Arnhem: Myth and Reality E-Book

Sebastian Ritchie

• Herausgeber: Robert Hale Non Fiction
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 523

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

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.

Leseprobe

ARNHEM

Myth and Reality

About the Author

Sebastian Ritchie is an official historian at the Air Historical Branch (RAF) of the Ministry of Defence. He has a PhD from King’s College, London, and he lectured for three years at the University of Manchester before joining the Air Historical Branch. He is the author of numerous official narratives covering RAF operations in Iraq and the Former Yugoslavia, and he has also lectured and published widely on aspects of air power and air operations, as well as airborne operations and special operations in the Second World War.

ARNHEM

Myth and Reality

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

Sebastian Ritchie

First published in 2011 by Robert Hale, an imprint of

The Crowood Press Ltd, Ramsbury, Marlborough Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

Paperback edition 2019

This e-book first published in 2019

© Sebastian Ritchie 2011 and 2019

All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7198 2921 5

Ebook ISBN 978 0 7198 2922 2

The right of Sebastian Ritchie to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All photographs © UK MOD Crown Copyright

Maps © Sebastian Ritchie (Map 14 © UK MOD Crown Copyright)

Back cover: Glider Pilot at Control by Leslie Cole

To Jacqueline, with love

Contents

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

General Introduction

Part One: Airborne Warfare in Historical Context

Introduction

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

1.2.Airborne Warfare: The Allied Experience, 1940–43

1.3.Airborne Warfare: Normandy and Beyond

Part 1: Conclusion

Part Two: Market Garden: The Conceptual Plan

Introduction

2.1.The Origins of Market Garden

2.2.From Comet to Market Garden

2.3.The Market Garden Intelligence Legend

Part 2: Conclusion

Part Three: The Allied Air Forces and Market Garden

Introduction

3.1.The Arnhem Landing Areas: Operation Comet

3.2.The Arnhem Landing Areas: Market Garden

3.3.The Airlift

3.4.Air Support Operations

3.5.The Air Battle

Part 3: Conclusion

General Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgements

Arnhem: Myth and Reality is an entirely private project, and is not related in any way to my work as an official historian at the Ministry of Defence (MOD). It was researched and written in my own time and the historical judgements contained within its pages are mine alone and in no way reflect the views of the RAF or the MOD.

Having said that, I cannot deny that this book had its origins in the MOD’s Directorate of Equipment Capability (Deep Target Attack) staff ride to Arnhem in 2004. I am grateful to the officers who staffed the directorate at that time for inviting me along, and to Bill McQuade for introducing me to the Market Garden area, which I have explored on many occasions since. I am also indebted to the numerous British military personnel who have accompanied me for their many constructive questions and comments. They have played an invaluable part in helping me to rethink the events of September 1944.

My basic thesis was first published in rudimentary form in the Royal Air Force Air Power Review in 2005 and first presented at the Society of Military History’s annual conference at Kansas State University in 2006; further presentations then followed at the RAF College, Cranwell, in 2008 and at Birmingham University in 2009. These opportunities to publicize my position proved immensely useful, and my views were in some cases substantially refined as a result. I must therefore thank all of those involved, particularly Air Commodore Neville Parton, formerly (as Group Captain) Director of Defence Studies, RAF, Dr Joel Hayward and Air Commodore Peter Grey. I also owe an immense debt of gratitude to my colleagues at the Air Historical Branch, particularly Sebastian Cox, Steve Lloyd, Clive Richards, Mary Hudson and Lee Barton, for help and encouragement and for alerting me to a number of valuable sources I had previously ignored or failed to identify. At the RAF museum, Peter Elliot’s assistance with Hollinghurst papers was likewise very valuable, and immensely appreciated.

Beyond this, Arnhem: Myth and Reality owes much to the many historians who have tackled Market Garden before me. Although I argue in this book that a substantial reassessment of the operation is long overdue, this is not in any way to deny the historical value of earlier studies, and the extent to which they have helped to shape my perspective. Finally I am grateful to my family for tolerating extended periods of research and writing when I undoubtedly neglected my duties as a husband and father.

This book is primarily a study of military planning. Operation plans (especially airborne plans) have a tendency to become highly complex. The records they generate for historians are often contradictory or deficient, while the recollections of those involved may not always answer outstanding questions or resolve discrepancies. I have sought to make the following chapters as accurate and well-documented as possible but if, despite my efforts, any factual errors have gone undetected, I am of course solely responsible.

