Browsing the internet I’ve found the following links about the French pre-war paratroopers and special units:

http://www.google.ro/imgres?imgurl=http://...%26tbs%3Disch:1 (scroll down to the middle of the page)

http://www.cervens.net/legionbbs123/showth...-Special-Forces

Those (extremely rare) photos show quite an obvious resemblance between the French “infanterie de l’air” and the Romanian paratroopers early in WW 2 (at least until their re-equipping with German materiel in 1943) - starting with helmets and outfit up to the planes used for jumps and training.

Are there any documented (and known) facts about the process of forming of the Romanian paratrooper units, before June 1941? It is known that in the beginning of 1940, during the Phony War, the Romanian General Staff was already aware of the danger (and potential) of the actions of the “air infantry” (“infanteria aeriana”). Was there any French official/unofficial influence, any joint initiative in constituting these units in Romania? One of the article mentions the maneuvers from October 1938 when “the whole 601st CIA [CIA = Compagnie d'Infanterie de l'Air] is dropped on BA112 airbase by 5 planes and in less than 3 minutes after the beginning of the dropping the first 37mm rounds were shot. The German observers invited to this presentation were impressed and unlike the French high command they used these lessons”. Perhaps there were also some potential/traditional allies invited to those demonstrations (Romanians)?

This post has been edited by Agarici on July 04, 2010 07:35 pm