The book I read to research this post was Sky Men by Robert Kershaw which is an excellent book which I got from the library.
During world war 2 any members of the special forces captured by the germans could expect to be shot. The nazis thought it was a dirty kind of fighting and at the end of the day they could do a lot more damage than ordinary soldiers. The paras were formed in the UK in 1940. In the early days if they were parachuting from a plane they had to climb out on the wing. In 1948 in response to the fact that there weren’t really any wars the UK was fighting the paras were reduced to a single brigade. Around this time bigger and more powerful tail loading aircraft were introduced. The american fairchild C-119 flying boxcar was introduced in 1949. Then in 1957 trials were started for the C-130 hercules which was a huge plane which had a tail loader from which they could jump and which had a heated deck which was also pressurized.
