japanese fleet from the western part of the Indian Ocean. Britain supplied the bulk of the naval and merchant shipping for TORCH, HUSKY, AVALANCHE, SHINGLE, OVERLORD, and so on. Even after all this, Britain was still able to put together the British Pacific Fleet. A marvellous effort.
And all this, from a nation of just 46 million, a bit more if you rope in the contribution of the Commonwealth and Empire. From a nation that, in addition to the above, had to escort the shipping for its substantial import needs. The nation that, more than any other, had stuck to international naval treaties, and then had to cope with the consequences as so often, ship for ship, it was up against more modern and more powerful adversaries. A marvellous effort.
A few points of detail:
The loss of the PRINCE OF WALES, and REPULSE took place in the South China Sea, not the Pacific Ocean. The losses took place three days after the Japanese attack on PEARL HARBOUR. The idea that lessons from the PEARL HARBOUR attack could be absorbed in three days is absurd. In any case Pearl Harbour was an attack on ships in a sheltered anchorage. The attack on PRINCE OF WALES, and REPULSE to ok place at sea. If anyone should have been learning lessons, it should have the US Navy from the marvellous Royal Navy attack on the Italian Navy at TARANTO. Battleships sunk in a safe anchorage. The Japanese did, as TARANTO led to PEARL HARBOUR.
At the time of the BATTLE OF MIDWAY (June 1942), Britain had the carriers ARGUS, EAGLE, FORMIDABLE, FURIOUS, ILLUSTRIOUS, INDOMITABLE, and VICTORIOUS available. A marvellous effort after nearly three years of war.
As for US in the Pacific…it was sledgehammers to crack walnuts.
Guam (30 miles x 8 miles), 60,000 US troops v 23,000 Japanese troops.
Saipan (14miles x 7 miles), 71,000 US troops v 32,000 Japanese troops.
Iwo Jima (5miles x 4 miles), 110,000 US troops v 21,000 Japanese troops.
Etc, etc.
What is the fuss all about?
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@kniespel6243
Ah...
So you did not see what Montgomery did at Caen and Market Garden.
Let us look st some of the words from people that were around then
Caen:
‘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 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 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 the enemy reserves would race once the alarm was sounded’
From Omar Bradley's book A Soldier's Story.
‘Now I am quite certain no promises were made about Caen’
From Operation Victory, by Major-General Sir Francis De Guingand.
Market Garden:
‘Actually, only a handful of divisions was involved, the over-all losses were small and apart from the magnificent outburst of courage the battle had no more significance than half a dozen actions that were fought that same winter’
From Montgomery, by Alan Moorehead.
'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.'
From Crusade in Europe by Dwight D Eisenhower.
‘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.’
From Operation Victory, by Major-General Sir Francis De Guingand.
‘Heavy risks were taken in in the Battle of Arnhem, but they were justified by the great prize so nearly in our grasp. Had we been more fortunate in the weather, which turned against us at critical moments and restricted our mastery of the air, it is probable that we should have succeeded.’
From The Second World War, by Winston Churchill.
‘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!’
From a statement by German General Karl Student supplied by Basil Liddell Hart in 1949.
‘Why was Montgomery not given adequate troop and logistic support at least one more division?’
From On to Berlin, by US General James M Gavin.
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@kniespel6243
Oh well, its your funeral...
‘On 21January 1944, we foregathered at Norfolk House under Eisenhower’s chairmanship to compare or impressions. Montgomery, who was to command all the ground forces in the initial stages of ‘Overlord’ said at once that the planned assault by three divisions was insufficient to obtain a quick success. We must take a port at the earliest possible moment. He pressed that the proposed area of assault in Normandy be extended to include an area of the eastern side of the Cotentin Peninsular. The American forces should be placed on the right and he British to the left, the former to capture Cherbourg, and then drive for the Loire ports, while the British and Canadian forces would deal with the enemy’s main strength approaching from the east and south-east.’
Marshall of the Royal Air Force, Arthur Tedder – a ‘vet’
”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 Germans by diverting him toward Caen from Cotentin, we would also have given our strategy away. We desperately wanted the German to believe this attack on Caen was the main Allied effort.’
US General Omar Bradley – a ‘vet’
The Battle of the Beachead was a period of incessant and heavy fighting and one which, except for the capture of Cherbourg, showed few geographical gains. Yet it was during this period that the stage was set for the later, spectacular liberation of France and Belgium. The struggle in the beachhead was responsible for many developments, both material and doctrinal, that stood us in good stead throughout the remainder of the war.’
