Pathfinders (military)
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The pathfinders were a branch of the Allied armed forces who performed many dangerous assignments. Parachuted behind enemy lines, they were charged with establishing facilities that would help the invasion force to follow. Their only hope for survival lay in remaining undiscovered until the enemy could be beaten back beyond their positions.
These forces carried out their vital tasks using night time parachute drops which would leave them behind the enemy lines. They would set up special radio beacon sets and landing lights to help guide Allied airborne divisions to their drop zones.
Pathfinders were involved in campaigns in North Africa, D-Day, Operation Market Garden and the Battle of the Bulge.
Pathfinders taking part in the American parachute assault on Normandy on 6 June 1944, were trained by the Pathfinder School at RAF North Witham of which the USAAF designation was Army Air Force Station 479.
At 21.30 hours on 5 June, about 200 pathfinders began to take off from North Witham, for the Cotentin Peninsula, in 20 C-47 aircraft of 9th Troop Carrier Command Pathfinder Group. They began to drop at 00.15 on June 6, to prepare the drop zones for the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions. They were the first US troops on the ground on D-Day. However, their aircraft were scattered by low clouds and anti-aircraft fire. Many never found their assigned landing zones. Some of the landing zones were too heavily defended, some were flooded. Only one of the pathfinder teams completed its mission on D-Day, which contributed to the overall confusion of the major nighttime paratrooper drop that followed.