Heloin wrote:The New California Republic wrote:They were building landing craft and pressing various boats and ships into war service, if push came to shove they could have landed and paradropped significant men and material.
I laughed a bit too hard at paradropped. Airborne infantry is generally the worst option available, the Germans determined from the Battle of Crete that while it can work it’s so rarely worth it.
The Germans' abandonment of airborne assaults was probably more of a logistical issue than anything, the Ju 52 fleet suffered heavy losses in the Low Countries that were never really replaced, and as a result hamstrung the Fallschirmjager for the remainder of the war.
The success of airborne in Normandy with the allies was mostly do to how much the airborne landing fucked up creating chaos behind German lines, the allies would determine after market garden that it really is almost never worth it to use airborne as anything other then ground infantry.
The real problem with Market Garden was the British only had enough aircraft to carry half their force and had to use half of that to secure the LZs for the second drop, so they're essentially going into action at 25% strength. That and the whole "relief column advancing on one road" thing...
That's why with Operation Varsity they cut one airborne division from the operation and switched to dropping all their airborne in one go rather than piecemeal.