Airborne Warfare
Airborne Warfare.The first concept for the use of American airborne troops occurred during World War I in 1918, when Gen. Billy Mitchell proposed a mass drop of paratroopers against German trenches on the western front. The following year, Gen. John J. Pershing endorsed Mitchell's plan, but the armistice of November 1918 made the airborne assault unnecessary. Isolationism and small budgets between the world wars prevented the development of an airborne force, but the U.S. Army kept a close eye on developments in the Soviet Union and Germany where paratrooper and glider units participated in large training exercises. The dramatic, successful assault in May 1940 on Fort Eben Emael in Belgium by German parachute and glider troops, followed by a successful German mass airborne assault against Crete in 1941, convinced military planners that America...
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