Operation Plunder - Wikipedia Simpson, in turn, ordered a combat command of the 2nd Armored Division, which had just reached Beckum, to make a 15mi (24km) advance southeast to Lippstadt, midway between Beckum and the stalled 3rd Armored Division spearhead. Back in the 1950s, a posting in Germany was being actively encouraged as a vast British Army presence continued to expand. To accomplish both objectives, Patch's 7th Army on Devers' left was to make a great arc, first driving northeastward alongside Bradley's flank, then turning south with the 3rd Army to take Nuremberg and Munich, ultimately continuing into Austria. NORTHAG wartime structure in 1989 - Wikipedia [55] The British and Americans contemplated an airborne operation before the attack. Entering in the night, the commandos secured the city late on the morning of 24 March, although scattered resistance continued until dawn on the 25th. Still, despite the terrain and German machine-gun and 20 millimetres (0.79in) anti-aircraft cannon fire, VIII Corps troops managed to gain control of the east bank's heights, and by dark on 26 March, with German resistance crumbling all along the Rhine, they were preparing to continue the drive the next morning. 20 Postal and Courier Squadron, Royal Engineers. These dresses, in order to be cleaned and washed, are cast into flames. Victory in Europe | National Army Museum It was originally composed of five corps, composed of two divisions each, plus a cavalry division:[1], IV Corps: Commanded by Sir Alexander Godley, VI Corps: Commanded by Sir Aylmer Haldane, IX Corps: Commanded by Sir Walter Braithwaite and later by Ivor Maxse, Cavalry Division (formed from 1st Cavalry Division). [43], On 4 April, as it paused to allow the rest of the 12th U.S. Army Group to catch up, the 3rd Army made two notable discoveries. [55] This later caused some friction with the Yugoslav forces, notably around Trieste. Faced with trying to make rapid advances through dense forest on rutted dirt roads and muddy trails, which could be strongly defended by a few determined soldiers and well-placed roadblocks, the task forces advanced only about 2 miles (3.2km) on the 25th. On 4 April, the day it shifted to Bradley's control, the 9th Army began its attack south toward the Ruhr River. Sixth United States Army Group - Wikipedia Eisenhower, supported by the American Chiefs of Staff, disagreed. [44], In the center of the 12th U.S. Army Group, Hodges' 1st Army faced somewhat stiffer opposition, though it hardly slowed the pace. [46], While the 12th U.S. Army Group made its eastward thrust, Devers' 6th U.S. Army Group to the south had the dual mission of protecting the 12th U.S. Army Group's right flank and eliminating any German attempt to make a last stand in the Alps of southern Germany and western Austria. . In case of a war the Corps first line of defense would have been a screening force of 1st The Queen's Dragoon Guards, 16th/5th Queen's Royal Lancers and 664 Squadron AAC, which would have become an ad-hoc brigade formation under command of BAOR's Brigadier Royal Armoured Corps. In total they were to consist of 16 Divisions in four Corps (out of the current British total in Europe of 61 and 16), together with appropriate cavalry, air resources and extended lines of communication. On the Western Front, the Allies had been fighting in Germany with campaigns against the Siegfried Line since the Battle of Aachen, the Battle of Metz and the Battle of Hrtgen Forest in late 1944 and by January 1945, had pushed the Germans back to their starting points during the Battle of the Bulge. The Armistice that went into effect on 11 November . During the First World War the army was active on the Western Front throughout most of the war and later active in Italy. Near the town of Merkers, elements of the 90th Infantry Division found a sealed salt mine containing a large portion of the German national treasure. "Now we will have roughly one-sixth of that number. [33], Another important aspect of Montgomery's plan was Operation Varsity, in which two divisions of Major General Matthew Ridgway's XVIII Airborne Corps were to make an airborne assault over the Rhine. The artillery fire had been so effective and so perfectly timed that the assault battalions merely motored their storm boats across the river and claimed the east bank against almost no resistance. 88 mm Pak 43 with spread mount covered in a securing position behind the river Rhine, Germany spring 1945. Antony Beevor, Inside the British Army, 1991, 429. Seventh and Third Armies) into southeastern Germany and Austria. Late on 26 March, the 8th Armored Division began moving into the bridgehead. Once the Ruhr was surrounded, he wanted the 9th Army transferred from the British 21st Army Group to the U.S. 12th Army Group. [33], In the southernmost sector of the 21st Army Group's attack, the 9th Army's assault divisions were to cross the Rhine along an 11 miles (18km) section of the front, south of Wesel and the Lippe River. This force would block any German counterattack from the Ruhr. An intense exchange of fire lasted for about thirty minutes as assault boats kept pushing across the river and those men who had already made it across mounted attacks against the scattered defensive strongpoints. . On 25 August 1945, it was redesignated as the British Army of the Rhine (B.A.O.R. By midnight, infantry units had pushed the boundary of the bridgehead more than 5 miles (8.0km) inland, ensuring the unqualified success of the first modern assault crossing of the Rhine. To the north, the 9th Army's XIX and XIII Corps would also drive for the Elbe, toward Magdeburg, about 65mi (105km) north of Leipzig, although the army commander, General Simpson, hoped he would be allowed to go all the way to Berlin. [42], Meanwhile, the remaining Allied forces north, south, and east of the Ruhr had been adjusting their lines in preparation for the final advance through Germany. 