Abbreviations

ADGB

Air Defence Great Britain

AEAF

Allied Expeditionary Air Force

AHB

Air Historical Branch

CIGS

Chief of the Imperial General Staff

DZ

Drop Zone

GCI

Ground Control Intercept

LZ

Landing Zone

MGAF

Major General Airborne Forces

MOD

Ministry of Defence

PARA

Battalion, the Parachute Regiment

PIR

Parachute Infantry Regiment

POW

Prisoner of War

RAF

Royal Air Force

SAS

Special Air Service Brigade

SHAEF

Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force

TAF

Tactical Air Force

TCC

Troop Carrier Command

USAAF

United States Army Air Force

VCP

Visual Control Post

General Introduction

OPERATION MARKET GARDEN, launched on 17 September 1944, is often depicted as one of the most decisive military actions of the Allied campaign to liberate Western Europe. After finally breaking out of Normandy in August, Allied forces had quickly crossed northern and eastern France, raising hopes that the European war might be brought to a successful conclusion by the end of the year. But Hitler’s armies were not yet defeated; early in September their chaotic retreat from Normandy was halted, units and formations were reorganized, and reserves were deployed to points of particular vulnerability. Through an extraordinary combination of resourcefulness, improvisation and administrative skill, a defensive line was re-established from the North Sea to Switzerland; the Allied advance – already jeopardized by mounting logistical problems – was finally stopped in its tracks. More than any other action, Market Garden has come to symbolize this so-called ‘check in the west’. To its proponents it offered an opportunity to cross the River Rhine and seize the Ruhr – Germany’s industrial heartland. But its failure ended any realistic chance of securing a Rhine bridgehead before 1945.

Aside from the Normandy landings and perhaps the German offensive in the Ardennes, no other large-scale operation mounted in Western Europe in the final year of the war has so captured the popular imagination. With its dramatic mass airborne landings, heroic tactical actions like the defence of the Arnhem road bridge and the Waal assault river crossing, alleged command failures and planning and intelligence blunders, Market Garden has generated an enduring fascination and consequently an enormous literature. Thus it was never the intention that this book should be just another history of the operation. Readers seeking one more narrative of 1st Airborne Division’s epic struggle at Arnhem or of XXX Corps’ ill-fated efforts to relieve them will search these pages in vain.

Rather, the aim of this account is to place Market Garden in its correct historical context and to survey a number of major themes in its historiography. It was written for two principal reasons. First, it is contended that many critical aspects of the operation have consistently been misunderstood or misrepresented in past histories. Second (and from the perspective of a historian who works closely with the modern military), it is clear that until we have a more accurate understanding of these issues the most valuable and enduring lessons of Market Garden’s failure simply cannot be learnt.

The existing literature on Market Garden suffers from one particular drawback. Considering its scale the operation is one of the worst documented of the Second World War, chiefly because it was initiated at only four days’ notice; it was originally sanctioned on 10 September with D-Day envisaged as the 14th; on the 12th it was postponed until 17 September. Official records certainly survive, but detailed planning papers – minutes of meetings, records of decisions – from the 10 to 17 September period are few and far between. Presumably, given the lack of time, much of this planning activity was conducted verbally or was at least never recorded in a form deemed worthy of long-term preservation. Unfortunately the well-known scarcity of such documents has led historians to ignore even the relatively limited quantity of official papers still available. Instead they have tended to rely heavily for source material on the memoirs and recorded testimonies of those involved. Of course, these accounts are of immense value but they also suffer from predictable problems of bias, parochialism and selective recollection. As is typical in the aftermath of any failed military endeavour, many of the participants later claimed to have strenuously promoted alternative courses of action which (they alleged) would have produced more successful outcomes than those actually adopted. Yet invariably such arguments gain credibility only with the advantage of hindsight – an asset at the time unavailable to the actual decision-makers.

Another consequence of this limited source base has been a disproportionate focus among historians on the more emotive aspects of the operation. The five Victoria Cross awards and the innumerable stories of heroism, sacrifice and achievement in the face of extreme adversity naturally have an important place in the Market Garden saga, but they have not encouraged careful and dispassionate scholarly investigation. Equally, the strenuous efforts devoted over many years to portraying 1st Airborne Division as the blameless victims of misguided ‘actions taken by others’ serve no useful historical purpose.1 They merely ensure that research on the operation is confined within narrow boundaries and that, to this day, many aspects of 1st Airborne’s experience at Arnhem are wrongly described and imperfectly grasped.

Yet the most acute problem lies not so much in the inherent weaknesses of anecdotal source material but in the fact that so much of it is drawn from only one of the armed services involved in Market Garden, namely the airborne forces. This focus reflects an elementary misconception among historians concerning the very nature of airborne operations: all too often they are viewed simply as an extension of conventional land warfare. Yet the very concept of airborne warfare actually grew out of the application of air power, that is, out of the exploitation of air power’s inherent flexibility and reach to deliver a particular load (airborne troops) to a defined objective. Air power should therefore be central to any study of airborne warfare. And yet invariably it is regarded as a peripheral element – a minor detail compared with the fighting on the ground. Hence no major study of Market Garden published in recent years has attempted to describe the planning or execution of the airlifts in any detail.2 Typically, histories of the operation devote only pages to the air plan and dwell largely on its alleged failings. Another important reason for this bias is that the history of airborne operations – and especially of Market Garden – has predominantly been written by scholars of land warfare, former army personnel or ‘generalists’ who have only a limited understanding of air issues.

