Iain is a super guest. If you have enjoyed this show, please don't forget to click like, leave a comment for other viewers and if you have not done so already please SUSBSCRIBE so you don't miss our next streams. You can also become a member of this channel and support me financially here th-cam.com/channels/UC1nmJGHmiKtlkpA6SJMeA.html. Links to any books discussed, WW2TV merchandise, our social media pages and other WW2TV shows to watch can all be found in the full TH-cam description. Lastly, my own book Angels of Mercy is always available online - more info here www.ddayhistorian.com/angels-of-mercy.html
I also agree with Iain, the arbiters if this was a failure or not, are the residents of Arnhem. Their respects every year show that the soldiers sacrifice was not in vain and will be remembered.
ust rewatching this one now and I very much appreciate the attention to the civilians. We truly should have more history on their sufferings and monuments to them in my mind. I had a conversation regarding it with my step grand dad who was with the 101. And my take away was that it's much better to be a well trained soldier with your friends and comrades all armed and prepared to have your back. As a civilian you're facing random overwhelming force and just trying to stay alive and keep your family safe. Having his wife and kids back home in the US was a comfort to him.
I had what was for me the unique opportunity of visiting the Hartenstein Airborne Museum at Oosterbeek and the rebuilt Arnhem bridge about ten years ago. It was a day to remember.
Went to Arnhem last summer to watch iron maiden. Prior to my visit I contacted Jan loos about a tour and he met me at the hartenstein and took me round oosterbeek for a battlefield tour,lovely bloke,think he was 94 at the time!!loved the tour. Was my 6th visit to Arnhem, love the place
This is an excellent show … it honors the British airborne and civilians who were subjected to this horrible cauldron. They were brave & stood strong for good in the very face of evil. Iain’s book is top notch. And this show had me on the edge of my seat. A+. Thank you Paul, for bringing such superb content to TH-cam.
What an amazing book! I’m about halfway through and it’s hard to put down. I really appreciate the veteran interviews. Almost makes you feel like you’re there. It’s clear that an amazing amount of research and work went into the book!
A very good and slightly different perspective. I think most books talk a little about the Dutch civilians and I agree the question of whether the operation should have been conducted is in the words of the Dutch boy at the end of Ians book and the continued support and friendship by the Dutch people to veterans of Arnhem. After all the books I've read for the last 46 years I refuse to think this operation was a failure. Were all objectives met, well No, but most were, and even at Arnhem it gave people some hope even if it was for just a few days. Remember some of the words written by little Anne Frank. Despite being so afraid of the bombings it gave them all hope that people were fighting and dying to liberate them. I am grateful to all the Allied soldiers, seamen, and flyers who participated and died to rid the world of the evil that if left unchecked might have continued for many years later. Thank you all.
There were at least four black soldiers with 1st Airborne for Market Garden: Corporal Roland "Knocker" West, 156th Btn The Parachute Regiment Trooper Cecil Charles Bolton, 1st Airborne Reconnaissance Squadron Sergeant Joseph Smith, 21st Independent Parachute Company Private Kenneth Roberts, 21st Independent Parachute Company It's interesting to note that the last three were in units where as well as being volunteers they were only accepted after interview with the CO (Gough for the recce, Wilson for the Independent Coy). Of the four, West was KIA on the 20th; Roberts died after swimming the Nederrijn in the evacuation; Bolton was taken POW when the bridge group surrendered; Smith made it across the Nederrijn and went on to become an officer.
This is an interesting and in detail talk about some lesser known or discussed parts. My grandfather was a part of the Recce. squadron at Arnhem, so any new information I can learn about the whole event is very welcome!
Phill, I now have a copy of Bob Hilton's book, Freddie Gough's Specials At Arnhem. If you have your grandfather's details, I could see if he's listed in the nominal roll in the book.
My Grandad was II Para Platoon Sgt in Arnhem, told me his section was the first on the bridge. Always remover him saying that that they knew they were heading for kicking from the German Army before the Op got under way. Would love to have known more about his military career before he passed, Robert Dennis, known as Sweed.
PAUL …OMG ..sorry I'm not shouting but the officer by the name of Lieutenant Bingly actually came to the smugglers pub at Totness to tell us his story ,unfortunately the pub has now been long gone ,but an absolute tremendous story was told that had us all in total aw and disbelief ..incredible .
