Using airborne assaults and special operations (1939-1945 World War II experience).

Analysis of local wars and armed conflicts at the turn of the 21st century in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq gives grounds to believe that airborne assaults and special operations can be of decisive influence in attaining the goals of military campaigns. Effective employment of airborne, subversion and reconnaissance and subversion and terror force elements in possible types of warfare represents an important factor in winning a victory over the adversary. Studying the ways in which different countries employed their assault forces in World War II (1939-1945) makes it possible to contend that the above claim was more than once taken into account by the military leaders of the opposing sides.

Airborne troops were one of the fledgling components of the opposing sides' armed forces as WWII broke out. Nazi Germany organized its 7th Air Division of three paratroop rifle regiments as early as in spring 1940. Britain began organizing its airborne units in late 1940 and activated its 1st Airborne Division in 1941. Based on combat experience of airborne force elements, the United States formed the 82nd Airborne Division and, by the fall of 1943, the U.S. armed forces had as many as five airborne divisions (11th, 13th, 17th, 82nd, and 102nd).

During WWII, there were many paratroop, subversion and reconnaissance operations of various scope and objective that put to the test various airborne force elements. With regard to modes of operation, special troops are as a rule subdivided into airborne, subversion and terror, and subversion and reconnaissance troops.

Airborne force elements were employed, as a rule, by three methods during WWII. The dropping of subunits (units) upon targets; delivery of subunits (units) in the area of target by glider; bringing units, subunits and combined units by transport planes after the seizure of airfields by paratroop subunits.

The most typical example of the first method of employing paratroop force elements is the German invasion of Crete codenamed Operation Mercury, between 20 May and 1 June 1941. (1) The 11th Airborne Corps activated by that time by the Wehrmacht comprised the 17th Airborne Division (of the above strength), the 5th Infantry Division, the 1st Airborne Assault Regiment and separate units of the 6th Mountain Infantry Division.

Airdropping four regiments from four directions in cooperation with mountain rifle units delivered by planes and gliders with relatively low casualties and in shortest time possible, the combined and ordinary units of the German 11th Airborne Corps invaded Crete, a very operationally and strategically important island in the Mediterranean. All in all, Operation Mercury involved approximately 25,000 troops, nearly 1,200 planes (500 Ju-52 transport planes, 430 bombers and 180 fighter planes), 80 cargo gliders, 5 destroyers, 60 motor boats and sailing vessels.

Before Operation Mercury, military specialists held that paradrops were possible only on totally accessible terrain and only by day. Examining the operation, they changed their mind. The summing up and empirical analysis of the operation they found and later confirmed that paradrops were possible on woodland, populated centers, roofs of buildings and not only by day but also by night. In December 1944, there was a successful paradrop of commandos in a forested mountainous terrain near Eifel (2) who took control of advantageous grounds and mountain passes.

The foregoing makes it possible to contend that the above method is the most rational and efficient because its main advantage in performing combat missions with appropriate training and teamwork is the element of surprise, swiftness, independence and drive.

At the same time, the first years of WWII revealed many important problems related to the employment of paradropped assault forces:

* insufficient accuracy of the drop-zone delivery. Success of any airborne operation appreciably depends on the delivery of personnel to the spot where it is supposed to operate and perform its missions. During WWII this problem was tackled through providing with special training in skills and self-control of air crews that delivered parachutists to the drop zones; the appointment of so-called observers--specially trained men who were to find airdrop places and give jump signals--to coordinate the activities of the parachutists and pilots; the marking of drop zones with white squares by day and with signal flares and making fires in the designated airdrop zones by night; transmission at regular times (periodically) radio signals from the areas of proposed airdrops by "radio beacons" recruited (infiltrated) ahead of the operation;

* massive airdrops which required of the commanding officers the solving of lots of questions, big inputs of effort and materiel to organize and provide all-round support, cooperation and control of operations. Despite that, the airdropping of units (subunits) upon targeted areas was one of the main methods of employing airborne force elements during WWII. The body of experience gained in WWII goes to show that the strict military principle--the simplest solution promises the biggest success--applies every time you select an airdrop zone. Operation Mercury showed that the tactic of dividing an airborne rifle battalion and dropping the parts to several areas was wrong. The more concentrated in terms of time and space an airdrop was, the more probable success was;