Cornelius Ryan’s A Bridge Too Far, which is still one of the most widely read and influential books on Market Garden, provides a perfect illustration. In preparing A Bridge Too Far, Ryan claimed to have followed ‘certain strict guidelines’. Each statement or quotation in the book was allegedly reinforced by documentary evidence or by the corroboration of others who heard or witnessed the event described. ‘Hearsay, rumour or third-party accounts could not be included.’3 But Ryan did not maintain that his sources were notable for their objectivity. In point of fact, the contributors who he ‘singled out for special thanks’ were:

Major General Roy Urquhart: commander of 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem

General Charles Mackenzie: formerly Lieutenant Colonel, Urquhart’s chief of staff

Major General John D. Frost: formerly Lieutenant Colonel, commander of 2nd Parachute Battalion at Arnhem

Colonel Eric M. Mackay: formerly Captain, with the Royal Engineers at Arnhem

Major General Philip H.W. Hicks: formerly Brigadier, commander of 1 Airlanding Brigade at Arnhem

General Sir John Hackett: formerly Brigadier, commander of 4 Parachute Brigade at Arnhem

Brigadier George Chatterton: formerly Colonel, commander of the Glider Pilot Regiment at Arnhem

Brigadier Gordon Walch: I Airborne Corps chief of staff during Market Garden

Other notable contributors were General (formerly Brigadier General) James Gavin, commander of 82nd Airborne Division during Market Garden; General (formerly Major General) Maxwell Taylor, commander of 101st Airborne Division during Market Garden; Major General Stanislaw Sosabowski, commander of 1 Polish Parachute Brigade during Market Garden; and Daphne du Maurier, wife of the commander of I Airborne Corps, Lieutenant General F.A.M. (later Sir Frederick) ‘Boy’ Browning.4 It is difficult to imagine how anyone could expect such a one-dimensional array of sources to provide a remotely balanced or comprehensive view of a joint operation.

Equally, the published memoirs cited in so many histories of Market Garden almost all provide the perspective of airborne or army officers. Urquhart, Hackett, Chatterton and Frost are among the most commonly quoted, although key figures from XXX Corps such as Lieutenant General Brian (later Sir Brian) Horrocks and Lieutenant Colonel (later Brigadier) Joe Vandeleur also wrote accounts of the operation. Other regularly cited memoirs include those of Gavin, Eisenhower and of course Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, commander of British and Canadian forces in northwest Europe (21st Army Group). By contrast, of the air officers who held senior command appointments during Market Garden, only Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur (later Marshal of the Royal Air Force Lord) Tedder would later produce memoirs. But Tedder (as Eisenhower’s deputy) had no responsibility for planning the supporting air effort.

For all of these reasons, then, there are good grounds for reconsidering Market Garden. It is particularly important that its history should be based as far as possible on such official sources as survive rather than on personal accounts of the operation, that we should not attach undue weight to the more emotive aspects of the story, and that we should to some extent reorient our attention away from the airborne divisions and towards the Allied air forces. After all, without them Market Garden would not have been possible. It is only through this means that the numerous myths and legends that have clouded our perceptions of the operation for so long will ultimately be dispelled.

Three of these myths form the central focus of this study. The first is that airborne warfare had proved an effective and successful means of conducting operations before September 1944. This belief has been bolstered by the failure of many published accounts of Market Garden to place the operation in historical context by considering the German and Allied airborne record earlier in the war.5 Historians merely assume or imply that the airborne medium did not differ fundamentally from any other means of applying military force. The contention here, on the other hand, is that the operation cannot properly be understood unless past airborne experience is examined in some detail. The first three chapters of this book thus break completely with established tradition by surveying all the large-scale airborne operations mounted in the European theatre by both the Germans and the Allies between 1940 and 1944. Only some such survey can provide an accurate foundation for assessing the events that culminated in the launch of Market Garden, the basis upon which it was planned, and its prospects of success.

The second myth is that Market Garden was a brilliant conceptual plan at the military-strategic level, which only failed because of flawed operational-tactical level execution.6 In other words, responsibility for Market Garden’s failure rests not with the British Army commander who initiated it – Montgomery – but with the Allied airborne headquarters that was required to turn the concept into a detailed plan. The prevailing assumption is that, although the airborne planners had a variety of practicable options at their disposal, they consistently chose the wrong ones; allegedly they let Montgomery down.7 This depiction of events has appeared both plausible and convenient to the majority of authors, especially in the United Kingdom, yet it is unsatisfactory on a number of counts. In particular, it has left little scope for careful investigation of the relationship between conceptual and detailed planning. Chapters 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3 seek to rectify this imbalance in the historiography by tracing the emergence and development of the conceptual plan for staging an airborne Rhine crossing at Arnhem, and by critically assessing its feasibility. The influence of higher command levels upon the process of operational-tactical level planning is also considered in the context of intelligence analysis and exploitation.

