'Aspects of Arnhem'
'Aspects of Arnhem'
A new analysis of Operation Market Garden looks at the factors that influenced the operation's planning - and of the role played by General Lewis Brereton
By August 1944, the Supreme Allied Commander, General Eisenhower, had become deeply sceptical about the benefits of large-scale airborne operations. The problems of dispersed landings and the scale of casualties experienced in operations in both Sicily and Normandy were leading him to the same conclusion that Hitler had taken after his airborne assault on Crete. These three air assaults were ‘successful’ but the cost to the highly trained men involved had been very high - might they be better employed as ‘elite infantry’?
But Airborne operations had their champions, not least George C. Marshal, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army. The successful seizure of Nadzab airfield in New Guinea by the 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment, later followed by the ‘Knollwood Maneuver’ - a major airborne exercise in the US, suggested they still had great potential.
Aspects of Arnhem—the Battle Re-examined examines whether the lessons learned from Nadzab and Knollwood were followed in planning Market Garden, especially by Lieutenant General Lewis Hyde Brereton, commander of the First Allied Airborne Army. This detailed, well-illustrated study probes afresh how Market Garden came about and what went wrong, making it a valuable contribution to the debate.
The following excerpt looks at some of the decision-making in early September 1944:
Since Brereton commanded both the airborne troops and the USAAF element of the transport aircraft, with RAF machines coming under his command for the operation, his first pressing command decision was to choose between a nocturnal or daytime fly-in. Hitherto, operations had been carried out by moonlight, but this had resulted in problems that we have already seen – principally the widely-dispersed landings of Sicily and Normandy, the results of navigational errors. Eisenhower shared this concern about the navigational skills of the USAAF. Since Operation MARKET would be executed in the dark moon period, the absence of moonlight ruled out any major night-time landing. Brereton had no option other than a daytime assault.
Large numbers of slow transport aircraft and glider tugs would present excellent targets for German fighters and anti-aircraft guns.The C-47 (Dakota in the RAF; Skytrain in the USAAF) had a maximum airspeed of 224mph and cruised at 160mph, making it very vulnerable to fighters, while the glider tugs – while some were C-47s, most were RAF Short Stirlings, Armstrong Whitworth Albemarles and Handley Page Halifaxes – were equally slow, even before the burden of a towed glider was taken into consideration.
However, by mid-September the Allied air forces had achieved almost complete mastery of the skies over Europe, which mitigated the threat to the air armada from Luftwaffe day fighters. The danger from anti-aircraft guns, or Flak, remained high, however, and part of the planners’ task was to plot routes to avoid the heaviest AA artillery concentrations. (Had a nocturnal operation been possible, German AA guns would still have been a major threat since they were radar- controlled; night-fighters, fitted with radar but also directed by controllers on the ground, would equally have presented very serious danger.)
Brereton faced two real problems involving the transport aircraft. The first, and greater of the two, was the allocation of machines to the assaulting airborne formations. The second was the planning of fly-in routes that reduced as far as possible the danger from German anti-aircraft defences. How many aircraft were available to Brereton and how many soldiers would those aeroplanes have to carry? To answer the second question first, there were 35,000 paratroopers and glider-borne troops to be conveyed to the Netherlands.
However, Brereton had available only enough aircraft to carry 16,500 men. Therefore, only half of Browning’s corps could be inserted in one lift. The manpower involved demanded no fewer than 3,790 transport aircraft, of which 2,495 would carry paratroopers and the other 1,295 would tow gliders. Combining all the resources of the USAAF’s IX Troop Carrier Command and the RAF’s Nos 38 and 46 Groups would not provide enough machines to carry the entire corps in a single lift.
Landing the majority of I Airborne Corps on D Day would require two lifts, a fact that placed Brereton in a dilemma. The air officer commanding the RAF’s No. 38 (Airborne Force) Group, Air Vice-Marshal Leslie Hollinghurst, was among the pioneers of airborne warfare and the first AOC of the group. Not one to remain at his desk, he chose to take part in operations, including flying in an Albemarle that dropped part of 22 Independent Parachute Company, the pathfinders of 6th Airborne Division, in Operation TONGA on the night of 5 June 1944.
Faced with Brereton’s dilemma, the pragmatic Hollinghurst was prepared to countenance his airmen flying two missions on D Day with the first mission taking off in the pre-dawn darkness. However, his USAAF counterpart, Major General Paul L. Williams, commanding IX Troop Carrier Command, and Hollinghurst’s senior for the operation, disagreed; the bulk of the transport fleet was USAAF.
Williams’ rationale was that his command’s aircraft strength had increased twofold in a matter of months with no commensurate increase in ground personnel, especially maintenance staff. He considered that, if two missions were flown on D Day, his ground crews would not be able to cope with the essential maintenance, plus battle-damage repair, in the turnaround time. Moreover, he opined, the airmen would suffer fatigue as a result of flying two missions.
