Intended FJ role in Sealion

[RichTO90]

1/ in several places, most recently ww2talk, Fred has extolled the virtues of the ruthlessly practical and efficient Germans at overcoming every obstacle and problem put in front of them...

Yep, he is part and parcel of a group that includes:

robdab, who has extolled the virtues of the ruthlessly practical and efficient Japanese at overcoming every obstacle and problem put in front of them...
67thTigers, who has extolled the virtues of the ruthlessly practical and efficient British at overcoming every obstacle and problem put in front of them...
various Finns, who have extolled the virtues of the ruthlessly practical and efficient Finns at overcoming every obstacle and problem put in front of them...
various Russians,...
various Americans,...

2/ Every time we pick up a book or listen to a documentary on the FJ, we're told about the participation of Germany's youth in gliding and other aero sports pre-war...

...and yet it was several months into problem-ridden training for Eben Emael BEFORE the Luftwaffe thought to draft "many" of the nation's amateur glider pilots??? BIG oversight right there.....

Um, just compare the Empire Training Programm or the USAAC pilot training program with the German effort...

Cheers!

[phylo_roadking]

Fred, why are you relying on British tertiary sources when German primary sources are available???

Because they fit his preconceived assumptions?

The strange thing is - Fred was still lauding Farrar-Hockley's book "Kurt Student General der Fallschirmtruppen" HERE on the 30th of July...

...when a fortnight before he'd been told - and accepted!!! - in another place that it wasn't that reliable! http://www.wehrmacht-awards.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4761705#post4761705

Cherrypicking - it's a wonderful thing UNTIL you're discovered doing it...

[fredleander]

...when a fortnight before he'd been told - and accepted!!! - in another place that it wasn't that reliable!

There is a difference in quoting a figure from a book and actually lauding it. Aren't you guys going a little off the rocker now.... ...

[phylo_roadking]

There is a difference in quoting a figure from a book and actually lauding it.

Well, you were prepared to go up against Zuylen's figures...

From where do you have these numbers, please? Are you not mixing up the numbers with the 22nd Luftlande-Division?

Please see my earlier posting quoting Farrar-Hockley's FJ loss figures. Are these wrong?

....until you were told they came from primary sources - which, incidently, you still haven't explained why you weren't using, in favour of a tertiary source that you'd already been told or found out for yourself was questionable over events in WESERUBUNG and MERKUR...

Remember what I said about checking and double-checking sources, even supposedly reliable ones? Once you'd found errors in the Norway and Crete material, you should have been questioning everything in it....

Especially before going into print with it!!!

I have outlined the situation for the FJ's in Holland like this in my book:

"When describing the happenings in Holland in 1940 it is quite usual to mix up the 7th Fliegerdivision and the 22nd Infantry Division. The latter was moved by transport planes and landed directly, in the first wave, on several Dutch airfields. The Dutch were able to inflict significant losses on the 22nd Division since they had studied the German operations in Norway and reinforced the defense of their airfields. Several hundred members of the division were captured and transported over to England as prisoners. The parachute division, however, suffered only minor losses (only a part of it was used, actually) of approximately 180 killed, wounded or missing. It was therefore in good shape for Sea Lion later in the fall. All information also points to the fact that the 22nd Division was fully operational in September, as it was given a complete infantry regiment as reinforcement. This is of interest because it was disposed as the strategic reserve for the 16th Army and later was transformed into the XI Fliegerkorps with the 7th Fliegerdivision. It was earmarked to operate together with the paratrooper units. Otherwise, during the campaign in Norway the Germans had already shown that they could easily compromise on normal procedures since many mountaineers (gebirgsjägers) were dropped by parachute in the Narvik area following rude parachute training."

[RichTO90]

Well, you were prepared to go up against Zuylen's figures...

Yes, well nigh two weeks after he was informed on the other site that Farrar-Hockley's figures were wrong. Why am I unsurprised that he continues that modus operandi?

....until you were told they came from primary sources - which, incidently, you still haven't explained why you weren't using, in favour of a tertiary source that you'd already been told or found out for yourself was questionable over events in WESERUBUNG [b]and MERKUR...

The creature in question has never bothered to make use of the wealth of material he was given gratis here two years ago and instead continues to toot the same rather lame horn...and make the same basic errors he was corrected on two years ago. Like I said, robdab/leandros/67th Tigers/any number of half-assed, pseudo-"historians" that infest the aether are all variations on the same theme.

Especially before going into print with it!!!

The problem is these characters are shameless about their idiocies and simply wallpaper over the cracks in their crackpottedness...

Cheers!

