# Hypothetical question re: Allied Airborne Forces WW2



## armyguy62 (7 Nov 2005)

Just wondering what thoughts there might be regarding the following question: Might the British and US Forces have been better served during WW2 by limiting their Airborne forces to, say, a Brigade each. Certainly the Airborne soldiers were the "cream of the crop" and having so many of those men concentrated in one place may have detrimentally affected the overall Allied war effort. What say ye??


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## geo (7 Nov 2005)

Having a certain number of airborne forces is one thing
Utilising them is another matter all together different.

The intent of inserting parachute troops to the rear of the ennemy is to "shock" the ennemy, dissorganize, distract and weaken them so that the main forces can punch through defences - at a smaller overall cost.

It's up to the army planners to determine if they need Platoon, Company, Battalion, Brigade or Division sized forces to have the "shock" effect they are looking for.

The operation "Market Garden" that saw 2 US AB Divisions 1 Brit AB Division and 1 Polish Bde attempt to capture bridges through Holland and into Germany couldn't have been contemplated without that hefty sized committment.... and even with that - we all know about the "bridge too far" at Arnhem.


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## 3rd Herd (7 Nov 2005)

If my memory serves me correctly during the Second World War there were airborne operations planned but cancelled due to rapid advances made by ground troops. One positive benefit though of having these outfits in the rear with the gear was the 101st and Bastonge, and I believe in the Pacific theater was a jump operation to save POW's. On the German side of things after Crete and excluding the Battle of the Bulge, the German airborne was reduced to fighting in a strictly ground roll. The inventors of the airborne the Russians to my knowledge never used their troops in a mass air attack.


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## a_majoor (12 Nov 2005)

The DVD was severely damaged by the purges of the late 1930s (which extinguished much of the leadership and theoretical knowledge developed in the late 1920s and early 1930s), and losing most of the large aircraft in 1941 didn't help either. Small parachute actions did occur, mostly dropping cadres behind enemy lines to organize partisans. This certainly leveraged the effect of the available forces for the "Red Army". See:

Inside the Blue Berets : A Combat History of Soviet and Russian Airborne Forces, 1930-1995 by Steven Zaloga 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0891413995/103-9208568-7528622?v=glance&n=283155&n=507846&s=books&v=glance


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## larry Strong (27 Dec 2005)

Actually the Soviets did have one combat jump in WW2. It was during the assault across the Dnieper River in 1944 IIRC. 
I am sitting in the middle of a field in the Toolpush's shack rig watching at the moment, and thus do not have any of my books here. When I get home I will hunt up the specifics


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## Michael Dorosh (27 Dec 2005)

Expanding airborne forces would have made little sense, given the fact that our 2nd Canadian Parachute Battalion - the Canadian component of the 1st Special Service Force - was disbanded in late 1944 because they were seen as a "luxury".  There was little enough for the airborne forces to do without creating even more of them.


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## geo (27 Dec 2005)

Michael Dorosh said:
			
		

> There was little enough for the airborne forces to do without creating even more of them.


Plans are made based on the resources that are available.
If you do not think you have enough of them, you use em sparingly
If you feel you have adequate quantities, then you can be more aggressive in their use... 
Airborne forces might have helped capture bridges across the Rhine.
Airborne forces might have helped - if they had been used in the Italian Alps - behind German lines.

The German Paras were Goering's infantry. In the end, due to the demands of a war on several fronts, they were used for that exact purpose - infantry... If the Germans had been able to maintain some Air Superiority, they could have certainly been used to much better purpose.... like raids to England, Malta, Gibraltar?


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## larry Strong (27 Dec 2005)

Around the end, very few of the troops in the FJ Divs were even para qualified!


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## geo (27 Dec 2005)

well... yeah...  Remember when 3 Mech Commando was stationed in West Germany. we had guys going around with Green Berets and the Para cap badge - a lot of those guys weren't paras either.

As I said, after the Germans lost air superiority AND once they had a greater need for foot infantry, what was the point of training Soldiers in Para skills if they didn't have the intention or ability to use em.

BUT

give credit where credit is due, the Para trained FJ instructors who trained Goering's infantry did do a commendable job. FJs were tough & ruthless at Monte Cassino and everywhere else they were employed.


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## larry Strong (27 Dec 2005)

Not arguing their fighting capabilities, I was just pointing out a interesting or maybe a "Cliff Clavin" bit of trivia  ;D


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## geo (27 Dec 2005)

NP  (was providing some little bit of trivia on CF non para Paras as well) 

Chimo!


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## Danjanou (27 Dec 2005)

As long as we’re showing off our Clavin powers. The POW rescue jump 3rd Herd mentioned was in 1945. A Bn of the 11th Airborne Division drooped into the civilian internment camp at Los Banos near Manila to save several hundred interned allied civilians.

