Arnhem: Myth and Reality

Airborne Warfare, Air Power and the Failure of Operation Market Garden

Sebastian Ritchie

• Publisher: Robert Hale Non Fiction
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780719829222
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Seconde Guerre mondiale

Operation Market Garden, often depicted as one of the most decisive military actions of the Allied campaign, offered an opportunity to conclude hostilities with Hitler's Germany before 1945 but its disastrous failure left the Allies facing another seven months of difficult and costly fighting. In this revised new paperback edition of Arnhem: Myth and Reality, Sebastian Ritchie demonstrates that the operation can only be properly understood if it is considered alongside earlier airborne ventures and reassesses the role of the Allied air forces and the widely held view that they bore a particular responsibility for Market Garden's failure. By placing Market Garden in its correct historical setting and by reassessing Allied air plans and their execution, this groundbreaking book provides a radically different view of the events of September 1944, challenging much of the current orthodoxy in the process.A groundbreaking book that provides a radically different view of the events of Operation Market Garden, September 1944, challenging much of the current orthodoxy in the process.The author places Market Garden in its correct historical setting and reassesses the Allied air plans and their execution. Of great interest to historians of World War II and anyone interested in Operation Market-Garden.Illustrated with 30 black & white photographs including one previously unpublished image for the paperback edition and 10 maps.Sebastian Ritchie is an official historian at the Air Historical Branch (RAF) of the Ministry of Defence and the author of numerous official narratives on RAF operations.A revised edition and new in paperback for 2019.

PART ONE

Airborne Warfare in Historical Context

Introduction

OF ALL THE weaknesses in the published history of Market Garden, the most fundamental is the absence of historical context; all too often the events of September 1944 are considered in near-total isolation, and accounts of Market Garden are still regularly published that contain no discussion whatsoever of the development of airborne warfare. A.D. Harvey’s recent study is typical. Harvey ostensibly ‘tried to show how the battle appeared to those in positions of command’.¹ Yet he offers no examination of earlier airborne ventures and his analysis is therefore bereft of any discussion of how they might have influenced commanders’ views and actions. At best, historians tend to offer vague contentions to the effect that early German airborne experience, such as the capture of Fort Eben-Emael, illustrated the critical importance of shock effect and surprise – fundamentals supposedly ignored during the planning and implementation of Market Garden.

Another common but equally simplistic approach is to contrast the Allies’ failure in Holland in September 1944 with 6th Airborne Division’s success in capturing the Orne River and Caen Canal bridges in Normandy on 6 June. Readers are invited to conclude that the two operations are readily comparable merely because bridge objectives were involved. In actual fact, they could hardly have been more different. In short, then, the tendency is to imply that these two outstandingly successful airborne operations typified the employment of airborne forces prior to Market Garden. Occasionally, historians also acknowledge that acute risks are inherent in airborne warfare, but their true severity is rarely described in detail. To place Market Garden in historical context, the course of previous airborne operations must first be thoroughly investigated. We need to keep in mind the fact that past experience is one of the most fundamental determinants of human action. And from the following analysis it will quickly be appreciated that the accumulated experience of airborne operations before September 1944 was far from positive.

Notes

1.Harvey, Arnhem, p. 11.

1.1. Airborne Warfare: The German Experience, 1939–41

AIRBORNE WARFARE WAS pioneered by Italy and the Soviet Union during the 1930s, but it was in Germany that the concept advanced furthest before the outbreak of the Second World War, and it was the apparent success of early German airborne operations that persuaded Britain and America to create their own airborne arms. German airborne doctrine was at this time very different from Allied practice as it evolved in the later years of hostilities. First, the airborne forces themselves were part of the Luftwaffe rather than the Wehrmacht. Second, early German operations were directed against countries not known for their military prowess – countries which did not possess large or modern air forces or extensive ground-based air defences. Third, these operations were not mass ventures but were for the most part company-sized drops aimed at specific objectives – fortifications, bridges or airfields. The troops involved carried very few weapons heavier than machine guns and light mortars; they had virtually no ground transportation and little air-portable equipment.

The appearance of mass airborne landings came from the German tactic of using a vanguard of genuinely ‘airborne’ troops (i.e., paratroops or glider-borne infantry) to seize airfields before much larger numbers of air landing troops were flown in by powered transport aircraft. Light assault gliders were only employed in small numbers. Operations were planned to ensure that the airborne had only to hold their objectives for limited periods before they were reinforced or relieved by conventional forces, and they were always scheduled in daylight. Finally, as both Hitler and Goering took a very strong personal interest in the airborne, their commander, General Kurt Student, found himself in ‘a certain privileged position which he seized with both hands’.¹ He could always be certain that the interests of his troops would not be neglected by other branches of the German armed forces – by the ground units tasked to link up with them, or by the air formations that provided the fire support they otherwise lacked.

