Out of the Blue: The Unraveling of Operation Market-Garden

On February 8, 2025March 13, 2025 By Akhil KadidalIn WWII27 Comments

Warfare is a product of the worst of human excesses and in World War II, Operation Market-Garden was almost no different, if not for its nobility of purpose, and civility in battle. The British-US operation was an ambitious effort to hasten the end of the war by the Christmas of 1944. Instead, it went so wrong that eight decades later historians are still trying to understand what failed and why.

Conducted in the last autumn of the war, the operation aspired to propel the Allies through the eastern Netherlands and over the sprawling Rhine River (the last, great natural obstacle to Germany). From there, the Allies had a spring-board from which they could strike into Germany and attack its capital, Berlin. That dream collapsed around the destruction of the elite British 1st Airborne Division at the Dutch city of Arnhem.

That failure, occurring at the height of Allied military fortunes in the war, provided a stunning reminder of the old von Moltke¹ maxim that, “no plan of operation survives first contact with the enemy” – Especially, a hastily developed plan that assumed that the Nazis were already beaten.

Market-Garden became better known to the general public in the postwar period. In 1946, a British film, Theirs is the Glory, filmed with 1st Airborne Division veterans in the ruins of the actual battlefield, opened to public acclaim. However, the film did little to dispel the public’s misconception that only the British Army was involved in a struggle which in reality, had also cost two US airborne divisions dearly.

The unexpected failure of Operation Market-Garden, despite the courage of its Allied protagonists, is a reminder of the old maxim that “no plan of operation survives first contact with the enemy.” This photograph, showing a scene from the 1977 film, *A Bridge Too Far*, evokes real-life incidents of defiance and courage which occurred during the operation. (Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

A spate of memoirs by British commanders and minor histories followed.

Then came the 1974 history, A Bridge Too Far by the Irish-American journalist, Cornelius Ryan. This book gave the US airborne their dues, while creating a stunning picture of heroism, sacrifice, and stupidity. A later reprint provided this writer’s introduction to the battle, as a teen.

Despite its depth, the book did not provide all the answers. Without detailed maps on the subject, following the complexity of the battles becomes difficult, especially the convoluted battle of Arnhem. For years (until recently, I confess), I failed to grasp what had really happened and where, during obtuse battles fought in esoteric places called Ginkel, Grave, Renkum, Beek, Wolfheze, Son, and Mook.

Could these have also been the names of comic characters of another childhood? They might have been.

A 1977 film adaptation of Ryan’s book, made with a gamut of stars from Hollywood and Pinewood, reinforced some of the deficiencies of the book, including the myth that the operation failed because the 1st Airborne landed on two fully operational Waffen-SS armored divisions.

If Market-Garden has cemented itself in the public consciousness over the decades, it is because of its daring, and because of its humanistic objectives. Allied combat operations, especially in northwest Europe, were acts of liberation, fought to restore democracies and democratic institutions.² At its essence, Market-Garden aspired to achieve this grand goal.

Cheering crowds greet British troops entering the Belgian capital, Brussels, on 4 September 1944. Wherever Allied troops went in western Europe, they were met by euphoric local populations effusing thanks for liberating them from the Nazis. No other campaigns or wars in human history have triggered such mass gratitude. (Imperial War Museum (IWM) BU483)

While the operation caused horror and tragedy, it also brought out the best in people. The heroism and sacrifice of its Allied protagonists triggered enduring gratitude from the Dutch. Surprisingly, it also elicited sentiments of honor, even decency from the Nazi combat cadre, the Waffen-SS — in spite of their moral decline which was nearly complete after five years of war and six years of nationalized racial indoctrination.

The operation’s failure, however, has caused it to be refought hundreds of times in books and films, fed by public curiosity.

Will I do some refighting of my own in the words that follow? A little. My larger objective was to use primary source statistical data (and select secondary sources) to recreate the battles through maps, infographics, and analysis. The intention is to offer a new and clear perspective of the operation.