Of this reaction, Geoffrey Powell wrote:
The advice was strangely out of character. Williams was known among both British and Americans for his general helpfulness and for his drive, and it was largely because of the respect in which the soldiers held him that they accepted what he had to say with little argument.
Brereton decided that Williams’ advice was sound and ordered that only one mission would be undertaken on D Day.The direct effect on 1st Airborne Division would be that its journey to Arnhem would be carried out over three days. Montgomery, on learning of this, immediately despatched his Brigadier General Staff (Operations), Brigadier David Belchem, by air to Brereton’s HQ to impress on him the importance of a second lift on D Day for 1st Airborne at Arnhem.
Monty considered that Brereton, lacking the experience of ground combat to appreciate the adverse implications of a single lift to the Arnhem battle, had failed to recognise the difficulties that dropping Urquhart’s division over three days would create. Belchem, who was deputy to Major General Francis de Guingand, had been the man who had briefed the Field Marshal on Brereton’s intentions, found the Airborne Army commander firm in his intention.
...
Two routes were to be used by the aerial armadas and were described as the Northern and Southern routes. The former crossed over the occupied Netherlands, while the southern overflew Belgium; although the northern route was both shorter and simpler, the southern route was safer. Williams chose to use both; 1st Airborne and 82nd Airborne would take the northern route and 101st the southern.
The paratroopers of 1st Airborne were flying from USAAF bases in Lincolnshire – Barkston Heath and Spanhoe – from whence 82nd Airborne would also depart; Urquhart’s men were to be carried in 143 C-47s. However, 101st Airborne was flying from bases farther south in England while Urquhart’s airlanding, or glider-borne, troops were departing from airfields in Lincolnshire and a group of airfields from Kent to the West Country, their gliders towed by Stirlings, Halifaxes and Albemarles; in all, almost 500 aircraft carried 1st Airborne’s paratroopers or towed its gliders.
In deciding the routes to be used, the planners also had to consider German anti-aircraft defences, not only at the target areas but also along the routes and, especially, crossing the coast. Plans were made to deploy RAF Bomber Command aircraft to raid the AA sites the night before D Day, followed by USAAF bombers of Eighth and Ninth Air Forces, and both British and US fighter-bombers. The locations of the various AA sites had been identified from aerial photographs taken by photo-reconnaissance aircraft.
However, Hollinghurst was concerned that the concentration of AA guns around the Arnhem area (156 guns, of which forty-four were heavy), with mobile units nearby and AA barges on the river, presented a real danger to the transport aircraft after they had dropped their paratroopers or let go their gliders. The danger seemed to be greatest around Deelen airfield, seven miles north of Arnhem. This assessment contrasted considerably with an earlier report of AA defences for the aborted Operation COMET which suggested a lesser threat from the guns.
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The other concern felt by Monty’s staff, including Williams, was caused by the locations of 1st Airborne Division’s LZs and DZs at Arnhem. So critical was the element of surprise that dropping or landing airborne soldiers as close as possible to their objectives was imperative. Instead, the division’s assigned area was eight miles from Arnhem’s bridges and to the west of the city: LZs L and S were north of the Arnhem-Utrecht railway line; DZ Y was on Ginkel Heath; DZ and LZ X and LZ Z were on Renkum Heath, south of the railway. DZ K, south of Arnhem, would be used for the drop of the Polish brigade on D plus 3. Since there would be no second lift on D Day, elements of Urquhart’s 1 Airlanding Brigade would have to secure and hold the DZs and LZs until the second day, reducing significantly the number of soldiers who could be deployed to seize and hold the divisional objectives.
The selection of DZs and LZs distant from the objectives was due to the RAF fears of heavy anti-aircraft defences in the area and, especially, around Deelen airfield, over which the turning transports and tugs would have to fly. However, not only was the intelligence on the AA guns wrong, but bombing raids were planned for the night of the 16th/17th and the morning of the 17th to suppress those defences. Thus, holding fast to Brereton’s principle that plans would not be changed, Hollinghurst’s fears led to those far-flung DZs and LZs.
The seven days of planning were crammed with activity but that was often activity not co-ordinated fully between planning teams. Nor did Montgomery have his eyes concentrated on the plans and the planners. Operation MARKET GARDEN was unique in that Monty allowed the planning to be conducted outside his HQ. It was also unique in being a plan of such boldness as to be completely untypical of him. As Richard Mead writes:
He was generally meticulous in his preparation, refusing to move until he was absolutely ready, with the odds stacked in his favour. On this occasion, blinded by his determination to seize the opportunity to pursue his Northern Thrust strategy, for the first and only time he accepted a plan which had not been endorsed by his staff, but was firmly in the hands of others.
And so, Operation MARKET GARDEN was launched on the morning of 17 September 1944. The first actions were those of airmen, bomber crews of the RAF followed by men of the USAAF.
© Richard Doherty and David Truesdale 2023, 'Aspects of Arnhem - the Battle Re-examined '. Reproduced courtesy of Pen & Sword Publishers Ltd
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