Russian Paratroop Deployment Tactics

[Icejon]

I remember I was taught in college in a history class that Russian paratroopers often had poor equipment. What amazed me is that my prof asserted that many of the units did not have parachutes and had to deploy from aircraft by jumping out and hitting the ground. Something like the US military LILO, but from like 100-200feet or so. He also said it was lucky if they fell in a tilled field or something or they would break their bodies. I want to know if anyone knows if this is true.

[flamingknives]

A 100' fall would, at the very least, render the jumper hors de combat.

And that's without accounting for travelling at 100mph

[Denwad]

Your proffessor is probably enthralled with the superior German warmachine ( look where it got them. ) vs the "untermensche" Soviet tactics ( not bad for a future superpower )

by poor equipment, they dropped with no artillery or other heavy weapons IIRC, which contributed to their failures

[Icejon]

Well my old prof was seriously interested in militaria. He was an ex us reserve colonel in logistics. Philosophy aside, I am very curious about the lack of parachutes for soviet drops. I still want to know if that is substantial or something just bizzare. After the years that is one of the things I remember from his class and it does sound plausible but bizzarre.

[c3k]

Icejon,

I seem to recall some EXPERIMENTS in dropping Soviet troops at low altitude. Sledges or something similar were used.

Otherwise, I'd venture that the vast majority of Soviet paratroopers went into combat on trucks, tanks, or on foot. (Distastrous jumps into the Dnieper loop notwithstanding.)

In a related note, many years ago I read a book on German paratroopers. A commander (regiment or battalion level?) was experimenting with lower and lower drops in order to maximize post-landing cohesion. He found an altitude at which most companies suffered 10% fractures at a reliable rate (100'?). He then went back up to the previous altitude (200'?). (Okay, one more aside - this commander was bothered by the long turn times necessitated by repacking the chutes by trained technicians. He had each man repack his own. He commented that most of the technicians' folds and techniques, "were mere fussiness." It would usually work no matter how you packed it.)

He was somewhat more mission oriented than most.

Regards,

Ken

(Edited because even apostrophes need friends.)

[1stUkrainianFront]

I knew a guy a while back who had been a MiG-21 pilot. He said he was coming in to land one time and the gear wouldn't go down. Nothing to do but eject...he ejects at 50' altitude and the chute only partly opens as he comes back way down...smash! It took him two years in traction before he could walk again.

When I spent some time in Russia as a kid in the 1970s there was a big youth organization called DOSAAF. This was sortof like Junior ROTC but on the usual massive nationwide & ideological Soviet scale. DOSAAF's job was to get kids involved in military-type activities, including parachuting. I think the organization's roots came out of some of the paratroop experiments they did in the 1930s. I'll ask around out here and see what I can dig up.

[1stUkrainianFront]

Here's a photo of "people pods" for carrying paratroops on a Soviet R-5 biplane.

http://aeroweb.lucia.it/~agretch/RAFAQ/R-5.html

[JasonC]

It is horsefeathers, a propaganda myth, exploded a million times.

[yuvuphys]

Imagine being in a car, going about 70 mph (112 kph), and jumping out of the car at an altitude of 2 feet. Chances of survival are not good.

[MPK]

"So what is LILO?"

'Down here' a Lilo is an inflatable cushion

bed that is a lot of fun in the pool...

I would imagine that having one strapped to

your body might protect you not at all when

jumping from 100 ft...

There is an old, oft-repeated urban myth

(sometimes it features the Ghurkas,

but insert the tough, elite troops of

your choice) that goes like this:

The Ghurkas are told that they will be making an airborne landing from very low altitude...

The Ghurka NCO's ask their British officers

"How Low?" and are told "200 ft"...

They go into a huddle...and then come back

and say "We'll do it...but it has to be from

100 ft"... the Officers are aghast: "Don't you

realize," they say, "Your parachutes won't open

at that height"...the Ghurkas look equally astonished..."Oh, we get parachutes, do we?"

boom boom...or splat splat.

