Night Drop

Scattered in farms and villages along thirty miles of coast, the German 709th Infantry Division had been awaiting the invasion for a year. It had been formed eighteen months before around a core of German veterans from the Russian front …

1944-06-06

R223

Scattered in farms and villages along thirty miles of coast, the German 709th Infantry Division had been awaiting the invasion for a year. It had been formed eighteen months before around a core of German veterans from the Russian front with a large number of conscripts from occupied countries. On the night of June 5-6, the 82nd Airborne dropped in the midst of the 709th. The mission of the 82nd was to hold open the causeways across the flooded terrain behind the UTAH beaches thus allowing the invading units rapid exit while preventing the defenders from reinforcing the beach. Although utterly disorganized by the night drop the 82nd had begun to regroup and push aside the 709th when, as dawn broke, the 1057th PanzerGrenadier Regiment attempted to break through to the beaches.

Cherbourg Peninsula, France

Mission Boston was a parachute combat assault at night by Major General Matthew Ridgway's U.S. 82nd "All American" Airborne Division on June 6, 1944, part of the American airborne landings in Normandy during World War II. Boston was a component element of Operation Neptune, the assault portion of the Allied invasion of Normandy, codenamed Operation Overlord. 6,420 paratroopers jumped from nearly 370 C-47 Skytrain troop carrier aircraft into an intended objective area of roughly 10 square miles (26 km2) located on either side of the Merderet river on the Cotentin Peninsula of France, five hours ahead of the D-Day landings. The drops were scattered by bad weather and German anti-aircraft fire over an area three to four times as large as that planned. Two inexperienced units of the 82nd, the 507th and 508th Parachute Infantry Regiments (PIR), were given the mission of blocking approaches west of the Merderet River, but most of their paratroops missed their drop zones entirely. The veteran 505th PIR jumped accurately and captured its objective, the town of Sainte-Mère-Église, which proved essential to the success of the division.

Wikipedia: Mission Boston

German

American