221st (BAOR) EOD Company, Royal Army Ordnance Corps, Communications Zone Ordnance Depot, Antwerp, Belgium, Forward Stores Depot, Royal Army Ordnance Corps, Dulmen. Finally, the Germans surrendered, and by midnight units moved out laterally to consolidate the crossing sites and to attack the first villages beyond the river. 1st Training Regiment Corps of Royal Engineers. [40], The first step in realizing Eisenhower's plan was the eradication of the Ruhr Pocket. HQ British Forces Brunei & Brunei Signal Troop, Detachment 24 Postal and Courier Squadron, Royal Engineers, 9th Signal Regiment (Radio), Royal Signals, at, 259 (West) Signal Squadron (responsible for communications in the west of the island). While Montgomery was carefully and cautiously planning for the main thrust in the north, complete with massive artillery preparation and an airborne assault, American forces in the south were displaying the kind of basic aggressiveness that Eisenhower wanted to see. On 29 November 1952, the Headquarters of Northern Army Group (NORTHAG) formed. This increased the importance of the southern offensives across the Rhine. 75 years after the infamous Battle of Arnhem, rare photos reveal terrifying death and destruction as allied troops struggle to liberate Netherlands from the Nazis. Further West in Belgium was the British Communications Zone, which was headquartered in Emblem, outside Antwerp and tasked with receiving reinforcements and supplies from Great Britain and to co-ordinate their onward movement to 1 (BR) Corps. In the early morning hours of 25 March, elements of the 87th Infantry Division crossed the Rhine to the north at Boppard, and then some 24 hours later elements of the 89th Infantry Division crossed 8 miles (13km) south of Boppard at St. Goar. 1st Armoured Division Transport Regiment, Royal Corps of Transport, 1st Ordnance Battalion, Royal Army Ordnance Corps, Verden, 7th Armoured Workshop, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, Fallingbostel, 12th Armoured Workshop, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, Osnabrck, 1st Armoured Field Ambulance, Royal Army Medical Corps, Bergen-Hohne, 2nd Armoured Field Ambulance, Royal Army Medical Corps, Osnabrck, 111th Provost Company, Royal Military Police, Bergen-Hohne, HQ 7th Armoured Brigade & 207th Signal Squadron, Royal Signals, Soltau, HQ 12th Armoured Brigade & 212th Signal Squadron, Royal Signals, Osnabrck, HQ 22nd Armoured Brigade & 201st Signal Squadron, Royal Signals, Bergen-Hohne, 10 (Assaye) Air Defence Battery (under command of Field regiment for admin), HQ 3rd Armoured Division & Signal Regiment, Royal Signals, Soest, 13th Postal & Courier Squadron, Royal Engineers, Soest. VIII Corps crossing sites were located along the Rhine Gorge, where the river had carved a deep chasm between two mountain ranges, creating precipitous canyon walls over 300 feet (91m) high on both sides. 1stCorps District8th Corps District30th Corps DistrictBritish Troops Berlin, Click here for information from Mar 49 onwards 1st (BR) Corps6th Armoured Division7th Armoured Division11th Armoured Division2nd Infantry DivisionBritish Troops BerlinRhine Army TroopsHamburg DistrictHannover DistrictRhine District5 Army Group Royal Artillery (Anti-Aircraft). The battle to breach The Rhine: Rarely-seen photos show - Mail Online Regimental headquarters are administrative and ceremonial in nature. In a double envelopment, the French captured Stuttgart on 21 April, and by the next day, both the French and the VI Corps had elements on the Danube. Because of the poor road network on the east bank of this part of the Rhine, a second 9th Army corps was to cross over the promised Wesel bridges through the British zone north of the Lippe River, which had an abundance of good roads. British Air Forces of Occupation, Royal Air Force (c/o British Army On Rhine 1) ***** ***** No. [80] The brigade had been disbanded in September 1981 with its units and area initially having been taken over by 8th Infantry Brigade. The failure of this offensive exhausted Germany's strategic reserve, leaving it ill-prepared to resist the final Allied campaigns in Europe. [44], The 4 April pause in the 3rd Army advance allowed the other armies under Bradley's command to reach the Leine River, about 50mi (80km) east of Paderborn. At first, this was done informally with occupants evicted immediately and taking with them few personal possessions, but the process became standardized, with three hours' notice and OMGUS personnel providing receipts for buildings' contents. british