Investigates the Red Army Command in the 1930s using the memoirs of pioneer military paratroopers and documents discovered in archives and museum collections. This book looks at Soviet military doctrine in the period before the invasion by Germany in 1941. In this book a significant amount of attention is devoted to the aircraft of the Soviet Union, from which airborne operations were planned. The book has been written on the basis of a number of documents that the author has discovered in the archives, and in museum collections. This work draws upon the memoirs of the pioneer military paratroopers in the USSR, some of which have never been published before. AUTHOR: Vladimir Kotelnikov was born in Moscow on 9 December 1951. He graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute (University) in 1975 and was engaged in research and development in the area of high-temperature strength. Vladimir defended the academic degree of the Candidate of Science in 1981 and read lectures on aircraft piston engine design at the Moscow Aviation Institute. Since the 1980s Kotelnikov has conducted archive research on the history of Russian aviation of the inter-war and WWII period. In addition, he has paid specific attention to the history of foreign aircraft testing and operations in Russia. As the result of his work he published several hundred articles and dozens of books in Russia, Ukraine, Poland, UK, France, Germany, Spain and US. 400 colour and b/w photographs