airborne warfare

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airborne warfare. In 1922, Soviet soldiers were dropped successfully by parachute from aircraft. This experiment aroused the interest of German officers attached to the Red Army as technical advisers. When Hitler rearmed in the mid-1930s, however, the army lacked enthusiasm for the airborne concept. It was adopted by the Luftwaffe with the intention of sending parachutists to attack targets inaccessible to aerial bombs. After a period of uncertainty, an air force officer, Maj-General Student, was ordered in 1938 to command and expand an airborne striking arm.

The pioneers had already developed equipment and training, including use of a ‘static line’ instead of a ripcord for parachute opening. The line attached to the aircraft pulled the parachute out automatically as the user fell away, finally releasing the canopy, which reduced individual misjudgements in falling and permitted the dropping of men much closer to the ground. The trainee was taught to pack his own parachute and was exercised vigorously in exit and landing techniques. Those recruited were volunteers who made six descents to qualify. About three-quarters of each course passed.

The Germans had a suitable transport aircraft in service, the Ju52. With seventeen parachutists its range was 1,370 km. (850 mi.). However, until these troops had landed and assembled, they were vulnerable to ground forces; and even when gathered, they lacked vehicles or heavy weapons, so Student decided to carry these in gliders. The DFS230, specially designed, lifted troops or freight up to 1,135 kg. (2,500 lb.) when towed by an empty Ju52. Men and aircraft were incorporated into the 7th Fliegerdivision and an army division was made available to form an airborne corps.

German airborne operations were planned but not executed against Czechoslovakia and Austria in 1938–9, and for the Polish campaign. The world's first airborne operation was mounted on 9 April 1940 when divisional elements were used in the Norwegian campaign, with smaller numbers in the invasion of Denmark. One month later, in a variety of aircraft, Junkers, Heinkel 59 float planes and DFS 230 gliders, the corps joined the assault into the Low Countries that led to the fall of France. Combined airlanding and parachute operations at The Hague were unsuccessful, but glider and parachute troops captured two important bridges over the Meuse and the massive Belgian fortress at Eben Emael.

These operations alarmed the Allies. During the remainder of the fighting there were frequent reports of parachutists landing which, though false, contributed to the crises preceding the Allied defeat and evacuation (see Dunkirk).

On 6 June 1940 Churchill gave instructions for the ‘Deployment of parachute troops on a scale equal to five thousand’. These were to complement sea raiders (later called commandos) to harry German garrisons in continental Europe, the policy of what Churchill called ‘butcher and bolt’.

The Central Landing Establishment and School was formed at RAF Ringway, Manchester, to gather suitable parachutes and gliders, and to train volunteers for airborne operations. A few Whitley bombers were provided, converted to drop parachutists from a hole in the fuselage floor, and to tow gliders. The American ‘statichute’ was purchased but was prone to malfunction. It was successfully modified by Raymond Quilter of the GQ Parachute Company, and further developed as the Type X with Leslie Irvin. Webbing was adopted for the static line. The General Aircraft and Airspeed Companies quickly produced a range of gliders including the light Hotspur, which was relegated to training, the 32-seat Horsa, and the Hamilcar, a large 40-seater which could also carry several light vehicles or guns. A Glider Training Squadron opened at Ringway.

Training began, but progress was slow. Bomber Command was opposed to surrendering its aircraft. The air staff suggested that, despite German success in the Low Countries, ‘it was at least possible that this was the last time that parachute troops are used in major operations’; gliders might be better employed for aerial refuelling or bomb carrying, but training of pilots would slow the expansion of RAF aircrew. Many army commanders resented the loss of the thousands of high-calibre officers and men volunteering for parachuting. Of these, training facilities could cope with only 500 for several months. Churchill's persistence overcame these objections. The first unit, No. 2 Commando, became the 11th Special Air Service Battalion, and finally the 1st Parachute Battalion. Plans were made to form a parachute brigade of three battalions with detachments from all arms.

