Major General Matthew Ridgway: 82nd Airborne, D-Day & the Cotentin Mission
Major General Matthew B. Ridgway commanded the 82nd Airborne Division during the Normandy invasion. By D-Day his division already had airborne combat experience in the Mediterranean, but the Cotentin mission presented a different scale of uncertainty: a night drop into flooded, compartmented ground where the division’s regiments could be scattered before the battle formally began.
Building the 82nd Airborne
Ridgway took command of the 82nd Infantry Division in 1942 and oversaw its conversion into the US Army’s first airborne division. The formation fought in Sicily and Italy before being selected for Normandy.
Those earlier operations mattered. Airborne warfare was still new, and Sicily had already shown how transport, navigation, anti-aircraft fire and dispersion could fracture even carefully prepared plans.
The Normandy mission
For D-Day, the 82nd was assigned objectives on the Cotentin Peninsula behind Utah Beach. The plan changed late in May after intelligence showed stronger German forces in the area. The division’s final missions included Sainte-Mère-Église, the Merderet crossings and protection of the 101st Airborne Division’s flank.
The division’s principal parachute regiments for the initial operation included the 505th, 507th and 508th Parachute Infantry Regiments, with glider infantry and supporting units following.
Scatter and command
The drop dispersed much of the division. The 505th landed more accurately than the 507th and 508th, whose men were spread widely west of the Merderet. Ridgway and his commanders therefore faced the classic airborne problem: units existed on paper but locally the fight was being conducted by improvised groups.
This did not mean mission command was absent. It made it essential. Officers and NCOs collected whoever they could find and moved toward recognizable objectives, bridges, roads and towns.
Sainte-Mère-Église and the Merderet
Elements of the 505th secured Sainte-Mère-Église in the early hours. Farther west, fighting around La Fière and the Merderet causeways became some of the hardest American airborne combat of the Normandy battle.
Ridgway’s division had to protect the western edge of the airborne lodgement while maintaining contact with the 101st and the troops moving inland from Utah.
After Normandy
Ridgway later moved to command XVIII Airborne Corps. His postwar career included command in Korea, where he succeeded General Douglas MacArthur in the Far East, and eventual service as US Army Chief of Staff.
For D-Day, however, his significance is narrower: he commanded an experienced airborne division through an operation in which the planned geometry broke apart almost immediately.
Continue the US airborne series
- Log 036 — US Airborne on D-Day
- Brigadier General James Gavin — 82nd Airborne
- Second World War Field Notes archive
