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3 дня назад
The real problem with Market Garden is the fake history enhanced by movies and memoirs. It was Gavin and the 82nd who failed to even try to take the Nijmegen bridge until day 2-3. Their weren't any panzers in the Reich Wald! He knew that as did local resistance. Zero evidence of Brits stopping for tea. A ton of evidence to prove that Gavin was against the plan for nationalistic reasons from day one.
There are two things to draw from this immediately, 1 You don't need to defend landing zones if no one's landing, so if you land, move off and 2 James' smock really blends in with the landscape really well.
This series has taught me more than any other about Market Garden. The maps are critical in my understanding and the modern analysis around holding landing zones vs consolidating and attacking in force, not taking Nijmegen bridge, and worrying about the wrong parts of the battlefield has been fascinating.
I truly enjoy this series and the excellent, knowledgeable banter between these two. However, sometimes, it feels like James (in the smock) prematurely cuts off Al just as he's getting going. I wish he'd let him got a few seconds longer before interrupting him.
Although Jim writes tremendous books, Als airborne and armour knowledge is second to none.😮. Your chats about armour in the Market Garden series show that there must be a gap in the market for TV on wartime armour whilst you walk around preserved examples and the drive them around.
This series has been so incredible. Just finished the podcast series going through it and have bought Al's book as a result. Thank you for giving me a new obsession lol
Your videos have been great to watch and learn from. They have made me want to learn more about D-Day and Juno, Sword and Gold beaches. Market Garden was way more than I had thought. Thanks.
Al touched on something I've always said was a huge factor in the failing to Arnhem and that was communication or lack of. So many huge things happened due to no radios working properly. You could say Browning using 30 gliders for his HQ on the first day was a total waste and could have been used to bring the whole of South Staffs on one lift. These guys are fantastic and highly recommend Al Murray's book. I've read a lot of Arnhem books and his by far the best. He also mentions Leonard Hooker and sheds more light on his unfortunate ending. Me and my friends found his grave and immediately wanted to know how a Navy man died at Arnhem. It's unbelievable the reason behind his story!!!!!
The second half of the South Staffords battalion was not the glider loads bumped to second lift by Browning moving his Corps transport up to first lift, although the number of gliders (32 Horsas plus 6 Wacos vs 40 Horsas and 1 Hamilcar) is temptingly similar. The loads that got bumped by the last minute change were the 6-pounder guns of Z Troop (Division HQ defence) and second line ammunition Jeeps and trailers for 1st Anti-Tank Battery, and 1st Parachute Brigade and 1st Parachute Squadron Royal Engineers Jeeps. You would have to restructure the Arnhem plan if a complete South Staffords battalion landed on D-Day is to make any difference at all. If you follow their story over the first two days, Brigadier Hicks (standing in for the missing Urquhart) decided to take a gamble and release them early from their Phase 1 task of protecting Landing Zone 'S' before the second lift arrived and sent them into Arnhem to support 1st Parachute Brigade. A logical choice by Hicks, since their Phase 2 role was to be Brigade reserve in the planned final divisional perimeter around Arnhem. By the time the leading B and D Companies reached 1st and 3rd Parachute Battalions in western Arnhem, the second lift had arrived and A and C Companies had caught up with them. Browning's motive to move up his Corps HQ transport looks self-centred and he doesn't appear to have voiced his reasons for doing so, but they can be deduced by examining his role in the planning for MARKET. He and Dempsey had wanted two lifts on D-Day and troops landed close to their objectives by means of dawn glider coups de main assaults - which would have used D Companies of the 2nd South Staffords, 7th KOSB, and 1st Border Battalions to take the Arnhem-Nimegen-Grave bridges. These were removed by Brereton's decision to fly one flight per day entirely in daylight in order to improve his Troop Carrier's poor record for navigation and drop accuracy in the Sicily and Normandy operations. As an alternative at Nijmegen, Gavin said the British wanted him to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge to take it by coup de main, and although he toyed with the idea he said he eventually discarded it because of his experience in Sicily, where he landed with just four or five men to command and the division was disorganised for days. No doubt frustrated by the Americans in his efforts to get the bridges seized quickly, and neutralised politically within 1st Allied Airborne Army by his previous threat to resign over Brereton's LINNET II operation and learning that Brereton had planned to accept his resignation and replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps, he had obviously resigned himself to trying to influence events only after he had safely arrived on the ground in the Netherlands. Apparently the change to the glider schedule was made late on D-1 (16 September), so late in fact that some of the official records on the glider manifests do not reflect all the changes correctly. So the Staffords are a red herring - they should have been taking the Arnhem bridge at dawn on 17 September and Browning's Corps HQ should have been arriving at Groesbeek in the late afternoon or early evening. The radio communications problems at Arnhem is another complex issue, not best served by the Hollywood film that exaggerated the problems, then suddenly contradicted itself with a late radio conversation between Urquhart and Frost near the end of the bridge seige, but that's another long story.
@ Some pretty interesting points and completely agree on Hicks decision!!! I used the South Staffs as an example of what they could have used those gliders for instead of Brownings HQ. I think although this was a copy/paste of a previous Op (Comet) 10 days planning an operation this size was always going to have flaws. There are so many factors to this operation you can spend hours dissecting and discussing, many pints have been sipped with like minded people about this topic!!! I’ve been looking more into those poor men from 10th and 156 battalions. So sad
@@phillipbrown9661 - well, COMET was designed as a pursuit operation with one airborne division that because of the intelligence situation needed to be replaced with an upgrade as a set piece assault with three airborne divisions - the second division to secure the corridor for XXX Corps to break through, and a third to reinforce the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave area where German armour was being reported. The outline was provisionally called operation SIXTEEN. Operation COMET had been provisional FIFTEEN, while 1st Allied Airborne Army only had nine planned (and cancelled) operations on its books at this time. Brereton took the SIXTEEN proposal, renamed it MARKET, and made a copy/paste of his LINNET/LINNET II air plan onto the SIXTEEN objectives and thereby scarificed the requirements of the airborne troops in order to serve his objectives of improving the Troop Carrier performance after Sicily and Normandy. In terms of what-ifs, I would agree with the gents walking the ground to go with what you have landed with on the first lift - six battalions to occupy Arnhem and forget the landing zones, and then perhaps drop the 4th Parachute Brigade at Elst on the second lift, which was originally in the SIXTEEN proposal for the first lift, but deleted by Brereton due to insufficient aircraft. Securing Elst, even on the second day, would secure the small rail and road bridges over the Linge-Wettering drainage canal (effectively an anti-tank ditch that became the front line in October after GARDEN had failed) and occupy the only significant settlement on the main road between Nijmegen and Arnhem. Dempsey cited the removal of this drop and having to hold the landing zones as the fatal flaws in the MARKET plan, according to Peter Rostron's 2010 Dempsey biography. I'm sure 4th Brigade would have given a better account of themselves taking Elst against zero or minimal opposition instead of being destroyed at Johannahoeve. There were only remnants of SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 and two companies of naval cadets from Schiffsstammabteilung 14 located to their north in the Elden area, south of the Arnhem bridge.
@@davemac1197 wow never thought of basically ditching 4th Airborne’s landing location and dropping them at Elst!!! Doing that would bolster the force on day 1 advancing to Arnhem. Dropping the 4th at Elst would have also had support from the Polish airborne. Still would have been a huge gamble for the Battalions at Arnhem but in those vital hours at the start, they had a fighting chance. Still doesn’t hide the fact though communication was a huge issue and was the cause of many hiccups.
@@phillipbrown9661 - I'm assuming the intended drop zone at Elst was for the 4th Brigade (it was the the third brigade in the division, with the attached Polish brigade being the fourth). It was a complete surprise to me a few weeks ago when someone drew my attention to Rostron's biography on Dempsey containing this nugget. I have long been aware of the intended divisional perimeter around Arnhem, with 1st Parachute Brigade in the centre around the bridges, 1st Airlanding to the west in Oosterbeek, 4th Para to the north (taking over from 1st Para Battalion) and the Poles in the east covering the Zutphen highway and the Westervoort bridges. Each sector having two battalions in the line and a third in reserve, hence the Staffords were the planned reserve in the Airlanding Brigade sector. If they intended in SIXTEEN for the 4th Brigade to land at Elst, the Arnhem divisional perimeter was presumably going to be a lot tighter. I would certainly like to see the maps on this, if they still exist! The communications problems affected command and control for sure, but I would point out that 1st Para Brigade Major Tony Hibbert at the bridge was able to contact Brigadier Lathbury by radio on the first evening and suggest that he slip one of the other battalions down to the 2nd Battalion route as he was sure it was still clear. Fitch and Lathbury was apparently all for following the suggestion, but it was Urquhart that ordered the 3rd Battalion halt for the night in Oosterbeek and proceed in the morning, so that's a bad decision by Urquhart and you can't blame it on a communications failure in this instance. Dobie changed his 1st Battalion mission on his own initiative after receiving a radio message from Frost asking for help at the bridge, so that was received as well. The bridge also had reliable support from the Light Regiment guns in Oosterbeek, thanks to the Royal Artillery using the more powerful No.18 sets. As I said, it's a complex picture, and Lewis Golden (Divisional Signals Regiment Adjutant) wrote a report on it after the war I think is very instructive.
Another factor that makes Ginkel heath a bad dropzone is that there were barracks containing german troops right next to it. Granted these were second rate troops, but they still made life difficult for the KOSB defending the dropzone for the second lift. The KOSB also didn't have enough men to secure the entire heath. So by the time the second lift arrived there was vicious fighting going on and the heath was on fire.
Thanks guys. There''s just so much wrong with Op Market Garden, and a number of times where they could have got their nuts out of the fire. ABTF has quite a bit to answer for the misconceptions. Great job
Looking for the ideal drop zone isn't the problem, distance wasn't the problem. The problem was the time it gave the Germans time to react, create a defence line, harden that line and counter attack. Airborne troops are lightly armed with limited mobility, there was no way a brigade with diverse objectives were going to fight eight miles and capture a major river crossing. Time gentlemen that's what finished the Arnhem drop and the compromises that caused it when everyone gets a voice in an operation.
Just like Al I’m convinced every time I encounter Arnhem that maybe this time they’ll do it. This series is such a good companion to the pod and Al’s book. Proper 3D WW2 as it were 🤣 tally ho & keep up the good work ✌🏻
3:31 - "we are 60 feet above sea level here, you're not, south of the river, you're below sea level" - er, not quite - more like 79-92 feet above sea level, based on the 1943 military map of the area - that field you're in (Drop Zone 'X' west of Telefoonweg) has spot heights of around 24-28 metres (79 to 92 feet) above sea level, the datum on the contemporary maps state "DATUM MEAN SEA LEVEL AT AMSTERDAM" - probably because they were based on Dutch pre-war maps. The polder south of the Arnhem bridge was not BELOW sea level but still ABOVE sea level - the average spot height is about 10 meters, which is 33 feet above sea level, but the important point is that the rivers have to have Winter dikes because the polder they are protecting may be below the river level during the Winter floods. In the Spring and Summer the polder and the river flood plains dry out, and in the Autumn and Winter rains they get soggy again, so in September they should still be quite firm. Glider landings on polder would still be problematic as the fields are small and defined by numerous drainage ditches, which would also hamper vehicle extrication and movement. The proposed and cancelled glider coup de main missions on operation COMET and provisional operation SIXTEEN would only involve six gliders each landing on the river flood plains close to the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges. The Dutch get very particular about "Holland" being used inaccurately to describe the whole country, when it strictly refers to the provinces of Noord and Zuid Holland on the coast, which are mostly below sea level behind the protective dikes, so this situation of the polder being below sea level applies to Holland, but not the entire Netherlands. James, on the other hand, has to live with being a Holland wherever he goes in the world... 8:17 - "the Recce Squadron - four Troops of Jeeps" - was only three Reconnaissance Troops plus the Support Troop, because B Troop was destroyed in Italy in 1943 and not reformed. A Troop were to remain in Division Reserve on the landing zones (some of their Jeeps had failed to arrive, generating the false rumour many of the Jeeps had not arrived), leaving C, D and Support Troop to make the 'assault' on the Arnhem Bridge. Full details in Robert Hilton's excellent book, Freddie Gough's Specials at Arnhem (2017). 10:51 - "can't see any point in the Ginkel heath" - but there was nowhere else where you could land a large number of paratroops, because Landing Zones 'S' (1st Airlanding Brigade) and 'Z' (Divisional units) were full of gliders from the 1st lift, and Drop Zone 'X' was to be re-used in the 2nd lift as Landing Zone 'X' to bring in the 4th Parachute Brigade's glider element (2nd Anti-Tank Battery and 2nd Battery Light Regiment). The other zones not yet used were Landing Zone 'L' at Johannhoeve for the Polish glider element, too too small for the 4th Brigade, and Drop Zone 'K' south of the Arnhem bridge, which needed to be cleared of Flak and power lines - not even ready for the Poles on the 3rd lift and had to be re-located. 12:45 - "do without it" - [the 2nd lift] - which is essentially COMET, or have the 1st lift arriving at dawn and the 2nd lift in the late afternoon of D-Day, which was the outline proposal for SIXTEEN - which was changed by Brereton and Williams at 1st Allied Airborne Army into the compromised MARKET plan, because they wanted all their flights to be in daylight to improve on their Sicily and Normandy navigation problems. 13:30 - Urquhart thought from the rumours that many of the Recce Squadron Jeeps had not arrived and thought he should get a full report from Gough and give him a new mission. The delays in retrieving some of the Recce Squadron Jeeps was due to some of the gliders overrunning their landing zone and going into trees at the end of the zone near the Wolfheze asylum. It took time for the whole Squadron (minus a few non-arrivals) to be assembled, but they did move off at 1540 hours, just 10 minutes after 1st Parachute Battalion moved off along the same route to northern Arnhem. The leading C Troop moved to the RV (most of the Squadron personnel dropped by parachute and the RV was in the NE corner of DZ 'X') at 1500 hours, the same time 2nd and 3rd Battalions moved off for the bridge, so it could argued that if the complete unit could have moved off at 1500 they might have slipped through before Krafft's SS battalion blocking line had formed. Bringing the Squadron in complete by glider would be quicker, but would use more gliders. Krafft's report on the battle indicated his line was formed between 1515 and 1530, based on early reconnaissance reports the enemy were in strength in Wolfheze (South Staffords and Glider Pilots) and weaker to the south, so the timing was very tight and Krafft's troops north of the railway would only have been in position for a few minutes before the Recce Squadron attempted to pass through them. It was unfortunate that Krafft was in Oosterbeek at all and not in his barracks in Arnhem, because he was the only senior officer in the area to heed Luftwaffe 3.Jagd-Division (Deelen airfield) commander Generalmajor Walter Grabmann's warning that the fields around Wolfheze were ideal for airborne landings and reiterated this to Model when he moved his headquarters into Oosterbeek. Model dismissed these concerns, but Krafft had taken them seriously and had his two training companies moved out of Arnhem and camped north of Oosterbeek close to the landing zones.
