Was Gavin to blame for the failure of Market Garden?


  • Total voters
    173
  • Poll closed .
The Bocage was an unforeseen that was clearly an intelligence failure. Makes one wonder if a siege train might have been something the allies should have purchased to handle little problems like Caen and the ports.

Rommel & other German commanders complained or commented emphatically on the effects of the 35 cm naval gunfire support around those two locations. How much difference would a battalion or two of 24cm artillery weapons make?


A couple of regiments of Marines and 30 Corps might have made across the river assaults. when they were held up by the unsecured bridge at Nijmegen for example. I imagine an alligator battalion would have come in handy here and there?

I'm wondering how those are transported to the river banks. Getting the assault boats actually used to the river on time was problematic.
 

McPherson

Banned
Rommel & other German commanders complained or commented emphatically on the effects of the 35 cm naval gunfire support around those two locations. How much difference would a battalion or two of 24cm artillery weapons make?

I honestly don't know. Anyone know how Sevastopol fared? Caen could have been similar.

I'm wondering how those [Marines] are transported to the river banks. Getting the assault boats actually used to the river on time was problematic.

0e7bcb9bfa78525e791e021abde41657.jpg


Monty Python: "Thou shalt ask Uncle anon, and he shall reveal to thee a marvel, and then thou, Brave Canuck kaniget, shall take the holy alligator of the Florida swamps, Uncle reveals to thee, and thou shalt cause the Killerkaninchen to snuff it."
 
Did the Market Garden salient have any effect at all on the German supply routes for getting V2s to place like Walcheren and the like to launch, or were they still able to get them and other stuff (ammunition, food, etc, for their troops) to positions to the west of the salient with no problem?
 
Did the Market Garden salient have any effect at all on the German supply routes for getting V2s to place like Walcheren and the like to launch, or were they still able to get them and other stuff (ammunition, food, etc, for their troops) to positions to the west of the salient with no problem?

AFAIK the installations were mostly at the Holland part of the Netherlands (The Hague and such) sor probably not.
 
The Bocage was an unforeseen that was clearly an intelligence failure.
US forces were based in the west of England. Strangely enough Devon has similar terrain to Normandy - small fields surrounded by stockproof hedges. There is little excuse for lack of preparation.
Makes one wonder if a siege train might have been something the allies should have purchased to handle little problems like Caen and the ports.

A "siege train" would have made little difference at Caen as there were no significant fortifications. Ports (apart from Brest) were not a serious problem - Le Havre was taken in 3 days after a week of preparations.

The argument about how to get the troops across at Nijmegen and Arnhem never really addresses, though we have stabbed at it: "What do we do now, Monty, that we've punched a 70 km salient in the German lines and we're out of supplies?"
Although there is no evidence that there would have been logistics issues - the British had moved their supply base east of the Seine.
 
I'm wondering how those are transported to the river banks. Getting the assault boats actually used to the river on time was problematic.

The operation was based on the concept of a rapid advance "on a carpet of airborne troops". If the airborne troops do not capture the bridges intact, then the delays caused by having to build bridges allows the Germans far too much time to react.

If the Germans had blown the Nijmegen road bridge when XXX Corps seized it, then post-war analysis of the operation would look very very different.
 
The operation was based on the concept of a rapid advance "on a carpet of airborne troops". If the airborne troops do not capture the bridges intact, then the delays caused by having to build bridges allows the Germans far too much time to react.

If the Germans had blown the Nijmegen road bridge when XXX Corps seized it, then post-war analysis of the operation would look very very different.

My question was how the LVT were to get to the river bank from the UK? The transport ships can get them to the Belgian coast, after that? The tracks were not designed for roads, drive them up the Belgian canals at 3-4 mph ? The Belgian railways were not a option in early September, so were there enough automotive tank transporters on hand for 21 AG?
 
