Green Light - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Airborne Operations Before Our Time 35
the Gela beaches from the east rather than the south. Of the 226 planes that set
out, only one in six jumped its troopers into the DZ, or at least close enough to
attack designated targets.
At about the same time that the winds scattered HUSKY I, gliders of the
British LADBROKE mission were being towed toward the region of Syracuse,
on the eastern shore of Sicily, mainly by American airplane crews. Again, high
winds played havoc with the formation, but much worse was to come. The first
few tugs and gliders went toward the LZ undetected. Soon banks of searchlights
caught the planes in mid-air; a terrible barrage of antiaircraft fire came up at
them from German and Italian defenders in Syracuse. The mission was reduced
to chaos long before the planes were close enough to the shore to release their
gliders. Many American pilots refused to fly further into that hell and turned
back out to sea, meanwhile ordering their glider pilots to cut loose. Many glider
pilots reckoned they were not close enough to make it all the way into shore-let
alone to their LZs.lo Some tugs and gliders made three passes this way, the C-47
pilots signaling for a cut-off and the glider pilots demanding to be flown closer.
The air seemed filled with planes taking wild evasive action, loosed gliders fran-
tically seeking a relatively safe way down, bursting puffs of flak, and machine-
gun tracers filling the dark sky.
Of the 144 gliders in LADBROKE pulled to Sicily that night, seventy-two
came down in the sea. High waves battered at the struggling men and smashed
gliders. Some of the soldiers were picked up by British seaborne assault craft on
their way in, but more than 200 were drowned. This horrible fiasco was made
even more humiliating by debriefing reports given by American pilots when they
got back to North Africa: virtually every one of them claimed “a good release,”
and XI1 Troop Carrier Command announced that at least half of the gliders had
made it into their designated LZs. It was a preposterous claim, as anyone looking
at the debris and bodies in the vicinity of Syracuse the next morning could
plainly see.”
It is easy to understand why LADBROKE brought already existing tensions
between British and American soldiers to the boiling point. Fights over this mis-
sion erupted not only in Mediterranean area caf& but also in British pubs. British
paratroopers swore they would kill any troop carrier pilot they could get their
hands on. They shouted that it was a lack of guts that made American pilots cut
their gliders off so early. A stinging indictment in their argument: every single
one of the American planes and crews involved in LADBROKE made it safely
back to North Africa.
Faced with two such ghastly disappointments, airborne commanders in
North Africa postponed for one day the second mission designated for 82nd
Airborne troops, HUSKY 11. Like HUSKY I, HUSKY I1 was scheduled as an