Airborne forces critical equipment carried in 408 gliders daylight missions code-named Operation Bluebird, phase 2, simultaneous with the beach landings, and Operation Dove, phase 3. A second daylight parachute drop, Operation Canary, dropped 736 men of the 551st PIB with nearly 100% effectiveness late on the afternoon of August 15. The airborne objective was to capture the area, destroy all enemy positions and hold the ground until the U.S. Seventh Army came ashore. Operation Market Garden of September 1944, involved 35,000 airborne troops dropped up to behind German lines in an attempt to capture a series of bridges over the Maas, Waal
Airborne forces and were rarely used as parachute troops afterward. On 6 December 1944, a 750-strong detachment from "Teishin Shudan" ("Raiding Division") and the "Takachiho" special forces unit, attacked U.S. airbases in the Burauen area on Leyte, in The Philippines. The force destroyed some planes and inflicted casualties, but was eventually wiped out. Japan built a combat strike force of 825 gliders but never committed it to battle. Ironically, the battle that ended Germany's paratrooper operations had the opposite effect on the Allies. Convinced of the effectiveness of airborne assaults after Crete, the Allies hurried to train and organize their own airborne