ARmy Rumour SErvice

Talk here of it being a scale replica: Horsa Glider Flypast ? - World War 2 Talk

Not far from where I'm typing this, are two former WW2 airfields that were used as launching pads for OVERLORD, MARKET GARDEN and VARSITY. The locals still talk of seeing Horsas and their tugs, filling the sky on those 3 operations. Rumours were that a local farmer used a Horsa fuselage for box storage, for many years after the war.

Others tell stories of plundering the gliders that came down on training exercises, for the dingies and other interesting stuff!

Be great to see a Horsa flying again - but would it be a bit of nightmare to get CAA certification?

There are no original Horsa Gliders intact and even parts of are relevantly rare due their construction and use (or should that be abuse?). There are two being built, one at Shawbury in Shropshire (Home) and the other at the 'Silent Wings Museum' Lubbock Texas in the US. Neither of which are or were ever intended to be airworthy. So I don't know where this story originated or to which Horsa it applies.

I did on occasion help my dear old dad at Shawbury when he was a volunteer for the Assault Glider trust. They did (and are probably still) doing a grand job on building a 1:1 replica, but I would run a mile in the opposite direction as soon as anyone suggested getting it airborne, much as I'd love to see one flying one day. These two replicas are never going to fly.

I have to ask this, in the spirit of being a nosy bugger who likes to know the answers.
What was the policy regarding the recovery/reuse of gliders during WWII? Given that the aim of them was to be landed roughly behind enemy lines, on rough-ish ground (often rendering them un-airworthy) and then be abandoned was there a unit whoes sole job it was to come along later on and dismatle/scrap them? Or was there no plan and they were just to be left in situ for the locals to loot/pillage/strip/dispose of?

The Horsa was more or less a single use disposable hairyplane, built as you would imagine from plywood and balsa. Some that didn't get used were sold off and turned into prefab houses (it's on Youtube somewhere.)

There is an interesting page here containing some great facts, if you can excuse the poor spelling and layout that is: http://www.fiddlersgreen.net/models/...eed-Horsa.html

Operation Varsity was more costly to Allied airborne than the invasion of Normandy. By early evening of March 24, in eight short hours, our airborne forces had suffered 819 killed, 1,794 wounded and 580 missing in action. Over six dozen glider-towing planes were shot down. Seventy glider pilots were killed and 114 wounded or injured. British and American glider-recovery teams found later that less than 25 percent of the gliders landed unscathed.
About 6,000 American glider pilots were trained. Almost 14,000 CG-4A's were built; about 3,600 were used in combat overseas.

Glider-rider and glider-pilot casualties were estimated at 40 percent for some missions. Specially trained glider-assault regiments were part of the U.S. 11th, 13th, 17th, 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions. (British glider-assault teams were assigned to Air Landing Brigades, each equivalent in strength to a U.S. regiment.)

The 11th Airborne spearheaded Operation Gypsy Task Force, a glider-para drop attack on Japanese installations on Luzon, the Philippines. In the China-Burma-India Theater were glider units-assigned to the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Air Commando Groups - which flew British troops into battle behind the Japanese lines.

So there were dedicated glider recovery units then. Thats a lot of dismantling and shipping!

Horsa gliders were more or less a 'once only use' item, on ops at least. During training where the landing zones were more than likely airfields, they would be expected to be reused. In fact, the pilot could, if he thought the landing area could have wire fences or other obstructions likely to cause his landing to be a little 'ropy', jettison the undercarriage and rely on a spring loaded skid in the center of the fuselage to reduce the chance of flipping over. This could have proved interesting for the 'rear gunner' who was laid prone in the tail section, facing aft. At least they were supposed to be, I wouldn't have liked to have been there for any landing, with wheels or skid.

Being built of wood with plywood skin, any hard landing would have rendered the airframe u/s so recovery after an operation was not deemed practical. Locals would have stripped them of anything useful and there was a Dutch woman who was living in one up to the 1970s. There are photos of her 'house' on display in the Assault Glider Project hanger.

Cheers. I don't know how I'd feel about being trained up in a large unpowered disposable aircraft!