SAAF IX Troop Carrier Command was a pioneering effort that used mass formations of low-flying aircraft to deliver the spearheads for the major Allied invasions of Western Europe in World War II. The frontier was warfare in the 3rd dimension—the delivery of elite airborne and gliderborne infantry from the vertical flank. 

The concept of warfare in the 3rd dimension remains a vital part of modern warfare, but the technology of delivery has changed dramatically since WWII. The Troop Carrier armadas, some of which took hours to pass a given point, formed a rather unstable platform from which paratroopers jumped and gliders released into enemy territory only a few hundred feet below. Initially, aircrews flew these operations at night, in tight formations, unarmed, with navigation lights off. They delivered their human payloads from low altitudes at slow airspeeds, and were vulnerable not only to flak but to small arms fire. Indeed, TC airmen were the only air force flight crews for whom infantry helmets were required flight gear. 

In contrast, modern warfare uses smart bombs and missile technology, helicopters for airlanding, satellite-based navigational aids, smart weapons for covering fire, and many other advances that make the delivery of invasion spearheads much less manual, and not so costly in lives. In World War II this was not the case. 

The delivery technology of that era was primitive. Pilots identified landmarks in the light of a partial moon, and used imprecise navigational technology, like Rebecca-Eureka and Gee, to help confirm positions determined by pilotage and dead reckoning. Airborne troopers did not “deliver” the spearheads, they were the spearheads, and Troop Carrier units delivered them. Communications between ground and air—so vital for airsupply of paratroopers in the period before they linked up with ground units—was poor to non-existent until the Spring of 1945.  

As Gen. John R. Galvin has stated, the record of USAAF Troop Carrier has been “sometimes misunderstood.” In part, this stems from the radical changes in technology that make the manual requirements of air assault flying in World War II almost incomprehensible by modern standards. Some misinformation, however, has been introduced over the years as a result of the use by several historians of a poor quality “snapshot” of Troop Carrier operations, a view based on anecdotal information rather than facts. Moreover, few accounts in the popular literature about WWII present a clear or complete picture of USAAF Troop Carrier and the wide variety of significant contributions to Allied victory by TC units in every theater of war.

The Troop Carrier flight training program, unlike bomber, fighter and attack programs, did not begin until several months after the war started. Though Troop Carrier was a major Air Force outfit, TC training was not included in the rigorous pre-war Army Air Corps flight training program. The reason was simple: the decision had not yet been made that there should even be Airborne-Troop Carrier. Into The Valley includes extensive information on the development of USAAF Troop Carrier, as it does on each of the following operations described below. For additional information on Airborne-Troop Carrier operations before and during WWII in all theaters of war by both Allies and Axis, see the Airborne Chronology.

North Africa (TORCH)

After the Troop Carrier training program began in earnest, little time elapsed before military and political realities intervened and TC units were sent overseas to participate in the development of the “second front” requested by Stalin. Named Operation TORCH, political exigencies required U.S. commanders for the invasion, though most of the Allied effort in North Africa had been British. The British had sunk much of the French fleet after the pro-German Vichy government was established, an act the French had not yet forgiven. The Allies were hopeful that French forces in the area would be aligned with the Free French, and did not want to provoke a reaction that would drive them to the Vichy government.

The airborne mission that accompanied the amphibious assault of North Africa, 7-8 November 1942, was planned hastily and coordinated poorly. Pilots had to fly all night before reaching their target. Under the “Peace Plan,” which presumed that French forces were friendly, Troop Carrier aircraft were to airland their troopers at La Senia, Algeria. If the French were unfriendly, then Troop Carrier would use the “War Plan” and drop their paratroopers to take the airfields at La Senia and Tafaraoui. 

The mission departed under the Peace Plan. TC aircraft were to home in on a British ship, the Alynbank, off the coast near Oran, but the ship was broadcasting on the wrong frequency. When the French anti-aircraft fire opened up on the C-47s, and when several Dewoitine fighters attacked the incoming C-47s, it became evident that the “Peace Plan” was not in effect. One TC pilot of a shot-up C-47 backed off a Dewoitine by flying straight at him, which bought the TC crew enough time to get their ship on the ground. This C-47, and more than two dozen others in the target area, landed and re-grouped at the Sebkra d'Oran, a large dry lake bed not far from the two targeted airfields. After the Airborne commander learned that an Allied column from Arzeu had taken Tafaraoui, three Troop Carrier C-47s loaded with Airborne were dispatched from the Sebkra for Tafaraoui, where the paratroops were to garrison the airfield. The three aircraft were attacked by six French fighters and forced down. It was in this action that TC and the Airborne suffered their first combat casualties of the war. 