On the night of 10/11 February 1941, Major T. A. G. Prichard with 35 members of the commando landed by parachute in southern Italy and demolished an aqueduct at Tragino to deprive local military ports of water. This operation (COLOSSUS) was a pinprick in the war effort, but the raid alarmed the Italian government, causing the diversion of considerable forces to guard duties. A year later, a company from the 2nd Battalion carried off German radar equipment from Bruneval, near Le Havre.

In the meantime the Germans had again demonstrated the strategic potential of airborne forces. Beginning on 20 May 1941, Student launched an operation (MERKUR) against Crete. Against all expectations, it was successful, although a quarter of the parachutists were killed. This triumph influenced the formation of the 1st British Airborne Division with one ‘airlanding’ (gliderborne) and two parachute brigades, supporting Arms and Services under Maj-General Browning. The object was no longer simply raiding but to provide a force for strategic intervention. A wing, later Thirty-eighth Group, Royal Air Force, was formed to complement the division. The USA also began to develop parachute and glider units during 1941, including the CG4A WACO glider. When they joined the war, two items of American equipment were welcomed by British airborne forces, the C47 Dakota aircraft with its door exit, and the jeep.

British and American parachute detachments took part in the invasion of French North Africa in November 1942 (see North African campaign), and in greater numbers at the start of the Sicilian campaign in July 1943. Many lessons were learned in these operations. The British 1st Parachute Brigade also earned a high reputation in ground operations in Tunisia; the Germans called them ‘Red Devils’, partly because of the distinctive maroon berets worn by British airborne forces. A fourth parachute brigade was raised in the Middle East, principally from British units in the Indian Army; another body, the 6th Airborne Division, included a Canadian battalion, formed in the UK. The 1st Airborne returned home to join them in 1943, leaving one reinforced formation—2nd Independent Parachute Brigade—for operations in Italy, Greece, and Southern France. The two British divisions with the American 82nd and 101st formed a part of General Eisenhower's command for the reoccupation of north-west Europe (see OVERLORD).

Allied delivery techniques, training, and special operational equipment had advanced considerably by 1944. The number of fatalities in early parachute training had been greatly reduced. In the UK, Stirling, Albemarle, and, most importantly, Halifax bombers had been brought into service for parachute and equipment dropping, and as glider tugs. Numbers of gliders and pilots had been organized to provide carriage for essential light vehicles and heavy weapons for the parachute units, men and freight for those airlanding. Dakota aircraft also dropped cylindrical containers for the troops aboard, and each parachutist carried on his person light equipment and a Sten machine carbine (see small arms) for immediate action on landing. Dropping and landing patterns and rallying drills had been perfected.

Maj-General James Gavin's 82nd, Maj-General Maxwell D. Taylor's 101st, and Maj-General R. N. Gale's 6th Airborne Divisions took part in the assault phase of OVERLORD when they landed ahead of the seaborne forces in Normandy on 6 June 1944. Their objective was to secure both flanks which they did successfully, having been preceded by pathfinder companies whose task was to mark the dropping and landing zones (DZs and LZs). Though some units were scattered, the majority of the airborne tasks were accomplished, and the divisions remained in action on the ground for some weeks.

In August 1944 all Allied airborne formations became part of Lt-General Brereton's Allied Airborne Army which comprised 1st British Airborne Corps and the 18th US Airborne Corps. As the Allies advanced, Browning, who commanded the 1st Airborne Corps, co-ordinated planning of sixteen operations between August and September. None was executed. The seventeenth, MARKET-GARDEN, involved the two American divisions, 1st Airborne Division, and the Polish Parachute Brigade whose task was to capture bridgeheads across the Dutch Maas, Waal, and Lower Rhine rivers, and their associated canals to facilitate the advance of Horrocks's 30th Corps on the ground. There were insufficient aircraft to lift the corps simultaneously, which contributed to the prolonged isolation of 1st Airborne under German armoured pressure at Arnhem. A Rhine bridgehead was thereby denied. However, the 6th British and 17th US Airborne Divisions of Lt-General Matthew B. Ridgway's 18th Airborne Corps dropped successfully beyond the Rhine in one lift in the following March, the final such operation of the war.