* the selection of airdrop altitude. Choosing the altitude for an airdrop equally depends on the tactical situation and the parachutists' skills. The altitude of parachute jumps should be the lower the stronger is the enemy defense--air defense, in particular--the assault force commander expects to encounter. The altitude between 60 and 120 meters makes combating parachutists in the air a problem. In addition, low altitudes are conducive to concentrating the assault forces which is essential for going into battle right after the landing. Some parachutists are reluctant to jump from low altitudes fearing possible injuries. The war experience shows that jumps from 60 meters result in casualties and injuries of up to 20 percent even if they involve specially trained personnel. It has also been established that casualties in jumps from 700 or 800 meters in the presence of adversary in the landing area can be 30 percent to 35 percent even before the landing from hostile fire.

The second method is exemplified by the Battle of Arnhem (Netherlands), 17-26 Sept. 1944 carried out by units of the First Allied Airborne Army comprising the 82nd and 101st U.S. Airborne Divisions, the 1st British Airborne Division and the 1st Polish Parachute Brigade. In effect, aircraft and gliders had delivered 34,876 troops, 568 artillery pieces, 1,926 vehicles and 5,227 tons of stores. (3) The essential condition for using this method was the presence of terrain suitable for landing the gliders and the absence of air defense near the assault objective.

The third method (the airlifting of units with seizing airfields ahead of their landing) was used in Operation Overlord in June 1944. (4) The U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions dropped in the first wave nearly 10,000 parachutists who seized airfields and likely spots for landing transport planes and gliders. The second wave (924 Douglas S-47 transport planes and 103 S24-A gliders) delivered on 6-7 June 1944 to the airfields and likely spots for landing and captured by the first wave nearly 35,000 troops, 504 artillery pieces, 110 light tanks and some 1,000 tons of stores, which contributed to the successful performance of the missions assigned.

The hard part of this method is that it is necessary to maintain reliable communications throughout the operation with all those involved, precise organization of cooperation between a great number of dissimilar units and subunits (parachute, air, rifle, artillery, signals and so on) which largely increases the number of organizational activities and increases the likelihood of errors and miscalculations.

Combat operations in all three methods are based on the so-called ink spot tactic consisting in the following: to attack several spots from the air and establish several strongholds; prevent the adversary from concentrating its forces in one sector and cut the main lines of supply and communication; then select one of the strongholds, concentrate on it the main efforts and enable the newly arriving forces land safely and following this to attack the adversary in the direction of the other strongholds until the main stronghold merges with the other strongholds.

Studies of the conduct of WWII airborne operations have established that they used three main types of airborne assaults in relation to their targets: dropping or landing of forces right on the target areas; dropping or landing of forces next to the target areas; dropping or landing of forces at a distance from the target areas.

Military leaders of the belligerents thought that dropping or landing of forces right on the target area was as a rule possible and even necessary when the target area was small. One example is the German airdrop on a Belgian fort, Eben Emael, 10 May 1940. It was possible to capture the fort only by landing troops atop it. The operation was mainly facilitated by the element of surprise, speed, high standard of training and the availability of weapons and ammunition. (5)

A typical example of dropping or landing troops next to the target involves the seizing of a beachhead for subsequent amphibious landing. Landing troops by glider at the target area or dropping them on it would entail big casualties and wreck the mission on an open space and in the presence of a sufficient number of enemy air defense assets. This can be possibly confirmed by the Anglo-American airborne operation in the south of France in July 1943. (6)

Studies of the use of airborne operations during WWII have established that the dropping of paratroops far from targets denies them the element of surprise which is present in dropping or landing them right on the target. Whereas the dropping or landing of troops right on the target or next to it bears comparison with offensive actions without halt in attack position, dropping or landing troops far from the target means in effect the taking by them of an attack position. A good example is the operations of the 3rd German Paratroop Rifle Regiment on Crete. Assigned to take the town of Khania the troops were dropped on the road between Khania and Alikhiana, some 3 km southwest of Khania, whence the regiment began pushing toward its objective in a planned manner.