After the initial missions in TORCH, Airborne-Troop Carrier operations in North Africa were improvised on a small scale, targeting airfields and other important locations across Algeria and Tunisia, where by this time most French forces were friendly. On some of these missions the only maps available were road maps and the drop zones were selected from the air. Most of these improvised missions achieved their objectives. 

Sicily (HUSKY, LADBROKE, FUSTIAN)

In the invasion of Sicily, 9-14 July 1943, inexperienced planners routed the LADBROKE glider mission to a low-altitude release at a point two miles offshore, near Syracuse in the British sector. Unexpectedly strong headwinds blew most of the gliders out to sea, and an estimated 326 aviators and troopers, mostly British, drowned. Only 5 percent of the gliderborne troopers reached their objective, but with some help from British 5 Division, succeeded in their mission. 

In the first parachute mission, HUSKY I, formations were to fly a complicated dogleg route to avoid Allied naval guns, then make their drops around midnight in the light of a setting quarter moon. Many inexperienced pilots got separated in the darkness as a gale blew itself out over the Mediterranean, and the drops were scattered. In Husky II, nervous U.S. Navy and Army gunners combined to shoot down 23 Troop Carrier aircraft, and the British navy shot down two more during Operation FUSTIAN. 

Two days after HUSKY II —four days after HUSKY I—Gen. Matthew Ridgway was still unable to account for 43 percent of his paratroops. Nevertheless, Gen. George C. Patton stated that the airborne assault had saved him 48 hours, a long time during an invasion. Once again controversy swirled around the future of Airborne-Troop Carrier, though ironically, Hitler was so impressed with the Allied successes in Sicily that he ordered the German airborne effort to be revived. By then, fortunately for the Allies, it was too late for the German airborne. The Luftwaffe had lost air superiority.

After additional analysis, several key paradrop, air resupply and glider maneuvers in the States, plus the success of the first Airborne-Troop Carrier operation in the Pacific at Nadzab, the go-ahead was given for the buildup to the large-scale Normandy airborne assault missions. TORCH had involved a battalion-sized airborne assault, and the Sicily invasion spearhead included a brigade, a regiment, a battalion with attached units. Normandy, in contrast, was to be much larger: two American airborne divisions, the 82d and the 101st, were to drop and open the roads from one of the American beaches (Utah), and prevent German counterattacks from reaching the beach. The British 6 Airborne Division was to provide similar support for the British amphibious landings. The majority of troopers were to be dropped after midnight in the early morning hours of D-Day. Five more Allied divisions were to make amphibious landings on Normandy beaches.

The lessons of Sicily, and later Italy, had produced several important changes. Operational planners were no longer an ad hoc group, but permanent staff. Coordination between Airborne and Troop Carrier commands had become a priority. Pilots were rigorously trained in night flying, bad weather flying, and close formation flying. In addition, the Pathfinders were organized trained prior to Normandy operations. Their mission was to come in ahead of the TC serials and to mark each dropzone (DZ). To accomplish this, they used such things as lights, panels and “Eureka” responder beacons, which were picked up by “Rebecca” receivers in the cockpits.

Normandy and Southern France (OVERLORD/NEPTUNE; DRAGOON)

Troop Carrier groups that had received Stateside training finished their operational training after they arrived overseas. Numerous practice missions were flown with live loads. Efforts were made to coordinate these live practice missions so that airborne and gliderborne troopers flew with the same TC units that would fly them into Normandy. The Normandy operation was code-named OVERLORD. The assault phase of OVERLORD was code- named NEPTUNE. 

