A Bridge Too Far

by Martin Bowman

  Whether fair weather on the 19th would have brought success to ‘Market’ is far from certain. Possibly, the arrival of the 325th Glider Infantry Regiment at 1000 hours as planned might have enabled the 82nd Division to take the Nijmegen Bridge that day. Had the Polish Brigade dropped at the south end of the Arnhem Bridge they might have been able to secure it and join forces with Frost’s battalion before the latter had been crippled by losses. Even so, they might not have been able to hold the north end of the bridge against German tanks and artillery for the time which it would probably have taken the British ground forces to get there from Nijmegen. What is certain is that after the 19th the Allied chances of getting a bridgehead across the Rhine were negligible.

  Because not all the units could arrive together was one reason why the 1st Airborne Division failed to hold the crossings of the Lower Rhine. Apart from anything else, this meant that a substantial part of the force that landed on the first day was tied down holding the DZs so that subsequent lifts could land in safety.

  Another was also to become apparent in the first 24 hours. The plan provided for the arrival of the second lift containing the balance of the Division at latest by ten in the morning of Monday the 18th but cloud and foggy conditions prevented combinations from taking off till after midday. It was not until between three and four in the afternoon that they arrived in the landing area. This delay of several vital hours still further complicated a situation which was becoming increasingly difficult.

  Weather After 19 September seven of the next eight days had poor weather and all air operations were cancelled on 22 and 24 September. A precarious timetable at the mercy of the weather resulted in the 101st Airborne Division being without its artillery for two days, the 82nd Airborne without its artillery for a day and without its glider infantry regiment for four days and the British 1st Airborne division without its fourth brigade until the fifth day. The more time required to complete the air drops, the longer each division had to devote forces to defending the drop and landing zones, weakening their offensive power.

  Browning’s failure to arrange RAF and USAAF liaison officers with his troops and Brereton’s stipulation that the fighter-bomber aircraft in Belgium remain grounded while his own were flying, meant that on 18 September 82nd Airborne received only 97 close-support sorties from RAF 83 Group and 1st British Airborne received none. This, compared with 190 Luftwaffe fighters committed to the area.

  Browning’s decision to take his Corps HQ on ‘Market’ employed 38 glider combinations reduced Urquhart’s men and guns further. Why did Browning see the need for a HQ in Holland? It could just as easily functioned from a base in England. The HQ did not need to go in with the first lift; it could have gone in later. As it was in the early stages Browning’s Advanced Corps HQ succeeded only in establishing radio contact with the 82 Airborne HQ and 1st British Airborne Corps HQ at Moor Park. The former was largely superfluous given the proximity of the two HQs and the latter was rendered the same by a lack of cipher operators, which prevented the transmission of operationally sensitive material.

  It has been claimed that Browning’s decision to establish his HQ on the Groesbeek Heights just east of the Eindhoven road had dire effects on the 82nd Airborne operations in Nijmegen. In The Struggle For Europe Chester Wilmot disagrees: ‘Gavin had four major objectives: the bridges at Grave, at Nijmegen and over the Maas-Waal Canal and the Groesbeek Ridge which runs along the German frontier dominating the area between the Maas and the Waal. These objectives were so widely separated that Gavin could not expect to secure them all with the forces which would be available to him in the first 24 hours. He decided, therefore, to concentrate his initial landings around Grave and Groesbeek, for Browning... had ordered him ‘not to attempt the seizure of the Nijmegen Bridge until all other missions had been accomplished.’ This was sound, for that bridge would be of little use if Gavin failed to secure the bridges leading to it or the high ground that was essential to its defence.’

  Animosity at the highest levels and the dispersion of Allied HQs which prevented the holding of joint command conferences with XXX Corps and Second Army exacerbated the problems of shortage of aircraft and other operational problems as they unfolded.

  In The Struggle For Europe, Chester Wilmot records that ‘...the situation at Arnhem might yet have been saved if the weather had permitted the flying in of the Polish paratroops and the American gliders [on 20th September] the day the Nijmegen bridge was captured - or if Horrocks and Browning had known then what the situation really was. That day Major-General E. Hakewill Smith, the commander of the 52nd Lowland Division (Browning’s only reserve), offered to take one of his brigades by glider to Urquhart’s rescue. Browning replied, ‘Thanks for your message but offer not repeat not required as situation better than you think.’

