Crossing the Rhine by James M. Fenelon

[After the invasion of Crete in May of 1941, due to the number of casualties and the belief that airborne forces no longer had the advantage of surprise,  Adolf Hitler became reluctant to authorize further large airborne operations, preferring instead to employ paratroopers as ground troops. In contrast, the Allies were impressed by the potential of paratroopers and started to form airborne-assault and airfield-defense regiments. They deployed paratroopers on several occasions, largely without much success.  The author summarizes  and

Crossing the Rhine

While America’s 17^th Airborne Division played a crucial role in VARSITY so to did the British 6^th Airborne Division, which seized the village of Hamminkeln and repelled German counter attacks in their sector. Equally critical were the glider and troop carriers of both the U.S. Airforce and the RAF who skillfully delivered their cargo into battle.

The combined effort across multiple branches of two Allied nations made VARSITY the largest single-day airborne mission in World War II. VARSITY’S massive display of power reflected the Allies industrial advantage at the time: their combined resources marshaled an air armada of 1,596 transports, 1,348 gliders, and 240 B-24 bombers to deliver 19,782 armed men, 133 (light) howitzers) and well over 1,800 tons of ammunition, medical supplies, gasoline, and communications equipment.

All arrived roughly on target, within four hours [Italics mine].

But kicking in the door of Adolf Hitler’s  Third Reich exacted a steep price. The 127^th Airborne Division sustained 1,307 casualties, including 430 killed in action. British airborne troops suffered another 347 dead, 731 wounded, and dozens missing. The glider pilots of both nations were also hard hit: British casualties in this group included 38 killed and 77 wounded while American losses stood at 35 dead and 106 wounded. The power aircrews- pilots, navigators, crew chiefs, and radio operators – of the parachute transports and glider tugs also paid a price: the US Air Force totaled 41 such personnel killed, 316 wounded and 163 missing; the RAF added another 233 dead. The B-24 crews of the Eighth Air Force, flying in on the tail of the armada, were even more badly mauled: 109 bomber personnel were killed and dozens more wounded.

The losses spurred postwar questions regarding the operation’s necessity and effectiveness. The controversy appears to have started with the publication of the US Army’s official history of the war’s final phase, The Last Offensive, written by Charles MacDonald. MacDonald debated ‘whether under the prevailing circumstances an airborne attack was necessary or . . .even justified.’ He based his skepticism on three assertions: 1) that the airborne bridgehead did not add appreciable depth to PLUNDER’s perimeter, (2) that round troops could have taken the same objectives without ‘undue difficulty and probably with considerably fewer casualties,’ and (3) that the drop did not expedite engineering efforts to span the Rhine with pontoon bridges.

To take each point in turn:

 . . . The airborne bridgehead was as deep as it needed to be to encompass the most threatening artillery positions and the crossings on the Issel River and Canal vital to a German counterattack.

.  .  . there is no denying that the airborne objectives could have been taken by ground troops but not as rapidly. The drop netted 3,000 German prisoners whose escape was cut off and prevented from further hindering Allied advances by destroying to crossings on the Issel River and its Canal.

.  .  . MacDonald’s claim that the speed of bridge-building didn’t proceed  at a materially faster rate in the vicinity of Wesel than it did elsewhere is only partially correct. While upstream bridges were in operation on D-Day, down stream- where the Germans held the high ground - bridges weren’t in position until the day after. VARSITY’s vertical envelopment of the two German divisions and its destruction or capture of ninety enemy howitzers ensured the construction could proceed apace and vindicated Montgomery’s belief in the need to secure the far bank as quickly as possible.


 VARSITY veterans, unsurprisingly, aren’t much interested in armchair debates. They were soldiers, given a task that they executed with the violence expected of them. It was a sound mission, with a good plan that adhered to the tenets of World War II airborne doctrine. Those veteran’s still alive more than half a century later bristle at philosophical arguments that appear to diminish the sacrifices of their dead comrades.

[ In any other context, from an American point of view at the time, you’d hardly get any willing ‘vindication’ of  Montgomery’s ‘beliefs’. At any rate SHAEF obsessed with mounting airborne operations through-out the War in Europe, despite their repeated failures. ‘If only they are massive enough they can work’ seems to have been the logic at work in VARSITY. And it might ell be asked: ‘What was the rush? One answer might be: the disintegration of American ground troop morale. So one answer to that might have been: ‘drop the guys in where they will  be forced to fight’.

Its true, the sheer mass of VARSITY carried the day, along with the fact that they faced short, often inexperienced enemy divisions, but its important to recognize, as is abundantly clear in the author’s narrative of the battle, that by far the largest percentage of casualties never had a fighting chance. They were blown out of the sky by German flak. They crashed in gliders, trapped, cut-down escaping or simply burned to death. If not picked off in the sky, paratroopers were raked with machine gun fire while struggling to get out of their harnesses. Supplies were scattered, much of it hard to reach safely or damaged beyond use. Units were dispersed, out of communication and geographically disorientated.  No way to run war, in my opinion.]