I read a Bridge too Far, I saw the movie too but I don't always trust movies (or any individual book: there are at least 3 sides to every historical event - what I saw, what you saw, and what actually happened). I'll have to read this book. My opinion so far has been that there was an attempt for an airborne assault that was extremely ambitious to try to open a road into Germany and it didn't work. I am personally torn between admiration at the attempt, and horrified at the results. I give every man who took part my thanks, they did what they were assigned to do and if historians 75 years later still cant figure out what the best option would have been, I believe its its a reflection of overthinking after the fact. The operation itself may have had flaws, but its always easier to point flaws out after the fact. By the way, I'd never thought I'd say anything in defense of Montgomery but I just did.
@@WW2TV I absolutely agree! Having the asset of elite troops in such large quantities is guaranteed to elicit a desire to use them, you don't want them sitting idle and unproductive (from a military perspective). They were slated for several airborne operations before OMG (I forget the exact number) but none came to fruition. That was, to my understanding, part of the reason for the enthusiasm towards OMG, that they could finally use this force they had in reserve
@@WW2TV it is amazing to me that they didnt perform more airborne operations, although I will admit putting the 101st airborne at Bastogne was a stroke of genius even though it was probably incidental (using whatever reserves they had available). I know it's used as a trope but it is true that airborne units were trained to expect to be surrounded, granted only for limited periods of time. On a related subject, I'm amazed at glider pilots and glider-borne troops survived their training, let alone their landing into combat.
This loss still does not compare to our horrible loss in the Philippines. MacArthur abandones tens of thousands of allies to the Japanese who enslave them. In Korea this same General flobbels again and cannot supply our troops with winter gear, resulting in terrible loss of life. One of Americas worst Generals...
Another outstanding episode. You are at the top of my documentary list. Also, my bookshelf space may need expanding as I just ordered this book, after ordering the book on the Eastern Front the other day.
Can you tell me which photo you're referring to? I know many of the photos that show up time and again in books and in some cases the names and unit are captioned.
When talking about the civilian sidethe Dutchman called Frans, 56:11 there is a photo shown illustrating the de devastation, remenants of a car. There is a interesting (civilian) story behind this photo. This car was used by 2 Dutchmen to collect supplies for the medical aid station in the house behind it, actually Hotel Schoonoord. At a certain point these two men were trying to collect water for the wounded. They used milk churns, two are visible in this photo. When they returned to Schoonoord, the Germans start to mortar the area and their car received a direct hit. One of them Samuel Swarts was later buried at the Airborne cemetary. When later discovered he was a Dutch civilian they wanted to remove him. His widow objected that. Considering that Mr Swarts had been serving in a Dutch volunteer "unit" Oranje battalion in aid of the British airborne it might be one of the considerations to leave his final resting place at the airborne cemetary. He is one of two Dutch civilians buried at the cemetary
Fascinating that Monty is characterised by some US military historians as outspoken, when you consider the truths about US leadership he could have disclosed but was decently reticent about. I suspect he knew that truth-telling would be counter-productive in the post-war political reality of a world divided between communism and consumerism.
Montgomery's memoirs (1958) criticised many of his wartime comrades in harsh terms, including Eisenhower.[243] He was threatened with legal action by Field Marshal Auchinleck for suggesting that Auchinleck had intended to retreat from the Alamein position if attacked again, and had to give a radio broadcast (20 November 1958) expressing his gratitude to Auchinleck for having stabilised the front at the First Battle of Alamein.[244] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Montgomery#Opinions
All film drama has to be seen in the light of the filmmaker's intentions. If you lookup Based On A **True** True Story, it examines a number of films made in the 2010s for historical accuracy and finds the best is Selma (2014) at 100%, and the worst is The Imitation Game (2014) at 42.3%. The reason for the Imitation Game's poor portrayal of how the German Enigma codes were broken is because the intent of the film was to rehabilitate the name of mathematician Alan Turing, who was prosecuted under the laws existing at the time for indecent behaviour. The 'Colossus' codebreaking machine was designed and built by engineers, not Turing himself as shown in the film - he only wrote the specifications for what the machine needed to do - admittedly not very dramatic on film. Selma is a biopic of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, and although I haven't seen the film myself, the 100% score would suggest to me that historical accuracy was probably the motive behind the film and not something