Name This...(330 Special Edation)

[Brady]

???

[DeepSix]

Where the Thoras go to die?

[Edit: on second thought, no that's not it. Soldiers look German.]

[jrcar]

Soldiers are German... Dutch Parachute school?

Cheers

Rob

[Odin]

Captured french airfield?[&:]

[DeepSix]

I think I know the manufacturer's name... but I cheated to get it. Gotta love Google (assuming I'm correct).[;)]

[Edit: I'm pretty sure I know what it is, but I had to Google it so I'll keep mum.]

[DeepSix]

Ok, well, I was wrong.[:o][:)]

[Gen.Hoepner]

General Student's gliders somewhere in europe?

[m10bob]

The soldiers are definately Wehrmacht,the planes camouflage looks Italian.There appears to be a lone ME-109 "F or G model upper left,(because of the distictive wing curvature).
I suspect this is an Italian airfield,being held by the Germans in 1943 when Italy capitulated..
The design of the planes themselves look like Caproni,but I do not know Italian "civil" types that well..
Since Brady usually sticks to WITP,but likes to "trip us up",these might even be camouflaged snowgeese in Java ?
Planes look close to being Caproni CA 314's,(the engines being inline rather than radial as on the CA 310)..

[Marten]

planes are in terrible mess. they just don't look like being used, but just abandoned by it's owners and captured.

[Oliver Heindorf]

I think m10 bob is right, it could be a captured field in italy. all the nationality symbols are painted white, obvisiously, waiting for re-painting.

[Cap Mandrake]

Definitely look Italian to me. Here are the WWII Italian transport aircraft with two engines and sufficent production numbers to be a candidate for this pic:

Caproni CA 135 BIS

Breda BA 44

Fiat G 18/G 18 V

Macchi MC 94 IDRO

[Sonny]

They are top-secret Japanese kite-gliders which the Germans are testing in preparation for using them to invade Great Britain.

They are facing in all different directions so no matter which way the wind blows a couple of them will get airborne - just to see how stable they are in flight. You cannot see the tether lines in this picture due to the poor quality of the photograph.

They could hold 25 Japanese infantrymen each. However, they could only hold four or five German infantrymen so the initial invasion project was cancelled because the Japanese could not buid enough of them to allow an invasion force of more than a handful of German troops.

Once that plan was abandoned they thought of using them as decoys in bombing raids to confuse the British radar as to the location and number of incoming bombers. This plan too had to be abandoned when it was found that balsa wood and paper did not give a good enough radar return to confuse the British radar.

The Germans ended up using them as decoys placed at airbases so the Allied photo recons would overestimate German bomber strength. Alas, this plan lasted only until the first big wind storm when almost all of them blew away.

[Marten]

somehow i don't trust you.... [:-]

[m10bob]

What if Sonny's right ??[:D]

[Marten]

then the history that we've learnt at school is completly upside down... [:D]

[jcjordan]

My WAG is captured French MB220 transport a/c.

[Bradley7735]

Brady uses "special edation" for things that are outside the Pacific theatre.

[eMonticello]

I think the guy on the right is Italian. It sorta looks like the Fascist cap below:

[thebeis]

My guess is French Caudron C.440 Goéland "Seagull"

[Brady]

It is,C.445.