ROMANIAN MILITARY PARATROOPERS - 80 YEARS OF HISTORY (1950-2021)

Abstract

In 2021, the military paratroopers celebrated 80 years of existence, since their establishment as a specialty, within the Romanian Aeronautics, later as a distinct specialization and generating, in turn, new military specialties, all vital for a military that wants to be modern and proficient. This specialty, established in the Romanian armed forces at the beginning of the Second World War, was an attempt to respond to and align with the needs and, why not, the modernity of the time. Passed through the difficult test of August 1944, disbanded immediately after the war and reborn from its own ashes in 1950, it managed, despite many hardships and sacrifices, some of which were particularly painful, to impose itself as an elite job profile in the panoply of the contemporary Romanian military. Side by side with the Air Force pilots, who always supported them with aircraft and aerodrome infrastructure, the paratroopers wrote history for modern Romania.