He 111 as paratroop carrier?

[Lagarto]

I've been reading 'Bitter Victory' by Carlo D'Este about the battle for Sicily, 1943. The author mentions several times that German paratroopers were dropped from He 111s. I'm no expert on Luftwaffe aircraft but it seems to me there was not enough room in the He 111 for carrying paratroopers (?)

Edit: OK, I've found out that He 111H-23 could carry paratroopers but apparently it was introduced in late 1944, only 12 were built for service with KG 200, which didn't need them anyway, and eventually they were converted to night bombers.

[odybvig]

If you remove the bomb racks, you have rom for some Fallschirmjägers

Best

Olve Dybvig

[Lagarto]

Thank you Olve. Was it some sort of field modification, possibly in use in mid-1943, before the introduction of the H-23 variant?

By the way, the book also mentions a daylight bombing raid on July 11th by a force of sixteen He 111s and Fw 200s. Were the Fw 200s ever used over Sicily as daylight bombers?

[Pilot]

Slovakia also have similar version of He111

[odybvig]

This was a standard option on a H-20. So I do believe it could be done on earlier models.

Best
Olve

[Nick Beale]

And I think you'll find that the RAF Museum's machine had been converted for paratroops (if I'm remembering the caption on the exhibit correctly).

[ianatheling]

A photo of paratroops about to board a He111 (which seems to be a fairly early version?)

Ian
source; old eBay photo

[Csaba B. Stenge]

A number of early He 111 variants were converted into paratrooper training aircraft for training purpose.

[Mikael Olrog]

A few days, may be two weeks ago, two nice photos where sold on e-bay of paratroopers jumping from He 111. One photo showed four He 111 in formation dropping paratroopers and one was a close up of a single He 111 with exiting paratroopers. Really nice.

There is also a photo on www.preservedaxisaircraft.com from the interior of RAF Museum's He 111, but I don't know if it shows any relevant details for Parachutists or not.