else. Director Richard Attenborough's motive for making A Bridge Too Far he declared was to make an "anti-war film", and he probably settled on Cornelius Ryan's book because it already appears to have an anti-British bias. Ryan was born in Dublin, worked for the Daily Telegraph in London, and was embedded as a war correspondent with Patton's US 3rd Army during the NW European campaign. After the war he emigrated to the United States, where he wrote his three books. The scriptwriter was the very talented William Goldman, who has 1969's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to his credit, and I always thought Ryan O'Neal and Robert Redford's performances almost recreate Paul Newman and Redford in the earlier film. Hollywood producer Joseph Levine is quoted as responding to charges of historical inaccuracy in the film by saying "I pay to make entertainment, not history." I conducted my own study of A Bridge Too Far a few years ago by timing each scene and breaking them down into true, untrue, or a bit iffy, and came up with a figure of 50.2% true, which looks (to an old cynic like me) almost like a deliberate attempt to make it 'mostly' accurate, especially as the longest scenes are the ones with troops boarding aircraft and glider tow ropes being unfurled on the runways. Much of the manipulation to the true story in the film is used to serve Attenborough's view that British officers were from an inherently incompetent class (and Americans are from a classless society of course), and the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge almost single-handed by the Sundance Kid himself is a total unashamed fiction. Despite this, the film did badly at the US box office, only two years after the fall of Saigon and showing another Allied defeat, so American audiences were voting with their feet in the Summer of 1977 by lining up around the block to watch Star Wars again.
@WW2TV No. The Arnhem bridge would have crossed the Rhine, avoided the German West wall, and a drive into the Industrial Heartland, which was still producing war material. Once that was done, on to Berlin. War over in 3 to 4 months. It would have opened up Amsterdam, too. That was Montys objective. So if you were to leave out Arnhem, then you couldn't achieve the objective. Had it worked it would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. As they say in the Army, PPPPPPP PisPoorPlanning&Preparation leads to a PisPoorPerformance. Over 2 years to plan D-Day & 1 week for Arnhem. If the Canadians attacked the Sheldt at the same time, the German's in the West would have had to defend against 30 Corps and the 1st Canadian Army. A senior General needed to bend Churchills ear to do likewise with the RAF. Had someone got the RAF to play ball they would have pissed it. Area Bomb where the German Armour was in the forrests first. They had the aircraft to drop the same number of Para Divisions for D-Day. Before any military operation, ask the following, What is the political objective, and can it be achieved by military means, YES. Ask, what Men and Material are required, have we got it. YES, then proceed. Market Garden touched YES, just, but the material (RAF) wasn't made available, therefore the YES should be changed to NO that No should have been put under Churchills nose with the reason RAF.... Both the RAF & USAAF would provide the required air to ground support as on D-Day and Normandy Campaign. That mobile Ariel Artillery support for all 3 Airborne Divisions and 30 Corps may alone had made the difference, despite the lack of Airlift. Ray.... Ex Para & SAS
Actually, Brereton, Williams and Hollinghurst made the big decisions that proved costly. To a lesser extent, so did Gavin, Browning and Taylor. Urquhart was probably not the best choice. Monty's general outline idea was sound. Unfortunately it was planned by others, and that's where it went wrong.
Iain is a super guest. If you have enjoyed this show, please don't forget to click like, leave a comment for other viewers and if you have not done so already please SUSBSCRIBE so you don't miss our next streams. You can also become a member of this channel and support me financially here th-cam.com/channels/UC1nmJGHmiKtlkpA6SJMeA.html.
Links to any books discussed, WW2TV merchandise, our social media pages and other WW2TV shows to watch can all be found in the full TH-cam description. Lastly, my own book Angels of Mercy is always available online - more info here www.ddayhistorian.com/angels-of-mercy.html
I also agree with Iain, the arbiters if this was a failure or not, are the residents of Arnhem. Their respects every year show that the soldiers sacrifice was not in vain and will be remembered.
ust rewatching this one now and I very much appreciate the attention to the civilians.
We truly should have more history on their sufferings and monuments to them in my mind. I had a conversation regarding it with my step grand dad who was with the 101. And my take away was that it's much better to be a well trained soldier with your friends and comrades all armed and prepared to have your back. As a civilian you're facing random overwhelming force and just trying to stay alive and keep your family safe. Having his wife and kids back home in the US was a comfort to him.
I had what was for me the unique opportunity of visiting the Hartenstein Airborne Museum at Oosterbeek and the rebuilt Arnhem bridge about ten years ago. It was a day to remember.
