If the First World War had gone on for just one more year,
it’s very likely the world would have seen paratroopers descend on the trenches.
The British, Americans, and French were very interested in what airborne soldiers could do,
but they had to wait until the 1940s to test their ideas in combat. By then, others had caught on and
were dropping their own men from the skies. But how well effective were these soldiers? Did they
turn the tide of battle? In this video, we shed light on the paratroopers of the Second World War.
The Soviet
Union was the first to seriously consider deploying paratroopers in large battles and was
already tossing men out of aeroplanes in 1930. Or, more accurately, tossing men off of aeroplanes.
While Soviet parachute design was advanced, their transport aircraft weren’t,
and the men had to cling to the outside of the wings and fuselage before their drop.
High command figured it didn’t matter if some men fell off—they had parachutes after all.
When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Stalin had no less than 10 airborne divisions
at his command. He sent one into battle near Vyazma. It began on January 8th 1942,
when the first of 7,400 paratroopers descended on the rear of the German 4th Panzer Army.
Sabre-wielding horsemen of the 1st Cavalry Guards Army had broken German lines south of Vyazma,
and the paratroopers jumped in to cut off the Axis retreat. They landed at night, and,
scattered over a massive area, they were unable to form a front. Their transports
had no fighter cover, and many were shot down by enemy flak and night-fighters.
The operation was nearly a fiasco until the cavalry arrived. They
mounted the paratroopers on their spare horses and ran the Germans down. Their
furious charge only ceased when it ran into Axis heavy armour.
After the paratroopers were rescued by cossacks who still insisted on fighting with swords,
Stalin lost faith in their utility. The jump-trained men spent most of
the war fighting as infantry on the front lines. Nine of the 10 airborne divisions
were deployed to Stalingrad, where they predictably suffered appalling losses.
Italy was also quick to recognise the capabilities of elite paratrooper units. Theirs were called
“a” and were trained just before the war at Castel Benito near Tripoli in Italian Libya.
After hostilities broke out, the training school was moved to Tarquinia, near Rome.
The graduates of this prestigious school became the core of a new type of Italian unit:
the 185th Paratroopers Division—better known as the “Folgore” Division.
The Folgore Division was raised with one goal: to take Malta.
The British outpost in the Mediterranean had caused the Axis no end of trouble, and a strong
Royal Navy presence made an amphibious assault very risky. It was a job for the paratroopers,
and a date for the invasion, codenamed “Herkules,” was set for July 1942.
But before it went ahead, Rommel launched a lightning-fast attack into Egypt. Hitler felt that
Rommel’s push took precedence over the airborne operation, and ordered the Folgore Division to
support him. Their higher level of training qualified the paratroopers to serve as elite
infantry, and Rommel deployed them on his exposed southern flank. The men were poorly equipped for
a long desert campaign and frequently ran out of supplies, yet their morale remained high.
The Folgore Division kept to Rommel’s flank until the Second Battle of El Alamein. They
repulsed an attack on three sides by three British divisions—including tanks—but suffered horrendous
casualties. Their line never broke, but the division was reduced to battalion strength.
The Folgores retreated with Rommel to Tunisia, and the division’s 600
survivors fought a last stand against the New Zealanders in the Battle of Takrouna.
They bought just enough time for a German unit to escape the battle,
after which the last remaining Folgores, just 40 men, finally surrendered.
The first German paratroopers emerged not from elite infantry but Luftwaffe chief
Hermann Goring’s personal bodyguard. Between 1935 and 1939, the “Landespolizei General
Göring” transformed into the 1st Parachute Division and its men into Fallschirmjagers.
Fallschirmjagers belonging to the Luftwaffe, not the army, and Goring felt he had much
to prove. They went into combat for the first time during the invasion of Poland,
where they captured a series of airfields along the Vistula and Bug rivers.
These early operations were very successful and proved the concept for Hitler.
On May 10th 1940, the Fallschirmjagers launched their most daring assault of the
war. Eighty-five men of “Assault Troop Granite” landed around the Belgian fort Eben Emael.
They moved from room to room, clearing them with flamethrowers and explosives. The Belgians were
caught off-guard, and the Germans neutralised its entire 1,200-man garrison in a few hours
of fighting and seized the fort. The world was shocked and awed by the Fallschirmjager’s prowess.