The Gamble

Against a defeated and demoralized enemy almost any reasonable risk is justified and the success attained by the victor will ordinarily be measured in the boldness, almost foolhardiness, of his movements – Dwight D Eisenhower

By the start of September 1944, the Allies found themselves nearly the masters of northwestern Europe. The tattered remnants of Germany’s primary battle force in the region, Army Group B, were in headlong retreat after their defeat in Normandy.

The Allies were in pursuit, sweeping through northern France. Paris fell on 25 August and the Allies approached Belgium. Up to early September, one-third of British General Bernard “Monty” Montgomery’s 21st Army Group³ were clearing German forces from ports along the English Channel while the rest pushed into Belgium.

But the Allied advance was congealing. The Anglo-Americans armies were outrunning their supply lines. Nearly every port recovered from the hands of the Germans was in ruins. This limited the amount of supplies that could be landed.

Many operational ports were also in or near Normandy, which was receding into the distance as the frontlines radiated out towards Germany. The British captured the valuable deep water port at Antwerp on 4 September. But the harbor was unusable because German troops held the approaches, along the Scheldt River estuary, and especially on Walcheren island.

Compounding the problem was growing German resistance.

Lieutenant General Brian Horrocks, the commander of the British Army’s XXX (30) Corps would later note (with hindsight), that the Germans were no longer in retreat by September 1944, and that Allied troops were fighting again. (Horrocks interview, World at War, “Pincers,” Episode 19)

By September 1944, four Allied armies were poised along the border with Germany, trying to find a way in. Operation Market-Garden was to be their ticket in. On 17 September, three Allied airborne division took off from England and headed to the Netherlands. ©Akhil Kadidal

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Aces over Berlin

On May 12, 2024June 16, 2024 By Akhil KadidalIn WWII6 Comments

In the spring of 1944, two American pilots from the US 4th Fighter Group, operating together, began to destroy flights of German fighters, right over the Nazi heartland — representing a remarkable turn for the relatively inexperienced US fighter force. (Akhil Kadidal)

The American fighter pilots of the US 8th Air Force who fought and destroyed the German Luftwaffe have largely been given a bum deal by history. Sure, reams of paper have been written about them but scant have they been portrayed by the celluloid or the digital screen. I started thinking about this post while watching “Masters of Air” (detailed in a separate post) and especially about two ace pilots, John Godfrey and Don Gentile, who are nearly forgotten now, but who played their part (however modest) in the final Allied victory. Their combat careers are the subject of the infographic above and some of the text below.

“The ordinary air fighter
is an extraordinary man and
the extraordinary air fighter
stands as one in a million
among his fellows.”

Theodore Roosevelt

In the skies over World War II Europe, relatively green American fighter pilots met their battle-hardened opponents in the Luftwaffe and the result was an astounding test of arms, driven by small groups of talented survivors and stone-cold killers who earned the right to be called “aces.”

Fighter pilots of WWII were like some type of superhumans who went to war, wielding a battery of heavy machineguns and/or cannons. Not all survived the crucible of combat. In any squadron in World War II, a gifted 30% of pilots roughly accounted for 60% of all squadron kills. Another 15-20% of squadron pilots in a given squadron were so much cannon-fodder.

To be called an “ace” in the western air forces of WWII, one needed to have shot down five aircraft (this basic requirement has continued). The Germans did not recognize the term “ace” but instead used the word “expert” (experte). But if measured by the Allied yardstick, the German Luftwaffe had a monopoly on aces during the war — with over 2,880 of them, out of which 104 pilots racked up an hitherto unprecedented number of aerial kills (over 100 each).

The US had 1,200 aces during the war, but none in Europe scored more 28 aerial victories. No Allied pilot (including the British commonwealth and Soviet) exceeded 62 in the war. But as the European air war showed, Allied and US pilots were no welterweights in comparison to their Luftwaffe counterparts. The disparity in scores boiled down to how many opportunities for combat Allied pilots had, shorter tours of operational duty and different operational procedures.

Having fed on the obsolete aircraft of the French and Polish Air Forces in 1940 and then romping through the largely inept Soviet Air Force from 1941, the Luftwaffe was stunned to discover that American fighter pilots could actually shoot them down in combat.

A typical example was in early 1944, in the sky over Berlin, when two American fighter pilots in the US 8th Air Force began a deadly partnership during a strategic bombing raid on the city.