In addition to using airborne troops in operational missions the high command of the warring sides often assigned to airborne troops tactical missions in combat operations involving large strategic formations. Paratroops were mostly used as advance forces or rear guard forces. The operations of German paratroops in Norway near Dombas and on the Oslo airfield in April 1940 as well as the Anglo-American Rhine Airborne Operation in March 1945 can be regarded as operations of paratroops in the capacity of advance forces. (7)

Analysis of operations conducted by parachute and parachute-glider troops makes it possible to conclude that fears existing at the time of sustaining big losses were totally groundless. Losses sustained by paratroops in such operations were substantial, without a doubt, because operations involving any big airborne force mean fierce fighting. However, the use of airborne troops always helped achieve operational and tactical objectives with much smaller forces than in the case of a land operation of ground forces. If we suppose that the objectives before the airborne forces in The Netherlands (1940), Crete (1941), Normandy (1944), The Netherlands (1944) and in the Rhine Airborne Operation (1945) could have been reached without the use of airborne forces and exclusively with the use of ground troops, it would have taken much longer time and much greater effort and assets. At the same time, the absolute figures of losses would not have been lower. (8)

At the same time, there were a number of problems that had an impact on the effectiveness of combat employment of paratroops, as studies of the results of their combat operations have established.

In-depth studies of combat employment of paratroops in WWII have found that one of the hardest problems in all airborne operations was all-round logistic support for the troops dropped by parachute and landed by glider.

Ammunition supplies, for example, should be priority number one, studies show. Paratroopers in combat should be exceptionally mobile and light, they cannot take along the number of ammunition necessary for long and effective fighting. For this reason, they drop big amounts of ammunition in ammunition chests. In Operation Overlord in June 1944 known for its highly-fluid maneuver fighting, it became necessary to detail part of the paratroopers to bear ammunition. Later, there were attempts to set up specialized ammunition bearer platoons. The best solution in terms of delivering weapons, ammunition and other materiel proved the use of light cross-country motorcycles.

The problem of weapons for airborne force elements was of equal importance. Whereas in 1940 they thought it was possible to jump armed only with hand arms (pistols or assault rifles) and then successfully fight, by 1943 German parachute formations developed and adopted a new set of weapons (blade weapons and firearms).

One of such newly developed weapons for airborne forces of Nazi Germany were light carbines that could use standard ammunition. Another successful and effective enough weapon was the 200-mm "Do" missile system whose case also served as launcher tube. Specially designed for combat engineers was an exceedingly light flamethrower; in wide use was the Panzerfaust antitank grenade launcher. Parachute artillery subunits used light artillery systems of two calibers--75-mm and 105-mm guns with abridged barrels, and used special reduced charges. The guns were so designed as to produce almost no recoil and thus they could do without heavy carriages.

No more or less satisfactory solution was found to the problem of communications, not inside airborne formations where standard portable transceivers provide for communication between subunits, but between landed parachute units and troops in the field fighting 100 km or more away from them, and with airborne troops still arriving by air. Lack of communication facilities was one of the reasons why the German command did not have a clear idea of the situation in the drop zone during the first days of fighting for Crete. The total absence of communication with the panzer army, the leading assault element of which were commandos, prevented them from transmitting reconnaissance data which could have been of decisive importance for the army commanders.

All airborne operations of WWII showed that no sophisticated radio equipment should be too heavy, complicated, sensitive to shock, atmospherics, have unreliable batteries, develop frequency errors and deviations, etc.

It seems necessary to dwell, albeit briefly, on the views of the opposing forces' commanders on the problem of the moral-psychological factor of airborne formations, special troops and raiding and reconnaissance parties. It follows from the results of analysis that we should pay special attention to this problem. Analysis of airborne operations in WWII shows that a paratrooper should not only know how to fight but also staunchly endure hunger, cold and other difficulties and hardships.

