[3], From 1922 the BAOR was organised into two brigades:[1], The second British Army of the Rhine was formed on 25 August 1945 from the British Liberation Army. The next day they gained some more ground, and one even seized its objective, having slogged a total of 6 miles (9.7km), but the limited progress forced Hobbs to abandon the hope for a quick breakout. Within 21st Army Group the Canadian First Army (under Harry Crerar) held the left flank of the Allied line, with the British Second Army (Miles C. Dempsey) in the center and the U.S. 9th Army (William Hood Simpson) to the south. Brigade groups took over from divisions as the smallest operative units. After the reduction of the Ruhr Pocket, the main thrust east would be made by Bradley's 12th Army Group in the center, rather than by Montgomery's 21st Army Group in the north as originally planned. Hong Kong Provost Company & Hong Kong Dog Company, HQ 48th Gurkha Infantry Brigade & 246 Gurkha Signal Squadron, This page was last edited on 12 February 2023, at 22:39. 29th Transport & Movement Control Regiment Royal Transport Corps. British Army operations after 1945 - The National Archives In five days of battle, from 18 to 22 March, Patton's forces captured over 68,000 Germans. 1 CVR(T) representing the HQ or Recce Capability. 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. British Army of the Rhine - BAOR Locations Thus, he decided to feint at Mainz while making his real effort at Nierstein and Oppenheim, 910mi (1416km) south of the city. DECODED: The Cold War in Europe 1945-1995 : NATO's Northern Army Group Wartime Order of Battle 1985. A heavy bombing campaign by USAAF and RAF forces, known as the "Interdiction of Northwest Germany", designed primarily to destroy the lines of communication and supply connecting the Ruhr to the rest of Germany had been underway since February. Additional losses in the Rhineland further weakened the German Army, leaving shattered remnants of units to defend the east bank of the Rhine. Although the Ruhr area still contained a significant number of Axis troops and enough industry to retain its importance as a major objective, Allied intelligence reported that much of the region's armament industry was moving southeast, deeper into Germany. 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. 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. German Field Marshal Walter Model, whose Army Group B was charged with the defense of the Ruhr, had deployed his troops heavily along the eastwest Sieg River south of Cologne, thinking that the Americans would attack directly north from the Remagen bridgehead. Page last modified: "Now we will have roughly one-sixth of that number. Page 10. british army of the rhine order of battle. Nowhere, it seemed, were the Germans able to resist in strength. The British Army of the Rhine was born in 1945 out of the British Liberation Army at the close of the war as the military government of the British zone of occupied Germany. In reality, by the time of the Allied Rhine crossings the Wehrmacht had suffered such severe defeats on both the Eastern and Western Fronts that it could barely manage to mount effective delaying actions, much less muster enough troops to establish a well-organized alpine resistance force. The British army has never excelled at swift advances, and the Guards Armoured Division mandated to dash for the Rhine was better suited to conduct last-ditch, last-man infantry defensive actions than to emulate General Erwin Rommel's panzers. Denying this opportunity became another argument for rethinking the role of the southern drive through Germany. From 1952 the commander-in-chief of the BAOR was also the commander of NATO's Northern Army Group (NORTHAG) in the event of a general war with the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies. It included the four military members of the Army Board, including the Chief of the General Staff, General Sir John Chapple in 1989, the Second Permanent Under Secretary, and the Assistant Chief of the General Staff, a major general. 414th Tank Transporter Unit Royal Corps of Transport. BAOR orbat for the early 80s | Army Rumour Service "I have been visiting some of the units and found them, ready for the . [38], In the center of the Allied line, Eisenhower inserted the new 15th Army, under U.S. 12th Army Group control to hold the western edge of the Ruhr Pocket along the Rhine while the 9th and 1st Armies squeezed the remaining German defenders there from the north, east, and south. Eisenhower sent Bradley his final word on the matter: the 9th Army was to stay putthere would be no effort to take Berlin. The predecessor to British Forces Germany, the BAOR was active from 1919-1929, and then 1945-1994. british army of the rhine order of battle. Many of the units stationed in the United Kingdom were to move immediately to Germany to reinforce British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) in case of war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Both believed that the plan squandered the great strength in men and equipment that the 9th Army had assembled and ignored the many logistical problems of placing the 9th Army's crossing sites within the Second Army's zone. [44], In the center of the 12th U.S. Army Group, Hodges' 1st Army faced somewhat stiffer opposition, though it hardly slowed the pace. The British Second Army was a field army active during the First and Second World Wars. Equipped with about 60 tanks, the students put up a fanatical resistance, stalling the American armor all day. Recce Intelligence Centre (Gtersloh), Intelligence Corps. Under the new concept, Bradley's 12th U.S. Army Group would make the main effort, with Hodges' 1st Army in the center heading east for about 130mi (210km) toward the city of Leipzig and the Elbe River. 1956 Saw more major changes to the BAOR. [35], In addition to the poor roads, the 30th Division's breakout attempts were also hampered by the German 116th Panzer Division. The Brigade of Guards was reformed on 14 July 1948 as the administrative depot for the regiments of foot guards. The Western Allied invasion of Germany was coordinated by the Western Allies during the final months of hostilities in the European theatre of World War II. 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. 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. 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. In the south, the 1st Army's III Corps launched its strike on the 5th and the XVIII Airborne Corps joined in on the 6th, both pushing generally northward. british army of the rhine order of battle The Defence Operations Executive, led by the Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff (Commitments) and including the Assistant Chiefs of the Naval, General, and Air Staffs, supervised the Joint Operations Centre which in turn passed orders to the forces in Cyprus, Belize, the Falklands, and Hong Kong. They include the Royal Artillery, the Royal Engineers, the RoyalSignals and the Intelligence Corps. [31], By 28 March, the 8th Armored Division had expanded the bridgehead by only about 3mi (4.8km) and still had not reached Dorsten, a town about 15mi (24km) east of the Rhine, whose road junction promised to expand the XVI Corps' offensive options. For administrative purposes these units were under command of brigade HQ based in the UK during peacetime. [31], Plunder called for the Second Army to cross at three locations along the 21st Army Group frontat Rees, Xanten and Rheinberg. The 9th Army's sector of the Ruhr Pocket, although only about 1/3 the size of the 1st Army's sector south of the river, contained the majority of the densely urbanized industrial area within the encirclement. By 13 April, the 9th Army had cleared the northern part of the pocket, while elements of the XVIII Airborne Corps' 8th Infantry Division reached the southern bank of the Ruhr, splitting the southern section of the pocket in two. The General Officer commanding Headquarters Northern Ireland reported directly, operationally, to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. After a day or two, specialized Office of Military Government, United States (OMGUS) units took over. Seventh and Third Armies) into southeastern Germany and Austria. The Allied front along the Rhine stretched 450 miles (720km) from the river's mouth at the North Sea in the Netherlands to the Swiss border in the south. The British Army is the land warfare branch of the British Armed Forces. If successful, this pincer movement would envelop the industrial Ruhr area, neutralizing the largest concentration of German industrial capacity left. [59], In retrospect, very few questionable decisions were made concerning the execution of the campaign.[who?] While the U.S. Ninth and First Armies held their ground from Magdeburg through Leipzig to western Czechoslovakia, Eisenhower ordered three Allied field armies (1st French, and the U.S. The battle to breach The Rhine: Rarely-seen photos show - Mail Online The BAOR was no exception. As soon as Patton had received the orders on the 19th to make a crossing, he had begun sending assault boats, bridging equipment and other supplies forward from depots in Lorraine where they had been stockpiled since autumn in the expectation of just such an opportunity. 62 BA/MA, RM 7/102, Hitler's order (signed by Keitel) of 21 March 1945 to the Wehrmacht leadership, 99f; RH 2/334, note from the Commander-in-Chief of the reserve army of 26 March 1945, concerning the transfer of the reserve training units behind the western and eastern fronts, Aktion Leuthen, 27. 608th Signal Troop (Cipher Equipment), Royal Signals, 68th Transport Squadron, Royal Corps of Transport, JHQ Rheindahlen. [29], By midafternoon on 23 March, all three regiments of the 5th Infantry Division were in the bridgehead, and an attached regiment from the 90th Infantry Division was crossing. On 6 May, the Polish 1st Armoured Division seized the Kriegsmarine naval base in Wilhelmshaven, where General Maczek accepted the capitulation of the fortress, naval base, East Frisian Fleet and more than 10 infantry divisions. [20], The Allied forces along this line were organized into three army groups. In the British Army, divisions and brigades are referred to as "formations." In the north, from the North Sea to a point about 10 miles (16km) north of Cologne, was the 21st Army Group commanded by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. 2339 (Regular Signal Regiments 1st to 30th), Lord & Watson, pp. Postal and Courier Depot, Royal Engineers, Central Volunteer HQ Royal Engineers (Postal and Courier Services).