Since the release of the hit miniseries Band of Brothers and Hollywood-classic Saving Private Ryan, the story of American paratroopers in the Second World War has become cauterized in the minds of history connoisseurs and students. The story has all the elements of a homeric epic: young, fit men strapping on a parachute and leaping from planes to land amongst the enemy. They were a live military experiment in an entirely new form of warfare. The two Hollywood productions were followed by almost two decades of literature from historians and popular authors alike analyzing and dissecting the fire and brimstone shooting matches fought by these men. But little analytics have been devoted to the factors that made these battles possible.
Divisions of men jumping out of airplanes and landing in enemy-held territory was simple. But their ability to exist there would depend on their ability to be supplied and resupplied. This proved to be the challenging part, especially during the Allied airborne invasion of Holland, named Operation Market Garden, where aerial resupply became a life-or-death issue. Following the operation, a great deal of attention was given to the lessons learned on aerial resupply. Statistical studies, memorandums and board recommendations flew thick. In this period, Major General Matthew Ridgway, commander of the American airborne corps, concluded that “the importance of air resupply may vary from a very secondary element to an essential part of the operations plan, fully equal to that of the initial troop delivery… It is entirely conceivable that an estimate, duly arrived at,” he then wrote, “of the impracticability of air resupply might alone dictate the abandonment of an otherwise feasible airborne operation.”[i] [Emphasis in original]. Could one imagine, for instance, the parachute assault at Normandy being abandoned due to air resupply issues? Or has any post-war analysis thought to ask the question? As both the US Army and Marine Corps double-down on parachute operations in new force designs, it is imperative these questions are given deference and discourse.
The 82nd Airborne Division in Operation Market Garden
The studies taken up on the issue of aerial supply and resupply were largely focused on Operation Market Garden which took place in September 1944. The operation was a three-division airborne assault on the ostensibly lightly-held Dutch countryside. The airborne phase – codename “Market” – was centered around a single north-south road which the airborne troops were to form a corridor around for British ground forces, who would make a lightning ground advance north – codename “Garden.” One of the airborne divisions, the 82nd, was responsible for seizing a series of vital bridges along the route designated for the British ground force and establishing a large cordon defense along a frontal line of over 14 miles, which included areas of heavy woods and hills sitting on a plateau known as the Groesbeek Heights.
As the parachutes of the 82nd opened over the Dutch countryside, the division was running headlong into an operation which would push its staying power to the limit. The German reaction came swift; more swift than was expected. Within hours of the first parachute opening over the Groesbeek Heights, the fight was on. By the third day, the division was at a critical mass and their fate was hanging in the balance. Commanders on the ground believed the integrity of their defense was in doubt. This turn of events was brought about by two factors. First, was the inability due to weather to fly the glider infantry regiment from England and into combat. Second, was the late or non-arrival of aerial resupply. Brigadier General Gavin characterized the latter as “a very serious matter.”[ii] It brought untold challenges to the division staff as they attempted to keep up with the supply demands of the division. For the first 10 days, they were hardly scraping by.
From the outset in the planning, the division was faced with the age-old airborne math problem: men or material. Airlift was in short supply, and just to get the three parachute regiments on the ground required all of it. Therefore, the plan hinged on the force being built up in personnel and materiel over the first three days. The general rule of thumb at XVIII Airborne Corps was to plan for approximately 250 tons of supplies per day to sustain an airborne division.[iii] Gavin’s staff requested for 265 tons of supplies to be air-delivered daily for the first three days, after which they would revert to ground lines of communication/supply (LOC) from the advancing “Garden” ground force. While they requested 265 tons for air delivery the first three days, their actual needs were likely closer to 300 tons per day (215 tons alone in Class V, or munitions).
Prepositioned stocks in France prepared for air-dropping. NARA
As parachutes opened over the Dutch countryside, the division’s regiments dropped with their organic battle loads. Saying how many ‘days of supplies’ the division dropped with on D-Day is difficult to assess. In medical supplies, for example, it equated to three days worth. In food, approximately two days. In explosives, one day. Ammunition was standardized by division across all its infantry regiments by mandating rounds per weapon. Division records are quiet about how long they assumed this would last, but it was essentially the maximum amount that could be carried on the individual parachutist and dropped in the normal supply bundles racked up on the belly of their transport planes which, for the infantry units, was essentially all ammunition and crew serviced weapons, or medical supplies. Rockets were jumped on the individual, along with signal equipment – radios, batteries, communications wire – which was cross loaded on jumpers.
