Chapter 410 Planning (5)
After seeing the individual equipment of the paratroopers, Yannick was very satisfied, but these equipments alone were far from enough. After all, the "Market Garden" operation in the original time and space was a lesson for us.
In 1944, at the end of World War II, the German army had begun to weaken due to long-term combat, and its combat power had also been greatly reduced. At this time, the Allies had already achieved the Normandy landing and opened up a second battlefield. Although Germany's combat effectiveness was not as good as before, the Allies were still blocked on a large scale, and every step forward had to pay a heavy price.
Therefore, the Allied high-level decided to launch a large-scale war, and then completely destroy the German army's defensive capabilities and end the war as soon as possible. The highest commander of this operation was British Field Marshal Montgomery. Seeing that the paratroopers played an important role in the Normandy landing, he formulated the "Market Garden Operation".
First, three airborne divisions were deployed to cross the German defense line, seize the bridges on the Meuse River, Waal River and Lower Rhine River, and form an 85-kilometer corridor; at the same time as the airborne operation was launched, an armored division and two infantry divisions belonging to the British 30th Army used the bridges controlled by the airborne troops to advance along the corridor to the Arnhem area, and after joining the British 1st Airborne Division, they detoured to the north of the Ruhr area in Germany. When the 30th Army launched an attack along the corridor, the British 8th Army and the 12th Army conducted coordinated operations on the east and west wings of the corridor respectively. This combat plan was named "Market Garden", in which the airborne operation was "Market" and the ground combat operation was "Garden". The original intention of the plan was to push the front line into Germany without a frontal assault. The most important thing was that once this operation was successful, the most important Ruhr industrial area in Germany could be captured, which would undoubtedly be the last straw that broke the camel's back for Germany.
This plan seemed perfect, so Montgomery used his eloquence to explain his "perfect" plan to the Allied forces, which made all the countries invest their own money. Finally, it was determined that there were 350,000 aircraft and nearly 2,000 armored vehicles participating in the war.
So on September 17, 1944, "Operation Market Garden" was implemented!
But what Montgomery didn't expect was that he made a big mistake.
Because Montgomery did not make a detailed analysis of the German deployment, many paratroopers landed directly on the German military base. The Germans might be eating, and suddenly saw a dense crowd of people above their heads, so they started shooting the Allied forces like shooting birds. Some of the Allied forces even hung on the trees, unable to go up or down. Because the parachuting heights of the Allied countries were not consistent, many paratroopers from many countries were killed by falling.
Operation Market Garden was not carried out smoothly. It was difficult for the Allied forces to drive more than 2,000 armored vehicles into the German army. Even if they drove into the German army, there were no paratroopers to support them. The worst victims in this battle were the 1,500 Polish paratroopers, none of whom survived.
The direct cause of the failure of this war was that Montgomery did not make combat deployments in advance. So on September 24, the week-long "Operation Market Garden" officially ended.
Montgomery's plan was intended to win by surprise, relying on the unparalleled strategic mobility of the airborne troops to seize the key nodes in the rear of the German army, and then consolidate and expand the results of the battle with the rapid advance of the ground armored forces, thus causing the collapse of the overall German front. But at that time, after the airborne troops landed, they lacked heavy firepower to destroy enemy fortifications and suppress enemy armored targets, and they also lacked armored targets to provide sufficient combat assault forces. In essence, they were still an elite light infantry.
This determines that unless airborne operations can get timely support from friendly ground forces, in most cases they can only conduct infiltration and harassment operations, and are not suitable for strong attacks. However, at the beginning of the planning of the "Market Garden" operation, the success of the airborne operation was regarded as the key to the success or failure of the entire operation. This is completely different from the Normandy landing, where the airborne operation was only a subsidiary operation in the entire landing operation. The key to the "Market Garden" operation lies in the success or failure of the airborne operation, and the airborne troops lack independent attack capabilities. They must obtain support from artillery and armored forces to expand the combat results achieved by suddenness into campaign results.
This also determines that to support a large-scale airborne operation, the required reserves of materials must be more abundant than those required for a large-scale ground operation to be successful. But Montgomery's original intention in formulating this combat plan was to achieve greater campaign results with less material consumption and fewer casualties. In order to ensure that the airborne operation could proceed normally, Montgomery even ordered that fuel and other supplies be given priority to the airborne troops. This deployment made the ground armored forces not fully prepared before the war, so that at the critical period of the battle, they could not rush to the designated assembly area on time to provide necessary support for the airborne troops fighting alone.
Overall, the main reason for the failure of this operation was Montgomery's blind optimism and his obsession with ending the war against Germany before the Soviet Union. For such a large-scale combat operation, there was no pre-planned plan to deal with emergencies, so that in the subsequent operations, when the various troops were counterattacked by the German army outside the plan (in the combat plan, all the counterattacks of the German army were not planned), they could only bite the bullet. The intelligence department issued warnings to Montgomery several times about the 9th and 10th armored divisions of the 2nd SS Panzer Corps entering the Arnhem area, but Montgomery did not pay attention to it.
The report that the armored forces lacked sufficient fuel and ammunition did not receive a response from Montgomery. Naturally, as an army marshal, Montgomery was not aware of the lack of effective suppression firepower and anti-tank firepower of the airborne troops, which was understandable. Among the main German generals, there was Model, who was good at defense, and Student, who had the most experience in airborne operations in the whole of Europe. Intelligence was not worth paying special attention to. But the final result of all this was that Student seized a combat order as soon as the Allied airborne troops landed. As a veteran airborne soldier, Student naturally knew better than anyone how to counter airborne operations. The German army quickly assembled all the mobile forces that could be assembled to conduct anti-airborne operations. When the British and Polish paratroopers were beaten to a standstill by two armored divisions with a total of less than 7,000 people, the British armored forces could only sigh at the distant bridge because of the exhaustion of fuel and ammunition.