A Bridge too far - archive photos ...

[dogtag]

Ignoring the Dutch intelligence and the usual SNAFUs that
go along with military planning didn't help.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...years-ago.html

[Vern Humphrey]

Aerial photographs showed armored vehicles had been moved into the vicinity of the bridge. British Airborne "Expert" Boy Browning not only ignored them, but had the intelligence officer who insisted the Germans had armor there committed to psychiatric observation.

The British also made a basic planning error. Airborne (and most other) operations require "backward planning." You start with planning the assault on the objective, and allocate forces to the various tasks. Then you select drop zones for those forces. From that, you plan the flight pattern for the drop, then the approach to the objective area, and finally select the staging area that best supports that. That is how the Americans did it, and we took out objectives.

The British started by selecting the most convenient staging area, then planned the flight to the objective and then chose the most convenient drop zones along that flight path. As a result, the British troops were dropped about a two hour foot march from the bridge. By the time they got there, the Germans were already prepared for them.