[fredleander]

The problems cited by MacDonald as leading to this were - in no particular order or precednece -

1/ the shortage of Ju52s (as discussed elsewhere); over the summer of 1940 Junkers worked hard at repairing as many of the aircraft damaged in Norway and the West as possible...but it's own new-build rate seems to have been quite slow, down around 25-just over 30 a month - and this took a back seat for June and part of July because of the reconstruction/cannibalisation work. Between the losses in Norway and those in Holland, over 2/5s of the Transportverband's Ju52's had been destroyed.

2/ By the end of the summer, the numbers lost in Norway and Holland had been made good - but very few of these new volunteers had as yet received their jump training! Some of the losses suffered by the FJ had been quite horrendous - the high-casualty blocking action at Donbas in Norway, for instance...where their inserting Ju52s had to fly BELOW the level of Norwegian machinegunners in the mountains around the Donbas drop zone, leaving them like sitting ducks...the losses at Rotterdam...and the very-effectively defended airfields they assaulted in Norway and Holland...together of course with the casualties from cracked-up aircraft attempting to landing on boggy and wreckage-strewn Norwegian strips, flooded Dutch strips, and the unsuitable sands out at Zandvoort on the Dutch coast when they ran out of room anywhere else...

3/ an overall shortage of SILK! After the conquest of France the Germans had to scour France for material suitable for parachutes.

4/ a shortage of gliders; operations in the Spring had used up nearly the whole of the Luftwaffe's existing stock.

5/ a general unwillingness on the part of OKH to get involved in the same sort of mess the FJ got themselves into in Holland (so Halder records in his diary). They didn't want the whole focus of the Sealion beach landings to change into making fast, costly dashes to relieve FJs marooned far behind enemy lines as had happened in Holland.

It was only when the recovering Student (from his Austrian sanatorium, he was recovering from a head wound received in Holland) heard how limited this role was to be in the original plans that he sent Gen Putziger hotfoot to OKH to beg a greater role for the FJ.

It was now decided that Eben Emael-style combat engineer landings should be made to take out the coastal gun batteries north and south of Dover. And a SECOND role was now planned for the FJ; the 7th Flieger were to make TWO mass airborne landings, at Hythe and Hawkinge, to assemble then take Lympne airfield...after which the 22nd Airlanding could be brought in. The FJ would then move to a secondary objective - and secure the line of the Royal Military Canal through Romney Marsh. Once they were relieved - both the Lympne and RMC objectives were very close to the landing beaches - they would go back into the General Reserve for the ground fighting to come.

It is rather strange that almost nothing of what is mentioned above conforms with what is stated in Student's own book on his time with the German paras. Except maybe that the Ju52 losses in Norway and Holland had been made good. No shortage of silk, no shortage of gliders, no lack of trained paras. As a matter of fact the book explains thoroughly how their training targets were achieved. The actual order for the 7th fliegerdivision was also nothing like how McDonald is quoted here.

[Zuylen]

Interesting, these 'MacDonald' references.

I don't believe a word what is said under 1) - whereas I know for a fact that most of the Ju-52 wrecks were only recovered during the Summer of 1940 in the Netherlands and elsewhere and it took until well into December to get the better part fixed - and under 2) a massive load of certified beloney is served.

The whole nature of airborne warfare in WWII was flying low (e.g. within MG range) level to drop off the airbornes. There were no flooded Dutch airstrips and the crap about 'Zandvoort' sands (where not a single Ju-52 landed) is an enigma to me. The airborne losses were not high at Rotterdam, but at the Hague and surroundings, also at Dordrecht. British or American historians have not a clue about the war on the continent, as they have repeatedly shown in their products. It amazes me how much crap they continue to write about it, still. Sorry for that guys but it is true ...

Under 4. The operations in the Netherlands had not included a single glider. I wonder where all these gliders had been lost. Belgium, France, Norway?

The Student memoirs are subsidiary sources, btw. Full of untrue and inaccurate info, written long after the war by an admirer (Götzel). In fact Student was quite a crappy General, highly opportune, strategically quite poor and tactically not one of the best either. Should an historian weigh this biography really beyond the level of curiosity?

[fredleander]

The Student memoirs are subsidiary sources, btw. Full of untrue and inaccurate info, written long after the war by an admirer (Götzel). In fact Student was quite a crappy General, highly opportune, strategically quite poor and tactically not one of the best either. Should an historian weigh this biography really beyond the level of curiosity?

You might of course be correct in your opinions but how did you come to the conclusion that Student was such a crappy general?

Was the 7th Flieger division not up to their planned manpower - 3 para regiments, 1 glider regiment + divisional units - in September 1940?

[Zuylen]

'I' did not perse come to that conclusions. Others did that for me. I can only judge Student on his Holland plan, which would have grosly failed would he have met any other opponent than the Dutch. I am convinced that even the Belgian army would have kicked Student and his few hundred airbornes out. The Dutch failed to materialize on any of the many opportunities they got to close the airborne chapter out right there and right then. Mind you: the German airbornes did not gain a victory at the Moerdijk-Rotterdam axis, they got one. In the The Hague theatre they already lost.

