page_title: American airborne landings in Normandy
section_title: Preparations
hierarchical_section_title: American airborne landings in Normandy / Background / Preparations
caption_attribution_description: English: C-47 Skytrain of the 88th Troop Carrier Squadron, 438th Troop Carrier Group - RAF Greenham Common, England.
context_page_description: The U.S. airborne landings in Normandy were the first U.S. combat operations during Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy by the Western Allies on June 6, 1944, during World War II. Around 13,100 American paratroopers of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions made night parachute drops early on D-Day, June 6, followed by 3,937 glider troops flown in by day. As the opening maneuver of Operation Neptune the two American airborne divisions were delivered to the continent in two parachute and six glider missions.
  The divisions were part of the U.S. VII Corps and provided it with support in its mission of capturing Cherbourg as soon as possible to provide the Allies with a port of supply. The specific missions of the two airborne divisions were to block approaches into the vicinity of the amphibious landing at Utah Beach, to capture causeway exits off the beaches, and to establish crossings over the Douve River at Carentan to assist the U.S. V Corps in merging the two U.S. beachheads.
  The assault did not succeed in blocking the approaches to Utah for three days. Numerous factors played a part, most of which dealt with excessive scattering of the drops.
context_section_description: IX Troop Carrier Command (TCC) was formed in October 1943 to carry out the airborne assault mission in the invasion. Brigadier General Paul T. Williams, who had commanded the troop carrier operations in Sicily and Italy, took command in February 1944. The TCC command and staff officers were an excellent mix of combat veterans from those earlier assaults, and a few key officers were held over for continuity.
  The 14 groups assigned to IX TCC were a mixture of experience. Four had seen significant combat in the Twelfth Air Force. Four had no combat experience but had trained together for more than a year in the United States. Four others had been in existence less than nine months and arrived in the United Kingdom one month after training began. One had experience only as a transport (cargo carrying) group and the last had been recently formed.
  Joint training with airborne troops and an emphasis on night formation flying began at the start of March. The veteran 52nd Troop Carrier Wing (TCW), wedded to the 82nd Airborne, progressed rapidly and by the end of April had completed several successful night drops. The 53rd TCW, working with the 101st, also progressed well (although one practice mission on April 4 in poor visibility resulted in a badly scattered drop) but two of its groups concentrated on glider missions. By the end of April joint training with both airborne divisions ceased when Taylor and Ridgway deemed that their units had jumped enough. The 50th TCW did not begin training until April 3 and progressed more slowly, then was hampered when the troops ceased jumping.
  A divisional night jump exercise for the 101st Airborne scheduled for May 7, Exercise Eagle, was postponed to May 11-May 12 and became a dress rehearsal for both divisions. The 52nd TCW, carrying only two token paratroopers on each C-47, performed satisfactorily although the two lead planes of the 316th Troop Carrier Group (TCG) collided in mid-air, killing 14 including the group commander, Col. Burton R. Fleet. The 53rd TCW was judged "uniformly successful" in its drops. The lesser-trained 50th TCW, however, got lost in haze when its pathfinders failed to turn on their navigation beacons. It continued training till the end of the month with simulated drops in which pathfinders guided them to drop zones. The 315th and 442d Groups, which had never dropped troops until May and were judged the command's "weak sisters", continued to train almost nightly, dropping paratroopers who had not completed their quota of jumps. Three proficiency tests at the end of the month, making simulated drops, were rated as fully qualified. The inspectors, however, made their judgments without factoring that most of the successful missions had been flown in clear weather.
  By the end of May 1944, the IX Troop Carrier Command had available 1,207 Douglas C-47 Skytrain troop carrier airplanes and was one-third overstrength, creating a strong reserve. Three quarters of the planes were less than one year old on D-Day, and all were in excellent condition. Engine problems during training had resulted in a high number of aborted sorties, but all had been replaced to eliminate the problem. All matériel requested by commanders in IX TCC, including armor plating, had been received with the exception of self-sealing fuel tanks, which Chief of the Army Air Forces General Henry H. Arnold had personally rejected because of limited supplies.
  Crew availability exceeded numbers of aircraft, but 40 per cent were recent-arriving crews or individual replacements who had not been present for much of the night formation training. As a result, 20 per cent of the 924 crews committed to the parachute mission on D-Day had minimum night training and fully three-fourths of all crews had never been under fire. Over 2,100 CG-4 Waco gliders had been sent to the United Kingdom, and after attrition during training operations, 1,118 were available for operations, along with 301 Airspeed Horsa gliders received from the British. Trained crews sufficient to pilot 951 gliders were available, and at least five of the
caption: C-47 of the 438th TCG marked with invasion stripes.
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