Paratroopers played a role in many battles, but not always successfully.
During the Second World War, a new type of military operation was created which allowed armies to strike deep behind enemy lines. Airborne operations, which involved paratroopers and glider-borne infantry, were extremely risky and that is why some daring attempts ended in complete disaster.
Due to that fact, throughout World War II the bulk of paratroopers fought as infantry. However, four operations stand out as being the largest use in airborne forces ever.
Battle of Crete
Following the Axis victories in the Balkans and Greece, German General Kurt Student conceived Operation Merkur (Mercury) to capture the Greek island of Crete, which was being held by more than 40,000 British, Commonwealth and Greek troops.
Invasion of Crete: The First (and Only) Major German Airborne Operation of World War II
Emboldened by previous successes, the Germans launched Operation Mercury, dropping thousands of paratroopers onto the defended island of Crete.
Here s What You Need to Know: The Germans would the triumph at Crete, but their victory was bittersweet.
By May 1941, the German Luftwaffe’s fortunes had risen to great heights and plummeted to equally startling depths in the course of a single year of blitzkrieg warfare in Western Europe. Led by the narcissistic Hermann Göring, a former World War I flying ace, the Luftwaffe had been the perfect complement to the land-based Wehrmacht in the opening months of the war. In Scandinavia and the Low Countries in the spring of 1940, the Luftwaffe’s parachute light infantry, or Fallschirmjäger, had seized key objectives to speed the advance of Germany’s panzer forces, while high-level and dive bombers had hastened the capitulation of stubborn nations w
German paratroopers fought stubborn defenders during operations against Denmark and Norway.
Here s What You Need to Know: German airborne operations had important psychological consequences on Allied forces.
The Polish Campaign in 1939 demonstrated the awesome effectiveness of aircraft as weapons platforms for close ground support. Along with flexible control of tactical operations, it became part of the concept popularly referred to as blitzkrieg. The effectiveness of this doctrine was again demonstrated by the German military during the Norwegian campaign in 1940.
This campaign also demonstrated the usefulness of aircraft as vehicles for transporting supplies and reinforcements. The Luftwaffe made a significant contribution to the reinforcement and supply effort by successfully carrying out the largest air transport operation in history up to that time. Largely due to the efforts of the Luftwaffe, for more than two months the Germans were able to hold on to an increasingly prec
Operation Stösser was launched during Germany’s last gamble:
Wacht am Rhein (Operation Watch on the Rhine), Hitler’s offensive in the West which Americans know as the Battle of the Bulge, had as its ultimate objective the Belgian port of Antwerp. Recently captured, it was under repair to be reopened as a deep-water port.
When Antwerp was serviceable, the Allies would be able to bring supplies and reinforcements quickly to the front lines instead of transporting them across France from the Channel ports. To reach Antwerp, the German Army would push through the Ardennes Forest. An armored spearhead would attack in the Eifel plateau region of western Germany, lying between the Rhine and Moselle Rivers and the Luxembourg and Belgian frontiers.