Great War Para-troopers

Were there any Para-troopers or something similar in ww1? Did either side experiment with the Idea?

If they could have had succeful Para-Troopers, how effective would they be? Which aircraft would they use to be deployed?
 
Were there any Para-troopers or something similar in ww1? Did either side experiment with the Idea?

If they could have had succeful Para-Troopers, how effective would they be? Which aircraft would they use to be deployed?

When even pilots didn't have parachutes, why in gods name would someone "waste" them on perfectly good Light Infantry?
 

MacCaulay

Banned
Then Colonel Billy Mitchell put forward an idea in 1918 to deploy two companies of specially trained soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division to parachute into Metz and secure the bridges in preparation for the planned river crossing in 1919.
He was selecting the troops when the war ended.

Myself, I think that would've been an excellent POD. The plan was basically to drop them from modified Blenheim bombers to deny control of the bridges to the Germans, thus allowing the Allies to drive to Metz and across the river.

I don't know if they would've mounted anything else, though. That was really all that was planned, and it never got beyond the outline stages.
 
Not exactly paratroopers but if the Russians had more planes and thought of the "soft snow" theory earlier and used it in the war, it might have inspired someone to make paratroopers without the "soft snow" idea.
 
Well, Zeppelins could theoretically function as assault force carriers (qv the film, lol) but until late in the war there were no aircraft big enough in carrying capacity to have people on board to jump off, even if the theory had been there. And if it can't be done in force, then its not so much a paratroop unit as a way of PERHAPS landing an agent in enemy country. If each large aircraft could only deploy a couple of men without injuring its own operational capability you would need a lot of such aircraft in order to make a viable paratroops attack

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
Then Colonel Billy Mitchell put forward an idea in 1918 to deploy two companies of specially trained soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division to parachute into Metz and secure the bridges in preparation for the planned river crossing in 1919.
He was selecting the troops when the war ended.

Myself, I think that would've been an excellent POD. The plan was basically to drop them from modified Blenheim bombers to deny control of the bridges to the Germans, thus allowing the Allies to drive to Metz and across the river.

I don't know if they would've mounted anything else, though. That was really all that was planned, and it never got beyond the outline stages.

Wow, not only is that an excellent POD, but something I had never heard of.

Reminds me of some thread where the OP wanted to avoid tanks. There was some talk of elite infantry, but if this worked to break the stalemate...:cool:

If the lessons of WWI seemed to be the paratroopers were the shit and tanks were much less so...

Interesting possiblities.
 
i thought about this, and how it may have caused gallipoli not to be such a failiure. i mean, they could always just give the pilots guns, then tell them to point their plane at a fort and bail out whenever they could guarentee that the plane would hit the target. said pillot could use the confusion to open the gates and let in the infantry.
 

Deleted member 1487

Wow, not only is that an excellent POD, but something I had never heard of.

Reminds me of some thread where the OP wanted to avoid tanks. There was some talk of elite infantry, but if this worked to break the stalemate...:cool:

If the lessons of WWI seemed to be the paratroopers were the shit and tanks were much less so...

Interesting possiblities.

I doubt that Paras would ever be considered "the shit", they were intensely vulnerable and cut off behind enemy lines. They only survived by the attacking force linking with them quickly. The Germans and Russians both learned this lesson early, as their formations typically suffered badly. The Russians in fact only attempted one large scale jump that resulted in nearly the entire 30,000 force becoming casualties.

Basically to have paras be given a chance in WW1, have the Germans hold out and the earliest form of Blitzkrieg is witnessed when plan 1919 goes off. The massive use of tanks with aircraft support plus paras would have created possibly the most interesting scenario for wargamers and historians to puzzle over. There would certainly be no doubt that Germany lost and the stabbed in the back idea would be moot.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
Basically to have paras be given a chance in WW1, have the Germans hold out and the earliest form of Blitzkrieg is witnessed when plan 1919 goes off. The massive use of tanks with aircraft support plus paras would have created possibly the most interesting scenario for wargamers and historians to puzzle over. There would certainly be no doubt that Germany lost and the stabbed in the back idea would be moot.

This was what Pershing was advocating as the war was ending. He kept saying that the war either needed to end in Berlin, or it wouldn't end at all; it would just take a hiatus and they'd all be back later to finish it.

This is an interesting PoD for someone to work out, especially the fact that apart from the fact that this is World War I with what is essentially a battalion of airborne in the US Army, it's everything we saw in 1918 just let loose to it's full extent.
 
The biggest problem that airborne troops in WW2 was holding off any counterattacks. That was why they had AT guns landed in gliders. The WW1 equivalent are machine guns. Give that gliders can't seem to be on the cards any paras are going to be scavenging around for the canisters containing them right up until some armoured cars or directed artillery blows them away.