army of the rhine order of battle In that time, the Company has released a number of well-received projects that cut across the diecast spectrum, from big and beefy 1:32 scale tanks to pose-able 1:72 scale WWII-era fighters. Headed from Bielefeld it comprised of; 5th Heavy Regiment RA (Hildesheim)50th Missile Regiment, RA (Menden)12 Air Defence Regiment, RA (Dortmund)22nd Air Defence Regiment, RA (Soest)94th Locating Regiment, RA (Celle)1st Battalion, The Royal Scots, Infantry (Mnster)8th Transport Regiment, RCT (Mnster). Luftwaffe Data Book. 20th March 2015. and comes complete with a manual big enough to be deemed as an offensive weapon i.e. The largest difference was in the period from 1-10.4.1945, for which the Heeresarzt recorded 63,386 killed and wounded in the East (12,510 killed, 50,876 wounded) vs. only 431 in the West (100 killed, 331 wounded), an East vs. West ratio of about 147:1 in killed and wounded. Originally, Eisenhower had planned to draw all his forces up to the west bank of the Rhine, using the river as a natural barrier to help cover the inactive sections of his line. [26], On 19 March, Eisenhower told Bradley to prepare the 1st Army for a breakout from the Remagen bridgehead any time after 22 March. 2 Postal and Courier Regiment, Royal Engineers. In July 1944, soon after the Allied invasion of Normandy on D-Day (June 6, 1944), the British 11th Armoured Division broke out of the Normandy beachhead and advanced into France, before turning northward to Belgium. Commander-in-Chief, UK Land Forces, General Sir Charles Huxtable, HQ United Kingdom Land Forces commanded nine military districts until the spring of 1991. The 339th Infantry [85th Division] reached Austrian soil east of Dobbiaco at 0415, 4 May; the Reconnaissance Troop, 349th Infantry. 6 (UK) Div will include: 1st Signal Brigade, 11th Signal Brigade, 1st Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance Brigade, 77th Brigade and the Specialist Infantry Group, Corps of Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps. One of the British divisions arrived from Italy after the start of the campaign. Once this was done, the 21st Army Group would take Lbeck and Wismar on the Baltic Sea, cutting off the Germans remaining in the Jutland peninsula of Denmark, while the 6th U.S. Army Group and the 3rd Army drove south into Austria. However, Montgomery believed that the paratroopers would quickly link up with the advancing river assault forces, placing the strongest force within the bridgehead as rapidly as possible. 158 Provost Company Corps of Royal Military Police. Denying this opportunity became another argument for rethinking the role of the southern drive through Germany. Here the Germans turned a thick defense belt of antiaircraft guns against the American ground troops with devastating effects. However, as the 3rd Army began pulling up to the Mulde on 13 April, the XII CorpsPatton's southernmost forcecontinued moving southeast alongside the 6th U.S. Army Group to clear southern Germany and move into Austria. On mobilisation the regiments would join their divisional artillery. 9th Field Workshop, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (V). 50 Construction Field Squadron Corps of Royal Engineers, 62 Chief Engineer Command (Works) [Water utilities, water development, and well drilling], 63 Chief Engineer Command (Works) [Electrical power generation and distribution, originally utilities and force protection], 64 Chief Engineer Command (Works) [Fuels, fuel production, and distribution], 156th Provost Company, Royal Military Police, Colchester, 7th Ordnance Battalion, Royal Army Ordnance Corps, Colchester. Nicholas Goodison interviewed by Cathy Courtney (section 1) The battle was a victory for the Allies, and resulted in the capture of over 250,000 German soldiers. The Allied invasion of Germany east of the Rhine started with the Western Allies crossing the river on 22 March 1945 before fanning out and overrunning all of western Germany from the Baltic in the north to the Alpine passes in the south, where they linked up with troops of the U.S. Fifth Army in Italy. Still, Allied intelligence could not entirely discount the possibility that remnants of the German forces would attempt a suicidal last stand in the Alps. Another seven American divisions arrived during February,[19] along with the British 5th Infantry Division and I Canadian Corps, both of which had arrived from the fighting on the Italian front. The events of the first few days of the final campaign would be enough to convince him that this was the proper course of action. Additional losses in the Rhineland further weakened the German Army, leaving shattered remnants of units to defend the east bank of the Rhine. 1st Armoured Division was the corps' Northern forward deployed division. The first British Army of the Rhine was set up in March 1919 to implement the occupation of the Rhineland. 