In some of these operations, Allied troops fought German parachutists because, after Crete, the latter were used as ground forces, Hitler having decided that large-scale airborne operations were too expensive. The Axis thus missed an opportunity to capture Malta in 1942 using Student's veterans and the high-quality Italian Folgore Airborne Division which was, instead, used—and destroyed—at El Alamein. Still, Student used a small detachment to free Mussolini from his captors.

Soviet airborne warfare was largely confined to minor deployments, several of which were in conjunction with defensive amphibious warfare operations on the Black Sea coast. Airborne warfare had been under the patronage of Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky (1893–1937) up to his tenure as chief of armaments in 1931 and he had encouraged the early development of assault gliders and parachutes; it had been neglected after he was murdered in Stalin's pre-war purges.

Adverse terrain mostly prevented large-scale employment of airborne forces in the Far East, but the Japanese, with the aid of German instructors, began the training of paratroops in 1940, and they were as well advanced in this type of warfare as they were in amphibious operations. The Japanese Navy was quick to grasp the potential of airborne forces—which could capture vital airfields before they could be destroyed—and 1,800 Japanese marines received paratroop training in which they were taught to jump from low altitudes at the very short interval of one second, reducing their dispersion on the ground. They were formed into two battalions, the 1st and 3rd Yokosuka Special Naval Landing Forces. Each battalion, comprising 844 officers and men, included three infantry companies, an HQ company, and an anti-tank unit. In January 1942 they mounted their first operation when, during the Japanese invasion of the Netherlands East Indies, they captured the airfield at Menado on Celebes. This was successful, as was a remarkable assault by a small team of paratroops to capture the oil fields at Palembang in Sumatra, though neither of these operations was properly co-ordinated with amphibious forces. But on 20 February 1942 this co-ordination was achieved when 308 men of the 3rd Yokosuka Special Naval Landing Force took part in the first vertical envelopment of an enemy force in history when they dropped behind Allied lines in Timor and held up their retreat until the landing forces had advanced and started to encircle them. Apart from these early offensive operations, Japanese paratroops were mostly used as raiding forces.

The Allies also employed airborne forces during the Pacific war, most notably the 11th US Airborne Division which landed on Luzon by sea and from the air in January 1945 during the recapture of the Philippines. Also, during the Burma campaign, the 50th Indian Parachute Brigade played an important part in the ground fighting around Imphal, and a composite Gurkha Parachute Battalion captured Elephant Point at Rangoon by airborne assault in May 1945.

Anthony Farrar-Hockley

Bibliography

Farrar-Hockley, A. , Student (New York, 1973).
MacDonald, C. , By Air to Battle (New York, 1969).
Otway, T. , Airborne Forces (London, 1951).

Airborne Warfare. The first concept for the use of American airborne troops occurred during World War I in 1918, when Gen. Billy Mitchell proposed a mass drop of paratroopers against German trenches on the western front. The following year, Gen. John J. Pershing endorsed Mitchell's plan, but the armistice of November 1918 made the airborne assault unnecessary. Isolationism and small budgets between the world wars prevented the development of an airborne force, but the U.S. Army kept a close eye on developments in the Soviet Union and Germany where paratrooper and glider units participated in large training exercises. The dramatic, successful assault in May 1940 on Fort Eben Emael in Belgium by German parachute and glider troops, followed by a successful German mass airborne assault against Crete in 1941, convinced military planners that America needed an airborne capability for the coming war.

