The First Allied Invaders Came From The Sky -- In Gliders

Aero-News D-Day Anniversary Special Report By Kevin R.C. 'Hognose' O'Brien

(This is the first of a three-part series on the Allied invasion of Nazi-held Europe that began on June 6, 1944. Parts Two and Three will run Tuesday and Wednesday --ed.)

Everyone knows D-Day was the 6th of June, 1944. But by the time the landing craft hit shore at 6:30 in the morning, some Allied soldiers had already been in action for six hours. The very first of them came to the left flank of the invasion -- their job was to seize and hold two bridges over the Orne River and the parallel Caen Canal, and hold them until the commandos who were landed on the beach linked up with them.

This is the story of those men who came from the sky. They came in gliders.

Why The Operation?

At 2245 on June 5th, the six gliders and Halifax towplanes for the first attack of D-day took off from Tarrant Rushton in Dorset, England. Their goal was to seize two critical bridges that would let British troops expand their bridgehead, by crash-landing as close as possible to them right after midnight. Paratroops would drop shortly afterward, to blow up other bridges that the Germans would want to use for counterattacks. Then, after daylight, more gliders would land more troops and equipment nearby. Unlike some other events on D-Day, this operation went off exactly as planned.

Why A Glider?

Gliders were used by the major powers to deliver airborne troops from the 1930s until the late forties or fifties (depending on the nation). During that period they had definite advantages over other means of airlanding troops, especially parachutes. Paratroopers were often scattered to the four winds in the act of jumping; it was normal for their landings to be dispersed, and for there to be a degree of confusion and delay in assembly. They couldn't take weapons bigger than those one man could carry safely.

In contrast, gliders landed all the souls on board together, greatly simplifying assembly. Gliders could carry small cannons and vehicles; there was even a model that could carry a tank.

Also, a glider was the stealthiest means of delivery at the time. A glider was very nearly silent, and its towplane could release it far enough from the intended landing zone that enemy forces in the zone would not suspect they were under attack. That's exactly how the Caen Canal and Orne bridge attack took place -- the gliders were released at altitude, and they flew inland and approached the bridges from the landward side. The pilots had nothing to navigate on but compass and stopwatch, but they had rehearsed the operation thoroughly. All three of the gliders destined for the canal bridge touched down at the right place; two of the three gliders got to the Orne bridge (the other inadvertently landed at, and its soldiers seized, another bridge).

To ensure stealth, the gliders were camouflaged in green and brown on their upper surfaces, and painted flat black below. They would be as hard to see as they were to hear. But like every invasion aircraft, they were painted the night of June 5/6 with black and white invasion stripes. The stripes were hastily applied and uneven. "For one thing, we only had one brush per ten gliders," one of the pilots recalled. The purpose of these stripes was the exact opposite of the purpose of the camouflage -- by making Allied machines conspicuous, the organizers hoped to avoid the terrible friendly fire incidents that had befallen the airborne forces during the invasion of Sicily the year before. One paint job contradicted the other, but no one ever said the military was consistent.

Flying a Glider

Combat glider flying was a challenging profession. While some gliders would be picked up by flying towplanes, much like an aerial advertiser snatches his banner today, for D-Day most of the heavily laden gliders were aero-towed from a runway. The towrope -- hemp in those days, and well over an inch thick -- was laid out in S-rolls next to the aircraft. The towplane taxied forward until all the towrope was paid out and then when the line was taut, began to accelerate. The glider, even a heavily laden Horsa, took off first -- just like a modern sailplane behind its towplane. Until the towplane was up, the pilot was then flying in an imaginary box. Too low and he struck the runway --too high and he could lift the tail of the towplane with catastrophic results.

Two pilots manned each Horsa. They belonged to the Army's Glider Pilot Regiment, and would fight as infantry until they could be recovered. Unlike American glider pilots, who learned to fly in gliders from the beginning, most of the Britons had extensive time on piston trainers like the Tiger Moth or Miles Magister, and sometimes other powered aircraft.

The most common towplanes were Douglas DC-3s -- Dakotas, in British service -- although the British also used retired bombers like the Armstrong-Whitworth Whitley and the Handley-Page Halifax.

The Horsa was equipped with an instrument that showed the pilot the angle of the tow cable -- a strange looking instrument that would never be used again after the big British gliders were retired.

The air invasion was every bit as choreographed as the sea attack, and the glider tows had specific places to form up. In general, the tows got funneled together as they went further south over England. Then the pilots had to bear the long flight over the Channel, knowing that if they came loose from their towplane, their situation was hopeless. Over German-held France, the shelling began, as 88-, 105- and even 128-mm antiaircraft guns reached out, under radar control, for the unarmed towplanes and the plywood gliders. Then, the gliders were cut free and turned to the north, then to the west. They were on time, on altitude. The moon was out and they could see the silvery water where the Germans had flooded low-lying areas -- a few roads, and these two bridges, were the only way that Monty's British units would get off the beach.

FMI:  www.gliderpilotregiment.org.uk, www.assaultgliderproject.co.uk