  XXX Corps was criticized for its ‘inability’ to keep to the operation’s timetable although the delay at Son was caused by a bridge demolition and the delay at Nijmegen (having made up time, compensating for the delay while a Bailey Bridge was built at Son) was caused by Gavin’s failure to capture the bridges on the first day. Had the US 82nd Airborne landed a parachute force north of the bridge at Nijmegen on the first day or moved at once to take the bridge from the south, the costly river assault that took place on 20 September (D+3) would not have been necessary and the Guards Armoured would have been able to drive directly across the Nijmegen bridge when they arrived in the town on the morning of 19 September on D+2. By the 20th it was too little too late to save Frost’s men at Arnhem Bridge. General Gavin regretted giving his division’s most important tasks (Groesbeek ridge and Nijmegen) to the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment rather than his best regiment, Colonel Reuben H. Tucker’s 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment. ‘Hell’s Highway’ was never continuously under Allied control nor free from the enemy’s fire. Sometimes it was cut for hours on end; sometimes the point of the spearhead was blunted by frontal counter-attacks.

  The OB West report on ‘Market-Garden’ produced in October 1944 gave the decision to spread the airborne landings over more than one day as the main reason for the Allied failure. A Luftwaffe analysis added that the airborne landings were spread too thinly and made too far from the Allied front line. General Student regarded the Allied airborne landings as an immense success and blamed the final failure to reach Arnhem on XXX Corps’ slow progress.

  Lieutenant General Bradley attributed the defeat of ‘Market-Garden’ entirely to Montgomery and to the British slowness on the ‘island’ north of Nijmegen. Major General Urquhart, who led 1 British Airborne for the last time to help liberate Norway at the end of the war, blamed the failure at Arnhem partly on the choice of landing sites too far from the bridges and partly on his own conduct on the first day. Browning’s report blamed XXX Corps’ underestimation of the strength of German resistance and its slowness moving up ‘Hell’s Highway’, along with the weather, his own communications staff and 2nd TAF for failing to provide air support. He also succeeded in getting Major General Sosabowski dismissed from command of 1st Polish Parachute Brigade for his increasingly hostile attitude.

  Field Marshal Montgomery’s immediate reaction to ‘Market-Garden’ was to blame Lieutenant General Sir Richard O’Connor commanding VIII Corps. On 28 September Montgomery recommended that Browning should replace O’Connor and Urquhart should replace Browning but Browning left England in November, having been appointed chief of staff to Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten head of South-East Asia Command. Browning rose no higher in the Army.34 O’Connor left VIII Corps voluntarily in November 1944, having been promoted to command Eastern Army in India.

  In due course Montgomery blamed himself for part of the failure of ‘Marker-Garden’ and Eisenhower for the rest. He ‘also argued that the salient along Hell’s Highway provided a base for the attacks eastward across the Rhine in 1945, describing ‘Market-Garden’ as ‘90 per cent successful’.

  The troop carriers could not have speeded up the operation by using more or l
arger planes, since they had put into ‘Market’ almost every aircraft and crew they had, The C-46 was not yet available to IX TCC and the C-47 units of the 302nd Transport Wing were neither trained nor available for airborne missions. One remedy for this limited capacity would have been to fly two sets of missions in one day as had been done in southern France over a course comparable to that flown in ‘Market’. However, even in retrospect IX TCC held that this expedient would have done more harm than good, since the September days were too short for adequate rest and servicing between the missions.35 The American glider missions could have been completed on D+1 by using Horsa gliders or by flying Wacos in double tow, but the Americans had acquired an aversion to the Horsa and double-tow, though used later in ‘Varsity’, was a perilous novelty in 1944. The time which might have been spent in practicing it had been eaten up by bad weather and the air supply effort. Double-tow from England would also have involved a fuel problem, but this could have been met by the use of extra tanks or by allowing the units involved to land at bases in Belgium.

