You are rather missing the point, it was in reply to the ridiculous claim by casdave that “The overall US strategic appreciation of mobile warfare was so poor that it reduced the speed of the Allied advance.” If overall US appreciation of mobile warfare was so poor, I’d like an explanation for why the US built Sherman tank was the standard battle tank in Commonwealth forces at wars end for example, even when they never stopped making their own. We aren’t going down any road other than casdave’s statement was absurd and unsupportable.
It is seriously being claimed that when Montgomery was given a free hand and priority on supplies in order to mount his actual ‘single thrust’ into Germany the plan he came up with involved advancing on a single road that at parts consisted of a single lane which tanks could not maneuver off of without getting bogged down in the polder. It was called Operation Market Garden, feel free to look it up.
By the by, you can respond to my comments in a single post, you don’t need to create three separate posts.
You might want to check again, one poster responding three times isn’t actually “posters”. Given the paucity of actual weight, you should feel free to respond to my points.
I’ll have to echo what Little Nemo already said; I agree with all of what you said except for the last item. Little Nemo pointed out the many times he left openings for the Germans to escape.
Its fairly well referenced that the UK was struggling to build enough tanks to fill its requirements. The Sherman had many qualites but it was just a bog-standard one-size-fits-all available in quantity solution. The UK Cruiser tanks were far speedier beast.
It may be that you consider yourself fairly well read in this area and something of an expert on this board but given you know nothing about me it would be rash of you to assume I am a novice. I need not ‘look anything up’ because most of it is etched into my head. You continue to peddle this fiction about a single road as being the Montgomery method of advance. The claim is so absurd I assume you are doing simply to antagonise and provoke.
I do what I do. You just concern yourself with what you do.
Montgomery never ‘left’ anything. German escape routes were kept open by German troops. They were quite good at mobile warfare and woe betide anyone silly enough to stand in their path when they set their mind on something. I will just remind you why the Falaise gap was not closed. Rather than an insulting invation for you to ‘look up’ Bradleys ‘solid shoulder/broken neck’ remark I will assume you know it and what it actualy meant. That is Bradley was convinced that if Patton (or anyone) was foolish enough to break into the German rear and stand astride their escape route they would simply be steamrolled into the ground by the retreating Germans. Bradley did not believe this tactic would work. Bradley said that not Montgomery.
I dare say Montgomery thought along the same lines. Why take risks when you know all you have to do to win is keep moving forward?
It always puzzled me why critics like you divide battles into 2 types. Battles where someone goes waltzing off into the enemy rear making big long arrows on a map are considered ‘fair fights’.
Battles where a General uses all his superior supplies and manpower to win a victory are looked upon as a form of cheating and not worthy of consideration as the proper way to win.
Why is it that only Generals who fight to German strengths (and thus risk defeat) are lauded whilst those who tailor their battles to concentrate on a German wreakness are vilified for their ‘timidity’.
Please explain this 2 tier system of ranking.
The Cruiser tanks suffered the same problem as the battlecruiser: they traded armor for speed, but without enough armor they lacked actual battlefield mobility. There is a reason the Sherman was the primary tank in British tank divisions and brigades, and it wasn’t production.
It’s rather bizarre that you claim not to need to look anything up as it is so well etched into your head, insist that you aren’t a novice, accuse me of peddling fiction about a single road and yet you are entirely oblivious to this rather well known fact about Market-Garden. Since you are so unwilling to look it up:
And regarding the German counterattacking cutting the road on the 24th:
And for your edification, right from the horse’s own mouth:
Really? Because the only Cruiser tank worth much was the Cromwell, and while it was very good it was only 10mph faster than the Sherman. The primary use for the Cromwell was for training and recon, not Blitzkrieg exploitation. The Hellcat was even faster but the Tank Destroyer concept (as far as the US was concerned) had flaws.
The Crusader was more heavily used early in the war, certainly. But it was barely a match for the PzIII and other issues (thin armor, lack of HE round for the main gun, unreliability) made it less then spectacular. That so many Crusaders were replaced by the ad-hoc’ish Grant/Lee tanks speaks volumes. The Crusader was relegated to 2nd line & recon duties once M4s became available.
