Market Garden succeeds

Yep, think your right, and know dd's were used after D day also. But the amount of funnies and manpower assigned to Hobart in June was for a specific purpose. I dont think there was any intention of keeping the division substantiated as such for the period after beach landings etc.

With the state of manpower in British army at that time it is inconcevable that any losses were replaced in that division except with immediate reserves included for that purpose.

We were having problems keeping the infantry battalions up to strengh, the fighting teeth.

RAF regiment and others pulled in as replacements.

I've searched for info on the history of Hobarts division. And cannot find anything yet that gives me its disbanding or manpower equipment status for this period.

As to its use as an attacking arm for Market Garden I would say this is fancy footwork.

 

i think the c.o of the allied airboune army was out of his depth anyway,cheers.

 

YES. Logistics. Were it not for the L word, anything fantasy could occur. Patton was moving steadily along his projected advance, and BAM. Eisenhower cuts off his supplies and gives them to Montgomery. Patton claims that if he had the supplies Montgomery did, the Allies would have been across the Rhine. Not proving or disproving his statement, but, imagine: a world without logistics. Market Garden and Patton's advance: AT THE SAME TIME. Fanciful? Far-fetched? So is the rest of this thread.

 

only if the correct formation was used,welsh guards battlegroup.this was tthe armd recon regt for the guards div.its job was to lead an advance.cheers.

 

why would the nazis use two ss panzer divisions

 

Why not?

 

But he did have a nice shiney Sam Browne....

 

Because that was what was available.

 

They actually were more like two SS Panzergrenadier regiments (rather than divisions) reinforced with accordingly weak support elements to be exact.

 

But still a difficult opponent for troops with limited anti-armour resources and no armour of their own......

 

But isnt it amazing what a weak support element can do...battalion Kraft,,,sp... for example.

 

I agree, the English paras had even more limited ammunition and equipment. The SS really gets too much credit - the 3rd rate heer units did the other half of the hard fighting.

Nevertheless, it never ceases to surprised me that the paras were able to wreak a lot of the German armor and armored halftracks with pretty difficult methods. (piats, bombs, charges, etc.)

They ground a lot of mechanized and heavily armed SS/heer infantry into dust. The 9th/10th SS elements after the battle lost half of their offensive strength.

 

I think the original plan as it was could have worked but I would have tweaked it slightly.

XXX Corps should have started their attack earlier in day maybe this would have forced the Germans to send some of their troops south to meet XXX Corps attack. It would have weakened the defenses around the drop zones and would have caused even greater confusion for the Germans when the airbourne troops started dropping.

The other thing I would have done is given Arnhem to either the 101st or 82nd and 1st Airbourne would have taken Eindhoven. The least experianced division would have the area closer to XXX Corps resulting in their communication problems being less dibilating. The 82nd of 101st would have still taken a hammering like the 1st did but they would have been able to communicate with the outside world and notify command that there supply zones had been overrun. This combined with their greater combat experiance may have seen them hold out until XXX Corps broke through.

Without changing the existing plan Urqhart should have sent half his division to Arnhem with the other half staying behind to secure the drop zones. Bittrich's men had enough problems with 200 men in Arnhem, 5000 men would have been a nightmare for him.

 

The what if thread sometimes goes a bit comic strip i think this post as with a few others shows that, and for that i salute you

 

Sorry got some of my facts wrong in my original post, that's what happens when you try and post from memory.

I done 1st Airbourne a disservice by saying that they were inexperienced when they had actually seen action in Italy prior to Market Garden. Still if the commanders had know about their radio problems they could have reassigned the drop zones so that 1st had the sector nearest XXX Corps thus shortening their lines of communication.

Also reading the book Arnhem: Jumping the Rhine last night the author said that resupply priority was given to the 101st and 82nd rather then the 1st as they believed it was more important to keep the road clear for XXX Corps so that they could move faster rather then bolstering 1st Airbourne's ability to hold out. While this wisdom makes sense surely they would have realised that 1st Airbourne might have to hold out for a lot longer then anticipated. I guess though it comes back to communication problems as priorities could be changed if the 1st could communicate with anyone outside Arnhem.

 

Thats no problem, not many of us would come back to decry what they already said. Well done for that.

Indeed Members of this division had already proved themselves in action in Africa amongst others.

 

If this scenario would have been employed, for arguments sake, where would you have dropped the Polish Brigade?

 

I would either still send the Polish Brigade to Arnhem or maybe drop them around Nijmegen but use them as an extra division to keep the road clear. You would then have a total of 5 divisions trying to keep the road clear the three airbourne division dropped around Eindhoven and Nijemegen and the two infantry division that Horrocks detached from XXX Corps advance.

 

yes,but xxx corps o.o.b.was more than just 1 armd div,and 2 inf divs,cheers.

 

I know but Horrocks had detached two divisions from XXX Corps advance who's sole purpose was to assist the 82nd and 101st in keeping the road open for the rest of XXX Corps divisions to push towards Arnhem.