The main tenets of German airborne doctrine are clearly visible in their operations in Denmark and Norway in April 1940. Less than one company of paratroops captured the two-mile Vordingborg bridge linking the Danish islands of Falster and Seeland, while only one platoon took the two airfields at Aalborg in northern Denmark. Similarly the seizure of airfields near Stavanger and Oslo in Norway was assigned to single companies. Despite poor weather conditions, which complicated air navigation over Norway, all the objectives were taken and such Danish and Norwegian troops as were encountered were completely overawed by what was, at that time, an entirely new medium of warfare. Within hours of the initial assaults, the airborne units were being reinforced either by ground forces or by troops landed by Junkers JU 52 transports.

This first ever employment of airborne forces in live combat thus appears to have been an outstanding success. Yet German airborne actions in Scandinavia also illustrate another feature of early airborne warfare: virtually any flaw in the planning or execution of operations usually resulted in heavy losses of personnel and/or equipment, and in mission failure. A few days after their initial offensive the Germans dropped another company of paratroops at Dombas, on the Lägen river northwest of Oslo, to block a route being used by retreating Norwegian forces. The operation was a disastrous failure. The landings were widely dispersed and many paratroops were captured before they could assemble into a cohesive force; others were killed or injured in the drop, which was executed at too low an altitude. From a broader perspective even the limited operations conducted in Denmark and Norway proved extremely expensive in transport aircraft. Some 100 JU 52s were lost – primarily through the hazardous tactic of air-landing reinforcements onto enemy airfields. Many of these aircraft were required by the Luftwaffe for bomber crew training, blind flying training and navigational training, and their destruction therefore served to lower the output of new aircrew.²

The German airborne operations mounted in the Low Countries on 10 May 1940 were in many respects similar to those conducted in Scandinavia. The opening attacks on Fort Eben-Emael and the Albert Canal bridges involved a single company and a platoon of engineers conveyed in 42 DFS 230 gliders, although these were to be reinforced by paratroops. These objectives were only around 20 miles from the German frontier and hence the German airborne forces were quickly relieved by ground troops. The other goals assigned to 7th Air Division and the air landing division – 22nd Infantry Division – were mostly airfields and bridges and were largely divided between companies. Full battalions were used in but two instances to take the bridge across the Holland Deep at Moerdijk and the Waalhaven airfield southwest of Rotterdam.

Of the various operations, Eben-Emael has predictably attracted by far the most attention from historians. It is portrayed as perhaps the classic example of how to stage a coup-de-main attack of the type that some authors claim should have been employed by British forces at Arnhem. The comparison is completely misleading, however, for the assault on Eben-Emael was always far more likely than Market Garden to secure absolute tactical surprise and to encounter relatively weak opposition: it effectively initiated hostilities by one of the world’s strongest military powers against a small and uncommitted nation. Unlike Arnhem, Eben-Emael was not a deep objective, and the troops sent to capture the fortress and the Albert Canal bridges had been training for these specific tasks since the previous November, whereas in Market Garden there was no opportunity at all for preparatory exercises or rehearsals. Even then, it is worth noting that the Germans did not succeed in capturing all three Albert Canal bridges intact.³

Historians have been slow to contrast other German airborne operations in the Low Countries with Market Garden, and yet in many ways the German actions between Moerdijk and The Hague offer far greater scope for meaningful comparisons to be drawn than Eben-Emael. Indeed, they virtually involved a ‘Market Garden in reverse’ in so far as they required 7th Air Division and part of 22nd Infantry Division to secure crossings over the Maas and the Rhine delta so that German ground forces could advance through Rotterdam to link up with the remainder of 22nd Infantry Division, which was responsible for capturing the Dutch capital.

A number of problems confronted the German airborne. To begin with, airborne warfare was no longer the total novelty that it had been in April, so there was a greater likelihood that the Dutch would be anticipating an assault by parachute or glider-borne forces. To make matters worse, they would be able to observe the approaching airborne formations, which had to fly from German airfields all the way across Holland to reach their objectives, and they would be on the alert because operations along the frontier would already have commenced. Finally, as the various landing areas were located 70 to 90 miles from the nearest German territory, the two airborne divisions would be dangerously exposed until the arrival of the first ground units.

But offsetting these disadvantages was the fact that Holland possessed neither a capable air force nor strong anti-aircraft defences. Moreover, the importance attached to the airborne missions at the most senior levels of the National Socialist hierarchy made their success the top priority of both the Luftwaffe and the German army. The responsible air commander, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, later recalled how he visited his army counterpart, General Von Bock, and insisted ‘that on the third day of the offensive the Panzer forces would have to join up with Student’s air landing parties in or near Rotterdam’.

Von Bock was not by any means sure that he could keep to the Rotterdam time-table, but when I made no bones about it that the fate of the air landing group, and indeed of the Army Group’s operation, hung on the punctual arrival of the mechanized army units, he assured me that he would do everything humanly possible. I made it easier for him to give me this promise by guaranteeing him the fullest air support.⁴

One of Kesselring’s fliegerkorps (Air Corps) was also specifically earmarked for the airborne forces, not only to provide them with direct air support but also to impede Dutch troop movements and counter-attacks.⁵

Broadly speaking, 7th Air Division’s operations went according to plan. The one significant failure – to take the Dordrecht bridge over the Oude Maas – occurred because too few paratroops were assigned to the task, and because Dutch resistance was underestimated. There was heavy fighting around all the bridge objectives, and 7th Air Division could well have found themse...