[MPK]

and in related news...

"The greatest altitude from which anyone

has bailed out without a parachute and

survived is 6,700m. This occurred in

January 1942, when Lt (now Lt-Col) I.M

Chisov (USSR) fell from an Ilyushin 4

which had been severely damaged. He struck

the ground a glancing blow on the edge of a snow-covered ravine and slid to the bottom.

He suffered a fractured pelvis and severe

spinal damage"

[Guinness Book Of Records, 1978]

[SpitfireXI]

I have heard of this technique but not for paratroopers per se, but for dropping partisan organizers and spys. I also remember that this was done by flying really slow and low using I think P0-2's and only droping in thick snow.

[JasonC]

It doesn't matter how many people "have heard of it", it is a mistake (a very silly one) being repeated ad nauseum by nimnuts, with everybody and his brother trying to invent rationalizing stories to explain what never had any reality in the first place.

What undoubtedly actually happened is somebody interviewed a Russian paratroop veteran and wanted to ask questions about airborne ops, and the paratrooper shut down the whole line of questioning by explaining from the time they left training they never saw a parachute. Meaning, we were employed as ground troops. The idiot on the other side of the conversation heard what he wanted to hear, without comprehension.

Rumor races around the world three times before it meets correction just starting out the same way.

[M1A1TC]

USSR had pioneered the used of paratroopers in large scale operations. The German officers had studied in Soviet military academies prior to war. Soviet paratroops were superior to Germans in early war.

[76mm]

Some years ago I read in a Russian book on the history of their paratroops that initial Soviet pre-war airborne experiments consisted of Russian soldiers--without parachutes--lying on top of the wings of airplanes, hanging on to ropes. To deploy they would let go of the ropes and drop into snowbanks.

I suspect that this technique had been, uh, improved upon by the time of the Great Patriot War.

76mm

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by 76mm:

Some years ago I read in a Russian book on the history of their paratroops that initial Soviet pre-war airborne experiments consisted of Russian soldiers--without parachutes--lying on top of the wings of airplanes, hanging on to ropes. To deploy they would let go of the ropes and drop into snowbanks.

I suspect that this technique had been, uh, improved upon by the time of the Great Patriot War.

76mm

Didn't the old World at War TV series actually have film footage of that being done?

[1stUkrainianFront]

The famous Russian bard Bulat Okujava sang about the paratroopers fighting as infantry:

The Tenth Parachute Battalion (We Need One Victory)

By Bulat Okujava

Here no birds sing,

No trees grow

And only we shoulder to shoulder

Dig here into the earth.

The planet is on fire as it turns,

Smoke is rising over our Motherland.

And so we need a victory!

One for all of us, and we’ll pay any price.

One for all of us, and we’ll pay any price.

The deadly fire awaits us,

But it’s powerless after all.

Doubts aside, into the night goes our Independent

Tenth Parachute Battalion,

Our Tenth Parachute Battalion.

No sooner has the fighting stopped –

Than another order sounds.

And the messenger goes out of his mind

Looking for us.

The red rocket goes up,

The tireless machinegun beats.

And so we need a victory!

One for all, and we’ll pay any price.

One for all, and we’ll pay any price.

The deadly fire awaits us,

But it’s powerless after all.

Doubts aside, into the night goes our Independent

Tenth Parachute Battalion,

Our Tenth Parachute Battalion.

From Kursk and Orel

The war has brought us

To the enemy’s very gates,

That’s how it stands, my friend.

One day we’ll remember all this

And we won’t believe it ourselves.

But now we need a victory!

One for all, and we’ll pay any price.

One for all, and we’ll pay any price.

The deadly fire awaits us,

But it’s powerless after all.

Doubts aside, into the night goes our Independent

Tenth Parachute Battalion,

Our Tenth Parachute Battalion.

------------------------------

In Russian, it's one hell of a song.

