The Airborne Soldier

AIRBORNE WARFARE, after some experience of military parachuting in several countries in the 1930s, has its origins in World War II. The emphasis was on huge formations delivered by parachute and glider on to large areas of flat land. The advancing ground troops then followed up in an attempt to meet the airborne forces, and a junction had to be achieved in the shortest possible space of time.
Soviet Russia, Germany and Italy pioneered the way, but paradoxically none of these nations were to achieve great success with the airborne method. After Hitler's lavish use of parachute glider- and air-transported troops in Crete in 1941 and pyrrhic victory, even he was of the opinion that airborne assault was too costly in lives to warrant another attempt on a similar scale. It was left to the Western Allies to develop the art of airborne warfare and although the Arnhem saga in 1944 has been widely publicized as a disaster, the deployment of parachute and glider troops by the USA and Britain throughout the war must on the whole be judged to have been a success.

After the war, airborne forces were cut back in all countries, with the exception of Soviet Russia. The paratrooper nevertheless maintained his elite status, and today there is scarcely an army in the world that does not have at least one parachute company. Vietnam saw widespread use of the troop-carrying helicopter: the Americans sent parachute troops to that war as the French had done before them, but the US Army decided that the 'bird' was the most effective method of moving troops about the battlefield.

The airborne war in Vietnam bequeathed few lessons for the future: there may never again be another campaign fought in that particular way. So while NATO is fast disbanding its parachute units, airborne warfare may appear to some to be a thing of the past. The Soviet Union obviously thinks otherwise, with some 80,000 airborne troops currently at combat readiness and not counting those of the other Warsaw Pact armies. As far back as 1971 the Soviets dropped an entire division of 7500 officers and men on maneuvers with support equipment including artillery and combat vehicles in just half an hour. The parachute story is still very much alive.