As the Troop Carrier serials in NEPTUNE reached the Cotentin coast, clouds had formed, as they did three out of four June nights. The clouds were approximately 1,000 feet high and eleven miles deep. In what USAF analysis refers to as a “serious planning error,” no provision was included in NEPTUNE field orders for bad weather, though radio silence was mandated and, excluding flight leaders, Rebecca-Eureka was not to be used except in an “emergency.” Some DZs were unmarked because of the proximity of enemy troops. Inexplicably, field orders contained provisions for bad weather during the full-scale practice mission, Eagle, flown on May 11. Crews without navigators who had been visually locked on to an unlit wingtip less than 100 ft. away found themselves lost very quickly. At drop speed, a C-47 flies one mile every 30 seconds. Three-ship elements that stayed together dropped together, often dropping where they saw other concentrations of troopers.  

Some anecdotal reports have TC units dropping paratroopers virtually all over western France, but this is simply not so. In fact, 35-40 percent of the troopers dropped within a mile of their intended DZ, and 80 percent within five miles. Gen. John R. Galvin sums it up correctly in his Foreword for Into The Valley: “Although airborne operations in Normandy accomplished all assigned missions by the end of the first day, the later complaints that the landings were scattered (as in Sicily) created in some the conviction that success had been more a matter of coincidence and luck than good tactics or indeed, a viable concept. This was a mistaken impression. The air assault carried its objectives against heavy opposition and was key to the successful early establishment of the amphibious landing and the quick expansion of the initial beachheads to sustainable size.” 

In an effort to prevent the “friendly fire” that downed so many TC aircraft in Sicily, USAAF and British aircraft were painted with large, easily recognizable black and white “invasion stripes” on their fuselages and wings. Nevertheless, navy gunners shot down six British troop carrier aircraft flying in a 50-ship serial on 7 June, as the final glider serials of NEPTUNE flew to their LZs. Other communications failures resulted in casualties on airsupply missions. On one such mission, also on 7 June, 10 Troop Carrier aircraft whose crews were not advised of known German positions were shot down enroute to DZ N. The linkage of airborne units and amphibious forces coming in from the beaches occurred soon, however, and the need for airsupply did not become critical again until late summer when Allied supply lines stretched thin. 

After Normandy came the easy success of the airborne assault missions in Operation DRAGOON, the invasion of Southern France. German resistance was light and the airborne objectives were met well ahead of schedule. Planners responded to the successes in Normandy and Southern France with an overly aggressive plan to invade German-occupied Holland. This was Operation MARKET GARDEN, through which British Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery would lead Allied forces across the Lower Rhine River at Arnhem.

Holland (MARKET GARDEN)

Operation MARKET was a corps-sized drop, and as such, the largest in history. The ground assault was code-named GARDEN. In MARKET, three simultaneous airborne-troop carrier operations were mounted, all in daylight, against German targets in occupied Holland: Eindhoven, Nijmegen and Arnhem, with drop zones as deep as 85 miles in enemy territory. British ground forces were routed up a narrow road, and airborne units were to open a 60-mile long corridor. The airborne assault phase of the operation was scheduled over three days beginning on 17 September 1944. Troop Carrier formations used multiple lanes along each of two air routes to compress delivery time. The accuracy of TC operations was excellent throughout, though delayed by weather beginning on the second day and despite the fact that TC units did not have any time for operational training before MARKET. 

Supply lines stretched to the point of breaking as Allied forces streamed across Europe from Normandy and Southern France, and by the beginning of September one army corps and one entire army had been stopped several days for lack of gasoline. Ammunition and food were also in short supply. Troop Carrier flew emergency resupply missions to the Front on days they were not assigned to fly airborne missions, whenever the weather would allow, and even on some days when it would not. When Allied Supreme Commander Gen. Eisenhower gave the go-ahead for the invasion of Holland, airborne and TC planners had only six days before the invasion to prepare.    

The assault phase of Allied operations in Holland encountered stiff German resistance. Though the American airborne divisions took their objectives with help from the advancing British ground and armored units, the heroic British effort at Arnhem was doomed to failure. Commanders ignored intelligence photos and information from the Dutch underground which clearly indicated the presence of two panzer divisions that were refitting in the Arnhem area. Moreover, the DZ selected for the Arnhem sector was located too far from the bridge across the Rhine that was the primary objective in the British sector. Planners depended on three continuous days of good weather for airborne operations, though the weather over the North Sea was notoriously unpredictable in September. Communications were so poor in Holland that at times they jeopardized overall operational control. Ground-to-air communications were non-existent. As a result of these and other factors, critical lapses occurred. For example, reinforcements in the Arnhem sector were delayed for two days. These comprised the Polish 1st Parachute Brigade, which were flown to Arnhem by the 314th and 315th TC Groups from their bases near Grantham, England. Serials took off in nearly zero-zero visibility and flew through a cloud deck approximately 9,000 ft high.