I think it is your obsession with MG that is the problem. No one says it went to plan. However you have somehow made this ‘one road’ thing your defining fact about Montgomery. Insisting that if he had led the thrust he would yet again advance down a single road.
The Cromwell had to have its speed limited and 7th Armoured Division was completly equiped with Cromwells. The recce Regiments in 11th, 1st Polish and Guards AD aslo were Cromwell equiped.
And the logical conclusion being that if your home built tanks are not fit for combat then you have a shortage of tanks.
The main ‘Normandy’ tank was meant to be the 1942 tank the Cavalier. However production/engine problems delayed it so that it did not start rolling of the lines until Jan 1943. The Cavalier morphed into the Cromwell but it was obvious that production from 1942 was never going to be enough top fill the Army needs. Thus another source of tanks was required.
There are two questions, actually. Was Monty worth a shit? (I believe he was definately worth a shit, or even two, as a military leader.) Did Market-Garden delayed the clearing of the Scheldt Estuary for weeks?
The World War in Europe wasn’t put on hold because of Market-Garden. The Canadian advance along the coast, Le Havre, Dieppe, Boulogne, Calais, Dunkirk, Osten, Breskens, Flushing, Walcheren, South Bevland, etc., was reassessed in late Aug/early Sept. Some ports were to be “masked” (held but not taken?) and priority given to clearing the Scheldt.
The liberation of the Scheldt was planned before Market-Garden had been planned. Nazi resistance delayed the advance up the coast.
*The Battle of the Scheldt
The Liberation of Coastal Ports, August 22nd – October 1st, 1944
…The Canadians were not aware that on September 4th, Hitler had ordered to shore up the defences of Calais, Boulogne, Dunkirk and the Island of Walcheren, as he viewed Allied presence in those cities as a major threat to Germany. As a result, he was ready to keep them under control at all costs.*
The price of victory had just gone up and further delayed the march up the coast to the Scheldt and on to the Rhineland.
*Following the destruction of the German forces in Normandy, and before the beginning of the rapid advance into Belgium that ensued, a feeling of great optimism infected all levels of the 21st Army Group. The 1st Canadian Army was tasked with reducing the Channel Ports and with striking quickly into northern Belgium with the initial objective of reaching the Dutch border as rapidly as possible. On the 4th of September 1944 the 2nd Canadian Corps under General Guy Simonds was given the objective of the southern reaches of the Scheldt river. The next day the British 11th Armoured Division was liberating Antwerp, and Simonds was no doubt confident that his corps too would be capable of a rapid advance into the Low Countries. The 4th Canadian Armoured Division, with the 1st Polish Armoured Division, made up the spearhead of the 2nd Canadian Corps.
The first stage of the advance (on September 5th 1944) saw the Polish 1st Armoured Division liberate St Omer, and the Canadian 4th Armoured Division charge forward from St Omer on the northern flank of the Polish advance. That same day the British 7th Armoured Division was entering Ghent (though many in Simonds’ corps thought in terms of Ghent as their own objective!). The advances seen in early September defied belief to many, and the rapidity of the advance caused considerable confusion as well as supply difficulties for the seemingly unstoppable Allied armies. This was the “Great Swan” where an end to the war in 1944 seemed possible as long as the advance could continue, a mere few weeks before the dream ended definitively with the failure of Operation Market Garden.*
4th Canadian (Armoured) Division -
*Combat History
The division deployed to Normandy at the end of July 1944, becoming operational as a formation of 2nd Canadian Corps on 29 July 1944. The formation participated in the beakout from Caen and the closing of the Falaise Gap. For actions during the fighting at St. Lambert-sur-Dives between 18-21 August 1944, Major David V. Currie of the 29th Armoured Reconnaissance Regiment (The South Alberta Regiment) was awarded the Victoria Cross, the only soldier of the Canadian Armoured Corps to be so honoured.
