On the twelfth of September 1943 Otto Skorzeny along with 26 Waffen-SS commandos and 82 Fallschirmjäger landed on Gran Sasso by gliders in a daring raid to free Benito Mussolini who had been placed under arrest by his fellow countrymen. Only a small and light aircraft could land and take off from the massif and the plan was for only Mussolini himself to get on the one plane that landed there. In the event Skorzeny squeezed in with the former dictator and they took off, landing in Rome.
Having read a lot on the operation itself, no account i know of has ever mentioned the fate of the hundred or so German soldiers left on the mountain. Did they fight their way back to their own lines? Were they taken prisoner?
The commandos and the Fallschirmjäger made it back to the German headquarters at Frascati on the outskirts of Rome. Although Skorzeny and Mussolini's Storch ride and the gliders hogged the operation' s limelight, there was a ground component to the operation. The initial plan was for the glider troops to seize the hotel while a detachment of Fallschirmjäger proceeded in captured Italian Fiat lorries to the village of Assergi. This village at the Gran Sasso had a cable car to the Campo Imperatore hotel. Once the glider troops ha rescued Mussolini, the plan was for them to make their way by cable car where the trucks would proceed to the L’Aquila airfield and be picked up by two He-111 bombers. The Storch aircraft were a contingency in case the Italians cut the Assergi cable-car line. Although the cable line was intact, radio problems meant that the force could not make contact with L’Aquila. Skorzeny, who had already butted in on the Luftwaffe's operation, then insisted that the Storch force be used to evacuate Mussolini and the SS commando leader. The rest of the force set fire to their gliders and proceeded by cable car to the ground force in Assergi.
One of the reasons why this component of the operation is relatively forgotten is that Skorzeny both during the war and after the war foregrounded his role in the operation to the exclusion of its other participants. Skorzeny and his SS commandos received the bulk of the decorations for the operation, even though they were among the least professional component of it. Skorzeny's insistence on being on the Storch, for example, was a foolhardy gesture that overloaded the aircraft. The Storch's pilot, Hauptmann Heinrich Gerlach, objected to Skorzeny's inclusion but gave in after Skorzeny's threats. It was an unnecessary risk to the operation and led to a delay in the exfiltration as the Germans and the Italians had to clear a longer take-off for the evacuation plane. This very unprofessional behavior rankled with many of the Fallschirmjäger involved in the operation, who did the heavy lifting in the operation and were responsible for much of its success.