World War II: Paratroopers

During World War II Paratroopers offer a tactical advantage as they can be deployed into the battlefield from the air, thereby allowing the troops to be placed in areas not accessible by land. This ability to enter the battle from different locations allows paratroopers to evade fortifications that are in place to prevent attack from a specific direction, and the possible use of paratroopers forces an army to spread their defenses to protect other areas which would normally be safe by virtue of the geography.

Historical Jumps

In September 1940, General de Gaulle created the 1ere Compagnie d’Infanterie de l’Air transformed into Compagnie de Chasseurs Parachutistes in October 1941. These units fought in Creta and Cyrenaique in June 1942 with its brothers in arms, the british SAS.

2 French SAS units were created and existed independently of the other French Airborne units until 1945. They were part of the SAS Brigade.

The 1er Régiment de Chasseurs Parachutistes was created in May 1943 from the 601 GIA. as well as the 3ème and 4ème Bataillons d'Infanterie de l'Air.

The 2eme and 3eme Régiment de Chasseurs Parachutistes were created in July 1944.

During the D Day the BIA fought in Normandy and Britanny, the SAS in Britanny and Loire region, the 1er Regiment Parachutiste de Choc in Provence . The first allied soldier to touch the French territory was a French SAS in Britanny on June 5th, Captain Pierre Marienne, the first allied soldier killed in action in France was the Corporal Emile Bouétard of the 4th Bataillon d’Infanterie de l’Air in Britanny.

Many units were created after WW2, starting with the Bataillon de Parachutistes Coloniaux (BPC) in Vannes-Meucon. Metropolitan Paratroopers, Colonial Paratroopers and much later Bataillons Etrangers de Parachutistes (BEP, French Foreign Legion) coexisted until 1954, a Bataillon Parachutiste Viet Nam was created (BPVN).

Between 1945 and 1954, 150 different airborne operations took place in Indochina, 5 of them being major operations against the Viet Minh strongholds and areas of concentration.

All the batallions became regiments between 1954 and 1956, except the Commandos de l'Air(Air Force)

in Algeria, paratroopers were the best counter insurgency units of the French Army. For the first time in history, they used the helicopters for Air Assault and Fire Support.

In 1956, the 2eme Regiment de Parachutiste Coloniaux jumped on the Suez Canal.

The French Army regrouped all the Army Airborne units into two parachute divisions in 1956, the 10th parachute division (10e Division Parachutiste, 10e DP) under the command of General Jacques Massu and the 25th Parachute Division (25e Division Parachutiste, 25e DP) under the command of General Sauvagnac. The Air Force Commando de l'Air

In the aftermath of the Algiers putsch, both divisions were disbanded and their regiments merged into the Light Intervention Division (Division Légère d'Intervention). This division became the 11th Parachute Division (11e Division Parachutiste, 11e DP) in 1971.

In the aftemath of the Cold War, the French Army reorganised and the 11e DP become the 11th Parachute Brigade in 1999.

French Airborne units have merged with non airborne troops like Alpine troops or special forces units into COS, Commandements des Operations Speciales (equivalent of US SOCOM)in order to face new threats of today's world.

Germany

Fallschirmjäger units made the first airborne invasion when invading Denmark on April 9, 1940. In the early morning hours they attacked and took control of Aarhus airport which played a key role acting as a refuel station for the Luftwaffe in the further invasion into Norway. In the same assault the bridges around Aalborg were taken.

Later in the war, the 7th Air Division's Fallschirmjäger assets were re-organised and used as the core of a new series of elite Luftwaffe Infantry divisions, numbered in a series beginning with the 1st Fallschirmjäger Division. These formations were organised and equipped as motorised infantry divisions, and often played a "fire brigade" role on the western front. Their constituents were often encountered on the battlefield as ad hoc battle groups (Kampfgruppen) detached from a division or organised from miscellaneous available assets. In accord with standard German practice, these were called by their commander's name, such as Group Erdmann in France and the Ramcke Parachute Brigade in North Africa.

After mid-1944, Fallschirmjäger were no longer trained as paratroops due to the realities of the strategic situation, but retained the Fallschirmjäger honorific. Near the end of the war, the series of new Fallschirmjäger divisions extended to over a dozen, with a concomitant reduction in quality in the higher-numbered units of the series. Among these divisions was the 9th Fallschirmjäger Division, which was the final parachute division to be raised by Germany during World War II. The division was destroyed during the Battle of Berlin in April 1945.

