By Randolph J. Hils
The path to Troop Carrier glider training programs was as varied as the men and the places that they hailed from. To Gale Ammerman, an AT-6 trainer crew chief, the call for volunteers to glider pilot training represented an opportunity to fly that might never be offered again. Under far different circumstances, John Lowden was shanghaied after washing out of power pilot training. Lowden was motivated to join the glider pilot program by an enterprising officer who gave him the choice of inventorying endless mounds of army blankets in a hot warehouse for the balance of his career or, "volunteering" for glider pilot training. No matter where a man came from or how he came to be a glider pilot in the ETO, it was likely that eventually his path led to the 38th Troop Carrier Squadron of the 1st Troop Carrier Command, the "Glider Squadron."
Unsung in any theater history and little known as training units usually are, the 38th Troop Carrier Squadron, (TCS) trained glider pilots in tactical combat flying between February 1942 and April 1944. Gale Ammerman and John Lowden were first assigned to South Plains Army Flying School in Lubbock, Texas for primary glider training. Additionally, the two completed another twelve-week course of Ranger infantry training at Bowman Field near Louisville, Kentucky. It fell to the 38th Troop Carrier Squadron to translate and turn in to training programs, use of completely new equipment and operational procedures that were developed from the experimentation of the secretive Glider Branch. The Glider Squadron's operations were carried out at Camp Mackall and Laurinburg-Maxton Army Air Base in North Carolina.
The most unique and challenging glider operation taught by the 38th TCS was the pick-up of a fully loaded glider from the ground by a flying power aircraft, "the snatch." The squadron was the first to put into practice pioneering experimental work by All-American Aviation Inc., Material Command, AAF, Dayton, Ohio and the Glider Branch at Clinton County Army Airfield, Wilmington, Ohio.
Battlefield conditions demonstrated that the standard glider tow take-off had it's limitations and the new imaginative pick-up or "snatch" system offered a number of advantages under adverse conditions. Gliders and personnel could be retrieved from conditions unfavorable to the landing of a C-47 tow plane. Gliders could be retrieved and delivered ready to perform again saving man hours and material required to disassemble and transport a glider back from the battlefield. Most importantly the evacuation of seriously wounded could be accomplished in record time from places where it would be impossible to land a plane.
Pre-war glider pioneer and AAF experimental glider test pilot Lt. Chester J. Decker joined the 38th TCS in November 1943 to teach the proper methods of glider snatch. Early on the program was handicapped because of a lack of C-47s equipped with the 900-pound pick-up unit. To overcome the handicap a dummy pick-up boom was constructed from a 20-foot pine tree and used for simulated pick-ups from a flying C-47. A high degree of skill was required for a power pilot to hit the pick-up station that which resembled a football goal post. Not until January 1944 was there sufficient snatch equipped C-47s available and intensive training was underway. Among the pilots first trained in glider snatch were pilots from the 1st Provisional Group, 60th Troop Carrier Wing, and the 349th, 442nd 441st and 10th Troop Carrier Groups.
In a Historical Report from the squadron for February and March 1944, the squadron Historical Officer, Capt. Robert Siren described the glider retrieval operation:
"The pick-up procedure, itself, is fairly simple. The glider, to be snatched, remains at rest in a position facing into the wind. A rope attached to the glider angles off to the right and extends outward 225 feet. A nylon loop with the circumference of 80 feet supported by two 12-foot poles approximately 22 feet apart is attached to the end of the 225-foot rope. The plane swoops down on the starboard side of the glider at a speed determined by the weight of the glider and the condition of the ground. A wooden-arm guides the rope onto the hook and the hook unclips from the arm. The hook is attached to1050 feet of 3/8" flexible cable and is wound around the drum in the pickup unit installed in the C-47. The cable pay out is resisted by a set of multiple disk brakes which gradually and smoothly accelerates the glider to the speed of the tow plane. The glider usually ends its acceleration period in seven or eight seconds and 600 or 700 feet behind the plane. The pick-up unit is equipped with a motor to wind in the cable when the occasion requires."
