ORIGINAL: Jo van der Pluym
ORIGINAL: el cid again
Raider Brigades (Airborne).
T[font="times new roman"]he Dai I Teishin Dan (1st Raiding Brigade) exist early 1942 out
Brigade HQ (Col Seiichi Kume)
1st Raiding Regt (Maj Takeo Takeda)
2nd Raiding Regt (Maj Takeo Komura)
Raiding Flying Regt ( Maj Akihito Niihara) (Airforce)
(4 Transport Companies each 12x
Hickory or
Topsy a/c)
Airfield Comapny
Raiding Regt 1942
Regt HQ
1st, 2nd and 3rd Rifle Companies
each Co HQ
3x Rifle Platoon each 3 sections (each 1 LMG, 2x or 3x Grenade dischargers)
HMG Platoon (2 or more HMGs)
AT Section (1x 3.7cm AT Gun or 1x 2cm AT Rifle or 1x 3.7cm Infantry gun)
4th Engineer Co.
Co HQ
3x Engineer Platoon
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I do not understand the significance of this comment?
It is more or less correct re organization, but wrong for dated. A German mission went to Japan (88 strong) and it organized both Navy and Army paras in 1941. There were three battalions of Naval troops, and three of army, but one of the army ones was the "training raiding regiment" - which was intended as a second line unit to season troops before they went to the first line units. The organization is evolutionary, and it changes form significantly by midwar: another para "brigade" (2 battalions again) is added; and two glider "regiments" (battalions), plus a special ops unit (2 companies) and a tank unit (2 companies), and a "group" (almost division) HQ - including a mobile air base support unit and a small AAA unit which flies, and an engineer element. There is a second air element as well - and Japan is credited by historians at doing better than any other power in giving command and control of the planes as well as the paras to the airborne commander (although it never gave the units enough planes - so they often "borrowed" others). There are quite a number of para ops, large and small, in many places, in particular in the Philippines, in the Dutch East Indies and in China - more than the Allies launched in fact. The most successful was the drop on Timor - showing a fairly sophisticated doctrine - including a dummy drop - but nevertheless most of the larger ops resulted in very high casualties. The drop at Palembang succeeded in some ways, but not in its primary mission: the refineries were damaged anyway. The drop at Minado was Navy, not Army. The largest op was on Leyte Island in 1944 - and it was a wipe out - and executed against the better judgement of the theater commander on orders from Tokyo. There are many small ops we never hear about. My father in law tells a tale of a column formed up after a drop which marched onto a USAAF airfield (he was an MP) led by an English speaking officer - and then proceeded to attack the parked aircraft - but you don't read about it in our war stories.
Dutch