Their next operation was the invasion of Crete. But this would also be the
last German mass airborne operation. Paratroopers were spread over four drop
sites rather than concentrated at one, leaving them dangerously dispersed. The
defending Allies made use of this blunder and inflicted terrible casualties on the invaders.
The first dedicated British parachute units emerged in 1942, after German Fallschirmjager
operations in Scandinavia impressed Churchill. He wanted a British equivalent that was rougher,
tougher, and far more tenacious. He got the Parachute Regiment.
“Paras” were all volunteers and had to pass training second only to the commandos in terms
of rigour. They were the fittest men in the army and had to be above-average shots, too.
The moment they were ready, they went into action. Their first mission was an assault on an enemy
radar station in Bruneval, northern France. It was a success, and soon the paras were flung into
every major land campaign. From French Morocco and Algeria during Operation Torch, to Sicily and
Italy in Operation Avalanche, the British first and second airborne divisions fought like demons.
Their most important task, however, was right before D-Day in June 1944.
British paras captured key bridges, artillery batteries, and cut off Axis routes of retreat,
paving the way for the Allied naval landings. Perhaps they were too successful,
because their next mission was a far more difficult one: Operation Market Garden.
Market Garden has gone down in history as one of the Allies’ greatest late-war failures.
10,000 paratroopers and airborne infantry attacked Axis forces in Arnhem,
the Netherlands, and were repulsed by German tanks.
With few heavy weapons, the paratroopers could not hold out against enemy armour.
Like the Italian Folgores in the desert, many British paratroopers chose to go down fighting
Britain wasn’t the only belligerent nation inspired by early war German
paratroop operations. The Japanese Army were too. The unit “Teishin
Shudan” or “Raiding Group” was their answer to the German Fallschirmjager.
The Army first deployed these men in the Java Campaign, where they captured oil
facilities and airfields at Pelembang. They also went up against the Americans during the
Philippines Campaign in 1944—attacking American air bases on Luzon and Leyte.
Raiding Group was also meant to fight in several other campaigns but was prevented by typical
Japanese supply problems and a mortifying casualty rate. Like many other paratrooper units, they were
more often deployed as elite light infantry. In classic Japanese fashion, the Navy had its
own paratroopers totally separate from the Army. They were called the “Special
Naval Landing Forces Paratroopers” and were the elite of the Japanese marines.
These Navy units were thrown together less than a month before the war began,
and their job was suicidal from the start. They were to distract the enemy with inland
attacks while the marines landed and advanced up the beach. Five hundred Navy paratroopers
carried out Japan’s first combat drop, battling the Dutch for control of Menado in modern-day
Sulawesi. Despite an abysmal Dutch defence, the paratroopers suffered over one-fifth casualties.
The development of US paratroopers paralleled Britain, with one exception. The US Forestry
Service had been dropping “smokejumper” firefighters from the sky since 1939.
The Forestry Service helped to establish new “jump schools” in several locations
across the United States. Prospective paratroopers were offered higher pay
than their ground-pounding comrades, and volunteers swelled the ranks of
Roosevelt’s new airborne units: the 82nd and 101st airborne divisions.
These units saw service alongside the Brits in North Africa, during Operation Torch,
and in Sicily, Normandy, and the Netherlands. They endured the same
hardships in Operation Market Garden and earned a reputation as tough and dependable warriors.
US paratroopers spent much of this time assigned to the 1st Allied Airborne Army, and it was while
they were a part of this force that they fought their most famous battle: the Battle of the Bulge.
After months of stalemate following the failure of Operation Market Garden,
Adolf Hilter ordered an offensive through the Ardennes Forest. Three full German armies
took the defending American paratroopers by surprise, inciting a brutal clash in the snow.
The US the 101st, 82nd and, 17th Airborne Divisions battled fiercely for their sector,
with some units totally surrounded–but they ultimately repelled the attack.
But what do YOU think? Do YOU think it made sense to use paratroopers as light
infantry as many countries did? Which of these units do YOU think was the toughest? Reckon
you could pass World War Two parachute training? Let us know in the comments!