Essentially, when the division initially landed, the regiments had what was organic to them and there were no mass bundle drops for the division quartermaster unit to backfill. That is where the automatic air delivery of the 265 tons of supplies every day for three days came into play. The supplies dropped on the days following D-Day were not to be touched by the regiments; the collection and later allocation of these supplies was supervised by the Division G-4, or supply officer. Each regiment was required to furnish a detail of 25 men and one officer, and each independent battalion, such as the 319th Artillery, 10 men and one sergeant to the G-4 each day as a collection detail. In total, it was approximately 120 men. Every supply bundle would have a color-coded parachute denoting what class of supply it bore, and a stencil marking on the canvas container revealed more specifically what was inside. For example, all munitions were a Class V supply and would have either a red or yellow canopy. Artillery shells would be further identified by a “75” stenciled in white on the container; small arms ammunition would similarly be stenciled “30.” Signal and medical also had the same canopy color – white – and signal would be stenciled with “SI” and medical with a white cross to differentiate the containers. As the detail collected the bundles, they would be stacked by class, camouflaged, and the G-4 notified of its location. The division ammunition office (DAO) was set physically on the drop zone, and each unit was responsible for sending a separate ammunition hauling detail to obtain ammunition from the DAO.
The first airdrop of supplies occurred on D+1, a day in which two-thirds of the division was heavily engaged with the Germans. Of 263 tons dropped to the division, approximately 80% was recovered. Such a high recovery was possible only because the 504th Parachute Infantry (PIR) was relatively unengaged and able to act as a large collection detail. Recovery in future drops would not have that luxury. Brigadier General Gavin wrote that every bit recovered from the D+1 drop “was very vital to our continued combat existence at this time.”[iv] But they were already behind the curve in keeping up with ammunition stocks. They requested an additional 3 tons of ammunition to be dropped from ‘on call’ stocks, a stockpile of supplies held on reserve at the airfields for emergencies.
It was the following day, September 19, that things took a turn for the worst. Over England, where the supply bases were located, weather rolled in, grounding aircraft. Only sixty aircraft got through to the division to drop 64 tons. The supplies were dropped over such a range of territory, at such a low density, that recovery was “practically nil,” according to Gavin.[v] This day exposed one of the first major issues in aerial resupply. The supplies were spaced at airfields strategically through England, but the parachute riggers necessary for actually packaging the supplies and strapping them to parachutes were at another location. Weather over England meant that supplies could not be ferried from the airfields where the stocks were to the airfield where they need to be rigged; there were even instances of supplies being flown from France to England, where they were unloaded, rigged for airdropping, re-loaded and then sent back to the Continent to be dropped to the airhead in Holland.
A Troop Carrier soldier readies an A-5 aerial delivery container containing medical supplies. Army Quartermaster Museum.
September 20, D+3, was a critical day. The division was low on supplies, and the tactical situation was extremely severe. And in England, the weather situation was even worse than the day prior. However, the ground movement of supplies to the airfield with riggers was conducted, and by afternoon planes were able to depart England by taking a different route carrying 444 tons of supplies for the division.
The drop of D+3 exposed the second major problem of aerial resupply, and the one most concerning to BG Gavin: gathering and recovering the supplies. Gavin found himself looking at a field six miles long and two wide full of supplies his troopers desperately needed, but no way to get them to the firing line. Due to the considerable dispersion of the supplies in the field, Gavin estimated that it would take a full one-third of the force (in this case, a whole regiment) being used as a recovery detail to get the supplies to the rest of the force engaged on the forward line of troops. In a combat situation, this is hardly feasible; that afternoon the 505th PIR was fighting for its life at Mook, and the 504th PIR was assaulting the Nijmegen Bridges, the latter sucking up 10-15 tons of ammunition replenishment alone. A few hours before midnight, MG Ridgway stepped in and sent a message to the British urging them to “please send transportation, [ammunition] supplies urgently [needed].”[vi] With the assistance of Dutch civilians and their farm carts, they were able to recover between 60% and 80% of the supplies (XVIII Airborne Corps paints the rosier picture). In an area of less-friendly natives, the challenge would be much greater.
