Who came up with the idea of paratroopers?

...and of course it's utterly inconcievable that you might ever find yourself in Europe at any point in the future? :roll:

We know you're Australian, it says as much right by "Location", somehow I don't think that response was specifically aimed at you.

 

I was only being funny.

I would like to travel to Europe sometime and see some of the WW2 sites though.

 

If you dig a tunnel, you might end up in Eben Emael.

 

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Commando , Belgium is heaven for beer drinkers ,they have hundreds of beers
we had a bit of a tread on it a while back ,
they have a proud tradition of inventing great guns , love mussels cooked in white wine and have invented chips ( fries in U.S. )
their civilization is based on great drinking , eating , partying in the streets wearing silly costumes and waiting for somebody to invade them ,



As for paratroopers , there was a lot of talk about it between the wars and the soviets had whole brigades of them ,
the taking of the fort Eben Emanuel was as far as I know the first successful example of the paratroops potential , there could have be some actions during the soviet Finnish war of 39 , to be checked ..
during the fall of France and the waiting for sea lion , there was a certain para hysteria behind the line , one of the function of "dad's army" was to counter this threat .

There was two type of use
-the German doctrine of direct assault by dropping directly on the objective , it maximize surprise and speed at the cost of fire density
- pretty much everybody else did a drop away from the objective , regrouping , arming and a structured assault
The British tried to make the regrouping as short as possible , the soviets at the other extreme would cover large areas over a period of days , due to a wide variety of reasons except lack of bravery ,most soviets airborne operations were very bloody failures , the worst being the Dnieper's drop in 43
The Crete operation was grossly optimistic ,the Germans winning the contest by a whisker , having failed to take the airfields defended by the aussies and the brits , they scrapped through due to a New-Zealander officer who ,
having no idea what was going on ( he was winning in fact ) withdrew his command from one of the three airfields , thus starting the long kiwi tradition of choking on victory at the last moment


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we also knew they were coming and when and how which sort of ruined their surprise part

FNG

 

finally, someone who understand Belgians
We weren't waiting to be invated, they just came to the party uninvited

 

Sorry, but I don't drink any alcohol.

Thanks anyway though.

 

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You don't understand the glory that is Belgium
they have white beer for children and pregnant women ( very good too ! )
they probably make some for non-drinkers

If they played rugby and had sunshine , I would be there !!


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