Very good and detailed comments. The farmland between the river and the large winter dike is for sure dry and firm in September. The summer of '44 was long and warm! And the size of that farmland(uiterwaarden) is enormous because it is most of the time at least 400-500 meters wide and endless long along the south bank of the river. And yes, there were drainage ditches in those fields ans some hedges, but not that many and surely not very deep. So landing on the south side would not have been without problems and some casualties but surely not a suicide mission. Airborne troops giving up their biggest asset, surprise, is for me the biggest mistake of MG. A few weeks ago I walked from the Frost bridge to the fields north of Wolfheze and that is really a long walk. And I was not carrying heavy equipment and wasn't shot at. If Al and James are realy Walking the ground, they should have done the same when they were there this September. No cars, just walking. Then you can appreciate how far that distance was. For me landing closer to the bridge is the biggest "what if" of the whole operation.
@@ce17ec - Frost also had machine-guns, mortars, and armoured cars on his route, so all more impressive was his achievement. I totally agree with your comments, but the planning was compromised by the air planners in 1st Allied Airborne Army to protect their own assets and improve their navigation and accuracy performance after Sicily and Normandy, rather than cater for the requirements of the airborne troops.
Great comments. I (amateurishly, it must be said) used the example of the RAF dictating DZs to highlight problems with risk analysis in planning. RAF were able to put a number their risk but 1 AB could not quantify the risk of landing far away. The risk with a number on it usually wins.
@@wessexdruid7598Agreed. I was told off for saying Holland when I was in Holland last year. Apparently us "English" do it all the time. I immediately played my Plastic Paddy card ☘ but Dutch guy saw though me. We called it a draw.
That is a very odd piece of heathland. Looking at the map tho, the landing zones do seem a long way from the town with some other zones for parachute closer to the future action, creating a drop like Varsity, the advanced troops land in bulk close to the objectives and support arrives soon from the other zones. But hey......
I understand the issues surrounding landing zones for gliders and the need to defend them in force if you have a second lift. What has always been incomprehensible to me is why a battalion or stronger wasn’t landed on day 1 south west of the bridges where the Polish brigade eventually landed. If the drop zone works for a third drop why not a first drop? These troops would have been closer to the bridge and would have at worst caused the defenders to split their concentrations in the Arnhem area.
1st Airborne Division was given the option of using the original DZ K for their initial drop but chose not too. I am assuming that they did not want to split their combat power - especially the heavier equipment. I note that when the battle group (comprising largely of the 2nd Parachute Battalion) made it to the bridge it contained several 6 pounder antitank guns which effectively destroyed the SS Recce Battalion returning over the bridge - these would not be available to a battalion dropped on DZ K. There was always a chance that the bridge could have been blown which would have left a battalion stranded across the river from the rest of the division. It would have also given away the final objective on the initial drop which would have given the Germans a better understanding and ability to completely block the bridge from the main landing area so instead of splitting the enemy reaction it could well have focussed it. Moreover, it would appear that DZ K required some preparatory action by 1st Airborne Division before it was scheduled to be used on the third lift. . This included the destruction/suppression of flak close to the bridge (albeit intelligence assessment over assessed the number of guns present). In addition, the 1st Parachute Battalion was given the task of protecting the DZ and cutting/disconnecting overhead powerlines before the landing of the Polish parachute brigade (1st Parachute Brigade Operation Order No 1 dated 13th September 1944 sub-paragraph 21.b.).
Further to Mike's reply, Drop Zone 'K' was not usable on the first lift because of the heavy Flak positions and high tension lines crossing the zone from the Arnhem power station. It was deemed safe by D+2 for the Poles on the assumption the area was controlled by 1st Parachute Brigade and the Royal Engineers taking over the power station after completing their Phase 1 tasks. It was not an option until those conditions were satisfied. In the initial assault, Frost intended to pass his C Company over the Oosterbeek rail bridge, so that he could attack the pontoon (actually civilian ship) and highway bridges in Arnhem from both sides. The prompt detonation of the rail bridge thwarted this plan. The bridge had been prepared for demolition after the Normandy landings and a sprengkommando (I have not been able to identify the unit) stationed on it for months. Many of the rail bridges involved in MARKET were very promptly demolished, indicating they were well prepared and probably had standing orders to detonate when threatened, leaving no time for delays while waiting for orders to enable the bridges to be taken intact. The Arnhem highway bridge was not prepared for demolition and the Nijmegen bridge had prepared charges inside the bridge pier storage areas that needed installation on the superstructure and connected before the bridge could be demolished. I don't think the amount of Flak south of Arnhem was over-assessed. The Flak marked on the defence overprint maps dated 11 September were all present on D-Day. These being the two heavy batteries of 1., and 4./gemishte-Flak-Abteilung 591 (Major Alfred Majewski) consisting of 6 x 7.5cm ex-French Schneider M.36(f) and 3 x 2cm guns each, with additional light Flak near the bridge from leichte-Flak-Abteilung 845 (Major Hans Lange). I have requested digitised copies of Majewski and Lange's documents in the Cornelius Ryan Collection to be added to the digitised collection available online, but so far not received them. We do know that the 24 x 8.8cm Flak guns of schwere-Flak-Abteilung 428 (Oberstleutnant Ulrich Stens) at Deelen airfield were removed a few days before the operation and the four batteries repositioned on the Wilhelmina canal defence line at the Oirschot, Best (road and rail), and Son bridges, leaving two batteries from leichte-Flak-Abteilung 667 covering the airfield (as far as I know, possibly more). Most of this information from Michael Holm's excellent website on The Luftwaffe 1933-45, and historian Frank van Lunteren has done some research on the Flak south of Arnhem in an article for Dutch journal 'aHt' - arnhems Historisch tijdschrift (Maart 2016) - A forgotten battlefield: the Battle of Arnhem-South 1944, you can find the journal online (Dutch language I'm afraid). The Flak battery at Son and the two detached guns in the northern approaches of Eindhoven are well-documented in the history of the 506th PIR, who encountered them on D-Day and D+1.
Nice one. I'd add a 37- or 44-Pattern belt to that Denison, James. 🙂 I'm guessing that you've already completed the location filming but how about an analysis of 'that' iconic photograph of the airborne escort party moving through ruins at Oosterbeek on 23 Sep 1944? You'll know the photograph I mean.
@@davemac1197 Agreed. The consensus is that it was staged before they embarked on the task in hand. The photographer is known and the identity of the man on the left of the image (Pte John Dugdale) is perhaps 90% certain.
@@wills681 - I'm sure I've read as much somewhere. The most common photographs were taken in the ruins of a school just to the south of the Hartenstein grounds, and in the stables building next door on the main road that is now the restaurant Klein Hartenstein.
Awesome sauce as always - can you make longer vids like 20-30mins I don’t think they’re long enough.. feels rushed….music and interludes or more absorption of detail …..history underground has nailed this in video it’s more immersive…
The arrogance of Monty was not asking advice from the Dutch were to land. He could and should have put both US divisions to drop inbetween Arnhem and Nijmegan. Deemed no problem by Dutch military experts after the war. Something Monty thus could thus should have known. 7:37
Had the privilege of talking to a K.O.S.B veteran of Market Garden. Even at platoon level they thought heading away from the objective ( the bridge ) was a mistake. Apparently on the first night of the battle they barely heard a shot fired, next morning the Germans got serious ( his words ). Still can’t understand why they didn’t just defend and use the original drop zones?
There are issues to do with landing troops on LZs that have already been used (like glider wreckage scattered everywhere, needing separate areas for gliders and paratroops, etc). But my personal opinion is that they were too concerned with trying to make everything perfect rather than saying "we have to put the objectives first and accept some casualties". The air landing planning is actually extremely complex and is glossed over in most of the accounts. For example, there are a lot of personnel and equipment in an airborne division which are not combat troops but still have to land somewhere.
@jrd33 is correct, and I made the same point in my original post: 10:51 - there was nowhere else where you could land a large number of paratroops, because Landing Zones 'S' (1st Airlanding Brigade) and 'Z' (Divisional units) were full of gliders from the 1st lift, and Drop Zone 'X' was to be re-used in the 2nd lift as Landing Zone 'X' to bring in the 4th Parachute Brigade's glider element (2nd Anti-Tank Battery and 2nd Battery Light Regiment). The other zones not yet used were Landing Zone 'L' at Johannhoeve for the Polish glider element, too too small for the 4th Brigade, and Drop Zone 'K' south of the Arnhem bridge, which needed to be cleared of Flak and power lines - not even ready for the Poles on the 3rd lift and had to be re-located.
I like these two, it's a fun series, but by god you've got to be a book-learnt warrior to say 7-8 miles isn't a big drama in soldiering (1:20). That is a massive distance for an advance to contact over unreconnoitered built up and densely wooded ground with limited avenues of advance though multiple choke points. And a quick map appreciation would tell you that. 7-8 miles would be a good day's work for a concentrated armoured division in that kind of terrain, and the assault force here was a light infantry brigade without flanking protection, heavy weapon fire plan, reserves or artillery support (until much later in the day). An advance to contact can be bought to a halt by the simplest of ambushes, snipers, mines, barricades, natural obstacles, artillery shoots, mortar bombs and searching fire. Without reserves or multiple co-ordinated avenues of advance every halt is an opportunity for the enemy to deduce your aim and intentions and redeploy a new blocking line. Renkum Heath was a perfect drop and landing zone, going in daylight does make for easier navigation and formation in the air and re-organisation on the ground, you couldn't ask for a better site and plan if the objective was simply getting two brigades and divisional assets out of the sky. But that was not the objective. The low land south of the bridge was usable by flat bottomed gliders and parachutists, the fields alongside the northern end of the railway bridge were larger and firmer than the fields used at Pegasus Bridge. With a bit of care Horsas could have made the railway bridge from the planned release zone, a half loaded Hamilcar could make the road bridge from the air corridor and a Hotspur Mk.I could make the fields at the southern end of the road bridge from Nijmegen. The failure to plan a coup de main force was a failure of command - second day problems and second line priorities took charge over first day objectives. The inverse of commando operations.
Great informative video. Could any of the Day1 DZ and LZ have been reused for Day 2 instead of seizing and holding Genkel Heath, or were they unusable ?
Either already full of gliders or DZ 'X' being re-used as LZ 'X' for the glider element of 4th Parachute Brigade, so no, not possible. That's why they had to use Ginkel Heide for the Brigade's drop.
I am sure there is an even better DZ further up the Hoge Veluwe, the problem is that the element of surprise, the greatest weapon that paratroopers have, is completely gone if you do not land within a few km of your target. Furthermore, I do not understand why the landings in the days after had to happen at the same location.
The argument for each of the parachute battalions taking a different road was that the roads were narrow - a battalion column would be strung out, a brigade column even more so.
Only two battalions were going to the same objective - 2nd and 3rd to the Arnhem bridge, the 1st Battalion was tasked with securing high ground to the north with Company strong points on the Amsterdam and Apeldoorn highways - the expected routes of German counter-attacks. Gough wanted his Reconnaissance Squadron to screen all three routes with a Troop in front of each Battalion to find the best route, but this was refused, along with refusals to provide a Troop of Tetrarch light tanks (used by 6th Airborne Division in Normandy), .50 cal machine guns on the Jeeps, or twin Vickers 'K' Guns - all refused.
The thing I always wonder about this is what would have happened if Main Force Bomber Command and the Eighth, had towing hitches fitted in anticipation of the need for a massed landing. The Brits could have taken off in the dark flown into the sunrise and dropped the first lift in daylight. Then the Yanks could have taken off late morning and dropped a second lift early afternoon. For all three landing zones.
I think the chaps talked about this on their podcast. Brereton didn’t allow it. The airlift apparently had a lot of redundancy build in. All previous lifts didn’t go according to plan (gliders in the sea in Sicily etc). So they expect the lift to go wrong. Apparently they didn’t want to take the risk of 2 lifts
@@OldManofStorr The thing that gave me the idea was that the American tug crews were not trained in night flying in the book I was reading. I did not think it was 100% true but it did give me the idea.
I wargamed Market Garden about 35 years ago. No second lift for the 1st Airborne Division, so no defending landing zones. The Poles were dropped on historic DZ but attached to the 82nd. 1st Airborne got mullered but held out to be relieved by XXX Corps.
Which DZ did the Poles use in this wargame? The planned DZ 'K' was located between two heavy Flak batteries and crossed by high tension lines from the Arnhem power station SE of the bridge! In the planning it was assumed suitable for the Poles by the 3rd lift, if the area was under the control of 1st Parachute Brigade to deal with the flak, and the Royal Engineers were to RV at the power station and take control after completing their Phase 1 tasks. Interesting result, anyway.
