Arnhem: The Selection of the Drop Zones and Landing Zones

After 75 years, the circumstances that led to the selection of the drop zones and landing zones at Arnhem are still frequently misunderstood and misrepresented. What follows is an attempt to inject some much-needed balance and context into the story, and to remind readers of a long-forgotten first-hand account of how the DZs and LZs were chosen.

Reference: Arnhem: The Air Reconnaissance Story

Reference: The Royal Air Force and Airborne Operations, Normandy to Varsity

Some 75 years after Operation Market Garden (the Allied airborne invasion of Holland in September 1944), it is still common to read that the Allies failed to secure their primary goal – the Arnhem Road Bridge – because the RAF forced 1st Airborne Division to accept drop zones (DZs) and landing zones (LZs) some seven miles northwest of the Arnhem road bridge, near Wolfheze. The distance between these zones and the primary operational objective is held by many to be chiefly responsible for the Allied defeat at Arnhem. Out of the entire division, only some 740 men, mostly from 2 PARA, managed to bypass German opposition and reach the bridge. After a heroic struggle over three days, they were overwhelmed by (numerically) far superior enemy forces. Had the division been landed closer in, it is argued, many more troops would have taken up positions in central Arnhem, and the bridge might well have been held until the arrival of XXX Corps.

Some caution is necessary here. The fact is that 1st Airborne Division's battle plan only ever envisaged the deployment of two battalions (2 and 3 PARA) in the immediate vicinity of the road bridge. The remainder of the division was supposed to form a perimeter defence line stretching around Arnhem's outskirts. For them, the distance between the landing areas and the bridge was an irrelevance.

We must also bear in mind the likelihood that a larger airborne deployment around the bridge would have precipitated a far stronger German counter-attack in the same area whereas, in the event, the landings at Wolfheze were followed by intense and protracted fighting in western Arnhem. This commitment resulted in a substantial diversion of German resources – a major factor in their failure to overwhelm 2 PARA for three days. Had this not been necessary, they would have been able to assign all their available strength to the task of recapturing the bridge. It therefore seems unlikely that a landing in its immediate vicinity would have made much difference. The presence of so many German troops near Arnhem on 17 September and the remarkable rapidity of their subsequent reinforcement left them with a range of potential options for countering an Allied airborne assault; a different threat would merely have provoked a different response.

Nevertheless, given the controversy that has surrounded this issue ever since, it clearly merits further investigation and a reminder of some long-forgotten evidence – the only first-hand account (to my knowledge) of the DZ/LZ selection process.

To begin with, it is important to remember that Market Garden grew out of the smaller-scale Operation Comet, planned in the first week of September 1944. It was at this stage that Browning and the commander of 1st Airborne Division, Major General Roy Urquhart, first sought DZs and LZs at Arnhem. Following deliberations with the commander of 38 Group, RAF, Air Vice-Marshal Hollinghurst, it was agreed that the landings should take place at Wolfheze.

Hollinghurst, the AOC 38 Group

In part, understandably enough, Hollinghurst's position reflected concerns about German flak. The operations under consideration were the first large-scale airborne missions conducted by the Allies in daylight; also, no previous landings had been made immediately adjacent to a large town or city, 100 miles inside enemy-occupied territory and very close to Germany itself. Allied intelligence – the only information available to him – showed a steady build-up of flak at Arnhem and Nijmegen, and also pointed to heavy flak concentrations north of Arnhem at Deelen airfield.

The routing to Arnhem, first developed for Operation Comet,
carefully avoided known German flak concentrations

The air approach to Arnhem devised for Comet and used in Market 
Garden, again designed to reduce exposure to flak

The air routing plans for Comet and Market Garden were determined by the unprecedented depth of the two operations – something that was entirely beyond the control of the two air forces. Of necessity, the Allies had to guide aircraft around known flak concentrations between the Dutch coast and the Arnhem-Nijmegen area. To achieve this, they identified an eastward route inland, orientated slightly south of Arnhem, necessitating a final sharp turn that commenced just east of 's Hertogenbosch into a north-easterly approach to the DZs and LZs.