USAF analysis cited “the heroism of the men who flew burning, disintegrating planes over their zones as coolly as if on review and gave their lives to get the last trooper out, the last bundle dropped,” often to positions for which help was already too late. Overall accuracy of the drops associated with MARKET was excellent and USAF history refers to MARKET, FAAA command made it clear that communications problems would be solved before the next operation.

The Ardennes and Bastogne (REPULSE)

Troop Carrier units were busy during this period with airsupply and evacuation missions. After the German Ardennes offensive began, 16 December 1944, TC units began flying 11,000 members of the 17th Airborne Division from England to the Continent where these troopers were used in the front lines. The 82d and 101st Airborne Divisions were also sent to the Front, via ground, in the effort to stem the German advance. During the period from 22-29 December, in Operation REPULSE, IX TCC units flew an intensified schedule of airsupply and troop transport to the Front, including emergency resupply missions to the 101st Airborne and other American soldiers who were holding Bastogne. Located in SE Belgium near Luxembourg, and a key road net, Bastogne had come under siege by German forces. Of the 2,127 sorties that were flown during this eight day period, much of which was impacted by bad weather, 927 went to Bastogne between 23-27 December. Resupply included food, gasoline, a team of surgeons, and a 50-ship serial of gliders carrying heavy ammunition. 

On Christmas Day, U.S. troops had managed to fly a courier out in a Stinson L-5 to request a special glider mission for the next day. Artillery ammunition was critically low and German reinforcements had arrived to bolster German units who had shifted to the western perimeter in preparation for an attack on Bastogne. Two Troop Carrier groups of the 50th Wing, the 439th and 440th, had moved from England to bases in France and were available to fly. Airbases in England were weathered in at this time. The 76 tons of 155mm artillery ammunition to be loaded into the gliders arrived late, however, and the mission was scheduled for the morning of the next day.

Once again, communication failed, and the TC serial was routed in over the western perimeter where the heaviest concentration of German artillery had been assembled for two days. Though the Ninth Air Force had the updated information on the German troop positions, and IX TCC HQ was in contact daily “by telephone” with Ninth AF HQ, this information was not relayed in time. To complicate matters further, scheduled fighter cover failed to show in sufficient numbers, and those that did appear flew only high cover. The column of C-47s flew directly into a barrage of German flak and 26 percent of the formation was shot down. Nevertheless, because of the skill, dogged determination and courage of the aircrews, including both power and glider pilots and other aircrew members, more than 70 percent of the cargo was delivered to the designated landing zone (LZ), or otherwise recovered by the garrison at Bastogne. Capt. Joseph K. Perkins, Intelligence Officer of the 321st Glider Field Artillery Battalion, 101st Airborne, spotted the Troop Carrier formation four miles out with his binoculars. “No ‘show’ I have ever seen, or ever will see, compares to this spectacle, and this includes the armada off the beaches on D-Day,” he said years later. “Nothing compares to seeing those fellows march headlong through that intense flak.” Without the air resupply of Bastogne in REPULSE, in the words of Gen. Anthony McAuliffe, the American commander, “the situation would have become worse than desperate, it would have become untenable.”

Rhine River Crossing (VARSITY)

This was the largest single-day airborne assault mission in history. Planners, mindful of their mistakes in Holland, consolidated the entire operation to one day and limited the airborne objectives to no more than six miles east of the Rhine River in Germany. The plans for VARSITY had been originally developed in November 1944 and were developed for an earlier river crossing that was to be led by Gen. Omar Bradley. That effort had been delayed by heavy fighting in the Fall, and then waylaid by the German Ardennes offensive. Plans were adapted for a British-led effort that included the Canadian First, British Second, and U.S. Ninth Armies. The airborne assault included two divisions: the U.S. 17th Airborne and the British 6 Airborne. 