@@PaulmichaelDay - that's a bit of a hike! Gavin, in his interview with Cornelius Ryan in 1967 for A Bridge Too Far (1974) said the British wanted him to drop a battalion on the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge to take it by coup de main, and while he toyed with the idea he said he eventually discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. He had landed with just four or five men to command and the division was disorganised for days. He opted instead to land his three regiments together in a "power center" and have the battalions fan out towards their objectives. The highly experienced Colonel Reuben Tucker of the 504th PIR insisted on a special drop zone for one Company to drop south of the Grave bridge so he could take the bridge from both ends, and he got it. For the Nijmegen bridge, Gavin thought it would be enough to instruct Colonel Lindquist of the 508th to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge after landing, which Lindquist failed to do, thinking he had to secure his other objectives and clear the landing zone first before sending any sizeable force to the bridge. According to Dempsey's biography by Peter Rostron, there was a plan to land a third brigade of 1st Airborne at Elst - presumably to secure the two small rail and road bridges over the Linge-Wettering drainage canal and occupy the only significant settlement on the 'island' between Nijmegen and Arnhem - I assume the actual drop zone would be the open space between the town and the canal. The idea was cancelled by Brereton because there were insufficient aircraft to drop three brigades/regiments for all three divisions, so 1st Airborne had to make do with two on the first day. It's a pity that 3rd Parachute Battalion wasn't considered for a drop there - where it could have done a lot more good than getting stuck in Oosterbeek overnight, perhaps detaching a Company to secure the southern approach to the Arnhem bridge. It's something I hadn't considered before, since the orders specified that no attempt was to be made to linkup with 82nd Airborne to the south in order to preserve the division's southern bomb line - this was the box drawn around each division outside of which aircraft could attack targets of opportunity without ground control.
Drop Zone 'X', Landing Zone 'S' and most of Landing Zone 'Z' were farmland, with one field in the southeast corner of 'Z' (Doorwerthsche Heide) and the Ginkel Heide Drop Zone 'Y' are still heathland. Some of the farmed fields have since been returned to nature, so Al and James were walking around on natural grassland that was a ploughed or fallow field in 1944. In the middle of LZ 'S' is the Reijerscamp farm (independent Parachute Company HQ) on the access road called 'Reijerskamp', so called because the area had previously been a Dutch army training area for the 'Gele Rijders' (Yellow Riders) - a horse artillery regiment named after the yellow facings on their uniforms. Their former barracks in Arnhem was called 'Artillerie Park' - the intended headquarters for 1st Airborne Division had it fully occupied Arnhem. 'Artilleriepark' in Arnhem is now just a small residential street inside the block that was the former barracks, now occupied by apartment buildings and a post office/courier building.
The dilemma of military decision making, everything is time sensitive, what was viable an hour ago is no longer prudent, most of the fxxk ups come from lack of communication or info overload and of course the bugbear of humanity - Ego, great stuff as ever (nice smock James, Al looks like a twitcher or peeping tom😅) aw the best from freezing Troon 😊
Gough got the message and went to Division HQ to see Urquhart, who had left Division to find Lathbury on the 2nd Para Battalion route into Arnhem to inform him that Gough might not be at the bridge. Gough then followed and found 2nd Battalion and Brigade HQ, but was told Lathbury and Uquhart had both gone to check on 3rd Battalion's progress. Gough stayed with 2nd Battalion, so his Jeep and the two escorts from A Troop were the only Reconnaissance Squadron Jeeps to get to the bridge. Gough took over command of 1st Parachute Brigade at the bridge after Frost was wounded.
@davemac1197 that's probably our best chance, russian weapons designed in the fifties, built in the sixties and not maintained since the seventies! Let's hope that you're correct
@@nickmail7604 - I've found the video again - ruclips.net/video/iId3y9JtTbs/видео.html It's very interesting because it goes to the fact these systems are very expensive and the country is not just relatively weaker economically, but also very corrupt. It also makes the very good point that launching a nuclear attack on a nuclear armed nation is suicide unless you can guarantee to take out your opponent's entire nuclear arsenal before they can launch, and if you can't rely on 90% of your nukes actually detonating...
I do wonder if it would have been better to wait to launch the Arnhem attack until a day or two after the first lift so that the Arnhem force could be moved in a single drop
Hmm, sacrificing the element of surprise and forcing the Paras to fight their way through prepared defenders to reach their objective. Not sure that works... 1st Airborne never succeeded in taking any defended objective throughout the whole operation (though they proved to be excellent in defence).
@ actually airborne have achieved defended objectives. The question though is, would they have lost the element of surprise, or could it have gone completely the other way as the Germans moved troops to fight the American landings not realizing that Arnhem was the intended prize as it was so far behind the front line?
Why did they have to arrive at that time in the afternoon? Surely they could have arrived early in the morning ,when it was just getting light, rather than kick everything off in the afternoon? I know it had to be co-ordinated across the other parts of the Operation but an early start on a Sunday morning would catch more people off guard.
I suspect that size of air operation at night would not have been possible, given the capabilities of the Allies at that time. It took hours to reach the drop zones and the air planners demanded time for the air force to take out the German anti-aircraft defences before the paratroops arrived. Also, low mist was common in the UK in early September mornings, also not great for flying (on several days during the operation, air drops had to be delayed due to poor weather conditions).
The British planners Browning (I Airborne Corps) and Dempsey (2nd Army) for operation COMET, and its proposed upgrade provisionally called SIXTEEN, wanted a schedule that landed the first lift at dawn for a glider coup de main on the three big bridges, an hour or so later for the main first airlift, and a second flight in the afternoon to arrive late afternoon or early evening before it got dark. This was rejected by USAAF officers Brereton (1st Allied Airborne Army) and Williams (US IX Troop Carrier Command) who had both been appointed to their positions as commander and air transport commander in the new army by Eisenhower, and charged with improving their record of poor navigation and drop accuracy in the Sicily and Normandy operations. They opted to recycle their operation LINNET (Tournai) and LINNET II (Liège-Maastricht bridges) air plan and cut the double airlift on D-Day on the pretext the reduced hours of daylight now left too little time for the ground crews to turn around the aircraft. The coups de main raids had to go as well, because they were too risky for broad daylight in the middle of the day. There was no reason why the flights could not start or end in darkness, except to help improve the navigation record of the USAAF pilots (only 1 in 3 USAAF C-47 crews even had a navigator). If you ask me, the loss of the coup de main raids, which Browning had advised Dempsey were so essential that COMET should not go ahead without them, were a convenience to Brereton and Williams because the Americans did not have a glider assault capability in their airborne doctrine and they were keen to demonstrate what their so-called "air weapon" could do in 1st Allied Airborne Army without the British showing them up. Brereton and William's backers in Washington were already focused on the post-war era instead of concentrating on the task at hand - defeating Germany as quickly as possible. My own view of MARKET GARDEN now - having come around completely from the Cornelius Ryan narrative of 47 years ago - is that the operation was sunk by politics, both inter-Allied politics within 1st AAA, and internal politics within 82nd Airborne Division that compromised the operation on the ground at Nijmegen. There's a reason why all of this is not in the Hollywood movie.
Just thinking out loud. If the air landing brigade had all gone to the bridge, surely the Germans would not have been expecting a second lift. The battle would be taking place 8 miles away when the second drop landed at the DZ. Was that too risky?
The risk is that 4th Parachute Brigade (second lift) on DZ 'Y' and their gliderborne support elements on LZ 'X' would both be behind enemy lines, which would have formed around the divisional enclave established by the first lift, presumably in Arnhem. You would also have the problem of the drop zone being unmarked. Each element of the Brigade (HQ, 10th, 11th, 156th Para Battalions, 4th Para Squadron Royal Engineers) had advance elements that arrived with the first lift and marked the rendezvous points with coloured smoke. Do you leave the pathfinders and brigade advance party behind to hide up somewhere and hope they don't get discovered by German patrols? It's an interesting dilemma. If they're discovered, the jig is up. You also have the problem of the 4th Brigade not being united with its support elements (anti-tank and field batteries Royal Artillery, RASC Jeeps etc.) and having to hopefully rendezvous while behind enemy lines, isolated from each other as well as isolated from the Division. You're right in that the Airlanding Brigade protecting the landing zones did telegraph to the Germans that further landings would be made there, but I think the main lessons taken from Arnhem are those mentioned by Al and James in having just one lift and doing what you can with the forces landed in that one lift. It's interesting that the original proposal for the COMET upgrade (called provisonally operation SIXTEEN) called for a third brigade to be landed in the first lift at Elst on the 'island' between Arnhem and Nijmegen, which would presumably be the 4th Parachute Brigade and to secure the small bridges over the Linge-Wettering canal that drains the island, and ended up being the front line in October after MARKET GARDEN failed. That drop was deleted once the outline for SIXTEEN was handed over to Brereton at 1st Allied Airborne Army for detailed planning, because of insufficient aircraft available. The only source for this is Peter Rostron's 2010 biography of 2nd Army commander Dempsey, who blames this change and the distance of the landing zones from the bridges as the main reasons for the failure of the operation. It should be noted that Dempsey, who many people incorrectly believe was micro-managed by Montgomery, had considerable experience at planning airborne operations - more than Browning or Brereton, but you can add his name to Browning and Montgmery's as British officers frustrated by the changes made by USAAF officers Brereton and Williams to create the final MARKET plan. They made compromises to minimise aircraft losses and to improve their navigation and accuracy record after the poor performances in Sicily and Normandy, which they had been charged with improving by Eisenhower when he appointed them to their positions with 1st AAA.
@@davemac1197 Dave you need to remember the more planes lost from the 1st lift means few planes would be available for the 2nd and 3rd lifts. Some simple math's, to fly in the entire Market Force the Airforce's need to fly 3,795 sorties. The first lift consists of 1,525 aircraft which means each aircraft of the 1st Lift would need to fly 2.5 sorties. The actual second lift was 1,327 which represent 82.17% of the 1st lift. If the actual lost from the 1st lift were closer 33% you claim Browning was willing to accept the resultant second lift could have been 1,006 Aircraft, at difference of 321 aircraft. That would result in few troops and artillery being delivered in the 2nd lift. It could also result in the need for a 4th lift to bring in the balance of the airborne forces. In the end its a balancing act. Do you incur higher initial loss in aircraft and possible to the airborne force resulting in few troops available to capture the objects and a smaller second lift. The alternative decision, do you attempt to minimize the losses to both aircraft and Airborne force in the 1st lift to deliver a stronger initial ground force and 2nd lift. As for the 4th Brigade landing at Elst being deleted as you say, "That drop was deleted once the outline for SIXTEEN was handed over to Brereton at 1st Allied Airborne Army for detailed planning, because of insufficient aircraft available." Operation Comet did not include at drop at Elst, so if a drop was plan than it would have been added into the requirements of Operation Sixteen by Browning. The decision to deleted would have been made by Urquhart when he finalizes his plan. If Browning though it was important for the success of the operation that the 4th Para Brigade was drop at Elst as part of the 1st Lift, then he could have ordered Urquhart to include the 4th in the 1st Lift at the expenses of his artillery and Divisional troops. In multiply lifts operations compromises are always being made based on the situation and intelligent reports. Only after the event would the planners know if they made the right decisions.
@@johnlucas8479 - I never forgot that John, but you should remember that the crucial factor is what can be achieved on the first day, which means the force airlifted in first lift if you're only going to have one lift per day. COMET did not involve a drop at Elst because the operation only involved four brigades in total dropping at Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave, with a second lift later on the same day delivering the Polish brigade at Grave as a reinforcement. COMET was designed as a pursuit operation, whereas MARKET had to be a redesign as more of a set piece assault. The drop planned for Elst was part of Browning's "airborne carpet" concept to land airborne troops all the way from Valkenswaard to Arnhem, but the drop zones south of the Wilhelmina canal were deleted by Williams on the grounds of Flak around Eindhoven, at Uden by Taylor as an overextension of his division (and there is no bridge or water barrier at Uden), and Elst by Brereton due to insufficient aircraft. So significant parts of the "airborne carpet" concept was thrown out by the Americans, despite the phrase finding its way into the script for the film version of A Bridge Too Far (1977) and the three divisions were more isolated from each other than originally planned. I very much doubt Urquhart or Browning would have contemplated dropping three brigades without their divisional support elements. You would need more parachute transports to do it, so the glider tugs taking the divisional units to Arnhem would not have been suitable to be repurposed in this way - they can carry fewer paratroops than the C-47s assigned to airlift 4th Parachute Brigade. None of this makes any sense at all. I think Urquhart was given an airlift schedule and had to devise his divisional plan within its restrictions - this was certainly Gavin's complaint, so I don't believe Urquhart and Taylor were in a different position. So, given the airlift capacity to deliver one brigade of paratroops and glider tugs sufficient to transport a majority of the Airlanding Brigade and their respective support units, Urquhart was faced with devising a two-brigade assault on the first day, and one brigade would have to remain on the landing zones to hold them for the subsequent lifts. I'm sure the reason I'm just becoming aware of the Elst drop from the Dempsey biography was because it was dropped at an early stage, and only Browning and Dempsey would have been aware of it, being the authors of the SIXTEEN outline proposal before it was taken back to 1st Allied Airborne Army and Brereton.
@@davemac1197 Interesting reply 1) What evidence do you have that it was Brereton that made the final decision about not to drop the 4th Para Brigade at Elst. I would assume that Urquhart would always have the final say on how his division would be deployed. ELst drop would have been initial included as part of 1st British Divisions assignment for Market by Browning. 2) "I very much doubt Urquhart or Browning would have contemplated dropping three brigades without their divisional support elements." yet both Gavin and Taylor made the decision to bring in their 3rd parachute Regiment ahead of Division Troops and Artillery. Image if Gavin decided to include only the 504th and 505th PIR plus Divisional Troops in the 1st lift and the 508th included in the 2nd. Taylor decided not to include the 501st in the 1st Lift and instead include Divisional Troops and the German were able to destroy the bridges at Veghel. I image you would heavy criticize their decision not to have included the 3rd PIR in the first lift. 3) "You would need more parachute transports to do" and "glider tugs taking the divisional units to Arnhem would not have been suitable to be repurposed in this way - they can carry fewer paratroops than the C-47s assigned to airlift 4th". For D-Day the 46th Group Dakota's were used to transport the Parachute Brigades. As the Dakota is the British name for the C-47 Skytrain there would be no difference carrying capacity. Hollinghurst and Urquhart could have used 46 Group for the 4th Para brigade and 38 Group for 1st Airlanding Brigade and Divisional Troops if required.
