Before dawn on June 6, 1944, the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions were dropped behind invasion beaches.
First on the ground were 300 “Pathfinders” whose job was to mark the drop zones, followed by 13,100 paratroopers jumping from C-47 aircraft, and a small number of glider troops bringing in heavy equipment. (In the first 24 hours, a total of 3,900 glider troops came in aboard 517 gliders.) There were 14-16 paratroopers and 5 aircrew aboard each plane.
Movies depict heavy ground fire and numerous plane losses, but only 21 of the 821 C-47s used in the predawn parachute drops were lost in those first hours. The paratroopers lost 1,695 killed and missing on D-Day, a fatality rate of about 13%, which shows how dangerous the jumps were.
Photo below: Workers search a C-47 crash site for remains of 3 missing aircrew. The frames in the background are used for sifting soil for bone fragments.
