ENEMY SURPRISED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 July 1943, Page 4

ENEMY SURPRISED

LITTLE AIR OPPOSITION MET GLIDERS AND PLANES EVADE GROUND FIRE. ALLIED AIRCRAFT LOSSES NEGLIGIBLE. (Bv Telegraph—Press Association -Copyright) LONDON, July 11. Surprise played an important part in the landings. Of the airborne troops, glider troops landed first. Then parachutists, an hour later, were dropped at prearranged points. The men on the ground went to work immediately, attacking keypoints in communications and carefully selected ground targets. The “Daily Telegraph’s” correspondent tells how British and American paratroops and airborne commando units, dropped behind the enemy lines, paved the way for the invasion. Troopfilled gliders descended on the Sicilian mainland five hours before the assault forces disembarked on the beaches. Seventy minutes after the gliders reached their objectives, paratroops were dropped under cover of darkness. Both forces seem to have surprised the enemy. The airborne S troops were over their targets before they encountered flak. Allied plane losses in this manoeuvre are officially described as negligible. No enemy fighters attempted to interfere and anti-aircraft batteries were not very active. Searchlights picked up the huge transport machines, but the pilots, flying very low, manoeuvred sufficiently to put the enemy batteries off their aim. The planes bearing the paratroops loomed suddenly over their targets out of a heavy mist. They dropped their heavily armed cargo from a low altitude, despite anti-aircraft fire and barrages from pillboxes concealed near the shore. As the men went into action,' they saw large fires burning northwest of their objective—evidence of the Americans’ heavy bombing during the week. British airborne troops were assigned to the eastern half, and Americans to the western half of the main objective. Lieutenant-Colonel John Cerny, who rose from the ranks to command the most experienced troop-carrying unit in North Africa, said later: “The combat teams displayed an air discipline beyond my expectations. The transports kept in tight formation all the wpy. The fact that the aircraft went directly ahead in face of fire and searchlights demonstrates the skill of the pilots. They kept on and dropped an entire battalion in one area.”

A correspondent says General Eisenhower watched the departure of the armada of transport planes and gliders carrying Allied airborne troops from African shores. “The gliders looked like huge bats as they passed overhead,” the correspondent adds, “while around them circled an umbrella of fighters. Inside the gliders were men of British airborne units who had spent more than two years in training for their first effort, while in the transport planes were British and American parachutists who won laurels for their work in Tunisia. It is a tribute to their training that though the wind was very high, it is reported that almost all the gliders landed within a mile of their target.”