Nearly 1,000 paratroopers dropped out of the sky in Normandy on Sunday — but this time they did so in peace, instead of to wrest western France from the Nazis as they did during World War II.
Drawing huge crowds who braved hot weather and lined the historic landing area at La Fiere, the aerial spectacle re-enacted the drama of the Normandy landings and served to cap commemorations marking the 70th anniversary of D-Day.
Veterans were escorted down a sandy path Sunday to a special section to watch the show.
The planes flew overhead several times, with two dozen military paratroopers — from the U.S., Britain, France and Germany — jumping with each passage.
The scenes were reminiscent of the pivotal event, when around 15,000 Allied paratroopers were dropped in and around the village of Sainte-Mere-Eglise on D-Day. It became the first to be liberated by the Allies and remains one of the enduring symbols of the Normandy invasion.
Veteran Julian “Bud” Rice, a C-47 pilot who participated in the airdrops of Normandy on D-Day, watched the show.
“It’s good to see 800 paratroopers jump here today, but the night that we came in, we had 800 airplanes with 10,000 paratroopers that we dropped that night, so it was a little more,” he said.
Rice flew in a C-47 aircraft earlier in the week, similar to the one he flew on D-Day. With him was veteran pilot Bill Prindible, with whom he watched the show.
“Very impressive,” Prindible said. “You just have to imagine there’d be a squadron of 72 aircraft, 36 aircraft going by every time one of those guys went by.”
Among the planes ferrying paratroopers for the event was a restored C-47 US military transport that dropped Allied troops on the village of Sainte-Mere-Eglise — a stone’s throw from La Fiere — on June 6, 1944. And the pilots who originally flew it took the controls again last week, 70 years later, remembering their experiences.
The restored Douglas C-47 — known as Whiskey 7 because of its W-7 squadron marking — looked much the same Sunday as it did on June 6, 1944. It looked very different when it arrived at the National Warplane Museum in western New York as a donation eight years ago, however: It had been converted to a corporate passenger plane.
The museum’s president said that for its restoration they had to take out the interior, which had a dry bar, lounge seats and a table with a map of the Bahamas.
But a couple of modern items were added. The plane now sports two GPS systems to keep it on course.
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