Air Landing Regiment
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An Air Landing Regiment of the British Army, during the Second World War, was any combat or support regiment (or battalion - smaller units might also assigned to the Air Landing role) which had been tasked with an airborne role, specifically a glider-borne role. Air Landing Regiments included infantry, artillery, engineers, and other units, although the term was not generally used to include the Glider Pilot Regiment, which provided the aircrew who delivered them into battle (and who tagged along with them on the ground, thereafter). Although most of these units retained their own names (Royal Artillery sub-units, which included their roles in their names, were affected: the 53rd Division, Anti-Tank Regiment, an infantry unit, was converted into a Royal Artillery unit, then converted role, again, to become 53rd Air-landing Regiment, Royal Artillery (RA)) , and capbadges, all dressed as airborne troops, with the red beret and Denison smock.
The Air Landing units worked closely with the Parachute Regiment, and other parachute units, and the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion), in carrying out large scale airborne offensives. The Parachute soldiers could, in theory, land anywhere, but, divided between many aeroplanes, and with each parachutist descending singly (by his parachute), tended to become scattered over a wide area. This meant they inevitably took some time to compose a useful force, once on the ground, and drop zones had to be a safe distance from enemy forces, and, usually, the objectives, in order to allow them this time. Although gliders needed a certain amount of clear, and relatively flat and firm, ground to land in, the pilots could ensure they alit in close proximity to the objective. This ensured that all the soldiers aboard arrived in the same place at the same time, ready for combat. This meant that glider-borne troops became the first wave of an airborne attack, being landed beside important objectives (usually bridges), which they seized and held until re-inforced by parachute units.
The British Army had been inspired in creating both glider-borne units and parachute units by the example of the German Luftwaffe's Fallschirmjager, which had played a major role in Germany's invasions of the Low Countries, and Cyprus.
Air Landing Regiments were landed by glider in the Normandy invasion, and the crossing of the Rhine. Probably the most famous action involving a glider-borne unit was the first military action of the Normandy Landings, when D Company, the Second Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry (2nd Ox & Bucks), As part of Operation Tonga, on the night preceding D-Day, 6 June, 1944, as-well as Royal Engineers and men of the Glider Pilot Regiment (totalling 181 men), landed via 6 Horsa gliders to capture the vital Caen Canal Bridge (Pegasus Bridge) and the bridge over the Orne (since known as Horsa Bridge, and which is east of Pegasus Bridge). This was intended to secure the eastern flank to prevent German armour from reaching the 6th Airborne Division that was landing behind Sword Beach.
The Ox and Bucks landed very close to their objectives at 16 minutes past midnight - some of the first Allied soldiers to land in France, and the first tasked with a military objective - and poured out of their battered gliders, completely surprising the German defenders, and taking the bridges within 10 minutes. They lost two men, Lieutenant Den Brotheridge and Lance-Corporal Greenhalgh, in the process. One Glider, assigned to the capture of Horsa Bridge, was landed at the bridge over the Rives Dives, some 7 miles from where they were meant to land. They, in spite of this, captured the River Dives bridge, and advanced through German lines towards the village of Ranville where they eventually rejoined the British forces. The Ox & Bucks were reinforced half-an-hour after the landings by 7 Para, with further units arriving shortly afterwards.
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