Though Allied beach landings at Normandy would begin at 0630, the aerial invasion actually began in the dark hours just after midnight. Thousands of British and United States paratroopers dropped out of the night sky across the Cherbourg peninsula, far behind enemy lines. Other airborne troops swooped down onto Normandy in wooden gliders, each carrying men, equipment, and even small vehicles. Theirs was one of the more dangerous tasks of the whole operation: leaping in darkness into enemy territory, each group with a specific task--a bridge to be blown up, a railroad line to be cut, an enemy defense post to be dynamited, or a landing field to be seized and held. By achieving these objectives, the seaborne assault forces could have some assurance that a German counterattack would be weakened or delayed.
The Allies were new at the technique of airborne warfare. Prior to D-Day only a few operations had been tried in Tunisia and Sicily. It was the Germans who pioneered the paratroop tactics in their Blitzkrieg, or "lightning war," in their conquests of the Netherlands and Crete. Rommel was expecting the Allies to use both paratroopers and gliders in an invasion force, and had created some deadly defense measures. He had the plains and meadows around many Normandy rivers flooded, leaving precious little open landing space and treacherous water for the paratroopers. For the gliders, Rommel had designed mine-tipped poles, nick-named "Rommel asparagus," which he had planted across potential glider landing sites.
Rommel's defenses, as well as other factors, caused the airborne operation to teeter on the brink of disaster. Thick clouds and exploding clumps of flak (anti-aircraft fire) caused most of the planes to veer off course. Fully three-fourths of the paratroopers were scattered far and wide. Many dropped into the sea. Others were dropped so far from their zones, it would be days before they rejoined their units. Some paratroopers were shot before they even landed, while others perished in the flooded plains, drowning before they could cut themselves free of their harnesses.
For those who landed without injury, the immediate problem was regrouping with their comrades. Training had taught them to look for their units by following the "drop pattern" left by the direction of the plane. The drop plane usually followed a straight line, leaving the paratroopers spread along a similar pattern. Upon landing, the men were to move along this line, gathering at its center. To avoid enemy flak, the actual flight path had been erratic; subsequently, there was no drop pattern to follow.
The U.S. 101st Airborne Division had planned to regroup in the dark by signaling each other with the clicking of toy crickets. Unfortunately, a German patrol had captured a number of the early arrivals, discovered the clickers and their purpose, and used the toys to lure the Allied paratroopers into their gunfire. For U.S. paratroopers unable to tell friend from foe, it became a nightmare of confusion.
Despite these disasters, there were significant successes. Some glider groups made extremely accurate landings--one British team touched down fewer than twenty-five yards from their targeted bridge and overcame the enemy within minutes. Another glider landed directly on top of a building that housed a German sectional headquarters in the village of Ste-MΦre-╔glise. The Germans inside were so flabbergasted that they surrendered immediately, leading to the early capture of the entire village.
Amazingly, the paratroopers were far more successful than anyone could have expected. It was a remarkable tribute to the U.S. 82nd and the 101st Divisions that while thousands of their men found themselves miles from their units and targets that night, they fought the Germans wherever they encountered them. The Germans did not know the landings were scattered and confused; they only knew that thousands of fierce paratroopers were all around them.
Apart from the destroyed bridges and captured roadways, the greatest achievement of the airborne forces on D-Day was to bring confusion and uncertainty to the Germans across the whole breadth of the Cherbourg peninsula.