‘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.’
US General Dwight D Eisenhower – a ‘vet’
My father was a ‘vet’ of the fighting at Caen. He remembered the bitter fighting there against the mass of German forces.
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In, as far as Market Garden failed to take Arnhem. Montgomery's seem to be in line with Churchill, Eisenhower, the official US Army history of the European campaign, and the German General Student:
WINSTON S CHURCHILL.
THE SECOND WORLD WAR.
CASSELL & CO LTD REVISED EDITION NOVEMBER 1950.
VOLUME Vl TRIUMPH AND TRAGEDY
P174/5
‘Heavy risks were taken in in the Battle of Arnhem, but they were justified by the great prize so nearly in our grasp. Had we been more fortunate in the weather, which turned against us at critical moments and restricted our mastery of the air, it is probable that we should have succeeded.’
CRUSADE IN EUROPE
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
WILLIAM HEINEMANN LIMITED 1948
P340
'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.'
UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II
The European Theater of Operations
THE SIEGFRIED LINE CAMPAIGN
By Charles B. MacDonald
CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY
UNITED STATES ARMY WASHINGTON, D.C., 1993
P199
Field Marshal Montgomery has written: "We had undertaken a difficult operation,
attended by considerable risks. It was justified because, had good weather obtained,
there was no doubt that we should have attained full success."
CHESTER WILMOT
THE STRUGGLE FOR EUROPE
WM. COLLINS, SONS AND CO LTD.
1954
P 586
¹In Gavin's opinion, the performance of Frost's force was " the outstanding
independent parachute battalion action of the war." Frost's " tactical handling " was,
says Gavin, " a model for parachute unit commanders." Gavin, op. cit., p. 120.
¹Montgomery says that " Had good weather obtained, there was no doubt that we
should have attained full success." (Op. cit., p. 186.) Student, when interrogated by
Liddell Hart, did not go quite so far as this, but gave the weather as the main cause of
the failure.
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@Bullet-Tooth-Tony-
MONTY
The Field-Marshal
1944-1976
NIGEL HAMILTON
HAMISH HAMILTON
LONDON
1986
'St Malo fell on 17 August, Brest on 18 September 1944; neither was used. Monty's own chief of administration, 21st Army Group, Maj-General Miles Graham later considered that 'at the period at which the advance would have taken place we were no longer based on the Normandy beaches. The port of Dieppe was opened on September 5 and by the end of the month was dealing with over 6,000 tons a day. Ostend was captured on September 9 and opened on the 28th of the same month. Boulogne and Calais were captured on September 22 and 30 respectively. Meanwhile the depots on the Normandy beaches were being rapidly cleared by rail and road and the new Advance Base established in central and northern Belgium. An additional 17 General Transport companies with a lift of some 8,000 tons and preloaded with petrol and supplies were borrowed from the War Office and arrived in the latter half of September and early October.
`I personally have no doubt from a purely administrative point of view that, based as we were on the Channel ports, it would have been possible to carry out successfully the operation which Field-Marshal Montgomery desired:' Letter to The Times, 24.2.47.’
CHESTER WILMOT
THE STRUGGLE FOR EUROPE
WM. COLLINS, SONS AND CO LTD.
1954
P591-P592
When Eisenhower and Montgomery met in Brussels on September 10th, the Allied supply columns and transport aircraft could deliver from dumps in Normandy and bases in Britain to the front on the Moselle, the Meuse and the Dutch border some 10,000 tons a day for Patton, Hodges and Dempsey. The port of Dieppe was open and by the middle of the month had a daily intake of 3,000 tons, which was more than enough for First Canadian Army. In the last ten days of September with little
help from air transport, the supply capacity was increased to 14,000 tons a day. Of this total 'lift,' 2,000 tons would have been ample to support Third Army if it had assumed the defensive. This would have left 12,000 tons a day to maintain the 20 British and American divisions with which
Montgomery proposed to capture the Ruhr. Even on the basis of Eisenhower's inflated figure, this would have been sufficient, for in the wake of the advancing armies the supply facilities were being steadily improved. The petrol pipe-line from Cherbourg had reached Chartres by September 12th and was being laid at a rate of 25 miles a day. Rail communications were open from the Normandy bridgehead to Sommersous, 100 miles east of Paris, by September 7th, to Liege by the 18th, and to Eindhoven ten days later. At the end of September the port of Dieppe had a daily intake of 6,000 tons and by this time Ostend was also working.’
