The true dawn of airborne warfare came with the first large-scale movements of troops by transport aircraft in the 1930s. This less radical means of rapidly deploying troops - when compared to dropping them by parachute or crash-landing them in gliders - allowed a more widespread recognition of its potential. In 1931 the US Army airlifted an artillery battery coast to coast across the isthmus of Panama; two years later this exercise was repeated with an artillery battalion. The following year a small infantry force was air-landed behind 'enemy' lines during an exercise in Delaware, In 1923 Britain had airlifted troops in Iraq to put down a tribal rebellion, and in 1932 flew a battalion from Egypt to Iraq when trouble broke out again. The 1932-35 Gran Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay saw German Junkers Ju 52 airliners used as military transports by the former; and France and Italy also experimented with airlifting troops. The Soviets experimented on a much larger scale: they formed small motorized airlanding test units in 1931/32, and in 1933 two parachute and two air-landed regiments were employed during the Kiev manoeuvres. In the 1935 manoeuvres more than 8,000 troops were air-landed, with light tanks and trucks, and 3,000 paratroopers were dropped.
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