Arnhem: what went wrong with the radios?

Snickers Man

Just completed re-reading (way too long to get it all first time) A Bridge too Far, Cornelius Ryan's peerless account of Operation Market Garden in September 1944.

The main reason for the failure of the operation is not in dispute: the Allies seriously underestimated the strength of the German forces facing them, right throughout the sector of the operation but particularly in Arnhem itself where the British 1st Airborne Division dropped on top of two SS Panzer Divisions it hadn't expected to be there.

Compounding this error, however, was the fact that the radio communications of the forces in Arnhem malfunctioned seriously. This led, among other things, to the divisional commander going missing for more than a day while he tried to contact his subordinates who were in turn driving around looking for him with the result that few commanders in or outside Arnhem had much of a clue about what anybody else was doing.

Ryan doesn't dwell too much on the technical details. Clearly some radios were working, because troops on the bridge were listening to the BBC news telling the nation that the ground forces had linked up with them, which they never did.

I would be interested in learning more about why the communications failed so completely, why it hadn't been foreseen and why there seemed to be no contingency plans about what to do if an entire Division was incommunicado for several days.

I don't want circuit diagrams but does anybody have a good layman's description of what went wrong with their communications or know of a book or article where such a description could be found?

Owryan

i remember reading a book about "the signals failure" and the author (Christopher Hibbert i think) came across some new information .

Basically he found records which suggested that there was an issue with how the batteries for the radio sets were charged. From memory the batteries had to be full discharged before charging but this was rarely enforced . As a result there were problems with the radio signal not having any strength, radios dying and so on.

He argued that since the division was kept in reserve and had been stood to/down so often the batterys were mishandled and also not replaced as often as in units that were in combat.

Then again you also have suggestions that the relatively flat and boggy terrain also affected the radio signal.

The breakdown in communications was only 1 cause amongst many during the whole "Market Garden" disaster anyway.

Stovepipe

There were said to be times when the Dutch phoned friends and relatives in the combat areas for information and passed it on to the Allies. Also, a lot of WW 2 radios had a short operational range, even on a good day.Even keeping a radio of that generation on listen-only eats batteries.

regards
Stovepipe

Jawgap

It's like a lot of battles - you can read and decide yourself where it went wrong.

In my opinion, I think the timetable was far too ambitious - the Irish Guards and the rest of the Guards Armoured Division were expect to advance along a single roadway - either side of which was too soft to support a tank which meant their opportunities to manoeuver were severely curtailed.

Their problems were only compounded by the calibre of the German forces they encountered in the initial phase - it wouldn't have taken much to slow them down so even if the comms problems, logistics, scattered drops etc hadn't happened, you'd have to wonder if XXX Corps could have made it.

On a related note, JOE Vandeleur from Clare commanded 3 Bn Irish Guards and led the XXX Corps breakout - his cousin Giles Vandeleur was acting CO of 2 Armoured Bn Irish Guards.

Fl/Lt David Lord (from either Cork or Dublin) was awarded Transport Command's only VC of WWII for flying on in his heavily damaged Dakota to drop supplies in support of the troops on the ground.

Jawgap

On the comms failure this was traditionally put down to the crystals - frequencies were set by putting in different crystals into the radios but the reality was more complex.

You can read more here - it's a decent analysis not just of the comms failure but of the whole operation

"Assessing the Reasons for Failure: 1st British Airborne Division Signal Communications during Operation ‘Market Garden'"

Snickers Man

Jawgap wrote: »

JOE Vandeleur from Clare commanded 3 Bn Irish Guards and led the XXX Corps breakout - his cousin Giles Vandeleur was acting CO of 2 Armoured Bn Irish Guards.

Fl/Lt David Lord (from either Cork or Dublin) was awarded Transport Command's only VC of WWII for flying on in his heavily damaged Dakota to drop supplies in support of the troops on the ground.

Pushing it a bit to say that JOE Vandeleur was from Clare. Both he and his father were born in India. His father grew up in India, England and Germany. JOE grew up in India and England. I suspect he never lived in Ireland.

His great grandfather was a resident of Kilrush House and his grandfather may have been born there. It was the family pile and the Vandeleurs were large, and by some accounts particularly harsh landowners in Co Clare.

Giles Vandeleur was born in England, as was his father Alexander. However Alexander appears in the 1901 Irish census, described as "late of Eton College", living in Clare with his Dublin born father and family.

Certainly both Vandeleur second cousins JOE and Giles served in the Irish Guards and JOE was renowned for sporting an emerald green scarf, which may have been some indication of his own sense of identity or may have been a bonding exercise, aimed at creating an appropriate Irish "esprit de corps" in the regiment. This detail is reproduced in the film of A Bridge too Far in which JOE, played by Michael Caine, is clearly seen wearing a bright green scarf.

David Lord was born in Cork but his father was a Welsh-born soldier who was stationed there at the time. David grew up in various locations around the world, not unusual for a military family, went to school in India and Wales.

He was a Catholic and at one stage commenced training for the priesthood in Spain before joining the RAF. This is an indication, no more than that, that his mother may have been Irish.

His heroism is not in doubt. Cornelius Ryan's book describes the action which earned his VC from the testimony of navigator Harry King, the only survivor of his aircraft which had taken part in a disastrous and futile resupply mission.

Three minutes away from the drop zone their Dakota was hit and one engine went on fire. King heard Lord say "They need the stuff down there. We'll go in and bail out afterwards. Everybody get your chutes on."

King was ordered to help the soldiers in the back throw out the crates of ammunition they were carrying. As he did, he saw that flak had destroyed the rollers that were used to facilitate moving the crates to the door, and the rest of the crew had removed their parachutes so they could manhandle the supplies.

By the time they passed over the drop zone there were still two crates left on board and the fire in the engine was coming dangerously close to the fuel tanks on the wings. Lord turned the plane around and approached the drop zone again, all the time under heavy fire.

Soldiers watching from the ground were amazed that a damaged aircraft would come back for a second drop. As it passed over a second time it exploded just after the last crates had been pushed out.

King had been helping the others put their parachutes back on and was blown out of the aircraft. He was the only survivor.

Shortly afterwards he met up with some British soldiers on the ground who gave him a bar of chocolate saying that it was all they had. "What do you mean, all you have?" he said. ""We just dropped supplies to you."

He was told that the drop zone to which they had delivered their crates had been overrun by the Germans. The enemy had received all the supplies that his crew had given their lives to deliver.

Snickers Man

Jawgap wrote: »

You can read more here - it's a decent analysis not just of the comms failure but of the whole operation

"Assessing the Reasons for Failure: 1st British Airborne Division Signal Communications during Operation ‘Market Garden'"

Thanks very much for this. A most interesting read. He explains very well how it was not so much a case of the radios not working but the soldiers not being sufficiently well trained to use them in less than ideal conditions.

And, in a case like Arnhem, there was a greater likelihood of the skilled people who could get the most out of the radios, becoming casualties or POWs themselves.

As well, of course, as the fact that the radios were likely to take a battering on their way to and from the dropping Zones.

Capt'n Midnight

Back then radios used valves. Fragile glass tubes, doubly fragile while working because the filament would be red hot.

Quality control didn't really take off until after the war and oddly enough it started in Japan under American tutelage.

Today you can get a multimeter for a fiver. Read a novel about Stalingrad by one of the Russians and they were using a Wheatstone Bridge to find a break in a phone line. In the front line trenches, under fire.