The larger question of why there was a dire supply situation for the division on September 20 is one that deserves analysis. By the time the air resupply was conducted that day, the linkup with the Garden forces had occurred a day and a half earlier, and the British had pushed tank battalions deep in the division area which were fighting the Germans alongside the paratroopers. The LOC was so clogged, and the transportation and other support functions were stretched to its maximum just to keep up with supplying the attacking Garden force, that it had no capacity to supply the airborne division. When the Market plan was first hatched, the idea was for the 82nd to be relieved on D+4. That was soon scrapped as they understood that getting a relieving unit up the clogged road would be fantasy due to logistical and supply limitations. But the ability to supply the 82nd through LOC they believed would be accomplished. That proved to be a more problematic assumption than anticipated. “Air resupply was very essential to guarantee the continued existence of this division since, despite the fact that contact had been established with British troops, they were unable to furnish supplies of any class,” BG Gavin wrote of the supply drop on D+3.[vii]
The assumption of a quick ground re-supply brought cause to the division’s woes on D+3. The total amount of supplies scheduled to be automatically dropped per day – 265 tons – was over 35 tons short of what they actually needed. The request for under the necessary amount was likely due to a shortage of aircraft, the assumption they would only have to rely on air resupply for three days, and, most critically, that all three of their supply lifts would arrive. It was a fragile system. They had significant logistical limitations on what the division could do, or said another way: how many directions in which it could fight. Ammunition alone was likely a 15 ton deficit; when they became more heavily engaged with the enemy sooner than they thought, it began to show, as reflected in the 3 ton ‘on call’ request for ammunition on D+1. On D+2, the 320th Field Artillery was asking for more ammunition – “all they can get” – to support the attack on the Nijmegen Bridge.[viii] When the D+2 lift did not arrive as planned, it put the division in a bad place – enough to give rise to a serious feeling shared by Gavin and Ridgway that the ground defense may not hold on D+3. Gavin later admitted that if the German push had been much harder, the division very well may have folded under the pressure.[ix]
Following the D+3 supply lift, the clogged and stretched LOC became the new reason for supply challenges. September 21, D+4, some supplies started to flow in by ground, but it was hardly enough. That day, the division submitted an emergency air resupply request for eight tons of food to be air dropped from the ‘on call’ stocks, the emergency stockpile of supplies at the airfield in England. By this time, the arrival of seaborne echelons of the 82nd and British 1st Airborne, both carrying supplies and landed by the Navy through logistics over the shore capacity, gave the 82nd some relief. On September 22 the 82nd began suffering from a shortage of 75mm artillery ammunition. Because the British 1st Airborne’s seaborne echelon, carrying 2,000 rounds of 75mm, was not going anywhere, 500 rounds were released to the 82nd. And on September 26, when it became clear the British 1st was not going to get the ammunition, the remaining 1,500 rounds were given to the 82nd. “This bridged an awkward gap during which the 82 US Div would have been short artillery ammo,” a report found.[x]
In the 101st Airborne Division area many miles to the south (and with shorter supply lines), Major General Maxwell Taylor was faced with similar issues. He began requesting significant amounts of supplies to be air-dropped; less out of necessity and more as a workaround. When requesting supplies through his (British) task force headquarters, his needs were balanced with those of other divisions. If he went to XVIII Airborne Corps, which was merely acting as an administrative headquarters, and requested from the ‘on-call’ stocks held in reserve (for emergencies) at English airfields for air-dropping, his request would be considered urgent and he could bypass any balance or competition for supplies. XVIII Airborne Corps G-4 admonished this, calling it “an unsound method of operation.”[xi] The goal was to get the divisions off aerial resupply as quickly as possible. BG Gavin and virtually all of the airborne commanders of the war saw aerial resupply as a necessary evil. It was costly: in parachutes, containers, and aircraft wear and operating costs (and even more so when the demands for airlift exceeds capacity), and inefficient on the ground, where recovery was challenging. But they viewed no other alternative. Air-landing the supplies they found to be more problematic and it was concluded from their experience that the following conditions needed to be met to conduct air-landings in combat: a) adequate landing ground; b) natural defensive positions; c) facilities for aerial casualty evacuation; d) perimeter defense furnished by a division at minimum; e) complete air superiority; f) favorable weather. It should be noted that three of the six elements assume the airborne force can pick where it fights, and one of the six is weather-dependent. The advent of precision guided munitions perhaps makes an additional item to the list formulated in the mid-1940s.
B-24 Liberators conduct an aerial resupply over Holland on D+1 near the positions of the 504th Parachute Infantry. NARA
By D+10, the supply situation stabilized, but those opening weeks were much more serious – even, they thought on D+3, on the verge of defeat – than either Ridgway or Gavin would ever admit publicly in the post-war time due to egos and aspirations for higher service; they did, however, address supply issues during the war in secret memos and letters.
