Anti-paratrooper Defenses

General Erwin Rommel, having been put in charge of the defense against an allied cross-channel attack, developed extensive defenses against an amphibious and airborne attack along the French coast.  Although hampered by a limit on supplies, specifically explosives, Rommel managed to create affective anti-paratroop defenses.

Rommel assumed that the allies would attack around Normandy by air through use of gliders and paratroopers, which would allow Allied troops to take over and secure key crossroads and bridges, and to prevent any German counterattacks on the beach front.  In order to prevent such landings from occurring successfully, Rommel order construction of many obstacles across the region around Normandy.

A 101st Airborne paratrooper drowned in one of the many flooded fields around Normandy, from Ryan p.175.

The most effective obstacle turned out to be the fields that Rommel ordered to be flooded.  Many Allied troops would miss landing zones and land in these fields.  Weighed down by their heavy equipment and often tangled in their parachutes, many paratroopers drowned in these fields.

Planned Allied dropping zones and flooded fields, from Ryan p.1.

Another of Rommel’s plans for defense against an airborne attack involved sinking telephone poles upright into the ground throughout the region around Normandy.  The idea was for the poles to destroy incoming gliders as they attempted to land.  Often the telephone poles would be connected by wire and attached to explosives, if explosives were available.  Then, if any of the poles in the wire grid were hit by landing gliders, the movement of the poles and wires would set off the explosives, destroying the gliders and equipment, and killing the troops. 

A wrecked glider from a crashed landing, from Kemp p.62.

A wrecked Horsa glider near Ste.-Mere-Eglise. 8 of the 30 men in the plane lay dead from the crash, from Ryan p.175.

However, the poles never were equipped with explosives because the explosives were not made available to Rommel and his men until only three days before the landings on D-Day.  Still, just the presence of the ten-foot pole obstacles managed to hinder the glider landings and contributed to many injuries and deaths of Allied troops whose gliders were torn apart from hitting the poles.

Index     Introduction     Training and Preparation       Equipment     Anti-paratrooper Defenses      US 101st     US 82nd    British 6th     Conclusion     Bibliography