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@iemjgf
'The Market Garden fiasco was around 5 days. Where would Patton have been in 5 days?' Your words.
Why ask the question?.. We already know the answer.
No allied resources were taken away fronm Patton for Market Garden. He resumed his advance before Market Garden was even conceived.
By the 11th September, Patton was still West of Metz, about 100 miles from the Rhine.
General Hermann Balck, who took command of Army Group G in September, recalled in1979: “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.’” His words.
'With regard to the allocation of vital supplies I would have thought that Eisenhower called the shots? ' Your words.
Perhaps you are right. But he seemed to have stopped at the allocation of 7,000 tons per day for each army group: 21st Army Group (Montgomery), and 12th Army Group (Patton). Leaving, in Bradley's case, the decision to Bradley to give 5,000 tons per day to US 1st Army (Hodges), and 2,000 tons per day to US 3rd Army (Patton).
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@nickdanger3802
"In halting Patton at Argentan, however, I did not consult Montgomery. The decision to stop Patton was mine alone. I much preferred a solid shoulder at Argentan to the possibility of a broken neck at Falaise".
From Bradley's A Soldier's Story book. Page 377.
‘Sir Brian Horrocks Comments: Nevertheless, despite the slaughter in the Falaise Pocket, claimed everywhere, and rightly, as an outstanding victory, one third of the Seventh German Army, many of them without equipment, had managed to escape before the encircling prongs had closed around them. This should not have happened; many reasons have been put forward, but to my mind few Germans would not have escaped if Bradley had not halted Patton’s northerly advance. Montgomery, the master of the tactical battle, realized this only too well; to be quite honest, it was because of their lack of battle experience that he had little confidence in the U.S. Commanders.’
From Horrocks's, Corps Commander. Page 53.
...And these people were actually there...
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@Bullet-Tooth-Tony-
From Para Dave:
'An Army at Dawn,by Rick Atkinson,p419 .The British attack at el Alamein with more than 1000 tanks cracked the much weaker Axis defenders across a 40 mile front.The sheer weight of British resources made up for all the blunders,one account noted.Montgomery's 8th army hugged the Libyan coast much closer than it hugged the retreating Axis. *Air Marshall Conningham said "once Monty had his reputation he would never risk it again'
Rick Atkinson. Aged 69. Direct experience of the North African campaign, zero.
Alamein:
1,029 allied tanks, 547 axis tanks 1.88 to 1.
Operation Cobra:
2,451 allied tanks to 190 axis tanks. 12.9 to 1.
I caanot see what Para Dave in on about. As far as I am concrned, 1,029 to 547 tanks at Alamein is fine by me. I wish it had been 2,049 to 547.
As for the air war in North Africa:
'Not until 'Maori' or 'Mary' Coningham left and was succeeded by Air Vice-Marshal Broadhurst did RAF techniques improve, but Tedder's policy of applying the heavy bombing effort to the enemy's rear installations and supply lines was brilliantly successful, as Rommel's nightmare at Benghazi was soon to show. 'I punched him on the nose,' Monty afterwards pithily acknowledged; 'Tedder bit his tail.' Yet if the drubbing at Alamein and the vulture-like pursuit had shattered Rommel's nerve and forced him into premature evacuation '
Nigel Hamilton. Aged 69. Direct experience of the North African campaign, zero.
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@KrisBurns22
'Without US supplies during the early stages of WW2 Britain would have been starved into submission.'
'NORTH AMERICAN SUPPLY
BY H. DUNCAN HALL
LONDON: 1955
HER MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE AND LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO
P3
In the first fifteen months of the war the United Kingdom supplied 90-7 per cent. ( in terms of value) of British Commonwealth supplies of munitions from all sources. Canada supplied 2-6 per cent., the rest of the Commonwealth 1.1 per cent., and purchases in the United States 5.6 per cent.'
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
For British Food... 1941 for example.
UK crops harvest: 53.164 million tons.
Cereals, Potatoes and Sugar Beet: 6.5 million tons
Cattle, Calves, Sheep and Lambs: 13.109 million
UK Milk production: 1,222.8 million gallons
Total food imports: 14.654 million tons
Lend-Lease food imports: (7.4% of total food imports),1.078 million tons
Processed food production: 20,314 million tons
Total food consumption (UK): 19.996 million tons
Foodstuffs lost at sea enroute to Britain: 787,200 tons (5.3%) of the intended 15 million tons of food imports in 1941.