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Masters of the Air: The Historical Context

On April 18, 2024May 18, 2024 By Akhil KadidalIn WWII5 Comments

Since the finale of the WWII TV show “Masters of the Air” aired weeks ago, hundreds of media articles have emerged, talking about the “true stories” behind the show. Most are incomplete, repetitive. The following piece will try to provide a historical context to the events portrayed in the show, accompanied by the usual raft of custom infographics.

Please be advised that the following contains spoilers.

Some of the greatest war stories ever told are of units on the brink of destruction and among them, in the European theater of war in World War II, is the tale of the American 100th Bomb Group. The group’s story is now the subject of a new TV drama produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks as a follow-on to their critically acclaimed Band of Brothers (1998) and The Pacific (2010), in what could be the final salvo of their World War II trilogy.

Assembled stateside in June 1942 and shipped out to England in February 1943, the 100th Bomb Group was part of a massive military experiment: the first daylight strategic bombing campaign of an adversary.

The unforgiving air war. (*Masters of the Air*)

This placed it dead center in an unforgiving war fought at 25,000 feet, at temperatures of -50 Fahrenheit against a Nazi foe with some of the finest technology and combat veterans that could be mustered. The Nazis had declared “Total War” (Der Totale Krieg) in February 1943, a state of being meant to achieve victory in the war in the shortest time space by enhancing home front activities and combat operations. Facing such an enemy, the 100th, as an ill-disciplined unit with cavalier officers, became ill-fated and subject to such bloodletting that it became known as “The Bloody Hundredth.”

Masters of the Air (2024), supposedly based on the Donald L Miller history of the same name, tries to be a soaring finale to the Spielbergian view of the American WWII experience, the “good war”: decency versus barbarism, can-do initiative versus clumsy totalitarianism.

Origins

The 100th was a core member of the England-based American 8th Air Force (the “Mighty Eighth”) which tried to blast the German war machine off the face of the map. The Eighth’s “ships,” as the men called their Boeing B-17 heavy bombers, represented a view of American masculinity: strong, rugged, resplendent with gleaming Plexiglas, bristling with guns, an extension of the old west, and decorated with all manner of squadron heraldry and artwork, primarily Disney cartoon characters or gaudy pinup girls. In fact, the rule of thumb appeared to be: the gaudier the art, the better.

Men of the 91st Bomb Group paint a relatively tame nose art on a B-17 Flying Fortress nicknamed “Nine-O-Nine” at Bassingbourn in 1944. Nose art formed a vital component of the aircrews’ *esprit d’corps*. (*Imperial War Museum*)

Some men called their machines, “flying porcupines,” but the US Army Air Force (USAAF) preferred the name, “The Flying Fortress.” The B-17’s raiding partner was the Consolidated B-24 Liberator which gets zero screen time in the TV series.

Across B-17 and B-24 bases, the “ops” always began the same: a fleet of jeeps racing towards planes assigned on the mission, men with anxious faces and shouting voices. A green flare launched from the control tower indicating to men in the cigar-shaped hulks that the moment had come. They were to return once again to the lion’s den where some had gone before and had never lived to tell the tale.

In the spring of 1943, when the 100th appeared on the scene, 8th Air Force was a neophytic army, the US Army Air Force’s (USAAF’s) newest progeny. Its inception on 1 February 1942 had come with a twin caveat: sustain the primary American air effort against Nazi Germany and validate the controversial pre-war concept of strategic bombing.

The Eighth’s leading elements arrived in England shortly after – a scant two months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

In comparison to tactical air power, tested on the battlefields of France in the latter part of World War I, strategic air warfare was a new idea. As US historians put it: “Strategic bombing bears the same relationship to tactical bombing as a cow does to the pail of milk. To deny immediate aid and comfort to the enemy, tactical considerations dictate upsetting the bucket. To ensure eventual starvation, the strategic move is to kill the cow.”

