“Vertical Insertion” by Ranger Elite

Weapons Development in WWIII 1946

0600

Training Field,

Pope Army Airfield,

Outside Fayetteville, North Carolina

General Maxwell Taylor was particularly impressed with all the hard work that he and his planners had done in advocating for and utilizing this new and novel method of warfare: the new term coined for it by the powers that be was heliborne vertical troop insertion. General Taylor used a far simpler and more appropriate term: air assault.

Over the past couple of months, General Taylor and  his counterparts in the USAAF on this project were working feverishly to convert the newly-reconstituted 13^th Airborne Division to Air Assault status, adding the Sikorsky H-19B and Piasecki H-25C helicopters as integral air assets of the division. This move was unprecedented as all air units, regardless of size and mission, were controlled by the USAAF command structure in support of U.S. Army missions. The helicopter aviation regiments would be modeled after the cavalry in that their mobile units would be broken down by squadron, and each squadron was paired with an airborne battalion. Over the past three weeks, General Taylor has rigorously drilled the soldiers and airmen of the 13^th Airborne Division (Provisional Air Assault) until they worked as a finely-oiled machine. Today would be their final exam and their exhibition to a very select group of generals and admirals, and congressmen, who approved the project, along with the Secretary of War, Robert Patterson. They would not fail.

With the launch of a star flare, the soldiers ran from their staging areas to the waiting, warmed-up, helicopters. As each helicopter was filled with soldiers and their equipment, they received clearance to take off, assuming a moderately dense formation while in flight to their target landing zone. As the helicopters made staggered landings, with H-19's carrying troops and H-25's carrying Jeeps and other light equipment, all off-loading in an astonishing amount of time into the landing zone. In a matter of less than an hour, the division was assembled in the landing zone and had begun to establish their defensive perimeter, as they would have under actual combat conditions. General Taylor was rather impressed himself with the performance of the division, as was the Secretary of War, who congratulated the General on his hard work and proposed that he draw up plans to convert two more divisions to “Air Assault” status. With a salute and a handshake, the future of warfare had been changed yet again