They shot a large proportion of the airborne invaders as they hung helplessly beneath their parachutes. Second, in spite of their skill, the defenders were refugees from the defeat in Greece. They had machine guns without tripods, mortars without shells, almost no motor transportation, absolutely no air cover, and, especially, they had a great shortage of radios. Freyberg was unable to coordinate his troops’ movements; his subordinate commanders didn’t know what other units were doing or where they were. When one New Zealand commander pulled back to regroup, he left a corner of the airfield he was defending uncovered. By a sinister coincidence, Student had just at that time dispatched a fleet of transport planes loaded with regular — not airborne — troops to that airfield. If the New Zealanders had been in their former position, the Germans would have been slaughtered. As it was, they gained a foothold and were able to continue to pour in reinforcements. Nevertheless, German deaths were more than twice those of the British: 5,000 to 2,000. This was largely because of losses the first day.
The Allies conducted more successful parachute drops after D day, seizing bridges just ahead of the ground forces and preventing their demolition by the enemy. These, though, were small scale jumps in territory held by forces whose top priority was getting away from there. One parachute drop was a disaster.
The British “Red Devils” jumped at Arnhem in the Netherlands “One Bridge Too Far,” as Cornelius Ryan’s bestseller put it, ahead of the British ground forces. They were all killed or captured. In Burma, the maverick British General Orde Wingate used gliders to successfully bring troops and artillery to his “strongholds” in the jungle, pioneering what later developed into the “air mobile” tactical doctrine of such outfits as the U.S. First Air Cavalry Division.
Paratroopers jumped twice in the Korean War. Both times, the 187th Airborne Regiment tried to cut off retreating North Korean troops. But each time, the enemy had already retreated farther north than the drop zone. After Korea, troop-carrying helicopters made both parachutes and gliders largely obsolete.
Special Forces troops use steerable parachutes for small-scale special operations, but the mass jump of paratroopers with static cord chutes is a thing of the past. Some Special Forces troops jumped to secure airstrips in northern Iraq at the beginning of the Iraq War, but the jump itself seemed to be mainly for exercise. The airfields were undefended.
Still, just about every country in the world has paratroopers, even countries with hardly any airplanes. Paratroopers are considered elite troops. They are much like the grenadiers in the late 18th century — that is, highly trained masters of a military skill no longer needed. In combat, all other things being equal, including leadership, airborne outfits have proven to be neither better nor worse than ordinary infantry. That statement may anger paratroopers or former paratroopers who have been brainwashed to believe that they are superior to all “straight-legs,” but combat records permit no other conclusion.
Politicians and much of the public — and certainly Hollywood — want to believe it is possible to field mini- supermen. President John F. Kennedy believed that the Special Forces, the “Green Berets,” were the answer to troubles in Vietnam, but it didn’t turn out that way. Achilles is out of date. The strongest and toughest man ever born can be killed instantly by a bullet from a .22 short — the least-powerful cartridge generally available. Beyond a certain reasonable limit, strength and toughness are irrelevant. Courage still counts, of course. So does confidence and skill with weapons. But no one became braver by doing 100,000 push-ups. No one became confident by listening to some leather-lunged jackass with stripes on his sleeve call him a maggot. And few people became notably better marksmen because of the crash course they got in basic training.
The really skilled are those such as the New Zealanders in Crete, who had the skill before they enlisted. Courage is inborn, but it can be developed by confidence. Confidence comes from trusting the other soldiers in your unit. You trust them, and you know they trust you. Because they trust you, you don’t want to let them down. So you don’t, even though terrified. That’s courage.
Another name for this is morale. And morale is what makes a good unit.
Colonel David H. Hackworth, America’s most decorated living soldier, summed up what makes a good outfit when writing about one of his former regiments, the 27th Infantry (Wolfhound) Regiment. He said, “They weren’t a special unit, just a group of guys who thought they were good, so they were good.”
Chapter 46
From Sea to Shore: Landing Craft
World War II introduced a long string of firsts. One of these was the first modern amphibious war. The American Civil War included a few, very small-scale landings from seagoing ships or river boats. The ordinary whale boat, rowed ashore by sailors, was sufficient to get soldiers or marines to the beach. It also sufficed in the Spanish-American War, especially as most landings then were made where the enemy was not. In the many U.S. forays into Caribbean brush fires, including the Vera Cruz expedition in 1914, the overwhelming gun power of the U.S. Navy discouraged any attempt to bring troop-carrying rowboats or motor boats under fire. The United States did have some specialized landing craft, including some rowboats mounting cannister-firing cannon on the bow.
World War II was different. Japanese strategists envisioned a huge number of landings on Pacific islands and the southern shores of East Asia. They prepared for it by building scores of flat-bottomed boats that could be run right up on the beach, or at least to where the water was shallow enough for men to wade ashore. Some of the boats could carry small tanks and light artillery. They had ramps to allow vehicles to be run right off the boat.
The Japanese used these boats all over the far (from the United States) end of the Pacific following their attack on Pearl Harbor. They landed on the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies in several places. In Malaya, Japanese troops outflanked stronger British forces continually by landing behind their lines.
They drove the British back to Singapore, then landed on that British fortress and added it to their explosively growing empire.
By May of 1942, six months after Pearl Harbor, Japan controlled French Indo-China, Thailand (Siam at that time), Malaya, the Philippines, the Marianas, Wake Island, almost all of Burma, and all of the Dutch East except the southern shore of New Guinea. It controlled the northern shore of the other half of New Guinea, mandated to Australia. (The interior of New Guinea was controlled — as it always had been — by stone-age head-hunters.) The Japanese were attempting more landings — on southern New Guinea and the Solomon Islands — when the Pacific war suddenly began to change.
The first check to Japanese plans was the air-sea Battle of the Coral Sea.
That was followed quickly by another air-sea fight: the decisive Battle of Midway. After those two battles, America’s “island hopping” campaign began.
The U.S. Marine Corps, whose main function was landing troops from ships, had been experimenting with light, specialized landing craft since the 1930s. The Japanese sea-borne Blitzkrieg shocked the United States and its ship-building industry into concentrating on bigger and better landing craft.
The result was thousands of troop carriers, ranging from inflatable rubber boats for small-scale surprises to ponderous LSTs (Landing Ship Tanks) — flat bottomed but sea-worthy (although notably rough-riding) ships that could carry up to 20 tanks. The LST would run right up to the shore; its bow would open up like a mammoth garage door; a ramp would run down and the tanks would roll up on the beach, firing as they moved. The LCT (Landing Craft Tank) was smaller than the LST and had a flat front, like a modern Boston Whaler. The front would drop down and become a ramp for the tank or tanks to run down.
The LCI (Landing Craft Infantry) was similar to the LCT, although, as its name indicates, it carried people but not tanks. It came in various sizes, the largest being able to hold 200 soldiers.
The largest of these boats were armed with machine guns or light automatic cannons. One type of LCT, however, the LCT (R) [Landing Craft Tank (Rocket)] carried only weapons — not troops or tanks. The largest had 1,080 five-inch rockets mounted on its deck ready for firing. The rockets were fired in a continuous stream, a spectacular (and spectacularly deadly) fireworks display. Any but the strongest enemy fortifications were