The 8th Air Force’s singular objective was to incapacitate Germany by air before the first American troops set foot on occupied Europe. This, it did not achieve, but without the Eighth’s presence, Allied victory over Nazi Germany would have been more costly and less assured. The Eighth’s war was spread across an unprecedented and bloody 39 months, battle-torn and replete with massive losses. The Eighth suffered more deaths than the entire US Marine Corps (USMC) did during the Pacific campaign, Miller writes.

The statistics are sobering. The Eighth lost at least 6,333 aircraft of all kinds in combat during the war, 26,000 men killed in action, 18,000 men wounded and 28,000 men captured. The 100th Bomb Group alone lost 177 bombers in combat and suffered 1,756 casualties. (See Roger Freeman’s 8th Air Force War Diary, Eighth Air Force History & Statistical summary of Eighth Air Force operations European theater, 17 Aug. 1942 – 8 May 1945, HQ Eighth Air Force, June 1945) The USMC’s total fatalities in World War II were between 19,733 and 24,511 personnel. (USMC University/National WWII Museum)

This chart shows how many aircraft in each bomber group in the 8th Air Force were lost in combat during the war. The loss of a bomber also meant the loss of the 10-man crew onboard, although sometimes, fortunate crew members evaded capture and returned to England. (*Akhil Kadidal*)

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No Retreat: The Battle of Lanzerath 1944

On May 1, 2022December 3, 2025 By Akhil KadidalIn WWII14 Comments

How this research began…

I do not consider myself an expert on the “Battle of the Bulge.” The battle is dense and eventful. But I thought I knew enough about the Ardennes offensive to elevate me above the rank of battle hound. Then I read Alex Kershaw’s “The Longest Winter” and discovered the actions of the Intelligence & Reconnaissance Platoon of the 394th Infantry. As with some of my work, this post is centered around a map of the engagement. During the course of the research, I discovered that two of the GIs (PFC Bill James of White Plains (NY) and PFC Risto Milosevich of Los Angeles (CA) were students of my alma mater, Tarleton State (Texas A&M).

*Lanzerath, 16 December 1944. The initial situation*

A shortage of manpower in the US military at the twilight of World War II forced the army to transfer some of its best and brightest college-educated draftees who were training to become technical experts and officers to frontline units in 1944 as enlisted personnel.

As members of the US Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP), the draftees were to be employed as high-grade technicians and specialists. However, on 1 April 1944, many were reassigned to infantry, airborne, or armored units. Eighteen such men found themselves in a so-called Intelligence and Reconnaissance (I&R) Platoon of the US 394th Infantry Regiment in the European Theater of Operations, in the winter of 1944.

Isolated, in a forward position in eastern Belgium, amid snowy, near sub-zero conditions , the platoon found itself snarled in a maelstrom of combat during the opening blows of what would become known as the “Battle of the Bulge.”

Isolated Location

The 394th Infantry Regiment’s I&R Platoon had been posted to an unremarkable hilltop overlooking the Ardennes village of Lanzerath, a few thousand yards from the German frontier on 10 December 1944. Like in the rest of the Ardennes Forest, the platoon’s deployment was regarded as being in a “quiet sector” with scant presence of the hostile German military.

The core role of I&R Platoons in the US Army was to gather detailed information about enemy forces and the terrain in locations that US Arm rifle companies and battalions could not easily access. But in being posted to Lanzerath, the 394th’s I&R Platoon was also expected to fulfill another, more critical role: plugging a gap in the US lines.

The platoon’s parent unit, the US 99th Infantry Division, was a rookie to the wilds of the western European campaign. Known later as the “Battle Babies”, the division arrived on the continent on 6 November 1944, having missed the Normandy campaign and the subsequent Allied breakout across France. Posted to the Ardennes, the division’s inexperience was exacerbated by the fact that it was forced to string its three infantry regiments (393rd, 394th and 395th) out across a 25-mile front, along forest-covered hills.

US army doctrine stipulated that a infantry battalion could cover 800 yards of a frontline. But the 99th’s nine infantry battalions were each covering between 830-1,000 yards. This made it near impossible for US patrols to cover the gaps.

By 14 November, all of the 99th’s battalions and companies were on the frontline barring the 3d Battalion of the 394th Infantry, which was held in a divisional reserve near the boundary with US V and VIII Corps, near the so-called “Losheim gap”, a particularly thinly held part of the frontline.