[jtcm]

Did I read somewhere (Keegan WWII history?) that the Soviets in the period between the wars organized a demonstration of paratroopers for foreign observers, complete with band ? I seem to remember the band landing on its feet, and starting to play its instruments.

That, too might be myth or propaganda. But it hsa the right 1920s-1930s surreal-modernist feel to it !

[1stUkrainianFront]

Keegan's great.

Okujava is a different kind of singer, though. Not a brass band, Bulat.

[Bigduke6]

I will be delighted to see any evidence the Soviets did airborne drops without parachutes.

Until then, it seems to me pretty silly even to consider the idea of dropping a man from an airplane moving at around 100 knots or better.

I have seen reports saying the Soviets experimented with troops handing onto the wings as a way of getting more troops on the DZ per sortie, but they bagged the idea because, although it technically it actually worked, the soldiers were worth nothing when they landed. Something about sitting in a slipstream for 30 - 90 minutes - even Russians couldn't tough that out.

But w/o parachutes? Yeah right, and Adolf Hitler was a resonable man.

(Bracing for inevitable neo-nazi invecative)

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by Bigduke6:

I will be delighted to see any evidence the Soviets did airborne drops without parachutes.

Leroy Thompson's "Unfulfilled Promise: The Soviet Airborne Forces 1928-1945" (Merriam Press, Bennington, VT, 2002) says, on pages 34-35:

"Later in 1939 on 30 November, Soviet paratroopers had the distinction of making the first combat jump in history when they dropped at Petsamo and other points behind the Finnish lines during the Soviet invasion of Finland. Due to poor navigation on the part of pilots and quick action on the part of Finnish snipers who picked off many as they landed, few of these paratroopers actually made it into combat. Those who did fought with courage, and many had even jumped without parachutes into deep snow drifts."

Originally posted by Bigduke6:

Until then, it seems to me pretty silly even to consider the idea of dropping a man from an airplane moving at around 100 knots or better.

You don't have to have studied military history for very long to realise that "silly", or for that matter "barking bloody mad" or "suicidally insane", is nothing like the same as "didn't happen".

All the best,

John.

[imported_no_one]

I wouldn't be surprised to find that it was not only done,but probably experimented with a few times.If I thought I could load some infantry into a SturmTiger and blast them across the map and have some of them survive--I wouldn't hesitate.

The way someone could survive has already been hit on in different posts.

1)Very highly trained participants.

2)Forgiving terrain--tilled field,deep snow,etc.

3)Terrain at an angle.

4)The forward momentum of the plane.

5)Dropping from(hopefully)less than 100 feet.

6)Scream "Oh shi*&!*&^!!!!",drop and roll,Maggot :mad: :mad:

Parachutists today are taught to not resist on the landing;Instead you are told to roll and transfer the energy laterally.

I would bet that if performed perfectly,and with some sort of protective wear,you might could get 50% of the jumpers to be(somewhat)combat effective.

I wouldn't survive though,not for the bullet hole in my back

[JasonC]

You are all high. It is just an ordinary lie.

[imported_no_one]

Originally posted by JasonC:

You are all high....

Thanks for noticing

[Bigduke6]

John,

I believe it's in your book, I really do, but how can that possibly pass a reasonability test?

Even if a pilot got his plane down to say 80 knots, and even if the altitude somehow was right on the deck 20 meters, and even if the snow was two meter deep, a human being jumping from an airplane in those conditions would just die. Ok, maybe one in one hundred might survive with multiple broken bones and internal injuries, but for practical purposes it's murder.

This is not to say the Soviets didn't order their pilots to ram German planes, or infantry to make mass assaults against entrenched MGs, or do lots of other military activities that bordered on the suicidal.

But Thompson reports the Soviet paratroopers jumping w/o chutes "fought well". I just don't see how it is humanly possible to have done that, and I have a pretty high personal opinion of Soviet infantry.

So I personally conclude Thompson has the story wrong somehow, although certainly I must admit he wrote the book.

Still, I asked for a source and you gave me one. Thanks, although with friendly respect I'm not convinced in the least.