@@johnlucas8479 1) Urquhart would have a final say in the deployment of his division, but he had to work within the constraints of the air plan, fixed by Brereton on 14 September with no opportunity for any further changes, which also frustrated Gavin. It was not in Urquhart's gift to have sufficient aircraft to land three brigades, that was determined by Brereton. The fact the decision was made by Brereton is made clear in Peter Rostron's 2010 biography of Dempsey: _The plan agreed between Dempsey and Browning for MARKET was for [...] a further brigade to be dropped at Elst to aid the advance from Nijmegen to Arnhem. The preferred option was for these drops to be made in the shortest possible time and at night. It was now that the fundamental divergences in philosophy between Brereton and Browning became apparent. Brereton insisted that the drops must be in daylight, be spread over three days and could not include the extra brigade at Elst. The American pilots did not have the navigational skills of the RAF, and he would not even consider a request from the RAF's 38 Group that a quick turnaround on the first day could enable one early drop and one late drop to be made. This would require that the approach flight would be made in darkness - doubtless Brereton was mindful of the awful disaster fifteen months earlier when American pilots had dropped most of a British airlanding brigade in the sea off Sicily during a night operation. Restricting his room for manoeuvre was the fact that, despite Eisenhower's promise - or what was understood to be a promise - to give 21st Army Group priority, aircraft were needed elsewhere._ _Changes to the plan continued to be made. When Dempsey discussed the plan with Browning three days before the operation, the intention was to put one brigade down at Elst on the first day, and to land the other two brigades north of the river. 'They had to change this because of shortage of aircraft, and the failure to secure Elst plus the attempt to hold the DZ and LZ were fatal to the plan.'_ _Brereton, who was only appointed in August, was an outstanding airman with no experience whatever of either land or airborne operations. He was, in Browning's view, confused, weak-willed and overcautious. They had a fundamental difference of view over the employment of airborne forces. Brereton insisted that the primary responsibility of any air operation was that the first troops on the ground must secure landing zones for resupply. Browning favoured the immediate capture of tactical objectives while the element of surprise was still in the favour of the attacker. In this he had the full backing of Dempsey, who had planned and launched more airborne operations than either of them._ 2) Both Gavin and Taylor took their Engineers with them, and Gavin one battery of anti-tank guns and one battalion of artillery on the first lift. Taylor could expect an early linkup with XXX Corps and Gavin's limited response to the threat of armour in the Reichswald may be tempered by the fact it was an older report than the reports of armour north of Arnhem (in fact they were both generated by the Hohenstaufen Division in transit). The decision to deploy 1st Airborne to Arnhem instead of one of the American divisions was no doubt because of its stronger anti-tank capability and the weight of the intelligence on German armour being in the north. 3) "For D-Day the 46th Group Dakota's were used to transport the Parachute Brigades." - No. The 130 Dakotas of 46 Group were used to tow gliders carrying the KOSB and Border Battalions, and 1st Airlanding Brigade HQ and medical support units. The 220 Albemarle, Halifax, and Stirling transports towed gliders carrying (half of) the South Staffords Airlanding Battalion and Divisional HQ and support units. 1st Parachute Brigade was dropped by 143 C-47s of US 61st and 314th Troop Carrier Groups. Sources: Glider Pilots at Arnhem, Mike Peters and Luuk Buist (2009) - Appendix 8: Air Load Manifest First Lift Market Flights Volume 1 - IX Troop Carrier Command in Operation Market Garden, Hans den Brok (2018) - 17 September Serials for 1st Airborne Division Your assumption that RAF 38 Group could carry the Airlanding Brigade as well as the Divisional troops is incorrect. You must get your facts right and that requires reading. I've given you the sources.
@@jrd33 - British glider troops were trained in the assault role and doctrine was to land them first to secure the landings zones, because they took their own anti-tank guns with them. Glider troops of the Ox & Bucks Regiment assaulted the Orne river and canal bridges in Normandy until relieved by paratroopers, and the detached D Companies from the 2nd South Staffords, 7th KOSB, and 1st Border Battalions were due to assault the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges in operation COMET before it was cancelled at the last minute. US Airborne doctrine was different - they landed paratroops first for the initial assault and only used the glider infantry as a reinforcement force. The USAAF glider pilots were also an asset that had to be protected and evacuated as quickly as possible, whereas the British Glider Pilot Regiment was part of the army and trained as light infantry with the same equipment as the paratroopers once they had landed. The GPR provided two complete wings (battalions) at Arnhem and were an integral part of the defensive perimeter.
@@crusignatioutremer791 They've only done that to ride on a Sherman Tank, following the XXX Corps route to Arnhem. Have you tried wearing ammo boots and gaiters, 37 patt webbing - or a KF shirt? I don't recommend them.
Using German doctrine, what is the only objective of the mission? Capture and hold the bridge! Everything else is of secondary importance. What is the point of having a pristine, securely held drop zone if the bridge is not captured. No time for having a picnic and nice cuppa on the landing zone. Surely everyone marches en masse to the bridge and will be capable of pushing any opposition encountered, aside. Then a coup de main glider operation on the south side of bridge in daylight once the northern end is close to being secured. Job done. Yes it is risky as the landing zones might be overrun for easy resupply and reinforcement but the polder close to the south end of the bridge could be used as a substitute surely? War is a balance of risk and reward. Soldiers are going to die sadly but it is war. If the bridge is captured, then who knows, maybe the war does end Christmas 44?
The dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges planned for COMET and the proposed operation SIXTEEN outline were ruled out by Brereton's decision to fly all flights for his MARKET plan in broad daylight, so it was considered too risky in those conditions. The envelope for the glider assaults was either a night landing in a full Moon period, or dawn in a no-Moon period such as during COMET/MARKET. The approach would be the same as for the main landing zones at Wolfheze and the gliders would release when they crossed their respective river landmarks 6 km to the west over the Maas-Waal-Rijn, turn right and follow the rivers to the landing zones on the river flood plains close to the bridges. The assigned forces were D Companies of the three Airlanding Battalions - 2nd South Staffords (Arnhem), 7th KOSB (Nijmegen), and 1st Battalion Border Regiment (Grave). COMET was a last-minute cancellation at 0200 hours on 10 September as the men were boarding their aircraft for the assaults.
@@davemac1197 "The airborne assault on the bridges was code-named Operation MARKET and the ground follow-up and relief Operation GARDEN. On 14 September, Montgomery issued his ‘Operational Appreciation M 525’ summarising his plan." RAF Museum The Royal Air Force and Operation Market Garden: Chapter 2
Constant interruptions and over talking from Holland add nothing. If you were ex para have the Denison smock with wings up and your DZ flash or get it off.
Wouldn't they have been better landing south of Arnhem, closer to 30 corps, have specialist units take the bridge, i dont agree that the landing zones weren't the problem, of course they were a problem, element of suprise totally gone, Germans knew what there objective was very qiuckly and could counter.
There was considerable confusion on the German side over the objectives, although Bittrich correctly deduced it was the bridges when he received reports of landings near Arnhem and Nijmegen and the arrangements he had in place to react quickly could be put into operation. By the time Model was briefed and understood what was happening, he approved of the measures Bittrich had already taken. The drop zone imediately south of the Arnhem bridge - Drop Zone 'K' for the Poles in the third lift - was deemed unsuitable for D-Day because it was between two of the four heavy Flak batteries surrounding Arnhem and crossed by two high tension lines from the Arnhem power station southeast of the bridge. It was thought that by D+2 the 1st Parachute Brigade would control the area and the Royal Engineers were due to rendezvous at the power station and take control of it after they had completed their Phase 1 tasks. Obviously that didn't happen, so the Polish drop zone had to be re-arranged. Browning's original "airborne carpet" concept also included drop zones for the 101st Airborne between Valkenswaard and Son to ensure the Aalst-Eindhoven-Son bridges were quickly taken and enable a linkup with the Guards on D-Day. This was deleted by Paul Williams of US IX Troop Carrier Command on the grounds of the Flak around Eindhoven. The delays on D+1 at Aalst that wasted the whole day were caused bya battery of four 8.8cm Flak guns and two StuG III assault guns covering the bridge, who abandoned their guns after hearing that American paratroops had entered Eindhoven behind them. Had this occurred on D-Day the linkup could have been achieved 24 hours earlier (Aalst is only 4 km north of Valkenswaard, where the Guards stopped on D-day with one hour of daylight remaining), which also means in the worst case scenario the Son bridge was still blown the bridging equipment could have been brought up to replace it 24 hours earlier, and the Guards reach Nijmegen 24 hours earlier. There was also a proposal to drop a brigade of 1st Airborne at Elst - midway between Arnhem and Nijmegen and on the small road and rail bridges over the Linge-Wettering drainage canal. The drop was deleted due to insufficient aircraft, but the canal actually became the no-man's-land between the front lines east of the railway for many weeks in October after MARKET GARDEN had failed and the situation on the 'island' became very static, so it was a significant barrier - effectively an anti-tank ditch with few crossing points.
Again britisch talk on ther hei bij Ede , road nearby is N224 with go,s to a roundabout truth gents Now again missed you the rail road of wesel to Nijmergen of was it over look like monty did . Then a Dutch lesson to your jeeps attack on the bridge even if the jeeps were there i think it make no different at all.. Why " Fall gelb" and the attack of the " SS SVT brigade " on the " teufelberg "( grebbeberg ) we the Dutch shot them all up ..Why would the Germans do that on day1 ??? And why was er not a attack on the rader at schaarbergen or a attack to finisch off Deelen ??? Hard quistions a under stand but from my view ( Dutch and kritisch ) it a lot off strings of mistakes and so on ... Monty ( de Guingand ) to eager to finisch the war , result gents is the hungerwinter thx to Monty ..
@@MegaRebel100te rommelig… doe je best.. herstel je tekst . Minder lange zinnen.. ram het dan in Google translate.. en lees t Engels hard op.. en haal irritante foutjes er uit. We geven je 1 uur de tijd.
I would like to respond to all of this if I could understand it. Hope you'll try again. On the points I did get: Deelen was out of action as an air station and air units evacuated to Germany after the runways were bombed on 3 September and again on the morning of the airborne attack on 17 September, but still occupied by Fliegerhorst Kommandantur (airbase command) Deelen ground units and protected by two light Flak batteries - 2., and 3./le.Flak-Abteilung 667. The 24 heavy 8.8cm Flak guns of schwere Flak-Abteilung 428 had been removed a few days earlier and repositioned to support the Wilhelmina canal defence line at the Oirschot, Best, and Son bridges to the south near Eindhoven. The Luftwaffe nightfighter 3.Jagd-Division command bunker DIOGENES was undergoing a planned relocation to Duisberg in Germany on 17 September and the airborne landings only accelerated that process with the final evacuation of the remaining skeleton shift and destruction of the bunker interior by demolition charges by 1700 hours that day. The Hunger Winter was the retaliation of the Germans for the Dutch rail strike, organised by the resistance at the request of the Dutch Government-in-Exile based in London to coincide with MARKET GARDEN, and the Germans restricted train transport of food produce from the farms in eastern Netherlands to the cities in the west, so please thank your EU 'friends' in Germany for that and not your liberators (would be the prevailing view here in the UK).
Hoi @megarebel100, kan je misschien je tekst nogmaals schrijven (en evt. een Nederlandse tekst vertalen via Google Translate?). Wát je wilt bijdragen is mij (en anderen) volslagen onduidelijk.
If you are enjoying walking the ground of Operation Market Garden with Jim and Al, please do like the videos and subscribe to our channel to show your support. Growing our RUclips community will enable us to walk more ground and make more films. Thank you for watching!
The real problem with Market Garden is the fake history enhanced by movies and memoirs. It was Gavin and the 82nd who failed to even try to take the Nijmegen bridge until day 2-3. Their weren't any panzers in the Reich Wald! He knew that as did local resistance. Zero evidence of Brits stopping for tea. A ton of evidence to prove that Gavin was against the plan for nationalistic reasons from day one.
There are two things to draw from this immediately, 1 You don't need to defend landing zones if no one's landing, so if you land, move off and 2 James' smock really blends in with the landscape really well.
It really ties the land together
This series has taught me more than any other about Market Garden. The maps are critical in my understanding and the modern analysis around holding landing zones vs consolidating and attacking in force, not taking Nijmegen bridge, and worrying about the wrong parts of the battlefield has been fascinating.
My Uncle was at Nijmegen Bridge during the battle to take it from the Germans. 💥
Al's explanation of the second lift being a hindrance to the operation is first class and educational👍
I truly enjoy this series and the excellent, knowledgeable banter between these two. However, sometimes, it feels like James (in the smock) prematurely cuts off Al just as he's getting going. I wish he'd let him got a few seconds longer before interrupting him.
Exactly that !! Let him speak man. How infuriating......
Although Jim writes tremendous books, Als airborne and armour knowledge is second to none.😮. Your chats about armour in the Market Garden series show that there must be a gap in the market for TV on wartime armour whilst you walk around preserved examples and the drive them around.
This series has been so incredible. Just finished the podcast series going through it and have bought Al's book as a result. Thank you for giving me a new obsession lol
Gentlemen you knowledge is unbelievable in this "Series".....Long may it continue, thank you 👍👍👍👍
It's so cool to see you guys walking the ground I drive past every week taking my daughter to school.
Love it!!
Fascinating insights and debunking lots of myths, cant wait for the next few parts. No plan survives contact with the enemy!
Your videos have been great to watch and learn from. They have made me want to learn more about D-Day and Juno, Sword and Gold beaches. Market Garden was way more than I had thought. Thanks.
Glad to hear it!
Excellent attire James 👌
Here we go! Best way to start a Friday is with a notification that another Walking The Ground video is out!