The third and most enduring myth of all is that the Allied air forces – the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) – bore a particular responsibility for Market Garden’s failure. At a time when other large-scale air operations were being mounted in support of 21st Army Group, both the RAF and the USAAF lent their backing to Market Garden on an immense scale. In a period of nine days some 14,751 air sorties and 2,598 glider sorties were flown in support of the operation.8 If it is considered that the most intensive air operations were required during the first few days of the offensive, and that poor weather grounded the majority of Allied aircraft on at least two days in this period (19 and 20 September), the true extent of the air effort will be appreciated. The air forces also went to quite extraordinary and unprecedented lengths to ensure that the airborne troops were delivered accurately and safely to their drop zones and landing zones. It is nevertheless now common to read that senior air commanders – Lieutenant General Lewis Brereton of First Allied Airborne Army and his subordinates, Major General Paul Williams of 9th Troop Carrier Command (9th TCC), and Air Vice-Marshal Leslie Hollinghurst of 38 Group, RAF – are primarily to blame for the Allied defeat.9

This line of argument can be traced all the way back to an after-action report signed off by the commanding officer of 1st Airborne Division, Major General Urquhart, on 10 January 1945. Urquhart’s report did not overtly criticize the Allied air forces, but his basic message would not have been lost on any reader with a knowledge of how Allied airborne operations were planned and executed. Urquhart identified three basic lessons from ‘Market’ – the airborne phase of Market Garden.* The first concerned the staging of the airlifts, the second the location of the drop zones and landing zones at Arnhem and the third the availability or otherwise of close air support. His words have had such a profound impact on historians that they deserve to be quoted in detail.

Planning

An Airborne Division is designed to fight as a whole. If the Division is split and committed to a 2nd lift some 24 hrs later then, owing to the necessity of allotting part of the first lift to protect the DZs and LZs of the following troops, the effective strength for immediate offensive action of the Div[ision] is reduced to that of a B[riga]de.

It is considered that we must be prepared to take more risks during the initial stages of an Airborne operation. When the balance sheet of casualties at Arnhem is made, it would appear a reasonable risk to have landed the Div much closer to the objective chosen, even in the face of some enemy flak. It has always been the rule when planning that the maximum distance from the DZ or LZ to the objective should not exceed 5 miles. In the ARNHEM operation the distance was 7 miles and in some cases 8 miles. An extra two minutes flying time in the face of flak, if not too severe, would have put the Div – always supposing the ground was suitable – much nearer its objective. Initial surprise in this operation was obtained, but the effect of the surprise was lost owing to the time lag of some 4 hrs before the troops could arrive at the objective chosen.

A whole B[riga]de dropped near the bridge site at ARNHEM might have been a major factor in the outcome of the battle … The forecast of the photographic interpretation and of the ‘I’ [intelligence] appreciation both RAF and Army, of the flak defences to be met in the area proved very pessimistic….

Air support

Close air support during the first afternoon of the operation would have been invaluable. If there had been a ‘cab rank’** available then and on subsequent days, the effect on the enemy would have been considerable. Close air support during the period when troops were in movement might easily have turned the scale and allowed the whole of 1 Para B[riga]de to have concentrated near the main ARNHEM Bridge…10

Urquhart did not of course maintain that these were the only lessons to be learnt from the Arnhem debacle. Later in the report he acknowledged that his communications infrastructure had failed, although he devoted only four lines to this subject, and he accepted that his forces had sometimes been held up by only small numbers of Germans equipped with light weapons. He also hinted at disciplinary problems, at ‘stickiness’ among less experienced troops, at deficient training for low-level decision-making, and at tactical failings that prevented infiltration and manoeuvre during the Arnhem battle.11 Nevertheless, his fundamental argument was that 1st Airborne Division fell victim to a series of extraneous factors completely beyond its control. The division should have been infiltrated more rapidly into Arnhem, it should have been dropped closer to the road bridge and it should have received far more offensive air support. In such circumstances – in his view – the outcome of the battle might have been very different.

Historians have since been almost unanimous in their backing for Urquhart’s position. Indeed, his arguments about planning were repeated by William Buckingham in a study published as recently as 2002. For Buckingham, ‘the lion’s share of responsibility [for the Allied defeat at Arnhem] has to go the airmen involved, whose decisions significantly tilted the odds against the airborne soldiers before they left the UK’. The air forces’ allegedly excessive influence over the Market Garden plan not only caused the airlift to be unnecessarily protracted, but also lumbered 1st Airborne Division with landing areas that were too far from their primary objectives.

This compounded the effects of delivering 1st Airborne over a three-day period, it flew in the face of all airborne experience, and the professional opinion of the airborne soldiers involved. The location of the landing zones was thus the single most important factor in the failure at Arnhem. The Arnhem portion of Market Garden failed … because the bulk of 1st Airborne’s first lift did not manage to reach the Arnhem road bridge at all, and the major reason for this was the distance between the landing areas and that bridge.12

Writing in 1994, Martin Middlebrook was no less critical of the Allied air forces. He described as ‘the cardinal, fundamental errors’ their ‘refusal to consider a night drop or to land at least parts of the force as coup-de-main parties closer to the two bridges, and their failure to land any part of the force at both ends of the bridge objectives’. Similarly, he deplored ‘the refusal to fly two lifts on the first day, which resulted in the prolonged dispersal of the division and its failure to achieve concentration of effort’. To Middlebrook, a major factor in the Allied defeat at Arnhem was what he termed ‘the failure of the air plan’.13

In another 50th anniversary study, Peter Harclerode drew similarly damning conclusions. He wrote that:

The major flaws in Major General Roy Urquhart’s plan were the distance between his division’s objectives and its dropping and landing zones, and their location west of Arnhem and north of the Lower Rhine. But Urquhart had little choice. The RAF vetoed his initial selections on grounds of the threat from enemy flak defences in the vicinity of Arnhem itself and the air base at Deelen to the north. His idea of a glider-borne coup-de-main force had to be discarded because of an RAF veto on the use of terrain south of the river despite the spectacular success of the Orne Bridge attack in Normandy: this was reported as being unsuitable for parachutists or gliders, being heavily defended by flak. In both instances, the intelligence proved incorrect.14

Urquhart’s 1945 critique of offensive air support at Arnhem likewise retains a prominent position in the published literature. Thus in 2001 A.D. Harvey argued that ‘the fighting round Arnhem provided ideal opportunities for fighter-bomber intervention’.

