Grossdeutschland Air Landing Troops, 1940 (?)

[Jagdpanther]

I'm just about to finish reading "Panzer Leader" by Heinz Guderian (great book by the way, I'd recommend it). In the Chapter on the 1940 campaign in the west, there are two interesting references to GD:

Pg 98:

"Shortly before the operation was due to start it was decided, in accordance with Goering's wish, that a battalion of Infantry Regiment "G.D." be loaded in "Stork" aircraft and landed, on the first morning of the attack, behind the Belgians at Witry, west of Martelange, with the aim of spreading alarm among their frontier defence force."

Pg 98/99:

"At 05.30 hrs, I crossed the Luxembourg frontier with the 1st Panzer Division near Wallendorf and headed for Martelange. By the evening of that first day the advanced guard of the division was already through the Belgian frontier defences and had established contact with the air-borne troops of Infantry Regiment "G.D."......"

I don't recall any other references to elements of GD being airlanded (?!?!), and if it was done by Feiseler Storch, it would have taken a while to airland them all (with only 1 passenger seat) , so find it hard to believe, but then again, Guderian of all people should know what he's talking about, and who am I to question him....!! Perhaps you're all aware of this, and it has just passed me by previously..??! Any thoughts?

Cheers,

Ade

[Kolya]

Could be mistranslation, but then in those cases what I do is look at the context of the sentence again and - in this case - I can't see (bear in mind I'm no expert on the GD or the German language) an easy way of there having been a slip of the pen.

Confuzzling.

[Jagdpanther]

Yes, like you I thought initially it had to be a mistake of some kind, either his memory had failed him (unlikely, as the rest of the book is so specific in it's details and authoratitive), or something was lost in translation (but again, the translation seemed to make perfect sense throughout the rest of the book, and it seems like great care was taken)...

As you say, I can't see any scope for this being a simple mistake..

So, I'm confused like you.....!!

If it did happen, then I can't believe it was a whole Battalion if they went by Storch - it would have taken quite a few assault waves to take them one man at a time by Storch..!!

[Kolya]

Or it's a mistake on "battalion", and when it's said that they linked up with the "airborne troops" it was just one GD who'd won the prize of getting the seat on the Storch

[Jagdpanther]

Apparently this did happen..!!

I also posted this on the GD Recon forum (and, incidentally, I'm proud to say that I have just joined up with GD Recon), and they have got to the bottom of it. Briefly, it seems 98x Storch's were used, each squeezing in 2x GD men. Weight restrictions meant that ammo was limited, so 3x Ju-52's were on standby to drop more ammo if needed. If any of you are interested in more details, have a look at the below:

http://www.hostingphpbb.com/forum/viewt ... mforum=gdr

Cheers,

Ade