[5] The British airborne establishment began development on 22 June 1940, when the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, directed the War Office in a memorandum to investigate the possibility of creating a corps of 5,000 parachute troops.

[8][9] It had been decided that the Royal Air Force and the Army would cooperate in forming the airborne establishment, and as such Squadron Leader L. A.

[9] The two officers and their newly formed unit were provided with four obsolete Armstrong Whitworth Whitley bombers and a small number of Tiger Moth and Avro 504 biplanes for towing purposes.

Crocombe (team leader)[13] to the Air Ministry specification X.10/40, and was to be similar in design to the German DFS 230 assault glider which had been used in the Battle of the Netherlands.

[18] The Mk I was distinguished from its other variants by the addition of cabin portholes along its fuselage,[16] and hooks on the nose and tail to allow multiple Hotspurs to be towed together.

Tactically it was believed that airborne troops should be landed in groups far larger than eight, and the number of aircraft therefore required to tow the gliders needed to land larger groups would be unfeasible; there were also concerns that the gliders would have to be towed in tandem if used operationally, which would be extremely difficult during nighttime and through cloud formations.

[17] The Hotspur remained in production primarily as a training aircraft and as a "stop-gap" in case the other programmes failed.

The first was the heavily modified Mk II (Specification X.22/40 and X.23/40), which was redesigned partially to address changes in operational requirements and also to bolster the ground handling of the initial series of aircraft.

[1] The Hotspur Mk I wings had also shown considerable flex and the type had proved difficult to handle on the ground.

Instead of using the "lid" (where the two pilots still boarded via the hinged perspex canopy),[24] two side doors were added from which troops would enter and depart.

[25] A total of 50 of the early-production Mk IIs were modified into trainers as the Mark III,[13] by adding dual controls and instruments for the student pilot and an externally braced tailplane.

[27] In August 1942, the sole "Twin Hotspur" prototype (MP486) underwent testing, towed behind an Armstrong Whitworth Whitley tug.

[17] Although relatively heavy with a high sink rate, the Hotspur exhibited good flying characteristics and could even be flown aerobatically, allowing novice pilots to quickly gain proficiency.

At the Glider Schools, a Hotspur MK III was first employed for dual instruction with the rear seats weighted for ballast and only the instructor and student aboard.

At Operational Training Glider Schools, the flights were made with troops instead of ballast in Hotspur MK IIs.

The squadron operated the Supermarine Spitfire IX, some of which were modified to tow gliders by means of a tow-point attached to the tail wheel; some pilots were trained to fly the Hotspur, including fighter ace Don C. Laubman.