My opinion is that the worst operation was operation market garden , because to many troopers died or captured and the main objective wasn’t achieved
Lots of people dying for no success doesn’t narrow it down very much on either side. You’re going to have to define “worst” far more accurately, but for starters pick any one off the following list.
From the point of view of the troops on the ground:
Kohima/Imphal - British & Indian troops cut off on a single hilltop for several weeks, a couple of battalions against most of a division.
Sieges of Stalingrad and Leningrad - classical meat grinder type sieges, with the defenders having to spend blood liberally while starving to death in order to keep the lines intact.
Battle of Sutjeska - the partisans were outnumbered 7:1, with no armour or air support, fighting an enemy who would not take prisoners and even massacred captured wounded and medical staff.
In terms of planning incompetence:
Fall of France in 1940 - the French army was effectively shattered simply because the command staff panicked and couldn’t regain control. That cost them 100,000 dead in a few weeks.
Fall of Singapore - all of the above, as well as complacency and racism, assuming that the Japanese were inferior. I would be inclined to include the sinking of Force Z (HMS Prince of Wales and Repulse) under this heading and nominate it as the worst cock-up of the war.
Barbarossa - the early battles of encirclement in 1940. Immense quantities of Soviet men and equipment captured because Stalin wasn’t thinking. This nearly cost them the war.
You are getting into a tangle pdf.
Barbarossa was started in 22 june 1941.
BTW it was not a Stalin who was responsible for the catastrophic defeat of the Soviet Western district in Belarussia , but the general Pavlov who have not executed the order of Hight command to make troops ready for combat in 18-20 june.
In other fronts - Southern and Northern -the German succes wan’t so impressive coz Soviet command in there acted enough professionaly.
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Operation Barbarossa - Several Soviet commanders wanted to put their ground/airforce/naval troops in high alert, but Stalin refused that, like he refused flying over 100km in the german side of the border, and sometimes even shooting at germans without a permit.
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Fall of France: Soldiers, tactics, leaders… everything was so disunited.
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Operation Market Garden: Way too risky. And a lot of intelligence information about german units was simply ignored because it didn’t fit to the plans.
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Dammit, good spot. I plead finger trouble.
Umm… yes, to an extent. Thing is, Stalin was still responsible for the attitude of “hold at all costs” and the refusal to trade space (the one thing Russia had a hell of a lot of) for time, manpower and materiel (two of which Russia was critically short of in 1941, and the third (manpower) they may have had plenty of but that attitude is kind of hard on the poor bastards on the ground).
To be fair, that intelligence information was IIRC coming out of a net that the Allies had only just realised had been almost totally taken over by the Germans. Thus any information they got from intelligence sources will have a very hard time being believed - and if it entails changing the whole plan, human nature is to try to wish it away.
I’m not arguing that Market Garden wasn’t a collossal cockup, but rather that compared to some other ones it’s a relatively small one (forces involved and casualties small compared to some campaigns, and the operation did in fact achieve most of it’s objectives). I’d also say you’re picking out the wrong errors - placing the DZs so far from the objectives was the one error that cost the operation, had they been dropped closer the US paratroopers could have captured their bridges in time to let the Guards Armoured division get to Arnhem more or less in time. Furthermore the British paratroopers would have been able to commit substantial forces to holding the bridges in Arnhem (and indeed capturing them in the first place) rather than as they did leaving a small group (company size?) to hold the bridges and use the rest of the force to hold the airhead.
These weren’t exactly new concepts - the seizure of Pegasus bridge for example is a picture-perfect example of how to seize a bridge using airbourne forces, and was done several months before the planning started for Market Garden. However, the planners simply ignored this experience - and their troops paid the penalty.
id say market garden was probably the worst planned, being thrown together fairly quickly and at the expense of general pattons speedy advance. The british dropzones were in crappy locations far from there objectives near arnhem. Also the armors execution was less than spectacular.
Depends all on how you look at it. Operation Jubilee or the raid on Dieppe was a complete disaster however if that had not been launched then Operation Overload would have had many more problems. Alot more dead bodies on the Normandy beachs.
Sometimes you just have to learn as you go!
The several attacks on the German Gustav Line in Italy in 1943-44. A lot of Allied casualties for little gain. Then there was a British attack on some Greek island, which was entirely repulsed with heavy losses.
Dieppe may qualify as ‘Worst Planned’ .
1.Having one of the brigades attack the foritfied port frontally was down right ignorant. It ran contrary to British practice for the previous several centuries. US Army amphibious doctrine called for the landing to occur adjacent to a port & it be captured from the landward side. Nothing original in this, its been the standard practice by most armys. The Roman navy routinely used that technique. I guess the Greeks, Phonecians, & even the Sumerians understood that principle. A few months later in Torch a British naval unit tried exactly the same thing (with a borrowed US Ranger battalion) in Operation Reservist. The entire combined landing force of US & British was killed or captured by the French. I supose if there is a leasson there it is ‘Dont violate a proven principle of the last 5,000 years’.
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Lack of adaquate & coordinated air support. The RAF took the opportunity to fight a air superiority battle over Western Europe during the Dieppe landing. But the tactical bombing support was not suffcient and not well controled. The British had already learned many hard lessons about coordinating air and ground operations in France & Africa & air/ground ops were arleady far better run in Africa than at Dieppe. Just why those leassons were not applied at Dieppe is worthy question.
