Quote:
Originally Posted by Kutscha
They were?
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Yes. Schlemm's First Parachute Army grew from a single division on February 8 to 11 divisions before pulling out on March 10, 1945. He stemmed the Allied advance west of the Rhine for 31 days, inflicting 15,634 casualties on 1st Canadian Army and 7,300 casualties on 9th US Army. The Germans lost 40,000 killed and 50,000 captured.
The Germans were supplied across 9 Rhine bridges, which were blown up by the Germans only when threatened. Schlemm blew the last two bridges at Wesel on March 10th after withdrawing in good order and ensuring the Russians got to Berlin first.
Bomber Command tried to destroy the Wesel bridges. On February 16, 100 Lancasters bombed Wesel, and on the next day 298 heavies and Mosquitoes aborted a raid due to cloud. On March 6, 48 Mosquitoes of 8 Group bombed the Wesel road bridge and that night 87 Lancasters of 3 Group and 51 Mosquitoes of 8 Group bombed both bridges. Not one bridge was taken out of action.
2TAF seem to have left the bridges completely alone because of Flak. Shores & Thomas on page 443 record the Flak concentrations at Xanten, Wesel, Bocholt and Doersten which determined the routing of the medium bombers, which by this time had been banned from army support because their inaccuracy killed too many Allied soldiers. Wesel and the others were no-go areas to 2TAF which lacked the equipment to deal with them.
The inability of BC and 2TAF to destroy the Rhine bridges was such a scandal that a post-war postmortem was held into it. IIRC the RAF suggested they had made a mistake and should have used mediums. At least they kept their sense of humour.
Tony