No sure what you mean by this. Marshall was named Army chief of staff in September, 1939, which predated the fall of France by 10 months. If the June 22 armistice is defined as "the week France threw in the towel" than are you suggesting that every US Army general officer (brigadier general on up) was simultaneously relieved in June, 1940? Because that is not true, obviously, as follows:

1st Army - Hugh Drum served as CG from 1938 to 1943;
2nd Army - SF Ford, 1938 to October, 1940;
3rd Army - Stanley Embick, 1938 to September 1940;
4th Army - JL DeWitt, 1939-1943;

Your not wrong (and yes I got the date completely wrong - corrected in the original post - thanks) - but he did very carefully choose the army's leaders for the course of the war rather than simply use the next person in the list

This lecture puts it far better than I could

 
US forces were based in the west of England. Strangely enough Devon has similar terrain to Normandy - small fields surrounded by stockproof hedges. There is little excuse for lack of preparation. ...

As near as I can tell the assumption was the Germans would withdraw into the interior, with a series of delaying actions. Not deeply entrench in the coastal zone. So it appears they only expected to fight a few days there. The idea the enemy would fight a disadvantageous defense on the coast seemed stupid to the Allied leaders & was not perfectly prepared for. But, it did give the Allies a large advantage in a attritional battle, massive naval gun support, sitting right on top of the beach side supply dumps, short sortie time for air support, and the Germans suffered the same problem of the bocage when they counter attacked.

I suppose in that context not understanding Rommels strategy and Hitlers preference for forward defense was a intel failure.
 
Last edited:
My question was how the LVT were to get to the river bank from the UK? The transport ships can get them to the Belgian coast, after that? The tracks were not designed for roads, drive them up the Belgian canals at 3-4 mph ? The Belgian railways were not a option in early September, so were there enough automotive tank transporters on hand for 21 AG?

IIRC LVTs were used early in October by the Canadian Army for the Breskens pocket. I have not looked up details of the earliest date they could be available, but believe they were moved on tank transporters. A further potential issue is what sort of exit slope they could deal with as there were embankments on the rivers.
 
My question was how the LVT were to get to the river bank from the UK? The transport ships can get them to the Belgian coast, after that? The tracks were not designed for roads, drive them up the Belgian canals at 3-4 mph ? The Belgian railways were not a option in early September, so were there enough automotive tank transporters on hand for 21 AG?
Really good question! I've always had it in the back of my mind that the TO&E of a really boss 79th type formation would, of necessity, include a shitpot load of tank transporters. Quite necessary for all the vehicles using alligator chassis as basis, or painfully slow Churchill-based stuff, or the truly whacky stuff like DD tanks, flails, etc. The DUKWs and Kangaroo's would be on their own; the more normal guys, combat engineers and the Cromwells and Humbers of the Recce outfit would serve a sort of Fusileer function when the formation was in travel mode.
 
I honestly don't know. Anyone know how Sevastopol fared? Caen could have been similar. ...

The siege of Sevastopol lasted a couple of months. Cherbourg was in Allied hands in less than three weeks from D1, the actual siege was a week. Caen was held for some six weeks. That had more to do with the Brit inability to flank and envelop it.

21 AG had near 200 naval cannon of 20cm or larger. Capable of reaching 20,000+ meters inland, highly mobile, and well protected from counter battery attacks. With that sort of fire power adding some slow to reply siege guns seems inefficient.
 
I... A further potential issue is what sort of exit slope they could deal with as there were embankments on the rivers.

Fairly steep, they were originally built to crawl over impassible terrain, including piles of fallen trees. The tracks were designed to grip soft mud and loose vegetation deeply. Uneven coral reefs could be crossed with the LVT. As always operator skill counted for a lot.
 

McPherson

Banned
Reply to various.

1. LVTs were designed to climb coral reefs and or/swampy mud flats. Slick mud banks "could" be a problem; but not really as their use here in this fashion attests.

Scheldt1.png


2. How were "canvas boats" supposed to climb river banks?

CAEN and other situations like it.