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As a exercise in running battalions across a beach Dieppe had little to offer. Over a dozen divsion & corps sized practice exercises had been run in the US already. A dozen more were scheduled when Dieppe occured, and other combat landing operations were getting under way in the Pacific. For the problems of timing landing waves, boat loading, navigation aids, naval gunfire support, command details, and supply Dieppe had little to offer the experince already accumulated.
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A lack on unity of command seems to have been a problem in the execution of Jubilee. This is another ancient principle that seems to have been neglected in the specific case. Nothing new there.
I dont know the deep details of Jubilee, But have often wondered why it was executed in such a amaturish way in violation of many well known principles of amphibious ops.
Does “Allied” include the Soviet army & airforces? They had some less than sucessfull ops as well.
To be fair to the planners, this one isn’t as dumb as it sounds. One big thing had changed since all previous attacks on ports, and that is simply that the side being attacked now had the ability to demolish the port, rendering it useless. Furthermore, modern armies could no longer live off the land, they had to be supplied. Thus, capturing a port quickly - and before it could be wrecked - was suddenly a very major imperative, which a slow and deliberate attack from the flanks and inland side would not achieve. Operation Overlord was critically dependent on having an intact port available from an early date, and as such there was interest in how feasible it would be to capture one. The Dieppe (and later St Nazaire) raids demonstrated that it was just about possible to capture a harbour, but that it would be prohibitively expensive in casualties and that it would be unwise to bet the entire operation on capturing the port facilities in time. Hence the development of the Mulberry harbours - had the Dieppe raid proved it was practical to capture a port by storm, these would almost certainly not have been needed.
also a main assault on a deepwater port such as la harve or cherbourg (not recommended because the allies might have been trapped on the penninsula like battan) when done on a large enough scale may have worked, however even if the plan went off perfectly there is a good chance that the port may have been destroyed beyond use (such as antwerp)
Not offical allies but I think it fits into this category. As the old saying goes “The enemy of my enemy is my friend!” So if you have something feel free to post it.
Ports have been demolished & otherwise made unusable as far back as one cares to search. Explosives have been available for this since Medival times and the Phonicians or ancient Chinese would start by burning the city supporting the port. Poisioning the wells and killing the population reduces the usability of a ancient port as well. I’m not speculating here. Such actions are descibed in many ancient historys.
The ability of ancient armys to ‘live off the land’ is often exaggerated. Its possible for brief periods during favorable conditions to find some food, but most armys that are cut off from a organized supply service starve quickly. Particularly in the winter & early spring. Securing a location to shelter the support ships has always been a critical consideration for a army entering a coast. Even if it is just a beach for dragging rowboats onto. For most well equipped and organized armys a regular anchorage, buildings for shelter, and a population for labor are essential for sustaining operations ashore, and leaving again.
Fast & furious around the flank works better than slow & methodical, but both are better than straight into the enemys strongest defense.
I dont see either as proving any such thing. In nether case did the landing force assualting the harbor from the sea have any realistic chance of securing the place. Jubilee was not needed to prove what the Royal navy alrready knew from the previous three centuries of global operations. Its always been unwise to count on sailing straight into a potientially hostile port. In one millenia its high powered cannon, in another its spears and boiling oil. Either way its never a great idea to attack a defended port directly from the sea.
The idea of using prefabricated artificial harbors long predates the Dieppe raid in British planning.
http://www.combinedops.com/Mulberry%20Harbours.htm
Adm Ellsbergs account ‘The Far Shore’ gives a bit of background of the early development of what became the Mulberrys. He also has one of the rare refrences to the Quiberon Bay prefabricated facility that was never used.
Beyond all that one can find the use of prefab docks ect… a far back as Roman times for littoral operations. Great engineers those Romans.
As the Allies learned in the Mediterrainian campaign the German held ports were invariably destroyed long before the Allied army came into sight. The descriptions of the ruin of Napoli rival anything in NW Europe. Fortunatly both the Royal Navy the USN had salvage engineers that were up to the tasks and engineer and Construction Battalions suffcient to support them. It is truly amazing that Napoli was able to handle 20,000 tons of cargo a day just a few weeks after its capture.
For some reason I’ve always thought of the USSR as one of the ‘Allies’, despite being born in the depths of the Cold War (1954). Unfortunatly I’m not a student of the Eastern Front so I cant offer much. Was there a 1942 operation called "Mars’ that failed to accomplish much? Perhaps the worst operation of the eastern front would be the 1941 offensive plans in the HQ safes of the Soviet frontier armys. The German assualt made those useless, but when the orders from STAVKA came thats what the RKKA army commanders had: attack plans for charging into Poland & East Prussia. In terms of scale it was a large one.
Um, Stalin forbid his generals to “provoke” the Germans by deploying their units --even when they knew the attack was imminent. Some generals actually quietly countermanded the orders from Moscow…
I think Anzio was a fun little aside to the war in Italy. Had great promise and was quickly made into a happy little stalemate.
market garden
If you think this was the worst…you really do need to learn more about WW2 :roll:
it was one of the worst but not the worst.