  A partial solution would have been possible if the three groups which were moving to bases near Reims when preparations for ‘Market’ began had been retained there. Flying from northern France they could easily have accomplished two missions in a day and would have been much less handicapped by bad weather than they were in the Grantham area. However, to do this, large amounts of troop carrier materiel and all the airborne troops with their supplies and equipment would have had to be flown in from England. It is hardly conceivable that this movement could have been made in time if ‘Market’ had begun on the 14th or 15th as originally contemplated. It might possibly have been done before the 17th, but IX TCC would have had to divert to the staging operation hundreds of planes which were bringing supplies to Brussels for Montgomery. Furthermore, bad weather could have disrupted ‘Market’ as badly by interrupting the staging process as it did by grounding missions. Although it can be argued that some troop carrier and airborne units should have been already deployed in northern France, the logistical situation there would probably have made such a move an excessive strain on available resources. Under the circumstances, the decision to fly all missions from England must be regarded as logical.

  The final straw which tipped the scales against ‘Market’ was the slowness of the British ground troops. The delay of the Guards Armoured Division in reaching Eindhoven made little difference, since if it had gone faster it would have had to wait longer before crossing the bridges at Son and Nijmegen. What did hurt was the failure of 43 Division to move up fast enough to give infantry support to the Guards at Ressen on the 21st and its lack of aggressiveness on the 22nd. To this may be added the failure of British units in VIIl and XII Corps to advance up the Banks of the salient in time to prevent the Germans from cutting the highway as they did briefly at Son and more seriously on the 22nd and 24th near Veghel. The two corps averaged only three miles a day against feeble resistance. Unquestionably they were impeded by difficult terrain and by lack of transportation and supplies, but even British observers felt that they might have done better had they felt a greater sense of urgency. Better footwork by Second Army might possibly have saved the Arnhem Bridge, or, more probably, have brought help to 1st Airborne soon enough to preserve a foothold across the Rhine.

  Weaknesses in communications, air support, resupply and the combat qualifications of American glider pilots have also been regarded as contributing to defeat in ‘Market’. While the signal organization of Airborne Corps was new and not wholly adequate, its radio communication was generally satisfactory except in the case of 1 Airborne Division, which from D-day to D+5 had very little contact with the outside world.

  Interference by a powerful British station drowned it out on one frequency. To prevent compromise the division had been given no data on ground force frequencies or procedure so it could not send messages through Second Army. Its long-range radios would sometimes reach England, but would not pick up Airborne Corps. Its short-range sets were too weak to begin with and after the move to Hartenstein were muffled by the woods in that area. Some sets failed altogether and others were knocked out by enemy action. The effect of all this was to keep Browning in comparative ignorance of the plight of the division until it was too late to do much about it. Had he known, he might have called in 52 Division or ordered 1 Airborne to move to Renkum, where it could have held out with comparative ease.

  Another weakness in communications was the lack of ground-air radio contact with incoming troop carrier missions at the drop and landing zones. The greatest value of such a system would have been in steering missions away from danger points like Best and providing information on changes of zone like that which caused the British resupply mission on D+2 to miscarry so badly, but it would also have provided traffic control and warnings on sudden changes in the weather. Before the year was out those directing the destinies of Airborne Army had agreed that in future operations troop carrier representatives would be brought in with the airborne to provide ground-air communication with command ships in subsequent missions.

  Air support for the airborne troops after they landed was the responsibility of the Second Tactical Air Force, RAF. In contrast to the massive support given to the troop carrier operations, this was small in scale and ineffective, the reasons being bad weather, faulty support arrangements and lack of planned interdiction.

  Apparently no plans were made for interdiction of German troop and supply movements and none was attempted, although a good deal of impromptu harassing was done.36 Both Allied and German experts felt that interdiction would have been worthwhile and one look at the map of Holland is sufficient to show why they thought so. Marshy soil and a multitude of waterways created bottlenecks for German armour and vehicles just as they did for those of the Allies. Surely the importance of ‘Market’ warranted the stoppering of certain of those bottlenecks, even at some inconvenience to future ground operations. As it was, the Germans were able to move troops to the ‘Market’ area much faster than they got them to Normandy at the time of the Allied landings. Two divisions moved from the Dutch coast 98 miles away and reached the battlefield on D+5.

