Airborne: A Guided Tour of an Airborne Task Force

by Tom Clancy

  Like Ridgway, these men would become famous for their dynamic personalities and heroic exploits during the war. In fact, the independent, steel-backboned, Brooklyn-born “Jumpin’ Jim” Gavin would instill such a powerful esprit de corps in his troops that they would have a tough time integrating with the rest of the 82nd. The 505th had a reputation for being as rowdily arrogant as they were courageous and superbly trained. Though an intense rivalry would develop between their units, Tucker and Gavin shared the conviction that a good commanding officer had to place himself at the center of the action with his men. Both did exactly that time and again as the war ground on, beginning with the 82nd’s chaotic trial by fire during the invasion of Sicily in June 1943, code-named Operation Husky.

  After a great deal of wrangling among high-level planners, many of whom were enormously skeptical of the untested airborne and its strategic value in combat, the 82nd had been relegated to a supporting role in the overall scheme of the invasion: blocking any counterattack upon the flanks of amphibious U.S. forces as they made their beach landings in the Gulf of Gela, and then linking up with elements of Terry Allen’s 1st Infantry Division (the “Big Red One”) to await further orders.

  The paratroopers found themselves plagued with difficulties from the get-go. The division’s training exercises in North Africa were rushed and disorganized. Its pre-staging base in Oujda, French Morocco, was a hellish oven, where the tent camps were besieged with aggressive black flies the size of cherries and scouring windblown dust that caked in the eyes, nose, and throat of every man. During one of the training jumps, the desert siroccos had whipped up to over 30 mph/48 kph and scattered the troopers across the desert. Dozens of the troopers suffered multiple injuries and fractures. Their situation did not improve when the division was shipped to a makeshift airbase in Kairoun, Tunisia, in preparation for the assault. In that Muslim city, where thousands of the devoted were interred in tombs barely two feet underground, the air stank of centuries-old human rot, and morale began to falter. Also, the dysentery many of the troopers contracted from drinking tainted water hardly improved their situation. Only the start of the Sicilian invasion improved things.

  The assault commenced on the night of June 10th, 1943. Bolstered by a single battalion of the 504th, Gavin’s 505th led off for the 82nd on D-Day, while the remaining two battalions of the 504th cooled their heels in Kairun. There they awaited word that they could jump into so-called “friendly territory” already seized by the 505th. However, things quickly began to go wrong for Gavin and his men. Entire squadrons of the troop transports missed their landmarks and took incorrect headings to their targets. This was in large part because their transport crews lacked night-flying experience. In addition, high winds caused other planes to break formation and overshoot their DZs, scattering the troopers all over Sicily. Some of them—including Gavin himself—wound up well behind enemy lines. Lost, out of contact with their officers, little groups of paratroopers (the LGOPs that we talked about earlier) wandered around the island for days, conducting improvised commando-style raids as they searched for the Allied front lines. Amazingly, they probably did more damage to the Axis effort in Sicily by these raids than taking their original planned objectives would have done.

  Bad as the initial drop had been, even greater catastrophe befell Tucker’s 504 on the night of D-Day+1. While Ridgway had argued for the regiment’s C-47 transport planes to fly a course that would take them around the ground and naval forces massed at the beachhead, he was overruled, and the long aerial column was instead routed over the two thousand vessels of the invasion fleet. To ensure a safe corridor for the paratroop drop, Allied units were ordered to refrain from firing at aircraft under any circumstances. But Luftwaffe airstrikes had been harassing American and British troops since early that morning, pounding the beaches and scoring hits on the transport and supply vessels. Nerves were on edge, and as the 504th approached the beach slightly ahead of schedule, somebody down below opened fire. Within seconds, antiaircraft batteries everywhere were letting loose with everything they had. Reuben Tucker’s own C-47 transport took over one thousand direct hits, and the paratroopers aboard were forced to bail out into hellish, swirling constellations of AAA fire. Tucker miraculously survived—along with most of his troopers. Others did not fare as well. Nearly half the planes that launched from North Africa were hit, twenty-three of them never making it back to base. Thirty-seven others sustained serious damage. The combined casualties among the paratroopers and airmen numbered in excess of 300. Three days after the two disastrous drops, only 3,024 of the 5,307 troops the 82nd took into Sicily were accounted for. The tragic failure of these operations not only devastated the division’s already sagging morale, but cast a shadow over its future viability in combat. Things were soon to change, though.

