Varying Views

The general views of Troop Carrier performance in Normandy vary widely between veterans of the 82 nd Airborne Division and veterans of The 101 st Airborne Division with the most critical judgments coming from the 101 st There are still strong differences of opinion about this between veterans of these two divisions but there are also many other well documented records to supplement these opinions Normandy was the first combat action for the 101 st while the 82 nd had trained and fought with these same Troop Carrier units in North Africa Sicily and Italy It may be that they just knew a little more about what to expect A more likely reason for the difference is the relative time of arrival over the French coast The first Troop Carrier serials in the lineup carried the 101 st Airborne Division from airfields in Southern England and this is when the fog and the clouds were the thickest And this is also when and where the breakup of the formations was the most severe.

This gets even more confusing when one considers that it took five hours for the full formation to cross the French coast. The weather varied widely during those five hours and each Troop Carrier pilot flew into the weather conditions that were there at the exact time he crossed. In the ways of war there were some bad encounters and some equally bad flight experiences, but these were a relatively small percentage and not one of them is at all typical of the full five hour mission. Many of the first reports from the paratroopers on the streets are still with us appearing in popular books and in commercial World War II TV documentaries.

The full story of these flights can't possibly be told accurately and professionally without input from the flight crews and this is what is lacking in much of the more recent material we read and view today This is a serious omission in any D Day report labeled History.

It is easy to understand the resentment of paratroopers for the rough ride some of them got but it is also hard to understand how individual pilots can still be held responsible for the French weather or for the command decisions that ordered them to fly in it. More detailed information about this is available in most libraries and in reliable history websites on the Internet.

TRAINING FOR FLAK

There has been other speculation and it is just that that the Troop Carriers might have continued through the fog in formation if they had been trained better for instrument flight and that they might have been able to cope with flak and ground fire had they been trained to fly through it.

This was in fact tried with disastrous results later in 1944 in a 349 th Troop Carrier Group training exercise from Pope Field North Carolina This was scheduled in response to the suggestions of the 82nd Airborne commanders in their official debriefing conference.

Three C 47s were lost in rain and fog out over the Atlantic before the mission could be aborted It was tried again four weeks later in better weather The conclusions were It is impossible to fly tight formations in the clouds and antiaircraft fire programmed to miss is not realistic training It cost fifteen lives to learn this.

Authors like Stephen Ambrose, Max Hastings and the writers for the History Channel who refer to the Troop Carrier pilots as being unqualified and careless, need to look again at the facts now that they are so readily available. They haven't yet considered the lengthy training sessions in England to hone the night formation skills of the pilots nor is there any apparent awareness of the intensive night practice drops with the paratroopers during the same period.

For many weeks this was the top priority in all Troop Carrier Groups and very little else took place Many of the pilots were combat veterans of North Africa Sicily and Italy and all but the newest replacements had 500 hours or more in the air Some had many more.

The most formidable enemy of the troop carrier airdrops on D Day was the weather And the most formidable enemy of historical truth everywhere is hazy memory and uncertain speculation.

THE PATHFINDERS WENT IN FIRST

The Troop Carrier pathfinders flew them in and the Airborne pathfinders stayed to fight the war.

The role of the Pathfinders was critical here and must not be overlooked The IX Troop Carrier Command Pathfinder Group Provisional was formed within the 52 nd Troop Carrier Wing under the command of Lt Col Joel Crouch to provide accurate guidance for the airborne troops to their drop zones and landing zones This group was the outcome of numerous meetings held in Comiso Sicily between senior American and British commanders to critique the disappointing results of the airborne landings there It was clearly established that the use of assigned drop zones marked in advance of the arrival of the main body of airborne troops was sound thinking.

In addition the idea was that even if the pathfinders missed the zones a bit and the zones were improperly marked that at least the main body of the paratroopers would be dropped together This would avoid the tragic scattering we experienced in Sicily Specially selected troop carrier crews and airborne troops were trained for specific pathfinder duties The Rebecca Eureka radar transponder system was utilized as a navigational aid for incoming troop carrier serials Eureka was a portable responder beacon that was placed on a drop zone or landing zone on the ground And after it was activated it indicated it's approximate location on a receiver called Rebecca in the cockpit.

Army Air Forces navigators also relied on Gee a primitive electronic navigational system that worked to a degree but was complex and time consuming to use It required special training and many crews found it awkward in combat Some crews used it successfully however The Pathfinder training which had to do with the Army Air Force crews was but a small part of the whole story and should in no way be confused with the special training of the airborne pathfinder troops They learned the proper ways to operate their special equipment including long wave radio Rebecca Eureka sets smoke signals holophane lights at night fluorescent panels by day for marking landing areas and wind direction in the form of large T s laid out on the ground These troops learned to jump with all this equipment and how to set it up once on the ground all of this in 15 30 minutes in the dark before the incoming serials began arriving.

The Army Air Forces Pathfinders were only a means of transportation and delivery That job accomplished they immediately returned to their home base leaving their airborne friends on the ground to fight the war Just before 10 00PM on June 5th twenty C 47s of the 9th Troop Carrier Command Pathfinders Group took off from the base of North Witham near Grantham England.

Each carried its elite pathfinder paratroopers and their equipment The weather also scattered those who were to mark the DZs Their destinations Ste Mère Eglise and Ste Marie du Mont These crews and their men were the first to know the exact place of the Normandy landings and theirs were the very first flights Multiple pathfinder teams preceded the main assault but some missed their destinations by as much as 1 1 4 miles They set up their transmitters where they landed and this is why there were some conflicts between the visual sightings of the drop zones and the Rebecca signals.

Lieutenant Colonel Joel Crouch piloted the lead plane following his preset itinerary without any further radio communication He crossed the English Channel flying as low as safely possible flying over the French coast just after midnight.

These pathfinders were absolutely essential to the success of this mission Their job was to mark the proper DZs drop zones and LZs landing zones with luminous panels in the shape of Ts in predetermined places that were visible from the air but not from the ground In addition smoke generators were also to be placed near the panels to indicate the wind direction Radio direction finders beacons were also to be placed as homing beacons The pathfinder force arrived over the beaches after an uneventful flight across the Channel but after they made landfall they ran into problems.

The lead C 47 ran into a bank of low lying coastal cloud and disappeared from the view of the pilots in the rest of the formation The loss of visual contact completely destroyed the essential integrity and the discipline of the formation that had been drilled into the pilots during their training Some pilots elected to climb above the clouds while others tried to go below them and others tried to stay together The disorder caused the formation to break up and the force scattered.

Then to compound the problem German flak came up to meet they lowflying C 47s as they crossed the coast Many of the pathfinders were dropped away from their programmed destinations At 01 30AM the planes carrying the 101st Airborne Division arrived over Normandy and began dropping their troops In part because of the failure of the pathfinders to find their objectives. Their planned drops were also scattered  

As a matter of general interest one report states that the first person to land on the continent of Europe during the invasion was Captain Frank Lillyman of the 101 st Airborne Division an airborne pathfinder. Less than an hour after landing Captain Lillyman heard the engines of the main body of IX Troop Carrier Command C 47s arriving from the west. They were carrying paratroopers of the 101 st and 82nd Airborne Divisions a sight that Captain Lillyman hadn't time to enjoy. Lt Col Patrick Cassidy battalion commander of the 1st Battalion 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment 101st Airborne Division ordered Lillyman to set up a roadblock near Foucarville. And once again we can be thankful for the American ingenuity that largely saved the day.