The Allied operations officially began three days later.

There was no large-scale bombing as before when the war started... This was obviously because Montgomery wanted to quickly break through Belgium and the Netherlands, so he was worried that the bombing would blow up the road and the bridges would affect the advancement of the armored forces.

The "Market Garden" plan is divided into two plans: "Market" and "Garden".

Among them, the "market" is airborne combat, and the "garden" is the attack of the ground armored troops.

The "market" airborne combat was launched two hours in advance.

The 9th Transporter Command of the United States dispatched 14 transport brigades, a total of 1,438 C47 transport aircraft and 321 modified bombers from the Royal Air Force to perform parachute landing missions, as well as 2,160 CG4A "Wacco" gliders, 916 "Homsa" gliders and 64 "Hamilka" gliders.

These do not include Allied fighters, attack aircraft and bombers for escort and small-scale air strike missions.

There were more than 5,000 aircraft and gliders, densely packed with locusts, flying over Belgium and covering the sun, blocking the entire sky tightly, and even the sun could not be penetrated.

Although the German soldiers were mentally prepared, they were still shocked to see this scene.

The Dutch guerrillas jumped out and shouted unscrupulously: "The Allies are here, the Allies are here... we are going to liberate!"

"Armed and drive the Germans out of our country together!"

...

Obviously, the Allied forces' big pomp made the Dutch guerrillas believe that Germany will undoubtedly lose.

Then the Allied Airborne began to parachute, and large patches of white parachutes unfolded under transport aircraft.

In addition to paratroopers, there are also packages of various weapons, equipment and ammunition, falling like snow in the sky.

Colonel Slain observed the sky with a telescope and sighed: "If we had so many planes, we would be sure to win this war!"

Amid the screaming of the air defense alarm, the German air defense firepower scattered around the country quickly roared.

However, because the German army mainly set up traps to let the Allied airborne troops jump down, the air defense firepower was not strong... Of course, this was just compared to the planes in the sky. At this time, the anti-aircraft gunners were afraid that they would be blinded and they would not know which target to hit, or they just needed to fire shells into the air and hit them.

But the Allied airborne was not as smooth as expected.

First of all, the Allied fleet flew too high.

It is well known that airborne troops are safer to parachute at lower altitudes, because this can reduce the time for paratroopers to descend in the air as much as possible and thus reduce the risk of being hit by the enemy as a target in the air.

The standard parachuting height in World War II was 244 meters, but the Allied forces even reached 600 meters this time... According to post-war investigation, the average height of the parachuting was 457 meters, which was far higher than the standard parachuting height.

This may be because the US pilots are too nervous... The US military aircraft need more pilots, and at the same time, the US military aircraft are still flying everywhere, such as those fighting against the Japanese army on the Pacific battlefield, those who are stalemate with the German army on the African battlefield, and those who are conducting air transportation on the Sino-Japanese battlefield.

This makes the overall quality of US pilots, especially the large number of transport aircraft pilots that need, not high. They know that they should lower the altitude, but unconsciously lift the aircraft because they are afraid of being hit by ground air defense fire... In fact, for air defense fire, there is no big difference between 244 meters and 600 meters. This is more of the subconscious actions of the pilot in psychological fear.

If there is any difference, 600 meters will make the target look smaller.

The result was that a large number of paratroopers slowly fell from the air, and many people were shot dead before they even landed on the ground and became corpses hanging on parachutes.

However, because there were too many paratroopers and the German air defense firepower was quite weak, there were not much casualties.

Another mistake is that the airborne point is too far from the target.

One problem caused by too far away from the target is that paratroopers without transportation are difficult to quickly and bring all the more equipment to their destination. This is fatal for airborne troops that are mainly raids, because the enemy has plenty of time to prepare for defense before the airborne troops arrive.

However, this has not had a big impact, because the German army is ready anyway.

The 1st British Paratrooper Division, known as the "Red Devil", was airborne under Major General Redric.

At the beginning, the paratrooper division's actions went smoothly. After landing on the ground, they immediately assembled and collected supplies that were descending with them.

Major General Redric couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief after waiting for a while, because no Germans appeared until then, which seemed to mean that Marshal Montgomery's judgment of the Germans was correct... Their main force had retreated to the "Zigfee" defense line.

"The Second Paratrooper Brigade is stationed on site!" Major General Redric ordered: "The First Paratrooper Brigade...target Arnhem Bridge!"

The reason why a paratrooper brigade was left to garrison on site was that the U.S. transport teams would continue to airdrop supplies. The paratroopers needed to open up the defense to strive for a larger area of ​​airdrop materials so that they could obtain as much material as possible.

Major General Redric looked at the map while moving forward and found that the Arnhem Bridge was 13 kilometers away from the parachute point.

"Damn!" Major General Redric couldn't help but curse: "We are too far from the target!"

It takes an hour to arrive for 13 kilometers.

More serious problems followed one after another... The communication distance of the Type 22 radio equipped by the British army was only 5 kilometers.

In other words, it is difficult to achieve effective coordinated combat with two separate brigades of the British army only use radio stations to communicate with each other.

But Major General Rederick didn't realize that these problems were small problems...the real problems were in front of them, and they approached it step by step.

An hour later, the British First Paratrooper Brigade rushed to the Arnhem Bridge in panting.

Major General Redric felt something was wrong at the first time.

The British army took an hour to arrive. Originally, he thought the German army would at least deploy several battalions here, and even the tanks that the airborne soldiers were most worried about... Major General Redric had already made the worst plan.

However, there were only two companies of German troops on both sides of the Arnhem Bridge.

"No tank!" The staff officer reported to Major General Redric with excitement: "No armored vehicles, either! General, order an attack!"

"No, William!" Major General Redric stopped, "This is likely a trap!"
Chapter completed!