Between November 1943 and April 1944 at least 500 pick-ups were accomplished by the 38th TCS. In conjunction with the Airborne training at Ft. Bragg after the December 1943 maneuver 55 gliders were retrieved by snatching, and 76 more with the January maneuvers. Another 16 pick-ups were initiated in various areas and 55 were snatched from the WACO factory in Troy, Ohio as opposed to the much more expensive method of disassembly, crating and shipping the new gliders. It should be noted that during the time the 38th trained glider and power pilots in the art of the snatch, no serious injuries were reported to either pilots or equipment. The safety record stands as testament to the expertise of the unit.
The practicality of combat glider medical evacuation snatch was dramatically demonstrated for the first time in the European Theater with two CG-4A gliders that were flown into the Remagen Bridgehead on the Rhine loaded with medical supplies. The pontoon bridges across the Rhine were jammed with supply trucks headed for the front and another method was desperately needed to evacuate the seriously wounded held up in the area. Lt. Col. Robert Burquist, the 9th Troop Carrier Command Chief Surgeon learned the snatch technique to evacuate wounded had been accomplished in the Far East and ordered two gliders be equipped as air ambulances. Rigged with stretchers for the retrieval, on March 22, 1945 medical supplies were delivered then the wounded were loaded aboard. The first of two gliders were snatched from the ground by a C-47 from the 439th Troop Carrier Group and later that day the second was snatched by a C-47 from the 441st Troop Carrier Group. The wounded soldiers accompanied by a doctor and nurse were delivered to a rear area hospital in France in less than thirty minutes. Major Howard Cloud of Headquarters, 9th Troop Carrier Command expertly piloted the first glider, landing the CG-4A right up to the entrance to the surgical tent. The same evacuation by ambulance would have taken hours.
The 38th could also claim the distinction of the first unit to snatch a huge British Horsa glider with a C-47. The first Horsa came to the 38th at Camp Mackall North Carolina for experimentation and training in October of 1943. Lt. Col. Mike Murphy was the first member of the unit to fly the Horsa. Murphy then qualified 2nd Lt. Julian Hall on the big British Glider and Hall was assigned as the Horsa Instructor. Hall certified 30 glider pilots as Horsa First Pilots and gave hundreds of glider pilots familiarization rides as additional Horsas were assigned to the unit. Piloting the Horsa for the first attempt to snatch the large glider, Lt. Hall commented after the event that it was the "smoothest pick-up I ever flew."
For a little over two years the officers an men of the 38th Troop Carrier Squadron trained thousands of glider pilots in tactical combat flying. The testing and new training programs affected thousands more who would never know of the work done by the 38th. The Airborne Glider Infantry units, the lives saved by speedy medical evacuations, the critical re-supply of the 101st at Bastogne, hundreds of lesser known missions of were accomplished, in part, by the expert training of troop carrier aircrews at the 38th Troop Carrier Squadron, 1st Troop Carrier Command's "Glider Squadron."
Bibliography
Ammerman, Gale R. An American Glider Pilot's Story, Vermont: Merriam Press, 2001.
Day, Charles L. Silent Ones WWII Invasion Glider Test Experiment Clinton County Army Field, Wilmington, Ohio, Minnesota: Charles L. Day, 2001.
Lowden, John L. Silent Wings at War: Combat Gliders in World War II, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992.
Young, Charles H. Into the Valley: The Untold Story of the USAAF Troop Carrier in WWII, Texas: PrintComm Inc., 1995
____History of the 38th Troop Carrier Squadron February 1942 to April 1944, USAAF document.
____Historical Report For Months Of February & March, 1944, by Robert Siren, Captain, Air Force Historical Officer, Headquarters, 38th Troop Carrier Squadron, AAF, Laurinburg-Maxton Army Air Base.