The videos and podcast episodes have been fantastic. I'm going to order Al's book Arnhem Black Tuesday today. Great work, gentleman!
Al touched on something I've always said was a huge factor in the failing to Arnhem and that was communication or lack of. So many huge things happened due to no radios working properly. You could say Browning using 30 gliders for his HQ on the first day was a total waste and could have been used to bring the whole of South Staffs on one lift. These guys are fantastic and highly recommend Al Murray's book. I've read a lot of Arnhem books and his by far the best. He also mentions Leonard Hooker and sheds more light on his unfortunate ending. Me and my friends found his grave and immediately wanted to know how a Navy man died at Arnhem. It's unbelievable the reason behind his story!!!!!
The second half of the South Staffords battalion was not the glider loads bumped to second lift by Browning moving his Corps transport up to first lift, although the number of gliders (32 Horsas plus 6 Wacos vs 40 Horsas and 1 Hamilcar) is temptingly similar. The loads that got bumped by the last minute change were the 6-pounder guns of Z Troop (Division HQ defence) and second line ammunition Jeeps and trailers for 1st Anti-Tank Battery, and 1st Parachute Brigade and 1st Parachute Squadron Royal Engineers Jeeps.
You would have to restructure the Arnhem plan if a complete South Staffords battalion landed on D-Day is to make any difference at all. If you follow their story over the first two days, Brigadier Hicks (standing in for the missing Urquhart) decided to take a gamble and release them early from their Phase 1 task of protecting Landing Zone 'S' before the second lift arrived and sent them into Arnhem to support 1st Parachute Brigade. A logical choice by Hicks, since their Phase 2 role was to be Brigade reserve in the planned final divisional perimeter around Arnhem. By the time the leading B and D Companies reached 1st and 3rd Parachute Battalions in western Arnhem, the second lift had arrived and A and C Companies had caught up with them.
Browning's motive to move up his Corps HQ transport looks self-centred and he doesn't appear to have voiced his reasons for doing so, but they can be deduced by examining his role in the planning for MARKET. He and Dempsey had wanted two lifts on D-Day and troops landed close to their objectives by means of dawn glider coups de main assaults - which would have used D Companies of the 2nd South Staffords, 7th KOSB, and 1st Border Battalions to take the Arnhem-Nimegen-Grave bridges. These were removed by Brereton's decision to fly one flight per day entirely in daylight in order to improve his Troop Carrier's poor record for navigation and drop accuracy in the Sicily and Normandy operations.
As an alternative at Nijmegen, Gavin said the British wanted him to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge to take it by coup de main, and although he toyed with the idea he said he eventually discarded it because of his experience in Sicily, where he landed with just four or five men to command and the division was disorganised for days. No doubt frustrated by the Americans in his efforts to get the bridges seized quickly, and neutralised politically within 1st Allied Airborne Army by his previous threat to resign over Brereton's LINNET II operation and learning that Brereton had planned to accept his resignation and replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps, he had obviously resigned himself to trying to influence events only after he had safely arrived on the ground in the Netherlands. Apparently the change to the glider schedule was made late on D-1 (16 September), so late in fact that some of the official records on the glider manifests do not reflect all the changes correctly.
So the Staffords are a red herring - they should have been taking the Arnhem bridge at dawn on 17 September and Browning's Corps HQ should have been arriving at Groesbeek in the late afternoon or early evening.
The radio communications problems at Arnhem is another complex issue, not best served by the Hollywood film that exaggerated the problems, then suddenly contradicted itself with a late radio conversation between Urquhart and Frost near the end of the bridge seige, but that's another long story.
@ Some pretty interesting points and completely agree on Hicks decision!!! I used the South Staffs as an example of what they could have used those gliders for instead of Brownings HQ. I think although this was a copy/paste of a previous Op (Comet) 10 days planning an operation this size was always going to have flaws.
There are so many factors to this operation you can spend hours dissecting and discussing, many pints have been sipped with like minded people about this topic!!! I’ve been looking more into those poor men from 10th and 156 battalions. So sad
@@phillipbrown9661 - well, COMET was designed as a pursuit operation with one airborne division that because of the intelligence situation needed to be replaced with an upgrade as a set piece assault with three airborne divisions - the second division to secure the corridor for XXX Corps to break through, and a third to reinforce the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave area where German armour was being reported. The outline was provisionally called operation SIXTEEN. Operation COMET had been provisional FIFTEEN, while 1st Allied Airborne Army only had nine planned (and cancelled) operations on its books at this time. Brereton took the SIXTEEN proposal, renamed it MARKET, and made a copy/paste of his LINNET/LINNET II air plan onto the SIXTEEN objectives and thereby scarificed the requirements of the airborne troops in order to serve his objectives of improving the Troop Carrier performance after Sicily and Normandy.
In terms of what-ifs, I would agree with the gents walking the ground to go with what you have landed with on the first lift - six battalions to occupy Arnhem and forget the landing zones, and then perhaps drop the 4th Parachute Brigade at Elst on the second lift, which was originally in the SIXTEEN proposal for the first lift, but deleted by Brereton due to insufficient aircraft. Securing Elst, even on the second day, would secure the small rail and road bridges over the Linge-Wettering drainage canal (effectively an anti-tank ditch that became the front line in October after GARDEN had failed) and occupy the only significant settlement on the main road between Nijmegen and Arnhem. Dempsey cited the removal of this drop and having to hold the landing zones as the fatal flaws in the MARKET plan, according to Peter Rostron's 2010 Dempsey biography.
I'm sure 4th Brigade would have given a better account of themselves taking Elst against zero or minimal opposition instead of being destroyed at Johannahoeve. There were only remnants of SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 and two companies of naval cadets from Schiffsstammabteilung 14 located to their north in the Elden area, south of the Arnhem bridge.
@@davemac1197 wow never thought of basically ditching 4th Airborne’s landing location and dropping them at Elst!!! Doing that would bolster the force on day 1 advancing to Arnhem. Dropping the 4th at Elst would have also had support from the Polish airborne. Still would have been a huge gamble for the Battalions at Arnhem but in those vital hours at the start, they had a fighting chance.
Still doesn’t hide the fact though communication was a huge issue and was the cause of many hiccups.
@@phillipbrown9661 - I'm assuming the intended drop zone at Elst was for the 4th Brigade (it was the the third brigade in the division, with the attached Polish brigade being the fourth). It was a complete surprise to me a few weeks ago when someone drew my attention to Rostron's biography on Dempsey containing this nugget.
I have long been aware of the intended divisional perimeter around Arnhem, with 1st Parachute Brigade in the centre around the bridges, 1st Airlanding to the west in Oosterbeek, 4th Para to the north (taking over from 1st Para Battalion) and the Poles in the east covering the Zutphen highway and the Westervoort bridges. Each sector having two battalions in the line and a third in reserve, hence the Staffords were the planned reserve in the Airlanding Brigade sector.
If they intended in SIXTEEN for the 4th Brigade to land at Elst, the Arnhem divisional perimeter was presumably going to be a lot tighter. I would certainly like to see the maps on this, if they still exist!
The communications problems affected command and control for sure, but I would point out that 1st Para Brigade Major Tony Hibbert at the bridge was able to contact Brigadier Lathbury by radio on the first evening and suggest that he slip one of the other battalions down to the 2nd Battalion route as he was sure it was still clear. Fitch and Lathbury was apparently all for following the suggestion, but it was Urquhart that ordered the 3rd Battalion halt for the night in Oosterbeek and proceed in the morning, so that's a bad decision by Urquhart and you can't blame it on a communications failure in this instance.
Dobie changed his 1st Battalion mission on his own initiative after receiving a radio message from Frost asking for help at the bridge, so that was received as well. The bridge also had reliable support from the Light Regiment guns in Oosterbeek, thanks to the Royal Artillery using the more powerful No.18 sets. As I said, it's a complex picture, and Lewis Golden (Divisional Signals Regiment Adjutant) wrote a report on it after the war I think is very instructive.
Great, but James Holland's cough is like a blooper scene from "The fast show" if only Al would shout "arse" half way through a sentence
They will be doing a series where they talk ww2 whilst fishing next . Lol that would float my boat 😂
Jim Fleming lol😂
Another factor that makes Ginkel heath a bad dropzone is that there were barracks containing german troops right next to it. Granted these were second rate troops, but they still made life difficult for the KOSB defending the dropzone for the second lift. The KOSB also didn't have enough men to secure the entire heath. So by the time the second lift arrived there was vicious fighting going on and the heath was on fire.
Thanks guys. There''s just so much wrong with Op Market Garden, and a number of times where they could have got their nuts out of the fire. ABTF has quite a bit to answer for the misconceptions. Great job
Bloody Marvellous! Thankyou Guys ;)
Looking for the ideal drop zone isn't the problem, distance wasn't the problem. The problem was the time it gave the Germans time to react, create a defence line, harden that line and counter attack. Airborne troops are lightly armed with limited mobility, there was no way a brigade with diverse objectives were going to fight eight miles and capture a major river crossing. Time gentlemen that's what finished the Arnhem drop and the compromises that caused it when everyone gets a voice in an operation.
Surely, a couple of gliders landing on the highway at the open end of the bridge would have been a worthwhile risk to take.
Brilliantly done boys.
James has the best jacket on and in a great camo pattern
Loving this channel
Great as always.
Thank you! Cheers!
Just like Al I’m convinced every time I encounter Arnhem that maybe this time they’ll do it. This series is such a good companion to the pod and Al’s book. Proper 3D WW2 as it were 🤣 tally ho & keep up the good work ✌🏻
3:31 - "we are 60 feet above sea level here, you're not, south of the river, you're below sea level" - er, not quite - more like 79-92 feet above sea level, based on the 1943 military map of the area - that field you're in (Drop Zone 'X' west of Telefoonweg) has spot heights of around 24-28 metres (79 to 92 feet) above sea level, the datum on the contemporary maps state "DATUM MEAN SEA LEVEL AT AMSTERDAM" - probably because they were based on Dutch pre-war maps. The polder south of the Arnhem bridge was not BELOW sea level but still ABOVE sea level - the average spot height is about 10 meters, which is 33 feet above sea level, but the important point is that the rivers have to have Winter dikes because the polder they are protecting may be below the river level during the Winter floods.
In the Spring and Summer the polder and the river flood plains dry out, and in the Autumn and Winter rains they get soggy again, so in September they should still be quite firm. Glider landings on polder would still be problematic as the fields are small and defined by numerous drainage ditches, which would also hamper vehicle extrication and movement. The proposed and cancelled glider coup de main missions on operation COMET and provisional operation SIXTEEN would only involve six gliders each landing on the river flood plains close to the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges.
The Dutch get very particular about "Holland" being used inaccurately to describe the whole country, when it strictly refers to the provinces of Noord and Zuid Holland on the coast, which are mostly below sea level behind the protective dikes, so this situation of the polder being below sea level applies to Holland, but not the entire Netherlands. James, on the other hand, has to live with being a Holland wherever he goes in the world...
8:17 - "the Recce Squadron - four Troops of Jeeps" - was only three Reconnaissance Troops plus the Support Troop, because B Troop was destroyed in Italy in 1943 and not reformed. A Troop were to remain in Division Reserve on the landing zones (some of their Jeeps had failed to arrive, generating the false rumour many of the Jeeps had not arrived), leaving C, D and Support Troop to make the 'assault' on the Arnhem Bridge. Full details in Robert Hilton's excellent book, Freddie Gough's Specials at Arnhem (2017).
10:51 - "can't see any point in the Ginkel heath" - but there was nowhere else where you could land a large number of paratroops, because Landing Zones 'S' (1st Airlanding Brigade) and 'Z' (Divisional units) were full of gliders from the 1st lift, and Drop Zone 'X' was to be re-used in the 2nd lift as Landing Zone 'X' to bring in the 4th Parachute Brigade's glider element (2nd Anti-Tank Battery and 2nd Battery Light Regiment). The other zones not yet used were Landing Zone 'L' at Johannhoeve for the Polish glider element, too too small for the 4th Brigade, and Drop Zone 'K' south of the Arnhem bridge, which needed to be cleared of Flak and power lines - not even ready for the Poles on the 3rd lift and had to be re-located.
12:45 - "do without it" - [the 2nd lift] - which is essentially COMET, or have the 1st lift arriving at dawn and the 2nd lift in the late afternoon of D-Day, which was the outline proposal for SIXTEEN - which was changed by Brereton and Williams at 1st Allied Airborne Army into the compromised MARKET plan, because they wanted all their flights to be in daylight to improve on their Sicily and Normandy navigation problems.
13:30 - Urquhart thought from the rumours that many of the Recce Squadron Jeeps had not arrived and thought he should get a full report from Gough and give him a new mission. The delays in retrieving some of the Recce Squadron Jeeps was due to some of the gliders overrunning their landing zone and going into trees at the end of the zone near the Wolfheze asylum. It took time for the whole Squadron (minus a few non-arrivals) to be assembled, but they did move off at 1540 hours, just 10 minutes after 1st Parachute Battalion moved off along the same route to northern Arnhem. The leading C Troop moved to the RV (most of the Squadron personnel dropped by parachute and the RV was in the NE corner of DZ 'X') at 1500 hours, the same time 2nd and 3rd Battalions moved off for the bridge, so it could argued that if the complete unit could have moved off at 1500 they might have slipped through before Krafft's SS battalion blocking line had formed. Bringing the Squadron in complete by glider would be quicker, but would use more gliders.
Krafft's report on the battle indicated his line was formed between 1515 and 1530, based on early reconnaissance reports the enemy were in strength in Wolfheze (South Staffords and Glider Pilots) and weaker to the south, so the timing was very tight and Krafft's troops north of the railway would only have been in position for a few minutes before the Recce Squadron attempted to pass through them. It was unfortunate that Krafft was in Oosterbeek at all and not in his barracks in Arnhem, because he was the only senior officer in the area to heed Luftwaffe 3.Jagd-Division (Deelen airfield) commander Generalmajor Walter Grabmann's warning that the fields around Wolfheze were ideal for airborne landings and reiterated this to Model when he moved his headquarters into Oosterbeek. Model dismissed these concerns, but Krafft had taken them seriously and had his two training companies moved out of Arnhem and camped north of Oosterbeek close to the landing zones.