The division advanced to the River Seine on the right of 2nd Canadian Corps, sending its infantry across above Elbeuf on 26 August 1944, and advancing to the Somme River. The division crossed this next obstacle on 2-3 September as the 2nd Division returned to Dieppe. An administrative pause followed at Abbeville, and the division advanced once more toward Belgium, where spearheads of the British Army were already in Brussels and Antwerp. Organizing into two battle groups, the division reached the Ghent Canal on 8 September, hitting the first of the Scheldt Fortress defences. Fighting for a bridgehead over the Ghent followed, as well as a battle to clear Bruges. More fighting to clear water obstacles south of the Scheldt followed, at Moerkerke and Eecloo.*
Yes and no. One of the problems with top secret code-breaking operations is that the source of the information can not be disclosed to your own side leading to trust issues. Another problem is the overall time it takes for the coded message to arrive at the code-breakers, be decoded, distributed up-line to the decision-makers, and the message’s message then being distributed downward on a need-to-know basis. And, hopefully, confirmed by some reliable source.
*Unfortunately, there were drawbacks. Intelligence is used only if it reaches those who understand its significance. Three specific incidents underline this point with great clarity. The first occurred in early September 1944, as Allied armies pursued the beaten Wehrmacht to the Third Reich’s frontiers. On September 5, Bletchley Park made the following decryption available to Allied commanders in Western Europe:
For rest and refit of panzer formations, Heeresgruppe Baker [Army Group B] ordered afternoon fourth [September 4] to remain in operation with battleworthy elements: two panzer, one-six panzer [Second, Sixteenth Panzer Divisions], nine SS and one nought [Ninth, Tenth] SS panzer divisions, elements not operating to be transferred by AOK [controlling army] five for rest and refit in area Venloo-Arnhem-Hertogenbosch.
This intelligence, along with a second confirmation on September 6, indicated that at the very time when the British-planned Operation Market-Garden was moving forward, some of Germany’s best panzer divisions would be refitting in the town selected as the goal of the British First Airborne Division and the operation’s final objective on the Rhine–Arnhem. Putting this message together with intelligence that soon emerged from the Dutch underground in Holland that SS panzer units were refitting in the neighborhood of Arnhem, Allied commanders should have recognized that Operation Market-Garden had little prospect of success. Unfortunately, they did not put these pieces together, and officers at the highest level at Field Marshal Sir Bernard L. Montgomery’s headquarters who had access to Ultra also failed to draw the correct conclusions*.
Umm… no. The problem is your denial that the Market-Garden advance was down a single road. Try rereading the conversation. As I have stated from the beginning, when Monty was given a free hand to launch a single thrust advance into Germany and given priority of supplies over all other Allied forces to accomplish it, the plan he drew up involved invading Germany down a single road that tanks could not maneuver off of. Again, your insistence that this is fiction is truly bizarre. It is a well known fact.
And the tank regiments of the 11th, 1st Polish, Guards Armored and every other Armored division in the Commonwealth were equipped with Shermans. If you hadn’t noticed, you are also agreeing with Mr. Miskatonic who said “The primary use for the Cromwell was for training and recon” - which is why it was relegated to the reconnaissance regiments.
Now this is truly warped logic. First you claim that “Its fairly well referenced that the UK was struggling to build enough tanks to fill its requirements” as the reason the Sherman was the main battle tanks for Commonwealth forces at wars end. When I provide you reference from the official UK History of WW2 putting to lie this claim and that the issue was quality, not quantity, you now shift the goalposts to try to argue that if your home built tanks aren’t fit for combat you have a shortage of tanks. Well no shit Sherlock, you have a shortage of combat capable tanks because of the quality of them, not because of struggling to build enough tanks to fill requirements. The problem was, as I said, quality of production, not quantity.
Are you back again trying to string together non sequiturs? There is only one question to what you are actually responding to this time: did Monty allow the 15th Army to escape and fortify itself in the Scheldt Estuary? The answer, by Monty’s own admission, is yes. The other two questions have already been asked and answered repeatedly. Yes, Monty was worth a shit as a military leader, and yes, Market-Garden delayed the clearing of the Scheldt Estuary by weeks. I have no idea why you are continuing to imply that serious action was taken to clear the Scheldt Estuary before the launching of the offensive to clear it on October 2nd in defiance of the actual historical record. First you provide a garbled cite poorly translated into English that doesn’t even make grammatical sense, and now you seem to think that “the division reached the Ghent Canal on 8 September, hitting the first of the Scheldt Fortress defences” means successful offensive operations were conducted against them. It doesn’t. It means the division encountered the first of the Scheldt Fortress defenses on that date. You’ll note the following sentences include “More fighting to clear water obstacles south of the Scheldt followed, at Moerkerke and Eecloo.” Considering that the 15th Army had escaped to and had fortified itself on the north bank of the Scheldt, I again have no idea what you think you are pointing out.
