Could the yanks have done any better at Arnhem?

and were very well equipped (the lee enfield is far superior to the k98 and the bren and the vickers both regarded as among the finest weapons in their class and age).

I can see you point on many of the issues raised and I happy to accept those in this discussion.
I must say that, given a choice, I'd much rather have an MG42 than a Bren or a Vickers. They may be among the best but when you are offered the best why go with a bren or a vickers? As a single solution to the machine gun question it's much better than either, a true GPMG. It is the basis for many modern MG's both in construction, operation and use.
I'd also prefer an MP40 or STG44 to a Sten.
I can see your side to a degree with the Lee Enfield, the mag capacity counts for a lot but I can agree with 'far superior'. The action of a Mauser always feels better to me than the Enfield.
I'm dragging this off topic again, sorry.
I honestly, devils advocate tendencies, and love of a verbal joust removed, think that no soldier in the world could have done more at Arnhem than the British Airborne did. Poor bast**ds.

I have to agree with the assesments so far. US Airborne may have been able to hold out a day longer and Patton would push and push and get a shitload of men killed. Ole' Blood and Guts (Our Blood his Guts as the joke goes) US infantry fought for souviners. A lot of people(soldiers included) didn't think we had any real business in a European war still even at this late date. I think Brit and US paras were pretty equal in so much as they were highly motivated and spirited troops. The US did have a better allotment of weapons I feel and could have put more of a hurting on the German armour, but in the end it seems it was just a piss poor plan with faulty intelligence to begin with. The US may have made a bigger show but not neccessarily a better show of it.

I have to add on about the Enfield/K98/Garand bit.
I feel the Garand is one of the reasons the war didn't drag on longer than it did. Not that you Brits were not whipping ass long before we got involved but I think this semi-auto rifle mass produced helped to overwhelm the Germans. Had the Germans produced a working main semi auto battle rifle in any large number it might well again been a different war. The sheer production numbers the Americans could muster in form of armament was a big help to end the war. It was not by far the only factor in ending the war but one of many little things from all invovled. Not to mention all the mistakes the Germans made along the way.

Couldnt agree more, as any soldier knows - at small unit level its all about 'winning the fire fight' and putting more lead down range than the enemy and keeping their heads down. Fire without movement is indecisive but movement without fire is suicidal.

UK and German tactics were to use the bren or mg34/42 to do this while the rifles outflanked and used cover to get close enough to assault..... the garand gave the US section ridiculous firepower and meant that the three components of a US section could all effectively manoeuvre individually or put down a punishing fusilade.

Hmm... well if we're talking about infantry squad firepower, the fact is that the US relied on the BAR as their MG - and it obviously bore no comparison to the MG42 (or Bren). As I have read, despite having the Garand, a US squad would find itself outgunned by a late war German squad armed with one or possibly two MG42s.

if i may add my little thought to this debate.....
the one thing the yanks are good at is logistics, and if it had been there guys they would have made the effort. Logistics is waht wins wars in the end. I agree with Gadge about the quality of the troops by 1944. It is generally thought that the german squad outgunned the small US squad easily, not only because of weaponry but a different approach to small squad tactics.

I think in terms of the battle the brits did spectacularly well. bad planning and a refusal to believe the intelligence they had. (werent they aware of there being SS troops in the area) I think the yanks would have planned it better, but i think they didnt have the will for an op like that - by that stage in the war the outcome was a foregone conclusion, and as has been said the yanks were content to advance slowly on a broad front minimising there casualties as much as possible.

If the yanks had launched MG would there have been more air support? that would have made the difference.

An interesting debate, thats what i like about this forum....