Went to Arnhem last summer to watch iron maiden. Prior to my visit I contacted Jan loos about a tour and he met me at the hartenstein and took me round oosterbeek for a battlefield tour,lovely bloke,think he was 94 at the time!!loved the tour. Was my 6th visit to Arnhem, love the place
This is an excellent show … it honors the British airborne and civilians who were subjected to this horrible cauldron. They were brave & stood strong for good in the very face of evil. Iain’s book is top notch. And this show had me on the edge of my seat. A+. Thank you Paul, for bringing such superb content to TH-cam.
Churchill was the evil one ❤
What an amazing book! I’m about halfway through and it’s hard to put down. I really appreciate the veteran interviews. Almost makes you feel like you’re there. It’s clear that an amazing amount of research and work went into the book!
I agree.. ian’s book is captivating
A very good and slightly different perspective. I think most books talk a little about the Dutch civilians and I agree the question of whether the operation should have been conducted is in the words of the Dutch boy at the end of Ians book and the continued support and friendship by the Dutch people to veterans of Arnhem. After all the books I've read for the last 46 years I refuse to think this operation was a failure. Were all objectives met, well No, but most were, and even at Arnhem it gave people some hope even if it was for just a few days. Remember some of the words written by little Anne Frank. Despite being so afraid of the bombings it gave them all hope that people were fighting and dying to liberate them. I am grateful to all the Allied soldiers, seamen, and flyers who participated and died to rid the world of the evil that if left unchecked might have continued for many years later. Thank you all.
One more book sale for Mr Ballantyne, an excellent discussion
Another great episode
Great show, very interesting presentation with lots to learn from it !
There were at least four black soldiers with 1st Airborne for Market Garden:
Corporal Roland "Knocker" West, 156th Btn The Parachute Regiment
Trooper Cecil Charles Bolton, 1st Airborne Reconnaissance Squadron
Sergeant Joseph Smith, 21st Independent Parachute Company
Private Kenneth Roberts, 21st Independent Parachute Company
It's interesting to note that the last three were in units where as well as being volunteers they were only accepted after interview with the CO (Gough for the recce, Wilson for the Independent Coy). Of the four, West was KIA on the 20th; Roberts died after swimming the Nederrijn in the evacuation; Bolton was taken POW when the bridge group surrendered; Smith made it across the Nederrijn and went on to become an officer.
Wtf as that got to do with anything
Interesting.
80 years this September.
Great conversation and book.Thank you.
This great account ( book) needs to be available on an audible download and deservedly would be well received).
Great interview. Thank you! 👏👏👏
I snuck into the movie as an 11 year old. Got kicked out! Ha ha. One of my favorite movies now.
Market Garden was an audacious throw of the dice.
Paul and Iain: Thank You both. Can't Wait to get the Book.
This is an interesting and in detail talk about some lesser known or discussed parts.
My grandfather was a part of the Recce. squadron at Arnhem, so any new information I can learn about the whole event is very welcome!
Phill, I now have a copy of Bob Hilton's book, Freddie Gough's Specials At Arnhem. If you have your grandfather's details, I could see if he's listed in the nominal roll in the book.
My Grandad was II Para Platoon Sgt in Arnhem, told me his section was the first on the bridge. Always remover him saying that that they knew they were heading for kicking from the German Army before the Op got under way.
Would love to have known more about his military career before he passed, Robert Dennis, known as Sweed.
You should apply for his service records from the MoD
Brilliant insight
PAUL …OMG ..sorry I'm not shouting but the officer by the name of Lieutenant Bingly actually came to the smugglers pub at Totness to tell us his story ,unfortunately the pub has now been long gone ,but an absolute tremendous story was told that had us all in total aw and disbelief ..incredible .
Ha, how fantastic
Yeah unreal mate, honest I couldn't make it up when we got the German with a very pistol he said he wasn't very well after that.. Lol. 👍
I read a Bridge too Far, I saw the movie too but I don't always trust movies
(or any individual book: there are at least 3 sides to every historical event - what I saw, what you saw, and what actually happened). I'll have to read this book. My opinion so far has been that there was an attempt for an airborne assault that was extremely ambitious to try to open a road into Germany and it didn't work. I am personally torn between admiration at the attempt, and horrified at the results. I give every man who took part my thanks, they did what they were assigned to do and if historians 75 years later still cant figure out what the best option would have been, I believe its its a reflection of overthinking after the fact. The operation itself may have had flaws, but its always easier to point flaws out after the fact. By the way, I'd never thought I'd say anything in defense of Montgomery but I just did.
