The Order Of The Flights

These Groups of The IX Troop Carrier Command flew from England to Normandy in the following order from the following locations

The Pathfinders went first and made their drop at 0020. The Pathfinders were followed by serials from:
The 438th Group at Greenham Commons
The 436th Group at Membury
The 439th Group at Upottery
The 435th Group at Welford Park
The 441st Group at Merryfield and
The 440th Group at Exeter

All of the above groups airlifted units of the 101st Airborne Division and flew from the above airfields in Southern England. They had the shortest distance to fly and the most severe weather conditions

The 82nd Airborne Division was carried by the following Groups moving into the stream of traffic in this order.

The 316 th Group at Cottesmore
The 315 th Group at Spanhoe
The 314 th Group at Saltby
The 313 th Group at Folkinghan
The 61 st Group at Barkston Heath
The 442 nd Group at Balderton

The 434th Troop Carrier Group at Aldermaston and the 437th Group at Ramsbury towed gliders on their first NEPTUNE missions.

Bill Brinson Historian
Author--The Three One Five Group

READY GET SET

Troop Carrier D Day was not only a flying event it was also a day of reckoning for the planners and the ground crews.

It was also the day of reckoning for the Troop Carrier Command operations officers These men had carefully devised an extremely complex plan to assemble 821 C 47s into a workable formation This needed to be launched and assembled precisely into a pattern that would deliver troopers and gliders to their specific drop zones and landing areas on time and on the button

Harvey Cohen writing in the history of the 32 nd Troop Carrier Squadron comments about the amazing logistics of the mission.

The planning for D Day in retrospect seems incredible The airborne segment alone the only part being considered here was awesome All the thousands of men and machines had to be moved about many from the USA and all of them had to be at exact locations at specific times

In the case of Troop Carrier with its function of dropping paratroops this involved working backwards from the time of the planned paratroop drop in our case at 2 14AM on the 6 th of June The route of each unit had to be plotted and the number of miles had to be accurately determined so that calculations at prescribed air speeds C 47's carrying paratroops flew inbound at 140 miles per hour could be made Still working backwards each of the Groups which came from three different Wing areas in England had to be over check points at specific times so that there would not be several Groups flying through an airspace at the same time And working still further back the takeoff times and the assembly times had to be determined for each squadron of each group Before all these events could take place there had to be the fueling and last minute maintenance of hundreds of airplanes

All the aircrews had to be briefed on the scope of the mission and then the details e g flying in V of Vs drop speed of 110 mph return speed of 150 mph no evasive action over the Drop Zone At the same time the paratroops had to leave their own barracks areas and moved to various Troop Carrier bases They had to be fed and provided with personal needs and facilities they would need to load the planes.

June 6 1944 was also the day of reckoning for the ground crews who serviced the airplanes They also worked with the airborne troops to see that the correct materials were loaded onto the proper airplanes Mortar ammunition for example would have been of no value to a rifle platoon This was a logistics accomplishment of great magnitude and no one could allow for any mistakes on D Day

The ground crews for any combat mission have one of the worst jobs of all; the long wait for the mission to return A crew chief for example will have told his assistant what to do with his personal belongings if he didn't make it back No one expected this to happen but empty C 47 parking revetments at the end of the day were silent evidence that it did Life goes on of course but the loss of good buddies and true friends is never easy For the crews and airplanes that returned major repairs were often made far into the night to make the airplane flyable the next day Sometimes this was possible and sometimes it wasn't A pilot with a good crew chief and a good radio operator considered himself blessed especially if they were well supported by other squadron maintenance types

This photo of Turf Sport taken later during Market Garden shows how tight the formations were flown during combat missions The shadow in the lower right hand corner is the windshield wiper on the pilot's side of the cockpit of the photographer's airplane. Troop Carrier pilots were all very well trained in the fine art of flying in close formation and most of their missions were flown that way. To the uninitiated this may look difficult but formation flying soon becomes second nature. It can be done precisely only if the pilots can see the other airplanes clearly and a paradrop could not be flown accurately in WW II if the pilots could not also see the ground.

On D Day General James Gavin reported that he could not see the wingtip of the C 47 he was riding in let alone the ground while standing in the door and neither could the pilots in that particular serial This is why the airplanes scattered and this is the reason some of the paratroopers were also scattered.  

There is hardly time to blink. Formation flying requires constant attention

LET S GO!
Said Eisenhower The Supreme Commander Made His Decision

The training days were now over Almost everyone involved in the flights on 6 June 1944 started in a briefing session in a chilly shelter somewhere in England Here they were told what their part of the mission was to be and how they were expected to carry it out The one noticeable difference from the earlier Troop Carrier briefings for the North Africa Sicily and Italy missions was that the enlisted crewmembers were included and as a result much of the Troop Carrier history has been written by Sergeants like Martin Wolf Bob Callahan Bing Wood Arthur Een Michael Ingrisano and others We've all seen the Hollywood scenes of dramatic commanders like John Wayne or Gregory Peck standing before maps or sand tables briefing their troops This is it men the scene goes Synchronize your watches Five four three two one HACK Good luck The benches shuffle and everyone moves out

Some version of this took place in all the 18 aerodromes of the IX Troop Carrier Command and in the staging areas of the troops they were to carry These were scattered throughout the English Midlands and south and west of London at colorful places like Cottesmore Merryfield Folkingham Saltby Spanhoe Ramsbury Nottingham Membury Welford Greenham Common Exeter Meryfield Upottery and others It was finally the big day following endless formation training and practice drops Temporary numbers were chalked on the sides of each C 47 to tell paratroopers which plane to get on

A DAY OF RECKONING

All in all 821 Troop Carrier crews participated in the D Day mission and they were all loaded and launched as planned In his book Into The Valley Col Charles H Young describes the take off and assembly of his 439 th Troop Carrier Group

The Skytrains upon take off turned in a closely held well practiced formation passing back over the airfield as the last airplanes were taking off As the last crews formed up on their flight leader the formation flew toward the Bill of Portland a checkpoint on the English coast checkpoint headed southwest and turned off the red and green navigation lights Then 47 miles later at the point where the formation turned southeast toward Normandy downward recognition lights were turned off and the blue formation lights on top of the wings and fuselage were dimmed until they could just barely be seen Serials of aircraft made up almost entirely of 36 or 45 planes flew as nine ship Vs on Vs in trail The leader of each nine airplane flight kept 1000 feet behind the rear of the preceding flight

Leaders of the Wing elements in each flight were 200 feet back and 200 feet to the right or left Within each three plane V wingmen were to fly 100 feet back and 100 feet to the right or left of their leader This was a tight formation at night for aircraft approximately 75 feet long and 95 feet from wing tip to wing tip