Had the landing area been located near to the road bridge, the Allied transport aircraft would have had to over-fly slowly, straight and level, and at low altitude, the anti-aircraft defences of both Nijmegen and Arnhem; then they would either have had to exit straight over Deelen airfield or bank east towards Germany. The Dakotas that equipped the bulk of the Allied air transport force lacked both armour and self-sealing fuel tanks; the gliders were even more vulnerable. Furthermore, quite apart from the losses that seemed likely to result, one important lesson of earlier operations (Normandy and Sicily, for example) was that heavy flak tended to cause widely dispersed and inaccurate drops and the loss of much vital equipment. In short, on grounds of flak alone, there seemed to be good reasons for avoiding central Arnhem.

After Comet was planned, and during its transformation into Market Garden, Allied air reconnaissance revealed a sharp increase in German anti-aircraft artillery deployments around Arnhem and Nijmegen. On 6 September, one 1st Airborne Division report based on air imagery noted ‘heavy concentrations at Deelen airfield, Arnhem and Nijmegen, respectively 30 light and 24 heavy guns, 36 light and 36 heavy guns, 24 light and 12 heavy guns.’ These numbers were expected to increase. On the 7th, XXX Corps recorded that heavy and light flak at both Arnhem and Nijmegen was increasing very considerably. ‘Guns getting into position (with vehicles and pits under construction) can be seen on several photos and there is railway flak at Arnhem.’  

Air imagery showing the build-up of anti-aircraft artillery around Arnhem
and Nijmegen in the second week of September 1944

These developments would have been worrying enough under any circumstances, given the inherent vulnerability of airborne air transport. But the build-up of German flak around Arnhem and Nijmegen gave cause for particular concern because it was suspected of being far from coincidental. Both Hollinghurst and Browning feared that operational security had been breached, and these concerns were shared by 1st Airborne Division’s head of intelligence. On 14 September he wrote:

Perhaps as usual the Germans have misappreciated our intention and they really do think we wish to destroy the bridges which we photograph but do not bomb, or perhaps they perceive as we have that the bridges are a suitable airborne target. Even if they do not realise this the security for the operation has been so appalling that some breeze must have reached them.

In fact, while the Germans were expecting an Allied ground offensive in Holland, as well as the possible use of airborne troops, they do not appear to have identified Arnhem as a potential airborne objective. However, Luftwaffe records do confirm that flak was being strengthened in the Market Garden area as a direct result of the decision to establish a defensive line between Antwerp and Maastricht. Both the formation and sustainability of this line depended on the integrity of the communication routes behind it. On 5 September, Luftgau Belgium-Northern France Field Headquarters received orders ‘to put A.A. [anti-aircraft] artillery into the German western position to provide defence against air attack for troops fighting there, and also to cover defiles, bridges etc. on supply routes.’ The headquarters was specifically instructed to protect the area ‘between Antwerp and Maastricht’. The lines of communication serving the more westerly sector of this region ran directly through Arnhem and Nijmegen, and could have been severed if their vital bridges over the Neder Rhine and the Waal had been destroyed. This doubtless explains why they were singled out for the additional flak cover noted by Allied air reconnaissance.

However, predictions about the strength of German anti-aircraft artillery played only a part in the decision to locate the DZs and LZs at Wolfheze. Of equal if not greater importance was the problem of identifying suitable terrain for the glider landings, which involved more than 500 aircraft. There was never any realistic prospect of safely landing hundreds of heavily laden assault gliders in the countryside south of the Arnhem road bridge. Since the war, this area has been transformed by drainage and a significant level of agricultural consolidation. However, in 1944 it was polderland, criss-crossed by hundreds of dykes and drainage ditches. This can be confirmed merely by examining maps from the period and the surviving imagery. According to one post-war official account, the land was divided by ditches into plots of 50 to 100 metres in width, and 100-200 metres in length; the ditches were 2-3 metres wide and 1.5 metres deep, and contained water about half a metre deep.

A highlighted secton of the polderland south of the Neder Rhine

After the extreme difficulties encountered in Sicily and Normandy, no one involved in planning the Arnhem operation could have authorised a large-scale glider landing in such heavily subdivided country. To have done so would have involved a high risk of serious damage to the gliders and their cargoes, injury or worse to their passengers and acute difficulties unloading and transporting vital equipment. Away from the polders, much of the countryside around Arnhem was characterised either by dense woodland or small fields. The only larger and more open fields near the town were those actually chosen for the landings, and they were only just large enough. The fact is that there was no practicable alternative to Wolfheze. It was therefore selected as the landing area for Comet, and retained when Comet was replaced by Market Garden.

