Operation DRAGOON - Southern France
551st PIB Pathfinders
This post continues research into the 551st Parachute Infantry Battalion. It will focus on their part in Operation DRAGOON in Southern France which began August 15, 1944, originally called Operation ANVIL. Members of the 551st operated as pathfinders on this mission as well as part of the paratroopers in the main body of the jump.
The post is a bit different in that it is outside of my primary area of research. Any corrections and contributions to the information here are welcome and encouraged. The 551st PIB were a group of men, who like the glider pilots, were looked over when the history of WWII was written. Their sacrifices were many and to date few records exist of their achievements. I say to date because so many records at NARA and other archives have yet to be digitized. It is impossible to speculate on what historians we are missing
First a word about sources. Most of the sources I consulted had the same information and I have located very few official documents. The reason I have not done a deep dive into locating original sources is that this area is new to me and I am familiarizing myself with it, and because the two books I am writing have me buried in research on Bastogne. The sources which I did consult are all listed at the end of the article and make great reading so I highly recommend them. The only official documents I did consult were those reproduced in the book The Left Corner of My Heart.
Although it is said not many documents exist about the 551st PIB, just as I was told about the glider pilots at one point, I remain optimistic and determined that they do indeed exist. I say this for two reasons. First family members of the 551st PIB veterans probably have their orders and other military papers. Many do now know how to read them or what they have. What Information Can You Find with a Veteran's Enlistment Records . It is incredible how much WWII information people have in lockers and boxes in their basements, attics, outbuildings. I found out so much about my father because of people who had read my book and recognized his name on their father’s documents or saw his signature in their father’s flight log. Secondly, a mere fraction of the holdings in the NARA for WWII have been digitized. In the Record Group I consult it is only .01%. Sadly, in order to find those documents there are only a few options one of which is to hire a researcher who knows the particular archive or do your own research at the archives. Lastly, the records are scattered in archives all over the world. Historians of WWII have done a good job with the small fraction of documents we have ready access to but we have not even begun to scratch the surface of this war. So yes, for the above reasons, I do think this is a research subject that is very worthwhile and just waiting for researchers and historians to start digging into. I wrote more about the documents situation here: The Challenge of Writing History with Incomplete Documents.
As I stated, in this post I am taking a closer look at the 551st PIB Pathfinders. For those that are not aware pathfinders were members of the airborne that jumped into the respective invasion area ahead of the rest of the paratroopers and glider flights. One of their purposes was to clear and mark the Drop Zones (DZ) for incoming paratroopers and supply drops, and the Landing Zones (LZ) for glider landings. They jumped with an array of weapons to clear the zones as well as equipment to mark them and guide the aircraft following them in. After marking the zones and the flights arriving the pathfinders rejoined the fight as airborne troops, sometimes with their units, other units or alone.
Pathfinder members were not limited to the 101st or the 82nd Airborne as evidenced by the 551st pathfinders that jumped in DRAGOON. The DZs and LZs the pathfinders were tasked to mark were in the general vicinity of Les Arcs, Le Mitan and Le Muy. Of the three zone “O”, “A”, and “C” the first two were designated as both Drop and Landing Zones while the last “C” was a Drop Zone only. Three serials of pathfinder planes took off, each serial made up of three planes and each of those planes carried one Pathfinder Team usually made up of one officer and nine enlisted men. To simplify there were a total of nine pathfinder drops. The 551st PIB Pathfinders appear to have been in the first serial and that will be the focus here.
Troop Carrier Command supplied the pilots for these flights. Specific Troop Carrier pilots were designated as Troop Carrier Pathfinder Pilots. Their job was to fly the pathfinders, and in the Ardennes offensive to also conduct low level supply drops. The Commander of the first three pathfinder flights in DRAGOON fell under Lt. Col. Joel Crouch. Crouch is well known in Troop Carrier for his skills as a pilot and devotion to the pathfinders.
In the first three pathfinder aircraft the Air Movement Table shows three teams from the 509th. Nowhere does it list the 551st among the pathfinder flights. The sources listed below confirm the 551st were among the pathfinders, although they appear to have been further divided among the three planes of the first serial. Messengers of the Lost Battalion stated seventeen 551st PIB were among the pathfinders. Pvt. Roger Carqueville, Hq Company stated in an interview “there were three Pathfinder planes in our formation: One from the 517th, one from the 551st and probably one from the 509th” (Left Corner of My Heart). Lt. Milt Hill, HQ Company Exec Officer of the 551st jumped as a pathfinder and stated in an interview after the war that he jumped with men who he thought were with the 509th Battalion (Left Corner of My Heart, Messengers of the Lost Battalion). He also stated he did not know anyone on his flight, so it would seem the other 16 pathfinders were distributed among the other two planes in the first serial.
