Warbird Information Exchange

What was the reason for the lack of ground attack support in this operation. Was weather a contributing factor or the distance from fighter bases?

I'm doing this from memory (which, at my age, is not usually a good source)
but I believe it was weather. I also seem to remember that there was a problem with dropping supplies because of weather.

Mudge the geezer

(I'm pretty sure someone will come along and tell me that my memory SUCKS.)

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Land of the free because of the brave

I believe it was mainly down to bad intel and/or bad interpretation of intel.. The issue that Field Marshal Montgomery did not pay heed to intel reports which contradicted his assessment of the operation and went ahead with it.

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By ground support I assume you mean troops already on the continent, not those being dropped in. They had some weather problems for the drop, but as far as existing ground support, XXX Corps had to travel up that single lane road through low terrain. They never got the chance to bring the total ground support to bare on the final goal of the Arnhem Bridge.
It was like fighting in a closet, all the way up the road. Hard to bring a lot of support in when there are very few options on route to the front.

Once XXX Corps reached each pocket of Airborne troopers, then those troopers had good ground support. Unfortunately, Gen. Urqhart's men in Arnhem never had got the chance to get any of the support that XXX Corps could've supplied.
Sad campaign.
Jerry

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"Always remember that, when you enter the ocean or the forest, you are no longer at the top of the food chain."

and the Germans overran the drop zones. That was a issue!

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Don't touch my junk!!

Bad use of the term ground support by me, what I meant was air support in a ground attack role. I wonder if they had air liasons controllers embedded with the paratropper units.

SuperFort...That's what I assumed you meant. Hence my weather scenario.

Mudge the meteorologist

(or is it meteoric? I can never remember. )

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Land of the free because of the brave

ok now that i have woken up and read your question properly... The weather did play a role in the intial stages of the operation. The second wave of drops was delayed. However over the length of the operation, air support was lacking due Lt. General Brereton order for no aircrafts in Belgium to be utilised during the operation. Also, I believe there was no real effort made between the USAAF & the RAF. and finally Luftwaffe gained air superiority soon after the weather cleared up as well..

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But just as importantly, the comms were pretty much hopeless so there wasn't exactly much chance of calling anything in to support the guys on the ground, and the guys on the ground didn't really know where each other were as it was let alone hoping air support would know where to drop whiz-bangs in the right place that wouldn't result in hitting your own troops.