1st Airborne Division (United Kingdom)
The 1st Airborne Division was an airborne infantry division of the British Army during the Second World War. The division was formed in late 1941 during the Second World War, after the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, demanded an airborne force, and was initially under command of Major General Frederick A. M. "Boy" Browning. The division was one of two airborne divisions raised by the British Army during the war, with the other being the 6th Airborne Division, created in May 1943, using former units of the 1st Airborne Division.
The division's first two missions—Operation Biting, a parachute landing in France, and Operation Freshman, a glider mission in Norway—were both raids. Part of the division was sent to North Africa at the end of 1942, where it fought in an infantry role during the Tunisian campaign over the next few weeks, and when the Allies invaded Sicily in July 1943, the division undertook two brigade sized landings. The first, Operation Ladbroke, carried out by glider infantry of the 1st Airlanding Brigade and the second, Operation Fustian, by the 1st Parachute Brigade, were far from completely successful. The 1st Airborne Division then took part in a mostly diversionary amphibious landing, codenamed Operation Slapstick, as part of the Allied invasion of Italy in September 1943.
In December, most of the 1st Airborne Division returned to England, and began training and preparing for the Allied invasion of Normandy. It was not involved in the Normandy landings in June 1944, being held in reserve. In September 1944 the 1st Airborne took part in Operation Market Garden. The division, with the Polish 1st Parachute Brigade temporarily attached, landed behind German lines, to capture crossings on the River Rhine, and fought in the Battle of Arnhem. After failing to achieve its objectives, the division was surrounded and took very heavy casualties, but held out for nine days before the survivors were evacuated.
The remnants of the 1st Airborne Division returned to England soon after. The division never fully recovered from their losses at Arnhem and the 4th Parachute Brigade was disbanded. Just after the end of the war in Europe, the depleted formation took part in Operation Doomsday in Norway in May 1945. They were tasked with the disarmament and repatriation of the German occupation army. The 1st Airborne Division then returned to England and was disbanded in November 1945.
Background
Inspired by the success of German airborne operations during the Battle of France, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill directed the War Office to investigate the possibility of creating a force of 5,000 parachute troops. As a result, on 22 June 1940, No. 2 Commando assumed parachute duties, and on 21 November was re-designated the 11th Special Air Service Battalion, with a parachute and glider wing.On 21 June 1940 the Central Landing Establishment was formed at Ringway airfield near Manchester. Although tasked primarily with training parachute troops, it was also directed to investigate the use of gliders to transport troops into battle. At the same time, the Ministry of Aircraft Production contracted General Aircraft Ltd to design and produce a glider for this purpose. The result was the General Aircraft Hotspur, which was capable of transporting eight soldiers and was used for both assault and training purposes.
The success of the first British airborne raid, Operation Colossus, prompted the War Office to expand the airborne force through the creation of the Parachute Regiment, and to develop plans to convert several infantry battalions into parachute and glider battalions. On 31 May 1941, a joint army and air force memorandum was approved by the Chiefs-of-Staff and Winston Churchill; it recommended that the British airborne forces should consist of two parachute brigades, one based in England and the other in the Middle East, and that a glider force of 10,000 men should be created.
Formation history
The existing 11th Special Air Service Battalion was renamed the 1st Parachute Battalion on 15 September 1941, and, together with the newly raised 2nd and 3rd Parachute Battalions, formed the first of the new airborne formations, the 1st Parachute Brigade, commanded by Brigadier Richard Gale, who would later command the 6th Airborne Division from 1943 to 1944. The 2nd and 3rd Parachute Battalions were formed from volunteers, between the ages of nineteen and forty, who were already serving in infantry units. Only ten men from any one unit were allowed to volunteer. Paratroops were paid an extra 2/- per day.In October 1941, Brigadier Frederick Arthur Montague "Boy" Browning was promoted to major general, named the Commander Parachute and Airborne Troops, and ordered to form a headquarters to develop and train airborne forces. The next unit formed was the 1st Airlanding Brigade on 10 October 1941, by the conversion of the mountain warfare trained 31st Independent Infantry Brigade Group, commanded by Brigadier George Frederick "Hoppy" Hopkinson, later to command the division. The brigade comprised four battalions: the 1st Border Regiment, 2nd South Staffordshire Regiment, 2nd Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry, and the 1st Royal Ulster Rifles. The men who were unsuitable for airborne forces were replaced by volunteers from other units. By the end of the year Browning's command had become the headquarters of 1st Airborne Division.