The British had a few small Bren carriers but nothing that could be mistaken from the air for a German tank or self-propelled gun or even a half-track, and the British 75mm howitzers and anti-tank guns had much less high and bulky profiles than the German 88mm flak guns; the Luftwaffe carried out groundstrafing missions … and Allied fighter-bombers could have done the same. Of all the battles in Europe in the Second World War this was the one where the equipment of the two sides was most easily distinguishable from the air; but it was also the battle where the Allies’ vast superiority in ground attack aircraft had least significance.15

Similarly, both Middlebrook and Harclerode maintain that the absence of close air support at Arnhem contributed much to 1st Airborne’s defeat. Middlebrook echoed Urquhart’s complaint about ‘the failure to employ fighter-bomber units of the Second Tactical Air Force in the “cab-rank” ground-support role’.16 It has also been argued that deficient air support seriously delayed the northward advance of XXX Corps – the formation tasked with relieving 1st Airborne at Arnhem. One of the most widely read battlefield tour guides of the Market Garden area devotes considerable space to unsubstantiated claims to the effect that XXX Corps were the victims of a major ‘friendly fire’ incident involving RAF Typhoons on 17 September.17 Elsewhere it is implied that they were for no good reason denied air support south of Eindhoven the following day.18 And, moving north of Nijmegen on 21 September, XXX Corps were again allegedly unable to obtain tactical air power at a critical stage of the battle.19

Thus some 60 years of scholarship has not substantially altered our understanding of the fundamental reasons for Market Garden’s failure; historians have been unable to move far beyond the main parameters established by 1st Airborne’s post-operation report barely four months after the shattered remnants of the division withdrew across the Lower Rhine. The restrictive nature of this discourse inevitably means that many important questions concerning air operations in support of Market Garden have yet to be posed, let alone satisfactorily answered, and little or no attempt has been made to view the key air planning decisions from the air forces’ perspective. Instead, their senior officers are invariably accused of acting either through ignorance or self-interest. Critical influences upon the highly complex and technical air planning process are either neglected or (if acknowledged at all) incorrectly portrayed. The second half of this book therefore seeks to challenge the existing orthodoxy by reconsidering the three specific issues first raised in Urquhart’s after-action report, i.e., the selection of the airborne landing areas, the airlift plan and the provision of offensive air support.

By surveying the past record of airborne warfare, by investigating the origins and development of the Market Garden concept, and by explaining (and not merely criticizing) the role of the air forces in the Allied defeat, this book provides a radically different view of the events of September 1944. While the conclusions ultimately reached do not in any sense belittle the remarkable achievements of some of the servicemen involved, Arnhem: Myth and Reality does ride roughshod across hallowed airborne ground and its perspective may thus not be palatable to all. But if it persuades at least some readers that the reality of Market Garden contains much more important lessons than the popular but deeply flawed mythology, it will have been worth writing.

Notes

1.Martin Middlebrook, Arnhem 1944: The Airborne Battle, 17–26 September (Penguin, London, 1995) p. 442.

2.The most recent detailed study of air power in Market Garden was Sebastian Cox’s ‘Air Power in Operation Market Garden’, Air Clues (April, May and June 1985).

3.Cornelius Ryan, A Bridge Too Far (Wordsworth Editions, Ware, 1999), p. 460.

4.Ibid., pp. 462–463.

5.This basic failure is common to Middlebrook, Arnhem, Ryan, A Bridge Too Far, Peter Harclerode, Arnhem: A Tragedy of Errors (Caxton Editions, London, 2000) and A.D. Harvey, Arnhem (Cassell, London, 2001), to name but a few. William Buckingham, Arnhem 1944 (Tempus, Stroud, 2004), considers earlier operations involving 1st Airborne Division but otherwise also avoids comparing or contrasting Market Garden with previous airborne ventures.

6.Chester Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe (Reprint Society, London, 1954), p. 585; Middlebrook, Arnhem, p. 442.

7.Richard Lamb, Montgomery in Europe 1943–45: Success or Failure (Buchan & Enright, London, 1983), p. 226.

8.First Allied Airborne Army, Operations in Holland, September to November 1944, 22 December 1944 (held at Air Historical Branch – AHB); AIR 25/698, 83 Group F.540, September 1944. The figure of 14,751 comprises the 12,996 sorties recorded by First Allied Airborne Army and 1,755 fighter sorties mounted by 83 Group, Second Tactical Air Force, which were excluded from the First Allied Airborne Army totals.

9.Buckingham, Arnhem, pp. 231–232; Harvey, Arnhem, pp. 37–39, 180.

