Operation Market-Garden 1944 (1): The American Airborne Missions

Overshadowed by the dramatic British failure at Arnhem, the US 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions were a vital component of Operation Market-Garden and succeeded in capturing their objectives at Eindhoven and Nijmegen.

In the summer of 1944, plans began for a complex operation to seize a Rhine river bridge at Arnhem in the Netherlands. The American portion of the airborne mission was to employ two divisions of the US XVIII Airborne Corps to seize key terrain features that otherwise might dela...