Operation Goodwood...Montgomery...?

big difference with Bulge<>naval [ ha ] and air power was negated,...Goodwood<> Allies were attacking, Bulge<>Germans [ THREE armies, very concentrated ] on the attack...at Metz, wasn't Ike the CO of ground forces?? not Patton...Monty was CO of ground forces at Goodwood/Epsom?

 

I thought they were way ahead of their planned objectives in late August, early September, [ after Ike took over, ] and lack supplies really slowed them down....and then,when they went with Monty's plan, there was the disastrous MGarden operation planned by Monty [ again, much men and material loss for nothing gained, just like Goodwood, only worse?? instead of opening the Scheldt estuary?

 

As US manpower losses were higher (tank losses roughly equal) against significantly lower opposition care to follow through the logic of that claim?

Well if you claim Commonwealth losses were 'big' then surely you should know both sides losses. If not then you are just making unsupported claims.

Why?

 

No. They got ahead of schedule whilst Montgomery was still in charge. Is this just another way of laying all blame on Montgomery and transfering all credit to another (preferably US) General?

Here we go again. MG happened when Ike took over. Thus it is Ike's responsibility. Another attempt to transfer all blame for failure on to Montgomery.

 

We can all find reasons to explain away our national defeats. I am not sure everyone else will accept your excuses though.
I like the way you are now claiming the commander takes credit/blame for his armies so can we expect you to praise Monty for his COBRA breakout?

 

Please let us remember this topic is whether Goodwood can be called a success, failure or something in between and not a prolonged critique of Montgomery. We have enough of those already.

As said by others wiser than I, no battleplan ever survives contact with the enemy.

In my opinion Goodwood must be classified as a partial success that played its part in setting the conditions that led to a unqualified success in Cobra.

 

What we CAN say for certainty is that the Allied strategy was to wear the Germans down until a breakout somewhere could be achieved. In this we were fantastically aided by Ol' GROFAZ himself. Rommel stated in a report which I paraphrase, "One can calculate with almost mathematical certainty when the enemy will break out." It seems that Eisenhower himself thought that Monty was going for the breakout. The British press was told he had broken out so it seems to me that he was going for just that. A man with his ego and ambition would do nothing less. German and Allied casualties were enormous but while the Allies could, at least in the short term replace theirs, the Germans could not-thanks to Hitler. So in answer to the original question I would have to agree with others and say that Goodwood failed in its total objectives but contributed to the success of the total Allied effort.

 

It is easy to forget, ion the desire to nail Montgomery for not doing what he said he would do is that was not the success criteria.

If you set targets in any walk of life, in business, sport or conflict you need to get people to believe that they can win. The annual ritual of setting objectives and targets for the next year is based on a series of untruths. Managers set "stretch " targets that they know are unlikely to be achieved. No commercial business sets targets that they expect.
In a war it is even more important to ensure that soldiers are aggressive and undertake the risks to win .

The experienced land commanders knew there could not be a break out until the Germans had been exhausted. Bradley, Montgomery and Eisenhower knew less about the German ability to resist than Rommel, who could calculate how much longer his men could resist. . From mid July the allies had to plan on the possibility that the next attack would be the own which broke the German front.

For much of the campaign the land commanders cannot have had any expectation of "breaking out" or making major territorial gains. Even if the aim of a battle is to wear them down by attrition the objectives need to be set in geographic terms. No one issued orders to "go out and attrit the enemy." Montgomery's talent was to make this palatable to the Beritish troops he commanded.

 

Dear Sheldrake,

I disagree! It's one thing to tell your troops that you're going to break out. It's something entirely different to tell your superior that you're going to break out and then get him to throw the strategic assets of two major air forces behind your effort! If Monty hadn't been a UK national hero there is reason to believe he could have been sacked. Ike was pretty disgusted with him at that point. Good wood was a full-blooded thrust designed to break through. Read your last sentence in the third paragraph in your last post. It supports what I'm saying.

 

So any General who fails to tell his his superior 'I might not win the next battle' deserves the sack?
Thats an interesting concept.
When did Bradley tell Monty he 'I might get bogged down for weeks banging my head on a brick wall outside outside St Lo' and which assets did Bradley deny himself in order not to tie them up for 'no gain?'

Not so much as he was disgusted by Bradley's later behaviour in the Bulge. Nor as disgusted as Ike was with Hodges meltdown. They never got sacked though.

Can anyone remind me how many unsuccesful attempts Bradley made to 'break out' up to and including his inability to start COBRA in step with GOODWOOD? Should he not have been sacked for his 'failures'.
The main reason COBRA worked is because the Commonwealth diverted all the mobile German forces to its sector and if the same forces had been deployed against Bradley in the same depth as they were against Monty/GOODWOOD Bradley would have failed to break out. I put it that bluntly.

 

if you can't breakout and incur high casualties, isn't that failure in any book?

 

It would be if we could decide on the meaning of 'failure'. For instance in Monty's case we know you want to judge every single advance he made individualy and if any ended up not breaking out you want to call it a failure. In the case of Bradley I believe you want to lump all his advances together and will argue that as he finaly 'broke out' then he did nor 'fail.

