The Hessian Cloth ‘Parajute’ of the Second World War

Abstract

The Second World war in India and Burma was principally a ground campaign, prosecuted in large part with supply by air, both air landing and air dropping. Distance from the UK and other factors required GHQ India develop domestic capabilities to be partially self-sufficient. The war in India and Burma has received much less coverage than elsewhere and there are gaps in what has been published. Coverage of the supply parachute situation, critical to air dropping, is one of those gaps, with official and personal books and articles mostly focusing attention on a failed substitute, the hessian cloth parachute, at the expense of the locally produced and massively successful cotton cloth parachute.