We can run through the figures for any other years of the war if you wish...
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
'It was the American destroyers that guarded the convoys of American goods keeping 🇬🇧 in the fight.
Not really. Guarding the sea lanes and convoys bringing supplies to Britain was overwhelmingly carried out by the Royal Navy, with good support from the RCN.
WINSTON S CHURCHILL.
THE SECOND WORLD WAR.
CASSELL & CO LTD
VOLUME II THEIR FINEST HOUR
REVISED EDITION NOVEMBER 1950.
P5
‘Out of 781 German and 85 Italian U-boats destroyed in European theatre, the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, 594 were accounted for by British sea and air forces, who also disposed of all of the German battleships, cruisers and destroyers, besides destroying or capturing the whole Italian Fleet.’
'Not to mention the P-40’s, Sherman tanks, and most importantly gas sent to 🇬🇧 in Africa'
The P-40 was unfit for operations in North West Europe, and was therefore sent to the Middle East. The Sherman as slightly better than British tank types in 1942, but was only just a match for the German Mark IV. The Key weapon in the desert was the anti-tank gun, and the British used British anti-tank guns.
ARTHUR BRYANT
THE TURN OF THE TIDE
1939-43
COLLINS, ST JAMES’S PLACE, LONDON 1957
P440
' The relative importance of Egypt as opposed to Abadan was a subject to which I had given a great deal of thought. All the motive-power at sea, on land and in the air through-out the Middle East, Indian Ocean and India was entirely dependent on the oil from Abadan. If we lost this supply, it could not be made good from American resources owing to shortage of tankers and continuous losses of these ships through submarine action. If we lost the Persian oil, we inevitably lost Egypt, command of the Indian Ocean and endangered the whole Indian-Burma situation.'
Do know about US gas supplies to Africa. What would gas have been used for?..
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
If you picked up your views during your education, you should ask the college for your money back.
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@doubleaught7540
The aerial photography can be seen on line. Unlike the Hollywod film 'A Bridge Too Far', which includes a photohraph of post war AFV, disguised as Second World War machines, shown in clear at a nice oblique angle, the actual photographs were grainy overhead shots, which, only after a considerable amount of enhancement showed what seemed to be a few Mark III tanks that identified as belonging to the Hermann Goering Division Training and Replacement unit.
Any information purporting to come from the Dutch Underground at that time was disregarded due to the German 'Englandspiel' penetration of the Dutch Underground. MARKET GARDEN was no different to any other matter in this regard.
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.’
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@lacuevadeadulam
On the 8th September 1944, the first German V2 rockets landed in London, launched from the Western part of the Netherlands, in the area around The Hague. An urgent signal was sent from London to Montgomery about know what could be done about those attacks. The rockets could not be intercepted once they were in flight, and given they were launched from mobile launchers, usually in built up area, thus the chances of hitting their launch equipment were almost zero. Therefore, the only thing that could be attempted was to stop delivery of rockets to the western part of the Netherlands. When Montgomery met Dempsey on the 10th September, they discussed whether MARKET GARDEN should end at Nijmegen or Arnhem. Montgomery showed Dempsey the signal from London which settled the matter.
Where is the ego in that?
Prior to that, Montgomery had pointed out to Eisenhower that allied logistics only allowed for two of the four allied armies to advance against Germany and that the advance should be by British 2nd Army and the US 1st Army – towards the Ruhr. Failing that decision, Montgomery would agree to British 2nd Army and the Canadian 1st Army being halted, and the resources put to Bradley’s subordinates, Hodges (US 1st Army), and US 3rd Army (Patton), provided that a decision on a single thrust was taken over the available resources being spread out over all four armies – leaving the allies being not strong enough to advance properly anywhere – which is what happened.
Where is the ego in that?
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@nickdanger3802
"First and foremost, they note that they have written off the main body of Lend-Lease"
Too right. The USA made money hand over fist in the war, bleeding Britain, France and Russia white, while they, and other countries made sure that he USA was safe and smug, 3,000 mles from the nearest enemy.
It was cheap foreign policy for the USA.
Then, a few generations later, their descendants have got the bare faced cheek to on here trying to tell others how it was and to demand some sort of thank you for events that took place decades before they were born. The USA should be thanking others for sorthing things out before the USA turned up and elbowed its way to the front at the victoty parades.
Fcuk off.
