Keeffro (your #8556);
Checking back, put up the link you gave me [
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Varsity]. Like most people, I'd heard about "Market Garden" (and we'd all been to see the film "A Bridge Too Far") and knew about the heroic failure at Arnhem, but "Operation Varsity" was a new one on me.
Wiki tells me:
... Involving more than 16,000 paratroopers and several thousand aircraft, it was the largest airborne operation in history to be conducted on a single day and in one location...
It seems that Dennis's war may not have been long - but it was a hot one ! And a successful one too, for it enabled the Allies to get across the Rhine "in one bound", as it were, and so bring the war in Europe to an end little more than a month later.
Reading Wiki's account, I was horrified to hear that, unlike the Daks, the Curtis C-46 Commando tugs (sort of big fat Dakotas) did
not have self-sealing tanks, which made S&L at 1,500 ft in daylight over defences more than a little hazardous !
5,000 miles away, I'd other things on my mind at the time: and was rather excited (and nervous !), as I'd just been told that they were giving me my first (and last) very own tiny Command in the RAF.
Danny.