Just follow the rope: WWII glider pilots remember

Flight Journal, Feb 2002 by Fisher, Scott M

They were some of the most heroic pilots of WW II. They were quick-thinking pilots in command while flying their troops or supplies into battle. Then, if they survived a crash landing, they were transformed into airborne infantry soldiers. They flew on the darkest nights over oceans, mountains and deserts and landed in swamps and jungles and on city streets-sometimes through the deadly gunfire of their own forces. Many died, but thanks to the glider pilots of World War II, thousands of other lives were saved and battles won. The veteran war correspondent, and later television news anchorman, Walter Cronkite, who flew into Holland in a WACO CG-4A glider to report on the ill-fated Market Garden campaign said, "I don't recommend gliders as a way to go to war. If you have to go, march, swim, crawl-anything, but don't go by glider!"

At the beginning of WW II, the U.S. military didn't have any gliders. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, however, Maj. Gen. Henry "Hap" Arnold was briefed on the success of Nazi glider troops' invasion of Fortress Eban Emael and the island of Crete. Arnold declared, "We shall have a glider force second to none in the world." So the scramble began to set up training centers, procure both glider and tow aircraft, find qualified instructors and attract recruits.

Maj. Lewin B. Barringer, a glider pilot in civilian life, was appointed by the Army Air Corps to run the show. He contacted manufacturing companies and private flight schools and sent dozens of recruiters from state to state to line up instructors who had glider experience.

One of those recruiters happened to drive through Plymouth, Michigan, and stopped at Triangle Field, where Lyle A. Maxey, Paul "Ed" Laine and Chuck Kohls were members of the Detroit Glider Council. They all agreed to become glider instructors for the U.S. Military, so in January 1942, the three young men headed by car to the 29 Palms Air Academy in the California desert. Maxey recalls, "We drove continuously and made the trip in about three days. The Air Academy was in a startup mode when we arrived, and we had to go through ground and flight checks to get commercial glider pilot licenses so we could act as paid instructors."

Ed Reeder, another instructor at 29 Palms, explains there were four basic types of student: "Most students came from the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP) as members of the Enlisted Reserve Corps. Others were transfers from the Aviation Cadet program where they'd had sixty hours of flight and ground school, similar to CPT. Some also came directly from the military ranks, and the smallest group were CAA private pilots."

Lyle Maxey adds, "The first six classes of students were commissioned officers who had already completed powered, fixed-wing flight training-regular Army Air Corps pilots, probably about fifty or sixty who would form a cadre of operational flying groups of deployed glider units."

Some of the glider units contained celebrities. Flight Officer John L. "Jackie" Coogan, the childhood film star, was one of Maxey's students at 29 Palms. "On night operations, on our dry lakebed he [Coogan] would tell dirty stories for two hours every night for about a month and never repeat himself," Maxey recalls. Coogan later served with distinction in the China Burma India theater. On one mission, he landed his glider a few miles short of the landing zone. Although he was not injured and was able to walk through the dense jungle to reach the rest of his unit, rumors of his being captured or killed in action circulated back to the U.S. His fellow glider pilots weren't worried about him; one remarked, "We knew that nothing could happen to any man who had been married to Betty Grable."

To attract more recruits into the glider pilot program, the Air Corps launched a media blitz. Posters went up all over the country with slogans such as: "You too can soar to victory on silent wings!" Each recruit was promised that he would become a staff sergeant in six weeks, and on graduation, would be awarded silver pilot wings and the rank of Flight Officer (or Warrant Officer) with a corresponding raise in pay. For some, the draw was the extra pay; for others, it was a chance to avoid being stuck in a "ground outfit." Iowa glider pilot James Swanson, who participated in three major glider operations in Europe, recalls, "We were all volunteers; we were there for the adventure. I celebrated my twenty-first birthday with the Dutch Underground."

Wilbur Dawson, from Rockford, Illinois, recalls, "I had recently graduated from college and figured it sure beat walking. Of the nine men who signed up with me in Decatur and went through glider raining, I was the only one left by the end of the War." Another Illinois glider pilot, Donald Sipe of Sterling, who flew in three major European glider assaults, says, "I wanted to learn to fly at government expense."

Many of the training schools were poorly equipped to handle the training needs of those early student recruits. Walter Craig Davidson, an instructor at the Wickenburg Arizona Flight Academy, recalls, "We had five flights of students there, and we had two T-Crafts and three Laister-Kauffman sailplanes. They were towed by BT-13s, BT-15s, or Jeeps."