In any case, Lend-Lease had little effect on the war in the Middle East, as in regard to goods sourced from the USA, goods paid for exceeded Lend-Lease goods until the end of 1942.
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CHESTER WILMOT
THE STRUGGLE FOR EUROPE
WM. COLLINS, SONS AND CO LTD. 1954
P543
‘On the morning of the September 10th Dempsey arrived at Montgomery’s Tactical H.Q. prepared to advocate this course. Montgomery greeted him with the news that a signal had just come from the War Office, suggesting that the V.2s, which landed on London on the 8th. were launched from bases in Western Holland near The Hague. The War Office enquired whether in the near future there was any chance of these bases being captured or at least cut off from their sources of supply in Germany. This settled the issue’
THE GUNS AT LAST LIGHT
THE WAR IN WESTERN EUROPE, 1944-1945
Rick Atkinson
LITTLE BROWN 2013.
P245/246
‘The initial volley had been fired from Holland, and the SS general overseeing PENGUIN had placed his headquarters outside Nijmegen, ‘a Dutch town only ten miles south of Arnhem on the Rhine, a prime objective of Operation MARKET GARDEN. The message from London advising Montgomery of the first rocket attacks also pleaded, “Wil you please report most urgently by what date you consider you can rope off the coastal area contained by Antwerp-Utrecht-Rotterdam?” While General Dempsey and others favored a more easterly advance toward the Rhine at Wesel, this new German onslaught further persuaded Montgomery to drive deep into Holland. “It must be towards Arnhem.” He said.
Where is the ego in that?
One drop, two drops, Montgomery had no jurisdiction over the air plan.
CHESTER WILMOT
THE STRUGGLE FOR EUROPE
WM. COLLINS, SONS AND CO LTD. 1954
CHAPTER XXVII. THE LOST OPPORTUNITY
P 588
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 GUNS AT LAST LIGHT
THE WAR IN WESTERN EUROPE, 1944-1945
Rick Atkinson
LITTLE BROWN 2013.
This paperback edition published in 2013.
P 265
‘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, despite analysis that showed transporting the entire combat force at a deliberate rate could take up to four days.’
UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II
The European Theater of Operations
THE SIEGFRIED LINE CAMPAIGN
By Charles B. MacDonald
CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY
UNITED STATES ARMY WASHINGTON, D.C., 1993
P132
‘Naturally anxious that all their strength arrive on D-Day, the division commanders asked that the planes fly more than one mission the first day. They pointed to the importance of bringing all troops into the corridor before the enemy could reinforce his antiaircraft defenses or launch an organized ground assault. For their part, the troop carrier commanders dissented. Flying more than one mission per aircraft, they said, would afford insufficient time between missions for spot maintenance, repair of battle damage, and rest for the crews. High casualties among the airmen might be the result. If weather remained favorable, they pointed out, and if combat aircraft assumed some of the resupply missions, the troop carriers might fly but one mission daily and still transport three and a half divisions by D plus 2. Although it meant taking a chance on enemy reaction and on the weather, General Brereton sided with the troop carrier commanders. He decided on one lift per day. Although subsequent planning indicated that it would in fact take four days to convey the divisions, General Brereton stuck by his decision.’
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@marysullivan3326
'i certainly have no idea where thats coming from.'
It just pours out of the USA on a conveyor belt...Films, TV programmes, books, lectures, YouTube comments...All full of America this, America that.
Let us be absolutely clear, Britain was the only major power to fight from the first day, to the last day of the war. Britain fought in every major theatre of war, it was only country to fight Germany on its own. Britain was the only major power to go to war on behalf of another country (Poland) - all the others either attacked other countries, or were attacked by other countries. Britain out-mobilized every other country (even Russia). Relative to its circumstances, Britain out-produced every other country. On its own, Britain out-produced Germany. All this from a country that was uder air assault, a sea blockade, and for four years had the enemy 21 miles away. As far as who did what in the Second World War is concerned is concerned, we rule.
'Britain asked the US of A to join in the fight.'
When did that happen?
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@richardbono5540
Really...
All I can find is a diary entry from Eisenhower's naval aide Butcher. Tedder was supposedly the ring leader of a plot to get rid of Montgomery. Something he later denied:
WITH PREJUDICE
The War Memoirs of Marshall of the Royal Air Force
Lord Tedder G.C.B.