My thoughts here are;
The idea of the American Airborne at Arnhem is a vaild one to consider. The expansion of the Comet plan to Market Garden could have tasked an American division to Arnhem. They may have been able to get Troop Carrier Command to use the more central landing grounds closer the Arnhem road bridge. The RAF was reportedly reluctant to use these due to reports of AA gun positions in Arnhem. They were the planned landing grounds for the Polish Brigade.
The change of division would not make much difference to the outcome unless the commander also had a reduced number of objectives. 1st Airborne's forces are divided because they are tasked with securing the Landing areas for the second lift, the Arnhem railway and road bridges, Arnhem town and the Airfield beyond.
If we imagine just a straight replacement of the divisions the outcome would be similar. Possibly worse for the following reasons the American artillery commander would have to establish a link to XXX Corps artillery. This could prove more difficult than it was for the British. Without this outside artillery support it is very unlikely the Oosterbeek perimeter would have been maintained for as long as it was and the cover given during the withdrawl probably allowed far more troops to be withdrawn. A more minor point would be that while the American divisons have more AT weapons they did not have the heavy 17lb AT guns that 1st Airborne took in. There is good evidence that the German armour kept its distance from the perimeter at times because of concern from these guns. The availabilty of more AT weapons to any American defenders of Arnhem road bridge would have prolonged the defence but not enough to make a significant difference. The problem of firing bazooka's inside enclosed spaces (back blast dangerous to firer and others in the room) may have made them less useful than the PIAT's and six pounders the British did have.
One change an American divison may have made would have been co-operation with the Tactical Air Force. There were no Ground to Air missions flown over Arnhem and the British had no way to communicate with them if they had. Close Air Support may have allowed the Oosterbeek to Arnhem link to be maintained and even reduced the advantage of the Germans in Armour.
All this does not remove the problem of moving an Army Corps up one defended route for sixty miles. this was always impossible to be achieved before the airborne division at Arnhem was destroyed.

An interesting debate, thats what i like about this forum....

Im glad you think so Neil even if others think its a bit of a lame thread or research on my part lol!

i love these discussions, there are so many people on here with so much knowledge (lets face it we are all ww2 nerds) and knowledge is shared in such good spirit (mostly) - discussions like this and the grounding in history is what makes ww2 airsoft more interesting.

I think an interesting point to make is: since when do you ever hold an objective actually at the objective. I dont think they should have got so close, nor try and assault the bridge too early... mind you they weren't to know the Son bridge would have been blown up at this point and that XXX Corps would have been delayed. They should have used the camoflague and dug in positions to hold a band around the town itself, not by taking positions in the buildings! It's like camping on PC games, as soon as you open up from 1 position you run the risk of the next person knowing exactly which building you're in, 1 tank/arty round in through the window and everyone in the room is hurting.

I don't think the Yanks would have done any better, they may have had better AT capabilities, but not by much. The M1a1 Bazooka wasn't the best. It just goes to show that in the end, you could have had a million British paras at Arnhem and they still wouldnt have done it. You can't fight armoured infantry with rifles. Simple.

If they intel had been correct, or they'd had better support (ie CAS) who knows.

Yeah, I reckon Robert Redford would have done a much better job than Anthony Hopkins. He's younger and blonder.

Soldier "What the hell are these?"
Redford "What were you expecting? ... Destroyers?"
Soldier "Well as a matter of fact I was"

I don't think it would have mattered which unit or from which army the defenders of Arnhem came from. Once they were cut off the Germans could pulverise them into surrender. Without the hope of fresh supplies and ammunition, re-inforcements it was never going to be a case of if they had to surrender or pull out but when. The Germans could sit back and simply reduce the town to rubble.

from what i know, and from reading this thread, it seems to me that whether one force or another would have done better can only really be put down to the troops themselves. Yes the americans would have had better anti tank weapons but weapons run out of ammo. Also despite their crappy and few AT weps the british still managed to kill alot of tanks (firing a mortar from the hip comes to mind).

In a situation like arnhem and especially at the bridge I think what really determines how long they could hold on for is the mind set of the people. The british had an extremely strong fighting spirit and the sheer determination to fight on and do whatever it took just to last a little bit longer despite often being seriously wounded. I dont know how many of you have been in army but there is a tremendous sence of "nothing is impossible," you give EVERYTHING you have to get the job done no matter what it is. I assume this was present and stronger in ww2.