You still have not answered my point about 'high casualties'. As you have failed to quantify German losses how can you claim Mongomery had high casualties?
Is the fact the US sustained highrer casualties than the Commonwealth significant?
Why do you think the US casualties were greater that Commonwealth casualties?

I remember one Monty hater who argued it this way.

Monty did not pull his weight in Normandy. The US fought harder and thus sustained higher losses.

Later he was knocking Monty for the Rhine Crossing and stated:

The US crossed the Rhine with fewer casualties than Monty. These higher losses proved Monty was wasteful with lives and not as good as the US Generals.

Heads I win tails you lose.

 

Ike's willingness to take the airforce side over Montgomery over this matters does not reflect particularly well on Eisenhower.

The Allies struggled to find the firepower to break down the very stubborn German defences positioned in depth. The air force could deliver the level of firepower in depth that could disrupt defences and allow an armoured force to get into the depths of the german defences. Had the germans defences been as shallow as the intelligence reports suggested the attack might have made a breach in the German lines. Op Goodwood was not an aberration, but the start of a pattern of allied offensives. . As was demonstrated by the success of Op Cobra, and the continued use of heavy bombers to support major attacks.Toitalise, Tractable, Astonia, etc.

The airforce did not want to divert strategic bombers to be used for close air support. This was largely for interservice political reasons - and because the bomber barons had not ever really accepted that Op Overlord came first. .If Eisenhower genuinely took airforce's side over this raises the question about how committed Eisenhower was to helping his armies to solve their tactical problems rather than rock Eisenhower's career boat! If Ike was the good guy in this he should have been thumping the table and protecting his subordinates who trying to find new tactics to break the Germans.

It may be that by Monty being the naughty boy and Eisenhower the shocked superior that Ike (and the armies) could have their cake and eat it. Montgomery was either too arrogant to care about the career risks of annoying the airforce, or perhaps genuinely cared more about getting the support for his troops than he did about the impact on his reputation..

 

I suspect part of the reason that Monty get's so much flak over Cain is that he tried so hard to spin the results to make it look like it all went exactly as he planned. Had he simply said that the dtails original plan didn't quite work as intended due to the level and quality of resistance but that overall the strategic plan worked he would have gotten very little flak over it.

 

My point was that you don't use all those assets for a diversionary operation. The idea that Monty was just trying to tie down the German armored units is false. He was going for a breakout and that's what he told Ike and Churchill. He did so in a way that raised expectations beyond what they should have been. If he had said, "I'm going to try and break out, but if I don't at least I'll keep the German armor off of Bradley." it would have been one thing. However, he stated he was going to break out and that he couldn't be stopped. He oversold his effort so since he didn't break out, or achieve his stated objective he failed in their eyes and the eyes of the public who were told he HAD broken out. True, it helped the Allied cause. Later, Monty tried to say that all he really intended to do was tie down the German armor but that was Hogwash!

 

Can you point me to the reference you use to make that claim.

 

Your post is hogwash because Monty clearly stated pre-invasion he intention to keep the German mobile units pinned on his flank-wherever that flank was.
It is a straight out lie to claim he made it all up in June/July.
Also note that no one has ever claimed his intention was just to tie up the German armour and not try and break out

 

No it is far more than that. There are a number of people who just can not say a single good world about Monty. It is a sickness that makes them post lie and invention in order to validate their affliction.

 

He did. Clearly and long before the invasion. Am I to assume you have never seen the evidence even though it has been posted here in earlier threads?


Here are a couple of these overlooked myth killers:


April 7 1944
Second British Army
To assault to the west of the R. Orne and to develop operations to the south and south east, in order to secure airfield sites and to protect the eastern flank of First U.S. Army while the latter is capturing Cherbourg.
In its subsequent operations the army will pivot on its left and offer a strong front against enemy movement towards the lodgement areas from the east."


March 22 1944

if he suceeds in forestalling us there(CAEN}.

c) To counter these enemy measure 3 British Division should, before dark on D-Day, have captured or effectively masked CAEN and be disposed in depth with brigade localities firmly established..................Should the enemy forestall us at CAEN and the defences prove to be strongly organised thus causing us to fail to capture it on D-Day, further direct frontal assaults which may prove costly will not be undertaken without reference to I Corps.




June 11th 1944

My general policy is to pull the enemy on to Second Army so as to make it easier for First Army to expand and extend the quicker.

 

Nothing unusual in that. Look at threads on Mac or even some of the ones here on Rommel. About the only general I can think of in WWII that I haven't seen anyone with a strong negative opinion on is Slim, certainly all the "prominent" generals have t heir detractors for reasons both good and bad.

About the "pin" vs "breakout" debate, if everything had gone perfectly the ideal outcome would have been Monty's forces "pinning" the German movile forces in place and at the same time breaking out and enveloping them. Unfortunatly the Germans didn't cooperate to that extent but that's hardly Monty's fault.