PROPOSED AIRBORNE ASSAULTS IN THE LIBERATION OF EUROPE: Cancelled Allied Plans from the Falaise Pocket to Operation Market Garden

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Examines canceled airborne operations -- Lucky Strike, Transfigure, Linnet, Comet, and Axehead -- conceived to cut off a German retreat from the Falaise-Argentan Pocket in August 1944 or set up a faster Allied advance across France. They were all canceled, usually because the Allied forces reached the intended dropping zones before the airborne forces could take off. In particular, several of these operations bear very strong resemblance to elements of the Market Garden plan and show early signs of the mistakes. Operation Comet, for example, included a glider coup-de-main for the bridges at Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Grave - why did this disappear for Market Garden?

These operations and their planning show that far from being an operation that went wrong in September 1944, the flaws in the Arnhem plan were evident much earlier. They also show that divisions between the Allies emerged much earlier and ran much deeper than originally thought. Contains 16 mono illustrations.