Once again the assault was planned as a daylight operation, as Allied air superiority could now only be breached at night or in bad weather. A total of 17,132 airborne troops with more than 7,000,000 lbs of equipment and supplies, including 130 artillery weapons and more than 1,200 vehicles, were delivered behind enemy lines by 1,836 power aircraft and 1,348 gliders. Of the 908 gliders flown in by units of IX TCC, 592 were on doubletow. The DZ and LZ area was less than 25 miles square. This was German soil, and resistance was expected to be fierce. Allied leaders were determined to avoid a protracted struggle during the river crossing, and believed that with the airborne envelopment of German positions near the Rhine and the simultaneous capture of bridges across the Issel River, that Allied forces could move quickly out of the flood plain and into the interior of Germany and the Ruhr industrial center.

The air routes were again concentrated, as in Holland. This time they flew in three lanes abreast, 1½ miles apart, with one more lane above. A formation of 240 B-24s rigged to drop resupply to each division came in 15 minutes behind the TC formation. Even with the compact formation, the massive air armada took 3 hours and 12 minutes to pass a given point. The formation must have seemed interminable to German defensive forces on the ground. In a post-war evaluation of the operation, German military experts, including Kurt Student, Freiherr von der Heydte, and Albert Kesselring, referred to the airborne operation as “practically a mass crossing of the river by air.”

Several firsts were introduced on this mission. Self-sealing gas tanks were installed on most Troop Carrier aircraft, a long-needed safety feature for missions susceptible to heavy ground fire. The need for ground-to-air communications was addressed by the introduction of Combat Control Teams that arrived with their equipment in two gliders: a jeep and a ¼-ton trailer with two different types of radios (ground-to-ground and ground-to-air), a transmitter, a generator, and other equipment. Two teams were assigned to each division, one as backup, plus an additional backup team, for a total of nine. FAAA had come under heavy criticism for the poor communications capabilities of its units, and it made a serious attempt to correct the problem in VARSITY, should further air resupply be required. It was not.

Again, the Troop Carrier deliveries were highly accurate, more accurate even than in Holland. The DZ and LZ area was shrouded in smoke, however, as the medieval German town of Wesel burned from an earlier artillery pounding and from Montgomery’s use of smoke pots to cloak his troop movements. Visibility was reduced to 300-400 yards and the smoke was 2,300 feet thick in places. Gunners on the ground had an advantage in that low-flying aircraft were highlighted against the sky. An English newspaper had learned of the invasion and ran the story in advance, and on 23 March, Axis Sally announced that the Germans knew the mission was scheduled for the next day near Wesel. “Don’t worry about the landing,” she said. “Flak will be so thick you can walk down from the sky.” Indeed, according to official airborne records, this mission flew “through the heaviest concentration of anti-aircraft fire yet experienced in an airborne operation . . . .” 

The post-Ardennes attrition among German defensive forces east of the Rhine was good news for ground troops, but not necessarily good news for Troop Carrier. Anti-aircraft weapons took the place of ground forces in the German plan of battle, which now centered on knocking as many TC aircraft and gliders out of the air as possible. And, as the official USAF analysis stated, “there was no way for troop carriers to fly around the enemy strong points; those strong points were their objectives.” Numerous aircraft were hit, 394 in IX TCC units alone, and over half the gliders in LZ S were hit on the way down. According to USAF records, some bomber crew members in the B-24s that dropped supplies 15 minutes behind the TC formation reported that the flak on this mission surpassed anything they had encountered on bombing missions.   

The Rhine crossing mission was a success, and though opposition on the LZs and DZs was intense and kept gliderborne troopers and glider pilots pinned down for hours, the linkage with Montgomery’s troops on the ground occurred quickly. In the words of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “The March 24 operation sealed the fate of Germany.” Though there had been two previous crossings of the Rhine River farther to the south, Ike noted that each of those had an element of “surprise and good fortune.” On the other hand, the operation near Wesel was “made in the teeth of the greatest resistance the enemy could provide anywhere along the long river. Moreover, it was launched directly on the edge of the Ruhr and the successful landing on the eastern bank placed strong forces in position to deny the enemy use of significant portions of that great industrial area.”

