Operation Transkaspische Bahn

trans-Caspian railway

'Transkaspische Bahn' was a German unrealised plan to destroy two bridges on the trans-Caspian railway to the east of the Caspian Sea (summer 1941).

Designed to limit still further the already strained Soviet ability to move men and equipment in this theatre, the plan was posited on the use of special forces and equipment of Oberstleutnant Paul Haehling von Lanzenauer’s Lehr-Regiment 'Brandenburg' zbV 800 transported in a Soviet aeroplane captured on the airfield at Riga after this had been taken by the Germans in the early phases of 'Barbarossa'.