The Nazi special services waged an especially fierce subversion and reconnaissance and subversion and terrorist activities against the USSR. According to plans of Nazi Germany's military leaders, massive terrorist and raiding operations were supposed to demoralize and debilitate the Red Army's rear services, disrupt command and control and thus facilitate defeat of the USSR in the war. Before WWII, researchers and engineers at the Abwehr's laboratories and a technological institute near Berlin (controlled by military intelligence) were designing and testing new and more powerful types of explosives and poisons. They were also developing new military subversion and raiding equipment, weapons, personal gear and equipment, false documents, among other things. German raid and reconnaissance and raid and terror formations were being trained in new tactical methods of reconnaissance, subversion and terrorist acts.

It should be noted that, long before 22 June 1941, Germany unleashed upon the Soviet Union an entire army of terrorists and subversive agents in the guise of RKKA [Workers' and Peasants' Red Army] servicemen, policemen, railway workers, and ordinary civilians. Before the start of hostilities, groups of wreckers, spies and individual terrorists were performing the following missions: they set up reference points for aerial bombing of military, industrial and transport targets; recruited signalmen to designate targets to aircraft; organized anti-Soviet gangs; carried out blasts, torched supply stores, forests, peat extraction fields; disrupted communications and poisoned sources of water. They burned down in the border district of Taugare, Lithuanian SSR, nearly 400 hectares of forest and 200 hectares in the Trakai district. Pressed into service to fight the fires were not only military units but also border guards.

With the start of the war, subversion and terrorist activities gained an exceptionally wide scope and continued right up to May 1945 with a frantic zeal unprecedented in history.

Throughout WWII, Germany called more often than not on the Division "Brandenburg" z.b.V 800 for commando operations. In a sense the division was a prototype of modern special operations forces. (9) Its combat groups operated with special success and daring during the first year of the Great Patriotic War. The experience of WWII made it possible to subdivide special operations in accordance with their objectives and tasks into the following: subversion operations; anti-subversion operations; information-psychological operations; law-related operations, operations to render immediate help in forming, supporting, training, providing logistic support to and combat employment of irregular combined units and other resistance forces; search and rescue operations; peace-keeping and humanitarian operations and action operations.

According to German military specialists' views, one specially trained subunit of 10-15 commandos was equated, for the results of combat employment, with a rifle company of 100 men or an air strike delivered by two flights of bombers. Such subunits were mainly intended, as a rule, for seizing brides to enable swift advance of troops along the main axes of advance. On 25 June 1941, for example, an airborne platoon dropped not far from the Byelorussian rail station of Bogdanov made a surprise attack without halt in attack position, seized two bridges, cleared them of mines thus letting the main force grouping of the German troops to continue their onward push.

No less important indicators of the efficiency of commando groups is the destruction of communications, disruption of the operation of supply points behind the lines, the destruction of ammunition dumps and creating panic among civilians and members of the military on guard duty.

The system of Nazi military intelligence included raid and reconnaissance teams and groups whose mission was to seize and hold important objectives until the arrival of the main forces, commit acts of subversion at communications facilities, collect intelligence (Kurfurst regiment). Most of the men included in these teams and groups spoke Russian and other languages of the Soviet Union and were dressed up as Red Army men and officers. This largely helped the spies to move freely around the areas that had military and strategic installations and collect high-quality intelligence. In 1942, they held 256 spying parachutists at transport facilities alone and eliminated 266 subversion and terror groups.

A special method of subversion activities consisted in setting up underground resistance teams behind the lines of the Red Army and on liberated territories. According to what captured documents and the captured German military intelligence agents say, retreating German forces left behind not only intelligence instructors, many agents, weapons and explosives in western Ukraine, Belorussia and the Baltic states, but also continued to run the armed gangs and give them the necessary assistance. In December 1944, for example, the 202nd subversion party requested from the Wehrmacht's high command for the so-called Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) supplies of equipment for 5,000 men and 2 kg of explosives per each of them. Beginning in summer 1943, Nazi special services were surreptitiously planting groups of wreckers in cities so that they should, with the arrival of Soviet forces, organize explosions and fires, inflict material losses and spread panic among the population.

Studying archive materials, it has been established that, beginning in summer 1944, they began to create in Germany wideranging and highly secret organizations like the Werwolf and the Hitler Corps, a guerrilla force intended to conduct subversion and terrorist activities against Red Army units. It should be stressed that when the Red Army liberated Poland and reached the German border, the Nazi special services devoted almost all of their efforts to subversion and terror.