The commander of the Glider Pilot Regiment, Colonel George Chatterton, allegedly suggested that it might be possible to land a small glider force (five or six gliders) in the immediate vicinity of the road bridge. However, while such an operation was approved for Comet, this was only on the basis (1) that it would be executed under cover of darkness and (2) that the first main lift would reach Arnhem only shortly afterwards, just after daybreak. These stipulations could not have been applied after Comet was succeeded by Market Garden because the first main airlift was rescheduled to the early afternoon. Flown according to the original Comet schedule, the coup-de-main glider force would in these circumstances have arrived too far in advance. If, on the other hand, the coup de main had been mounted in daylight, it would have faced significant dangers from German flak and, if executed successfully, it would have signalled to every German in Holland that a larger-scale airborne assault to seize the Arnhem road bridge was imminent.

Imagery of the polderland showing the multiplicity of
drainage ditches that extended right across the area

The DZ/LZ selection issue at Arnhem is invariably presented by historians as an inter-service problem, which resulted in Hollinghurst 'over-ruling' Urquhart. This is misleading, for the real tension was between the operational and tactical levels of command rather than the airborne and air components. The official documents (UK National Archives, CAB 44/253, P. 69) prove that, during the planning of Operation Comet, both Browning and Dempsey were made fully aware of the fact that there were no suitable areas for large-scale airborne landings immediately adjacent to the Arnhem road bridge. Almost certainly, Montgomery would also have been briefed to this effect. They nevertheless retained Arnhem as the objective for Market Garden, consciously accepting a major risk (in addition to many others) instead of seeking a different Rhine crossing point. The three operational commanders then simply handed off the problem to the tactical level, where it could not possibly be solved.

The records provide no evidence of a major inter-service dispute over the Arnhem landing area. It was only later, searching for scapegoats for the Allied defeat, that historians began to allege controversy and confrontation between Urquhart and Hollinghurst. Urquhart would have known that Browning, his superior officer, accepted the case for landing at Wolfheze, but it is very likely that the intelligence picture also influenced his position. When Comet was being planned, it was at first believed that elements of only three enemy divisions of very limited capability were deployed between the front line and Arnhem, where there was thought to be nothing more than a flak battalion. There would have been no serious cause to doubt the capacity of 1st Airborne to deal with such meagre opposition.

It is of course true that intelligence subsequently reported that German defences in the Arnhem area were being strengthened. But this must be weighed against the fact that, in virtually every other respect, Market Garden represented a vast improvement over Comet for Urquhart’s men. Whereas Comet would have spread 1st Airborne Division far and wide via landings at Arnhem, Nijmegen, Groesbeek and Grave (for the bridge over the Maas), Market Garden focused the entire force on the Arnhem mission. At the same time, the daylight airlift promised far greater accuracy and concentration than had been achieved in darkness in the past. Given the absence of suitable landing areas elsewhere, there was simply no option but to use Wolfheze and devise the best possible plan for the subsequent seizure of the bridge.

The landings at Wofheze

Urquhart afterwards described the Arnhem airlift as ‘quite first class' and 'easily the most successful and accurate of any previously achieved either in operations or on exercises'. Moreover, in complete contrast to earlier airborne experience, ‘All units were able to move off to their tasks practically at full strength and in a very short time after landing.’ This factor, more than any other, explains why, in Market Garden, the airborne forces (British and American) were able to secure a far higher proportion of their objectives independently – without the support of conventional ground forces – than they had attained in the past.

And yet, at Arnhem, the advantages bestowed by the accuracy and concentration of the airlift might have been better exploited. The commander of 1 Parachute Brigade chose to advance on a broad front, dispatching his three battalions into the city along three different routes. By this means, even if one were blocked, the others might bypass enemy forces. Sensible as this appears, there was also a very obvious drawback – loss of mass. The plan dictated that 1 Parachute Brigade would be dispersed across a substantial area and ruled out any prospect of one battalion supporting another. As events turned out, the effect was magnified by the failure of 1st Airborne Division's communications. This was unfortunate but it should not have been unexpected, for poor communications had bedevilled earlier airborne operations and exercises.

2 PARA were ordered to capture the road bridge, but they were also lumbered with a variety of other tasks, which reduced their effective strength by at least one company before they reached their primary objective. In theory, 3 PARA was to ‘assist 2 Para Bn in capture of main bridge’. However, given the two battalions’ geographical separation, this was never likely to be easy. As for 1 PARA, they were not even sent to the bridge: rather, they were tasked to occupy high ground in northern Arnhem.