Russia

Russian Airborne Troops were first formed in the Soviet Union during the mid 1930s. But they were massively expanded during World War II, forming ten Airborne Corps plus numerous Independent Airborne Brigades, with most or all achieving Guards status. The 9th Guards Army was eventually formed with three Guards Rifle Corps (37,38,39) of Airborne divisions. One of the new units was the 100th Airborne Division.

At the end of the war they were reconstituted as Guards Rifle Divisions. They were later rebuilt during the Cold War, eventually forming seven Airborne Divisions, an Independent Airborne regiment and sixteen Air Assault Brigades. These divisions were formed into their own VDV commands (Vozdushno-Desantnye Voyska) to give the Soviets a rapid strike force to spearhead strategic military operations.

But following the collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been a reduction in airborne divisions. Three VDV divisions have been disbanded, as well as one brigade and a brigade-sized training centre.

VDV troops have participated in the rapid deployment of Russian forces in and around Pristina airport during the Kosovo War. They were also deployed in Chechnya as an active bridgehead for other forces to follow.

United Kingdom

The Parachute Regiment has its origins in the elite force of Commandos set up by the British Army at the request of Winston Churchill during the initial phase of the Second World War. Britain was inspired in the creation of airborne forces (including the Parachute Regiment, Air Landing Regiments, and the Glider Pilot Regiment) by the example of the German Luftwaffe's Fallschirmjäger, which had a major role in the invasions of Norway, and the Low Countries, and a pivotal, but Pyrrhic victory, in the invasion of Crete.

Britain's first airborne assault took place on February 10, 1941 when, what was then known as II Special Air Service (some 40 men of 500 trained in No. 2 Commando), parachuted into Italy to blow up an aqueduct in a daring raid named Operation Colossus.

After the Battle of Crete, it was agreed that Britain would need far more paratroopers for similar operations. No 2 Commando were tasked with specialising in airborne assault and became the nucleus of the Parachute Regiment.

United States

The first US Airborne Unit was a test platoon formed from part of the 29th Infantry Regiment, in July 1940. The platoon leader was 1st Lieutenant William T. Ryder who made the first paratroop jump for the US Military on August 16, 1940 at Lawson Field, Fort Benning, GA from a B-18 Bomber. He was immediately followed by Private William N. King, the first enlisted soldier to make a parachute jump.

Although airborne units were not popular with the top U.S. Army commanders, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sponsored the concept, and Major General William C. Lee organised the first paratroop platoon. This led to the Provisional Parachute Group, and then the United States Airborne Command. General Lee was the first commander at the new parachute school at Fort Benning, in west-central Georgia.

The US Army regards Major General William C. Lee as the father of the Airborne.

The first US Army Combat Jump was near Oran, Algeria, in North Africa on November 8, 1942 conducted by elements of the 509th Parachute Infantry.

^{courtesy of wikipedia.com}

Paratroopers were to play a decisive part in World War Two. Paratroopers were vital in the German attack on Crete, the initial attacks by the Allies at D-Day and they played an important role in the Allies failed attack on Arnhem.

Paratroopers developed an elite image on both sides during World War Two. The British paras who fought with such bravery at Arnhem helped to cement this image even in defeat. The German Fallschirmjager's attack on Crete did the same from the German perspective.

The desire to drop soldiers behind enemy lines dates back centuries.

"Where is the prince who can afford so to cover his country with troops for its defence, so that ten thousand men descending from the clouds might not, in many places, do an infinite deal of mischief before a force could be brought together to repel them?"

Benjamin Franklin in 1784

In World War One, Winston Churchill suggested dropping "flying columns" to destroy enemy bridges, factories and sabotage communications. An American officer, Colonel ‘Billy' Mitchell, devised a plan to actually drop troops by parachute from a British Handley-Page bomber onto the city of Metz. It was cancelled because the Armistice was signed.

Between the wars, all the world's military powers toyed with the idea of airborne operations. The Russians took an early lead in this field. In 1936, 1,200 men in the Red Army, parachuted during manoeuvres near Kiev. The watching foreign military attaches were suitably impressed. The Russians called these troops ‘locust warriors'. Ironically, despite their pre-war lead in this field, the Russians barely used paratroopers in World War Two. Men destined to lead Russian partisan groups were dropped behind German lines. A legend held by the Red Army told of soldiers who were dropped from a low flying plane without parachutes as they were targeted at a large snow-bank!

As the war approached neither Britain nor America had paratrooper regiments. Both countries put their faith in the movement of complete military units by air - men, supplies, artillery pieces etc. This was known as air-landing. The French had created a battalion of paratroopers in 1939, but it soon disbanded.

It was the Germans who seized on the potential that paratroopers gave. Such troops fitted in perfectly with Guderian's vision of lightening war - Blitzkrieg.