Very good and detailed comments. The farmland between the river and the large winter dike is for sure dry and firm in September. The summer of '44 was long and warm! And the size of that farmland(uiterwaarden) is enormous because it is most of the time at least 400-500 meters wide and endless long along the south bank of the river. And yes, there were drainage ditches in those fields ans some hedges, but not that many and surely not very deep. So landing on the south side would not have been without problems and some casualties but surely not a suicide mission. Airborne troops giving up their biggest asset, surprise, is for me the biggest mistake of MG. A few weeks ago I walked from the Frost bridge to the fields north of Wolfheze and that is really a long walk. And I was not carrying heavy equipment and wasn't shot at.
If Al and James are realy Walking the ground, they should have done the same when they were there this September. No cars, just walking. Then you can appreciate how far that distance was.
For me landing closer to the bridge is the biggest "what if" of the whole operation.
@@ce17ec - Frost also had machine-guns, mortars, and armoured cars on his route, so all more impressive was his achievement. I totally agree with your comments, but the planning was compromised by the air planners in 1st Allied Airborne Army to protect their own assets and improve their navigation and accuracy performance after Sicily and Normandy, rather than cater for the requirements of the airborne troops.
_"James, on the other hand, has to live with being a Holland wherever he goes in the world..."_ Excellent. 🙂
Great comments. I (amateurishly, it must be said) used the example of the RAF dictating DZs to highlight problems with risk analysis in planning. RAF were able to put a number their risk but 1 AB could not quantify the risk of landing far away. The risk with a number on it usually wins.
@@wessexdruid7598Agreed. I was told off for saying Holland when I was in Holland last year. Apparently us "English" do it all the time. I immediately played my Plastic Paddy card ☘ but Dutch guy saw though me. We called it a draw.
Loving it, thanks chaps!👍
That is a very odd piece of heathland.
Looking at the map tho, the landing zones do seem a long way from the town with some other zones for parachute closer to the future action, creating a drop like Varsity, the advanced troops land in bulk close to the objectives and support arrives soon from the other zones. But hey......
Hindsight, a wonderful thing
Considering it was a whole new version of warfare,the limitations aren't know till afterwards. The Germans managed it in 39 going the other way
Brilliant series 😊👍
I understand the issues surrounding landing zones for gliders and the need to defend them in force if you have a second lift. What has always been incomprehensible to me is why a battalion or stronger wasn’t landed on day 1 south west of the bridges where the Polish brigade eventually landed.
If the drop zone works for a third drop why not a first drop?
These troops would have been closer to the bridge and would have at worst caused the defenders to split their concentrations in the Arnhem area.
1st Airborne Division was given the option of using the original DZ K for their initial drop but chose not too. I am assuming that they did not want to split their combat power - especially the heavier equipment. I note that when the battle group (comprising largely of the 2nd Parachute Battalion) made it to the bridge it contained several 6 pounder antitank guns which effectively destroyed the SS Recce Battalion returning over the bridge - these would not be available to a battalion dropped on DZ K. There was always a chance that the bridge could have been blown which would have left a battalion stranded across the river from the rest of the division. It would have also given away the final objective on the initial drop which would have given the Germans a better understanding and ability to completely block the bridge from the main landing area so instead of splitting the enemy reaction it could well have focussed it.
Moreover, it would appear that DZ K required some preparatory action by 1st Airborne Division before it was scheduled to be used on the third lift.
. This included the destruction/suppression of flak close to the bridge (albeit intelligence assessment over assessed the number of guns present). In addition, the 1st Parachute Battalion was given the task of protecting the DZ and cutting/disconnecting overhead powerlines before the landing of the Polish parachute brigade (1st Parachute Brigade Operation Order No 1 dated 13th September 1944 sub-paragraph 21.b.).
Further to Mike's reply, Drop Zone 'K' was not usable on the first lift because of the heavy Flak positions and high tension lines crossing the zone from the Arnhem power station. It was deemed safe by D+2 for the Poles on the assumption the area was controlled by 1st Parachute Brigade and the Royal Engineers taking over the power station after completing their Phase 1 tasks. It was not an option until those conditions were satisfied.
In the initial assault, Frost intended to pass his C Company over the Oosterbeek rail bridge, so that he could attack the pontoon (actually civilian ship) and highway bridges in Arnhem from both sides. The prompt detonation of the rail bridge thwarted this plan. The bridge had been prepared for demolition after the Normandy landings and a sprengkommando (I have not been able to identify the unit) stationed on it for months. Many of the rail bridges involved in MARKET were very promptly demolished, indicating they were well prepared and probably had standing orders to detonate when threatened, leaving no time for delays while waiting for orders to enable the bridges to be taken intact. The Arnhem highway bridge was not prepared for demolition and the Nijmegen bridge had prepared charges inside the bridge pier storage areas that needed installation on the superstructure and connected before the bridge could be demolished.
I don't think the amount of Flak south of Arnhem was over-assessed. The Flak marked on the defence overprint maps dated 11 September were all present on D-Day. These being the two heavy batteries of 1., and 4./gemishte-Flak-Abteilung 591 (Major Alfred Majewski) consisting of 6 x 7.5cm ex-French Schneider M.36(f) and 3 x 2cm guns each, with additional light Flak near the bridge from leichte-Flak-Abteilung 845 (Major Hans Lange). I have requested digitised copies of Majewski and Lange's documents in the Cornelius Ryan Collection to be added to the digitised collection available online, but so far not received them.
We do know that the 24 x 8.8cm Flak guns of schwere-Flak-Abteilung 428 (Oberstleutnant Ulrich Stens) at Deelen airfield were removed a few days before the operation and the four batteries repositioned on the Wilhelmina canal defence line at the Oirschot, Best (road and rail), and Son bridges, leaving two batteries from leichte-Flak-Abteilung 667 covering the airfield (as far as I know, possibly more). Most of this information from Michael Holm's excellent website on The Luftwaffe 1933-45, and historian Frank van Lunteren has done some research on the Flak south of Arnhem in an article for Dutch journal 'aHt' - arnhems Historisch tijdschrift (Maart 2016) - A forgotten battlefield: the Battle of Arnhem-South 1944, you can find the journal online (Dutch language I'm afraid). The Flak battery at Son and the two detached guns in the northern approaches of Eindhoven are well-documented in the history of the 506th PIR, who encountered them on D-Day and D+1.
Thanks for the maps. Hellishly difficult to follow all the movements in all different directions otherwise…
Really enjoyed the video mate gust been watching the movie desert rats
Nice one. I'd add a 37- or 44-Pattern belt to that Denison, James. 🙂 I'm guessing that you've already completed the location filming but how about an analysis of 'that' iconic photograph of the airborne escort party moving through ruins at Oosterbeek on 23 Sep 1944? You'll know the photograph I mean.
Probably staged - usually the case when the photographer is in front of the subjects!
@@davemac1197 Agreed. The consensus is that it was staged before they embarked on the task in hand. The photographer is known and the identity of the man on the left of the image (Pte John Dugdale) is perhaps 90% certain.
@@wills681 - I'm sure I've read as much somewhere. The most common photographs were taken in the ruins of a school just to the south of the Hartenstein grounds, and in the stables building next door on the main road that is now the restaurant Klein Hartenstein.
@@davemac1197 Yep, that's my understanding too.
Awesome sauce as always - can you make longer vids like 20-30mins I don’t think they’re long enough.. feels rushed….music and interludes or more absorption of detail …..history underground has nailed this in video it’s more immersive…
Nice action. 🌟
It all came so very close to working. So close. What a tragedy.
The arrogance of Monty was not asking advice from the Dutch were to land.
He could and should have put both US divisions to drop inbetween Arnhem and Nijmegan.
Deemed no problem by Dutch military experts after the war. Something Monty thus could thus should have known. 7:37
Home movie Oosterbeek, 18 September 1944
ruclips.net/video/u_jODxujP9k/видео.html
This needs more love...
Love the videos, love the books, I'm a wargamer, so these put me there from America. Can I suggest a laser rangefinder to better show distances?
It's great to see Al in his spiritual home.😀😎
I jumped in The Netherlands (I did not jump into Holland 😂 ) and the only hazard in sight was the A50 motorway. That wasn't there until 1970's
Had the privilege of talking to a K.O.S.B veteran of Market Garden. Even at platoon level they thought heading away from the objective ( the bridge ) was a mistake. Apparently on the first night of the battle they barely heard a shot fired, next morning the Germans got serious ( his words ). Still can’t understand why they didn’t just defend and use the original drop zones?
There are issues to do with landing troops on LZs that have already been used (like glider wreckage scattered everywhere, needing separate areas for gliders and paratroops, etc). But my personal opinion is that they were too concerned with trying to make everything perfect rather than saying "we have to put the objectives first and accept some casualties". The air landing planning is actually extremely complex and is glossed over in most of the accounts. For example, there are a lot of personnel and equipment in an airborne division which are not combat troops but still have to land somewhere.
@jrd33 is correct, and I made the same point in my original post:
10:51 - there was nowhere else where you could land a large number of paratroops, because Landing Zones 'S' (1st Airlanding Brigade) and 'Z' (Divisional units) were full of gliders from the 1st lift, and Drop Zone 'X' was to be re-used in the 2nd lift as Landing Zone 'X' to bring in the 4th Parachute Brigade's glider element (2nd Anti-Tank Battery and 2nd Battery Light Regiment). The other zones not yet used were Landing Zone 'L' at Johannhoeve for the Polish glider element, too too small for the 4th Brigade, and Drop Zone 'K' south of the Arnhem bridge, which needed to be cleared of Flak and power lines - not even ready for the Poles on the 3rd lift and had to be re-located.
I like these two, it's a fun series, but by god you've got to be a book-learnt warrior to say 7-8 miles isn't a big drama in soldiering (1:20). That is a massive distance for an advance to contact over unreconnoitered built up and densely wooded ground with limited avenues of advance though multiple choke points. And a quick map appreciation would tell you that.
7-8 miles would be a good day's work for a concentrated armoured division in that kind of terrain, and the assault force here was a light infantry brigade without flanking protection, heavy weapon fire plan, reserves or artillery support (until much later in the day).
An advance to contact can be bought to a halt by the simplest of ambushes, snipers, mines, barricades, natural obstacles, artillery shoots, mortar bombs and searching fire. Without reserves or multiple co-ordinated avenues of advance every halt is an opportunity for the enemy to deduce your aim and intentions and redeploy a new blocking line.
Renkum Heath was a perfect drop and landing zone, going in daylight does make for easier navigation and formation in the air and re-organisation on the ground, you couldn't ask for a better site and plan if the objective was simply getting two brigades and divisional assets out of the sky.
But that was not the objective. The low land south of the bridge was usable by flat bottomed gliders and parachutists, the fields alongside the northern end of the railway bridge were larger and firmer than the fields used at Pegasus Bridge. With a bit of care Horsas could have made the railway bridge from the planned release zone, a half loaded Hamilcar could make the road bridge from the air corridor and a Hotspur Mk.I could make the fields at the southern end of the road bridge from Nijmegen.
The failure to plan a coup de main force was a failure of command - second day problems and second line priorities took charge over first day objectives. The inverse of commando operations.
Great informative video.
Could any of the Day1 DZ and LZ have been reused for Day 2 instead of seizing and holding Genkel Heath, or were they unusable ?
Either already full of gliders or DZ 'X' being re-used as LZ 'X' for the glider element of 4th Parachute Brigade, so no, not possible. That's why they had to use Ginkel Heide for the Brigade's drop.
I am sure there is an even better DZ further up the Hoge Veluwe, the problem is that the element of surprise, the greatest weapon that paratroopers have, is completely gone if you do not land within a few km of your target. Furthermore, I do not understand why the landings in the days after had to happen at the same location.
The argument for each of the parachute battalions taking a different road was that the roads were narrow - a battalion column would be strung out, a brigade column even more so.
Only two battalions were going to the same objective - 2nd and 3rd to the Arnhem bridge, the 1st Battalion was tasked with securing high ground to the north with Company strong points on the Amsterdam and Apeldoorn highways - the expected routes of German counter-attacks. Gough wanted his Reconnaissance Squadron to screen all three routes with a Troop in front of each Battalion to find the best route, but this was refused, along with refusals to provide a Troop of Tetrarch light tanks (used by 6th Airborne Division in Normandy), .50 cal machine guns on the Jeeps, or twin Vickers 'K' Guns - all refused.
Good call. 🌟
The German paratroop fiasco in Crete needs some attention.Massive losses of experienced troops,and equipment,for not a great return.
Excellent
Thank you so much 😀
The thing I always wonder about this is what would have happened if Main Force Bomber Command and the Eighth, had towing hitches fitted in anticipation of the need for a massed landing. The Brits could have taken off in the dark flown into the sunrise and dropped the first lift in daylight. Then the Yanks could have taken off late morning and dropped a second lift early afternoon. For all three landing zones.
I think the chaps talked about this on their podcast. Brereton didn’t allow it.
The airlift apparently had a lot of redundancy build in. All previous lifts didn’t go according to plan (gliders in the sea in Sicily etc). So they expect the lift to go wrong. Apparently they didn’t want to take the risk of 2 lifts
@@OldManofStorr The thing that gave me the idea was that the American tug crews were not trained in night flying in the book I was reading. I did not think it was 100% true but it did give me the idea.
I love the smock James.
Drop zone 'Y' is aptly named
I wargamed Market Garden about 35 years ago. No second lift for the 1st Airborne Division, so no defending landing zones. The Poles were dropped on historic DZ but attached to the 82nd. 1st Airborne got mullered but held out to be relieved by XXX Corps.