The thing is, once an Allied Airborne Army had been created it was going to get used. So if not OMG then another op
@@WW2TV I absolutely agree! Having the asset of elite troops in such large quantities is guaranteed to elicit a desire to use them, you don't want them sitting idle and unproductive (from a military perspective). They were slated for several airborne operations before OMG (I forget the exact number) but none came to fruition. That was, to my understanding, part of the reason for the enthusiasm towards OMG, that they could finally use this force they had in reserve
@@WW2TV it is amazing to me that they didnt perform more airborne operations, although I will admit putting the 101st airborne at Bastogne was a stroke of genius even though it was probably incidental (using whatever reserves they had available). I know it's used as a trope but it is true that airborne units were trained to expect to be surrounded, granted only for limited periods of time.
On a related subject, I'm amazed at glider pilots and glider-borne troops survived their training, let alone their landing into combat.
Such an interesting and thought provoking presentation. And yes....another book to add to my collection!
A great show. I really liked Iain very comprehensive present of the battle, which I really only know from the film and a few documentaries.
Almost caught up with the Arnhem series.
This loss still does not compare to our horrible loss in the Philippines. MacArthur abandones tens of thousands of allies to the Japanese who enslave them. In Korea this same General flobbels again and cannot supply our troops with winter gear, resulting in terrible loss of life. One of Americas worst Generals...
Another outstanding episode. You are at the top of my documentary list. Also, my bookshelf space may need expanding as I just ordered this book, after ordering the book on the Eastern Front the other day.
Could have done without the social justice soapboxing towards the end though. It was forced, and just nor appropriate to the subject at all.
I turned it off after that. I'll read the book.
Question for Iain .... the interviews with veterans you undertook, how far back was this and did you happen to speak with any from the Tenth?
Are identities of the four Airborne soliders visible on that very famous photo of Market Garden, known?
Can you tell me which photo you're referring to? I know many of the photos that show up time and again in books and in some cases the names and unit are captioned.
We sometimes forget, that it nearly did work.
When talking about the civilian sidethe Dutchman called Frans, 56:11 there is a photo shown illustrating the de devastation, remenants of a car. There is a interesting (civilian) story behind this photo. This car was used by 2 Dutchmen to collect supplies for the medical aid station in the house behind it, actually Hotel Schoonoord. At a certain point these two men were trying to collect water for the wounded. They used milk churns, two are visible in this photo. When they returned to Schoonoord, the Germans start to mortar the area and their car received a direct hit. One of them Samuel Swarts was later buried at the Airborne cemetary. When later discovered he was a Dutch civilian they wanted to remove him. His widow objected that. Considering that Mr Swarts had been serving in a Dutch volunteer "unit" Oranje battalion in aid of the British airborne it might be one of the considerations to leave his final resting place at the airborne cemetary. He is one of two Dutch civilians buried at the cemetary
Thanks for sharing
Fascinating that Monty is characterised by some US military historians as outspoken, when you consider the truths about US leadership he could have disclosed but was decently reticent about. I suspect he knew that truth-telling would be counter-productive in the post-war political reality of a world divided between communism and consumerism.
Montgomery's memoirs (1958) criticised many of his wartime comrades in harsh terms, including Eisenhower.[243] He was threatened with legal action by Field Marshal Auchinleck for suggesting that Auchinleck had intended to retreat from the Alamein position if attacked again, and had to give a radio broadcast (20 November 1958) expressing his gratitude to Auchinleck for having stabilised the front at the First Battle of Alamein.[244]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Montgomery#Opinions
@@nickdanger3802 my observation still stands.
Great show. Totally clichéd, but the airbourne actions like Arnhem are great in the re-telling.
A deadly cauldron
Dutch courage😄
👍
❤
You always hear how ss are elite best soldier's in ww2, then tbe paras fought them tooth and nail
Arnhem was a bridge too far
After the battle the germans
Ousted the dutch from their homes and many died in the
Cruel winter
Always feel like the movie made tbe Americans did nothing wrong, the British was the reason for failure.
Indeed, and considering Americans played a prominent part in the planning of the battle (Brereton, Williams, Gavin and Taylor) this needs to stop.
