Zagadka wrote:The traditional thinking seems to be that the drops were confused and barely cohesive, and the allies were pretty lucky. I challenged that thought - what if the landings being so disrupted and spread out had the effect of actually gumming up the works and slowing German response time. It is one thing to hold off an organized group, but as we see in more modern combat, small numbers of trained fighters spread everywhere can REALLY disrupt a traditional army. It would have made the Germans even more confused than they would have been had the drops gone perfectly.
Gumming up the works was part of the objective. Take for example the assault of Pegasus Bridge. A glider landing aimed at capturing vital bridges over canals to capture and hold those bridges so that the following could be prevented, or ensured:
That the bridges were not demolished to prevent their use by the Allies to get inland.
To hold the bridges so that the Germans could not use them to bring up reinforcements to bolster beach defenders.
The effect of the scattering of the Paratroops is that instead of local groups of enemy troops, the Germans suddenly have reports of enemy troops from almost everywhere – which is itself confusing, instead of having a few key focal points of contact with the enemy (thus forming a front line), there is contact all over the place, thus no way of being able to determine where the main line of enemy resistance is: Is it the beaches, is it the bridges, is it the canals, no, its everywhere.
So although German high command knows the beaches are the main line of resistance, they can’t move freely without having formations run into sporadic groups of paratroops.
But also, on the other hand. What did hamper the initial response for the Germans was the fact that Panzer Formations in the area were not under the direct control of Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, but Oberkommando der Heeres and Hitler. That was initially, but when forces were mobilised to face the landings, the biggest issue that hampered the movement of forces to counter the landings was the air superiority of the Allies over Normandy – anything that moved was shot up by roving ground attack aircraft. The air cover made moving during the day so hazardous that German forces would go into hiding during the day and move primarily during night time or bad weather.
There were also situations where formations that had been tasked with defending the beaches, had been reallocated to Russia (eg: II SS-Panzer Korps consisting of 9. SS-Panzer Division “Hohenstaufen” and 10. SS-Panzer Division “Frundsberg”). Which were entrained and sent back from Russia to face the western Allies – which brought them under the guns and rockets of the patrolling Typhoons of the Allied air force.
Smilin’ Dave wrote:Close but not quite. The initial battles were won by the paratroops (without which the invasion would have been defeated), but the follow up attacks which finally pushed the British off Crete were by units landed by the navy or flown into the captured airfields (particularly the mountain troops).
Well there is a lot of controversy about the capture of Crete. The book: Crete, gives a very interesting account of the initial drops by Fallschirmjager onto the island. A lot of drop zones covered dug in Allied forces, with a number of Fallschirmjager almost dropping right into the very foxholes Australian & New Zealand troops were using! Even command posts had officers running around bagging the Fallschimjager who had been unlucky to land nearby or in the Command Post.
Also the majority of troops landed on the Islands were by an air-bridge the Germans established as soon as they captured an airfield (which they did after the main resistance at the airfields, two tanks, were neutralised when they became stuck in a river bed). The Germans did attempt to bring in extra forces by sea, but these ran into the Royal Navy – the bulk of attempts to land German troops by sea were failures (assuming my memory is correct here).
The controversy is whether or not the British knew the Fallschirmjager were coming? Had they prepared for it (the landings), the Germans may have worked out that the British were reading their mail and changed their codes – which would have been a disaster!
So a poor defence of Crete would enable the British to get the bulk of their forces away, while still making it look like the German codes were secure.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the Fallschimjager landings on Crete were a shambles, but rather that, it was not the Fallschimjager that won the day, but poor miss coordinated defence that won Crete for the Germans. The Fallschimjager did have some successes, but generally from what I have read, their forces were battered by landing right on top of allied troops who demolished them.
You really should pick up Crete Dave, it is a very interesting read.
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