Matters did not proceed so smoothly for the two kompanien of Fallschirmjäger tasked to secure the Norwegian airfields at Fornebu near Oslo and at Sola, farther west near Stavanger. The fog that had delayed the attack on Aalborg and Copenhagen extended up to 2,000 feet over the Skaggerrak Strait separating Denmark and Norway and reduced visibility to less than thirty yards. These were extremely hazardous conditions for large formations of transport aircraft, and the first wave of Junkers 52 carrying Major Erich Walther, the commander of I Bataillon, Fallschirmjäger Regiment 1, his HQ element and 2 Kompanie were obliged to turn back at 08:20. Two aircraft failed to return, having either collided or crashed into the sea in the murk; the approach flight appears to have been made at low level to escape detection.
The second wave, carrying elements of 193 Infanterie Division, pressed on, apparently unaware that their parachute spearhead had aborted its mission, and arrived at Fornebu in clear visibility to find six of the eight assigned Messerschmitt 110 heavy fighters strafing the unsuppressed Norwegian anti-aircraft defences. The two missing Messerschmitts had been shot down earlier in a dogfight with Norwegian Gloster Gladiator fighters, and the remainder were not only running low on fuel and ammunition but three had also lost engines. The precise detail of what happened next is unclear. According to one account, one of the damaged Messerschmitts, flown by a Leutnant Lent, was ordered to attempt a landing by his commander Oberleutnant Hansen and the Junkers 52 transports followed him down.63 Another refers to a single transport carrying a Fallschirmjäger signal section settling down to land as soon as it arrived over the airfield despite the anti-aircraft fire, and almost colliding with Leutnant Lent’s machine as they landed on convergent runways. Whichever, the remaining Messerschmitts landed and provided covering fire for the Fallschirmjäger signallers with the last of their ammunition, and Oberleutnant Hansen took personal command of events after landing, directing Heer troops from subsequent transports that began to arrive at 09:15 to clear the Norwegian defenders from their positions. He later signalled the operation HQ in Hamburg that his fighter squadron was responsible for securing the airfield.64
The transports carrying Leutnant Freiherr von Brandis’ 3 Kompanie carried on through the fog and after spending thirty minutes re-establishing formation made a low-level approach to Sola, rising to 400 feet, just long enough to drop their hundred Fallschirmjäger. As the latter drifted down along the edge of the airfield they began to take fire from the Norwegian defenders, but six Messerschmitt 110s appeared in the nick of time and began strafing the defender’s positions. Within thirty minutes von Brandis’ men had finished the job and Sola joined Fornebu in German hands. 1 Kompanie, commanded by Leutnant Herbert Schmidt, had been held in reserve but was subsequently tasked to prevent newly arrived British forces linking up with the Norwegians in the Gudbrandsal Valley north of Oslo. To this end, Schmidt and his men dropped near Dombas, ninety miles north of Oslo, at twilight on 14 April 1940. The operation did not begin well. Accurate ground fire brought down one Junkers 52 and caused a number of casualties during the jump including Leutnant Schmidt, who was wounded in the hip and stomach. Only sixty-one men rallied at the assembly area, but this little band nonetheless managed to establish a blocking position on a nearby major road. They held out there for four days until their ammunition was exhausted, at which point they were obliged to surrender. By that time Schmidt had only thirty-four men left alive; he was subsequently awarded the Knight’s Cross for continuing to exercise command despite his wounds.65
The attack on the Low Countries, part of operation Fall Gelb, was launched on 10 May 1940. At 04:30 the first of forty-one Junkers 52 transports, each towing a DFS 230 glider, began to take off into the pre-dawn blackness at thirty-second intervals from Butzweilerhof and Ostheim airfields near Cologne. The gliders were the sum total available in the Luftwaffe inventory, and contained the 363 men of Sturmabteilung Koch, who had lived and trained for their mission in almost total isolation at an airfield at Hildesheim from November 1939.66 Once airborne, the glider combinations headed for the Dutch border in the vicinity of Aachen, guided by a chain of searchlights. Koch’s force was divided into four sections, each with a specific objective. The primary mission of neutralising the Eben Emael fortress was allotted to Oberleutnant Witzig’s Sturmgruppe Granit (Granite), made up of eleven gliders and eighty-five men. Once again, the mission did not begin well. Two gliders, one of them Witzig’s, became separated from their tugs not long after take-off. Both landed unscathed but the attack force had lost its leader before leaving German airspace, and command devolved to Oberfeldwebel Wenzel. The remaining nine gliders cast off from their tugs at 05:00, five minutes ahead of schedule owing to an unexpected tailwind. At 05:32 all touched down on the 1,000-by-1,750-yard plateau atop the Eben Emael fortress, which was actually an underground complex burrowed into a steep bluff overlooking the Albert Canal and River Meuse.
