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The German Fallschirmjäger (paratroopers) were highly trained but hampered by a terribly designed parachute. The jumper was attached to the chute at a single contact point (as opposed to the lift webs of American and British chutes), which made it almost impossible to control the descent and also forced the wearer into an awkward forward-leaning posture.
This posture meant that they could only land safely while wearing knee and elbow caps and had to perform a forward roll on touchdown. The forward roll, in turn, posed a serious hazard to anyone carrying anything larger than a pistol or grenade, maybe a submachine gun, as the weapon would get entangled during the maneuver. Fallschirmjäger therefore jumped without their rifles and machine guns, which were dropped after them in a color-coded canister attached to a separate parachute.
Once on the ground, the soldiers had to get the parachute off (a difficult task in itself), find and approach the weapons canister, and arm themselves – all the while potentially taking enemy fire. To add insult to injury, the Germans actually had perfectly good, controllable parachutes available and used by Luftwaffe pilots. It’s not clear why paratroopers were saddled with a much worse design.
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