Cook
Banned
Would Paratroopers have been an effective way to break trench warfare if the technological and theoretical prerequisites were developed before/during WWI?
I get the feeling that they wouldn’t.
Paratroops aren’t dropped directly on top of enemy troops because they’d be massacred. They are generally dropped in locations to cease and hold key terrain for more powerful ground forces to link up with. They are lightly armed and cannot hold long without relief.
The battle of Crete is an example of what happens if you drop them on top of the enemy. Even as a successful attack it was too bloody to repeat.
And Market-Garden is an example of what happens when they are not relieved quickly by ground forces.
The trench systems in WW1 were extensive in depth and had reserve forces behind the lines available to cut off any penetrations that did occur. Hence the progressively bigger and bigger Massed infantry attempts to punch through the lines.
If you used them without a means for ground forces to punch quickly through the trenches and link up they’d just come under attack from the enemies reserve forces behind the lines.