1.1.Airborne Warfare: The German Experience, 1939–41

AIRBORNE WARFARE WAS pioneered by Italy and the Soviet Union during the 1930s, but it was in Germany that the concept advanced furthest before the outbreak of the Second World War, and it was the apparent success of early German airborne operations that persuaded Britain and America to create their own airborne arms. German airborne doctrine was at this time very different from Allied practice as it evolved in the later years of hostilities. First, the airborne forces themselves were part of the Luftwaffe rather than the Wehrmacht. Second, early German operations were directed against countries not known for their military prowess – countries which did not possess large or modern air forces or extensive ground-based air defences. Third, these operations were not mass ventures but were for the most part company-sized drops aimed at specific objectives – fortifications, bridges or airfields. The troops involved carried very few weapons heavier than machine guns and light mortars; they had virtually no ground transportation and little air-portable equipment.

The appearance of mass airborne landings came from the German tactic of using a vanguard of genuinely ‘airborne’ troops (i.e., paratroops or glider-borne infantry) to seize airfields before much larger numbers of air landing troops were flown in by powered transport aircraft. Light assault gliders were only employed in small numbers. Operations were planned to ensure that the airborne had only to hold their objectives for limited periods before they were reinforced or relieved by conventional forces, and they were always scheduled in daylight. Finally, as both Hitler and Goering took a very strong personal interest in the airborne, their commander, General Kurt Student, found himself in ‘a certain privileged position which he seized with both hands’.1 He could always be certain that the interests of his troops would not be neglected by other branches of the German armed forces – by the ground units tasked to link up with them, or by the air formations that provided the fire support they otherwise lacked.

The main tenets of German airborne doctrine are clearly visible in their operations in Denmark and Norway in April 1940. Less than one company of paratroops captured the two-mile Vordingborg bridge linking the Danish islands of Falster and Seeland, while only one platoon took the two airfields at Aalborg in northern Denmark. Similarly the seizure of airfields near Stavanger and Oslo in Norway was assigned to single companies. Despite poor weather conditions, which complicated air navigation over Norway, all the objectives were taken and such Danish and Norwegian troops as were encountered were completely overawed by what was, at that time, an entirely new medium of warfare. Within hours of the initial assaults, the airborne units were being reinforced either by ground forces or by troops landed by Junkers JU 52 transports.

This first ever employment of airborne forces in live combat thus appears to have been an outstanding success. Yet German airborne actions in Scandinavia also illustrate another feature of early airborne warfare: virtually any flaw in the planning or execution of operations usually resulted in heavy losses of personnel and/or equipment, and in mission failure. A few days after their initial offensive the Germans dropped another company of paratroops at Dombas, on the Lägen river northwest of Oslo, to block a route being used by retreating Norwegian forces. The operation was a disastrous failure. The landings were widely dispersed and many paratroops were captured before they could assemble into a cohesive force; others were killed or injured in the drop, which was executed at too