Red Assault

An aviation historian explores Russian airborne assault innovations in the decade before WWII using paratrooper memoirs and archival research.

 


Through the 1930s, the USSR was pioneering new developments and technologies in airborne assault. The Red Army was conducting mass airborne assault exercises—dropping paratroopers, tanks, and guns from the skies—when no other nation on Earth even had airborne assault troops.


 


In Red Assault, the Russian aviation historian Vladimir Kotelnikov explores these pioneering achievements. He describes the armament, equipment, and military hardware developed for airborne troops, as well as fantastical projects that reflect the unrestrained imagination of the Soviet military's aviation designers. Kotelnikov offers a detailed account of the aircraft designed for airborne troops, while also describing troop drop exercises and real operations leading up to 1941.


 


Kotelnikov's research is drawn from government archives and museum collections, as well as the memoirs of pioneer military paratroopers in the USSR, some of which have never been published before.