10.1st Airborne Division Report on Operation Market, 10 January 1945 (held at AHB).

11.Ibid.

12.Buckingham, Arnhem, p. 231.

13.Middlebrook, Arnhem p. 443.

14.Harclerode, Arnhem, p. 161.

15.Harvey, Arnhem, p. 185.

16.Middlebrook, Arnhem, p. 444, Harclerode, Arnhem, pp. 168–169.

17.Major & Mrs Holt’s Battlefield Guide, Operation Market Garden (Leo Cooper, Barnsley, 2001), pp. 59–60.

18.Ryan, A Bridge Too Far, p. 253.

19.Harvey, Arnhem, p. 126; Harclerode, Arnhem, p. 135.

* The airborne operation was simply named ‘Market’, while the ground operation was named ‘Garden’. For the sake of simplicity, as both operations are referred to, the combined operation name ‘Market Garden’ is employed throughout this book.

** Tactical support aircraft, normally fighter-bombers, maintaining a presence over ground troops by operating in relays, and receiving requests for support from those troops by ground-to-air radio or pre-arranged signals.

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 themselves in severe difficulties given their lack of logistical support and heavy weaponry. But fortunately for the Germans the successful capture of Waalhaven airfield once more allowed reinforcements to be flown in and used to secure the all-important crossing. The German airborne afterwards had little difficulty holding out until the arrival of ground forces on the 12th.

But the fact that an extra 2,000 air landing troops were available to strengthen 7th Air Division ’s hold on the Dordrecht-Rotterdam sector was a reflection of the disastrous failure of the German airborne missions further north. The ambitious role assigned to 22nd Infantry Division again involved the tactic of using small parachute teams to seize airfields – this time around The Hague – where JU 52s could land and offload the main air landing force. But only one slightly enlarged parachute battalion was made available for the capture of three separate airfields – again, too few troops assigned to too many objectives – and the Dutch had strengthened their airfield defences to confront the airborne threat. Long before the airfields had been secured the air landing units began to arrive, their JU 52s coming under intense fire as they sought to land. Eleven out of thirteen aircraft carrying one assault company to Ypenburg airfield were shot down. The grass strips themselves proved unable to support the heavy transport aircraft and many became stuck in the soft soil. Soon the airfields were so littered with wrecked JU 52s that further landings became impossible. In all, of the 9,300 personnel who were originally to land around the Dutch capital on 10 May, only around 3,800 succeeded in doing so, and they soon found themselves dispersed into small and vulnerable pockets.6 They were eventually ordered south to Rotterdam and the attack on The Hague was abandoned. By the time they were withdrawn some 40 per cent of their officers and 28 per cent of their other ranks had become casualties.7 But the worst losses were again sustained by the Luftwaffe’s air transport fleet: during the course of the airborne attacks on both the Albert Canal and western Holland, as many as 280 JU 52s may have been destroyed and many others were damaged.

German paratroops in Holland, May 1940

The losses sustained in these operations should have given the Germans ample understanding of the potential hazards inherent in airborne warfare – particularly when conducted in broad daylight. But instead they were dazzled by the success of their actions in the Albert Canal and Rotterdam areas, and the critical role played by conventional land forces in rapidly linking up with the airborne was largely overlooked. Their paratroops were showered with medals, the airborne formations were enlarged, and ambitious plans were drawn up for their employment in the invasion of Great Britain – Operation Sea Lion. But on 17 September Sea Lion was indefinitely postponed and a new factor came into play, which would also exert a profound influence on Allied planning exactly four years later. Airborne troops are expensive: they require large amounts of air transport, specialized training and equipment, and dedicated logistical provisions. And yet the role for which they are prepared is necessarily an intermittent one. Hence, when unused, they appear to tie up substantial resources that are often required urgently elsewhere. This in turn creates pressure to deploy them in further operations and, as the pressure builds, there is an inevitable tendency for new operation plans to become conceptually more optimistic, and more detached from reality. Student later recalled how, in January 1941, Hitler proposed a scheme for an airborne operation on the Devon-Cornwall peninsula that bore no relation to any other German plan for an invasion of Britain. But Student himself then went on to suggest a diversionary airborne assault on Northern Ireland.8

Map 1: The German airborne plan in western Holland, 1940

In the event, this pressure to employ the airborne would ultimately find an outlet in an entirely different theatre – the Balkans. German airborne operations in Greece began with a regiment assault on the Corinth Canal Bridge – another lightly defended pinpoint objective. At the operational level this action was completely unnecessary, as German ground forces had already crossed the Gulf of Corinth further west; moreover, although the German paratroops and a three-glider engineer unit were dropped immediately next to the bridge, they were unable to capture it intact. Historically, the operation has been justified not on the basis that it achieved its primary goals but because it produced the collateral effect of trapping a few thousand Greek and Yugoslav troops north of the gulf.9 Yet the Corinth Canal bridge action also produced more negative consequences by reinforcing overconfidence among German airborne commanders and the expectation that future operations would be no more difficult.