Student in its time was already marginally appreciated. His Crete plan was seen - by many - as an absurd plan, which it in fact was. What did it add to the German power in the Mid, when the taking of Malta or even Cyprus would have added considerably more? But basically also recent German work rekon Student to be a mediocre General. I refer to the recent Mittler Verlag books by Golla, Stimpel and Roth.

Truly, do you conceive the idea that after the devastating losses of April-May 1940, when by the grace of God the airborne weapon had gained a strength of one-and-a-half regiment (and due to losses seen that strength fall back to say one regiment only), that in two to three months time suddenly four regiments were built? Of what, monkeys? It is easy to have regular military make some jumps and call them airbornes. Then even I was one. But the kind of well trained soldier that formed the 1st Para Regiment in May 1940 could not be copy/pasted into four of those regiments three months later. The Germans could - what they in fact did - get regular troops in, suit them up into jumpsuits, clip their helmets, push them out of an airplane with a silk umbrella a couple of times and call them 'Fallschirmjäger'. Yes, from that perspective the 7th Flieger Division could be fully manned by September 1940. Well hurrah, but it created not an elite unit that 7th Flieger was by April/May 1940. It was more like 22.ID, that only saw its 16th Regiment truly get trained in airlanding warfare but its other two regiments [47.IR and 65.IR] not.

[Andy H]

The problems cited by MacDonald as leading to this were - in no particular order or precednece -

1/ the shortage of Ju52s (as discussed elsewhere); over the summer of 1940 Junkers worked hard at repairing as many of the aircraft damaged in Norway and the West as possible...but it's own new-build rate seems to have been quite slow, down around 25-just over 30 a month - and this took a back seat for June and part of July because of the reconstruction/cannibalisation work. Between the losses in Norway and those in Holland, over 2/5s of the Transportverband's Ju52's had been destroyed.

2/ By the end of the summer, the numbers lost in Norway and Holland had been made good - but very few of these new volunteers had as yet received their jump training! Some of the losses suffered by the FJ had been quite horrendous - the high-casualty blocking action at Donbas in Norway, for instance...where their inserting Ju52s had to fly BELOW the level of Norwegian machinegunners in the mountains around the Donbas drop zone, leaving them like sitting ducks...the losses at Rotterdam...and the very-effectively defended airfields they assaulted in Norway and Holland...together of course with the casualties from cracked-up aircraft attempting to landing on boggy and wreckage-strewn Norwegian strips, flooded Dutch strips, and the unsuitable sands out at Zandvoort on the Dutch coast when they ran out of room anywhere else...

3/ an overall shortage of SILK! After the conquest of France the Germans had to scour France for material suitable for parachutes.

4/ a shortage of gliders; operations in the Spring had used up nearly the whole of the Luftwaffe's existing stock.

5/ a general unwillingness on the part of OKH to get involved in the same sort of mess the FJ got themselves into in Holland (so Halder records in his diary). They didn't want the whole focus of the Sealion beach landings to change into making fast, costly dashes to relieve FJs marooned far behind enemy lines as had happened in Holland.

It was only when the recovering Student (from his Austrian sanatorium, he was recovering from a head wound received in Holland) heard how limited this role was to be in the original plans that he sent Gen Putziger hotfoot to OKH to beg a greater role for the FJ.

It was now decided that Eben Emael-style combat engineer landings should be made to take out the coastal gun batteries north and south of Dover. And a SECOND role was now planned for the FJ; the 7th Flieger were to make TWO mass airborne landings, at Hythe and Hawkinge, to assemble then take Lympne airfield...after which the 22nd Airlanding could be brought in. The FJ would then move to a secondary objective - and secure the line of the Royal Military Canal through Romney Marsh. Once they were relieved - both the Lympne and RMC objectives were very close to the landing beaches - they would go back into the General Reserve for the ground fighting to come.

It is rather strange that almost nothing of what is mentioned above conforms with what is stated in Student's own book on his time with the German paras. Except maybe that the Ju52 losses in Norway and Holland had been made good. No shortage of silk, no shortage of gliders, no lack of trained paras. As a matter of fact the book explains thoroughly how their training targets were achieved. The actual order for the 7th fliegerdivision was also nothing like how McDonald is quoted here.

