twelve pathfinders and a group of six bodyguards whose job was to defend the pathfinders while they set up their equipment. The pathfinder teams dropped approximately thirty minutes before the main body in order to locate designated drop zones and provide radio and visual guides for the main force in order to improve the accuracy of the jump. These navigational aids included compass beacons, colored panels, Eureka radar sets, and colored smoke. When they jumped, the pathfinders many times would encounter less resistance than the follow-up waves of paratroopers, simply because they had the element of surprise on their side. Once the main body jumped, the pathfinders then joined their original units and fought as standard airborne infantry. World War II Early operations The first two U.S. airborne campaigns, the drops into French North Africa (Operation Torch) and on Sicily (Operation Husky) did not make use of pathfinders. The jump into North Africa, made up of men of the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion (509th PIB), resulted in its men being scattered to places such as Algeria, Gibraltar, and Morocco when they ran into bad weather and got lost. The next major airborne operation took place in the invasion of Sicily in July 1943. Many of the same problems were encountered, as the men were scattered as far as 65 miles from their drop zones, due to high winds and poor navigation. In fact, some of the paratroopers landed so far off course that it was a matter of weeks before they finally found their way back to Allied lines. In a history of the 509th PIB's wartime actions titled "Stand in the Door! The wartime history of the 509th Parachute Infantry," authors and 509th veterans Charles H. Doyle and Terrell Stewart described how their unit formed the first U.S. Army pathfinder unit. [General James] Gavin likes to claim credit for "inventing" Pathfinders, pointing to bad drops in Sicily as the cause. Let us set the record straight: The 509th, the world's most experienced bad drop specialists, first saw the need for them. Pathfinders were separate teams of "advance men" who jumped in ahead of main forces to set up beacons and other guides to incoming aircraft. The 509th's Scout Company was the first specialized Pathfinder group. In the U.S. Army, it started the training and experimentation necessary to develop the concept at Oujda. With fragments of practical knowledge from the