Browning expressed his opinion that the force must not be sacrificed in "penny packets", and urged the formation of a third brigade. Permission was granted, and on 17 July 1942, the 2nd Parachute Brigade, commanded by Brigadier Ernest Down, who would later succeed Hopkinson in command of the division, was formed. The 2nd Parachute Brigade was assigned the existing 4th Parachute Battalion, and two new battalions converted from line infantry units, the 5th Parachute Battalion, converted from the 7th Battalion, Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders, and the 6th Parachute Battalion, from the 10th Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers.
File:The British Army in the United Kingdom 1939-45 H19947.jpg|thumb|right|King George VI inspects an airborne jeep fitted with a Vickers machine gun during a visit to the airborne forces in Southern Command, 21 May 1942. With him is Major General "Boy" Browning, GOC of the 1st Airborne Division.
The 3rd Parachute Brigade was formed in November 1942 and assigned to the 1st Airborne Division. The brigade, under Brigadier Alexander Stanier, comprised the 7th Parachute Battalion, previously the 10th Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry, the 8th Parachute Battalion, converted from the 13th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, and the 9th Parachute Battalion, formerly the 10th Battalion, Essex Regiment.
Soon afterwards, the 1st Parachute Brigade left the division, to take part in Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa and ended up participating in numerous operations in North Africa, including three parachute operations, although it was more often fighting in an infantry role.
In April 1943, the commander of the 1st Airlanding Brigade, Hopkinson, was promoted to major general and given command of the division in succession to Browning. Later that year, the division was deployed to Tunisia for operations in the Mediterranean theatre, where it would adopt the unofficial battlecry "Waho Mohammed!” from the local Arabs, which was quickly adopted by other British airborne units and would be used all the way through the Battle of Arnhem. The 3rd Parachute Brigade and two battalions from the 1st Airlanding Brigade—the 1st Ulster Rifles and 2nd Ox and Bucks—remained behind in England, forming the nucleus of the new6th Airborne Division.
The 1st Airborne Division was reinforced by the 4th Parachute Brigade, that had been formed in the Middle East during 1942. In addition to the 156th Parachute Battalion, which had been raised from British troops stationed in India, it comprised the 10th and 11th Parachute Battalions, which had been raised from troops based in Egypt and Palestine.
The division took part in two brigade sized operations in the Allied invasion of Sicily, and an amphibious assault at Taranto in the Allied invasion of Italy. During the fighting in Italy, Major General Ernest Down became the divisional commander, after his predecessor, Major General Hopkinson, died of wounds received in the fighting. After brief service in Italy, the division returned to England in December 1943, leaving the 2nd Parachute Brigade behind as an independent formation.
After the division arrived in England, Down was posted to India to oversee the formation of the 44th Indian Airborne Division, and was replaced by Major General Roy Urquhart. In September 1944, for Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands, the 1st Polish Parachute Brigade was attached to the division. Following Market Garden, fewer than 2,200 men from the 10,000 that were sent to the Netherlands returned to the British lines.
Having suffered such severe casualties, the 4th Parachute Brigade was disbanded, with its survivors being posted to the 1st Parachute Brigade. The division then went through a period of reorganisation, but had still not fully recovered by the end of the war, due to the acute shortage of manpower throughout the British Army in 1944–1945. Still under strength in May 1945 with the End of World War II in Europe, it was sent to Norway to disarm the German army of occupation; returning to Britain in November 1945 where the 1st Airborne Division was disbanded.
Operational history
France
, also known as the Bruneval Raid, was the codename for a raid by Combined Operations in 1942. Their objective was a German Würzburg radar installation at Bruneval in France. Due to the extensive coastal defences erected by the Germans to protect the array, it was thought a commando raid from the sea would incur heavy losses, and give the garrison sufficient time for the radar equipment to be destroyed. It was therefore decided that an airborne assault followed by sea-borne evacuation would be the ideal way to surprise the garrison and seize the technology intact.On the night of 27 February, 'C' Company, 2nd Parachute Battalion, under the command of Major John Frost, parachuted into France a few miles from the installation. The force then proceeded to assault the villa in which the radar equipment was kept, killing several members of the German garrison and capturing the installation after a brief fire-fight.
A technician that had come with the force partially dismantled the Würzburg radar array and removed several key pieces to take back to Britain; the raiding force then retreated to the evacuation beach. The detachment assigned to clear the beach had failed to do so, however, and another brief fire-fight was required to eliminate the Germans guarding the beach. The raiding force was then picked up by a small number of landing craft and transferred to several Motor Gun Boats which brought them back to Britain. The raid was entirely successful. The airborne troops suffered only a few casualties, and the pieces of the radar they brought back, along with a German radar technician, allowed British scientists to understand German advances in radar and to create counter-measures to neutralise those advances.