CASSELL & COMPANY 1966
P 563
According to the diary of Eisenhower’s aide, Captain Butcher, I told the Supreme Commander on the evening of 19 July that Montgomery had in effect, stopped his armour from going farther. Later, I am reported as saying that he British Chiefs of Staff would ‘support any recommendation that Ike might care to make with respect to Monty for not succeeding in going places with his big three-armoured division push’
I am sure that this record is misleading for although I strongly disapproved of Montgomery’s action, it was quite beyond my powers to speak in the name of the British Chief’s of Staff.’
This from the diary of Alanbrooke, CIGS:
July 27th.
‘Then Dinner with the P.M., Ike and Bedell Smith’
‘ "The Strategy of the Normandy landing is quite straight forward. But now comes the trouble; the press chip in and we heard that the British are doing nothing and suffering no casualties whilst the Americans are bearing all the brunt of the war"
“There is no doubt that Ike is all out to do all he can to maintain the best relations between British and Americans. But it is equally clear that Ike knows nothing about strategy. Bedell Smith, on the other hand, has brains but no military education in its true sense. He is certainly one of the best American officers but still falls far short when it comes to strategic outlook. With that Supreme Command set-up it is no wonder that Monty’s real high ability is not always realised. Especially so when ‘national’ spectacles pervert the perspective of the strategic landscape.” ’
Hardly the words of a Chief of Imperial General Staff that wanted to sack Montgomery...
As for Churchill, I am very familiar with his six volume history of the Second World War. There is no mention of a desire, or plan to sack Montgomery in that work.
Atkinson and Beevor were not even born when the war ended, and therefore could not have been there, unlike the people I have quoted. So what do Atkinson and Beevor offer in regard to 'everyone from Churchill to the Imperial General Staff wanted to sack him in Normandy'?
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@daleburrell6273
The average American documentary about the Berlin Air Lift goes something like this:
AMERICA,SUPPLIES,MARSHALL,AMERICATHIS,C47,CANDY,AMERICATHAT,GODDAM,
TEMPELHOF,AMERICATHIS,AMERICATHAT,C54,CHEERINGBERLINERS,TRUMAN,
MONTGOMERYCLIFT,AMERICATHIS,CANDY,HOLLYWOOD,AMERICATHAT,GODDAM,AMERICADIDITALL,STRATOFREIGHTER,STARSANDSTRIPES,CANDY.
Oh, and some others helped as well.
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@BunyipToldMe
'So, almost half a million English troops'
Err...
No it was 390,000 British troops.
The Dutch supplied 240,000 troops, the Belgians, 600,000 troops, the French supplied 2.1million troops to the allied cause.
The Germans had 3.35 million troops.
'Why didn't they fight instead of running away or surrendering?'
Err...
The Germans attacked on the 10th May 1940.
In the early morning of the 15th, the French Premier Raynaud, telephoned Churchill to tell that the Germans had broken through French lines and the war was lost.
Churchill flew to Paris on the 16th. During his meeting with French leaders at the Quai d’Orsay he could see French officials burning French government papers in the garden.
The Netherlands capitulated on 17th May.
German forces reached the coast on the 24th May, leaving two French armies, 250,000 British troops and the Belgian army isolated from the rest of the allied armies.
Belgium capitulated on the 28th May, having given France and Britain one hour notice of that surrender.
On the same day, the Germans captured Calais, leaving Dunkirk as the only port in Northern France in allied hands.
The Dunkirk evacuation finished on the 4th June, with 220,000 British troops, and 110,000 French troops evacuated to Britain.
On 10 June, the French government declared Paris an open city. On the same day, Italy declared war on France.
On 13 June, At a meeting a meeting of the Anglo-French Supreme War Council at Tours, Britain offered the French a Franco-British Political Union. The offer was rejected.
On 14 June, Paris fell.
On 16th June, Petain replaced Reynaud as the French Premier having already begun secret negotiations with the Germans for an armistice, whilst still urging Britain to send more forces to France.
On 17th June, Petain sought agreement from Britain to seek a separate armistice with Germany. Britain agreed to that request, with two conditions: that the French fleet be put beyond the reach of the Germans, and that Germans pilots in French custody be transferred to British custody.
General de Gaulle, who no longer in the French government, arrived in London on 17th June and in a BBC broadcast on the 18the June, called on French people to resist German occupation.
On the 22nd June, the French concluded an armistice with Germany, with neither of the British conditions for an agreement to an armistice having been fulfilled.
The last British in France departed on 25th June.
And your service in which major war gives you the right to accuse troops of running away?..
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