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Operation Colossus
Operation Colossus was the codename given to the first airborne operation undertaken by the British military, which occurred on 10 February 1941 during World War II. The British airborne establishment was formed in June 1940 by the order of the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, in response to the successful airborne operations conducted by the German military during the Battle of France. Training began immediately, but a shortage of proper equipment and training facilities, as well as bureaucratic difficulties, meant that only a small number of volunteers could immediately be trained as parachute troops. The first airborne unit to be formed was actually a re-trained Commando unit, No. 2 Commando, which was subsequently renamed as No. 11 Special Air Service Battalion and numbered approximately 350 officers and other ranks by September 1940. The battalion finished its training in December 1940, and in February 1941 thirty-eight members of the battalion, known as X Troop, were selected to conduct an airborne operation, which was intended to test the capability of the airborne troops and their equipment, as well as the ability of the Royal Air Force to accurately deliver them.
The target chosen for the operation was a fresh-water aqueduct near Calitri in southern Italy, which supplied water to a large portion of the Italian population as well as several ports used by the Italian military; it was also hoped that its destruction would hamper Italian military efforts in North Africa and Albania. The airborne troops were delivered by converted Armstrong Whitworth Whitley medium bombers to the target on 10 February, but equipment failures and navigational errors meant that a significant portion of the troops explosives, and a team of Royal Engineer sappers, landed in the wrong area. Despite this setback the remaining members of the troop successfully destroyed the aqueduct and withdrew from the area, but were all captured by the Italian authorities within a short time; an Italian translator was tortured and executed and one paratrooper managed to escape captivity, but the rest remained as prisoners of war. The aqueduct was rapidly repaired before local water reserves ran out, ensuring that the local population and the ports were not deprived of water, and, consequently, that the Italian war efforts were not hampered. However, it served as a morale boost for the fledgling airborne establishment, and the technical and operational lessons learnt from the operation helped the development of further airborne operations.
==Background==
The German military was one of the pioneers of the use of airborne formations, conducting several successful airborne operations during the Battle of France in 1940, including the Battle of Fort Eben-Emael.〔Flanagan, p. 6.〕 Impressed by the success of German airborne operations, the Allied governments decided to form their own airborne formations.〔Harclerode, p. 197.〕 This decision would eventually lead to the creation of two British airborne divisions, as well as a number of smaller units.〔Harclerode, p. 107.〕 The British airborne establishment began development on 22 June 1940, when the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, directed the War Office in a memorandum to investigate the possibility of creating a corps of 5,000 parachute troops.〔 Despite the Prime Minister's desire to have 5,000 airborne troops within a short period, a number of problems were rapidly encountered by the War Office. Very few gliders existed in Britain in 1940, and these were too light for military purposes, and there was also a shortage of suitable transport aircraft to tow gliders and carry paratroopers. On 10 August, Churchill was informed that although 3,500 volunteers had been selected to train as airborne troops, only 500 could currently begin training due to limitations in equipment and aircraft.〔Otway, p. 21〕 The War Office stated in a memorandum to the Prime Minister in December 1940 that 500 parachute troops could probably be trained and be ready for operations by the spring of 1941, but this figure was purely arbitrary; the actual number that could be trained and prepared by that period would rely entirely on the creation of a training establishment and the provision of required equipment.〔Otway, p. 23〕
A training establishment for parachute troops was set up at RAF Ringway near Manchester on 21 June 1940 and named the Central Landing Establishment, and the initial 500 volunteers began training for airborne operations. The Royal Air Force provided a number of Armstrong Whitworth Whitley medium bombers for conversion into transport aircraft for paratroopers. A number of military gliders were also designed, starting with the General Aircraft Hotspur, but gliders were not used by the British until Operation Freshman in 1942.〔Otway, p. 73〕 Organizational plans were also being laid down, with the War Office calling for two parachute brigades to be operational by 1943.〔Otway, p. 28〕 However, the immediate development of any further airborne formations, as well as the initial 500 volunteers already training, was hampered by three problems. With the threat of invasion in 1940, many War Office officials and senior British Army officers did not believe that sufficient men could be spared from the effort to rebuild the Army after the Battle of France to create an effective airborne force; many believed that such a force would only have a nuisance raiding value and would not affect the conflict in any useful way.〔 There were also material problems; all three of the armed services were expanding and rebuilding, particularly the Army, and British industry had not yet been organized to a sufficient war footing to support all three services as well as the fledgling airborne force.〔Otway, p. 25〕 Finally, the airborne forces lacked a single, coherent policy, with no clear idea as to how they should be organized, or whether they should come under the command of the Army or the RAF; inter-organizational rivalry between the War Office and the Air Ministry, in charge of the RAF, was a major factor in delaying the further expansion of British airborne forces.〔
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
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