It's a good documentary, if this is the same documentary that I'm reviewing. The identification of films on YouTube frequently differs from that on IMDb.com.
Paratroopers are positively heroic, no doubt about it. I'd have died of fright long before finishing jump school. Yet, if one thinks about it, it's impossible to remember a massed jump from World War II that achieved its objective except for the fortress at Aba Eban by the Nazis and Pegasus Bridge by the British. Both successful attacks involved gliders. All the others that come to mind, from Crete to Market Garden in Europe, all of the few drops in the Pacific failed, and some were outright disasters.
In the invasion of Sicily, the first step towards the Italian boot, the US sent more than 140 C-47s carrying paratroopers of the 82nd Airborn from North Africa to help their comrades in the heavy battles around Gela, on the southern coast of Sicily, shortly after the amphibious landings by Americans. The Navy and Coast Guard ships offshore mistook them for German bombers. Someone opened fire on the airplanes and twenty-three of the low flying aircraft were shot down. Three hundred and eighteen Americans were killed or wounded by friendly fire. The next day the British launched their own airborne assault, using individual troops and gliders. Out of 1900 paratroopers launched, only 300 reached their objective.
In any case, Montgomery's Eighth Army landed in the southeast corner of the island. George S. Patton's divisions landed to the west with orders to protect Montgomery's left flank during the march up in the east coast towards the city of Messina, across the straits from the toe of the Italian boot. I might as well add that the Strait of Messina, only some forty miles of water, are also the location of the most famous mirages in the world, the Fata Morgana, which is the Italian name for Morgan le Fay, a sorceress from the legends of King Arthur, thought to lure sailors to their deaths by constructing fairy castle in the air. The Strait of Messina is also the quickest escape route if you want to get Italian and German troops out of Sicily to the safety of ports in Italy.
Montgomery intended to quickly move up the east coast and take Messina, trapping the enemy on the rest of the island, but he encountered not only Italian but elite German paratroopers and panzers and his attack was stopped at the essential Prima Sole bridge. The battle was fierce. Dead bodies lay strewn across the landscape, decomposing in the summer heat, until finally both sides agreed to a short truce to recover the remains. Finally British tanks were brought up and the German paratroopers executed a withdrawal under fire. The British were against brought up short when faced with the carefully constructed defenses around Mount Aetna, which dominated the road to Messina.
To the west, Patton fumed about having been assigned the secondary role of Montgomery's guard. Ignoring orders to stop his advance he took the Sicilian capital of Palermo on the north coast and began move eastward in an attempt to beat Montgomery to the port of Messina, which he did, by a few hours. But the fighting stopped for no one. The Germans skillfully withdrew, while the Allies continued to slog along towards Messina, Montgomery from the south, Patton from the west. Mussolinia was deposed and Italy itself dropped out of the war for all intents and purposes.
But the Germans were probably the most thorough and efficient army of any nation in the war. Their defenses were carefully prepared. Both Montgomery and Patton found the going hard and bloody, and they were frequently stopped at German strong points. At the small city of Troina, the American advance was halted by a determined defense using formidable weapons that infantry found difficult to deal with -- mortars, 88 mm. guns, and MG-42, machine guns that could fire about 1,500 rounds per minute, compared to an average of about 500 rounds for most automatic weapons. A burst of fire from an MG-42 was more like a shotgun blast, with all the rounds landing almost at the same time. The Germans piled dead bodies on the streets, knowing that tanks would be reluctant to drive over them. The object of these defenses was not to defeat the Allied armies but to delay them while the bulk of German forces withdrew troops and equipment across the Strait of Messina.
Patton's army was 75 miles from Messina and Montgomery's was 52 miles from the city. A silly race began. Which of these two vain generals would be the first to enter Messina? Patton, desperate, ordered flanking movements involving assaults from the sea and many casualties. "We MUST take Messina before the British," he announced. He "won". Some of the British troops were chagrined and thought they should have been first in the city, considering all the casualties they had taken. There was no sign of the Germans. Over 100,000 German and Italian troops and more than 10,000 vehicles had been evacuated. The race for Messina had distracted the Allies and no joint plan had ever been drawn up to seal the port.
All the armies would run into each other again on the Italian mainland, minus Patton who was relieved of command.