  Once the division had returned to its base in North Africa, Ridgway rapidly began to apply the hard-won lessons of Operation Husky. Transport and coordination procedures were changed so that drop accuracy would be improved and the disastrous “friendly fire” incident on D+1 would not be repeated. Pathfinder units were created and equipped to help guide the transport aircraft to their drop zones (DZs). Equipment was also improved, particularly antitank weapons. British 6-pounder/57mm antitank guns were added to the division’s equipment, though the anemic American “bazooka” would be a continued failure for another year. One thing that had gone right for the paratroops was their performance once they had hit the ground. No less an authority than General George Patton was full of praise for their fighting abilities and spirit. They would need it for the coming invasion of the Italian mainland, Operation Avalanche.

  A number of different staff proposals were made for the employment of the division, but in the end the 82nd would be used to close a dangerous 10-mile/16-kilometer gap between British and American ground forces at Salerno. Three regiments (the 504th, 505th, and 509th) with all their gear were dropped on the night of September 14th, 1943, with excellent results. The lessons from Sicily had been rapidly applied, and the 82nd took all of its assigned objectives. Unfortunately, various units of the 82nd wound up paying for their excellent performance by being held on the line in Italy long after their airborne missions had been completed. As a result, many superbly trained paratroops wound up being killed in worthless firefights.

  Even more disturbing was the use of the 504th as an assault infantry unit during the disastrous Anzio invasion near Rome in early 1944. Once again, the paratroops of the 82nd were used in a role that regular infantry units would have been perfectly adequate for. Other than a number of needless casualties, the only effect of the Anzio campaign on the 82nd was to deny the division the use of the 504th for the upcoming invasion of France.

  The invasion of Normandy in June of 1944 was to be the formal validation of airborne warfare for the Allies. Three full divisions of airborne troops (the American 82nd and 101st, as well as the British 6th) would be dropped behind the Normandy beachhead in the hours just before and after the landings. The idea was that the airborne units would block the advance of counterattacking German forces into the vulnerable Allied units on the five landing beaches while they gathered their strength. Some Allied leaders, especially the testy British Air Marshal Leigh-Mallory, tried to have the drop canceled for fear of the heavy casualties that might occur. Fortunately, General Eisenhower realized the need to get maximum combat power on the ground as quickly as possible, and the drops were on.

  For the Normandy invasion, the 82nd was assigned the tough job of taking and holding a series of roads and crossroads behind the Utah beachhead. It was going to be a tough target. The famous German “Desert Fox,” Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, had personally supervised the anti-invasion measures, and numerous obstacles had been laid to specifically defeat airborne operations. Large numbers of low-lying fields had been flooded to drown heavily laden paratroops when they landed, and “Rommel’s Asparagus” (thick poles topped with barbed wire and/or mines) had been planted in fields to destr
oy gliders. Despite all these enemy preparations, the drop plans went forward, and were ready by early June.

  The night of the June 5th/6th, 1944, was a nightmarish one for both the troopers of the 82nd and their German opponents. Bad weather had delayed the start of D-Day twenty-four hours until just after midnight of the 5th. Even with the delay, the weather conditions were barely adequate for the invasion to begin. The worst effects were reserved for the troopers of the airborne assault, whose aircraft became hopelessly mixed and lost over Normandy. It was the nightmare of Sicily all over again as all three regiments of the 82nd (the 505th, 507th, and 508th) were scattered in the darkness. Some of the transport crews flew all the way across Normandy, dumping their loads of paratroops into the sea to drown. The worst disaster was to befall a company of the 505th, which overshot its drop zone and landed in the middle of the town square in Sainte-Mère-Eglise. German troops, coincidentally fighting a fire there, massacred the American troopers in their chutes. The next day, the 505th fought not only to take the town, but to recover the bodies of their dead comrades.