The long months of intensive training paid off. Within minutes, Witzig’s men had placed their explosive charges on armoured cupolas and gun barrels and disabled the seven artillery casemates covering the Albert Canal; Wenzel radioed a success signal to Hauptmann Koch at 05:40. However, the fort proper remained in Belgian hands, and Sturmgruppe Granit was effectively marooned atop an enemy force that outnumbered it by over ten to one. At 08:30 some small reinforcement arrived in the shape of a DFS 230 carrying Oberleutnant Witzig, who had arranged for a replacement tug to lift his glider and fellow passengers from the field where they had force-landed; he immediately took command of the effort to keep the Belgian garrison bottled up. The Heer relief force was delayed because Dutch troops had demolished bridges further north at Maastricht, but despite this, counter-attacks by the garrison and enemy artillery fire, they succeeded in holding out through the night of 10-11 May. By the time reinforcements from Pionier Bataillon 51 finally arrived at around 0700 hours on 11 May the men from Granite were all but out of ammunition, but a hastily prepared final effort later in the morning finally persuaded the garrison commander, a Major Jottrand, that the game was up. The Eben Emael fortress and its garrison of around 1,200 men surrendered at 13:15 on 11 May 1940, having lost twenty dead and an undetermined number of wounded. The thirty-six-hour fight cost Witzig’s little band six dead and twenty wounded.67
The remainder of Sturmabteilung Koch had been tasked to seize three bridges across the Albert Canal covered by the Eben Emael fortress to assist the German ground advance, all of which were thought to be rigged with demolition charges. Oberleutnant Gustav Altmann’s ninety-two-strong Sturmgruppe Stahl (Steel) was to seize the steel-frame bridge at Veldwezelt, just under four miles north of Eben Emael; Sturmgruppe Beton (Concrete), commanded by Leutnant Gerhard Schacht with ninety-six men, was assigned the modern concrete bridge at Vroenhoven; and the bridge nearest Eben Emael at Canne was to be secured by Sturmgruppe Eisen’s (Iron’s) ninety men commanded by Leutnant Martin Schächter. The gliders carrying Sturmgruppen Concrete and Steel touched down alongside their targets at 05:15 and 05:20 respectively; the time difference was presumably due to the unexpected tailwind. Both objectives were secured in the face of heavy Belgian fire, and Altmann’s men discovered that the demolition charges had been fortuitously removed from the Veldwezelt bridge; both parties were relieved by Heer troops at around 21:30 after a day beating off numerous Belgian counter-attacks. Sturmgruppe Iron was less fortunate. The Belgian troops guarding the bridge at Canne were alerted by a German motorised column advancing prematurely and detonated their demolition charges as the gliders began their landing run. The latter were badly shot up and the attackers suffered a number of casualties including Leutnant Schächter, who was killed. Command thus devolved to Leutnant Joachim Meissner, who rallied the survivors and repulsed two Belgian attacks before finally being relieved at 23:30.
While Sturmabteilung Koch was busying itself atop Eben Emael and the nearby bridges, the remainder of Student’s airborne force was pursuing its own objectives deeper inside Holland. Gruppe Süd, consisting of
the bulk of 7 Flieger Division and some attached elements from 22 Luftlande Division, was tasked to secure a series of road and rail bridges at Dordrecht, Moerdijk and Rotterdam. The objective was to open an avenue into western Belgium and the Channel ports, while striking at the heart of so-called ‘Fortress Holland’ to deny the RAF use of airfields to strike at Germany, and to vertically outflank the Dutch ‘Grebbe’ and ‘New Water’ defence lines.68 Along with the water crossings, an airfield at Waalhaven, south-east of Rotterdam, was to be seized in order to fly in reinforcements and heavy weapons. The Fallschirmjäger of Gruppe Süd began to drop at around 06:00 on 10 May, thirty minutes after the attack on Eben Emael commenced. The bridges at Rotterdam were seized via an imaginative coup-de-main operation that utilised twelve Heinkel He 59 seaplanes; these landed on the river and taxied up to the objective, allowing their passengers from 22 Luftlande Division to disembark directly onto it.69 The bridges at Dordrecht and Moerdijk were captured intact by Major Walther’s I Bataillon, Fallschirmjäger Regiment 1 and Hauptmann Fritz Prager’s II Bataillon, Fallschirmjäger Regiment 2 respectively, with simultaneous drops at the north and south ends.
