Compared to an airplane, a glider has a number of disadvantages. First of all, this is the inability to take off on its own: the glider can be launched using another aircraft, a ground winch, a powder pusher or, for example, a catapult. The second disadvantage is the seriously limited flight range. Of course, in 2003, the record pilot Klaus Ohlmann in the ultralight Schempp-Hirth Nimbus managed to overcome 3009 km in one free flight, but the flight distance of an ordinary glider even today hardly exceeds 60 km.
What can we say about the war times, when materials and structures were much more primitive! Finally, another significant disadvantage is the weight limitation. The heavier the glider, the worse its flight characteristics, therefore it will not be possible to equip such a machine with weapons from the cockpit to the tail. Nevertheless, the advantages - noiselessness, cheapness and ease of manufacture - have always attracted military engineers.
Waco CG-4A (USA, 1942)
The most massive military airborne glider in the world, almost 14,000 aircraft were built in various modifications. In addition to the United States, gliders were in service with Canada, Great Britain and Czechoslovakia and were widely used in various operations. About 20 Waco CG-4A gliders have survived to this day
Gloomy genius
The most famous story with the military use of gliders was, of course, the attempt by Richard Vogt, famous for his non-trivial thinking (what was the cost, for example, of an asymmetric fighter!). Oddly enough, the chief designer of Blohm und Voss did not start from the cheapness of the design (it became a side effect), but from the need to reduce the fighter. More precisely, its frontal area, since conventional aircraft were increasingly shot by the enemy "head-on". Vogt decided to implement his idea in a rather original way - getting rid of the engine.
Vogt's proposal was accepted in 1943, and by the spring of 1944, the Blohm und Voss BV 40 glider was ready for testing. The design was extremely simple: a cockpit made of armor plates (the most powerful, frontal, had a thickness of 20 mm), a riveted iron fuselage and a wooden tail section, elementary wings (a wooden frame sheathed with plywood).
The glider was somewhat reminiscent of the famous Japanese aircraft designed for kamikaze - so unreliable and strange it seemed to others. It was even more surprising that the pilot in the BV 40 did not sit, but lay on his stomach, resting his chin on a special stance. But his view was amazing: in front of him was a fairly large glass - armored, 120 mm.
Due to the fact that the pilots were above the cargo hold, the aerodynamics of the Ts-25 were worse than those of competitors, but for the landing glider, the payload was the prevailing factor.
One way or another, in late May - early June, a number of tests were carried out, and the glider showed itself well (Vogt was rarely mistaken at all, it was just that his course of thinking was very unusual). Despite the loss of several prototypes, the maximum speed reached during the tests - 470 km / h - was encouraging, and the pilots praised the stability of the glider. Another thing is that everyone complained about an extremely uncomfortable posture: arms and legs quickly became numb, and the flight could continue for quite a long time, especially taking into account the preliminary towing.
The Blohm und Voss BV 40 was supposed to be a successful fighter. Being very compact and almost imperceptible (by the way, complete silence also played a role), the glider could approach the enemy aircraft - primarily the calculation went to the B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bombers - at an attack distance. And then two 30 mm MK 108 cannons came into play.
But everything ended in the same way as many other projects of the Teutonic genius. An order was given for a batch of gliders by the spring of 1945, but in the fall of 1944 it was canceled, and the project was hastily curtailed. The reasons were simple: Germany, which was losing its assets, had no money left for the exotic, only proven solutions went into battle. The BV 40 did not have time to fight.
General Aircraft Hamilcar (UK, 1942)
One of the largest military gliders ever mass-produced. Used in a number of large amphibious operations.
Military transport theme
Vogt's project was the most famous, but not the only one in history (such statements can often be found in online and book sources). In general, gliders were used in the war quite often - both by the Germans and the Allies. Only these were, of course, not exotic fighters, but quite ordinary military transport vehicles, roomy and built according to the traditional glider scheme.
Famous German gliders of this type were the Gotha Go 242 and the giant Messerschmitt Me 321. Their most important characteristics are capacity, cheapness and noiselessness. For example, the Go 242 frame was welded from steel tubing, and the skin was a combination of plywood (in the bow) and a refractory-impregnated canvas (on the rest of the fuselage).
The main task of the Go 242, developed back in 1941, was the landing: the glider could accommodate 21 people or 2,400 kg of cargo, could silently cross the front line and land, performing the function of a "Trojan horse" (as the famous ace pilot Ernst Udet aptly christened the machine) … After landing and unloading, the glider was destroyed. The Heinkel He 111 served as a "tractor", and at the same time it could lift two "trailers". The Go 242 glider had many modifications, including with powder pushers, with skis and wheeled carts, with various weapons and sanitary equipment. In total, more than 1,500 airframes were manufactured - and they have successfully shown themselves in the delivery of goods and personnel on the Eastern Front.
The Messerschmitt Me 321 Gigant, also conceived as a disposable supply glider, turned out to be a less successful idea. The technical assignment implied the delivery by a glider of such cargo as PzKpfw III and IV tanks, assault guns, tractors, or 200 infantry! Interestingly, the first prototypes were made by Junkers. Her creation Ju 322, nicknamed Mammoth, proved to be monstrously unstable in flight. And the need to use cheap materials with a huge mass (imagine a wingspan of 62 m and a dead weight of 26 tons!) Led to the extreme fragility and danger of the machine. Experienced Junkers dismantled, and the Messerschmitt took up the banner. In February 1941, the first Me 321 samples took off and performed well. The main problem was the towing of a glider with a 20-ton cargo on board.
