Market Garden succeeds

Thats why I built into this revised plan GOTH Plans. Hobart is one, as instead of waiting for the Son Bridge to be replaced, his LVTs, DD Shermans, and other vehicles set for deep wading will just go across the river and drive on.

At Nimejin, same thing with fewer causilities than Cook's forces took and drive on.

If the 6th is still ran out of Arnhem, they will have orders to fall back to the Ferry and await Hobart.

Hobart will bring up Higgins boats and Baily Bridges to get more forces across and XXX Corp will exploit.

Then I throw in 1st British Airborne and the Polish Brigade to take Rotterdam by coup de main as XXX Corp Units rush to link up with them.

With Rotterdam, the Allies have an even bigger port than Antwerp which can be left to wither on the Vine.

With Rotterdam secured the Hague will be next for the 1st and Polish Brigades with Hobart in support.

XXX Corp begins an operational pause as Fresh Troops rush up the highway and through Rotterdam, once it is up, to exploit the gap.

 

Updating the plan again:

The Waal at Nijmegen Bridge is 400 yard wide. So I'll have Sunderlands land in conjunction with the 82nd in the morning with Royal Marines in the Sunderlands. They will land close to shore and rush both sides of the Bridge and wait for the 82nd to relieve them.

 

Looking at my railroad map of that area suggests Antwerp will work better. Antwerp has better rail connections south & south east & is one of the routes south from Rotterdam. According to my US Army Histoical Studies Green Book on logistics planning for Overlord the Dutch ports were considered desireable objectives, but secondary to Antwerp due to location and the railroad routes. Fully operable railroads were critical for these ports to function correctly. Prewar they had been operating as transit ports & lacked the dry storage for a significant percent of the usual monthly intake. In the case of Antwerp the Allied port operations command found storage facilitys suitable for only a couple days intake. Requisitioning additional floorspace, use of tent stocks, and the substitution of railcars for warehouses added another day or two. for Antwerp to take in its theoretical capacity of 80,000 to 100,000 tons per day that same ammount had to leave the port on the railroads each day.

Marsailles is mentioned as the other Holy Grail of those nameless supply officers who organized supply for Overlord. Churchill, amoung others, thought otherwise and kept suggesting the whole southern Anvil thing be canceled. Capturing the Marsailles/Toulon group in mid August was a hopefull sign, and restoring the harbor by mid September was usefull what really made the game was the realtively light damage to the railroads from the Mediterrainian ports to Central France & Paris

 

Well, isn't it so much easier to run the operation right now? Especially when you have impeccable intel on enemy locations, numerous sources on enemy commanders, weapons, and tactics? This operation was run over sixty years ago now, and it seems simple, after you know exactly what the Germans did in response. And, most of all, doesn't the answer to a hard question look easy, when you already have the answer?

 

It shows in various comercial historys of the Africa campaigns, and in US Army reprints of German documents. We were taught it as part of our motormarch instruction in the USMC in the 1990s. As taught in the books it is a practical coutner measure in the desert or other terrain where there is dry flat ground. I dont see it working very well in NW Europe what with all the stone fences, tree lines, ditches, muddy streams, dense woods, ect.... All the accounts I've read of Germans under air attack in Europe describe turning off the road into the nearest trees, or absent a adjacent orchard or shady lane they would stop and dive for the ditch.

 

And followed up closely by the Irish Gobi Desert canoeing Brigade Group with underwater tanks...

Well if you can do it so can I.

 

And then the first Australian philosophy brigade manned by Bruces
could barge in as well...
Let's face it. Market Garden was an over ambitious operation with limited resources.
Changing the COs or strategy to push to the objectives would change little given the available resources at time. What most of you propose, is a rewrite of the operation which as the thread goes on, moves further away from reality. The only way for it to succeed would be to bring more divisions into the fray bidding their time. Which was what was done after Market Garden failed. In the given window of opportunity, it'd be very easy for the Germans to break any allied attempt of this kind.



Cheers...

 

I think the real solution is to parachute Captain America. He'll break the enemy defenses straight into Berlin

 

On the reverse side though, Allied Engineers can just simply build new Rail Road Tracks and widen existing roads to get around that problem. We are looking at a month long Operational Pause after the Break out to clean up the Highway anyway. So there is time to build up Rotterdam properly.

 

Oh ye of little faith. Everything I proposed is utterly realistic and coincides with many of the Different Commanders thoughts before hand.

The operation had a high chance of success so long as aggressive innovative leaders ready to take risks and be flexible enough to stack the deck with GOTH Plans.

That is why Market Garden ultimately failed. Montgomery failed to stack the deck by bringing his Brother-in-Law Major General Percy Hobart along. Hobart alone had the equipment needed to, should the Airborne Divisions failed to hold the Bridges, take the bridges or make new ones.

The Airborne Portion fell through partly due to the radios and partly due to Transport Commands irrational one drop a day nonsense. The Airborne should have told them to shut up and do it the Airborne way so they could maximize their chances or face charges of cowardice in the face of the enemy.