In September 1944 Montgomery provided the primary impetus behind Operation Market Garden, selling one of the most ambitious airborne plans of the Second World War to Eisenhower in the hope of winning the race across the German frontier. In April 1941, in a very similar fashion, Student and Goering successfully promoted the invasion of Crete (Operation Mercury), believing that the Luftwaffe could play a more prominent role in a forward Mediterranean strategy than in the planned invasion of the Soviet Union. The operation had very little to do with strategic necessity and a great deal to do with finding more employment – and more glory – for the German airborne. Student produced a far-fetched scheme for using Crete and Cyprus as stepping stones across the Mediterranean, but Hitler never accepted this proposal and would have preferred to halt Germany’s southward advance at the Peloponnese. According to his Operation Directive, he envisaged that Crete would become an important air base; historians also speculate without much supporting evidence that he saw the island as a natural defensive barrier that could block any hostile penetration of his southern flank.10 The fact is that the strategic rationale for Mercury was always vague in the extreme.

By the time Operation Mercury was being planned the Germans had largely exhausted the surprise factor that had played such a vital part in their airborne operations in Scandinavia and the Low Countries. During the preparations for Sea Lion the previous summer the British had been observed erecting obstacles in a number of the areas chosen as drop zones, and in all the likely alternative locations.11 And as early as November 1940 Brigadier Tidbury, then commander of British forces on Crete, correctly identified every German objective and their four main dropping zones on the island; this was six and a half months before Mercury was launched. By May 1941 Tidbury’s successor, Major General Bernard Freyberg VC, had additionally been supplied with high-grade signals intelligence – so-called ‘Ultra’ – on the German invasion plans.12

Student’s concept of operations in Crete represented a marked departure from earlier German airborne ventures. It is true that the landings were primarily focused on airfields with the aim of airlifting 5th Mountain Division onto the island as soon as they had been secured. It is also a fact that the airborne element of the operation overwhelmingly involved parachute rather than glider landings (only 80 gliders were employed), and that air support was assigned a critically important role. To that extent Mercury did conform to established German airborne doctrine. Yet there were also certain clear differences. To begin with, the plan envisaged not only attacks on pinpoint targets, but also area domination of such locations as Canea, Suda Bay, the Akrotiri, Retimo and Heraklion. This was, to say the least, a very optimistic agenda given the inherent limitations of airborne forces at the time – no heavy weapons, no mechanized transport and minimal logistical support.

Secondly, in so far as the operation was launched against an island, there was of course no scope for the all-important link-up with conventional ground forces that had rescued 7th Air Division around Rotterdam in the previous year. The only planned role for surface forces (scheduled for the third day of the operation) involved a high-risk crossing of the Aegean by two battalions of mountain troops. To all intents and purposes, Mercury would be an independent airborne operation: Crete was to be seized by airborne forces, and by airlifted troops brought into captured airfields in their wake.13 Finally, whereas German operations in the Low Countries were preceded by months of intensive planning activity, including thorough exercises and rehearsals, no equivalent preparations preceded Mercury as virtually no time was available; indeed, the final operation plan was not settled until 16 May, only four days before the assault. This was all the more unfortunate as the German airborne had since been enlarged by a substantial influx of new and inexperienced personnel.14

Mercury should be of particular interest to scholars of Market Garden for it illustrates the critical importance of intelligence in determining the success or failure of airborne operations. German intelligence on the defending forces in Crete was abysmal. On the eve of Operation Mercury they assessed that the British garrison on the island numbered no more than 5,000. Only 400 troops were allegedly based at Heraklion, while Retimo was believed to be entirely undefended. In fact, the island was held by some 40,000 British, Commonwealth and Greek troops.15 This mistaken assessment provided the foundation for the German battle plan, with its ambitious objectives and its far-flung and dispersed landing areas, strung out across an eighty-mile stretch of coast so that no one airborne force could support another. Not surprisingly, the landings were a near-total disaster. In a number of instances, defending units were literally waiting to ambush the airborne troops from high ground overlooking the drop zones.16

Map 2: The main German landing areas on western Crete; their objectives spanned 80 miles of the island’s northern coast

In planning Operation Mercury the Germans confronted one particular problem that also faced the Allied planners before Market Garden: due to the heavy losses they had suffered in Holland the previous year they possessed insufficient transport aircraft to infiltrate all their airborne troops in a single lift.17 In Market Garden the Allies quickly concluded that it would be too difficult to organize two lifts on one day and opted instead to stage their principal landings on 17 and 18 September 1944. As we have noted, this decision (which is considered in more detail elsewhere in this book) has since proved highly controversial; many historians argue that a second lift should have been staged on 17 September.

In Mercury the Germans opted to attempt two lifts on the first day of the operation. The first succeeded in establishing only a very tenuous foothold in the Maleme and Prison Valley areas. The plan was that the second lift would follow on as soon as possible after the first, on the afternoon of 20 May 1941, to convey airborne units to Heraklion and Retimo. However, as events turned out, the second lift was late, partly because of delays in the departure of the first lift and partly because the German plan assigned insufficient time for the maintenance, repair and refuelling of the JU 52s. Chaos ensued as the original starting order was abandoned in a misconceived effort to make up for lost time.

