We all know that after the disaster that was the German Airborne assault on Crete (in regards to casualties I mean), Hitler gave up on the idea of using them again in that way. If Kurt Student could have made some changes and convinced Hitler otherwise, can any of you think of any ways Fallschrimjagers could have jumped again? During the Eastern Front, Italy, North Africa. Like to know what you guys think.
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Short answer is yes. Transport Fleet continued to grow until 1943, and Paratroops numbers until 1944, with I believe no loss in training quality, although they were used as elite infantry.
As to where, there’s two places I can think of: in my Civ 2 games I use vertical envelopment to bypass the defenses of Sevastopol and it’s usually the second city I take after Odessa, my thinking is always to destroy the Black Sea Flet from the air and use the Black Sea as a Partisan free supply route. Other way to use them is to seize Murmansk and possibly to fly over the taiga and raid Arkhangelsk. Holding it long term is not important, it’s enough to wreck it as a lend lease port.
If I were an actual German commander what I’d do is use them to reach out take the Donbass region in Eastern Ukraine, which is the biggest source of Russian coal. Reason is, Russian rail stock runs on coal, so even if you fail to nab the rail stock in the blitzkrieg, the Soviets won’t be able to move troops effectively due to coal shortages. You’ll all but cripple the Soviet’s ability to reinforce in the Autumn and winter of 41 at least.
But then again, all of this assumes the inevitability of a long war, that there’s no realistic probability Moscow can be taken and if it is, well, the Russians burnt Moscow before and they can do it again. I don’t know if it’s hindsight or taking Napoleon’s 1812 campaign seriously, but the way I see it, always assume a long war. You may get a short war, but if you plan for a short war and get a long war, you’re goose is cooked.
Fallschrmjager divisions were utilised after Operation Merkur (invasion of Creter) but they were not used as whole divisional sized operations ever. At most thery were deployed in airborne operations in regiment sized airborne drops like capture of Senio river bridge during invasion of Sicily (which suceeded temporarily but they lost the bridge and most of airborne units that dropped afterwards) or Operation Knights Move to capture Yugoslav partisan leader Tito , he escaped , falscrhmjager units suffred heavily and it failed.