The seizure of Waalhaven airfield began with III Bataillon Fallschirmjäger Regiment 1 commanded by Hauptmann Karl-Lothar Schulze, dropping along the edges of the field to distract the defenders while other Junkers 52s landed to deliver their troops from II Bataillon Fallschirmjäger Regiment 2 directly onto the target. At least one Dutch anti-aircraft position was still in operation when the transports began to land and damaged several aircraft, but the attackers rapidly overran the airfield, interrupting a party for the Dutch commandant’s fortieth year of service in the process. With the airfield secured more transports began to shuttle in reinforcements despite Dutch artillery fire and attacks by RAF bombers, including an anti-tank unit and Student himself with his forward HQ element. Linking up with the troops holding the bridges went less smoothly, and the relieving forces became embroiled in fierce street-fighting as the Dutch mounted a stubborn resistance that included repeated counter-attacks against the German troops holding the various bridges. The troops holding the north end of the Rotterdam bridges were cut off for the better part of two days, and the Dutch also succeeded in driving Major Walther’s Fallschirmjäger off the bridge at Dordrecht for a time, obliging Student to despatch the force earmarked to protect Waalhaven airfield to recapture it. The fighting continued until 9 Panzer Division, the spearhead of Heeresgruppe B, arrived in the area on 13 May 1940.70 The dead included Leutnant Freiherr von Brandis, who had led the jump onto Sola airfield in Norway only a month earlier.
The second strand of the German airborne attack on Holland was entrusted to Gruppe Nord, consisting of the bulk of 22 Luftlande Division with a parachute spearhead. Their mission was to decapitate the Dutch state politically and militarily by seizing the Dutch Royal family, government and military leadership located in the Dutch capital, Den Haag. To this end six companies of Fallschirmjäger, drawn from I Bataillon, Fallschirmjäger Regiment 2 and Infanterie Regiment 47 were to secure three airfields at Ockenburg, Valkenburg and Ypenburg. These airfields would then be used as an airhead to fly in additional units for a speedy advance on Den Haag. The Fallschirmjäger spearhead succeeded in securing Valkenburg, but the grass field was too soft to carry the weight of a fully laden Junkers 52 and the field quickly became jammed with bogged machines; the final wave had to be diverted to Waalhaven. Matters went even more awry at Ockenburg and Ypenburg. The parachute drops there was scattered and the Fallschirmjäger were unable to recover their weapon containers before the first wave of Junker 52s arrived and tried to land. The fully alert Dutch defenders, who had scattered obstacles across the landing area and were standing by their anti-aircraft guns, were quick to take advantage of a succession of virtually sitting ducks. Eleven of the thirteen Junkers in the first wave at Ypenburg were either shot down or severely damaged, with many catching fire. The remainder diverted to Ockenburg only to find the same process underway; the casualties sustained there included the machine carrying the commander of 22 Luftlande Division, Generalmajor Hans Graf von Sponeck, which crash-landed after being badly shot up. Unable to alight at the airfields, some pilots attempted to set down anywhere they could ‒ in fields, on the Den Haag-Amsterdam motorway and even on nearby beaches. The confusion and casualties were so great that the attack on Den Haag had to be abandoned, and a wounded von Sponeck led the survivors to link up with Gruppe Süd, arriving at Rotterdam on the night of 13-14 May.71
There was another, little-known German airborne operation on 10 May 1940 in addition to the spectacular events at Eben Emael and in Holland. Fall Gelb had originally been the main German effort in the West, but that changed on 9 January 1940 when a Luftwaffe liaison aircraft carrying an officer with a copy of the plan landed in error at the Belgian airfield at Mechelen. The German plan was thus modified with an additional predominantly armoured thrust by Generaloberst Gerd von Rundstedt’s Heeresgruppe A, codenamed Unternehmen Sichelschnitt, which envisaged a rapid advance through northern Luxemburg, the Ardennes and across the River Meuse into France at Sedan. Fall Gelb thus became the anvil, and Sichelschnitt the hammer swing that would crush the Allied defence against it. As 7 Flieger and 22 Luftlande Divisions and the whole of the Luftwaffe transport and glider fleet were fully committed to Fall Gelb there were no Airborne assets available to deploy in support of the Sichelschnitt advance. However, Göring himself came up with the novel idea of using 100 of the Luftwaffe’s fleet of Fieseler Storch co-operation aircraft as ad hoc transports. The Storch was a single-engine, high-wing monoplane with a forty-six-foot wingspan and a top speed of 109 miles per hour, and had a very good short take-off and landing performance. The machine’s nickname was inspired by its long, shock-absorber-cushioned undercarriage legs. The major problem was that the Storch was only capable of lifting two fully equipped infantrymen in addition to its crew, and moving the proposed force would therefore take two full lifts. The troops were drawn from 10 and 11 Kompanien, 3 Bataillon, Infanterie Regiment Grossdeutschland commanded by Oberstleutnant Eugen Garski and Hauptmann W. Krüger respectively.