Which DZ did the Poles use in this wargame? The planned DZ 'K' was located between two heavy Flak batteries and crossed by high tension lines from the Arnhem power station SE of the bridge! In the planning it was assumed suitable for the Poles by the 3rd lift, if the area was under the control of 1st Parachute Brigade to deal with the flak, and the Royal Engineers were to RV at the power station and take control after completing their Phase 1 tasks.
Interesting result, anyway.
Looking at the map it was probably DZ K. They were tasked with taking the northern end of the Waal bridge in my game.
@@PaulmichaelDay - that's a bit of a hike! Gavin, in his interview with Cornelius Ryan in 1967 for A Bridge Too Far (1974) said the British wanted him to drop a battalion on the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge to take it by coup de main, and while he toyed with the idea he said he eventually discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. He had landed with just four or five men to command and the division was disorganised for days. He opted instead to land his three regiments together in a "power center" and have the battalions fan out towards their objectives.
The highly experienced Colonel Reuben Tucker of the 504th PIR insisted on a special drop zone for one Company to drop south of the Grave bridge so he could take the bridge from both ends, and he got it. For the Nijmegen bridge, Gavin thought it would be enough to instruct Colonel Lindquist of the 508th to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge after landing, which Lindquist failed to do, thinking he had to secure his other objectives and clear the landing zone first before sending any sizeable force to the bridge.
According to Dempsey's biography by Peter Rostron, there was a plan to land a third brigade of 1st Airborne at Elst - presumably to secure the two small rail and road bridges over the Linge-Wettering drainage canal and occupy the only significant settlement on the 'island' between Nijmegen and Arnhem - I assume the actual drop zone would be the open space between the town and the canal. The idea was cancelled by Brereton because there were insufficient aircraft to drop three brigades/regiments for all three divisions, so 1st Airborne had to make do with two on the first day.
It's a pity that 3rd Parachute Battalion wasn't considered for a drop there - where it could have done a lot more good than getting stuck in Oosterbeek overnight, perhaps detaching a Company to secure the southern approach to the Arnhem bridge. It's something I hadn't considered before, since the orders specified that no attempt was to be made to linkup with 82nd Airborne to the south in order to preserve the division's southern bomb line - this was the box drawn around each division outside of which aircraft could attack targets of opportunity without ground control.
Love these vlips ✌️🇬🇧
What were these areas used for originally? Farming?
Drop Zone 'X', Landing Zone 'S' and most of Landing Zone 'Z' were farmland, with one field in the southeast corner of 'Z' (Doorwerthsche Heide) and the Ginkel Heide Drop Zone 'Y' are still heathland. Some of the farmed fields have since been returned to nature, so Al and James were walking around on natural grassland that was a ploughed or fallow field in 1944.
In the middle of LZ 'S' is the Reijerscamp farm (independent Parachute Company HQ) on the access road called 'Reijerskamp', so called because the area had previously been a Dutch army training area for the 'Gele Rijders' (Yellow Riders) - a horse artillery regiment named after the yellow facings on their uniforms. Their former barracks in Arnhem was called 'Artillerie Park' - the intended headquarters for 1st Airborne Division had it fully occupied Arnhem. 'Artilleriepark' in Arnhem is now just a small residential street inside the block that was the former barracks, now occupied by apartment buildings and a post office/courier building.
The dilemma of military decision making, everything is time sensitive, what was viable an hour ago is no longer prudent, most of the fxxk ups come from lack of communication or info overload and of course the bugbear of humanity - Ego, great stuff as ever (nice smock James, Al looks like a twitcher or peeping tom😅) aw the best from freezing Troon 😊
"Came back and see me" makes some sense if believed the recce's didn't leave the dropzone by jeep, but went on foot.
Gough got the message and went to Division HQ to see Urquhart, who had left Division to find Lathbury on the 2nd Para Battalion route into Arnhem to inform him that Gough might not be at the bridge. Gough then followed and found 2nd Battalion and Brigade HQ, but was told Lathbury and Uquhart had both gone to check on 3rd Battalion's progress. Gough stayed with 2nd Battalion, so his Jeep and the two escorts from A Troop were the only Reconnaissance Squadron Jeeps to get to the bridge. Gough took over command of 1st Parachute Brigade at the bridge after Frost was wounded.
I dont think we could field a whole fighting division today, never mind an airborne one.
Yesterday I watched an interesting video on why most Russian nukes probably won't work, if that's any consolation...
@davemac1197 that's probably our best chance, russian weapons designed in the fifties, built in the sixties and not maintained since the seventies! Let's hope that you're correct
@@nickmail7604 - I've found the video again - ruclips.net/video/iId3y9JtTbs/видео.html
It's very interesting because it goes to the fact these systems are very expensive and the country is not just relatively weaker economically, but also very corrupt.
It also makes the very good point that launching a nuclear attack on a nuclear armed nation is suicide unless you can guarantee to take out your opponent's entire nuclear arsenal before they can launch, and if you can't rely on 90% of your nukes actually detonating...
I do wonder if it would have been better to wait to launch the Arnhem attack until a day or two after the first lift so that the Arnhem force could be moved in a single drop
Hmm, sacrificing the element of surprise and forcing the Paras to fight their way through prepared defenders to reach their objective. Not sure that works... 1st Airborne never succeeded in taking any defended objective throughout the whole operation (though they proved to be excellent in defence).
@ actually airborne have achieved defended objectives. The question though is, would they have lost the element of surprise, or could it have gone completely the other way as the Germans moved troops to fight the American landings not realizing that Arnhem was the intended prize as it was so far behind the front line?
Brilliant as per uaual chaps ta!.......Carry on what!✌️
You guys must have had a full itinerary when you were over. I was there for the 80th for three days and covered only a portion of what you have
Plan might of worked if not for the wait for the 4th brigade.
Why did they have to arrive at that time in the afternoon? Surely they could have arrived early in the morning ,when it was just getting light, rather than kick everything off in the afternoon? I know it had to be co-ordinated across the other parts of the Operation but an early start on a Sunday morning would catch more people off guard.
I suspect that size of air operation at night would not have been possible, given the capabilities of the Allies at that time. It took hours to reach the drop zones and the air planners demanded time for the air force to take out the German anti-aircraft defences before the paratroops arrived. Also, low mist was common in the UK in early September mornings, also not great for flying (on several days during the operation, air drops had to be delayed due to poor weather conditions).
The British planners Browning (I Airborne Corps) and Dempsey (2nd Army) for operation COMET, and its proposed upgrade provisionally called SIXTEEN, wanted a schedule that landed the first lift at dawn for a glider coup de main on the three big bridges, an hour or so later for the main first airlift, and a second flight in the afternoon to arrive late afternoon or early evening before it got dark.
This was rejected by USAAF officers Brereton (1st Allied Airborne Army) and Williams (US IX Troop Carrier Command) who had both been appointed to their positions as commander and air transport commander in the new army by Eisenhower, and charged with improving their record of poor navigation and drop accuracy in the Sicily and Normandy operations.
They opted to recycle their operation LINNET (Tournai) and LINNET II (Liège-Maastricht bridges) air plan and cut the double airlift on D-Day on the pretext the reduced hours of daylight now left too little time for the ground crews to turn around the aircraft. The coups de main raids had to go as well, because they were too risky for broad daylight in the middle of the day. There was no reason why the flights could not start or end in darkness, except to help improve the navigation record of the USAAF pilots (only 1 in 3 USAAF C-47 crews even had a navigator).
If you ask me, the loss of the coup de main raids, which Browning had advised Dempsey were so essential that COMET should not go ahead without them, were a convenience to Brereton and Williams because the Americans did not have a glider assault capability in their airborne doctrine and they were keen to demonstrate what their so-called "air weapon" could do in 1st Allied Airborne Army without the British showing them up. Brereton and William's backers in Washington were already focused on the post-war era instead of concentrating on the task at hand - defeating Germany as quickly as possible.
My own view of MARKET GARDEN now - having come around completely from the Cornelius Ryan narrative of 47 years ago - is that the operation was sunk by politics, both inter-Allied politics within 1st AAA, and internal politics within 82nd Airborne Division that compromised the operation on the ground at Nijmegen. There's a reason why all of this is not in the Hollywood movie.
Just thinking out loud. If the air landing brigade had all gone to the bridge, surely the Germans would not have been expecting a second lift. The battle would be taking place 8 miles away when the second drop landed at the DZ. Was that too risky?
The risk is that 4th Parachute Brigade (second lift) on DZ 'Y' and their gliderborne support elements on LZ 'X' would both be behind enemy lines, which would have formed around the divisional enclave established by the first lift, presumably in Arnhem. You would also have the problem of the drop zone being unmarked. Each element of the Brigade (HQ, 10th, 11th, 156th Para Battalions, 4th Para Squadron Royal Engineers) had advance elements that arrived with the first lift and marked the rendezvous points with coloured smoke. Do you leave the pathfinders and brigade advance party behind to hide up somewhere and hope they don't get discovered by German patrols? It's an interesting dilemma. If they're discovered, the jig is up. You also have the problem of the 4th Brigade not being united with its support elements (anti-tank and field batteries Royal Artillery, RASC Jeeps etc.) and having to hopefully rendezvous while behind enemy lines, isolated from each other as well as isolated from the Division.
You're right in that the Airlanding Brigade protecting the landing zones did telegraph to the Germans that further landings would be made there, but I think the main lessons taken from Arnhem are those mentioned by Al and James in having just one lift and doing what you can with the forces landed in that one lift. It's interesting that the original proposal for the COMET upgrade (called provisonally operation SIXTEEN) called for a third brigade to be landed in the first lift at Elst on the 'island' between Arnhem and Nijmegen, which would presumably be the 4th Parachute Brigade and to secure the small bridges over the Linge-Wettering canal that drains the island, and ended up being the front line in October after MARKET GARDEN failed. That drop was deleted once the outline for SIXTEEN was handed over to Brereton at 1st Allied Airborne Army for detailed planning, because of insufficient aircraft available. The only source for this is Peter Rostron's 2010 biography of 2nd Army commander Dempsey, who blames this change and the distance of the landing zones from the bridges as the main reasons for the failure of the operation.
It should be noted that Dempsey, who many people incorrectly believe was micro-managed by Montgomery, had considerable experience at planning airborne operations - more than Browning or Brereton, but you can add his name to Browning and Montgmery's as British officers frustrated by the changes made by USAAF officers Brereton and Williams to create the final MARKET plan. They made compromises to minimise aircraft losses and to improve their navigation and accuracy record after the poor performances in Sicily and Normandy, which they had been charged with improving by Eisenhower when he appointed them to their positions with 1st AAA.
@@davemac1197 Dave you need to remember the more planes lost from the 1st lift means few planes would be available for the 2nd and 3rd lifts.
Some simple math's, to fly in the entire Market Force the Airforce's need to fly 3,795 sorties. The first lift consists of 1,525 aircraft which means each aircraft of the 1st Lift would need to fly 2.5 sorties. The actual second lift was 1,327 which represent 82.17% of the 1st lift. If the actual lost from the 1st lift were closer 33% you claim Browning was willing to accept the resultant second lift could have been 1,006 Aircraft, at difference of 321 aircraft. That would result in few troops and artillery being delivered in the 2nd lift. It could also result in the need for a 4th lift to bring in the balance of the airborne forces. In the end its a balancing act. Do you incur higher initial loss in aircraft and possible to the airborne force resulting in few troops available to capture the objects and a smaller second lift. The alternative decision, do you attempt to minimize the losses to both aircraft and Airborne force in the 1st lift to deliver a stronger initial ground force and 2nd lift.
As for the 4th Brigade landing at Elst being deleted as you say, "That drop was deleted once the outline for SIXTEEN was handed over to Brereton at 1st Allied Airborne Army for detailed planning, because of insufficient aircraft available." Operation Comet did not include at drop at Elst, so if a drop was plan than it would have been added into the requirements of Operation Sixteen by Browning.
The decision to deleted would have been made by Urquhart when he finalizes his plan. If Browning though it was important for the success of the operation that the 4th Para Brigade was drop at Elst as part of the 1st Lift, then he could have ordered Urquhart to include the 4th in the 1st Lift at the expenses of his artillery and Divisional troops.
In multiply lifts operations compromises are always being made based on the situation and intelligent reports. Only after the event would the planners know if they made the right decisions.
@@johnlucas8479 - I never forgot that John, but you should remember that the crucial factor is what can be achieved on the first day, which means the force airlifted in first lift if you're only going to have one lift per day.
COMET did not involve a drop at Elst because the operation only involved four brigades in total dropping at Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave, with a second lift later on the same day delivering the Polish brigade at Grave as a reinforcement. COMET was designed as a pursuit operation, whereas MARKET had to be a redesign as more of a set piece assault. The drop planned for Elst was part of Browning's "airborne carpet" concept to land airborne troops all the way from Valkenswaard to Arnhem, but the drop zones south of the Wilhelmina canal were deleted by Williams on the grounds of Flak around Eindhoven, at Uden by Taylor as an overextension of his division (and there is no bridge or water barrier at Uden), and Elst by Brereton due to insufficient aircraft. So significant parts of the "airborne carpet" concept was thrown out by the Americans, despite the phrase finding its way into the script for the film version of A Bridge Too Far (1977) and the three divisions were more isolated from each other than originally planned.
I very much doubt Urquhart or Browning would have contemplated dropping three brigades without their divisional support elements. You would need more parachute transports to do it, so the glider tugs taking the divisional units to Arnhem would not have been suitable to be repurposed in this way - they can carry fewer paratroops than the C-47s assigned to airlift 4th Parachute Brigade. None of this makes any sense at all. I think Urquhart was given an airlift schedule and had to devise his divisional plan within its restrictions - this was certainly Gavin's complaint, so I don't believe Urquhart and Taylor were in a different position.
So, given the airlift capacity to deliver one brigade of paratroops and glider tugs sufficient to transport a majority of the Airlanding Brigade and their respective support units, Urquhart was faced with devising a two-brigade assault on the first day, and one brigade would have to remain on the landing zones to hold them for the subsequent lifts. I'm sure the reason I'm just becoming aware of the Elst drop from the Dempsey biography was because it was dropped at an early stage, and only Browning and Dempsey would have been aware of it, being the authors of the SIXTEEN outline proposal before it was taken back to 1st Allied Airborne Army and Brereton.
