American Airborne, WWII Trivia Quiz

Answer: Algeria

The 509th Battalion flew to Algeria on a one way flight from England. Their target was two French held airfields near Oran. Many planes landed in the wrong areas, out of fuel. A jump was attempted by some plane loads to assault an armored column that had fired on them but the column turned out to be American.

The first operation was quite chaotic with some successes and subsequent jumps gradually improved the Airborne concept.

Answer: 82nd Airborne Division

The Sicily drop was the first attempt by American forces to deploy an entire airborne division during an operation. The drop of the 82nd Airborne on July 9 was widely scattered but small units of paratroopers were able to disrupt German and Italian reinforcements trying to attack the troops coming ashore on the landing beaches. An unintentional result of the scattered drop was the confusion caused in German and Italian headquarters in trying to ascertain where the paratroopers actually were.

Answer: Friendly fire from nervous anti aircraft gunners

The parachute drop of July 11 was intended to land at the port of Gela, Sicily. The Allied invasion fleet and troops on shore had been notified that the American air armada would be passing overhead. The beachhead and ships had been attacked by German planes during the day and an AA battery on shore mistook the second wave of American planes for Germans and opened fire on them.

Many batteries on shore and on ships opened fire also. Twenty three planes were shot down and over 300 paratroopers and aircrew were killed, wounded or missing in what was one of the worse friendly fire incidents of WWII.

Answer: 505, 507, 508

When the 82nd Airborne was pulled out of Italy in January of 1944 to England to prepare for D Day, the 504th Regiment was temporarily detached and remained in Italy fighting around Anzio. The 504th did not reach England until April, 1944, too late to absorb and train replacements prior to D Day.

The 82nd added the 507th and 508th regiments for the D Day assault. In addition to the three parachute regiments, the 82nd also fielded the 325th Glider Infantry Regiment.

Answer: Eindhoven

The 101st was assigned to capture and hold highway and railway bridges over the Aa River, the Dommel River, the Zuid Willems Vaart Canal, and the Wilhelmina Canal as well as capture the city of Eindhoven. Of their main objectives they succeeded in seizing most of the bridges except the one at Son and a secondary objective at Best. The Son bridge was blown by the Germans and a Bailey Bridge was constructed in its place. It still slowed down the advance of XXX Corps in their mission to relieve the British 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem.


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Answer: Nijmegen

The 82nd was able to secure some of their objectives with their surprise drop close to the bridge sites at Grave and Huemen. They missed an opportunity to take the main highway bridge and, in the face of stubborn German resistance, were finally able to take the bridge by a combined Armor/ Infantry assault that included a force crossing the Waal River in canvas boats to assault the north end of the bridge.

The river crossing is shown in relatively accurate detail in the movie, "A Bridge Too Far".

Answer: Around mid day

The American Airborne Divisions began taking off from England around 9:45 AM. There were some mechanical failures causing casualties, as well as some casualties from anti aircraft fire during the flight. Allied fighter aircraft were on hand to suppress the AA fire. By 3:00 PM all troops and gliders of all units were on the ground and moving toward their objectives.

Answer: First Airborne Task Force

The First Airborne Task Force was a unit that was pieced together for invasion of Southern France. It consisted of the US 517th Parachute Infantry Regiment, the British 2nd Independent Parachute Brigade, the US 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion. All these units had seen combat in Italy and were withdrawn to become the Airborne component of operation Dragoon. To these experienced units were added the 2/551st parachute Infantry Battalion and the 550th Glider Infantry Battalion, both of which had been stationed in the Panama Canal Zone prior to being shipped to Europe.

Answer: Operation Varsity-the jump across the Rhine into Germany

The C-46 had been used most extensively in the China-Burma-India theater of Operations mostly carrying supplies to China over the Himalaya Mountains. It was better powered than the the C-47, had a greater payload, and it was also configured to have two jump doors to exit the aircraft as opposed to the one jump door on the C-47, thus allowing more troops to exit the aircraft in a shorter amount of time.

Answer: Four

The 82nd, 101st, and 17th divisions were all in Germany at wars end. The13th had deployed to the continent from England on February 6, 1945 but had not seen action as a division although the 517th parachute infantry regiment was assigned to the division and had seen action in Italy, Southern France, and the Battle of the a bulge thus giving the 13th an experienced combat unit.