Comments by "TheVilla Aston" (@thevillaaston7811) on "War Stories"
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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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