All film drama has to be seen in the light of the filmmaker's intentions. If you lookup Based On A **True** True Story, it examines a number of films made in the 2010s for historical accuracy and finds the best is Selma (2014) at 100%, and the worst is The Imitation Game (2014) at 42.3%.
The reason for the Imitation Game's poor portrayal of how the German Enigma codes were broken is because the intent of the film was to rehabilitate the name of mathematician Alan Turing, who was prosecuted under the laws existing at the time for indecent behaviour. The 'Colossus' codebreaking machine was designed and built by engineers, not Turing himself as shown in the film - he only wrote the specifications for what the machine needed to do - admittedly not very dramatic on film.
Selma is a biopic of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, and although I haven't seen the film myself, the 100% score would suggest to me that historical accuracy was probably the motive behind the film and not something else.
Director Richard Attenborough's motive for making A Bridge Too Far he declared was to make an "anti-war film", and he probably settled on Cornelius Ryan's book because it already appears to have an anti-British bias. Ryan was born in Dublin, worked for the Daily Telegraph in London, and was embedded as a war correspondent with Patton's US 3rd Army during the NW European campaign. After the war he emigrated to the United States, where he wrote his three books. The scriptwriter was the very talented William Goldman, who has 1969's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to his credit, and I always thought Ryan O'Neal and Robert Redford's performances almost recreate Paul Newman and Redford in the earlier film. Hollywood producer Joseph Levine is quoted as responding to charges of historical inaccuracy in the film by saying "I pay to make entertainment, not history."
I conducted my own study of A Bridge Too Far a few years ago by timing each scene and breaking them down into true, untrue, or a bit iffy, and came up with a figure of 50.2% true, which looks (to an old cynic like me) almost like a deliberate attempt to make it 'mostly' accurate, especially as the longest scenes are the ones with troops boarding aircraft and glider tow ropes being unfurled on the runways. Much of the manipulation to the true story in the film is used to serve Attenborough's view that British officers were from an inherently incompetent class (and Americans are from a classless society of course), and the capture of the Nijmegen highway bridge almost single-handed by the Sundance Kid himself is a total unashamed fiction.
Despite this, the film did badly at the US box office, only two years after the fall of Saigon and showing another Allied defeat, so American audiences were voting with their feet in the Summer of 1977 by lining up around the block to watch Star Wars again.
We are amateur historians, Paul. You can change our minds if you produce evidence and give us your interpretation.
It can't have been a bridge to far otherwise it's a pointless operation.
In what way? do you mean it had to be risky to make it worthwhile?
@WW2TV No. The Arnhem bridge would have crossed the Rhine, avoided the German West wall, and a drive into the Industrial Heartland, which was still producing war material. Once that was done, on to Berlin. War over in 3 to 4 months. It would have opened up Amsterdam, too. That was Montys objective. So if you were to leave out Arnhem, then you couldn't achieve the objective. Had it worked it would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. As they say in the Army, PPPPPPP PisPoorPlanning&Preparation leads to a PisPoorPerformance. Over 2 years to plan D-Day & 1 week for Arnhem. If the Canadians attacked the Sheldt at the same time, the German's in the West would have had to defend against 30 Corps and the 1st Canadian Army. A senior General needed to bend Churchills ear to do likewise with the RAF. Had someone got the RAF to play ball they would have pissed it. Area Bomb where the German Armour was in the forrests first. They had the aircraft to drop the same number of Para Divisions for D-Day. Before any military operation, ask the following, What is the political objective, and can it be achieved by military means, YES. Ask, what Men and Material are required, have we got it. YES, then proceed. Market Garden touched YES, just, but the material (RAF) wasn't made available, therefore the YES should be changed to NO that No should have been put under Churchills nose with the reason RAF.... Both the RAF & USAAF would provide the required air to ground support as on D-Day and Normandy Campaign. That mobile Ariel Artillery support for all 3 Airborne Divisions and 30 Corps may alone had made the difference, despite the lack of Airlift.
Ray.... Ex Para & SAS
This stinks of Monty...
Could you elaborate?
Actually, Brereton, Williams and Hollinghurst made the big decisions that proved costly. To a lesser extent, so did Gavin, Browning and Taylor. Urquhart was probably not the best choice.
Monty's general outline idea was sound. Unfortunately it was planned by others, and that's where it went wrong.