  All around Normandy, mixed LGOPs, sometimes containing troopers from both the 82nd and 101st, fought to take objectives, and hold the line while the invasion troops fought their way off the Utah and Omaha beach-heads. By afternoon, though, help was on the way in the form of the 325th Glider Infantry Regiment, which swooped in to reinforce the division. Despite some heavy losses of gliders to obstacles, most of the regiment made it down safely, and began to help in the gathering fight. The 82nd would be in continuous deployment for the next thirty-three days, sustaining casualties equal to 46 percent of the troopers who had been dispatched to France. Once again, the division had found that success was rewarded with more combat. Their unrivaled tactical skill on the battlefield kept them committed to battle long after they should have been returned to England for training and refitting. However, they had done their job well, and the fears of those like Leigh-Mallory had been proven groundless, in spite of the problems during the drop.

  Lieutenant General James Gavin, America’s greatest Airborne leader. Even today, “Slim Jim” Gavin is the standard by which all Airborne officers are measured.

  OFFICIAL U.S. ARMY PHOTO

  By the time the 82nd and 101st had made good their losses and had regained their combat edge, it was midsummer. By now, General Patton’s Third Army had finally broken out of the Normandy bridgehead, and was racing, along with other British and American armies, to the pre-war borders of Nazi Germany. During this time, there were almost a dozen separate plans to use the airborne forces, now formed into the First Airborne Army, to assist in the effort to finish off Germany. Unfortunately, the Allied forces were driving so fast that none of the plans could be executed in time. Opportunity awaited, though, in the polder country of Holland.

  In September 1944, the 82nd played a crucial part in Operation Market Garden, a joint American-British attempt to penetrate the Siegfried Line along a narrow front extending through Belgium, Holland, and the North German plains. The plan was ambitious not only in its aim of driving the war to Berlin in a single decisive attack, but also in concept: It was to be the first true strategic use of airborne troops by the Allied military, calling for parachute and glider troops to land deep behind enemy lines and seize five major bridges (and a number of other objectives) in Holland, laying a “carpet” of paratroops across the Rhine for the rapidly advancing units of the British XXX Corps. Unfortunately, the Market Garden plan was terribly flawed, resulting in a tragic setback for Allied hopes of ending the war in 1944. Some of the flaws resulted from an overly ambitious schedule for the ground forces, which were to go over 60 miles/97 kilometers in just two to four days over a single exposed road. Also, the operation was conceived and launched in just seven days, allowing a number of oversights to slip into the final details of the Market Garden plan. Then the British staff of Field Marshal Montgomery, which was planning Market Garden, ignored a number of intelligence reports from underground and Signal sources that the planned invasion route was a rest area for German units being refitted. When Market Garden started, it turned into a bloodbath for the three airborne divisions involved (the 82nd, 101st, and British 1st, along with a brigade of Polish paratroops).

  While the initial drops on September 17th went well, things began to go quickly wrong. Several of the key bridges in the south near Eindhoven (covered by the 101st) were demolished, requiring the ground forces to rebuild them, causing delays. Then the paratroops of the British 1st Para Division in the north at Arnheim found that they had dropped right on top of a pair of Waffen SS Panzer divisions (the 9th and 10th) which had been refitting. Only a single battalion made it to the Rhine bridges, where it was destroyed several days later. In the middle section around Nijmegen and Grave, things went a bit better for the 82nd, commanded by now-General Gavin. The division took most of the objectives assigned, though it failed to take the bridge over the lower Rhine near Nijmegen. Finally, in a desperate bid to take the bridge and clear the way for XXX Corps to relieve the besieged British 1 st Paras at Arnheim, Gavin took a bold gamble on September 20th. Borrowing boats from XXX Corps, he ordered Colonel Tucker’s 504th Regiment to make a crossing of the river, so that the bridge could be taken from both ends at once. Led by Major Julian Cook, several companies of the 504th made the crossing under a murderous fire, linking up with British tanks from XXX Corps, taking the bridge intact. Unfortunately, it was all for naught. XXX Corps was unable to get to Arnheim, and the remnants of the British 1st Paras were evacuated.

