When dawn broke on 20 May 1941, residents of Athens awoke to a massive armada of transport aircraft leaving overhead. People in the streets described the planes as “some low as if heavily laden, others towing weird-looking gliders like young vultures following the parent bird from the roost.” Two hours later, this air fleet would commence the airborne assault that marked the beginning of the Battle of Crete. Understandably, this would be a strange sight to anyone in the world at the time, military or civilian: Crete’s airborne operation was the first skyborne invasion, and largest airborne operation by a wide margin, to that point in history. Codenamed operation Merkur (Mercury in English), the action would mark the first time that paratroopers …show more content…
Ultimately, the events alienated the German command from the concept while critically encouraging the Allies to utilize this new method of warfare. The first portion of the paper will be dedicated to the German experience in attempting to develop an airborne capability and divining a doctrine of how to best employ this force. This will show how and why the German conclusions drawn from Battle of Crete (and specifically from this Battle alone) affected German doctrine in a draconian manner, effectively ending any division-level or greater airborne operations for the German paratroop corps. It is widely accepted that following the battle Hitler forbade any strategic operations, similar to Crete: This paper will go beyond this and truly demonstrate the effect that the battle had on the German doctrine surrounding the employment of fallscirmjager troops, as the units were not disbanded. The second portion of the paper will focus on the more positive effects that the battle had towards allied proponents of airborne warfare. Direct links will be shown to how the conclusions drawn post-battle critically shaped allied airborne doctrine prior to the Overlord or Market Garden operations, which interestingly are the most comparable in scale to