Conclusion

Though this overview includes a summary of the more important Airborne-Troop Carrier operations in the Mediterranean and the European theaters of war during World War II, it is not meant to be an inclusive description of events. Rather, its purpose is to provide readers a sense of the development and evolution USAAF Troop Carrier in the MTO and ETO. For a thorough description of these events and first-hand accounts of the action, see Into The Valley, The Untold Story of USAAF Troop Carrier, From North Africa Through Europe. 

Troop Carrier, as Gen. Galvin said in his Foreword, “was built from scratch,” after the war began. It was controversial then, and not without controversy, even now. When First Troop Carrier Command was formed in the U.S. to begin training TC crews, many old-school planners and military leaders resisted the concept of warfare in the 3rd dimension. Still others opposed the drain of funds to a new, untested outfit at a time when the Air Force was considered by some as a mere adjunct to the army. As the war progressed, units of IX Troop Carrier Command did much more than fly airborne assault missions, which remained their primary responsibility. They also provided emergency resupply to front-line units, especially to Patton’s fast-moving tank columns. This flying became intense near the end of summer 1944 with few breaks to Spring 1945. TC units delivered when the routes became too long or too difficult for the Red Ball Express, and on return legs flew evacuation missions that effectively made general hospitals accessible from the Front. These evacuation missions saved the lives of many seriously wounded soldiers who would have otherwise died. Later in the war TC repatriated tens of thousands of POWs on airsupply return legs. See IX TCC Duties and Airborne Chronology in Part II, Airsupply, Evacuation, Transport, and Repatriation.

Troop Carrier’s capacity and efficiency in delivering large masses of men and materiel increased and improved throughout the war, especially in combat, and the tasks assigned to them grew exponentially. Nonetheless, several problems haunted USAAF Troop Carrier during the war. 

The navigational technology of this period was primitive and imprecise. This deficiency was not limited to Troop Carrier, of course, or even to the Air Force. The slow-moving naval armada in Normandy, for example, missed Utah Beach by nearly a mile-and-a-half. In addition, communications remained problematic throughout most of the war, resulting in many serious miscues and much loss of life. Again, this was not a problem exclusive to the air war, and the Allies were not its only victims. For example, when the Germans tried a last-ditch airborne operation during their Ardennes offensive, airborne veteran Col. Freiherr von der Heydte, mindful of past communications failures, asked permission to bring carrier pigeons—just in case the birds were needed to deliver messages. Permission was denied. All of von der Heydte’s radios were lost or destroyed in the jump. 

Even communications between aircraft in airborne operations were primitive. Radio silence on the run-ins to DZs and LZs was included in most operational field orders, as mentioned above. Consequently, the radio operators in each aircraft used directional flashlights known as Aldis lamps to signal aircraft crews behind them. A red light from the astrodome of the C-47 in front of you meant four minutes out, and time for paratroopers to stand up and hook up; a green light meant jump your troops, or release your glider. 

In his post-war book, Crusade in Europe, Gen. Eisenhower wrote that when he considered canceling the airborne assault in Normandy, as he was urged to do by his senior air advisor because of predicted heavy losses, he realized that to do so would mean that “the attack on Utah Beach [was] probably hopeless, and this meant that the whole operation suddenly acquired a degree of risk, even foolhardiness, that presaged a gigantic failure, possibly Allied defeat in Europe.” The D-Day airborne assault had to work, and fortunately, it did. The highest ranking airborne commander of the war, Gen. Matthew Ridgway, commanding general of XVIII Corps, described Troop Carrier pilots “as skilled as any aviators I ever knew, and God knows they were brave men, both in the air and on the ground. In the run to the drop zone, they flew formations tighter and more precise than any the bombers ever flew, and they did it at night. They couldn’t take evasive action, either, no matter how hot the fire from the ground might be.” 

It is time that Troop Carrier veterans received credit for what they accomplished in World War II, and for the way in which they accomplished it. For most of these veterans, this will not happen in their lifetimes, but it will happen, eventually. Someday people will study the improbable operations carried out by these indomitable warriors, and they will recognize the courage, the creativity, and the tenacity of these men who put their lives on the line to make a new idea work, while they used untested technologies to help develop a new form of battle, mostly during battle, with scarcely a chance to shoot back.   

Charles D. Young

Selected Bibliography