 

Do you have any informatin on the state or readyness and structure of Hobarts division in Autumn of 44? Any scources I could look up?

 

1. 1st British Airborne, the weakest unit was given the furthest bridge. That mission should have gone to the 6th British Airborne whose Hamlicar Gliders could carry Tetrarch Light Tanks that would have blown the initial German Scout Car response away.

Presumably his refers to the same 6th Airborne Division that had fought in Normandy from June 1944 onwards.....my concern at this switch would have been the fact that they only arrived back in the UK in the first week of September 1944 and according to Airborne Forces by Otway (the official history for WW2) they had suffered over 4,500 casualties in the Normandy campaign.....would they have been in a fit state to undertake Market Garden?

 

Ahhhh someone with some facts....I knew something was missing around here...

 

6th Airborne wouldn't have been in much of a state to participate in this revised Market-Garden. As Medic points out they'd taken heavy casualties in the attritional warfare of Normandy until September. That's the reason it wasn't chosen for the real Market-Garden. It was barely in shape when it was rushed over to the Ardennes during the Bulge in December.

In fact, there were no other airborne divisions available. 17th Airborne had only just arrived in Normandy, had little equipment and poor logistics. 13th Airborne wouldn't arrive in England until early 1945. 11th Airborne was in the Pacific. That's all of the airborne formations. So that part of AntiWank's plan would never have worked.

 

THANKS VERY MUCH for the salute urgh.....always happy to provide some facts about OMG....

 

Hamlicar Gliders could carry Tetrarch Light Tanks that would have blown the initial German Scout Car response away

After having read the comments about Tetrarch tanks and not wsihing to enter that debate, the first problem would have been getting them there.......only C Squadron GPR had pilots qualified to fly them and after speaking ot one of my gang he says that nearly all of the qualified pilots went on OMG.......so 28 Hamilcars in total went:

3 carried bulk loaded stores and the one tthat was unloaded provided much useful ammo etc
9 carried 2 Bren Gun Crriiers each for each of the infantry battalions in the Division
16 carried a 17 pounder anti-tank gun and towing vehicle......

So gents, the question as an armchair general which bits of kit do you want to kick off the operation......my first option would be the BGC but the CO's would probably have wanted them as they were their only bit of kit with any sort of armour.....as a commander I'd want all 16 17 pounders to go!!!!

 

Thats the trouble with facts....they get in the way.

What if's are fun at times, but they should always be appropriate to the logistics, weather and equipment available at the time of the what if.

I'm still pretty interested in Hobarts division and whether they even constituted a divison in status and readyness after D day op..I know some funnies including DD's were used in other operations, but in the numbers the originator here talks of, he talks of Hobart and his division. I cant imagine but may be incorrect that it still existed in the numbers and readyness that he imagines it to have at this stage.

Thanks for the facts.

But I've already ended this version of OMG. I've got a tsunami racing down the water....after FDR has agreed to test Atomic bomb out early on the prippet marshes, unfortunetly the bomb site on the newly arrived in service B52 was off a little...wave crashes down river....just at same time Catalinas are landing....

 

A month is not nearly enough. Antwerp was captured in early September. At the end of November the railroads out of the city and across central Belgium were suffcient for removing only about half of the cargo originally expected. While the Belgian railroads were not as badly damaged as the French there were also several key bridges and other bits destroyed. Temporary repairs to those and other damage did allow freight to pass, but at reduced volume to lessen failure of the interm fixes. Automotive transport was unable to make up the difference the same as in the earlier advance across France.there was a severe shortage of freight cars and insufficient locomotives. I also missed a paragraph in the Green Book. It had been expected that barge transport would provide the US Army with some 96,000 tons of supply from Antwerp in December. Due to blocks, infrastructure damage, and mines only 48,000 tons were provided to US Army forward depots by barge.

The bottom line here is that although Antwerp was fully capable of unloading more than the 40,000 tons daily it was reciving in early December, the ability to dispatch the cargo fell over 6000 tons per day short of the intake. If the combined British & US resources could not bring the Belgian transport system up to requrement in Sept thru Nov. would the transportation south from Rotterdam have been restored any faster? It is a greater distance, with more bridges. If I am reading the map correctly the railroads exiting Rotterdam appear less than Antwerp & the dependance on barges for freight removal greater. The problems the US and British armys had with barge transportation in France and Belgium suggest then the eventual problem with moving freight out of and south from Rotterdam greater than with Antwerp.

 

My god... I dont think I can even be bothered replying to such drivel. Antiwanks post are pure fantasy with no grounding in facts.

AM,

Yer... 6th were in no state for anything in September... Even by December when they are fighting around the North of the Bulge the division was still undermanned.

 

Were the LVT or Buffalos used by the Canadians in their campaign to clear the clear the Scheldt estuary? & were those part of the 79th?