Word: motorless
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...sailplanes and those interested in motorless flight owe a debt of gratitude to TIME for its story...
...Club. The two-week International Soaring contest, the biggest postwar meet, was coming to a flying finish. Each day at noon ranks of brightly colored sailplanes, eight abreast, were towed to a 1,650-ft. altitude by Spanish Air Force training planes. There, their long tow cables released, the motorless pilots sought out the thermals-rising warm air currents-on which they might ride up to soar highest, farthest or fastest...
...passenger traffic because "the stations are congested." Then you close the Autobahn bridge across the Elbe for "urgent repairs." Now, on the one precarious road to the West still open to the Western powers, jeeps and buses bounce over ten miles of a cobblestone detour, push onto a creeping, motorless ferry. When someone asks the German policeman aboard how the bridge repairs are coming, he grins: "You don't think they are real...
...fulfilling man's desire to fly like birds. You may be right- but there are over 1,000 sailplane and glider pilots in America who, in order to forgive you this grave error, must assume that your Writer (poor man) probably has never experienced the thrill of "motorless flight." These pilots will tell you that there can never be a motor-powered craft that will replace the sailplane and glider as aids in achievement of the mortal's ambition to flap his wings in flight...
Gliders are so ridiculously cheap to build (a steel frame is covered with plywood and "doped" fabric), and have such a variety of potential uses, that no one could believe that the U.S. is employing motorless flight only to make its pilots better flyers and to teach them an awareness of wind & weather. A glider full of troops is no home-defense weapon...