What It Was Like to be a WW2 Paratrooper
History Unplugged Podcast
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The History of the 11th Airborne Division
The 11th airborne sat that one out. By the time MacArthur decided that he wanted a number of secondary landings as a way to distract Japanese attention or relieve pressure from his main campaign coming down from the north into Manila, the 11th airborne was again tapped for that mission. Swing had advocated dropping the division in its entirety just outside of Manila. They couldn't get the number of aircraft necessary to do that. And so swing went with a hybrid approach where he landed his glider infantry regiments and other units amphibiously and then air dropped in his parachute regiment over a number of days. So took them three serials to drop those guys inland.
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