Airborne Forces - Early History

Early History

The idea of "Sky Soldiers" is by no means a recent thought; Benjamin Franklin envisioned a time when soldiers would be delivered from the sky, with a crude, rudimentary understanding of parachutes:

"Where is the prince who can afford so to cover his country with troops for its defense, so that ten thousand men descending from the clouds might not, in many places, do an infinite deal of mischief before a force could be brought together to repel them?" —Benjamin Franklin, 1784

Although Winston Churchill had proposed the creation of an airborne force to assault behind the German lines in 1917, the first modern operation dates to late 1918. Major Lewis H. Brereton and his superior Brigadier General Billy Mitchell suggested dropping elements of the United States 1st Infantry Division behind German lines near Metz. The operation was planned for February 1919 but the war ended before such an attack could be seriously planned. Mitchell conceived that US troops could be rapidly trained to utilize parachutes and drop from converted bombers to land behind Metz in sychronisation with a planned infantry offensive.

Following the war, the United States Army Air Service experimented with the concept of having troops carried on the wings of aircraft pulled off by the opening of their parachutes. The first true paratroop drop was by Italy in November 1927. Within a few years several battalions had been raised and were eventually formed into two Folgore and Nembo divisions. Although these would later fight with distinction in World War II, the divisions were never used in a parachute drop. Men drawn from the Italian parachute forces were dropped in a special forces operation in North Africa in 1943 in an attempt to destroy parked aircraft of the USAAF.

At about the same time, the Soviet Union was also experimenting with the idea, planning to drop entire units complete with vehicles and light tanks. To help train enough experienced jumpers, parachute clubs were organized with the aim of transferring into the armed forces if needed. Planning progressed to the point that Corps-size drops were demonstrated to foreign observers, including the British Military Attache Archibald Wavell, in the Kiev military district maneuvers of 1935. By the late 1930s, the USSR possessed the largest Airborne forces in the world, but development stagnated prior to World War II as a result of the Great Purge.

One of the observing parties, Germany, was particularly interested. In 1936, Major F. W. Immans was ordered to set up a parachute school at Stendal (Borstel), and was allocated a number of Junkers Ju 52 aircraft to train on. The military had already purchased large numbers of Junkers Ju 52 aircraft which were slightly modified for use as paratroop transports in addition to their other duties. The first training class was known as Ausbildungskommando Immans. They commenced the first course on May 3, 1936.

Other nations, including Japan, France and Poland also organized airborne units around this time. France became the first nation to organize women in an airborne unit. Recruiting 200 nurses who during peace time would parachute into natural disasters but also reservist would be a uniformed medical unit during war time.