What If We Used Paratroops To Take Schweinfurt and Regensburg in '43?

Because I like flogging dead horses.

You have a really odd definition or perhaps better stated understanding of the term "suicide mission". None of the above were.

No real point in going into that as they have no hope at all of doing so.
[/quote]... Also, the mission starts on Day 1 with P-38's strafing the area around the cities but the paratroops ground mission doesn't start until Day 2 at 1 am when they parachute out. ...[/quote]
So you use up the only 12 P-38's in theater to no good purpose before the raid even starts.

A line is a formation. Finding each other in the dark wouldn't be trivial either especially when being hit by AA and night fighters.

Much shorter distance over mostly friendly territory and when they were over enemy territory not much in the way of AA or night fighters. There's a world of difference between forming up over friendly territory and maintaining a formation for a few minutes flight to France as opposed to hours over Germany. Then there's the question of whether they are in formation or not for most of the trip... You can't have it both ways.
[/quote]...Some of the paratroop units had losses of 30% just from the landing in Normandy, not from being shot down. But that's okay, right, as long as it's not deep inside Germany, because that's different.[/quote]
Indeed it is. The losses in Normandy were heavier than expected and 30% is a lot less in any case than 100%. Note that their relief was part of the plan at Normandy. In your raid ???

How much are you going to need? How many are trained to drop it? How many are equipped to drop it. Yeah for such a major effort 3 weeks is a bit short especially if you also want to use it on more productive efforts.

You really don't have a clue do you?

But it's not just 20 aircraft is it? How many are dropping chaff and making decoy runs and ...

Try flying over Germany at night in that time frame and not pass over a city or air base.

 

You really don't have a clue do you? 3 miles an hour isn't a bad marching rate. Even 2 miles an hour isn't easy over broken terrain at night. Then you have to have a clue which way you are going and you also want to avoid enemy formations.

Did you not read the replies or are you ignoring them or is it reading comprehension problems?

Another indication that you really don't have a clue. They were sending a lot more P-38's to Europe at that time. Enough to equip several squadrons with.

I'll try to keep this simple. You are sending 12 P-38's deep into Germany during daylight hours. Yes they will get intercepted. Yes there will be dogfights. The P-38's will be badly outnumbered. Those that don't get shot down will almost assuredly have to return to England before completing their mission because of one or more of the following: combat damage, lack of ammo, lack of fuel. That equates to a mission failure. So why send them?

Except there wouldn't be any left there by then and wouldn't have been for some months.

 

1. there wasn't that much heavy flak at Normandy.
2. It didn't work there. The airborn forces at Normandy were pretty scattered. Since the major reason for dropping them was to disrupt the German response this may have actually worked better. If they were trying to take a city on the other hand that's a very different matter. Then there's the fact that planes were still in pretty decent formations when the drops were made a Normandy the same would be very questionable for your drop. Indeed I would expect some to be dcropped on or near the wrong cities (the lucky ones might even be dropped in Switzerland).

It's not a case of us exaggerating it's a case of you not understanding. It wouldn't be 2 to 3 hours they'd be lucky if it was 2 to 3 days and by then the German forces on site and arriving from elsewhere would have crushed the airborne troops.

You really should try reading and comprehending replies to your posts. If you don't understand something ask or look it up.

Which one? You mean you aren't going for all of the factories listed as being there?

It almost failed despite less ambitious plans and a much more favorable situation. Taking casualties to no good purpose is not a good thing.

No it wouldn't work at all.

Not quite correct.

Again you display a significant inability to understand or at least acknowledge what others have posted. In 43 the Germans weren't scraping the bottom of the barrel for recruits and as has been mentioned the training cadre were first rate troops.

 

In most reasonable discussion forums if your statement is brought to question you are expected to support it with fact and logic or it is considered of little weight. You have yet to support anything that I've noticed with either fact or logic indeed there has been a distinct lack of those in your posts.

Rich has never claimed (at least on these boards) that "Everyone is ignorant compared" to him. That sad his is on of the most knowledgeable people I know of not just here but in general on this topic. In this particular area for instance I consider myself ignorant compared to him although compared to at least one other in the conversation I'm well versed in the topic.

That deserves a "." rather than a "?"

??? You are becoming even less coherent. Logic is a system of thought and evaluating ideas and statements. Truth is an indicator of whether certain information is valid or not. What are you defining as a "valid concept" if it is valid in what sense is it false?

It isn't particularly difficult to figure out, at least if you are familair with logic. Here let me explain it to you:
1. The phrase "another Shooterike" especially the way the last word is capaitalized suggest that Shooterike is or was another poster on this board. If you use the search function you can probably still find his posts.

