The sun is veiled by dust and smoke. The survivors of the bombardment painfully extricate themselves from their trenches which are too shallow and snort, rubbing with their dirty hands their eyes blinded by the sand. Then they start cleaning their weapons.
They did not hear the next attack coming until it was upon them, for the enemy descended from the sky, silently, in gliders.
Operation “Merkur” has just started; it is a great first in military history placed under the patronage of the god with the winged heels. The defenders of the island of Crete were the privileged and powerless spectators:English, Greeks, New Zealanders, still stunned by the bombardment, watched a new breed of fighters land:General Student's paratroopers.
On the morning of May 20, 1941, exactly 8,060 men set out to conquer an island 260 kilometers long and 60 wide, defended by 42,500 British and Greek soldiers.
If the battle for the island of Crete was the prototype of major airborne operations, it nevertheless has its specific character.
In the Mediterranean theater of operations, at the time, the two adversaries were virtually of equal strength:to the Germans control of the air, to the British the primacy over the water. Admittedly, the Balkan campaign ended to the advantage of the Germans who swept away British hopes of a bridgehead on the continent, but for the English nothing is ever quite lost and they can imagine that it will be possible for them to cling to Crete to make it an aircraft carrier, the counterpart, in the Eastern Mediterranean, of Malta.
For the Germans, who are preparing the invasion of Russia, the problem is more serious. British-occupied Crete is a thorn in their right flank and, who knows, a direct threat to the Romanian oilfields of Ploesti, brought within reach of British bombers.
Once this equation is posed, the solution does not seem obvious. The island of Crete is roughly equidistant from Egyptian supply bases and Greek ports. The British had the material means to bring food and arms to the big island, but the Germans, in this case the Luftwaffe, could make them pay a high, if not disproportionate, price. The British and Germans therefore seemed to paralyze each other when General Leutnant Karl Student, on April 20, 1941, unveiled to the Reichsmarshall Herman Goering a plan he had just designed based on the possibilities of the 7th Airborne Division of the Luftwaffe. A priori, Goering is seduced by the somewhat "daredevil" side of the operation.
Student has a solid reputation as a winner; airborne operations at the start of the war gave him the aureole that characterizes happy warlords. Nevertheless, even if Goering, supreme leader of the Luftwaffe, supports the Student plan, it will be necessary to overcome a lot of resistance in the ranks of the high command which worries about the innovations and which is still under the blow of the failure that the British have inflicted on the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain.
However, in one month, all the obstacles will be removed, including those represented by the preparation of an operation of this magnitude in terms of logistics.
The Student plan is based on a summary report from the German intelligence services that is completely false... Transmitted on May 19 to the staff of the 7th Air Division of the Luftwaffe, this plan shows a Cretan garrison of about 5,000 men, the value of an infantry brigade, divided between Heraklion and Chania. The Germans based themselves on an estimate of the units that managed to escape from Greece, among others the illustrious 2nd Black Watch, the famous Scottish Black Guard. They estimate the garrison fleet to be 30 tanks and 300 various vehicles, to which they “lent” 30 anti-aircraft artillery pieces and around forty Bofors L 40 heavy machine guns, as well as two large-caliber guns installed by the Royal Navy. .
In fact, the island's garrison numbers just over 45,000 men, jumbled together from the remnants of two Commonwealth divisions, the 6th Australian Division and the 6th Neo-Division. almost destitute of their heavy equipment which they abandoned during the retreat through Greece, a few Greek battalions with rudimentary armament, disparate British units and an undetermined number of Cretan irregulars. Twenty-two tanks from Egypt, outdated and more or less well patched up, constitute the entire armored force of the garrison with a few armored cars. The British finally have guns taken back from the Italians in such a state that, if we know where the shell came from, very clever would be the one who could say where it will arrive...
If this garrison lacks everything, and particularly provisions, it does not lack generals in chief. Major General Freyberg, New Zealander, is the seventh boss that the high command has delegated to Crete for six months. It arrived three weeks ago and barely had time to go around the device adopted and modified by its six predecessors.
