German parachute landings in the Netherlands, May 1940

Paratroopers in round helmets sit shoulder to shoulder in a dim cabin while quays and waterways glitter far below; they dive from the door, their static lines pulling open white canopies, and drop past a fuselage marked D-AXIO. Three-engined transports with swastikas on their tails fly in close formation, dozens of parachutes sink towards a wide airfield, and in a harbour city soldiers run with their chutes while a canopy hangs caught in the girders of a bridge. German newsreel footage.

On 10 May 1940 German paratroopers and air-landed infantry seized the airfield of Waalhaven, the bridges over the Maas at Rotterdam and the bridges at Moerdijk and Dordrecht, opening the way for the armour from the south. The attempt to capture The Hague and the Dutch government from the air failed. The civil registration on one aircraft and the massed drop over an open field suggest that part of the footage comes from pre-war exercises.