Wastage, Tuxedo and Wild Oats – Proposed Airborne Assaults during Operation Overlord
With James Daly
Part of our DDay and Battle of Normandy series
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDG3XyxGI5lD-VIZrUhFbYxwDvdobbkEs&si=alYb5gBq6fxj5zoL
Also part of our 80th Anniversary Series
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDG3XyxGI5lCyOAGNszPdUOkA43dfSldX&si=bfIRjfLj4XKUcXds
In the days and weeks after June 6th, plans were considered or drawn-up for a number of ambitious airborne assaults that could have formed part of the Allies’ efforts to break out of the beachheads. Of these, three, operations Wastage, Tuxedo and Wild Oats, might well have been part of the fighting in Normandy itself. Operation Wild Oats, for example, was to see the 1st Airborne Division help capture Caen in conjunction with the British I Corps and XXX Corps.
James Daly is a historian and museum curator. James has previously published on the experiences of Portsmouth people in the First and Second world wars. He was inspired to write this series of books on airborne operations by the experiences of his grandfather, who fought at Arnhem with the 11th Battalion Parachute Regiment. Part of the curatorial team that developed the new displays at the D-Day Story in Portsmouth, James has also lectured to a wide range of audiences and appeared on podcasts such as We Have Ways of Making you Talk with Al Murray and James Holland. An Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and an Associate of the Museums Association, James lives and works in Portsmouth, United Kingdom.
Proposed Airborne Assaults During Operation Overlord: Cancelled Allied Plans in Normandy and Brittany by James Daly
UK https://uk.bookshop.org/a/5843/9781399037433
USA https://bookshop.org/a/21029/9781399037433
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James gave an honest presentation on a subject that has such subjectivity. His honesty on his research and documental findings are so refreshing.
I'm looking forward to his return.
Years ago, I went to a day of talks put on by RUSI and the Guild of Battlefield Guides. One speaker was trying to establish airborne doctrine (not a fan of that word) empirically from what had been done. I remember wondering at the time why he'd excluded all the proposed ops, as they were equally valid examples.
Great
Glad I caught the second half live. Really enjoyed the chat/response and James was great. Fascinating what-ifs and the book is an auto-buy on release.
Tsouras: Disaster at D-Day included a WILDOATS what-if.
thank you WW2TV. that was a good one.
Great episode. Some interesting counterfactuals being thrown around. It’s useful to understand more about those elusive Airborne operations that didn’t happen prior to Market Garden. So many passing references to them but this is the first time I’ve seen them detailed. Very cool.
another excellent presentation
So essentially the early airborne operations planned post-D Day were cancelled because the front lines were too static and the later ones because they weren’t static enough!
Fascinating conversation! No wonder 1st Airborne were chomping at the bit to get into action by September.
Very good video. Thanks.
My two cents about airborne ops.
Airborne units are like spoiled children. You devote a huge amount of your time, treasure and effort on them and when you finally do get them into the fight they inevitably disappoint either because they don’t accomplish the assigned mission (or marginally so) and/or they take heavy casualties. Then they get pulled out of the line and you get to devote even more time treasure and effort to rebuild them. All this for so called elite units that are really nothing more than light infantry with inadequate logistics and no heavy weapons.
Your grandmother can go down to the local parachute club and learn to jump out of planes. Obviously grandma won’t be fighting when she lands, but parachuting is the only difference between airborne and regular light infantry, other than being poorly equipped and supplied.
Meanwhile the regular PBI units and armor units are fighting, bleeding and dying on the front line every day, winning the war.
Is there any airborne operation of WWII that can be pointed out as to say it won the war or even just shortened it? Probably the biggest success were the D-day Normandy drops (with about 20-30% casualties, Pyrrhic victories), but the invasion would have succeeded without them. The allies conducted dozens of seaborne assaults throughout the war (the vast majority in the Pacific theater) and the all succeeded without airborne drops.
Search the internet for a paper by Michael Devore entitled “When Failure Thrives” for an analysis of airborne ops.
Missed this and watching now and halfway through and one question comes to mind, did the no-show Luftwaffe cause the planners to rethink their approach to this?