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Allied Airborne Forces in World War II: Surviving the Devil's CauldronBy Bernd Horn | MHQ | Single Page | one comment | Print This Post | Email This Post However, this line of reasoning and philosophical bent clearly indicated a wholesale lack of understanding of airborne warfare. The airborne battlefield was substantially different—much more demanding and unrelenting. Without question, it required warriors of a special ilk. Paratroopers needed to be carefully selected, meet special psychological requirements and possess a physical stamina beyond that of the average soldier. Their training was markedly more difficult, if not grueling. Only intrepid, resilient, self-reliant individuals could survive the devil's cauldron that was the airborne battlefield. Clearly, any soldier who engages in combat faces a formidable challenge. However, the distinct airborne battlefield presented specific ordeals the normal soldier did not face. First, paratroopers are remarkably vulnerable during deployment to the objective. The aerial armada in flight consists of large lumbering transport aircraft, as well as airplanes towing gliders. These were inherently slow, inviting targets to both anti-aircraft fire and enemy fighters. Controlling the entire "air corridor" was crucial and demanded air supremacy or, at a minimum, local air superiority along the entire route. Moreover, the flight was often physically taxing. Airplanes bucked and lurched, tossed about in the wash of preceding aircraft, and the pilots' attempts at avoiding flak created additional stress for the airborne soldiers. Research has shown that airsickness due to turbulent flying conditions in itself creates fatigue. The paratrooper might be exhausted on landing from the battering in the air, compounded by anxiety and tension, and from carrying equipment that might weigh a hundred pounds or more. The next challenge lay in the accuracy of the drop itself. Even if the aircraft reached their destination, pilots found it difficult to drop the paratroopers on target. Simple navigation errors created problems, as did high winds and poor weather. Poorly trained and inexperienced aircrews often could not maintain formation and released their paratroopers at too high an altitude or too great a speed. For example, during Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily in July 1943, Allied pilots were supposed to drop their charges from six hundred feet from C-47 Dakota aircraft. Pilots were also to slow down their airplanes almost to stalling speed, which was one hundred miles per hour. Instead, the paratroopers were flung out at fifteen hundred feet while aircraft raced along at nearly their top speed of two hundred miles per hour. Added to navigational problems and heavy winds, the pilots' failure to maintain the proper dropping posture resulted in 3,405 American paratroopers being scattered over a sixty-mile swath of southeast Sicily. On the same botched drop, Colonel James Gavin, a regimental commander in the 82nd Airborne Division, found himself in enemy territory for the first few hours of the landing with a force of only nineteen of his soldiers. He later estimated that only 12 percent, or about 425 of the 3,405 men, actually landed somewhere in front of the beachhead as planned. Twenty-four hours after his drop, Colonel Reuben Tucker, the regimental commander, could account for only a quarter of the two thousand men who had left Africa. Similarly, during the same operation, only twenty-seven of an intended force of two hundred British paratroopers (or 14 percent) landed near enough to their objective to join the fight for the Ponte Grande. Almost a year later in Normandy, of the sixty-six hundred men of the American 101st Airborne Division that dropped in the early hours of D-Day, thirty-five hundred were still missing by the end of the day. As a further example, on August 15, 1944, five thousand Allied paratroopers of the 1st Airborne Task Force dropped in the area of Le Muy, in southern France, as part of Operation Dragoon. Approximately 60 percent of the American paratroopers and 40 percent of the British landed too far from their drop zones for it to be considered a successful drop. Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to
            Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Airborne Operations, Historical Conflicts, World War II
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One Comment to “Allied Airborne Forces in World War II: Surviving the Devil's Cauldron”
Mr. Horn's article is informative, and I believe, more accurate than most that I have read.
Airborne operations will always be among the most difficult to precisely execute, and I believe the difficulties do not, as it seems popular with some to imagine, stem from the use of novice or cowardly aircrews. The airborne aspect of the Normandy invasion in particular, seems to have become a focus for such myth and misinformation, to the extent that even the 101st Airborne Division's own website was forced to revise its web page, in the direction of reality. Even at that, it was hardly thorough.
Steven Ambrose, generally excellent author that he was, was even called to account for his fictionalization and denigration of airborne operations. He admitted it, but never offered an apology. Unfortunately, many parrot his writing on the subject.
