Geological secrets a key to the radio myth?
Murdo Macleod of Scottish newspaper “Scotland on Sunday” published this interesting feature on January 8, 2006:The geological secrets which doomed the British operation were discovered by chance by a local historical expert, Adrian Groeneweg, who helps run the Dutch museum related to the battle, the Airborne Museum Hartenstein. Groeneweg said: "We have been involved in studying every aspect of the battle and why the Allied forces had such problems. A friend told me that from medieval times there was a large iron-ore industry in the area and there was a lot of iron in the soil and that got me thinking. Then someone else told me that even today our army's signal units cannot communicate by radio from one end of the area to the other when they are on exercise here.
"We decided to conduct some tests using the same type of radios as they had at the time and sure enough, the interference was so strong that they were unable to communicate."
In September 1944, the radio interference meant the scattered British units could not tell their commanders that the areas where their supplies were dropped were under Nazi control. All the supplies were falling into the hands of the Germans, meaning the Allies soon ran low on ammunition.
The Germans co-ordinated attacks on the Paras using tanks and artillery and called in extra soldiers. In desperation, the stranded British sent messages by carrier pigeon or by runners who risked death or capture to get messages through enemy lines. But the Allies could not hold out long enough for their main army to relieve them. The Battle of Arnhem was lost.
In the aftermath of the battle a host of myths emerged about the radios, including the suggestion that they had the wrong kinds of crystals or faulty batteries. Groeneweg said: "One of the problems was that the British troops and their weapons were dropped in three initial phases, meaning they had to wait for all their equipment to arrive, which meant they lost that element of surprise.
"It doesn't take away anything from the heroism and bravery of the men. And in the Netherlands today we are very thankful for their sacrifice."
Laurie Milner, a senior researcher with the Imperial War Museum and an expert on Arnhem, said: "Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. The plan was full of flaws. [Generals] Eisenhower and Montgomery failed to agree and failed to kick it off until it was almost too late. The two German SS Panzer divisions which had been moved into the area meant that the parachutists were pinned down. And to make matters worse they had been dropped into an area regularly user by the Germans for training and so the German commanders knew the place very well."
The doomed mission meant that the British lost some of their finest troops. Milner said: "In the run-up to Arnhem they scoured the army for the best soldiers they could find."