  Thousands of Allied paratroops had been shot down for an operation that would never have been attempted had better staff planning been present. The 82nd, though, had done an outstanding job, and Gavin was clearly the rising star of the American airborne community. After holding the area around Nijmegen for a few weeks, the 82nd, along with the 101st, returned to new bases near Paris for a well-deserved refit and rest. Though Market Garden had resulted in heavy losses for the airborne corps and fallen well short of its goal, the operation had left no doubt about the 82nd’s combat efficiency. As General Gavin pointed out, the valiant men of the division accomplished all of their major tactical objectives, held firm against every counteroffensive the enemy threw at them, secured the key Nijmegen bridge in one of the war’s legendary battles, and liberated a chunk of the Netherlands that would eventually become the staging ground for the Allies’ final strikes into Germany. The airborne had at last gotten the vindication it deserved. There would be one more battle for the 82nd, though.

  On December 16th, 1944, the Germans counterattacked in the Ardennes Forest in Luxembourg, trying to drive to Antwerp and split the Allied forces in half.47 Thinly held, the Ardennes was covered by low cloud and fog, making Allied airpower useless. Unfortunately, General Eisenhower, the supreme Allied commander, had only two divisions in reserve to commit to the battle: the 82nd and 101st. With most of the Allied airborne leadership away on Christmas leave, it fell on General Gavin to command the two divisions, and get the most out of them. Moving into Luxembourg in trucks, Gavin emplaced the 101st in a town at the junction of a number of roads: Bastogne. Under the command of the 101st Division’s artillery commander, Brigadier General Tony McAuliffe, they were to make a legendary stand against the Germans. At one point, when ordered to surrender, McAuliffe replied with a uniquely American response: “Nuts!” Eventually, Bastogne and the 101st were relieved by General Patton’s Third Army on December 26th.

  Famous as the fight of the 101st was, it fell to the 82nd to stop the really powerful wing of the German offensive. Gavin moved the All-Americans to the northern shoulder of the German penetration. There, around the Belgian town of Werbomont, Gavin deployed his four regiments into a “fortified goose egg,” ordering them to dig in and hold the Germans at all costs. Equipped with a new weapon, a captured supply of German-made Panzerfaust antitank rockets, the division held off the attacks of four Waffen SS Panzer divisions, blunting their attacks long enough for reinforcements to a
rrive and the weather to clear so that Allied airpower could destroy the German forces. The 82nd would spend a total of two months fighting in the worst winter weather on record, but it stopped the Germans cold when it counted.

  Now, having fought its fifth major battle in just eighteen months, the division was again pulled back to refit. Though there was a plan to drop the 82nd into Berlin, the war ended before the plan, Operation Eclipse, could be executed. At the end of World War II, all but two of America’s airborne divisions, the 11th and the 82nd, were deactivated, with the former remaining on occupation duty in Japan, and the All-Americans coming home to American soil, and a heroes’ welcome, in the summer of 1945. It had been a hard war for the All-Americans, but they had forged a reputation for battle that still shines today.

  Although airborne operations played only a limited role in the Korean War, it was during that period that the concept of airmobility—the idea that aircraft could deliver, support, and evacuate ground troops in remote and inhospitable terrain—began to evolve. This evolution took a giant leap forward with the development of rotary-wing aircraft (helicopters) and their extensive use in the steamy jungles of Vietnam. By 1963, CH-21 Shawnee transport helicopters and their successors, the famed UH-1B “Hueys,” had already conducted numerous missions in Southeast Asia, but it would take another year before the Army’s upper-echelon strategists grew to have full confidence in the airmobile concept—and then only because of the determination of two men: Jim Gavin and General Harry Kinnard.