The issue most pressing to Gavin, that of distribution of supplies on the ground, has an easier fix today than some of the other issues faced during the war. When the division was first deployed overseas in 1943, it consisted of 30 sets of quarter-ton trucks and trailers which could be brought in by glider. However, even in the light combat in Sicily, it was realized that their limited capacity would “leave this division without adequate means to supply itself for sustained action,” Lieutenant Colonel Robert Wienecke wrote at the time. Wienecke argued the 407th Airborne Quartermaster Company needed to trade up for 2 1/2-ton trucks used by standard divisions; he was correct and his argument won.[xii] The 2 1/2-ton trucks, however, made the division reliant on a seaborne echelon since they were too heavy to arrive by glider. Later down the road, when D+3 in Market Garden came, the division had no trucks with which to move their supplies, requiring MG Ridgway to request British assistance. Today, at the scale of a single brigade executing a joint forcible entry (JFE), air-droppable Infantry Squad Vehicles could be used to ferry supplies from a drop zone to companies on the line. This would be especially critical if the JFE is offset from an airfield. Accomplishing this, however, would likely need to be done by designating the vehicles a Battalion or Brigade S-4 asset.
Today’s commanders will face even more complex challenges than their predecessors when faced with the multi-domain threat of today’s peer or near-peer forces. They will face greater challenges to sense the operational environment, deal with degraded communications, and will be contested beyond the reach of organic combat systems within the airborne brigade combat team to expand and protect the lodgment.
From an airlift perspective, there is little to indicate that commanders of airborne task forces in the present will be faced with decisions that are different in any significant way from their World War II predecessors. This stems from the way a JFE is planned in doctrine, as outlined in Joint Publication 3-18. The JFE is conducted by a single brigade, supported by later follow on forces. This sets up a situation, just like in Market Garden, where the airhead will be built up in men and material over the course of multiple days. Because of limited airlift capacity in planes and gross weight, hard decisions would face commanders on what to prioritize to build redundancy into the supply system so that, when chaos strikes and aircraft cannot get through, it does not set up a situation like the one facing Gavin on D+3.
The greatest challenge is not planning the assault, it is planning the stabilization of the lodgment and introduction of follow on forces and the assessments throttling the flow of equipment. Commanders and staffs must place greater emphasis on how and what is flowing into the lodgment over time and space than ever before. Each piece comes with an associated risk to another warfighting function and the force. Does this fire support system outweigh this command and control system or does this sustainment package outweigh this combat system? Commanders and staffs must constantly assess their build of combat power. While the initial plan and estimates might have been good prior to the assault, it will not remain the same as soon as P-Hour occurs.
Equipment will be damaged during the drop, the enemy will destroy critical systems as paratroopers push out to the airhead line, and munitions will be consumed at greater or lesser rates than anticipated. The brigade combat team (BCT) commander, division commander, DCG-S, G/S4, G/S3 and executive officer must be in constant communication to changes in requirements as the situation develops and ensure they are operationalized. The operational assessment board, plans synchronization board, and sustainment board must work in harmony with each other to ensure that the right thing is showing up at the right time. This will only become more difficult as the different command posts become disaggregated and dispersed. These meetings must have a detailed PACE plan to ensure participation can occur no matter the location or means a command post might have available at the time. This will ensure that the commander is receiving the right amount of support or reinforcements at the correct time.
To further complicate this, a robust, integrated air defense bubble, enemy air forces, and short range air defense systems will hamper the ability to use fix wing and rotary wing resupply. The joint force must properly shape the environment to allow for continuous operational access into the airhead and not just a discreet event to insert airborne forces. Initial assault forces must rapidly destroy direct, indirect, and air defense fires within and around the airhead. Initial entry forces might have to rely on aerial delivery resupply for some time, much like their airborne forefathers did. It might not always be a guarantee that airlands will start arriving at P+4 hours. Staffs must conduct a detailed wargame to ensure that sustainment planners can anticipate what will be the critical commodities that will be required, in what quantities. Particular attention must also be paid to what platforms were also heavy dropped to allow the airborne assault force to go recover those items from the DZ. Plans and rehearsals for gathering, the creation of dumps and a processes for distribution between maneuver units and the Brigade Support Battalion should be incorporated as part of routine training so that everyone knows their role. Following the 82nd Airborne Division’s first operation in Sicily, it became clear that their supply personnel were not trained deeply enough in procedure; when one person was missing, it threw the whole system “out of gear.”