How about a compromise, folks: he was competent in many fields and good at particular types of combat and command, but at others he was pretty poor. Let’s not praise him to the rooftops or consign him to Colonel Blimp status unnecessarily.
Ummm no. The problem is that you are obsessed with showing Monty in a bad light and the MG club is your only weapon. Thus you twist his every action into a variation of MG in order to claim he would make the same mistake over and over again.
The Cromwell was indeed used in the recce Regiments. However they were Recce regiments in name only. The Comonwealth Armoured division used the Recce regiments as normal 4th tank regiments. The practical application in the field is what counts. The Cromwell was never a training tank. There were several thousand obselete tanks sloshing around in the UK. There was no need to waste a Cromwell in that role. More to the point the full allocation of Cromwells to the combat units was not carried out until just before June 6th.
The problem was the fall of France. Because of the loss of all the BEF tanks the production of tanks (any tank) was the aim and development cycles were cut short in order to boost the numbers. As a consequence the tanks produced were beset by many problems, The Cruiser and Churchill both had sever mechanical problems.
So we are now in 1942 and production targets are being set. It is known that the whole cruiser series is at the end of its life cycle. You need to find a new Cruser tank fast . The Cavalier is going through and it does not look as if will be ready any time soon. The Sherman is available in large numbers. Difficult decison time folks.
Do we look a gift horse in the mouth or do we struggle on and hope everything will be all right on the night?
As for UK tank production figures the 19000 ‘I’ tanks/Valentines do not enter into the calculation. The total number of Cruisers (including Cromwells) was under 10,000 and even then 5000 pre 1942. So yes I say CRIUSER tank production in the UK was not able to supply all the Army needed. The M4 was classed as a CRUISER in the UK.
It is also worth noting that Antwerp was not a SHAEF priority at this time. The US was concentrating on the Atlantic posts and it was only in September they realised their error. Antwerp was needed by the USA. 21st AG had its own suppy chain and was not suffering the same shortages as the US troops. Monty was never told to concentrate on Antwerp prior to MG. All claims he deliberately ignored orders to secure Antwerp in order to carry out MG are bogus.
I, for one, never said he was incompetent. He won battles I did say he could do some things better, but what general couldn’t? his basic problem in my view was twofold: putting his foot in his mouth and having that 20th century European attitude that US troops and equipment were simply best put under European command and send the US generals home - he was only slightly less obvious about it than the WW1 Brit and French generals.
Yes of course. Failure to accomplish something is proof positive the intention was to let it happen.
So then can you do your usual cut and paste to show us which US Commander ‘left openings’ that allowed the Germans to escape from the Bulge pocket in 1945?
It must trouble you greatly that you can not blame the** failure **to trap the Germans in the Bulge on Monty.
Indeed given the presence of the greatest advocate of cutting of trapped troops (One George Patton) one might ask how so many (i.e all of them) Germans escaped.
Please provide the sources where Montgomery said/wrote/claimed/hinted any such thing.
The problem was the exact reverse. The US inability to believe anyone except their own Generals could command US troops. The entire reason behind the 60 year long transatlantic war on Montgomery’s reputation hinges on the transfer of Hodges Army to his command when Bradley lost touch. Bradley took it as a mortal insult. A clash of ego pure and simple
You didn’t. Casdave did (although his description was ‘their understanding was poor’)
Dissonance commented on, noting that the British units (who presumably did know mobile warfare to casdave’s satisfaction. Then you White Knighted with comments to the effect that since the Cromwell was a Cruiser tank then dissonance was wrong to criticize Casdave. I further commented and it went downhill from there - I don’t even understand what point you were trying to make, actually.