Hi Leandros

I cant seem to find any sources to back up your post above, other than if its not mentioned by Student then its false!
I'm especially interested in the Parachute Silk claims, so if you can give me some sources that disclaim there was a shortage of silk used by the FJ I would be most grateful

Regards

Andy H

[Andy H]

Hi Richard

You wrote:

Perhaps only a few dozen DFS were expended by Koch in Holland and Denmark, but only 483 had been produced by the end of 1940, 455 of them in that year. A three-battalion lift of the Luftlande-Sturm-Regiment would likely have required 150 or more. Given that 61 were produced in January 1941 it is hard to imagine that more than about 350 could have been produced through September 1940. A two-to-one margin of on hand to requirement may sound adequate, but given expenditure rates of powered aircraft in training I doubt that is actually the case.

Either way, a "best case" assumption of 7,500 airborne troops ready to execute a single lift landing into England in September 1940 is unsupportable given the facts. Instead, the likeliest is about half that in multiple lifts. One of the more interesting proposals I ran across in that vein is the notion of lifting the gliders to 11,000 feet over France then casting them off to make a 30-odd mile glide to Perfidious Albion. The idea was that the transports would be less vulnerable to fighter interception and AAA...

Its my understanding that each glider had to be towed by a single Ju52 and that that Ju52 could not carry any payload whilst towing! Do you know if thats a fact?

Also I have a note that states that a DFS200 could glide for 35miles if released at 10,000ft, though only if in still air! So I dont see the Germans chancing that over water

Regards

Andy H

[fredleander]

I cant seem to find any sources to back up your post above, other than if its not mentioned by Student then its false!
I'm especially interested in the Parachute Silk claims, so if you can give me some sources that disclaim there was a shortage of silk used by the FJ I would be most grateful

Regards

Andy H

It is false if it is not mentioned by Student? That is a new twist.....No, I have no information on that and I am only moderately interested in your eventual information on it...... .....I find that question as interesting as how many Sealion ships had 25-ton cranes...... .....Sorry...

[Andy H]

I cant seem to find any sources to back up your post above, other than if its not mentioned by Student then its false!
I'm especially interested in the Parachute Silk claims, so if you can give me some sources that disclaim there was a shortage of silk used by the FJ I would be most grateful

Regards

Andy H

It is false if it is not mentioned by Student? That is a new twist.....No, I have no information on that and I am only moderately interested in your eventual information on it...... .....I find that question as interesting as how many Sealion ships had 25-ton cranes...... .....Sorry...

Hi

Your only moderately interested in the facts concerning Parachute silk I would think that if it was proven that Parachute silk was in short supply then in would have a serious impact on FJ ops and the relevant planned usage!
Your rather purile attempt at humour does you no favours either I'm afraid. The cranage limits of merchant ships would be a critical factor in unloading times of the German invasion/logistical craft (at damaged ports or onto open beaches), but dont let the detail get in the way-But thats another story.

I came here to ask you a relevent question and I was hoping for some insight but sadly your myopia has turned into Macular Degeneration Leandros.

Regards

[Zuylen]

I am no expert on silk issues, but I know for a fact that the Germans had even schools involved in projects to produce raw silk (from caterpillar colonies). They also had pre-war synthetic silk projects, which proved quite successful.

Nonetheless, I think that the Germans had shortages of basically all raw materials, and that must have included even silk. On the other hand, I do not believe shortages to bear so heavy in the Summer 1940, when large stock-piles and caches of the low countries and France had just fallen into German hands. That must also have included plenty of parachutes too. Since the managed to supply all their Luftwaffe personnel with parachutes I cannot think why silk production should have had any influence on the airborne weapon in 1940 operations whatsoever. The airborne shortage itself as well as the air-transport were the critical issues to my conviction.

[fredleander]

Your only moderately interested in the facts concerning Parachute silk I would think that if it was proven that Parachute silk was in short supply then in would have a serious impact on FJ ops and the relevant planned usage!
Your rather purile attempt at humour does you no favours either I'm afraid. The cranage limits of merchant ships would be a critical factor in unloading times of the German invasion/logistical craft (at damaged ports or onto open beaches), but dont let the detail get in the way-But thats another story.

I came here to ask you a relevent question and I was hoping for some insight but sadly your myopia has turned into Macular Degeneration Leandros.

Regards

Oh, are we touchy today, Andy! Sorry about that, but I am getting rather fed up in discussions that all end up in trying to prove that the German were amateurs at the time. They weren't, you know. They were the pros. Then.

The 25-ton cranes were specifically needed for ships carrying the larger tanks. Not otherwise.

OTH, I might enlighten you on DFS230 (230!) towing. The Luftwaffe also used other types than Ju-52's for this. Among them, the Do-17 in 1940. Even the Ju-87. I am not sure if that was in force in 1940, though. The Ju-52 could also tow more than one glider if need be. I have seen pictures of He-111's towing gliders.

As for the range of gliders: "Still air" does not mean "nice weather". It means: Headwind, shorter range - tailwind, longer range....cheer up.... ....