Word: gliderfuls
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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First School. Realizing that Hitler doesn't keep some 28,000 gliders just for fun, the Army opened the first of nine full-scale gliding schools at Twentynine Palms, Calif. last January. Chubby, 25-year-old West Point Captain Lester Cecil Hess is in command. Because there are not enough Army glider instructors to go round, civilian instructors have been brought in. Many officers have been graduated from the four-week course. Last week the second class of enlisted men were graduated, became staff sergeants with flying...
...July 1, the Army's 18 primary schools will begin to turn out men with pre-glider training. These men will become glider pilots after only two weeks at Twentynine Palms. So far, only men with previous flying experience have been trained, but the Army needs glider pilots badly, will soon inaugurate a ten-week course for greenhorns...
...Thermals. The school is in a mountain-surrounded piece of desert, hot enough to fry the traditional egg on a glider's duralumin fuselage. But the heated air rises, forming the welcome "thermals" which keep a glider aloft. The special glider dashboard instrument is a variometer, which shows a pilot whether he is in one of these upward thermals or in a downward air current...
...Gliders take the air at from 25 to 45 m.p.h. When one of the Army planes at the school starts out along the ground, towing three two-place glider trainers on graduated ropes, the little 300-lb. ships take off first, float about 50 ft. up, pointing their noses down to give the ropes some slack so that the plane can get off. Once in the air, like the yachtsman who watches the trembling sail lest it spill the wind, a glider pilot must keep his towline taut or suffer a jerk when it suddenly springs tight. Even...
Silent Flight. Somewhere above 1,000 ft., gliders are turned loose to soar, dropping a wing to lose altitude quickly, gliding downward to gain speed (which may reach 90 m.p.h.), or "picking up a thermal" to rise. Sometimes they even fly in formation. Another man-made addition to flight skill is the complete loop-the-loop, as exciting in a glider as in the oldtime barnstormers' crates. (Two pilots practicing a dog fight at Twentynine Palms -not a usual glider function -crashed and were killed when their wings touched.) A glider pilot, landing, keeps his plane balancing...