OPERATION "CHICAGO"

IX Troop Carrier Command - 101st Airborne Division


Lewis H. Breton

Paul L. Williams

Julian M. Chappell

Maurice Beach

Charles H. Young

Frank X. Krebs
 
Two pre-dawn glider landings, missions 'Chicago' and 'Detroit" (82nd Airborne Division), each by 52 CG-4 Waco gliders, landed anti-tank guns and support troops for each division.
Mission 'Chicago' was the 27th serial of the airborne assault, and was flown by the troop carrier C-47 Skytrains of the 434th Troop Carrier Group at RAF Aldermaston. 52 aircraft acted as tugs for an equal number of CG-4A Waco gliders carrying 155 troops, a bulldozer, sixteen 57-millimeter (6-pounder) antitank guns, and 25 small vehicles. 2.5 tons of ammunition and 11 tons of equipment were also transported, including an SCR-499 radio set for the division headquarters command post.
'Chicago' was primarily an artillery reinforcement mission, also accompanying the glider serial in a last-minute change was the assistant division commander of the 101st Airborne Division, Brigadier General Don PRATT, who had been designated to command the seaborne echelon.
The mission had originally been planned for glider release at civil twilight on the evening before the amphibious landings, but to protect the gliders from ground fire the time was changed on May 27 to 04:00 on D-Day, 2 hours before dawn. The designated destination was LZ E, an area co-located with and slightly overlapping one of the paratroop drop zones, DZ C. The area was chosen as central to the operations of the division.
The landing zone was a triangle-shaped area a mile in width at its mile-long base along the road connecting les Forges and Sainte-Marie-du-Mont. The zone was 1.5 miles in depth and its eastern edge ran through Hiesville, the division command post two miles west of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont. In addition to its central locality, the fields within the zone were on average twice the length of most others in the vicinity. Many of the fields, however, were bordered by trees 40 feet in height and not hedgerows, a fact that did not show up well on aerial reconnaissance photographs.
 
      
 
6 June 44
Hour Unit #Plane Air Force #AC Airfield DZ - LZ
0400 81st AA Bn 1-52 434th TCG 52 Aldermaston (467) LZ "E"