In the meantime, preliminary bombing attacks around the DZs were executed in accordance with the original timetable, more than an hour before the airborne drops actually commenced. Hence there was ample time for the defenders to recover before the first transport aircraft appeared. Instead of the lift being concentrated into a short period, it was extended over two hours; some units reached Crete in the wrong tactical order, and some did not take off at all. At Retimo many paratroops were inaccurately dropped, with some coming down in the sea and drowning under the weight of their equipment.18 Both landings were complete failures. When the slaughter was over the two severely depleted parachute regiments dug themselves into defensive positions and awaited relief from the west.19

How, then, did the Germans snatch victory from the jaws of defeat? They were primarily rescued by two factors. The first was the manifest incompetence of their adversaries. Freyberg famously misinterpreted the Ultra, deployed his forces primarily to meet a German amphibious landing and left the critically important Maleme airfield area defended by only a single battalion.20 No less catastrophic was the voluntary withdrawal of Allied infantry from Hill 107 (which dominated the airfield) on the night of 20–21 May and the subsequent protracted delay in mounting a counter-attack into the area, in stark contrast to the near-immediate counter-attacks launched by the Germans around Arnhem and Nijmegen in 1944. The second factor was that (unlike 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem) the German airborne on Crete succeeded in establishing at least some functional communications with their headquarters on the Greek mainland. Via this means, they were able to provide guidance to the Luftwaffe on how best to exploit their crushing air superiority. Most of all, however, the availability of timely and accurate intelligence on the tactical situation on the island allowed Student to alter his plans and send 5th Mountain Division to Maleme.21

And so ultimately Crete was largely captured not by the German airborne but by mountain troops airlifted into a location which was (by that time) behind German lines; there were no Allied units west of Maleme so Mercury can hardly be described as a triumph of vertical envelopment. And even 5th Mountain Division’s infiltration was achieved through a medium that was clearly unsustainable and could never have been built into any deliberate plan. JU 52s had to be crammed onto the small Maleme runway, which was under Allied artillery fire, and many were destroyed or damaged; others, to get down at all, had to be crash-landed into whatever space remained available to them. In its entirety, the capture of Crete cost the Germans some 350 aircraft, of which at least 151 were JU 52s. The German aircraft industry afterwards proved unable to make good these losses and provide for other wastage, predominantly on the eastern front, and the Luftwaffe’s transport forces were still suffering from the effects at the time of the Stalingrad airlift.22*

German dead by a DFS 230 glider during Operation Mercury

The German airborne incurred appalling casualties. Killed, wounded and missing 7th Air Division and Air Assault Regiment losses totalled 4,522 personnel – a rate of 56 per cent.23 The divisional commander, Generalleutnant Sussman, died when his assault glider crashed during take-off on the first day of the operation; the commander of the Air Assault Regiment was severely wounded; the commanders of his first and third battalions became casualties – wounded and killed respectively; all of the officers of one company dropped near Retimo were killed, and all three brothers from the Von Blucher family perished in the fighting around Heraklion.24

From the German perspective this sacrifice was in no way offset by the fact that Mercury ended in victory. Crete was of no particular strategic value and was never used either as a stepping stone across the Mediterranean or as a major air base. Hitler probably only sanctioned the operation on the understanding that it could be executed at minimal cost, and he was therefore horrified by the losses. ‘We shall never do another airborne operation’, he told Student afterwards. ‘Crete proved that the days of parachute troops are over. The parachute arm is one that relies entirely on surprise. In the meantime the surprise factor has exhausted itself.’25

Although undoubtedly true, this was not the only question that the operation raised about the viability of German airborne tactics. Mercury also suggested that the practice of dropping airborne troops straight onto their objectives might be far too hazardous, and that the concept of directly seizing airfields in enemy territory so that reinforcements could be air-landed in powered aircraft was impracticable against all but the very weakest opposition. As Luftflotte 4’s post-operation report stated, ‘a repetition of an attack under such circumstances will not be possible; future attacks will probably have to be made in a locality free from the enemy.’26 Hence the German airborne simultaneously lost Hitler’s patronage and certain fundamental tenets of their tactical doctrine. It was a disaster from which they never recovered. Although the Germans maintained a substantial airborne capability for the rest of the war, they subsequently attempted only a limited number of small-scale operations, and the vast majority of their paratroops were employed as conventional infantry in theatres such as Italy and indeed Holland.

Crete: paratroops and canisters fill the air

* * *

The following conclusions can be drawn from this brief survey of the German airborne experience from 1940 to 1941. First, the airborne medium was at its most effective in fairly small-scale operations against clearly identified and limited tactical objectives, such as bridges. The Germans certainly did not establish a clear case for the creation of strategic airborne forces. Second, airborne warfare was best employed against militarily weak adversaries. Third, as air navigation was still a very uncertain science, airborne lifts were best scheduled in daylight; however, daylight operations against even limited opposition could be very costly, especially in terms of lost or damaged aircraft. Fourth, it was inadvisable to infiltrate airborne troops into locations where they could not promptly be relieved or reinforced by conventional ground forces. In addition, preliminary exercises and rehearsals were at the very least immensely important, if not operationally essential; equally vital were robust communications, accurate intelligence and pre-arranged tactical air support.