AIRBORNE TROOPS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 July 1943, Page 3

AIRBORNE TROOPS

GREAT VALUE PROVED IN SICILY ACKNOWLEDGMENTS BY ALLIED COMMANDERS. INVASION FACILITATED & SPEEDED UP. (Bv Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright LONDON, July 22. An interesting feature of the fighting in Sicily has been the part taken by airborne troops. General Montgomery has stated: “The operations of the airborne troops which landed in the enemy rear on the Eighth Army sector advanced our operations by a week.” This was made known in London by Major-General J. M. Swing, of General Eisenhower's staff, who is now conferring with Lieutenant-General J.; Devers, the American commanding general in the European theatre. General Swing declared that in the Sicilian operations airborne troops had been landed on a bigger scale than ever before. “If airborne troops were important on the British sector, they were even more important to the American landings near Gela,” he said. “Enemy armoured forces there struck at our forces during the actual landings. Fortunately, one airborne combat team with light howitzers and other infantry weapons had landed and taken up positions covering the juncture point of our two task forces, and they took the brunt of the German attack and stood off the panzers all day on Sunday and well into Monday before they finally got reinforcements and threw off the German threat.

“If that one lone combat team had not been on the spot where the German attack was delivered then the whole operation might well have ended in fatal delay, in that one area at least. The Germans could have rolled up our whole line if they had been able to drive our troops here into the sea.”

SELF-CONTAINED UNIT. General Swing stated that the Americans armed with light anti-tank weapons, knocked out 13 of the German tanks, and their own casualties J were very light. “It was the first: time in history that a self-contained unit, complete with its own engineers, artillery, ammunition, and quartermasters, was committed to battle by the air. It was no raiding unit: it was a powerful force, a complete division ready for action and able in fire-power to compare favourably with an infantry division.” General Swing said that the British glider Horsa, which could carry more than 15 fully-equipped men, stood up better to the landings than the American 15-seater Waco. This was expected, as the larger craft stood a better chance' on the uneven terrain. Many lessons had been learned from Sicily, and they would undoubtedly be incorporated in future airborne landings. At Syracuse it was thought that the landing by glider was a complete surprise to the enemy, who had expected paratroops. The full British airborne division was stronger in firepower than the airborne divisions which were landed by the Germans in Crete. TRAINING IN BRITAIN. The Under-Secretary of Air, Captain Balfour, informing the House of Commons about the progress of glider training in. the Air Training Corps, said that in the last 18 months 64,000 launches had been given to cadets who were potential air crews, and 14,000 launches to instructors and instructors under training. Twenty-nine elementary gliding schools and two special schools for instructors were in operation. More than 5000 cadets had achieved varying degrees of proficiency and some 2000 had received in-

struction in two-seater gliders. The scheme had been further speeded up, the aim being to increase the elementary gliding schools to 100.