X-Nico

unusual facts about paratroopers



1 Parachute Battalion

The first paratroopers were Permanent Force men, but soon the training of Citizen Force (similar to the National Guard of the United States) paratroopers commenced.

185th Airborne Division Folgore

The Division was well equipped with modern automatic weapons (Beretta submachine gun, Breda M37 and Breda M38 heavy machine guns) and many support weapons, giving the paratroopers of the division a good firepower against infantry and light tanks, but without any transports or medium and heavy artillery.

3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment

The Guards Parachute Platoon is made up of volunteers from the 5 Regiments of the Foot Guards who can be distinguished from other paratroopers by a "blue red blue" patch sewn to their beret beneath the Parachute Regiment cap badge.

Alcantarilla

Paratroopers are trained there, and there is also a squadron of CASA C-212 Aviocar light transport planes.

Battle of Palembang

On 14 February, the surviving Japanese paratroopers advanced to the Musi, Salang and Telang rivers, near Palembang.

Beretta Model 38

During 1941 and 1942, this weapon was available almost exclusively to paratroopers, Blackshirts, tank crews and Carabinieri military policemen, given the need of all of the former to express high volumes of firepower in prolonged actions or to keep close-quarters combat superiority.

Brigada de Fusileros Paracaidistas

The plan consisted sending a group of Officers and regular servicemen to Fort Benning, Georgia to be trained as paratroopers.

Canobie Lake Park

"Skater" took up some of the removed Rockin' Rider site, but has since been moved to the old location of the "Paratroopers" ride (which will be sold and has been removed from the park).

Chuck Versus the Cliffhanger

A standoff occurs, but as Chuck is backed up by a superior force made up of his friends, family, the C.A.T. Squad (Mini Andén and Mercedes Masöhn), and Volkoff's Spetsnaz paratroopers, Decker is forced to stand down.

Combat Engineering Corps

In the 1973 Yom Kippur War the combat engineering battalions attached to Ariel Sharon's armored division bridged the Suez Canal during "Operation Knights of Heart", while carrying tanks and paratroopers across the canal with Gillois amphibious tank-carriers.

Edson Raff

Edson Duncan Raff (November 15, 1907 in New York City – March 11, 2003 in Garnett, Kansas) was an officer in the US Army and author of a book on paratroopers.

George Ivan Smith

Where he and his colleague Sir Brian Urquhart were kidnapped and beaten by Katangese paratroopers in the presence of US Senator Thomas Dodd.

Howa Type 89

Although the typical issue model is equipped with a fixed stock, a small number of the steel tubing folding stock version were produced for AFV crews and paratroopers.

Iván Castro

In September 2006, Castro and his men had relieved other paratroopers atop a house in the town of Yusifiyah, some 20 miles southwest of Baghdad, after a night of fighting.

M10 smoke tank

The tanks were used to lay aerial smoke screens in combat during the airdrop of the US Army's 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment paratroopers at Nadzab, New Guinea in 1943.

Maurice Bishop International Airport

The seizure of the airfield allowed United States Air Force C-141 transport planes to land and unload paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division.

Military glider

On April 26, 1941 the troops from six DFS 230 gliders captured the bridge over the Corinth Canal accompanied by 40 plane-loads of German paratroopers.

Nehvizdy

On December 29, 1941 Czechoslovak paratroopers Gabčík and Kubiš sent by exile government in London to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich were inserted near Nehvizdy (they overflew predesignated target area near Pilsen by more than hundred kilometres due to navigational error of their plane crew).

Operation Daisy

An enemy force was sighted near Ionde on the 9 November and were engaged by Alouette helicopters and by an airborne assault by paratroopers.

Operation Dingo

Ninety-six SAS and 48 Rhodesian Light Infantry (RLI) paratroopers and an additional 40 helicopter-borne RLI troops attacked the camps at 07h45 in the morning to exploit the concentration of forces on the parade ground for morning parade, directly after a strike by the Rhodesian Air Force's ageing Canberra and Hunter strike aircraft.

Operation Meebos

32 Battalion was the first wave of ground troops dropped in by Puma helicopters followed by a second wave of paratroopers.

Organisation of Young Free Algerians

"One can say that the real chief of the OJAL was General Mohamed Lamari, since he was the boss of the CC/ALAS, from which depended the paratroopers-commandos and the DRS elements responsibles of these crimes. Colonel Benabdallah indicated to me that if Islamists had committed numerous assassinations of political personalities, the Army had also engaged in this itself: it "struck back against all journalists, scientists or officials who gave support to the Fundamentalist cause.

Peter Scholl-Latour

In 1945 and 1946 Scholl-Latour was a member the Commando Parachutiste Ponchardier, a unit of French paratroopers, with whom he fought in the First Indochina War.

Reprisal operations

Operation Egged: Following an Egyptian border provocation in the Nitzana Demilitarized Zone, two-hundred paratroopers carried out a reprisal raid against an Egyptian military post at Kuntilla.

Saints and Soldiers: Airborne Creed

Three paratroopers, Curtis, Rossi, and Jones, meet and begin making their way to their intended drop zone in Les Arcs.

Sonlez

The Americans capture 65 paratroopers from the Fallschirmjäger Regiment 13 of the 5th Fallschirmjäger Division.

Tadeusz Chciuk-Celt

He also completed parachute training at RAF Ringway, Manchester England (This base was used for Men and women agents of the Special Operations Executive as well as all (60,000) allied paratroopers trained in Europe during WW2).

They Were Not Divided

During Market Garden we see the Welsh Guards link up with American paratroopers at the Grave bridge before moving on to Nijmegen and the failure of the operation.

William Derwood Cann, Jr.

In 1946, he became an aide de camp with the 82nd Airborne Division to Major General James M. Gavin, who was known for his unleashing of paratroopers during World War II.


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