Thought this was interesting.

Just doing some more reading and I came across something I wasn't familiar with the use of the Fieseler Fi 156 Storch as an airmobile platform in numbers. I remember OKW landing mountain troops in Ju-52s at enemy secured airfields but the only time I recall was Skorzeny's raid to get Mussolini out and back to Germany. I was surprised to find many used as airmobile platforms to take road intersections and other behind the lines tactically important areas due to its stol capabilities. Of course this was early in the war and Germany had air superiority.

 

??? Can you give us more details please?

 

It was in the Low Countries about twenty or so storchs flew into this area and dropped off 60 or so men to take an intersection to cut the road and wait until the Panzers showed up. Then some covert ops with Brandenburgers and some ops in Denmark to secure fields for the Norway Operation Weserübung not in that order but then it's late.

 

The US did the same thing with L-4 Grasshoppers late in the war on a somewhat larger scale. There were at least two cases of using divisional aircraft to transport a battalion of infantry across major rivers, including the Rhine. One done by Third Army was joked about as Patton's airborne assault over the Rhine mocking Montgomery's massive crossing.

 

Thank you both, I wasn't aware of any of this.

 

The uses of massed Storches is covered in exceptional detail in (surprise surprise) After the Battle's 'Blitzkrieg than and now' by JP Pallud. It fascinated me too so I'll rather heavily paraphrase most of what mr Pallud has to say, it is an excellent book covering a war that is a world away from many popular perceptions of WW2 that are based solely on Normandy and the Eastern front.

Operation 'NIWI', an attempt to stop Belgium defensively destroying too much infrastructure and slowing the advance of plan Gelb's panzers, involved some hundred Fieslers carrying c.400 men in 2 lifts (with over an hour between landings if things went well), only 3 JU 52's were made available. The Commander was one Major Otto Forster and the troops came from the 'Gross Deutschland' carrying twice the usual issue of HMG's and AT rifles as they were expecting to meet elite and armoured Begian units.

The landing sites were near Nives & Witri (Niwi) though the first lift went somewhat awry when a loose & very low flying plane, piloted by Forster & heading for one site lost it's way & picked up the bulk of the planes from the other drop, leaving one Oberstleutnant Garski to land with no radio and 9 troops. The first wave therefore mostly rather confusedly landed in one place, 93 planes in an area intended for 42.

8 Storches were unable to take off again due to damage on landing and were set on fire. The commander at this site set off immediately to try and get his troops where they were supposed to be, grabbing any civilian transport that could be found. The second lift seems to have gone better and the newly 'motorised' group was able to link up and continue more as intended.
The story is then one of basically skirmishing with Belgian units until the 1 Panzer Division rolled up.

Around 30 Germans were killed on 'Niwi' including Luftwaffe personnel, 16 Feislers were lost and 2 of the 3 JU52's shot down while flying supplies over Belgian units. 46 Iron crosses were earnt but as the raid doesn't exactly 'glitter' like Eben Emael, only one Knights cross was awarded, to Eugen Garski on July 19th. For me, this would also help explain why it seems a poorly covered part of the war in historical terms, Goebbels and his propaganda gang would see little benefit in promoting this particular 'special forces' op so it presumably never got the 'bigging up' of other more dramatic incidents that still seems to influence perceptions today. I assume this is a picture of the same Garski, who went on to command a GD regiment and was killed on 30th September 1942:


There was also a slightly smaller operation 'Hedderich' carried out at the same time (also in the Ardennes & presumably the one that caught HO's attention), 125 men were dropped in 5 groups using just 25 Storches (2 lifts) in an attempt to hold 5 significant crossroads on the French border. The op appears to have been quite successful at delaying Belgian reinforcements, one or two groups were bounced and forced to retreat but the others seem to have held their objectives, and even attracted crowds of curious civilians as they set up, somewhat unnerving for a first wave landing of 10 blokes I'd have thought.
Losses on 'Luftlandekommando Hedderich' were 25-30 men killed and 5 storches.

Cheers,
Adam.

 

Thanks Adam, it was Niwi where the Wehrmacht used an ad hoc form of Air Mobile doctrine.

 

According to Edgar F. Raines' book, Eyes Of The Artillery: The Origins of Modern U.S. Army Aviation in World War II, (US Army Center of Military History, 2000) only one such operation was actually planned, and it was never carried out. This operation was conceived and organized by Third Army, but was cancelled due to the rare appearance of a significant number of German fighters over the newly established Rhine bridgehead.

I would be very interested in hearing about any such operations that Raines may have missed.

Five-Zero-Nan