The brigade's first casualties occurred while they were still en route, when two Dakotas were shot down flying over an Allied convoy with another nine damaged and forced to turn back. When they reached the Sicilian coast, Axis anti-aircraft fire shot down thirty-seven and a further ten were damaged and forced to abort their mission. Of the surviving aircraft, only thirty-nine managed to drop their paratroops within of the correct DZ. Only four gliders arrived intact and those not shot down en route were destroyed while attempting to land. Despite these setbacks, the 250 surviving men of the 1st Parachute Battalion captured the bridge intact. The battalion commander, 28-year old Lieutenant Colonel Pearson, ordered his men to dig in on the north side of the river. Their only support weapons were three anti-tank guns, two 3 inch mortars and a Vickers machine gun. As they dug in, the men removed the demolition charges from the bridge such that even if they were forced off the bridge it could not be immediately destroyed.