How mad have got to be to be a Para in 1930s Russia. Were they any major airborne offensives launched by the Red Army in WW2
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war...e=wca&page=who
Brave or mad Russian Paras pre WW2
How mad have got to be to be a Para in 1930s Russia. Were they any major airborne offensives launched by the Red Army in WW2
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war...e=wca&page=who
I'm learning to fly, but I ain't got wings
Coming down is the hardest thing
I remember reading something on this...
“Later in 1939 on 30 November, Soviet paratroopers had the distinction of making the first combat jump in history when they dropped at Petsamo and other points behind the Finnish lines during the Soviet invasion of Finland. Due to poor navigation on the part of pilots and quick action on the part of Finnish snipers who picked off many as they landed, few of these paratroopers actually made it into combat. Those who did fought with courage, and many had even jumped without parachutes into deep snow drifts.”
If this is true then beyond mad is what I'd call them.
No -- there was one attempt to use airborne to cross the Dneipr, but it failed miserably; after that, the "airborne" were converted to Guards Infantry.Originally Posted by tikkifriend
http://www.wwpd.net/2013/12/soviet-p...s-in-wwii.html
Fact is: Parachute drops didn't become practical until the 1980s; before that... well, look at the invasion of Europe, or Arnhem, or even Crete.
Soviet Dnieper River airborne operation 1943
The Soviets launched a major airborne offensive in 1943 during the battles for the Dnieper River crossings, the following is from Wikipedia taken from '1943 Dnepr airborne operation: lessons and conclusions Military Thought', July 2003, by Nikolai Viktorovich Staskov & The History of Soviet Airborne Forces, Chapter 8, Across The Dnieper (September 1943), by David M. Glantz, Cass, 1994.
"STAVKA (the Soviet high command), detached the Central Front's 3rd Tank Army to the Voronezh Front to race the weakening Germans to the Dnieper, to save the wheat crop from the German scorched earth policy, and to achieve strategic or operational river bridgeheads before a German defence could stabilize there. The 3rd Tank Army, plunging headlong, reached the river on the night of 21–22 September and, on the 23rd, Soviet infantry forces crossed by swimming and by using makeshift rafts to secure small, fragile bridgeheads, opposed only by 120 German Cherkassy flak academy NCO candidates and the hard-pressed 19th Panzer Division Reconnaissance Battalion. Those forces were the only Germans within 60 km of the Dnieper loop. Only a heavy German air attack and a lack of bridging equipment kept Soviet heavy weaponry from crossing and expanding the bridgehead.
STAVKA, sensing a critical juncture, ordered a hasty airborne corps assault to increase the size of the bridgehead before the Germans could counterattack. On the 21st, the Voronezh Front's 1st, 3rd and 5th Guards Airborne Brigades got the urgent call to secure, on the 23rd, a bridgehead perimeter 15 to 20 km wide and 30 km deep on the Dnieper loop between Kaniv and Rzhishchev, while Front elements forced the river.
The arrival of personnel at the airfields was slow, necessitating, on the 23rd, a one-day delay and omission of 1st Brigade from the plan; consequent mission changes caused near chaos in command channels. Mission change orders finally got down to company commanders, on the 24th, just 15 minutes before their units, not yet provisioned with spades, anti-tank mines, or ponchos for the autumn night frosts, assembled on airfields to load for an 1830 take-off. Owing to the weather, not all assigned aircraft had arrived at airfields on time (if at all). Further, most flight safety officers disallowed maximum loading of their aircraft. Given fewer aircraft (and lower than expected capacities), the master loading plan, ruined, was abandoned. Many radios and supplies got left behind. In the best case, it would take three lifts to deliver the two brigades. Units (still arriving by the over-taxed rail system), were loaded piecemeal onto returned aircraft, which were slow to refuel owing to the less-than-expected capacities of fuel trucks. Meanwhile, already-arrived troops changed planes, seeking earlier flights. Urgency and the fuel shortage prevented aerial assembly aloft. Most aircraft, as soon as they were loaded and fueled, flew in single file, instead of line abreast, to the dropping points. Assault waves became as intermingled as the units they carried.
