Airborne forces

Benjamin Franklin envisioned the danger of airborne attack in 1784, only a few months after the first manned flight in a hot air balloon: Five Thousand Balloons capable of raising two Men each, would not cost more than Five Ships of the Line: And where is the Prince who can afford so to cover his Country with Troops for its Defense, as that Ten Thousand Men descending from the Clouds, might not in many Places do an infinite deal of Mischief, before a Force could be brought together to repel them?

Mitchell conceived that US troops could be rapidly trained to utilize parachutes and drop from converted bombers to land behind Metz in synchronisation with a planned infantry offensive.

In the Battle of France, members of the Brandenburg Regiment landed by Fieseler Fi 156 Storch light reconnaissance planes on the bridges immediately to the south of the 10th Panzer Division's route of march through the southern Ardennes.

In Belgium, a small group of German glider-borne troops landed on top of the Belgian fortress of Eben Emael on the morning of May 10, 1940, and disabled the majority of its artillery.

On September 12, 1943, Otto Skorzeny led a daring glider-based assault on the Gran Sasso Hotel, high in the Apennines mountains, and rescued Benito Mussolini from house arrest with very few shots being fired.

On May 25, 1944, paratroopers were dropped as part of a failed attempt to capture Josip Broz Tito, the head of the Yugoslav Partisans and later postwar leader of Yugoslavia.

On 6 December 1944, a 750-strong detachment from Teishin Shudan ("Raiding Division") and the Takachiho special forces unit, attacked U.S. airbases in the Burauen area on Leyte, in the Philippines.

54 effectives of 'L' Detachment, Special Air Service Brigade (largely drawn from the disbanded Layforce) mounted a night parachute insertion onto two drop zones in Bir Temrad, North Africa on the night of November 16/17 1941 in preparation for a stealthy attack on the forward airfields of Gambut and Tmimi in order to destroy the Axis fighter force on the ground before the start of Operation Crusader, a major offensive by the British Eighth Army.

A Würzburg radar site on the coast of France was attacked by a company of 120 British paratroopers from 2 Battalion, Parachute Regiment, commanded by Major John Frost, in Operation Biting on February 27, 1942.

531 men of the 2nd Battalion, 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment flew over 1,600 miles (2,600 km) at night from Britain, over Spain, intending to drop near Oran and capture two airfields.

On the night of 11 July, a reinforcement drop of the 82nd, consisting of the 504th Parachute Regimental Combat Team (composed of the 1st and 2nd Battalions, the 376th Parachute Field Artillery and Company 'A' of the 307th Airborne Engineer Battalion), under Colonel Reuben Tucker, behind American lines at Farello airfield resulted in heavy friendly fire casualties when, despite forewarnings, Allied anti-aircraft fire both ashore and aboard U.S Navy ships shot down 23 of the transports as they flew over the beachhead.

[12] Despite a catastrophic loss of gliders and troops loads at sea, the British 1st Airlanding Brigade captured the Ponte Grande bridge south of Syracuse.

Before the German counterattack, the beach landings took place unopposed and the 1st Airlanding Brigade was relieved by the British 5th Infantry Division as it swept inland towards Catania and Messina.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower reviewed the airborne role in Operation Husky and concluded that large-scale formations were too difficult to control in combat to be practical.

[20] The Knollwood Maneuver took place on the night of 7 December 1943, with the 11th Airborne Division being airlifted to thirteen separate objectives by 200 C-47 Skytrain transport aircraft and 234 Waco CG-4A gliders.

Eighty-five percent were delivered to their targets without navigational error,[21] and the airborne troops seized the Knollwood Army Auxiliary Airfield and secured the landing area for the rest of the division before daylight.

An airborne assault plan to seize crossings of the Volturno river during the Allied invasion of Italy, called Operation Giant, was abandoned in favor of the Rome mission.

Operation Repulse, which took place in Bastogne on December 23, 24, 26, and 27, 1944, as part of the Battle of the Bulge, glider pilots, although flying directly through enemy fire, were able to land, delivering the badly needed ammunition, gasoline and medical supplies that enabled defenders against the German offensive to persevere and secure the ultimate victory.

The honors for recapturing the Rock went to the 503rd Parachute Regimental Combat Team of Lieutenant Colonel George M. Jones and elements of Major General Roscoe B. Woodruff's 24th Infantry Division, the same units which undertook the capture of Mindoro island.

In Operation Thursday, most of the units were flown into landing grounds which had been seized by glider infantry transported by the American First Air Commando Group, commencing on March 5.

During the Ecuadorian–Peruvian War, the Peruvian army established its own paratrooper unit and used it to great effect by seizing the Ecuadorian port city of Puerto Bolívar, on July 27, 1941, marking the first time in the Americas that airborne troops were used in combat.

Shortly after the war the 187th ARCT was considered for use in an Airborne drop to relieve the surrounded French garrison at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam but the United States, at that time, decided not to send its troops into the combat zone.

Launching the 1956 Suez War, on October 29, 1956, Israeli paratroopers led by Ariel Sharon dropped onto the important Mitla Pass to cut off and engage Egyptian forces.

A few days later, Operation Musketeer needed the element of total surprise to succeed, and all 660 men had to be on the ground at El Gamil airfield and ready for action within four and a half minutes.

Meanwhile, French paratroopers of the 2nd Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment under the command of Colonel Chateau-Jobert jumped on the water treatment factory South of Port Said.

Twenty-two were killed, or rather lynched by joint combing teams of villagers armed with sticks, police and even bands of muleteers released by the Army, from the animal transport battalion of the nearby Corps headquarters.

The paratroop unit was instrumental in denying the retreat and regrouping of the Pakistani Army and contributed substantially to the early collapse of Dhaka via covert operations.

The use of helicopter-borne airmobile troops by the United States Army in the Vietnam War was widespread, and became an iconic image featuring in newsreels and movies about the conflict.

Fireforce is a variant of the tactic of vertical envelopment of a target by helicopter-borne and small groups of parachute infantry developed by the Rhodesian Security Force.

The Rhodesian Security Force could react quickly to insurgent ambushes, farm attacks, Observation Post sightings, and could also be called in as reinforcements by trackers or patrols which made contact with the enemy.