Operation Goodwood: Encyclopedia II - Operation Goodwood - Effects

Operation Goodwood - Effects

Goodwood yielded some terrain gain as the bridgehead over the Orne was expanded; in a few areas the depth of penetration was 12,000 yards, but much of the gain was lateral, southward across the British front rather than eastwards into the depth of the German position.

Goodwood was launched at a time of high frustration in the upper command levels of the Allies in Normandy, and this contributed to the controversy surrounding the operation. The Allied bridgehead in Normandy was not expanding at the pace expected, and there was some fear of a return to a slogging, WW1-type stalemate. Allied commanders were not able to exploit their potentially-decisive advantages in mobility during June and early July 1944. They were looking for a decisive breakthrough of the German defensive front.

In the planning stage of Goodwood, General Montgomery seemed to promise that the attack would be the breakthrough the Allies were looking for. When the British VIII Corps failed to achieve a penetration, by some accounts Eisenhower felt he had been misled. Irregular communications within Montgomery's headquarters contributed to this feeling. Montgomery had promised a breakthrough to his commanders, yet gave orders to his subordinates that tended to play down the chances of a breakthrough. For example, copies of orders forwarded to SHAEF called for an armored division to take Falaise, a town far in the German rear. Yet three days prior to the attack Montgomery revised these orders, eliminating Falaise as an objective, and failed to send copies of the revision up to SHAEF. This left Eisenhower in the dark about the more conservative revised orders.

On the tactical level, Goodwood was a German defensive success. They held their main positions and, although giving up some ground, prevented an Allied breakthrough into the operational depth. In all the Allies had extended their control over an extra seven miles to the east of Caen and destroyed over 109 German tanks, for the loss of 413 tanks and over 5,500 men.

On the strategic level, however, the outcome was more balanced. The loss of German men and material could not be made up, unlike the Allies. Goodwood was one more nail in the coffin that was the German position in France. The lost British tanks were easily replaced, and crew losses were not severe.

Probably the biggest post-Goodwood claim of success was that the attack reinforced the German view (already held) that the British and Canadian forces on the Allied eastern flank were the most dangerous enemy. They maintained their highest-quality mechanized units in the British sector, away from the US 1st Army in the west.

To some extent this is a specious argument. It is unquestionably true that Goodwood gave the US operation codenamed Cobra a greater chance of success. Once Cobra breached the thin German defensive 'crust' in the west, few German mechanized units were available to counterattack. They were committed to the eastern sector. However, the Germans really had no choice. In the face of Allied air power, even if they had intended to move most of their armor to the US front, they could not have intervened in time to affect Cobra (this was correctly guessed by U.S. First Army intelligence). Also, had the Germans weakened the British front to face the Americans, the British Second Army front might have broken through as planned. Combined with the Germans' belief, fostered by Operation Fortitude, that the Allies would coduct a second landing in the Calais area, they never considered moving their armor west.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Effects", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki