Quote Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube
There was a heck of a lot more wrong with Market Garden than that. Not the least of which was sending tanks up in a very narrow almost straight-line fashion, thinking they'd get to the Paratroopers' aid unmolested.
If you hadn't noticed they pretty well in that department.
They could have reached Arnhem if it hadn't been for bungle up further down the commandchain. They let the infantry get bogged down in Nijmegen, where reach echelons could have cleared it up instead. Had they arrived at Arnhem, they wouldn't have gotten the bridge, but they could have saved the paras.

Sure the schedule was severely overabitious, but again it was based on faulty intelligence. Had Monty known that two, granted tired, SS Panzer divisions were lying at Arnhem I'm pretty sure he would have scrapped the operation, at least for the moment.
Besides intelligence wasn't only wrong about the two SS division, they were wrong about the regulars holding the front.

So seen in the light that they had to punch through regulars, and did, I would say that it wasn't a halfbad operation. Of course I won't say it was great either, because it most certainly wasn't. But it did mangle the two SS divisions down further, and they were out for the count for a lengthy while. And these were two of the better SS divisions, imagine them at full strength going up against a few US/British armoured divisions. It would have been outright nasty.

An one shouldn't forget that if Monty had chosen that famous bridge shorter, the Germans could have brought up their reinforcements, including these two SS divisons, and then you would have seen spectacular displays of explodings tanks on the road.