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Saturday, June 06, 2009

The D-Day Airborne Landings

This is Steven Petrick Posting.

Sixty-five years ago, one of the two largest air-borne operations in world history took place, as elements of two American and one British airborne divisions were dropped over the Normandy countryside. The military planners were afraid that the casualties among the airborne troops would be exceedingly heavy (some predicted as high as 90%). The entire operation had been very carefully planned.

Things went wrong almost from the start, making the predictions of disaster seem the more likely.

Weather for the drops was not perfect (but then, weather seldom cooperates with military operations), that, and the relative inexperience of the Transport Command pilots in flying in close formation, at night, in less than perfect weather, while being shot at, resulted in many of the paratroopers being dropped miles from their designated landing points. Tragically, some of these men were even dropped into the English Channel where their equipment loads virtually insured they were drowned.

There is no accounting for the numbers of these men who died, or were badly injured, before they even had the opportunity to fire their own weapons. Those who made it to the ground were often lost (being miles from any of the land marks they had studied continuously in preparation for this operation), separated from the majority of their comrades, and surrounded by enemies.

Given how badly the drops had gone, one might have thought the men would have been demoralized, and literally simply tried to hide until the amphibious forces could contact them.

Some did.

The majority of them, however, gathered around their leaders, or in some cases found among their number an individual who, while he did not wear a senior NCO's stripes or the insignia of an officer, had the character and determination to step forward and become the leader. While the numbers of paratroopers that descended on Normandy were in the thousands, most of these little detachments of exceedingly determined men numbered in the tens and twenties initially. They, however, chose not to wait for the war to come to them, they went out looking for it.

Some by their determination reached their original objectives. Others, nowhere near where they were supposed to be, spread confusion through the German lines, creating an effective paralysis in the ability of the Germans to react, and keeping many local reserve formations pinned in place since they did not know which way to move.

The airborne drop could have been a complete disaster. Indeed, it started out that way, but the determined aggressiveness of the soldiers turned the looming disaster into an advantage, carving out zones that, while only a handful of airborne soldiers were present, could not be crossed, delaying German movements until the amphibious soldiers could secure the beaches.