@@davemac1197 Interesting reply
1) What evidence do you have that it was Brereton that made the final decision about not to drop the 4th Para Brigade at Elst. I would assume that Urquhart would always have the final say on how his division would be deployed. ELst drop would have been initial included as part of 1st British Divisions assignment for Market by Browning.
2) "I very much doubt Urquhart or Browning would have contemplated dropping three brigades without their divisional support elements." yet both Gavin and Taylor made the decision to bring in their 3rd parachute Regiment ahead of Division Troops and Artillery. Image if Gavin decided to include only the 504th and 505th PIR plus Divisional Troops in the 1st lift and the 508th included in the 2nd. Taylor decided not to include the 501st in the 1st Lift and instead include Divisional Troops and the German were able to destroy the bridges at Veghel. I image you would heavy criticize their decision not to have included the 3rd PIR in the first lift.
3) "You would need more parachute transports to do" and "glider tugs taking the divisional units to Arnhem would not have been suitable to be repurposed in this way - they can carry fewer paratroops than the C-47s assigned to airlift 4th". For D-Day the 46th Group Dakota's were used to transport the Parachute Brigades. As the Dakota is the British name for the C-47 Skytrain there would be no difference carrying capacity. Hollinghurst and Urquhart could have used 46 Group for the 4th Para brigade and 38 Group for 1st Airlanding Brigade and Divisional Troops if required.
@@johnlucas8479
1) Urquhart would have a final say in the deployment of his division, but he had to work within the constraints of the air plan, fixed by Brereton on 14 September with no opportunity for any further changes, which also frustrated Gavin. It was not in Urquhart's gift to have sufficient aircraft to land three brigades, that was determined by Brereton.
The fact the decision was made by Brereton is made clear in Peter Rostron's 2010 biography of Dempsey:
_The plan agreed between Dempsey and Browning for MARKET was for [...] a further brigade to be dropped at Elst to aid the advance from Nijmegen to Arnhem. The preferred option was for these drops to be made in the shortest possible time and at night. It was now that the fundamental divergences in philosophy between Brereton and Browning became apparent. Brereton insisted that the drops must be in daylight, be spread over three days and could not include the extra brigade at Elst. The American pilots did not have the navigational skills of the RAF, and he would not even consider a request from the RAF's 38 Group that a quick turnaround on the first day could enable one early drop and one late drop to be made. This would require that the approach flight would be made in darkness - doubtless Brereton was mindful of the awful disaster fifteen months earlier when American pilots had dropped most of a British airlanding brigade in the sea off Sicily during a night operation. Restricting his room for manoeuvre was the fact that, despite Eisenhower's promise - or what was understood to be a promise - to give 21st Army Group priority, aircraft were needed elsewhere._
_Changes to the plan continued to be made. When Dempsey discussed the plan with Browning three days before the operation, the intention was to put one brigade down at Elst on the first day, and to land the other two brigades north of the river. 'They had to change this because of shortage of aircraft, and the failure to secure Elst plus the attempt to hold the DZ and LZ were fatal to the plan.'_
_Brereton, who was only appointed in August, was an outstanding airman with no experience whatever of either land or airborne operations. He was, in Browning's view, confused, weak-willed and overcautious. They had a fundamental difference of view over the employment of airborne forces. Brereton insisted that the primary responsibility of any air operation was that the first troops on the ground must secure landing zones for resupply. Browning favoured the immediate capture of tactical objectives while the element of surprise was still in the favour of the attacker. In this he had the full backing of Dempsey, who had planned and launched more airborne operations than either of them._
2) Both Gavin and Taylor took their Engineers with them, and Gavin one battery of anti-tank guns and one battalion of artillery on the first lift. Taylor could expect an early linkup with XXX Corps and Gavin's limited response to the threat of armour in the Reichswald may be tempered by the fact it was an older report than the reports of armour north of Arnhem (in fact they were both generated by the Hohenstaufen Division in transit). The decision to deploy 1st Airborne to Arnhem instead of one of the American divisions was no doubt because of its stronger anti-tank capability and the weight of the intelligence on German armour being in the north.
3) "For D-Day the 46th Group Dakota's were used to transport the Parachute Brigades." - No. The 130 Dakotas of 46 Group were used to tow gliders carrying the KOSB and Border Battalions, and 1st Airlanding Brigade HQ and medical support units. The 220 Albemarle, Halifax, and Stirling transports towed gliders carrying (half of) the South Staffords Airlanding Battalion and Divisional HQ and support units. 1st Parachute Brigade was dropped by 143 C-47s of US 61st and 314th Troop Carrier Groups.
Sources:
Glider Pilots at Arnhem, Mike Peters and Luuk Buist (2009) - Appendix 8: Air Load Manifest First Lift
Market Flights Volume 1 - IX Troop Carrier Command in Operation Market Garden, Hans den Brok (2018) - 17 September Serials for 1st Airborne Division
Your assumption that RAF 38 Group could carry the Airlanding Brigade as well as the Divisional troops is incorrect. You must get your facts right and that requires reading. I've given you the sources.
Wouldn’t it be better to send landing brigades into town and smaller paras battalion hold landing zones
The Paras were regarded as elite and more aggressively trained soldiers so it made sense to use them to lead the offensive operations.
@@jrd33 none of them trained for close quarters
@@jrd33 - British glider troops were trained in the assault role and doctrine was to land them first to secure the landings zones, because they took their own anti-tank guns with them. Glider troops of the Ox & Bucks Regiment assaulted the Orne river and canal bridges in Normandy until relieved by paratroopers, and the detached D Companies from the 2nd South Staffords, 7th KOSB, and 1st Border Battalions were due to assault the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges in operation COMET before it was cancelled at the last minute.
US Airborne doctrine was different - they landed paratroops first for the initial assault and only used the glider infantry as a reinforcement force. The USAAF glider pilots were also an asset that had to be protected and evacuated as quickly as possible, whereas the British Glider Pilot Regiment was part of the army and trained as light infantry with the same equipment as the paratroopers once they had landed. The GPR provided two complete wings (battalions) at Arnhem and were an integral part of the defensive perimeter.
I am still waiting on the episode, where they "ruck up" and walk the talk.
ruck up? oh dear
@keithskelhorne3993 my bad. My ungrateful colonial is showing. I think the Brits use the term "kit up". 🇺🇸
@@crusignatioutremer791 In the British Army, it's 'tabbing'. (Tactical Advance to Battle.)
@wessexdruid7598 my initial meaning, was for them to put all the accoutrements of war for the period on, and then walk the ground.
@@crusignatioutremer791 They've only done that to ride on a Sherman Tank, following the XXX Corps route to Arnhem.
Have you tried wearing ammo boots and gaiters, 37 patt webbing - or a KF shirt? I don't recommend them.
Using German doctrine, what is the only objective of the mission? Capture and hold the bridge! Everything else is of secondary importance. What is the point of having a pristine, securely held drop zone if the bridge is not captured. No time for having a picnic and nice cuppa on the landing zone. Surely everyone marches en masse to the bridge and will be capable of pushing any opposition encountered, aside. Then a coup de main glider operation on the south side of bridge in daylight once the northern end is close to being secured. Job done. Yes it is risky as the landing zones might be overrun for easy resupply and reinforcement but the polder close to the south end of the bridge could be used as a substitute surely? War is a balance of risk and reward. Soldiers are going to die sadly but it is war. If the bridge is captured, then who knows, maybe the war does end Christmas 44?
The dawn glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges planned for COMET and the proposed operation SIXTEEN outline were ruled out by Brereton's decision to fly all flights for his MARKET plan in broad daylight, so it was considered too risky in those conditions. The envelope for the glider assaults was either a night landing in a full Moon period, or dawn in a no-Moon period such as during COMET/MARKET. The approach would be the same as for the main landing zones at Wolfheze and the gliders would release when they crossed their respective river landmarks 6 km to the west over the Maas-Waal-Rijn, turn right and follow the rivers to the landing zones on the river flood plains close to the bridges. The assigned forces were D Companies of the three Airlanding Battalions - 2nd South Staffords (Arnhem), 7th KOSB (Nijmegen), and 1st Battalion Border Regiment (Grave). COMET was a last-minute cancellation at 0200 hours on 10 September as the men were boarding their aircraft for the assaults.
@@davemac1197 "The airborne assault on the bridges was code-named Operation MARKET and the ground follow-up and relief Operation GARDEN.
On 14 September, Montgomery issued his ‘Operational Appreciation M 525’ summarising his plan."
RAF Museum The Royal Air Force and Operation Market Garden: Chapter 2
Constant interruptions and over talking from Holland add nothing. If you were ex para have the Denison smock with wings up and your DZ flash or get it off.
Airlanding troops wore them with no wings up. All paras might be airborne, but not all airborne were paras...
The germans despite heavy losses captured crete by
Landing close to targets!
Wouldn't they have been better landing south of Arnhem, closer to 30 corps, have specialist units take the bridge, i dont agree that the landing zones weren't the problem, of course they were a problem, element of suprise totally gone, Germans knew what there objective was very qiuckly and could counter.
There was considerable confusion on the German side over the objectives, although Bittrich correctly deduced it was the bridges when he received reports of landings near Arnhem and Nijmegen and the arrangements he had in place to react quickly could be put into operation. By the time Model was briefed and understood what was happening, he approved of the measures Bittrich had already taken.
The drop zone imediately south of the Arnhem bridge - Drop Zone 'K' for the Poles in the third lift - was deemed unsuitable for D-Day because it was between two of the four heavy Flak batteries surrounding Arnhem and crossed by two high tension lines from the Arnhem power station southeast of the bridge. It was thought that by D+2 the 1st Parachute Brigade would control the area and the Royal Engineers were due to rendezvous at the power station and take control of it after they had completed their Phase 1 tasks. Obviously that didn't happen, so the Polish drop zone had to be re-arranged.
Browning's original "airborne carpet" concept also included drop zones for the 101st Airborne between Valkenswaard and Son to ensure the Aalst-Eindhoven-Son bridges were quickly taken and enable a linkup with the Guards on D-Day. This was deleted by Paul Williams of US IX Troop Carrier Command on the grounds of the Flak around Eindhoven. The delays on D+1 at Aalst that wasted the whole day were caused bya battery of four 8.8cm Flak guns and two StuG III assault guns covering the bridge, who abandoned their guns after hearing that American paratroops had entered Eindhoven behind them. Had this occurred on D-Day the linkup could have been achieved 24 hours earlier (Aalst is only 4 km north of Valkenswaard, where the Guards stopped on D-day with one hour of daylight remaining), which also means in the worst case scenario the Son bridge was still blown the bridging equipment could have been brought up to replace it 24 hours earlier, and the Guards reach Nijmegen 24 hours earlier.
There was also a proposal to drop a brigade of 1st Airborne at Elst - midway between Arnhem and Nijmegen and on the small road and rail bridges over the Linge-Wettering drainage canal. The drop was deleted due to insufficient aircraft, but the canal actually became the no-man's-land between the front lines east of the railway for many weeks in October after MARKET GARDEN had failed and the situation on the 'island' became very static, so it was a significant barrier - effectively an anti-tank ditch with few crossing points.
The effing British public school system/network... that's what!
Again britisch talk on ther hei bij Ede , road nearby is N224 with go,s to a roundabout truth gents
Now again missed you the rail road of wesel to Nijmergen of was it over look like
monty did .
Then a Dutch lesson to your jeeps attack on the bridge even if the jeeps were there i think it make no different at all..
Why " Fall gelb" and the attack of the " SS SVT brigade " on the " teufelberg "( grebbeberg ) we the Dutch shot them all up ..Why would the Germans do that on day1 ???
And why was er not a attack on the rader at schaarbergen or a attack to finisch off Deelen ???
Hard quistions a under stand but from my view ( Dutch and kritisch ) it a lot off strings of mistakes and so on ...
Monty ( de Guingand ) to eager to finisch the war , result gents is the hungerwinter thx to Monty ..
Google Translate is een geweldig iets :)
@@keithskelhorne3993 zal wel gedeelte begreep je niet ??
@@MegaRebel100te rommelig… doe je best.. herstel je tekst . Minder lange zinnen.. ram het dan in Google translate.. en lees t Engels hard op.. en haal irritante foutjes er uit.
We geven je 1 uur de tijd.
I would like to respond to all of this if I could understand it. Hope you'll try again. On the points I did get:
Deelen was out of action as an air station and air units evacuated to Germany after the runways were bombed on 3 September and again on the morning of the airborne attack on 17 September, but still occupied by Fliegerhorst Kommandantur (airbase command) Deelen ground units and protected by two light Flak batteries - 2., and 3./le.Flak-Abteilung 667. The 24 heavy 8.8cm Flak guns of schwere Flak-Abteilung 428 had been removed a few days earlier and repositioned to support the Wilhelmina canal defence line at the Oirschot, Best, and Son bridges to the south near Eindhoven.
The Luftwaffe nightfighter 3.Jagd-Division command bunker DIOGENES was undergoing a planned relocation to Duisberg in Germany on 17 September and the airborne landings only accelerated that process with the final evacuation of the remaining skeleton shift and destruction of the bunker interior by demolition charges by 1700 hours that day.
The Hunger Winter was the retaliation of the Germans for the Dutch rail strike, organised by the resistance at the request of the Dutch Government-in-Exile based in London to coincide with MARKET GARDEN, and the Germans restricted train transport of food produce from the farms in eastern Netherlands to the cities in the west, so please thank your EU 'friends' in Germany for that and not your liberators (would be the prevailing view here in the UK).
Hoi @megarebel100, kan je misschien je tekst nogmaals schrijven (en evt. een Nederlandse tekst vertalen via Google Translate?). Wát je wilt bijdragen is mij (en anderen) volslagen onduidelijk.
Its not as far as all that Really Its a long why in enemy occupied country thats why it failed