Glider assault on Eben Emael as an archetype for the future

Infantry Magazine, March-April, 2004 by Paul Witkowski

In the wee hours of the morning on May 10, 1940, a flight of 11 German Luftwaffe Ju-52 tri-motor transport planes clawed their way into the dark sky above Ostheim, Germany. Connected behind each transport plane by a towrope was a high-wing motorless aircraft loaded with highly trained paratroopers. These paratroopers turned glidermen would make the opening blow of Germany's plan to seize France via striking through Holland, Luxembourg, and Belgium. Slightly over the Dutch border, the tow planes released their gliders. Nine of the 11 gliders reached their objective. Even though they had trained for months for this attack, none of the glidermen knew their objective by name until they loaded their gliders that morning. In the morning nautical twilight, nine Luftwaffe gliders silently descended upon the Belgian fortress of Fort Eben Emael. Within 20 minutes of landing, the 70 German glidermen rendered Belgium's most modern fortress, garrisoned by more than 800 soldiers, useless. The breach in Belgium's line of defense opened by these glidermen paved an open road for the German panzers to Blitzkrieg into the heart of Belgium.

This event not only marked the end of the Phoney War, but was also the debut of gliders in combat. Gliders were not a new invention; some of the earliest attempts at human flight were made in gliders. At the dawn of World War II, however, the concept of teaming powered aircraft with gliders to deliver combat troops to a specific landing zone in large enough numbers to overwhelm enemy defenders was revolutionary. The western Allies did not pursue a military glider program until after the Germans' success at Eben Emael. However, the Allies quickly exploited and expanded on what they had learned from German glider use at the fort. The German glider assault was a textbook example of the use of surprise in a military assault and served as a template for subsequent airborne operations conducted by the Allies in World War II.

In the larger sense, the attack on Eben Emael was just one small part of the German Blitzkrieg in action. German General Heinz Guderian is credited with developing the Blitzkrieg concept. Guderian's concept revolved around three essential components: attacking enemy command and communications structures, infiltrating past major enemy troop concentrations, and the use of the two-way wireless radio to control friendly attacking traits, according to Len Deighton in his book Blitzkrieg from the Rise of Hitler to the Fall of Dunkirk. By examining the components, it is clear that the purpose was to defeat the enemy's command and control structure while avoiding the enemy's heavily defended areas. This left the enemy troops in the field without guidance from their headquarters and undermined their will to fight after being caught behind the German lines, facilitating their surrender. The key elements of speed, combined arms, and wireless communications in conjunction with each other were crucial for Blitzkrieg to be successful. The point of main attack, Schwerpunkt, sought out holes in the enemy's defense to maintain constant forward progress in the attack. Combined arms refers to the close coordination of infantry, tanks, combat engineers, artillery, and close air support attacking in concert while maximizing the strengths and minimizing the weaknesses of each other. In the book Blitzkrieg: In History, Strategy, Economics and the Challenge to America, author S.L.A. Marshall highlighted that, "the prime mission of tanks and aviation is to shatter enemy resistance and open the road for the advance of the motorized mass." The breach created by armor and dive bombers would be exploited by motorized and foot infantry, who then take the battle to the enemy. The technological innovation of the wireless voice radio provided the glue that held the two other elements together. Deighton argued that, "Blitzkrieg could not exist without very close cooperation from all arms. In this respect, radiotelephony--transmitting speech, rather than Morse code--was the most crucial element in the new style of war." In a sense, without the radio there would have been no Blitzkrieg.

The inherent role of German paratroopers and glidermen made them an ideal force to support Blitzkrieg. These units were able to bypass enemy defenses by flying around them to seize key objectives from behind enemy lines. Two techniques governed the employment of airborne forces--the oil spot and airhead methods. The oil spot technique consisted of dropping small groups of paratroopers or glidermen over a wide area. The advantage to this method is that the enemy is not able to pinpoint the airborne troopers' main objective; however, these small groups could easily bc defeated one by one with strong counterattacks. The airhead method consisted of dropping a large number of troops in one area. The strength of this technique is the airborne troops are massed, but this also telegraphed their main effort to the enemy.

The German glider program was a direct result of the harsh sanctions imposed upon Germany in the Treaty of Versailles following the end of World War I. One of the stipulations in the treaty prohibited Germany from having an air force, but did not forbid the development and flying of gliders. This loophole in the treaty gave Germany the ability to train pilots who could readily transition to powered aircraft, as well as sparking aeronautical innovations in powerless flight. One of the offspring from the civilian glider development was Germany's first military glider, the DFS-230. The DFS-230 was a high-wing monoplane, manned with one pilot and capable of transporting nine combat- equipped glidermen or 2,800 pounds of cargo. The development of the DFS-230 provided the Luftwaffe with the means to silently land combat troops on any designated landing zone with a high degree of accuracy.