3 MAJOR Soviet airborne operations during World War II (PHOTOS)

1. The Vyazma Airborne Operation

Following the successful counteroffensive near Moscow in late 1941, the Soviet command set its sights on the complete destruction of Army Group ‘Center’. A massive airborne assault behind enemy lines was intended to play a key role in cutting the Vyazma-Smolensk railway and highway.

Due to a shortage of transport aircraft and constant Luftwaffe attacks on Soviet airfields, the troop deployment operation was significantly delayed: the first group of 462 paratroopers arrived on January 18, 1942; approximately 2,500 more arrived in early February, but the main force (approximately 7,000 soldiers) did not arrive until the end of the month.

The element of surprise was lost; the Germans brought in reinforcements and quickly responded to threats in their rear. Furthermore, some of the troops were mistakenly dropped far from the intended area and, on February 23, General Alexei Levashev, commander of the 4th Airborne Corps, was killed.

“We broke through, first in one direction, then in another, scattered groups wandered through the forests, then merged into larger units, but after yet another battle… they scattered through the forests once more and the confused and chaotic movement resumed amid the bloody chaos – sometimes eastward, sometimes northward. Chaos and disorganization reigned; the commanders didn’t know what to do, where to go or how to escape this ring of fire,” recalled veteran Mikhail Bogatsky.

Nevertheless, the paratroopers linked up with General Pavel Belov’s Guards Cavalry Corps operating behind German lines and awaited the arrival of the main forces. But, the main forces were unable to penetrate the enemy's defenses. For several months, the paratroopers and cavalrymen waged a guerrilla war and, in June 1942, they finally broke through to their own lines.

2. The Demyansk Airborne Operation

In early February 1942, Soviet troops encircled a large enemy force for the first time in the war. A force of approximately 95,000 men was trapped in a “cauldron” near Demyansk in the northwestern part of the USSR.

The Luftwaffe was effectively supplying the trapped units via an “air bridge”, so it was essential to destroy the airstrips and runways built by the Germans as quickly as possible. This task was entrusted to the paratroopers.

A small reconnaissance team was airlifted into the “cauldron”, while the main forces of several airborne brigades, numbering approximately 9,000 men, entered it on skis. This was due to a shortage of transport aircraft and the command's fears that paratroopers scattered across the terrain would become stuck in the deep snow and not be able to reach the assembly point quickly enough.

But, the extremely harsh winter still proved an insurmountable obstacle – the soldiers slowly made their way through the snow-covered forests, struggling to haul their mortars and equipment. Moreover, there turned out to be far more Germans in the “cauldron” than the Soviet generals had anticipated. The enemy easily tracked the airborne assault force and then the skiers, preventing them from reaching the airstrips.

At the end of March, scattered groups of Soviet soldiers, including many wounded, began to break out of the “cauldron” and rejoin their own forces – out of nearly 9,000 who set out, only a little over 2,000 returned. By April 21, the Germans had broken through the encirclement.

3. The Dnieper Landing

Following the Red Army's triumph at the Kursk Salient in Summer 1943, the Wehrmacht began a rapid retreat westward, in the hope of establishing a foothold on the Dnieper. Soviet troops did everything in their power to thwart this advance: they literally “rode the enemy's shoulders” across the river, where they captured and held bridgeheads.

At the Bukrin Bend near Kiev, paratroopers provided support to ground units. On September 24, several airborne brigades, numbering approximately 4,500 men, began landing behind enemy lines. Preparations for the operation were hastily prepared, with personnel arriving at airfields literally hours before boarding their aircraft and briefings taking place mid-flight.

But worst of all, no reconnaissance of the landing zone had been conducted the day before and, in the meantime, the enemy had amassed large forces there. “Six divisions and two tank corps were concentrated there. And so they dropped us on them… We came from the sky straight into battle and we died in the sky… Everything was burning there, night turned into day…’ recalled Guards Junior Sergeant Petr Nezhivenko.

Some of the soldiers were mistakenly dropped on friendly territory, others directly into the Dnieper River. Due to heavy fire from German anti-aircraft guns, the planes had to climb rapidly and the paratroopers were forced to jump from 3,000 meters instead of the standard 400. Thus, they found themselves scattered across a vast territory.

‘The enemy was everywhere… You name it, they were all there… Vlasovites (Russian collaborators, named after the general Andrei Vlasov, who defected to the Nazis), Polizei, Germans. Death could have lurked behind any bush,’ recalled Guards Private Vasily Shishkin. Some soldiers managed to join the partisans and, in November, fought their way back to their own lines.

Approximately 3,500 of the 4,500 paratroopers were killed, taken prisoner or missing in action. The Supreme Command Headquarters accused the organizers of the Dnieper landing of "incompetence" and refused to conduct operations of such a scale until the war with Japan.