Göring, as head of the Luftwaffe, formed the first parachute regiments in 1935. During the Spanish Civil War, the Germans had gained experience in air-landings, primarily using the Junkers 52. It was to be this plane that was to be the workhorse of the Fallschirjager - the German paratroopers. A Luftwaffe general, Kurt Student, was given charge of airborne training.

The Germans launched what can be classed as the first airborne ‘attack' on March 12th, 1938 when German paratroopers seized and captured an airfield at Wagram in Austria during the take-over of Austria.

When the Germans attacked Poland and gave the world its first glimpse of Blitzkrieg in September 1939, paratroopers played no part despite many rumours that areas of Poland had been captured by paratroopers. However, in the attack on Western Europe, German paratroopers were used in the attack on Norway in May 1940 when they captured air bases at Oslo and Stavanger.

In the attack on the Netherlands, German paratroopers played a major role isolating the city of The Hague and in Belgium, they seized vital bridges and took a strategic fort at Eben Emael.

One year later, the Germans used paratroopers to attack Crete. This was the first time that paratroopers were given the task of attacking and defeating a complete target. At the time, it was the largest airborne attack in history. Though the island was taken after heavy fighting and the attack passed into military folklore, the Germans took very heavy casualties (25%) and Hitler lost faith in this form of attack. On the orders of Hitler, German paratroopers were sent to Russia where they fought as ground troops. However, the British read more into this battle and with the support of Churchill, Britain soon had an airborne division.

In June 1940, Churchill had written to the head of the military wing of the War Cabinet Secretariat:

"We ought to have a corps of at least 5,000 parachute troops...I hear something is being done already to form such a corps but only, I believe, on a very small scale. Advantage must be taken of the summer to train these forces who can none the less play their part meanwhile as shock troops in home defence."

W Churchill

Major John Rock of the Royal Engineers was given the task of creating a British airborne unit. Unlike the Germans, the British paratroopers were part of the army. Rock's unit was based at Ringway, Manchester and it had to make do with minimal supplies. Its first planes were Whitley bombers which had the rear gun turret removed so that paratroopers could jump out of the plane (as opposed to jumping out of a side door).

The British made their first demonstration jump in November 1940 when four Whitley bombers dropped 50 paratroopers. In the same month, General ‘Boy' Browning was appointed General Officer Commanding Airborne Troops. By the end of December 1940, everything was in place to create the British 1st Airborne Division whose distinctive mark was to be the maroon beret and a shoulder patch with Bellerophon astride the winged horse Pegasus.

In America, an airborne brigade was discussed in 1939 by the Chief of Infantry. A parachute test platoon came into being in June 1940 under the control of the Infantry. This platoon was headed by Major William Lee. In the autumn of 1940, a parachute battalion was created in America and a parachute school was founded at Fort Benning in Georgia. The Americans, like the British, experimented with the use of gliders to deliver their men to a drop zone.

Both Britain's and America's airborne divisions tended to total about 9,000 men. The tendency was to go for lightly armed men to boost their ability to move around a battlefield. This put them at a disadvantage on the ground if they were confronted by tanks and other armoured vehicles. The damage down to the Germans in Crete taught a lesson to the British and Americans in that any area that was prepared for an airborne attack, would result in heavy losses for the attackers.

Airborne soldiers at D-Day took disproportionately high casualties compared to the beach landings (with the exception of Omaha) while the airborne attack on Arnhem proved to be a failure. The success of the Allies in using parachute regiments to capture airstrips in Burma was only due to the involvement of ground forces as well as airborne troops. In the western sector of Europe, the speed of the Allies advance was such that the time to plan and co-ordinate a massed airborne raid was never available.

Most senior military commanders saw the role of the airborne troops simply as to seize strategic sites (such as bridges in the example at Arnhem) and to hold them until ground troops arrived. In 'Operation Varsity', airborne troops held a ridge overlooking the River Rhine to give support to the ground troops who needed to cross the river before moving on. In this example, the paratroopers were also expected to fight off any German attack which would hinder the speed of the crossing of the River Rhine.

On many occasions, paratroopers were used as normal infantrymen. This happened in both the European conflict as well as in the Pacific. During the Battle of the Bulge, Eisenhower used three airborne divisions as infantry units to fight off the German counter-offensives. In the Philippines, the US 11th Airborne Division fought as regular infantrymen.

