Simon Forty - A Photographic History of Airborne Warfare, 1939–1945

Men of the 509th PIR conduct final checks before a training jump.

SIMON & JONATHAN FORTY

First published in Great Britain in 2021 by

P EN & S WORD M ILITARY

an imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd,

47 Church Street,

Barnsley,

South Yorkshire.

S70 2AS

Copyright Pen & Sword 2021

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-39901-114-3

eISBN 978-1-39901-115-0

The right of Simon and Jonathan Forty to be identified as Authors of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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A big thank you to Richard Charlton Taylor, who provided material for the appendices, significant numbers of illustrations and a lot of information. The text includes a number of directly quoted or edited excerpts from a number of works which are identified in the text and covered in the Bibliography. Many of these came via the excellent online resources of the Ike Skelton Combined Arms Research Library (CARL) Digital Library. Please note that some of these excerpts are contemporary and produced based on intelligence available at the time: there will be some, understandable, inaccuracies.

There are a number of websites that proved invaluable for help with captions and information. In particular wed like to reference the US Center of Military History for high quality histories and access to technical manuals.

Finally, thanks to Rupert Harding of Pen & Sword for being such an understanding editor and for pointing out a number of inaccuracies.

Jeep and Polsten 20mm AA gun off-loading from a Horsa glider.

Heavily laden US paratroops board the aircraft that will take them behind enemy lines. Bulky parachutes mean that they can carry little equipment, most of which including the units heavy weapons will have to be retrieved from containers dropped at the same time, a difficult proposition in the dark particularly in the bocage or when the Germans have flooded the area.

Introduction

A ir warfare dominated World War 2. At sea the aircraft carrier became the indispensable capital ship and long-range aircraft helped destroy the U-boat menace. Over land, strategic bombing devastated industries and cities. Tactically, ground-attack aircraft spearheaded Blitzkrieg. Later, in the North African desert and after the invasion of France, Allied air supremacy ensured that every German troop movement was fraught with danger; every counter-attack a target for medium and fighter-bombers.

There was a cost: huge numbers of Allied airmen died during the strategic bombing campaign. The proliferation of Flak emplacements, development of the proximity fuse and improvements to radar and other technologies meant that air forces paid a high price, and nowhere was that more true than with airborne forces.

Before parachutes were commonplace their military use had been theorised. In the 1920s and 1930s those theories became fact, as first the Russians and then the Germans developed the airborne concept.