To the alleged use of amateur flight crews in the Normandy operation, the answer lies in the fact that everyone, from Eisenhower on down knew that this was an operation that had to succeed, for there would be no second chance. The most experienced aircrews were therefore used, not the most recent graduating classes as some prefer to imagine. It should be remembered that the British considered that the entire airborne aspect of the Normandy operation would be completely hopeless (and the British were hardly short of experienced aircrews), and opposed it until it actually succeeded, even though they consented to participate
It was by their experience that the aircrews were able to get as many troops on target as they did, as they were operating without pathfinders, at night, in fog, over territory that they had never overflown before, and under intense enemy fire. Another myth maintains that they panicked in the face of the ground fire, and took evasive action. They were, however, as used to being shot at as any bomber crews, and were no more prone to breaking flight discipline than anyone. There was no accelerating, as the aircraft were spaced at 100 feet, measured from nose-to nose, and each aircraft took up 64 feet of that space. Accelerating would have produced an instant mid-air collision with the preceding plane. The tight formations were mandated by the necessity to put the troops on the ground in the maximum possible density. Similarly, there was no diving out of formation. Any aircraft which dives out of formation during a troop drop will be immediately colliding with the troopers who are parachuting from the planes in front of them, as all troops in a serial of planes jump at the same time. Anybody who put a paratrooper through his propeller and lived to tell about it, would shortly face a firing squad. It never happened.
Col. Robert Sink, Commander of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, considered the difficulties of what they were about to undertake at Normandy. He was to fly in the lead aircraft of serial #11, comprised of almost 50 planes, which would carry his 1st Battalion. The pilot of his aircraft would be Col. Charles Young, Commander of the 439th Troop Carrier Group. Young commanded not only the 50 planes carrying the 1st Battalion, but also the approximately 50 planes carrying the second Battalion as serial #12, and 100 more which would tow gliders. Col. Sink may have been among the first of those to underestimate what the Troop Carriers could do: He told Young that he didn't believe that Young could put him on the ground anywhere near the farmhouse that was Sink's designated command post, in the conditions that they were about to fly into. Young bet 10 English Pounds that he could put Sink within 300 yards, and actually put Sink within 200 yards, dropping Sink's second officer into the farmyard in the process. The entire 1st battalion jumped at the same time, and serial#12 arrived six minutes later, dropping the 2nd Battalion right on top of the 1st. Serial #12 was led by one of Col. Young's senior Officers, and included Lt.Col. Robert J Martin, Young's Group Communications Officer (Martin had been in the Air corps since the 1930's). Later, in England, Col Sink paid Young – double.
It is true that a substantial number of troops were scattered, and some, badly. But in the prevailing conditions, it was actually a better drop than even Eisenhower had hoped for, and the strategic planning anticipated greater airborne losses and lesser effectiveness than actually resulted.
For the troops who were dropped wrongly, it can be said that it was, indeed, their resolve, and their willingness to fight alone if necessary, that paid dividends beyond their numbers, and even beyond the plan.
It is noteworthy that the troopers of Col. Sink's 1st and 2nd Battalions were actually strung out for over a mile. There is no inconsistency here in considering this particular kind of scattering to be a perfect drop, because it was.The normal jump time for a stick of paratroopers from a C-47 was 30 seconds, or one man per second. Essentially, they were hooked up to a static line, and they rushed the door. The jump speed was 120 mph, and in 30 seconds, the plane had traveled one mile. As all troopers in a squadron element jumped simultaneously, and as the planes were in train, the first man from the last plane and the last man from the first plane were separated on the ground by well over a mile. And this would be the least dispersion possible under daylight circumstances in peacetime.
In the invasion across the Rhine, about 200 B-24's were modified to airdrop heavy cargoes, and they went in with the troop carriers. The B-24 crews later said that they were used to taking 20mm hits, but from aircraft, not from ground guns, and that they were also used to having 88's go off in their laps, but not so close to the guns that they could hear them going off as well. They expressed a great admiration for the C-47 crews, who operated in that as a normal environment. I have an original letter dated 15 January 1945, from Gen. Anthony Mcauliffe to a Troop Carrier Wing Commander, expressing his appreciation for the actions of the C-47 units that resupplied him at Bastogne, some of them taking 25% casualties, and still returning the next day. It is unfortunate that some seem to have relegated the Troop Carriers to having given second-class service, and thereby, effectively relegated them to second-class graves.
By Dennis Moran on Dec 12, 2009 at 6:13 am