Word: glider
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During its harried 18-month career the Army Air Forces glider program has found the winds of public and official esteem as tricky as the thermal air currents over a mountain peak. Like many another new weapon, the glider was first overlooked, then overdramatized, later overdisparaged...
...result, when the Army recently disclosed that it had temporarily suspended primary glider-pilot training, some conclusion-jumpers assumed that the whole glider program was being quietly washed out. Actually, the Army had done some realistic figuring on how many transport planes it could get to tow its gliders this year, and how many airborne infantry men could be made ready to fly in them...
Report from Crete. Off to a belated start in October 1941, the U.S. glider program was forced into being by public and military outcry after the German air conquest of Crete; British opinion also demanded a big glider force. Later reports on Crete cooled this enthusiasm so far as the military was concerned; it appeared that Nazi paratroops and transport planes had done the real damage while their gliders had suffered brutal losses (best estimate: 50%). U.S. officers now think the Germans misused their gliders, flying them directly onto British airfields and strong points instead of landing troops near...
First director of the U.S. glider program was Major Lewin B. Barringer, who was lost in a bomber over the Caribbean last January. Last week the Army called in a civilian expert, Richard C. du Pont (of the Delaware Du Ponts), pioneer sailplane pilot, to take full charge of glider production and training...
This was the biggest formation ever seen of the biggest plane in the war, the Merseburg-323. The ME-323 was developed from designs for a monstrous wooden glider, with a wing span of 180 feet. Six French Gnôme-Rhône engines were added to make a plane that would carry 120 fully equipped soldiers or 20,000 Ib. of freight 450 miles at 140 miles an hour. It has ten half-sunk wheels well forward to prevent nosing over in rough landings, and the front of its fuselage can let down to take in trucks...