It might work once. The second time paras land they will very lightly by toast.
 
The Blenheim MacCauley mentioned was a WWII bomber. I can't think of an aircraft in 1918 that would have carried more than ten fully equipped paratroopers. The Vickers Vimy had a payload of just over a ton, the civilian version carried twelve passengers. The Handley Page V/1500 would have carried over double that if it had gone into production but the HP 12 0/400 in service only carried about the same as a Vimy. The Russians had the truly amazing Sikorsky S-22 Ilya Muromets which could carry 16 passengers and the Italians the Caprioni Ca 3 which had roughly the same payload as the British aircraft.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
The Blenheim MacCauley mentioned was a WWII bomber. I can't think of an aircraft in 1918 that would have carried more than ten fully equipped paratroopers. The Vickers Vimy had a payload of just over a ton, the civilian version carried twelve passengers. The Handley Page V/1500 would have carried over double that if it had gone into production but the HP 12 0/400 in service only carried about the same as a Vimy. The Russians had the truly amazing Sikorsky S-22 Ilya Muromets which could carry 16 passengers and the Italians the Caprioni Ca 3 which had roughly the same payload as the British aircraft.

Yeah, sorry. Brain fart. Handley Page. I'll be honest: I'm not a bomber expert, and once you get past two engines with propellers, they all look the same to me. I thought I had a handle on the name.

My bad.
 
Yeah, sorry. Brain fart. Handley Page. I'll be honest: I'm not a bomber expert, and once you get past two engines with propellers, they all look the same to me. I thought I had a handle on the name.

My bad.

Well in OTL America did manufacture over 100 type 0/400s and bought another 50. They had ordered 1,500! So they could have had the capacity to lift enough men and equipment. I would have thought though it would have been better to land the machines as close as possible to the objective rather than parachute onto a DZ. Those WWI birds used grass airfields and didn't need much runway to land.
 
How about a modification of the Stormtroopers? Germany decides that the idea works well, and decides to expand on it. Have the war last longer, and in 1919, Germany decides to invest in making a Skytrooper brigade or two.

Now, as others have said, it probably wouldn't ultimately be that successful. But as a small-scale tactical experiment, I think it might be interesting and result in a few successes.
 

MrP

Banned
How about a modification of the Stormtroopers? Germany decides that the idea works well, and decides to expand on it. Have the war last longer, and in 1919, Germany decides to invest in making a Skytrooper brigade or two.

Now, as others have said, it probably wouldn't ultimately be that successful. But as a small-scale tactical experiment, I think it might be interesting and result in a few successes.

Brigades of them? That'd be thousands of men. According to the 12 chaps to an aeroplane of the learned fellas upthread, that'd mean 83 transports for each 1,000 men. That's quite an undertaking!
 
The lesson of WWII was that airborne troops are best used in small quantity for specific missions. The German capture of Eben Emael and the rescue of Mussolini, the Japanese capture of the Palembang oil fields, were the best examples. Crete was a pyrrhic victory. Normandy drops were ineffective. Market Garden was a colossal failure.

So small size airborne operations could be mounted. It would have to be unambitious due to the short range of of available transportation. However I think an attack on enemy HQ and doing things like cutting telegraph wires at the right moment could tip the balance of battles. The rigidity of command and control in those days would be something to exploit.
 
Brigades of them? That'd be thousands of men. According to the 12 chaps to an aeroplane of the learned fellas upthread, that'd mean 83 transports for each 1,000 men. That's quite an undertaking!

I was basing the number on including pilots and support and so forth. I'm not assuming that there'd be thousands of men jumping each time, since for every actual paratrooper, there are going to be several other men working support.

In retrospect, though, I think you're right. Battalion (500-1000) would be about accurate, I think, if it's self-sufficient. I don't know enough about military organization to know what would be in a paratrooper battalion.
 
The most successful airborne assault by the Allies was the attack on Pegasus Bridge and that was by glider so I still like my idea of landing 0/400s in a field as close to the objective as possible.
 
get them to listen to that guy who thought up blitzkrieg, then have the force attacking galipoli ask for RFC support.
 

MrP

Banned
I was basing the number on including pilots and support and so forth. I'm not assuming that there'd be thousands of men jumping each time, since for every actual paratrooper, there are going to be several other men working support.

In retrospect, though, I think you're right. Battalion (500-1000) would be about accurate, I think, if it's self-sufficient. I don't know enough about military organization to know what would be in a paratrooper battalion.

I'd imagine it'd be a mission-specific grouping of assault units, so replete with Lewis Guns, some HMGs, grenades and so on. In other words, an ad hoc formation not conforming to anything else. I'm not sure about anything much heavier, tbh, and am completely certain nobody would even consider trying to drop canisters for flamethrowers.
 
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