Incidentally it was IIRC the only the second time the 11th were actually used as airborne troops. They made one earlier Bn sized drop in the Leyte campaign and  fought the rest of the campaign in the in the Philippines as regular infantry.

Arthur is correct re the DVD. Mostly small scale drops to support partisan operartions. The few major attempts to drop brigades were unmitigated disasters. I can dig up some stuff I came across on another site on it recently.


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## Michael Dorosh (27 Dec 2005)

geo said:
			
		

> Plans are made based on the resources that are available.
> If you do not think you have enough of them, you use em sparingly
> If you feel you have adequate quantities, then you can be more aggressive in their use...
> Airborne forces might have helped capture bridges across the Rhine.



They did - Operation VARSITY - and they did it while 101st Airborne were employed as ground troops - there were too many airborne divisions.

How do you land paratroopers in the Alps?

No - they disbanded 1st SSF because they didn't need "elite" specialists.


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## larry Strong (27 Dec 2005)

Danjanou said:
			
		

> I can dig up some stuff I came across on another site on it recently.



That would be nice , my main reference on the operation I was mentioning, is Paul Carrell's book "Scorched Earth" but alas it's not part of my library at the moment.
From what I remember it was at least Bde sized, was an unmitigated disaster, however it did require a substantial amount of German resource to clear them out, as was the norm when the Soviets dug in.


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## geo (27 Dec 2005)

Michael Dorosh said:
			
		

> How do you land paratroopers in the Alps?


You don't - you drop em as close as possible (behind En lines) OR be prepared for high losses.... which, to some planners might be a viable solution.


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## larry Strong (27 Dec 2005)

geo said:
			
		

> NP  (was providing some little bit of trivia on CF non para Paras as well)
> 
> Chimo!



In regards to the FJ history, remnants of the 9th FJ Div were part of the final defense of the Fuhrerbunker area.

I had the wrong year it was 26.09.43, the following narrative was taken from John Erickson's book "The Road to Berlin" which i happened to have with me. 

....in the Burkin bridgehead area, which a Mech Bde had widen to about 10 miles on the 24 of Sept the Soviet Command flung in 3 Airborne Bde's. The 1st, 3rd and 5th Airborne Bdes....aerial recce showed at the time a weak German defense with no reserves, though much of the situation remained obscure.....the airborne drop conducted by the AB Forces Commander Maj Gen A B Kapitokhin....3rd and 5th Bde's dropped the night of 26 Sept with the 1st in reserve to be dropped 2nd or 3rd night. Unfortunately they dropped into an area that contained 3 German Divisions and 2 more moving towards the area. turned into a real hornets nest.


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## geo (27 Dec 2005)

Oopsie.....
As happened at Arnhem. Plans that look good on paper don't always stand up to much reality.


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## larry Strong (27 Dec 2005)

That, and they did not have the logistics for it;

 Each Bde was about 4500 men along with support  equipment. The ADD the long range bomber force of Air Chief Marshal A E Golovanov would supply 50 PS-84 bomber-transports and 150 Il-4 and B-25 night-bombers: the Airborne air force would provide 10 glider-tugs 13 Il-4s for dropping weapons by parachute, and 35 A-7 and G-11 gliders.
 The transports were scheduled to carry 20 men but the pilots pointed out that they could take at best 15 -18 men; fewer transport planes showed up at the forward airfields than planned on, and other planes were late owing to bad weather.
 On the night of the 26th 4575 men and  equipment of the 3rd Bde flew out in 296 aircraft sorties, the men dropped but none of their 45mm guns, 13 planes turned back unable to find the DZ,2  dropped to deep in the rear, 1 dumped it's troops into the Dnieper, and 1 on Soviet lines.
 The 5th Bde had only 48 of an expected 65 transports and the 4 tankers could not refuel all the machines on time, nor was there enough fuel, so the planes took of singly as and when they were fueled up. 2 Bn's, about 1000 men got down but lack of fuel caused the cancellation of the rest of the drop. Also the German AA fire drove the transports on up to 2 and 3000 feet with the corresponding dispersal of the troops......oooopsie :skull:


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## Danjanou (27 Dec 2005)

Larry Strong said:
			
		

> That would be nice , my main reference on the operation I was mentioning, is Paul Carrell's book "Scorched Earth" but alas it's not part of my library at the moment.
> From what I remember it was at least Bde sized, was an unmitigated disaster, however it did require a substantial amount of German resource to clear them out, as was the norm when the Soviets dug in.