2 PARA duly reached the road bridge, in the process demonstrating that the location of the main landing area seven miles away was not, in itself, the fundamental cause of the British defeat at Arnhem. But a more effective strategy would have been to deploy 1 Parachute Brigade as a more cohesive force. Such a force would almost certainly have been able to overwhelm the fragmented and generally low-calibre German units that prevented 1 and 3 PARA from advancing into Arnhem on the afternoon of 17 September, well before the SS panzer elements encamped to the north and east could be deployed in the town in strength.

By focusing on the DZ/LZ issue and presenting it as the critical factor in Market Garden’s failure, historians have consistently drawn attention away from the other weaknesses of the plan. The past record of the German and Allied airborne forces is rarely considered in detail – their frequent failure to capture tactical objectives independently, their critical dependence on rapid reinforcement by conventional ground forces, the high casualties they sustained, the heavy losses of aircraft, and the extreme difficulty encountered in executing safe, accurate and concentrated airborne lifts; all of these issues are ignored, and readers are instead invited to accept a sanitised version of the airborne experience that dwells on Fortress Eben Emael and Pegasus Bridge, or otherwise implies that airborne operations began in September 1944.

Equally, there is a tendency to overlook the intimate relationship between operational and tactical-level planning in Market Garden. Instead, historians tend to consider the two levels in isolation. Thus, we are left with the argument – particularly common in British circles – that Market Garden was a daring and brilliant operational concept that was ruined by faulty tactical-level execution. In reality, the Allied plan fell victim to chronic weaknesses in higher-level command and control, where there was a failure to integrate the different components – land, air and airborne – at the conceptual stage, before Market Garden was submitted to Eisenhower for approval. Afterwards, largely as a direct result, the operational plan imposed rigid constraints on the tactical planners that left them with virtually no options other than those selected, and caused risks to accumulate in an entirely uncontrolled way.

Finally, there has been a reluctance to acknowledge the extent to which Allied airborne planning lost mission focus during the summer of 1944, when multiple operation plans were devised and then cancelled. Against this background, almost inevitably, ends and means became hopelessly confused, planning became dominated by the basic airborne infiltration task, and airlift demands increased relentlessly, the assumption being that more men and more equipment would improve the chances of mission success. In Market Garden, the mission – capturing the Arnhem road bridge – became overshadowed by the goal of deploying a full airborne division. Almost the whole of the Air Landing Brigade was used to hold the DZs and LZs for more than 24 hours to make full divisional deployment possible.

'More is better' - the principle that underlay Allied airborne
planning in 1944; but the accompanying requirement for
multiple lifts significantly reduced the flexibility and
dynamism of the airborne forces.

I have yet to read a history of Market Garden that acknowledged the publication of an account prepared by the RAF officer responsible for DZ/LZ selection in airborne operations. His name was Lawrence Wright and his book, The Wooden Sword, was published in 1967. Wright’s narrative lays great emphasis on the terrain issue and the problem of finding a suitable location for the glider landings. The key passage is as follows.

‘Only three areas offered any possibilities. About four miles north of Arnhem, beyond a dense belt of woods, was some rough heath and dune land, quite fit for parachute dropping and for limited glider landings, but this was an active military training zone, with an active airfield in its centre, heavily ringed by flak and ground defences. This we rejected as unsuitable. (Subsequent knowledge confirmed this, though it weighted the reasons differently: the flak risk had been overestimated, but the ground forces were far more formidable than predicted.)

Extending almost continuously southward from the river bank is a vast area that might be thought, from a glance at a small-scale map or even from a superficial view on the spot, to be ideal Airborne terrain, flat and free from walls or hedges. But all this is reclaimed, low-lying, soft polderland, cut up by countless ditches and banks into small fields, with very sparse road or track access. In a 3-mile radius from the bridge, only one group of fields deserved closer study: the ‘Malburgsche Polder’. This was enclosed on two sides by power transmission lines, and ringed all round by a dyke 8 feet high. The flak map showed a battery of 6 heavy and 6 light A.A. guns on this perimeter, and the tugs would have had to fly on after release over the airfield area predicted to be thick with flak. If a tug had to jink, and shed its glider, or if the glider was shot down, they might just as well never have started. During deplaning and unloading (which often took half-an-hour) the whole area would have been under observation and fire from good cover on the higher north bank. We accepted the Malburgsche Polder as a D.Z. for the parachute reinforcements to drop on the third day, by which time the Division should be concentrated around the bridge and able to offer some protection, but Chatterton and his staff supported our view that it was quite unfit for mass glider landings.

