Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - Traditional customs - Why do modern airborne troops no longer use gliders to land?

Why do modern airborne troops no longer use gliders to land?

Airborne troops came into being only after the appearance of airplanes, and they are very young arms in the history of war. The first airborne combat was completed by Soviet troops in 1927, and achieved very good results. After that, airborne troops quickly developed in all countries of the world, and in the form of airborne, there were also two kinds of parachute landing and helicopter landing, including glider landing and helicopter landing.

glider landing is a special airborne mode. Compared with parachute landing, especially early parachute landing, glider landing has the advantages of easy control, high transportation efficiency, good concealment and strong suddenness, and is very suitable for special operations such as investigation, sneak attack, rescue and beheading. During World War II, Germany was particularly interested in glider landing. At that time, all high schools in Germany offered glider driving courses, and almost every German young man could skillfully use gliders, which reserved a large number of glider operation professionals for the German army. It is precisely because of this foundation that the Germans were able to quickly capture the Eben-Emil fortress with a small cost by using a glider, and even later the Germans used a glider to rescue Mussolini who was under house arrest on the snowy mountain. German airborne troops have performed well in many battlefields such as Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Crete, and a large proportion of them have used gliders to land. In addition to Germany, during World War II, the allied forces also used gliders to land on a large scale. For example, in the Normandy airborne operation on June 5, 1944, the allied forces used 1,8 transport planes and 1,2 gliders to airdrop 35, soldiers, which successfully cooperated with the Normandy landing operation and made immortal contributions to the final defeat of Nazi Germany.

Although many countries have used glider landing in history, it is strange that modern airborne troops basically no longer use glider landing. Why? The cold view of history holds that there are mainly the following reasons:

1. The glider is too dangerous to land and the landing casualty rate is high

The biggest problem of glider landing is not enough safety, because glider landing requires a certain sliding distance. Landing in a strange environment, even experienced airborne troops can hardly guarantee safety. In the complex and changeable battlefield, aircraft crashes and deaths caused by landing terrain are more frequent. In addition, the glider's own relatively simple landing device makes its soldiers and equipment vulnerable to strong bumps and impacts, which greatly reduces its combat capability.

In modern training operations, armies of all countries are striving for zero casualties, especially in non-combat attrition, so it is hard to accept the inevitable casualty rate when gliders land. Although parachute landing has some shortcomings, such as slow speed, wide spread and difficulty in concealment, the landing casualty rate can be controlled at a very low level because of its wide adaptability to landing sites (backup umbrellas can also be used if the main umbrella fails).

Moreover, the gliders are all in groups of people. If one glider is damaged due to landing site, anti-aircraft fire, bad weather and other reasons, the officers and men of the whole crew are hard to escape. Because paratroopers are all one person and one umbrella, there are fewer "group" casualties.

2. The glider has many shortcomings and is easy to deal with

As mentioned above, the glider has certain requirements on the landing site, and the defense policy can increase the difficulty of the glider landing by changing the "terrain". For example, the glider can be well countered by evenly inserting stakes about 2cm thick in the land.

In addition, gliders have many other disadvantages: First, as a "disposable product", gliders are often relatively crude and have poor reliability, and the fuselage protection is often insufficient to provide basic protection for passengers; Secondly, the speed of glider is too slow (about 2 km/h), and it is easy to be "taken care of" by air defense firepower, with great casualties; There is also a glider because of the lack of power, communication and weapons and equipment, and it can't fight back against enemy fighters when gliding, so it can only be slaughtered.

Throughout the World War II, although gliders have achieved many brilliant results, with people mastering the weaknesses of gliders, glider airborne troops have also suffered many very heavy losses, and using gliders to airborne operations has become an increasingly risky and tasteless choice.

3. Large transport aircraft and heavy weapons airborne technology offset the transport advantages of gliders

One of the important reasons for the large-scale adoption of gliders during World War II was that the aircraft manufacturing technology was not developed at that time, and the performance of transport aircraft at that time was limited. In the early World War II, most military transport planes could only carry 1-15 soldiers. In the middle and late World War II, the main German transport plane was Junker -52, which could only carry about 2 paratroopers. At that time, the main transport model of the US military was C-47, which could only carry 2 paratroopers. The U.S. C-46 is slightly larger than the C-47 and can only carry 3 paratroopers. It was precisely because the cabin capacity of the transport plane was very limited at that time that it was often necessary to drag the glider to increase the dispatch efficiency. (At that time, a glider could carry about 2 people, and some models could even carry heavy weapons such as tanks.)

But with the rapid development of aircraft technology and technology, modern large-scale transport aircraft has long been reborn, and its carrying capacity and efficiency have been greatly improved. For example, Russian Il -76 can generally transport 12 paratroopers, and American C-17 and C-13H can transport more than 1 soldiers. These modern large transport planes can carry heavy weapons such as tanks, armored vehicles and howitzers, and with the continuous development of heavy weapon airborne technology, the transportation efficiency, reliability, safety and comfort of modern large transport planes are far better than those of gliders.

4. The improvement of parachutes and helicopter landing offset the control advantages of gliders

At the initial stage, parachutes were simple in function and difficult to operate, so they often only dispersed with the wind, which easily led to the consequences of scattered landing points and difficulty in gathering quickly to form combat effectiveness. However, with the progress of the times, there are more and more parachute models and more perfect functions. According to the shape, there are not only traditional circular umbrellas, but also square, airfoil, biconical, strip, guide surface and rotary umbrellas. The maneuverability of modern parachutes has also improved a lot, and some types can even compete with gliders, which can greatly reduce the dispersion rate of airborne troops.

in addition, the mature development of helicopters also makes the advantages of gliders disappear. With its powerful low-altitude and low-speed (hovering) performance, helicopters can not only completely replace the airborne transportation function of gliders, but also have the functions of investigation and attack, medical rescue, command and control, communication, anti-submarine mine clearance, electronic countermeasures and so on, and have a very wide range of applications. Today, the concept of "airplane landing" generally refers to helicopter landing, not glider landing.

The cold view of history holds that although modern airborne troops have basically stopped using gliders to land, it does not mean that gliders have completely withdrawn from the historical stage. Because of its maneuverability, portability and cheapness, gliders are still of great value in civil and sports fields, especially the gliders equipped with power systems can meet the needs of entry-level aviation training and use, and the market prospect is still very broad.