The Remarkable Airspeed Horsa

By ANN Senior Correspondent Kevin "Hognose" O'Brien

Read Part One

(This is the second in a three-part ANN special report on the gliders that carried Allied troops to Europe during the D-Day invasion of June 6th, 1944. Part Three Runs Thursday. -- ed.)

The Airspeed Horsa wasn't just any glider. Designed and prototyped in haste, made mostly of plywood, with sections manufactured by furniture makers and then assembled by the Airspeed firm, best known for light planes and trainers, it was a near DC-3 sized cargo truck of the air. The most common glider in the invasion was the Waco CG-4B which the British called "Hadrian." The CG-4B reminds you of an overgrown Cub: it's made of tube and fabric, and built as lightly, and cheaply, as possible. The Horsa reminds you of a plywood Hollywood mockup, built to be thrown away, but large.

The Horsa glider had tricycle landing gear that you were supposed to use only for takeoff, and then jettison -- it landed on the nosewheel and a stout wooden skid. Speed could be reduced a little, and descent steepened a lot, by gargantuan flaps. With no need for fuel tanks in the wings, the wing roots were home to equipment storage where the glider troops could stash all kinds of goodies -- heavy weapons, explosives, supplies, radios. The bottom skin of the glider's wing opened up almost like bomb-bay doors to allow these to be loaded and unloaded.

That skin, like almost all the machine's structure, was made of plywood with the barest minimum of metal fittings. The floor was reinforced, but the fuselage skin was deliberately made light enough that a trooper trapped inside could kick through it. A stout plywood bulkhead behind the pilots would protect them from cargo that shifted on landing --with a little luck. A large door in the port side of the fuselage behind the cockpit provide ingress and egress, and large loads like Jeeps (which needed some small modifications, like trimming the bumpers, to fit) or field guns were taken out the back -- removing four bolts let the tail cone fall off, and not only the pilots but passengers had trained to do that.

The Horsa was capable of carrying a wide variety of loads. This rare "load planner" (photo) was a custom -- patented! -- set of balances that were used in arranging cargo loads so that the Horsa remained within its CG range. The pilots sat side-by-side in a glazed cockpit, flying the glider with floor-mounted yokes. Their tiny instrument panel was set in between them. Inside the glider, the pilots worked, while the troops in the back waited, and worried. The sound of the tow plane was somewhat distant; the loudest sound was already rushing air. Most of the soldiers sang songs to pass the time, or joked. Some slept. The officers and NCOs ran over the plans in their heads.

The commander of the operation, Major John Howard of D Co 2nd Battalion Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry ("Ox and Bucks" -- memorialized at Pegasus Bridge, below), crouched behind the glider pilots and watched the target get closer. They would release at 6,000 feet. In twelve hours or less, he and his mean would be relieved by the commandos, and would be heroes... or they wouldn't, and they'd be dead, or captives. The Nazis, every man in the gliders knew, were inconsistent about taking airborne troops prisoner. Captivity might be very brief and unhappy.

How Much Landing Run Do You Need?

The Germans were keenly aware of the glider threat and looked out for likely landing spots, which they then despoiled with large posts like telephone poles, designed to tear the gliders apart -- or deny them that landing zone. Sometimes their creativity extended to putting land mines or explosive charges on top of the poles, or wiring them with barbed-wire guy wires.

But even with a whole continent enslaved, you can't put poles up in every field overnight. So they started with the largest ones and were working their way down. The Germans had their own gliders and knew how they performed. After all, a landing on too short a field wouldn't be logical.

The Landing Zones on the left flank of the invasion were so small that there was no chance at all for a safe landing, unless you were willing to land some distance away and then move overland -- through the areas the Germans had occupied for years -- to the bridges. There were fields right by the bridges but they were only a couple of hundred yards long. Far too small for a safe landing.

But the planners had seen a number of glider crashes, and they had been surprised about how well the troops came out of even spectacular pile-ups. What about a controlled crash, as near to the bridge as possible? Most of the men should survive. And they would know what they were about. The Germans would be shocked, because this was going to be the very first landing. This plan best preserved the glider's native stealth.

The planners believed that they were sending many men to their deaths, but with three gliders, each with an officer who fully understood the mission, and with all men completely briefed on the target -- they had been attacking a mock-up for weeks -- they expected that enough would survive to take and hold the bridges until the commandos could make it overland from Ouistreham at Juno Beach.

The officers and men in the gliders knew all about these expectations. Despite that, they crossed the channel singing. Or perhaps it was because of that.

FMI: Assault Glider Project, Tarrant-Rushton Site