Operation Goodwood...Montgomery...?

I can understand the "pinning" while Bradely took Cherborg, a badly needed port. But something must have changed in Monty's planning after that. Otherwise, why would Ike be upset? By the way m Kenny, I don't hate Monty. What he did do well, he did very well. I certainly don't think he's the best general in WW2, but I don't consider him the worst either.

 

Thinking upon the use of air asset's aspect I think we are missing a significant point.

The Allied command structure was in its own way a very convoluted set up that worked exceptionally well considering its natural fault lines. Ike had deputies from a different country (Great Britain) deliberately to offset the potential inter allied friction. Include the natural inter-service rivalries to this mix and you have situation where not only push and pull top to bottom, but side to side.

Ike had to negotiate as much as order to get things done. Unfortunately this also means that to some degree his subordinates had free reign to do what they wanted, or go off the reservation so to speak.

The Navy knew how best to use their assets, as did the Air Forces and of course the Ground Forces. Thing is, true interservice cooperation was still fairly new to commanders not weaned on the concept. Considering all these handicap's they worked remarkably well considering.

That being said, sausage making is never pretty.

 

Well said Belasar! I believe I have read somewhere that Monty could not order American troops to do anything. Instead, he had to "suggest" to Bradley what he wanted him to do.

 

this sounds logical.....if it was supposed to be diversionary/etc, I don't think Monty 'planned' more casualties for the Allies than the Germans....much thanks everyone's replies..super interesting replies from everyone

 

Don't forget that the Germans had a say.

Montgomery understood German military doctrine which is why he was convinced that a convincing threat on the axis Caen - Paris would force the Germans to pin their armour their. He knew enough about schwehrpunkt anbd aufrollen to use these terms in his own directives. He had calculated that the German military mind would focus on Caen as the schwehrpunkt - the centre of main effort, based on his understandign of how the germans thought. .

That was based on a geographic appreciation.,There were two occasions in the Normandy campaign when the Germans considered transferring the schwehrpunkt to the Western Sector. 1) in Mid June when there was a clear threat to Cherbourg,Rommel considered shifting his schwehrpunkt to the Carentan sector - but this was forestalled by the British Operation Epsom. 2) After the breakout when Hitler seized on the opportunity to counterattack at Mortain.

The Germans would only focus on Caen as long as it represented the biggest threat. Montgomery had to launch sizable credible attacks, and did so. By doing so he posed the Germans a choice. Allow the British to break out alomng the Caen- Falaise axis or allow the Americans to break out on the Western Flank. Geography dictated that the Germans would have to defend the direct route to Paris.

The decision where to give ground was one of the Germans not just the allies.

 

was there a coordinated, planned operation by the US to breakout at time of Goodwood?

 

Bradley should have started his offensive the same day as GOODWOOD but he said he was not ready and needed a few more days.

 

roger that

 

An interesting discussion and sadly I see it has broken down into the same tired and long since debunked myths. It is fair to say that Goodwood did not achieve all of its objectives and I personally believed that Montgomery thought he may breakthrough.However his operational plans and orders clearly made allowance for the fact that he may not which is overlooked by many historians. They also reinforce the position that the Allied front was to pivot on the CAEN FAILAISE region and that the Majority of German Defences were to be pinned here. Also overlooked in the concept plans for the whole Normandy campaign which SHAEF under Montgomery's leadership as land commander outlined prior to D-Day. I have read almost every title available on this and the Normandy campaign and recommend alongside the Daglish, D'este and over titles one by Robin Neillands which takes all the claims and analyses them one by one. I found it a little bit apologist for Montgomery but fair and most importantly Factual as oppossed to the more recent populist Histories like Beevors etc where they trot out old gossip that passed for history once.

The Goodwood campaign was hamstrung by a lot more factors than Leadership and the layed in depth defence of the Germans. One of the most critical factors of the whole battle was the overly small concentration area and bottleneck caused by the terrain which did not allow all units to get into the battle in a timely fashion which had a monumental affect on the battle during the day as it allowed the German positions to engage each formation in turn rather than divide their efforts. This also ensured that by late afternoon most of the leading formations of 11AD were not able to use the might of the AGRA assembled to support this as they had not moved the guns far enough forward. Not even all of te SP batteries had moved far enough forward due to the bottlenecks and more tellingly the delays in getting the Infantry forward to clear the fortified villages that were bypassed thus allowing a terrible attrition of the follow on forces and the vanguard.

Air Support should have been the saving grace but a severe lack of Air to Ground control was caused when the only "tentacle" Unit deployed was destroyed. Thus C&C or moreso the lack of it played a huge role in the subsequent battles.

Goodwood achieved a lot of its aims and certainly put the allies in a much stronger position and without it there is no way that Cobra would have succeeded with the Germans able to attack the flanks of the penetration with massed armour which was all tied down containing the 2nd Army in front of Failaise. I believe at worst it was a marginal success and at best a limited success tactically but a success strategically. Most of the flak directed towards Monty came from a deliberate white anting of him by IKE's 2IC due to inter service rivalry where an RAF officer with no understanding of a Land Campaign made some pretty damning and unjustified comments about Montgomery's campaign as he did not yet have his airfields in Normandy and was still bitter over the fact the RAF did not get a better acknowledgement for its role in NA campaign. Montgomery's personality did not help his case but neither did the press of the day who were being fed by SHAEF and like today looking for gotchas and scapegoats.

Without Goodwood there would have been no successful breakout when it occurred. Given that and the original campaign plans yes it was a success - a very costly one but out of it the British reorganized their AD into battlegroups which proved highly successful in the remaining campaigns and more importantly and very rarely covered they massively improved their Air to Ground and tactical communications which allowed for true combined arms battles moving forward.


I will stick to the topic here rather than go on but will say for all the plaudits layed on Patton he NEVER had to fight a breakin until he came up against METZ and then he had room to manouvre but failed. He was not faced with the massive terrain constraints faced in Normandy nor anywhere near the depth of defences or scale and quality of enemy force. If Monty had been given the 2nd Army after they had broken the SEINE he would have looked more of a genius than Patton gets the credit for as his troops advanced further than Pattons did when given a breakthrough. (Rant over)

 

The videos of the Goodwood lectures for the British Army are available on facebuck. These are very good and are presented by the key personalities involved including Von Luck, Bill Close and Roberts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udW1UvSHXfY
Cheers
Al