With only two battalions under his command, Colonel Don Riley of the 394th Infantry Regiment, tried to plug potential holes in his perimeter with small units. One worry was the village of Lanzerath which commanded a road leading westwards, deeper into American lines. The village was the responsibility of the neighboring US Army units such as VIII Corps and the US 14th Cavalry Group.

However, the 394th Infantry lacked combat troops to occupy the village in force and so Riley employed the I&R platoon to provide advanced warning of a German advance or attack in the area. In command of the 394th’s I&R Platoon was First Lieutenant Lyle Bouck Jr, just 20 years old but not an ASTPer. Instead, he was a pre-war army volunteer who had risen through the ranks to become an officer.

“Our I&R Platoon was ‘temporarily’ moved into the resulting gap with orders to investigate and report any observed enemy activity,” a former platoon member, Private G Vernon Leopold, told US Congress in 1981.

The platoon’s location at Lanzerath occupied a veritable no-man’s land between two US Army Corps.

Lanzerath itself was unremarkable, having fewer than ten houses with wooden framework construction that could not withstand enemy fire. However, the village was situated about 300 yards south of a key road junction that connected Buchholz Station to the town of Losheimergraben. Northwest of Losheimergraben lay a major road network which would become a primary route of advance for the German Sixth Panzer Armee (Tank Army) during Operation “Wacht am Rhein” (The Watch on the Rhine) which would go down in the annals of history as the “Battle of the Bulge.”

The Sixth Panzer Armee was under an old veteran, SS Oberst-Gruppenfuhrer (General) Josef ” Sepp” Dietrich who intended to use the road network to reach the Belgian city of Liége.

As night fell on western Europe on 15 December, neither Lt. Bouck nor his men suspected that they had an engagement with history in the morning.

One of the 105,000 ASTP trainees to be reassigned to combat divisions was the postwar giant of postmodernism, Kurt Vonnegut, who was assigned to the doomed 106th Infantry Division. Like the men of the I&R Platoon in the 394th Regiment, Vonnegut was also an I&R member, of the 423rd Regiment.

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Return of the Chindits, Part 1

On June 26, 2016May 14, 2024 By Akhil KadidalIn The Chindits25 Comments

Operation “Thursday,” the second Chindit operation of World War II was an integral component of an Allied plan to liberate northern Burma from the Japanese. The campaign centered around the recapture of Myitkyina city. Among the attackers were four colorful forces – Stilwell’s Chinese, Merrill’s Marauders, Cochran’s Air Commandos and Wingate’s celebrated Chindits. Their war was meant to be short. Instead, they would be pitted to the point of destruction against an enemy renowned for his toughness and unwillingness to surrender.

BY AKHIL KADIDAL

It was the night of March 5th, 1944, and first of the gliders touched down in the Burmese clearing.

Little more than a large dirt track in the jungle, the clearing had been chosen by the eccentric British Major-General Charles Orde Wingate as one of three landing zones for his division of “Special Forces” known as the Chindits. Codenamed Broadway, the site was originally intended to take gliders carrying Brigadier Joe Lentaigne’s 111th Brigade, but unforeseen problems with the another landing area had forced Wingate to divert Brigadier Michael Calvert’s 77th Brigade there.

As they labored over that bald strip of earth, tugged by noisy C-47 Dakotas, the sounds of snapping rope tore through the air as tow lines were discarded and the gliders began their descent in the brilliant moonlight. Quickly, the craft gathered speed, utterly silent save for the howling wind and the whimpers and oaths of their terrified human cargo. Each glider was an archetype of multinationalism. The pilots were Americans, the troops a mixture of Burmese, Nepali Gurkhas and Britons from the Midlands and the northwest.

One by one, the gliders swept down towards the dark earth, alighting — and sometimes striking the ground with an earsplitting crash that sent bits of undercarriage, wood and metal flying into the trees. As the gliders came to a stop, men spilled out – automatic weapons and rifles at ready. One of them was Lieutenant George Albert Cairns of the 1st Battalion of the South Staffordshire Regiment. The jungle loomed all around them, the noises of the night abruptly silent.

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