Changes to the structure of Nazi special services in 1944 added to the old and operating agencies some new schools and formations for subversion. In 1944, Reichsfuhrer of the SS Himmler backed the initiative of Mussolini's rescuer Otto Skorzeny to create a special subversion and terror combined unit manned by tested and well-trained personnel to carry out especially important missions and asked Skorzeny to become head of the Waffen-Jagdsverband. He took charge of "experienced specialists of the Division "Brandenburg" z.b.V 800. His five schools for subversion trained 600-700 agents recruited from SS, police battalions, SD and SA units.

Given the great variety of Nazi Germany's raid and reconnaissance and subversion and terrorist activities, of certain interest today are the main methods these organizations used to get to their targets. Research papers and historical literature, archive materials and the results of employing airborne reconnaissance and airborne assault formations make it possible to contend that the main methods of these formations used to get to their targets were infiltration on foot or by a vehicle, airdrops, and diving (amphibious assault). Analysis of the actions of subversion formations in WWII indicates that the most used method was infiltration on foot or by a vehicle into areas occupied by the adversary and subsequent performance of their missions. On 8 September 1939, a platoon of German raiders of the Ebbinghaus group clad in Polish officer uniforms joined a column of retreating soldiers and after a two-day march they reached a strategic bridge in the town of Denblin. The commandos relieved by fraud the Poles who were guarding the bridge, cleared the mines for German armored vehicles to safely cross it.

The experience of employing subversion and reconnaissance and subversion and terror groups in WWII confirms that one of the main methods of getting across to their assault objectives was by parachute drop upon their delivery to the zone of combat employment. This method was used in many instances during WWII. One of them consisted in many activities carried out by one combined unit in connection of the Allied landing in Sicily and Italy's surrender. A combat group of the 2nd Parachute Rifle Regiment, right in the wake of Italy's capitulation, attacked from the air the Italian High Command headquarters near Monte Rotondo; subunits of the 7th regiment were landed by glider in the area of Gran Sasso in order to free Mussolini, and they also occupied the island of Elba; another combat group staged a surprise air assault to seize the island of Levros in the Aegean Sea.

Underwater assaults were used in WWII operations for the first time in history of wars and military art. The armed forces of Fascist Italy created and successfully used a special detachment of underwater demolition commandos code-named Gamma. In effect the detachment was assigned to army units of Nazi Germany and took part in joint operations in the Black, Baltic Mediterranean, and Barents seas. The main tasks of Gamma were to see if the coastal waters were suitable for the passage of naval ships and U-boats; to carry out acts of subversion at enemy shipyards and ports; to make underwater repairs to ships other water craft and installations; to lay and remove mines, protect underwater facilities and combat similar enemy forces. Clearly, outfits like Gamma were a serious threat to port installations, naval ships and submarines, sea lines of communication, bridges, dams and locks at major water obstacles.

It should be noted in conclusion that the employment of paratroops, subversion and reconnaissance, and subversion and terror formations in WWII proved a very effective weapon and made it possible to carry out successful operations with considerably reduced numbers of personnel and materiel and much quicker than with the use of conventional military formations. The experience of armed conflicts and local wars indicates that the use of paratroops, subversion and reconnaissance and other special formations may prove of decisive importance in winning a victory over the adversary in the 21st century.

NOTES:

1. "Kritskaya vozdushno-desantnaya operatsiya 1941," in: VES, Voenizdat Publishers, Moscow, 1986, p. 375; Voennaya entsiklopediya, Vol. 4, Voenizdat Publishers, Moscow, 1999, pp. 303-304.

2. "Vozdushno-desantnaya operatsiya," in: Voennaya entsiklopediya, Vol. 2, Voenizdat Publishers, Moscow, 1944, pp. 212-214.

3. Ibid., pp. 212-213.

4. Ibidem.

5. Ibidem.

6. Ibidem.

7. Ibidem.

8. Ibidem.

9. Voennaya entsiklopediya, Vol. 7, Voenizdat Publishers, Moscow, 2003, p. 612.

Col. P.I. LISITSKIY