On 16 August 1940, a test platoon of U.S. paratroopers made their first jump at Fort Benning, Georgia, and by April 1942, four months after U.S. entry into World War II, a parachute school was in full operation. In August 1942, the army formed its first two airborne divisions, the 82nd and the 101st. Their mission was vertical envelopment: to land behind enemy lines in order to disrupt command, control, and communications and to impede the enemy's ability to fight. From the beginning, U.S. paratroopers exhibited characteristics that remain central to the airborne fighting spirit. All were volunteers, physically and mentally tough, filled with esprit de corps, and capable of acting alone in a crisis.

The U.S. Army formed six airborne divisions of parachute and glider regiments during World War II, and the most famous exploits of these elite units under commanders such as Maxwell D. Taylor, James M. Gavin, and Matthew B. Ridgway occurred in Europe. The first combat action took place in November 1942, during the North Africa campaign, followed by a larger airborne assault during the invasion of Sicily in July 1943. Early airborne operations had significant problems; but in September 1943, paratroopers proved their worth when the 82nd Airborne made an emergency jump into the beachhead at Salerno, Italy, and helped prevent a potential Allied debacle. The 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions were among the best in the war and fought valiantly in June 1944 as the airborne vanguard of the D‐Day landing. Despite some units being dropped in the wrong place, they captured key bridges and road junctures and impeded the German Army's ability to react to the amphibious assault. In August, a provisional division of airborne and glider troops supported Operation Dragoon, the invasion of southern France. The 82nd and 101st Airborne jumped again that September and fought at Eindhoven and Nijmegen in Holland as part of Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery's abortive British Operation Market‐Garden to seize the Arnhem Bridge on the Rhine. During the Battle of the Bulge, the 82nd Airborne helped to defend the northern shoulder of the German salient near St. Vith. Meanwhile, the 101st rushed to Bastogne by truck and fought a dogged defense of the village, denying the Germans control of an important road junction even while surrounded. In March 1945, the 17th Airborne Division participated in Operation Varsity, the airborne assault supporting the British crossing of the Rhine River in northern Germany. The 11th Airborne Division fought in several campaigns in the Pacific and distinguished itself in 1945 during the liberation of the Philippines.

The Cold War saw a dramatic transformation in airborne forces. Significant reductions in airborne units occurred after World War II. During the Korean War, the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team made two jumps in an effort to cut off retreating North Korean forces at Sukchon in October 1950 and at Musan‐ni in March 1951. The Korean War saw a greater use of helicopters, and in 1952 the army formed its first helicopter battalions for vertical envelopment and soon eliminated all glider units.

The unconventional nature of the Vietnam War precluded normal airborne operations and led to air‐mobile warfare in which helicopters transported soldiers to the battlefield. The army's first air‐mobile division, the 1st Cavalry Division, deployed to Vietnam in August 1965 and fought the war's initial, major air‐mobile Battle of the Ia Drang Valley in November 1965. Later, the 101st Airborne Division converted from parachutes to helicopters, and air‐mobile “search and destroy” missions came to dominate U.S. operations. The 173rd Airborne Brigade conducted the only major parachute drop of the Vietnam War near Tay Ninh City in February 1967.

In the post–Vietnam War era, airborne and air‐mobile forces remain vital to the U.S. military. The 82nd Airborne and the 101st Airborne (Air Assault) Divisions deployed to Saudi Arabia in 1990 and saw action during the Persian Gulf War. In 1994, the 82nd Airborne was en route from North Carolina to a parachute drop to help overthrow the military junta in Haiti, but was recalled in the air due to successful political negotiations. Today, the 82nd Airborne and the 101st Airborne (Air Assault) Divisions retain their elite status, maintain a high level of readiness, and possess the strategic mobility to respond rapidly to crises across the globe.
[See also Army Combat Branches: Aviation.]

Bibliography

S.L.A. Marshall , Night Drop, 1962.
John R. Galvin , Air Assault, 1969.
James M. Gavin , On to Berlin, 1978.
Gerard M. Devlin , Paratrooper!, 1979.
Clay Blair , Ridgway's Paratroopers, 1985.
William B. Breuer , Geronimo!, 1989.

Michael D. Doubler