World War II Day by Day

RAF Aldermaston and Ramsbury Airfields, England · June 3, 1944

On this date in 1944 in Aldermaston, England, men of the 434th Troop Carrier Group and the 101st Air­borne Divi­sion began moving 52 CG‑4A gliders and C‑47 Sky­train tow planes onto the air­field to lead the glider phase of Oper­a­tion Over­lord, the in­va­sion of Nazi-occu­pied France. Taking off five minutes behind the 434th from Rams­bury airfield over 100 miles to the west was the 437th Group towing 52 CG‑4A gliders for the 82nd Air­borne Divi­sion. Each of these power­less, un­armed gliders carried 13 men and their gear or four men and cargo: a Jeep or a Jeep trailer fully loaded with combat supplies, bull­dozers to make landing strips for later glider landings, a 75mm howit­zer or 37mm anti­tank gun, sundry ammu­ni­tion and/or medi­cal supplies. Gen. Max­well Taylor, 101st Air­borne com­mander, stretched out on the floor on pillows, catching shut-eye. Most men remained seated, helmet in lap into which some vomited though most vomit ended up on the floor.

Over Guern­sey and Jersey, the Ger­man-occupied Chan­nel Islands, enemy flak bat­teries opened fire on the Sky­trains and their gli­ders. Over France, flying at 1,000 ft or less, the sky arma­da was with­in cross­fire range of Ger­man ma­chine guns and flak guns. Pilots, nick­named “sui­cide joc­keys,” weaved and twisted, throwing heavily bur­dened men in­side the fuse­lage this way and that, the bruising and bone-jarring made worse by slipping on the vomit-strewn floor.

Twenty-four hours earlier the Ger­mans had begun studding the fields and pas­tures in the two intended landing zones with “Rom­mel’s aspa­ragus” (wooden poles) and were digging and flooding 6‑ft deep by 10–12‑ft wide ditches across other fields to hin­der gli­der landings. U.S. casual­ties in men and equip­ment were heavy in the night­time and early morning (4 a.m.) landings behind Utah Beach on June 6, 1944. Gli­ders came in from every direc­tion, many over­shooting the fields and landing in sur­rounding hedge­row fences or crashing into farm­houses or stone walls, blind in the black night. Some gli­der troops were im­paled by splin­tering wood or were crushed when equip­ment broke away. One glider landed on a land­mine. Some gli­ders missed their landing zone and crashed into a swamp 12 miles to the south. Twenty-one of the 850 gliders carrying infantrymen were wrecked in landing.

Over 20,000 parachute and glider infantrymen were delivered to Normandy, the over­whelming major­ity thrown into com­bat for the first time. Of the roughly 4,000 sky soldiers who parti­ci­pated in the ini­tial air­borne assault phase of Opera­tion Over­lord, 10 per­cent became casual­ties, either killed or maimed. (More casual­ties occurred in glider landings than in para­chute jumps from trans­port planes.) But of course Operation Over­lord’s suc­cess or failure depended on the amphibious landings and the German response.

Waco CG-4A Combat Gliders in the Airborne Invasion of Normandy, 1944

Left: Forerunners of today’s helicopter-delivered air­mobile troops, mili­tary gliders came of age in World War II when they were made capa­ble of getting a whole squad or more of infan­try with heavy wea­pons onto the ground quickly, with equip­ment that para­troopers simply could not carry. The Waco CG‑4A glider (C for cargo, G for gli­der) was the most widely used U.S. troop and cargo mili­tary gli­der of World War II. Deri­sively called “flak bait” or “flying cof­fins,” 13,909 of these stealth air­craft were manu­fac­tured by 16 com­panies during the period 1942–1945—more than the num­ber of B‑17, B‑25 or B‑26 bombers; P‑38, P‑39, or P‑40 fighters; or any of the C‑46, C‑47, or C‑54 trans­port planes manufactured during that same time period.

Right: At 3,750 lb the CG-4A high-wing mono­plane could carry more than its own weight in pay­load, and fre­quently did. Its maxi­mum speed was 150 mph at 7,500 lb or 128 mph at 9,000 lb. As a troop car­rier it carried two crew mem­bers and 13 pas­sen­gers (“glider­men”). As a cargo car­rier with two crew members it carried four pas­sen­gers and one jeep or three pas­sen­gers, one 75mm howitzer, and 25 rounds of ammunition.

Left: Unarmed and unarmored, canvas-covered gliders were towed behind Douglas C‑47 tug planes on 300 ft/­91 m by 1 in/­2.5 cm nylon ropes. Com­mu­ni­cation between the early gli­ders and their tugs was via a tele­phone wire wrapped around the tow-rope. These wires often shorted out while being dragged along con­crete run­ways during take­offs. Two-way radios even­tually replaced this system.

Right: The combat glider had a length of 48 ft 8 in/­14.8 m and a wing­span of 83 ft 8 in/­25 m. It had a height of 15 ft 4 in/­4.6 m. The entire nose section (in­cluding the pilot’s com­part­ment) of the CG‑4A swung upward, creating a 70 in/­1.8 m by 60 in/­1.5 m opening into its cargo com­part­ment. This made it pos­sible to quickly load and, after a success­ful belly-flop landing, unload the glider.

Left: A normal three-point landing required a landing run of 600–800 ft. Gli­ders at the far end of gross weight need 2,000–3,000 ft. In this photo U.S. troops exa­mine a crashed glider. Almost all the gli­ders used in Nor­man­dy were lost. Few un­da­maged craft were ever retrieved.

Right: Germans examine this glider that landed in their midst, having crashed into a hedge­row. Sev­eral of the occu­pants were killed and the rest were over­powered and taken pri­soner. The 101st Airborne Division lost 30 men in glider crashes, the 82nd nearly 300.

Airborne Invasion of Normandy, France, June 1944