"As impressive in number, size and accomplishment as were the airborne attacks of the Second World War, only the one fully independent airborne attack - the German invasion of Crete - can be said to have been decisive. This inevitably raises the question whether airborne troops were essential to the arsenal of the modern army or whether they were an unnecessary luxury." C MacDonald

^{excerpts from historylearningsite.co.uk}

Fallschirmjager, The German Paratroopers

The Fallschirmjager, the German paratroopers of World War 2, made the first airborne infantry assaults in history. When Germany invaded Western Europe in 1940, the German paratroopers parachuted and landed with gliders and captured strategic positions. A year later, in May 1941, in their greatest operation, they invaded and conquered the big island Crete in the Mediterranean solely by airborne troops. Their losses were such that Hitler decided never to do another large airborne operation, so the German paratroopers served the rest of the war as elite infantry.

The military use of paratroopers as airborne infantry is originally a Russian innovation. Since the 1920s the Russian military exercised and demonstrated the use of paratroopers in increasingly larger scale. Some foreign officers were allowed to observe these exercises. One of them was a German Colonel, Kurt Student, who was a fighter pilot and squadron leader in World War 1.

Student was excited by the military potential of paratroopers, but the establishment of the German paratroopers force was delayed until the German military buildup began in 1935. In the meantime Student became an expert with gliders, the other element of his future airborne force (after World War 2 the helicopter replaced the glider as the vehicle of airborne landings).

The German paratroopers force, the Fallschirmjager, was established in January 1936, with the enthusiast Student as its commander. It began as a single battalion of paratroopers and kept growing rapidly, becoming a division in 1938 and later a Corps, including paratroopers, glider troops, and elite infantry. It was a large and independent elite force of selected and very highly trained volunteers. They developed new tactics and techniques which improved their performance, such as the parachute-opening cord tied to the aircraft, which made parachuting safer and enabled them to jump from lower altitude and reduce exposure to enemy fire. The Fallschirmjager force belonged to the German Air Force. The concept was that they will be used to achieve what air bombardment can not, mainly capturing strategic positions behind enemy lines instead of destroying them.

Their transport aircraft were the common Junkers 52, which carried 17 paratroopers, and the DFS 230 glider, which carried over a ton of heavier weapons and equipment, or troops, and could be towed by an empty Junkers 52 and released over the landing zone.

Since 1938 the Fallschirmjager prepared for planned operations in Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Poland, but these were cancelled. Their first assault was in April 1940 in Norway and Denmark, when airborne forces landed in key Norwegian and Danish airfields and captured them to allow safe landing of additional forces. The Junkers 52 was used as a passenger aircraft before the war and many of the German pilots landed in those Norwegian airfields before the war, so the surprise and deception were perfect, and once they landed the Germans quickly overwhelmed the defenders.

Their second operation, which this time included parachuting and glider landings, was a month later in the invasion of Western Europe. They did what paratroopers do best, and captured vital river bridges behind enemy lines which the advancing German armor needed to cross, and a formidable Belgian fortress, Eben Emael, which guarded other key bridges.

Eben Emael was manned by about a thousand Belgian soldiers and was strongly fortified. It was a set of seven large fortified artillery positions, with 18 artillery guns, surrounded by many machine gun positions, mine fields, barbed wire, a moat, and connected via underground bunkers and tunnels.

On May 10, 1940, at dawn, this fortress was attacked by just 78 Fallschirmjager troops which landed on top of it with 10 gliders. They were equipped with light weapons and with several 100 pound armor piercing explosive charges. Before the raid these 78 paratroopers trained on a full size model of the Eben Emael fortress. They landed precisely on the roof of the large fortress in total surprise, and with their far superior fighting skill over the shocked Belgians they were able to quickly take over the roof area and confine the defenders to their fortified bunkers which they cracked one after the other with their special explosive charges. The German losses were just six dead and twenty wounded. A day later, when the paratroopers were joined by German ground forces, the hundreds of remaining Belgian defenders inside the fortress surrendered.

The small elite force of just 78 German paratroopers defeated a greatly larger force in a mighty fortress. It was a great success which remains one of the most daring and successful raids in history, a model of what elite soldiers can achieve in properly planned raids.

Kurt Student himself suffered a severe head injury in the fighting in Holland, but survived. A year later he was back on duty and he and Erwin Rommel proposed a large scale airborne operation.

Operation Mercury - the airborne invasion of Crete

They proposed that an entire Fallschirmjager division will parachute and land with gliders in the large island Crete in the eastern Mediterranean, overcome its allied defenders and occupy it, with the support of reinforcements which would follow by air and by sea. Impressed with the former successes of the Fallschirmjager, Hitler agreed, in condition that the operation in Crete will end before the beginning of the invasion to Russia a month later, but this was much more time than Student needed.