I dont think the americans or germans would have had the will to hold that long, once it was obvious the plan had failed or as they began to run out of ammo I think they would have surrendered, I just cant see them bayonet charging MG positions in what was essentially a lost cause

well I understood that it was the 2 6pdrs overlooking the bridge that made a large mess of the German recce units attempting to take it back, plus Para bns had at least 18 PIATS allocated to them-so considering all the others with the recce and many other units then thats well in excess of 150 for the whole division, plus the aforementioned 17pdrs-Yanks had nothing anywhere near as good and all the 6pdrs (well over 48). Bear in mind that 52nd Lowland Div was in reserve....Yanks didn't possess a similar airportable division. Shame that 6th Airborne Recce hadn't been allocated to 1st Airborne.
So nope 82nd doesn't fare any better or any worse...

Could the Americans have done better? No!, Why? They didn't have the motivation to carry on if they lost the chain of command, the british soldier was taught to do the job of the man above him, platoon leader get slotted a Sgt takes over, he gets slotted then a Cpl and so on.

AT? the 17pdr could go through a Tiger, this is why they were attached to Shermans to make a Firefly.

If any of you have read the book by "Arnhem" by Major General Roy Urqheart ( Can't remember how to spell his name! ), then you will have your eyes opened to just what they managed to accomplish, Paras assaulting German positions with empty guns or one mag left, Medics comadeering German vehicles to get wounded out.

XXX corp could have moved faster and not kept stopping for the infantry, more could have been done for the lads on the ground, better airdrops, they didn't need berets and uniforms they needed Ammo, Water and food, and Medical kit.

Intel? Get more before an Op! if they had waited another 2 weeks then the 9th & 10th would probably not have been there, and it would have been old men and kids.

Intel? Get more before an Op!

Understanding / believing what they already had would have been a good start.

True, the lads there fought bloody hard for the ground they took, Both sides!, in the end if the Intel had been beleived and take as gospel then things would have been diferent

it wasnt so much that they didnt believe the intel (the last minute air recon that showed tanks anyway) but more that they chose to ignore it. After D-day the allied advance moved so quickly that almost every single airborne operation was scrubbed due to the objective being overrun.

Not only that but market garden itself was delayed and delayed and they just wernt going to delay or scrub any more, I dont know if monty was under pressure to finish the war quickly or if it was just the airborne that was fed up of being left out or something but I doubt they would have changed their plans much even if the evidence of the tanks had been found much earlier, or if they had believed the dutch underground reports.

now I going to only state that the 'man for a man' equation is, I think, overrated, unverifyable, and generally irrelevant.

I dont agree, whilst we will never be able to do a test on the various troops, we can conduct a meta analysis of the available reports of combat and actions. That will point, I am certain, to the fact that constantly out numbered in men and machines the German soldier performed very well, almost always accounting for more of his enemy that his own loses. Yes, you can find examples where they got royally stuffed but that's cherry picking, the majority shows they fought well, usually better than their enemy.
It may well be irrelevant in history, they lost in the end but it isnt irrelevant to a discussion such as this. An assessment of the value of the troops you have to hand is vital to be able to even consider the question be it the original American troops or my addition of the Germans.

Is that including when attacking? Fair enough the superiority would shine through when they were fighting a severly handicapped (almost headless) Soviet Army in 41 and when fighting similarly handicapped Fraco-British Alliance in 1940, but weren't the Germans constantly on the defensive in the West? Of course the Germans are going to have a bigger kill ratio when constantly defending and the Allies constantly attacking! (Even with Air Superiority)

The Germans were always in prepared positions with fortifications: The Mareth Line in Tunisia, the whole rocky spine of Italy, the Atlantic and West Walls. The kill ratio is always going to favour the defending soldier!

The only genuine Major Offensive (We are talking War changing outcome here) against the US Army was at Bastogne where the individual German Waffen SS/Heer Grenadier had more support in the form of tanks, artillery, manpower and were also better equipped and motivated (to maybe force a peace settlement and end the war!). On top of that the Allies had NO air cover what so ever due to the weather. They out numbered a tired and almost unarmed US division at Bastogne almost 10 to one.

And they got humped.