3. Tank supported infantry could not get past the direct fire guns the Germans dug in because the tanks were picked off by AT guns and enemy tanks on the ridges outside Caen. German naval artillery, mobile or not, cannot survive siege guns properly employed. The PROBLEM is that the assault infantry has to pay a bloody price to get forward during the bombardments (WWI type of assault) which means that the tanks have to suffer as well while enemy artillery is suppressed or dislocated. Bloody awful. Think Iwo Jima on steroids. On the ground it resembles a right hook assault moving around Caen isolating it as a pocket, and sealing it off and pushing contact beyond it. Difficult to do given the Northwest to southeast ground slope and the road net. (See map.)

CAEN-1.png
 
Last edited:

Dave Shoup

Banned
Your not wrong (and yes I got the date completely wrong - corrected in the original post - thanks) - but he did very carefully choose the army's leaders for the course of the war rather than simply use the next person in the list

This lecture puts it far better than I could

Fair enough. Yes, Marshall was the exemplar of a chief of staff and was an incredibly gifted individual, whose selection and promotion showcases FDR's brilliance.
 
Converting an entire armoured divisions (which is what the 79th was originally raised and trained as) to armoured engineers was a waste of combat arms troops - which the British and Canadians didn't have anywhere near enough to sustain two field armies in action (much less three, if one includes the 8th Army in Italy).

MG, at it's most successful, would have yielded a salient that would have accomplished nothing significant in terms of taking the Ruhr, much less breaking into the north German plain. The entire operation was pointless.
I believe if XXX Corps had crossed the Rhine at Arnhem in September 144 they still would have stalled out. They could have still ended up clearing Arnhem of Germans into October. The British still have to defend Hell’s Highway from probes coming from across the German/Dutch border. I still see the American Paratroopers stuck on the defensive in Holland. The British 1st Airborne probably spends a miserable winter in the Arnhem
Area on the defense as well.
 

Dave Shoup

Banned
I believe if XXX Corps had crossed the Rhine at Arnhem in September 144 they still would have stalled out. They could have still ended up clearing Arnhem of Germans into October. The British still have to defend Hell’s Highway from probes coming from across the German/Dutch border. I still see the American Paratroopers stuck on the defensive in Holland. The British 1st Airborne probably spends a miserable winter in the Arnhem Area on the defense as well.

That's pretty much my take. A motorized corps sustained by one highway is not an army group, which is what it took - historically - to get across the Rhine in the spring of 1945 (VERITABLE, GRENADE, LUMBERJACK, UNDERTONE in February and March) and in enough breadth to cut off the Ruhr and transition into the full offensives that ended with the German surrender in May.
 
Known fact that I'm not a big fan of specialized formations. Think that, after D-Day, the Wallies had too many airborne and mountain divisions and far too much talent tied up in special ops type smaller formations, specially when manpower shortages were considered. But, I must admit to a soft spot for Hobart's 79th Armored. Really think they represented more of a force multiplier than a manpower waste when the number of river crossings, Dragon's Teeth, and other fortified areas is taken into consideration. Always thought a WI thread could have been built around a fully prepared 79th "leading" Horrocks' drive to Arnhem, or clearing the approaches to Antwerp.

Someone make this happen!
 
That's pretty much my take. A motorized corps sustained by one highway is not an army group, which is what it took - historically - to get across the Rhine in the spring of 1945
But that Corps is over the Rhine in September 1944, which greatly complicates German defensive plans, especially if it can be reinforced. It also means that Allies offensives are not tied to river levels - late March was considered the earliest date for an assault crossing of the Rhine.
 
But that Corps is over the Rhine in September 1944, which greatly complicates German defensive plans, especially if it can be reinforced. It also means that Allies offensives are not tied to river levels - late March was considered the earliest date for an assault crossing of the Rhine.

Unless you capture a bridge intact...
 
Top