The strategic German goal in taking Crete was to make it a forward German base, mainly for the Luftwaffe, allowing it to more easily locate and attack British warships and convoys in the eastern Mediterranean and by that help Rommel in his North African campaign against the British forces in Egypt.

Crete was held by about 35,000 lightly armed allied and Greek infantry, most of them recently evacuated to Crete from mainland Greece. Thanks to intelligence the attack itself was not a surprise. It was also clear that the attack will be at the long North coast of Crete. The allied forces prepeared for the attack with what they had, and the Royal Navy patrolled in the sea North of Crete.

The Germans gathered near Athens forces and equipment for the operation from all over Europe. Student had:

• 3 elite infantry divisions (paratroopers division, airborne division, mountain infantry division)
• 500 Junkers 52 planes and 72 gliders for air transport
• 300 fighters, 200 Stuka dive bombers, and 30 other bombers for air support
• Civilian ships for troop transport and a force of torpedo boats for escort

The only flaw in the German preparations was that their intelligence underestimated the British force in Crete at a third of its actual size. This cost them in very heavy casualties during the attack.

In the morning of May 20, 1941, Crete was again heavily bombarded by the Germans, but this time the bombers were followed by large and dense formations of Junkers 52s carrying paratroopers or towing gliders. They attacked in several places but the main attack was in Canea and in nearby Maleme in the West side of Crete's North coast. There was an airport and a harbor there and both were defended.

The 6000 German paratroopers which landed in Canea and nearby Maleme , and also those which landed in the East side of Crete, fought all day, with heavy casualties, but allied defenders held their positions and it seemed that the Germans were going to lose the battle. Furthermore, at night the Germans tried to ship reinforcements by sea but they were intercepted and sunk by the British Navy. The German paratroopers also lost direct radio contact with the operation's command post in Athens which had to rely on pilots' reports to evaluate the situation.

It was clear to Student that he must urgently reinforce his paratroopers on the ground or lose them, but he didn't know if it was possible to land more troops in the airport at Maleme. He ordered Colonel Ramcke which commanded the paratroopers in West Crete and later became one of the most highly decorated German war heroes, to take Maleme at all cost, and then sent a single Junkers 52 to try to land in Maleme and return to report.

The German pilot landed in Maleme at dawn, under fire, stopped the Junkers 52 near some surprised German officers, received an updated situation report from them, and took off again. Once safely airborne again, the pilot immediately reported to Student that landing is possible, and Student immediately ordered the reinforcement force, which were already waiting inside their airplanes, to take off and fly to Maleme.

In the fierce battle of Maleme, the allied side made one critical mistake which greatly helped the Germans at the most critical time. The commander of the allied force which held the hill that covered the Maleme airport with fire, was under continuous pressure by Ramcke's paratroopers. The allied commander and his superiors failed to understand the key importance of preventing the Germans from using the airfield to bring in their reinforcements, so instead of receiving available reinforcements and hold this hill, the allied commander was permitted to abandon it, and it was just before the German Junkers planes began landing in Maleme with reinforcements.

It was a classic example of the importance of holding the higher ground position, which in modern fighting often translates to achieving air superiority, and there, in Maleme, abandoning the higher ground cost The Allies the battle, the island of Crete, and heavy losses which they suffered in the rest of the battle.

With the arrival of more and more reinforcements landing in Maleme airport, the Germans could finally secure their beachhead in West Crete, receive some reinforcements by sea (their total force in Crete reached 17,500), and start pushing the allied defenders. After several more days, the allied commander in Crete realized he was fighting a lost battle and ordered to evacuate his forces from the island, an evacuation which suffered heavy losses in men and ships to German air attacks.

Paratroopers on the ground

The German paratroopers conquered Crete, but at a heavy cost of thousands dead and thousands wounded, mostly of Germany's finest soldiers, and the loss of 170 transport aircraft and dozens of fighters and bombers. These losses were dwarfed just months later by the tremendous German losses in the fighting in Russia which began a month later, but in mid 1941, at the peak of his triumph, Adolf Hitler was shocked by the heavy losses of the paratroopers' invasion of Crete and he decided that there will be no more large scale German airborne operations. In the rest of World War 2, other than a few insignificant small operations, the Fallschirmjager fought on the ground, as elite infantry. They proved themselves again and again as formidable opponents, especially in Monte Cassino (early 1944), in Normandy, and in Holland, where they defeated the British paratroopers in Arnhem. The lessons of large scale operation of paratroopers by the Germans were learned by The Allies, which later during the war made several such operations.

^{excertps from worldwar2.com}