Is it true that there were German soldiers who jumped out of the back of airplanes into snow banks without a parachute?

Answer 1

I can't say if it was done,for a regular means, of low altitude Jumpers;but I do remember the news about a person survived,by jumping,into a snow covered slope.Maybe the Germans picked up the idea. George

Only in the movies.

John, the earliest mass para descents from aircraft were demonstrated to the world by the Russians who dropped 1500 men and equipment in 1936.Although the methods and means of delivery were primitive by today's, they had men lying on the wings of the large aircraft and sliding off at the appropriate moment,but they did wear parachutes the Germans were the only nation who took the idea seriously and at the outbreak of war in 1939 they had two full divisions ready for battle.It was their use of airborne in the attack on Belgium's fort at Eben Emael that stunned military thinkers and caused the scramble to form airborne forces by Britain and the U.S.and others. But I have not heard of dropping without a chute into snow. A Lancaster bomber tail-gunner Sgt. Ward who had his parachute partly burned when the aircraft was going down in flames rotated his turret and rolled out backwards without it, considering it better than burning, he fell thousands of feet to have his fall broken when he smashed through pine trees and into a deep snow drift which saved his life, though injured, the German soldiers who took him prisoner would not believe him at first, finding no parachute but later they did. As for normal para drops --extremely unlikely.