Factfile

• Nine months following Germany’s glider assault at Fort Eben Emael, America began to look to the potential of gliders – not as a combat strategy, but as a training aid for future power pilots and to deliver cargo. February 25, 1941, became the birthdate of combat gliders when General Arnold ordered a study of their capability with an eye toward their delivery capability and potential tactical objectives uniquely suited to gliders. From the outset, gliders were envisioned for troop and light armament delivery. They would serve as airborne delivery trailers, as one historian put it.
• Exactly one week later, his office directed procurement officers at Wright Field – an aircraft research and personnel training base in Ohio – to begin designs for a glider that could carry twelve or fifteen men, or a combination of machine guns, artillery, ammunition, and cargo. He envisioned a glider able to deliver a combat-ready and self-contained team to the field. It took only four days for letters to be sent to eleven aircraft manufacturers for proposals to design and build glider prototypes.
• A key caveat stated that glider development could not siphon any resources away from the Air Corps’ massive, powered aircraft program. Only four responded. Others cited previous commitments, some sidestepped the experimental notion of gliders altogether, and others lacked the production capacity.
• By mid-May, ten glider concepts of varying capacity had been ordered for static testing and preliminary analysis. When they arrived, the Air Corps would need trained pilots. Where would they come from? The first handful of pilots came from two civilian aviation schools, one in Elmira, New York, and the other in Lockport, Illinois.
• General Arnold, Assistant Secretary of War Robert Lovett, and various Air Forces commands were creating and revising the glider program almost on a weekly basis. By the time the first cadre of 150 glider instructors was trained in March 1942, Arnold had abandoned his vision for a glider force of 1,000, tripling it to 3,000.
• Only five days later, Arnold directed the Army’s Materiel Division to deliver 4,500 gliders by July 1, 1943. That closely matched another Arnold order the same day to produce 4,200 trained glider pilots over the same fifteen months.
• By mid-June, the program was expanded to allow volunteers with no flying experience and even some power pilot school washouts. Two student tracks were established. Students with flying experience would spend four weeks at a preliminary school, in part learning how to land light aircraft with no power (called “dead stick” training). Students with no experience started with forty hours of basic training and then fifteen hours of dead stick training. The two tracks then merged for elementary-advanced training in makeshift gliders or sailplanes until the combat gliders arrived.
• On June 20, 1942, it appeared the AAF finally had its combat glider after spending more than a year developing a training program, contemplating new airborne strategies, and beginning to train glider pilots whose qualifications kept changing and whose curriculum was far from settled. The first successful test flight of a fifteen-place glider took place that day, and it passed muster when it was towed from Wright Field in Ohio to Chanute Army Air Field in Illinois and back on a roundtrip of 220 air miles delivered its CG-4A glider prototype.
• It largely was the work of a Frenchman unknown outside aviation circles. Born in Paris, Alex Francis Arcier had studied aeronautics under Eiffel Tower designer Gustave Eiffel.
• The other three design firms that responded a year earlier to the design request for eight- and fifteen-passenger gliders with various cargo configurations had failed.
• Construction contracts were issued before the final testing of the CG-4A prototype was completed.
• The manufacturers’ mission was to build a squarish, motorless aircraft more than forty-eight feet long with a wingspan of nearly eighty-four feet.
• The wings sat atop the fuselage and were supported by external struts.
• The tail stood twelve feet off the ground.
• To save weight and because most metal was reserved for powered aircraft, most of the glider was covered with a doped-and-painted cotton fabric, supported by a steel tubing frame
• A remarkably strong, honeycombed wood floor comprising more than 5,000 interlocked crashing is a lonely sound pieces measured approximately six feet by twelve feet.
• A pilot and copilot sat side by side in a three-sided Plexiglass cockpit that opened upward to unload cargo.
• Atop their cockpit, a bracket was used to attach a 350-foot nylon tow rope with a coiled interphone cable wrapped around it from a C-47 Skytrain.
• The controls had little more sophistication than a go-kart. A glider pilot’s foot pedals controlled the rudder and the brake. An instrument panel in the center included airspeed, rate-of-climb indicator, turn indicator, compass, and altimeter. Navigation and landing light switches were nearby.
• Overhead were trim tabs, a parachute release, and towline release. A spoiler control lever was on each pilot’s outside hip and the steering wheel likely reminded farm boys of their dads’ tractors at home.
• In the back, twelve combat-ready glider troops sat shoulder to shoulder on four facing, removable benches and a thirteenth sat on a jump seat near the tail. Four round windows on each side were intended to reduce airsickness. Nearby were two escape hatches and doors on each side near the tail.
• The CG-4A could carry more than 3,700 pounds (equal to its weight) of combined glider troops, jeep, jeep trailer with supplies, 37mm or 75mm artillery, small bulldozer, medical supplies, ammunition, gasoline, and explosives.
• The glider’s outward “flying tent” appearance was misleading. Comprising 70,000 parts and requiring about 7,000 hours of labor to build, the Army hoped to build it for $20,000 each, less than half the cost of a twin-engine C-47 Skytrain that towed gliders and carried paratroopers, cargo, and the wounded with a top speed approaching 230 miles per hour and with a range of 1,800 miles.

In Pictures

The combat glider: fabric covered, a hinged cockpit, cramped seating for infantry, and totally defenseless. Glider warfare largely was invented from one invasion to the next. (Silent Wings Museum)

Before takeoff, glider pilots and other personnel often checked how a howitzer or jeep was tied down. A hard landing could send it straight into their backs on its way out through the cockpit. (Silent Wings Museum)

Hundreds of C-47s and their gliders taking off on time and in sequence required the practiced choreography typically found on an aircraft carrier. (National Archives)

A glider could become a firetrap in seconds. Its fabric was flammable and cargo sometimes explosive. Burned-out skeletons were an unnerving sight following a glider mission. (Silent Wings Museum)

If you enjoyed today's feature you can find out more in Brotherhood of the Flying Coffin: The Glider Pilots of World War II by Scott McGaugh.