As corps elements made their 170 to 220 km flights from four of five fields (one of which received no fuel), troops (half of whom had never jumped, except from training towers) got briefed on drop zones, assembly areas and objectives only poorly understood by platoon commanders still studying new orders. Meanwhile, Soviet aerial photography, suspended several days by bad weather, had missed the strong reinforcement of the area, early that afternoon. Non-combat cargo pilots ferrying 3rd Brigade through drizzle expected no resistance beyond river pickets but, instead, were met by anti-aircraft fire and starshells from the 19th Panzer Division (only coincidentally transiting the drop zone, and just one of six divisions and other formations ordered, on the 21st, to fill the gap in front of the 3rd Tank Army). Lead aircraft, disgorging paratroopers over Dubari at 1930, came under small arms, machine gun, and quad-20 anti-aircraft fire from the armored personnel carrier battalion (Pioneers) of the 73rd Panzer Grenadier Regiment and elements of the division staff of 19th Panzer Division. Some paratroops began returning fire and throwing grenades even before landing; trailing aircraft accelerated, climbed and evaded, dropping wide. Through the night, some pilots avoided starshell-lit drop points entirely, and 13 aircraft returned to airfields without having dropped at all. Intending a 10 by 14 km drop over largely undefended terrain, the Soviets instead achieved a 30 by 90 km drop over the fastest mobile elements of two German corps.
On the ground, the Germans used white parachutes as beacons to hunt down and kill disorganized groups and to gather and destroy airdropped supplies. Supply bonfires, glowing embers, and multi-color starshells illuminated the bizarre and macabre battlefield. Captured documents gave the Germans enough knowledge of Soviet objectives to arrive at most of them before the disorganized paratroops.
Back at the Soviet airfields, the fuel shortage allowed only 298 of 500 planned sorties, leaving corps 45mm anti-tank guns and 2,017 paratroops undelivered. Of 4,575 men dropped (seventy percent of the planned number, and just 1,525 from 5th Brigade), some 2,300 eventually assembled into 43 ad-hoc groups, with missions abandoned as hopeless, and spent most of their time seeking supplies not yet destroyed by the Germans. Others joined with the nine partisan groups operating in the area. About 230 made it over (or out of) the Dnieper to Front units (or were originally dropped there). Most of the rest were almost casually captured that first night or killed the next day (although, on that first night, the 3rd Co, 73rd Panzer Grenadier Regiment, suffered heavy losses while annihilating about 150 paratroopers near Grushevo, some 3 km west of Dubari).
The Germans underestimated that 1,500 to 2,000 had dropped; they recorded 901 paratroops captured and killed in the first 24 hours. Thereafter, they largely ignored the Soviet paratroopers, to counterattack and truncate the Dnieper bridgeheads. The Germans deemed their anti-paratrooper operations completed by 2100 on the 26th, although a modicum of opportunistic actions against garrisons, rail lines, and columns were conducted by remnants up to early November. For a lack of manpower to clear all areas, forests of the region would remain a minor threat.
The Germans called the operation a fundamentally sound idea ruined by the dilettantism of planners lacking expert knowledge (but praised individual paratroops for their tenacity, bayonet skills and deft use of broken ground in the sparsely wooded northern region). STAVKA deemed this second (and, ultimately, last) corps drop a complete failure; lessons they knew they had already learned from their winter offensive corps drop at Viazma had not stuck. They would never trust themselves to try it again.
Soviet 5th Guards Airborne Brigade commander Sidorchuk, withdrawing to the forests south, eventually amassed a brigade-size command, half paratroops, half partisans; he obtained air supply, and assisted the 2nd Ukrainian Front over the Dnieper near Cherkassy to finally link up with Front forces on 15 November. After 13 more days combat, the airborne element was evacuated, ending a harrowing two months. More than sixty percent never returned."
Here's two more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vyazma_airborne_operation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet...n_of_Manchuria - Soviet paratroopers seized airfields and other vital assets behind the Japanese lines.
well at least they had parachutes. as others have pointed out some didnt and had to rely on snowdrifts
Brave or Mad or simply afraid of what would happen if they disobeyed orders?
Disobeying orders, those are probably the ones without parachutes!
Just remember that while Russians can land safely in snow drifts, it doesn't work for other eastern European forces. Czechs usually bounce....
OOOh that's so old.
I'm learning to fly, but I ain't got wings
Coming down is the hardest thing
Ouch. Ouch on many levels!
Actually, the use of snowdrift-cushioned(?) drops without parachutes was strictly for spy drops, never for regular para-infantry.
Jumping off the plane's wing, while more difficult than a door or bomb bay, shouldn't be much harder. At least you have a good view
Karl'
It is impossible for a man to begin to learn what he thinks he knows. -- Epictetus
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks