[Nembo]

If I'm not wrong the russians mid-thirtys paratrooper displays at kiev was what gave the germans the inspiration to start thier own paratrooper program. Yet for all the russians pioneering work in the field I can only thing of one case in which the russians used them during WWII, that being the drops during the deinper (I spelled that wrong) crossing in 1943. Were there any others?

[Guest]

hi nembo,during the war the soviets carryd out 2 major drops,the first in january 19 42 around vyzma near moscow by the iv airborne corps of 14,000 men,they were dropped behind the german lines to distrupt the enemys supply lines and to generally hamper there activities,the drops were carryd out over 6 days due to lack of transport planes.coordination was poor both in the air and on the ground but due to the number of men dropped they still caused problems for the germans,they were not cleared up till march,of the 14000 dropped only 4000 men survived.


the second major drop happened in september 1943 in the ukraine 3 brigades dropped to the west of the dneper river around kanev to seize ground for the advancing soviet 40th army.because of fuel shortages 30% of the troops and all the anti tank guns(45mm) of one of the brigades had to be kept on the ground in total about 4600 troops were dropped.the jump was not succseful due to poor navigation lack of support bad weather and poor crew training the assualt force was scattered over a large area with only 50% actually landing in the right location(some landed 70km away!)by the end of the first day about half had formed into sizeable bodies unfortunatly for them they were in the path of a panzer division.

there was a few more very small drops(recon, sabotage etc) after this but the soviets by this time found it easier to infiltrate a tank corps behind german lines than mount a complex airborne assualt.

supposedly there was a drop carryd out at harbin in china by paras to occupy the city before the arrival of ground troops in august 1945.

hope this helps.this is a good site for more info http://rkkaww2.armchairgeneral.com/index.htm

[Polemarchos]

Hi,

another paratrooper attempt was made at kerch winter 1941/42 only brigade size though and totally left alone after the amphibious operation didnt gain momentum, was destroyed...

And as "Guest" said an uncountable amount of smaller drops all over the front and even in yugoslavia to bring in some liasson officers to the communist partisans.