34 Evacuation Hospital, Royal Army Medical Corps, 31st District Workshop, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, Catterick. Completing the Allied line to the Swiss border was the 6th Army Group commanded by Lieutenant General Jacob L. Devers, with the U.S. 7th Army (Alexander Patch) in the north and the French 1st Army (Jean de Lattre de Tassigny) on the Allied right, and southernmost, flank. Rolling northward 45mi (72km) without casualties, the mobile force stopped for the night 15mi (24km) from its objective. [42], The final tally of prisoners taken in the Ruhr reached 325,000, far beyond anything the Americans had anticipated. At the same time, General Devers' 6th U.S. Army Group would move south through Bavaria and the Black Forest to Austria and the Alps, ending the threat of any Nazi last-ditch stand there. On the morning of 10 April, the 12th U.S. Army Group's drive to the Elbe began in earnest. The British Army of the Rhine - Military History - Oxford - obo In the event of war with the Warsaw Pact the Commander-in-Chief of BAOR would have assumed command of NATO's Northern Army Group (NORTHAG), which was tasked with defending Northern Germany up to the river Elbe. [37], As March turned to April the offensive east of the Rhine was progressing in close accordance with Allied plans. British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) - GlobalSecurity.org The deployment and distribution of the divisions of the Wehrmacht and subordinate units of allies one day before the Allied air invasion near Arnhem on 17 September 1944 and the stabilization of the Western Front after the break-out of the Allied armies from Normandy.. 36th District Workshop, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, HQ London District & 238 Signal Squadron, Royal Signals, Chelsea. Deutsche Kriegs-gefangene des Zweiten Weltkrieges. 10th Field Squadron (Airfields), 38th Engineer Regiment, Royal Engineers. The idea was that each Division would have 2 Task Forces , which . On the Eastern Front, the Soviet Red Army (including the Polish Armed Forces in the East under Soviet command), had taken most of Poland, launched an offensive into East Prussia and began their invasion into Eastern Germany in February 1945, and by March were within striking distance of Berlin. [49], On 30 April, elements of 7th Army's XV and XXI Corps captured Munich, 30 miles (48km) south of the Danube, while the first elements of its VI Corps had already entered Austria two days earlier. divisions are listed in order of their original numbers (e.g., beginning with the former 1st Division and finishing with the former 62nd) . Both were originally occupation forces in Germany, one after the First World War and the other after the Second World War. British Army of the Rhine - YouTube Many towns flew white flags of surrender to spare themselves the otherwise inevitable destruction suffered by those that resisted, while German troops surrendered by the tens of thousands, sometimes as entire units. On 27 November 1989 Peter Inge became the commander of NATO's Northern Army Group and Commander-in-Chief, British Army of the Rhine in Germany with the local rank of general;[115] he succeeded General Brian Kenny. The predecessor to British Forces Germany, the BAOR was active from 1919-1929, and then 1945-1994. In addition, since Berlin and the rest of Germany had already been divided into occupation zones by representatives of the Allied governments at the Yalta Conference, Eisenhower saw no political advantage in a race for Berlin. 5th Security Company, Intelligence Corps, 6th Intelligence Company (Photo Intell), Intelligence Corps, JHQ Rheindahlen. 39th District Workshop Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. Such an example would be a squadron of tanks attached to an armoured infantry battle group, together with a reconnaissance troop, artillery battery, and engineering support. Combat Support units: These units provide support to the combat units in the combat zone. Advancing from northern Italy, the British Eighth Army[l] pushed to the borders of Yugoslavia to defeat the remaining Wehrmacht elements there. During Operation Lumberjack, Operation Plunder and Operation Undertone, German casualties during FebruaryMarch 1945 are estimated at 400,000 men, including 280,000 men captured as prisoners of war.[18]. British Army | Military Wiki | Fandom 89) are: Area 1 The Federal Republic of Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands; Area 2 Berlin. The Armistice and the occupation of the Rhine [31]Montgomery was exhibiting his now-legendary meticulous and circumspect approach to such enterprises, a lesson he had learned early in the North African campaign. British Army of the Rhine - YouTube 0:00 / 58:47 British Army of the Rhine Ichioku 334 subscribers Subscribe 6.6K views 1 year ago BBC Documentary from 2012 (small edit to avoid. 1945 offensive in the European theatre of World War II, U.S. 12th Army Group crosses the Rhine (22 March), U.S. 6th Army Group crosses the Rhine (26 March), German Army Group B surrounded in the Ruhr pocket (1 April), Eisenhower switches his main thrust to U.S. 12th Army Group front (28 March), U.S. 12th Army Group prepares its final thrust, U.S. 12th Army Group advances to the Elbe (9 April), U.S. First Army makes first contact with the advancing Soviets (25 April), Link-up of U.S. forces in Germany and Italy (4 May), British 21st Army Group crosses the Elbe (29 April).
british army of the rhine order of battle
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