As bravo echelon and charlie echelon forces arrive, sustainment requirements will grow and further strain the airborne task force’s ability to continue the fight until there is a reliable and protected ground line of communication or a substantial build-up of supplies within the lodgment. While it might be a great relief to see Abrams or a Bradleys arrive at the arrival/departure airfield control group, the sustainment costs associated with those types of systems or units will take time to catch up for the commander to have any additional operational reach. Terrain management will also become an issue if the lodgment is not expanded in sufficient size to facilitate the proper dispersion of units within the BCT’s footprint. A decision maker will have to be the arbitrator to determine if that advantageous piece of terrain is the best for a position area for artillery, forward logistics element, or a forward arming and refueling point. Lastly, thought will have to be given to backhaul. While the primary focus remains the build of combat power, equipment will be destroyed and there will be casualties. A plan must be in place to ensure those damaged pieces of equipment are sent back for repairs and that casualties are not spending unnecessary amount of time at the Role 1/2s as well as consuming very limited and precious medical resources.
For the American airborne division, Operation Market was its deepest insertion into enemy territory, and away from sources of supply. It meant that their dependence on aerial supply was also the heaviest. The operation tested the airborne division’s logistics systems in a way it had not been previously. Generals Ridgway, Taylor and Gavin all drew valuable lessons in aerial resupply. However the biggest question that hung in their minds following Market Garden was the near-term vision of airborne employment. Ridgway felt that although their mission was ultimately a success, even if marginal, he strongly felt that it was also a cautionary tale about what the airborne force could do without overcommitting itself. The potential violence and cohesiveness of the enemy could not be planned on a different wavelength from how much material the airborne regiments could attack with. “The measure of success of this operation,” Ridgway summed, “must be appreciated under the pitiless light of cold-blooded analysis, lest these magnificent divisions be assigned a task wholly beyond their strength… I cannot too strongly urge the study, the mastery, and the application by all upon whom devolves any degree of responsibility for the employment of airborne forces.”[xiii]
The authors would like to thank Col. Theodore Kleisner and Lt. Col. David Armeson of 1BCT, 82d ABN DIV for their input in the drafting of this article.
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Tyler Fox is the author of two books and a contributor to Mission Command II: Who, What, Where, When and Why, An Anthology. Other short works have appeared at the Modern War Institute and the Small Wars Journal. He is an Honorary Member of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, where he regularly works on history projects. @mil_landpower
Maj. Tyler Vest is an Infantry Officer who is currently serving as a Division M2 OCT with the Mission Command Training Program. He has previously served in airborne and air assault assignments as a Brigade and Battalion Operations Officer, Battalion Executive Officer, and Company Commander. He has also served twice at the Joint Readiness Training Center as a Company TM Senior, BDE CHOPS OCT, Live Fire Operations Officer, and as the JRTC Chief of Current Operations . He has operational experience in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
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End Notes
[i] Ridgway, M.B. “Operation MARKET, Airborne Phase, D to D Plus Ten, Inclusive.” Headquarters, XVIII Airborne Corps, Office of the Corps Commander, 4 December 1944
[ii] Gavin, J.M. “Lesson of Operation MARKET” Headquarters, 82d Airborne Division Office of the Division Commander, 3 December 1944
[iii] Annex No 1 to Incl No. 3 to “Operation MARKET, Airborne Phase, D to D Plus Ten, Inclusive.” Headquarters, XVIII Airborne Corps.
[iv] Gavin, J.M. Letter to MG Paul Williams, 25 September 1944
[v] iBid.
[vi] G-3 message logs, 82nd Airborne Division. 20 September 1944
[vii] Gavin, J.M. Letter to MG Paul Williams, 25 September 1944
[viii] G-3 message logs, 82nd Airborne Division. 19 September 1944
[ix] Gavin, J.M. “Lesson of Operation MARKET” Headquarters, 82d Airborne Division Office of the Division Commander, 3 December 1944 & Ridgway, M.B. “Operation MARKET, Airborne Phase, D to D Plus Ten, Inclusive.” Headquarters, XVIII Airborne Corps, Office of the Corps Commander, 4 December 1944
[x] “Report on Operation ‘MARKET’ and ‘GARDEN,’” Part II – Operation MARKET, Notes on Administration. Undated.
[xi] “G-4 Activities – Operation MARKET.” Headquarters, XVIII Airborne Corps, 5 October 1944
[xii] Weinecke, R.H. “Lessons Learned in Operation in Sicily (Supply and Evacuation Only)” Headquarters, 82d Airborne Division, Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-4
[xiii] Ridgway, M.B. “Operation MARKET, Airborne Phase, D to D Plus Ten, Inclusive.” Headquarters, XVIII Airborne Corps, Office of the Corps Commander, 4 December 1944