The Plan

The American airborne assault on D-Day was in its own right the largest ever to have been attempted. The two divisions, the 82nd 'All American' and the 101st 'Screaming Eagles', comprised six parachute infantry regiments (PIR), a total of over 13,000 men, including attached arms and services. The parachute assault alone needed 822 transport planes.

The broad plan was that the parachute divisions would secure exits from UTAH Beach, gain control of the crossings over the rivers Merderet and Douve, prevent German movement along the N13, and gain and secure landing grounds for reinforcement by glider at dawn and dusk. Ahead of the main bodies of the parachute troops pathfinders were to jump to mark the drop zones.

Not all the Allied senior commanders liked the airborne idea. Air Chief Marshal Trafford Leigh Mallory, Commander in Chief of the Allied Expeditionary Air Forces, had opposed the plan from the time that General Montgomery first altered the COSSAC drop on Caen to a three division assault behind the beaches. Leigh Mallory maintained that flak defences were so strong, and that the terrain was so unsuitable for parachutists or gliders, that losses in men and machines could be as high as 75 per cent or more. Montgomery, supported by General Omar Bradley, persisted with his plan.

Two weeks before D-Day it was learned that Rommel had moved a fresh division into the area where the 82nd Airborne were due to drop

and the plan was modified to that described here, but Leigh Mallory continued to express doubts. Barely a week before D-Day he wrote to Eisenhower setting out his fears that troop carriers and tugs flying in a straight line at 1 ,OOOft would be easy targets for flak guns, and that the flooded and swampy ground in and around the rivers was unsuitable for landing airborne forces. Eisenhower overruled him.

On 5 June the Supreme Commander said to his British driver, Kay Summersby,'I hope to God I know what I'm doing', and that evening they drove to Newbury where the General visited three airfields. There he talked to General Maxwell Taylor and men of the 101st Airborne Division. They were to be among the first American troops to land in France.

What Happened on D-Day

The thick cloud and bad weather made it difficult to navigate and some of the pathfinders missed the drop zones and set up their homing beacons in the wrong places. Although the enemy flak was not as deadly as Leigh Mallory had forecast, there was enough of it to cause the relatively inexperienced troop carrier pilots to take avoiding action. They therefore weaved and flew higher and faster than they should have done so that when the paratroopers jumped, they were not only too high and moving too quickly, but they were probably also in the wrong place.

The 82nd Airborne Division, dropping west of Ste Mere Eglise and astride the River Merderet, was more fortunate than the 101st. The 505th PIR, the first 82nd regiment to jump, landed pretty well on its drop zone, Zone 'O', and within three hours had taken Ste Mere Eglise one mile to the east, thus controlling any movement by the Germans from the north down the N13. The division's other two regiments, the 507th and 508th, were scattered west of the River Merderet which resembled less of a river and more of a broad ribbon of swamp. Thus the division was divided by the water, and the bridges at Chef du Pont and at la Fiere, by which the 82nd could communicate, became of particular importance.

The 101 st Airborne Division was distributed over an area of almost 400 square miles. By dawn only 1,100 men of the division's 6,600 had reached their reporting points and only a further 1 ,400 assembled by the end of the day. The countryside added to their confusion. Small fields bordered with strong hedges were typical. They all looked the same. It was difficult to know which way to go. Yet by 0600, 4'/2 hours after the main landing, the division had secured the western ends of the causeways leading from UTAH. Without those exits the 4th Division could not get off the beach. Thus, before the infantry had arrived, the 'Screaming Eagles' had virtually guaranteed the success of the UTAH landing.