Basically, the bet of the British generals is that, if the Germans attack, they will combine a naval air operation; in the ignorance of the place where they will strike, it is advisable to dilute the troops on all the extent of the island by supervising particularly the aerodromes and the port of the bay of La Souda, the most important of the island.
It must be admitted that these calculations are not very far from the truth, but the British lack the means of transmission and transport allowing them to regroup their forces on the German attack zones. They therefore immobilized several battalions to guard the airfields of Maleme, Rethymnon, Heraklion and Chania; they know, however, that the Junkers 52 of the Luftwaffe can land anywhere else, provided they find a strip of flat ground!
On the German side, aerial reconnaissance did not in no way invalidated the conclusions of the intelligence services. The island seems almost empty of troops and no one doubts the estimates concerning the number of fighters likely to be engaged to counter a landing.
Student's whole plan rests on a doctrine of employment of the airborne troops totally different from that which the Anglo-Saxons will adopt later. While the Anglo-American paratroopers and gliders will be dropped on drop zones relatively far from the objective, the men of the 7th Airborne Division of the Luftwaffe must jump directly on the objective, after intense fire preparation. br class='autobr' />Bumping defenders should normally block their reactions, long enough for assault troops to regroup and immediately cap hard points. This method proved itself in 1940, among others on the forts of the Meuse and more recently on the Corinth Canal, but it requires not only training and courage, but a good deal of luck. If the troops under attack pull themselves together in time, or if one of the parachute units regroups too late, everything can change and the paratroopers are destined for massacre.
Student knows it, but he trusts in his star and he can rely on an exceptionally efficient troop. In addition, its numbers seem quite close to those attributed to the defenders of the island.
Crete is a long, narrow and mountainous strip of land. Communications between the northern and southern coastal plains are not easy. It is therefore important to seize, initially, the flat parts of the island, then to extend, "in a spot of oil", with the support of mountain troops; the 5th Alp. Division must arrive by sea, aboard Greek fishing boats flanked by Italian naval units.
So, to summarize the Student plan, initially the 8,000 men of the 7th Airborne Division will land in two waves (for lack of transport planes in sufficient numbers) and will cling to the ground in the hours following the drop; then, after replenishing their ammunition supply, they will try to extend their zone by radiating around the strongpoints. With the British defense thus fixed, the mountain hunters will land on the north coast which is supposed to be bare due to the fighting taking place in the interior of the island.
For this, the Luftwaffe staff has 493 planes, mainly Junkers 52, a robust three-engine aircraft carrying 12 men and two releasable containers for heavy equipment. If it is not fast - its cruising speed is around 250 km/h - and can hardly cover more than 1,300 km, but the Ju. 52 is truly indestructible.
The Ju. 52 can tow DFS 230 gliders whose fuselages, made of metal tubes, are simply covered. Each glider carries ten men with their individual equipment.
As for the men, they underwent intensive training during which the virtual certainty of their invulnerability was imposed on them. They are elite fighters, equipped with sophisticated equipment:lightened automatic weapons, jumpsuit, special boots and helmet with a chin strap, a well-made uniform to reinforce an esprit de corps which, until 1945, will make German paratroopers a leading unit, both in the offensive and in the delaying battles, those they led, for example, in Italy and Germany, a few weeks before the collapse of the Reich.
The order of battle developed by Student himself is simple:the morning assault wave will drop around 3,000 men on the objectives of Materne, Chania and La Souda Bay. These elements will be placed under the command of Major General Eugen Meindl. In the afternoon, the second wave will jump on Rethymnon and Heraklion:1,500 men under Colonel Alfred Sturm on Rethymnon and 2,600 with Colonel Bruno Brauer on Heraklion.
The dropping of Brauer's men will be followed by that of two regiments of the 5th mountain division of Lieutenant General Julius Ringel, one regiment will join by sea. Other amphibious landings will be carried out by two battalions of Alpine troops bringing to the units engaged a reinforcement of heavy vehicles, field artillery, engineering vehicles and anti-tank batteries.
With their usual energy, the Germans, even before the Student plan was finally approved, began to put in place the logistical elements of Operation “Merkur”. Complications abound! We must bring the protective envelopes of the collective weapons from France where they had been stored for a possible landing in Great Britain, also bring in reinforcements of personnel from the depots in Germany.