The only really good air landing terrain was W.N.W. of the town. In Holland, an elevation of a few feet greatly affects the firmness of the surface and the need for ditches, and here the level rises above 65 feet, in large grass clearings in a wooded belt offering excellent cover for assembly. A high railway embankment intersected the area, but left ample spaces. The one serious drawback was that when sufficient ground had been chosen to accept the two successive lifts (and it was unlikely that many of the first could be moved to make room for the second) the line of landing zones extended from 2½ to 8 miles from the objective [i.e. defining the perimeter line as well as the bridge as the objective].

The DZ/LZ locations at Arnhem; it is often forgotten that the 1st Airborne Division plan was substantially based on the creation of a perimeter around Arnhem - the theoretical objective for many of the troops put down in the Wolfheze area

Command of 1st Airborne had been taken over by Major General R.E. Urquhart, D.S.O.; this was his first experience in Airborne. We had thoroughly thrashed out the landing zone problem with his Intelligence officers for about a fortnight, when I went to Moor Park for a final agreement with them. My arrival threatened to spoil their plan to take an hour off for a well-earned swim, but the General hearing of this, sent them off and summoned me; thus I was honoured with a first-hand exposition of his thoughts about Arnhem. I found him alone in the garden, seemingly painting a landscape, but his easel held the battle picture. He was of course fully aware of the basic dilemma. Although his initial force, with the advantage of surprise, might assemble successfully at an objective so distant, the protection of the zones for the next day’s landings would require all the glider-borne troops from the first lift, leaving only the lightly-armed Reconnaissance Squadron and 1st Parachute Brigade to hold the bridge for 24 hours. – We shall be too thin on the ground, he predicted, and he reopened the question of landing gliders on the polder, making me restate the pros and cons of the terrain. It was not for the Air side, nor even for Holly [Hollinghurst] or for Leigh-Mallory, to say whether greater losses would be suffered in landing on bad ground near the objective, in a flak area, than in fighting several miles towards it with a force initially intact. That was for Urquhart to judge, and he chose the latter. We were soon writing our orders accordingly.’

In his concluding comments on Market Garden, Wright referred to the barrage of criticisms later directed at the RAF concerning the DZ/LZ selection issue, and particularly to Urquhart’s assertion that gliders could have landed in the polderland south of the Neder Rhine.

‘The 38 Group forecast, accepted and urged by Leigh-Mallory, was not that it was impossible to land gliders in the polder, but that the polder was unfit for a mass glider landing. This view can be confirmed by a simple test, though it could not have been made before the operation. The actual glider landings of the first and second days were carefully plotted, from photo cover, on map overlay. Let this overlay be superimposed on the map of the Malburgsche Polder. Even ignoring the maze of ditches (substantial enough to feature on a 1:25,000 map) and assuming (absurdly) that gliders could have landed there at the same high density as was attained on the great clear spaces actually used, there is room for only a fraction of the number that landed on the first day alone. Many, probably most, of the loads would have been damaged, and others marooned amid impassable ditches. The use of Hamilcars was unthinkable; even on the comparatively firm ground used, two nosed in and another broke up. Some Horsas did the same on the far better fields in Normandy.’

The only viable alternative, as Wright himself acknowledged, would have been a division of force – a parachute brigade landing on the polder with limited glider support. The drawbacks of such an approach are obvious. First, the parachute brigades themselves depended heavily on gliders to convey their equipment and supplies – not least the anti-tank guns that played such a vital role in the defence of the Arnhem bridge. Gliders also carried the divisional elements that underpinned brigade-level operations. Hence, a parachute brigade could only have landed with small-scale glider support by accepting a substantial loss of combat power.

Second, it would still have been necessary to land the majority of the gliders eight miles away from the parachute brigade and on the other side a major water obstacle – the Neder Rhine. The disadvantages that this would have involved seem so obvious that they require no further comment. There is no record that any senior Allied commander seriously considered or promoted such a scheme at the time.