 

That'll teach me to post before I get to the end of the thread.

 

That's OK, Dork Emailed me a response to your queries.

"Tell that Canuck-lovin' gay Frenchman to shut his piehole when a real California heterosexual man speaks!"


.

 

For some reason I strongly suspect he lives in his parent's basement somewhere other than California. I'd guess the East somewhere but I'm not sure why.

 

A couple of corrections and clarifications.

Actually, there was a lot of Flak in Normandy, heavy, medium, and light. Flak-Sturm-Regt.1 was in the area Isigny-Bayeaux with two mixed and one light Flak battalion. It was the primary mobile non-divisional Flak unit present. Less mobile Flak present was under 13. Flak-Division, which area of responsibility included the Cherbourg peninsula, Channel Islands, and eastwards to Le Havre with one heavy, 11 mixed, and 10 light battalions. Stab/Flak-Regiment 30 (v) headquartered at Cherbourg was mainly responsible for the Flak that engaged the incoming serials of the 82d and 101st Airborne. It included s.Flak-Abtl. 653 (v), le.Flak-Abtl. 835 (v), le.Flak-Abtl. 931 (v), le.Flak-Abtl. 996 (v), gem.Flak-Abtl. 152 (v), gem.Flak-Abtl. 153 (v), 5.-6./gem.Flak-Abtl. 266 (v), and Flak-Sw.-Abtl. 298 (v). The (v) for Verlegbar indicated the unit was mobile, but without organic transport. The last unit was a searchlight battalion. All told, they comprised about 15 heavy batteries (8.8cm) and 16 light batteries (2cm and 3.7cm).

The reason there were only 12 P-38 in England in August 1943 was that all the others in Europe were in the Mediterranean prosecuting ongoing operations there.

The Flak defenses of Regensburg were under Flak-Regiment zbV Regensburg, those in Schweinfurt were under Stab/Flak-Regiment 179 (v), both part of 21. Flak-Brigade. The Schweinfurt defenses in late 1943 included 11 heavy Flak batteries, 4 light batteries, and 6 searchlight batteries. The Regensburg (actually the Ober-Traubling and Pruefining) defenses included 5 heavy and 2 light batteries.

There were about100 nightfighters of NJG 101 based at Ingolstadt, Lechfeld and Stuttgart.

 

I don't remember reading much about Flak being a problem for the paratroopers during Normandy. Guess I assumed that there wasn't much because of that. Have I missed reading about it being an issue or were there other reasons it wasn't? I can see lack of warning time being a possibility and flight routes as well (although my uncle mentioned once that the planners for bombing runs didn't always consider it).

Not sure if turning this thread into something useful is a great idea though. I guess if we put a warning in that the first 9 pages or so are for amusement only.

 

The response to the "what if" may have been done right but IMO for the thread to have been done right a more reasonable initial post is required. At least some more background information and detail would also be useful.

 

The actual IX TCC and IX AF AAR are illuminating. Contrary to what Ambrose and others made up, most of the TCC pilots and crews were experienced and attempted to execute the plan as written, but circumstances were against them. The biggest problem encountered was the unexpected heavy cloud bank encountered just after landfall. It negated the value of the special "run in" maps that had been created and forced the crews to do two things - attempt to climb over the clouds and drop down the other side, which is what caused the increase in speed that resulted in the hard drops; there simply wasn't enough time to bleed speed. It also forced them to rely on REBECCA and EUREKA, which functioned well...until within about two miles of its location, when the signals overlapped, which meant that the final run in had to be visual. And visibility over most of the DZs was lousy, compounded by the multiple failures of the visual beacons.

WRT Flak, it played a major role in further bollixing the American drops in Normandy. "Surprise was possible only in the case of the leading aircraft, all subsequent serials were under practically continuous ground and antiaircraft fire in crossing the peninsula and on landing. While receiving such fire the transport serials were generally unable to maintain close formation with the result that Airborne units were scattered and intermingled on landing."

Of the 1,606 sorties from D-1 to D+1 by IX TCC, 25 aborted prior to the drop and 1,581 completed the mission. Of those, 41 were missing and destroyed and another 449 were damaged, likely almost all due to flak. That's a 31% rate, which I would call fairly significant.

 

Fortunately, for some of us anyway, ignorance is a correctable deficiency.

Thanks for the posts.

*** edit for ***
This makes me wonder if any of the proposed raiders would even have made it to the drop zone. Almost a third casualties with only a relatively brief penetration of enemy airspace and essentially no fighter opposition....