  Two air support parties with SCR.193 were allotted to each of the airborne divisions and to Browning’s headquarters. They were to send their requests to Second Army, which would turn them over to 2nd TAF’s control centre for consideration and forwarding to 83 Group. The support parties had SCR-522 sets for direct ground-air communication by VHF radio. In addition, two light warning radar sets and one GCI set were flown in. The GCI party landed in hostile territory and had to destroy its set. The personnel with the light warning units landed with 1 Airborne Division but were almost wiped out by German fire and were never able to operate their equipment.

  The air support parties were frustrated by two basic difficulties. Their SCR-193 sets would not reach Second Army, which was 50 to 85 miles away and, try as they would, they could make no effective contact with support aircraft with their SCR-522 sets. On D+1 the 10lst Division and Airborne Corps Headquarters made contact with a mobile listening set of XXX Corps and were able to relay requests to Second Army through that. Both SCR-193 sets with the 82nd Division were inoperative because of landing damage, but Browning’s Corps Headquarters, which was in the 82nd’s area, sent requests on its behalf and on the night of the 18th loaned the division one of its sets.

  The great misfortune was that 1 Airborne was unable to put through any requests to anyone up to the time its only functioning VHF set was knocked out by a shell on D+2. Enemy fire had damaged the set very early and killed the only three well-trained operators. After making contact on 21 September with the short-range radio of 64 Regiment, the division sent some requests through that regiment to Airborne Corps to XXX Corps to 2 Army to 2nd TAF to 83 Group to the supporting units, or in other words, all around Robin Hood’s barn. Other requests were originated by Airborne Corps on the basis of 1 Airborne’s general situation, but 2nd TAF frequently objected to t
hese on the grounds that it needed more precise information on where to strike. This was reasonable, although the airborne, so desperate that they called down artillery fire on their own positions, said later that they would rather have had inaccurate support than none. If only a ‘cab rank’ patrol of fighters and fighter-bombers had been provided, prepared to take their missions directly by ground-air radio from controllers on the spot, the problem of getting requests through to 83 Group would have ceased to be serious and instructions could have been given with all necessary precision. In the opinion of 1 Airborne close support thus provided would have been invaluable in the initial phase of ‘Market’ and might have swung the scale from defeat to victory.

  In justice to 2nd TAF it should be said that it was gravely handicapped by orders not to send support missions over the ‘Market’ area when airborne missions were in progress. This restriction, intended to reduce congestion and prevent possible clashes between friendly forces, was transformed by weather conditions, repeated short postponements of airborne missions and 2nd TAF’s remoteness from Brereton’s headquarters, into something like a prohibition. Over and over again support units would be grounded in the early morning by bad weather and after that by the prospect of an airborne mission, which they would belatedly learn had been postponed a few hours. By the time the actual mission had come and gone the evening mists would be gathering or the clouds rolling in. Had support missions been flown like those of the troop carriers over a specified corridor and had they been under effective ground-air control at destination, the restriction might have been dispensed with, making it possible to send planes to the aid of the airborne whenever weather permitted.

  Instead direct air support during the nine decisive days of ‘Market’ was decidedly inadequate except in a handful of cases. On 18 September 97 Spitfires and Mustangs were sent to help the 82nd Division beat off the German attacks out of the Reichswald and on 22 September 119 planes were sent to the assistance of the 101st Division, probably in response to a specific request from the division which 2nd TAF had accepted. The first direct support at Arnhem came on 24 September when 22 Typhoons attacked German positions around 1 Airborne and on the 25th when seven Typhoons and 74 Mitchells and Bostons did likewise, all to very good effect but much too late to win. Some armed reconnaissance was also flown but to comparatively little avail, since the Germans simply silenced their guns until the planes were past and waited until the coast was clear before sending in their own planes in repeated hit-and-run attacks, principally against 1 Airborne and the 82nd Division. All in all, it must be said that ground support in ‘Market’ was a difficult task badly handled and that the support provided was too little and too late.