Here's the thread from the FOW forum with links.Some of these gamers are absolute fanatics when it comes to research I've noted.

http://fow.flamesofwar.com/viewtopic.php?t=18723&highlight=soviet+paratroops


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## 3rd Herd (29 Dec 2005)

Part Five Chapter Five 'Bukrin Bridge-Head"  pages 401 to 411 in Carell's Scorched Earth does cover this. A little more info: most use Glantz's study The Soviet Airborne Experience

1940, 29-30 June: In the first combat use of Soviet airborne forces in an air assault, two airborne brigades parachuted from TB-3 bombers into Rumanian Bessarabia and captured the cities of Bolgrad, Kagul, and Izmail. 

1942, 3 January-6 March: Airborne troops of the Soviet IV Airborne Corps, totaling approximately 14,000 men, were dropped or airlanded into the rear area of the German forces attacking Moscow in the vicinity of Vyaz’ma, 130 SW of Moscow. The operations included six major drops that were often spread out over several days due mainly to shortages in troop carrier aircraft (including PS-84s, TB-3s, and probably even some Soviet-built C-47s). Initial objectives generally required troopers to secure—and in one instance, establish—an airfield for airlanding additional forces. The troopers of IV Airborne Corps were to link up with attacking Soviet ground forces and, along with partisans in the vicinity, cut German supply lines and strike a counterblow; in the drop of 6 March, parachutists jumped even farther west and directly attacked the supply base at Elnya. The overall effort suffered from poor coordination between units, bad weather, shortages, ineffective resupply, pilots who were poorly trained in night navigation and formation flying, and scattered drops; however, the effort threw off the German timetable in Hitler’s quest for Moscow. Troopers were isolated and eventually defeated in a battle during which some units fought in the line for four months, making this the longest-running airborne operation in history. Approximately 4,000 men survived.

Source: http://www.usaaftroopcarrier.com/Airborne%20Chronology.htm

"GERONIMO!" AND THE RED ARMY http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/geronimo/index.html
.....and one entire brigade was dropped near Smolensk, in 1941, behind German lines. Many of the personnel in this drop were dressed in civilian clothing, and were expected to operate as Partisans. 

The VDV See Action
Despite being part of the Air Force, the 212th Airborne Brigade was deployed to the Far East and saw action in the Battle of Khalkin Gol against the Japanese Army in July and August 1939, while the 201st, 204th and 214th Airborne Brigades took part in the invasion of Poland during September 1939. The first full-scale combat jump in history occurred in November 1939 near Petsamo, Finland during the Russo-Finnish War and were again in action during the occupation of Rumanian Bessarabia. The reasonable success and good combat record, along with the success of the German Airborne forces in Western Europe meant that the five airborne brigades based in European Russia were earmarked to be expanded to corps status, while the sixth remained in the Far East. When war broke out in June 1941, the technical assets of the VDV (Vozdushno-Desantnaya Voyska - Air Assault Force) were totally inadequate to start with, and what they had was devastated by the air attacks early on in the campaign. This shortage of air assets meant that the VDV spent most of the war fighting as elite infantry. A number of operations were conducted during the winter of 1942 / 1943 with the 201st Airborne Brigade dropping near Medzyn on the 2 / 3 January and again near Vyazma on the 18th January, with the 204th Airborne Brigade near Rzhev on the 14 - 22 February. An ambitious plan was formulated to drop the entire 4th Airborne Corps near Vyazma behind German lines at the beginning of February, but with the lack of air transport assets meant that the 22 TB-3s and 40 PS-84s would have to fly two or three sorties a night for a week. The Corps started dropping on the 27th January and about a quarter of them were dropped into terrible weather conditions and the operation foundered. Another operation later in the month against Yukhnov also failed. These heroic but ineffective operations led the Soviet High Command to convert the Corps to Guards Rifle Divisions and they fought with distinction in the northern Caucasus and Stalingrad. Eventually however, the Air Force managed to have them reformed as Guards Airborne Divisions and a large scale operation was planned in September 1943 to drop and air-land 10,000 troops from the 1st, 3rd and 5th Airborne Brigades and establish a bridgehead over the Dniepr River. The operation, however was a costly failure. "By a cruel irony, the only successful airborne operation by Soviet forces in the Second World War were small-scale drops by special Naval Infantry paratroopers in the Crimea, and operations by improvised Army units during the campaign against the Japanese in Manchuria in 1945." [note 1] 
Source Airborne and Airmobile Forces, Russian (Peter Antill) http://www.rickard.karoo.net/articles/weapons_russianairlong.html


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## larry Strong (29 Dec 2005)

Thanks for the info . Is Glantz study hard to find?


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## 3rd Herd (29 Dec 2005)

Larry,
 I PM'd you about Glantz's study. I have listed the reference books that are littering the floor around my computer at the moment http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/37380.0.html
I have about eight more of those sunkists orange boxes full of books piled away. If I can help give me a shout.


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