"Assistant platoon leaders in US Airborne" Topic

For Normandy, in anticipation of high casualties, the US Airborne assigned two officers to each platoon: on eleader and one assistant.
This seems like a good idea. However, as far as I know they di dnot do that for later operations. Anybody know why?

I cannot find anything on the Army sites. My guess would be that the position was dropped due to an inability to keep that position filled.

It was actually known as "The Overstrength." Every unit in the first waves had extra men given to them before the invasion as "instant replacements." Different units handled them differently. Some just kept the extra men and officers back until needed. They had planned times to land them after the initial landing. And then push them up to the unit they were part of.

The position of assistant platoon leader was an actual slot in the airborne platoon TO&E as early as 1941. The 7 July 1941 Table of Organization 7-37 – Parachute Infantry Company lists a company HQ and 3 rifle platoons. Each platoon is authorized a 1st Lt. and a 2nd Lt.

FM 31-30 Tactics and Technique of Air-borne Troops, 1942 lists the duties of the assistant platoon leader as pretty much anything the platoon leader tells him to do.

The 1 August 1944 TO&E drops the assistant platoon leader. It could be like Rakkasan said, it was hard to keep qualified officers in a basicly supernumerary role. Also the NCO's were so good they could take over if the platoon leader was lost.

A bit distant but not entirely unrelated, didn't the British paratroop platoons have sergeants rather than corporals commanding each section? I assume that this was a different solution to the same problem.I appreciate that British and US sergeants were often different positions with different responsibilities.

I always assumed this was done because you couldn't fit a whole platoon in one C-47. The platoon needed to be split between several aircraft and you would want to have an officer with each group because they would probably be badly scattered during the drop.