The operation was codenamed Unternehmen NiWi after the two proposed landing areas at Nives and Witry in the Belgian Ardennes on the line of advance of 1 and 2 Panzer Divisions respectively, the former assigned to 10 Kompanie and the latter to 11 Kompanie. Their collective mission was to cut Belgian communications along the roads linking Neufchâteau, Bastogne and Martelange, threaten the Belgian border fortifications from the rear and block any Belgian advance from Neufchâteau; 10 Kompanie was also tasked to push on toward Bodange to ease the way for 1 Panzer Division. The first lift took off from airfields around Bitburg at 05:20 on 10 May 1940, crossed the Luxemburg border at low level at 05:35 and flew into Belgian airspace near Martelange at approximately 05:50. It was then that the plan began to unravel. All but five of the Fieselers carrying Oberstleutnant Garski’s 10 Kompanie became separated in fog or low cloud and inadvertently re-formated with Hauptman Krüger’s group heading for Nives. This error was compounded when the lead pilot in Krüger group became disoriented while avoiding ground fire and began to fly in the wrong direction. As a result, Oberstleutnant Garski landed as planned near Witry at precisely 06:00 to find himself accompanied by only five aircraft, while the bulk of his men landed with Hauptmann Krüger’s group near Léglise, approximately ten miles from their designated landing zone. A number of aircraft were damaged on landing, some so seriously that they caught fire and the arrival of Belgian troops supported by armoured cars prompted Krüger to withdraw north toward Witry, where he linked up with Garski at around 13:00.
Fortunately for Garski, the second lift into Witry had arrived intact and on time at 08:00, and the reinforcement permitted him to rebuff a Belgian probe before moving off toward Bodange as planned in the late afternoon; contact was established with the lead elements of 1 Panzer Division near Fauvillers at 17:30. Back at Nives the second wave also arrived accurately and intact at
08:05 and command of this part of the operation devolved to a Leutnant Obermeier, who established a blocking position astride the road between Bastogne and Neufchâteau and held it through the day against numerous attacks by Belgian troops and elements of a French formation, 5eme Division de Cavalerie Légère. An armoured attack by the latter in the early evening finally obliged Leutnant Obermeier to withdraw, but the French were disinclined to pursue them in the gathering darkness and they withdrew in turn, leaving the way clear for 2 Panzer Division the following day.72 By 14 May the Panzers were across the River Meuse at Sedan and by 23 May had the bulk of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and a large number of French troops penned into a coastal pocket around the French port of Dunkirk. Belgium surrendered on 28 May, a day after the British began an evacuation of Dunkirk, codenamed Operation DYNAMO. By 4 June 338,226 men had been lifted to safety, and by 20 June the remainder of the BEF and a large number of Allied military and civilian personnel had been removed from ports along the north and western French seaboard.73 It left behind 68,111 men dead, missing or prisoners of war, 2,472 assorted artillery pieces, 63,879 vehicles, 76,697 tons of ammunition, 415,940 tons of stores and 164,929 tons of fuel.74
Collectively the German airborne operations launched on 10 May 1940 played a significant role in all this, but individually the picture was less rosy. On the one hand Sturmabteilung Koch’s spectacular success at Eben Emael undeniably opened the way for Heeresgruppe B to penetrate into eastern Holland, and Gruppe Süd provided an equally vital conduit for the latter to access northern Belgium and the Channel ports, thus paving the way for the encirclement of the bulk of the BEF at Dunkirk. On the other hand, Gruppe Nord totally failed in its attempt militarily and politically to decapitate the Dutch state, and Unternehmen NiWi did little to aid the advance of Heeresgruppe A either, apart from possibly alerting the Belgians and French to the German line of advance through the Ardennes. Successful or otherwise, the cost was close to the edge of being prohibitive, if not over it. Two-thirds of the 430 Junkers 52 transports engaged in Fall Gelb as a whole were destroyed or so badly damaged that they had to be written off, while the transport unit assigned to Gruppe Nord suffered a ninety per cent loss rate.75 The human toll was also heavy. According to one source many of the aircrew manning the transports were instructors drafted in from training establishments, and the losses they incurred had an adverse effect on subsequent aircrew recruitment and training.76 Of the ground troops, 22 Luftlande Division lost forty per cent of its officers and twenty-eight per cent of its rank and file killed or missing; 1,600 of the latter were captured, most of whom were evacuated to Britain for incarceration.77 It is also important to note that a good deal of this was not due solely to enemy action, but to flawed operating procedures; these included launching operations with faulty or insufficient intelligence, dropping Fallschirmjäger separate from their weapons, and attempting air-landings in the face of unsuppressed enemy defences. Neither did Student or his staff learn the requisite lessons from all this, and the process was repeated at even greater cost at Maleme airfield and other locations on the Greek island of Crete in the latter half of May 1941.
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