Among the other 551st PIB Pathfinders may have been Captain Tims Quinn, Company C Commander; Sgt Hugh Roberts, Company B Communications; 1st Sgt Bill Munsen, Hq Company; Frank Serio; Sergeant Pat Garretty; T/5 Hugh Roberts; Private John Carqueville, Duke Spelzer; Bill Lumsden and Carl Noble. Between the various sources these names are listed in association with the pathfinder jumps, however some are mentioned in passing in a narrative without their rank or other information. More work needs to be done to determine or locate a list of exactly who the seventeen 551st PIB Pathfinders were and which planes they were in. If a list does exist I would be glad to post it in a follow up to this post if it is sent to me.
What is clear is there were serious problems with the flights. The job was made more difficult for pilot and pathfinder alike since it was conducted between 2 and 3 am. What is odd to me is that it had been determined prior to this that glider night flights were not a great idea for innumerable reasons. In his interview Lt. Milt Hill’s recounting of the jump echos the experience of the others who took part in it in terms of difficulty locating the Drop Zone and the quality of the jumps themselves.
The jumps of all three planes in the first serial were delayed because the poor visibility which made it impossible to locate the DZs. The heavily overcast conditions and low visibility were reminiscent of the Troop Carrier Normandy Flights as well as the initial Pathfinder flights into Bastogne which were thankfully cancelled en route by the same Lt. Col. Crouch. The troublesome domino effect of having no one on the ground who had marked the DZ/ LZ or was able to communicate a signal for the planes to follow to the correct location for the paratrooper jumps and supply drops is obvious. The Troop Carrier Pathfinder Pilots were the first planes in and the Pathfinder the first troops on the ground. There was no one else that was going to mark the zones.
The subsequent flights were on tight timetables, usually 30 minutes to and hour for the main body of paratroopers and and another 30 minutes until the gliders arrived at their designated LZs after the paratroop jumps finished. If the DZ/LZ was not marked the pilots of the bulk of the following flights were flying blind dependent upon their navigator or recognition of landmarks they had memorized in the pre-mission briefings. And, to a certain extent, this is what happened in DRAGOON. The pathfinders were dropped late, and in the wrong locations but only after many passes were made over the general area. When the signal to jump was given the planes were miles from the two of the Drop Zones. Consequently they could not be marked.
Altitude and speed of the aircraft as the paratroopers jumped was another issue. The blowback from the jumps were the worst many had felt and the force of it stripped them of the weapons and equipment they were carrying. In some instances the planes were too low and the landing was very rough with the chutes barely having opened before the pathfinders encountered the ground. A few stated they landed with their knives or a grenade as their only weapons. Making matters worse many were completely alone with Germans everywhere and they had no idea where they had landed. It is remarkable and a testament to their skill so many made it to friendly lines.
The question as to what happened on these flights is better answered by the Troop Carrier records and reports. The pilot’s pre-mission weather briefings were that the DZs “might be obscured by clouds” and oh, and by the way the Germans were expecting them. (Action of the Tiger: 437th Troop Carrier Group). The paratroopers were to jump at approximately 500 feet so altitude was a major factor. The planes encountered the forecasted overcast conditions and fog which completely covered the ground or as one eloquently put it “ . . . fog wrapped the coast in its ghostly hands. In spots the fog was lit up with a reddish flickering glare as fires started by naval craft burned fiercely. A sergeant, standing between the pilot and co-pilot . . . shook his head slowly and muttered to himself; ‘I’ll bet that’s what hell looks like.’” (Action of the Tiger: 437th Troop Carrier Group)
Rex Sharma, author of Pulse and Repulse, gives more details. He states that 121 pathfinder paratroopers were in nine pathfinder planes. The French Coast inland was “blanketed in a heavy fog through which they flew by dead reckoning augmented by vague terrain shown on the SCR-717-C scopes. The two first planes made a second run to locate the correct spot but missed by about 10 miles. The second serial fared no better and dropped one mile west of Le Muy instead of at LZ “A” which was 3 miles away.”
In the next post I will follow the flight of the main body of the 551st PIB and the gliders that followed the Pathfinder flights in DRAGOON. It is interesting to speculate, however, that even if the pathfinders had made their DZ/LZ there is a very good chance the may not not have been successful in clearing the Drop and Landing Zones in time for the follow on flights. Sources confirmed that the Germans were indeed well aware they were coming and were prepared. This same scenario would happen again in VARSITY when the gliders pierced the haze and fog and 500 hundred feet and came in for a long, slow and low landing making perfect targets for the Germans dug in and waiting for them. On those landing zones there were some of the highest casualty rates of glider pilots for the war. It is entirely possible that the end result may have been worse for the 551st PIB if they had hit their mark.
Sources:
551st Parachute Infantry Battalion Association.
The Left Corner of My Heart, The Saga of the 551st Parachute Infantry Battalion by Dan Morgan
Messengers of the Lost Battalion: The Heroic 551st and the Turning of the Tide at the Battle of the Bulge by Gregory Orfalea
Pulse and Repulse: Troop Carrier Airborne Teams in Europe During WWII by Rex Sharma
Action of the Tiger: 437th Troop Carrier Group by Frank Guild, Jr.