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Centuur -> RE: Next quiz (6/16/2011 10:21:39 PM)
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The amount stated by Dutch sources is about 575 airplanes which were put out of action. The German count was 270 destroyed and about 300 damaged, but repairable after the conquest of the Netherlands. This also explains the different numbers showing. A larger problem for the Germans was, that the Dutch took the liberty of putting a lot of aircrews and the officers of the German invading paratroopers they captured on a couple of ships with a one way ticket to Britain... The Germans were more concerned with the partial loss of the officers of the Para division and the pilots, than with the actual loss of the planes.
A lot of planes were repairable, because the Germans were landing the airlandingdivisions troops everywhere between The Hague and Rotterdam at the second day of the fighting. The airfields were blocked by to many airplanewrecks. A lot of the planes landed outside the airfields and simply sank in mud, or got damaged landinggears etc. etc. Some of them landed on beaches around The Hague and on the road between Rotterdam and The Hague (there they were simply destroyed by a few Dutch armoured cars and some heavy building equipment). The Dutch simply couldn't spare the troops and equipment to totally destroy the planes at that time.
At the end of the fifth day of fighting, a lot of the paratroopers north of Rotterdam were rounded up by Dutch forces (but there were still some Para's isolated around the city) and the airfields around The Hague were back in Dutch control. At Rotterdam however, the airport and the large bridges were controlled by Students Para's, which also did capture the bridges at Dorddrecht and Moerdijk on the first two days of the war. Just before the bombardment on the city of Rotterdam, a German Panzerdivision advanced from Brabant accross those bridges and reached the southern part of the city of Rotterdam. Since the defences of the Dutch were therefore seriously compromised (the road to The Hague and Amsterdam was open for the Germans, General Winkelman capitulated. Just after that, the Germans bombed the city.
Looking at the five days of fighting in the Netherlands a couple of things really stands out.
The first is that the percentage of deaths and wounded soldiers in the Dutch army the five days of the war is the about the same as for the whole Belgium campaign (Dutch 0,85% KIA, Belgians 1%). That means fighting in Holland was very intensive. The percentage of wounded soldiers is also about the same.
Also the Dutch got the absolute elite regarding German strength fighting against them. Student's Para, the airlandingdivision and the SS Leibstandarte were very well trained and equipped German forces.
The Dutch Command was surprised in the fact that the Germans did aim for the most Western bridges in the Netherlands. These bridges weren't rigged for demolition, because they were needed to give the French an entry in the Netherlands. The Dutch were afraid for a small commando raid on those bridges to demolish them.
Another astonishing thing is that the small Dutch airforce wasn't eliminated on the ground (compared to the Belgians, which lost almost there whole airforce being sitting ducks on the ground). The Dutch pilots were forced to warm the engines of all planes at 03:00 daily and keep those engines warm by staying next to the planes till 06:00 hours. Therefore, when the Germans came, almost all planes were airborne and bringing havoc on the German transports and bombers. However on return most airfields around The Hague and Rotterdam were battlefields, so the pilots didn't have a place to land the planes. So half the airforce got knocked out due to not having enough fuel to reach other airfields.
As I have read a lot of books about those five days (I couldn't stand the fact that the campaign only lasted for five days), one can say the German Para's succeeded in disrupting communications around the Area of The Hague. Therefore the Dutch weren't able to defend the Maasbridges (they had to fight the boxed in Para's in very many places around The Hague, using valuable troops) in Rotterdam and that was than the end of things.
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