Initially, the "troikas" of Ju 90 aircraft were used, but such coherence required the highest qualification of the pilots (and its absence at least once led to an accident and the death of all four aircraft).
Subsequently, a special Heinkel He.111Z Zwilling double-fuselage tractor was developed. The combat use of "Giants" was limited to a very small number of tractors and the complexity of the design (for all its cheapness). In total, about a hundred Me 321 were manufactured, more or less regularly used for supply purposes, but by 1943 the program was curtailed.
One of the original projects of Pavel Grokhovsky, known for his non-trivial thinking - a transport air train. According to Grokhovsky's project, the leading aircraft could tow up to ten gliders with cargo. The project was not implemented.
In Soviet factories
An interesting coincidence in the names of the first Soviet designers who created military airborne gliders: three "gr" - Grokhovsky, Gribovsky and Groshev. It was in the design bureau of Pavel Grokhovsky that the world's first airborne glider G-63 was built in 1932. But the greatest contribution to the creation of such machines was made by Vladislav Gribovsky.
His first towing glider G-14 took off in 1934, and it was he who created one of the most massive Soviet airborne gliders, the G-11. The simplest wooden car could accommodate a pilot and 11 paratroopers in full ammunition. The G-11 was built of wood, a non-retractable landing gear was used for takeoff, and a ski was used for landing. Taking into account that less than two months passed from the moment the order for development was received (July 7, 1941) to the appearance of the airframe itself (August), the design perfection was amazing: all test pilots approved the characteristics of the machine, its flight qualities and reliability.
Subsequently, numerous changes and improvements were made to the airframe design. A motor glider was even built on its base. G-11s were regularly used to deliver troops and equipment to the combat zone; sometimes the glider just flew over the territory, dropped the load, turned around and returned to the landing point, from where it could be picked up. True, it is difficult to determine the exact number of manufactured G-11s: it was produced intermittently, at different factories until 1948. In the first period of the war (1941-1942), about 300 devices were made.
Ts-25 (USSR, 1944), designed for 25 paratroopers or 2200 kg of cargo, it has become a more perfect replacement for the well-known KTs-25 model. The main disadvantage of the latter was an unsuccessful loading system, which did not allow full use of the airframe's carrying capacity. On the Ts-25, the bow was hinged, which greatly simplified loading.
No less famous airborne gliders were A-7 Antonov and KTs-20 Kolesnikov and Tsybin. If the first was compact enough (accommodated seven people, including the pilot), then the second became the largest of the Soviet airborne gliders - it could accommodate 20 soldiers or 2, 2 tons of cargo. Despite the fact that only 68 KTs-20s were produced, they were accompanied by military success. Repeatedly, Soviet gliders successfully transported troops over the front line (where they were destroyed - the solid wood structure burned well). The post-war development of the KTs-20 was the heavy Ts-25, produced since 1947.
By the way, the gliders did a very good job for supplying the partisans. They were launched into the occupied territory, landed on partisan "airfields", and burned there. They delivered everything: weapons, ammunition, lubricants, antifreeze for tank units, etc. They say that not a single Soviet glider was shot down during the entire war. It is quite possible that this is true: it is extremely difficult to even detect an amphibious glider, especially when it flies silently at night, and to shoot down is a completely impossible task.
In general, there were quite a lot of Soviet airborne gliders - both experienced ones and those that went into series. An interesting direction of development, by the way, were towing gliders, for example, the GN-8 designed by Groshev. Such a glider did not detach from the aircraft at all, but served as a trailer to increase the carrying capacity of the base vehicle.
Tank wings
The legendary A-40 "Tank Wings", designed by Antonov in 1941-1942 and even made in one copy, belonged to the original military gliders, of course. According to Antonov's idea, a special glider system was "hung" on a serial light tank T-60. During the only test flight in September 1942, almost all the equipment was removed from the tank in order to facilitate it, but the power was still not enough. The tug lifted the glider only 40 m, and it was very far from the planned 160 km / h. The project was closed. By the way, the British (Baynes Bat) had a similar project.
Two words about allies
The allies, in particular the British and Americans, were also not alien to the military glider theme. For example, a famous glider was the heavy British General Aircraft Hamilcar, capable of carrying a light tank. In principle, its design did not differ from other models - the lightest, made of cheap materials (mainly wood), but at the same time it was close to the size of the German "Giant" (length - 20 m, wingspan - 33).
Used by General Aircraft Hamilcar in a number of British airborne operations, including Tonga (July 5-7, 1944) and Dutch (September 17-25, 1944). A total of 344 were built. A more compact (and more common) British glider of those years was the Airspeed AS.51 Horsa, which accommodated 25 paratroopers.
The Americans, unlike the Europeans, did not skimp on the number of military gliders. Their most popular model, the Waco CG-4A, created in 1942, was produced in more than 13,900 pieces! Waco was widely used in various operations by both the Americans and the British - for the first time in the Sicilian operation (July 10 - August 17, 1943). With a length of 14, 8 m, it could accommodate, in addition to two pilots, 13 infantrymen with ammunition, or a classic military Jeep (for the size of which it was designed), or other cargo of a similar mass.
In general, amphibious gliders were used everywhere in the war, there were dozens of systems and structures. And even today it cannot be said that this vehicle has finally become a thing of the past. The main advantage of the airframe, noiselessness with sufficient spaciousness, allows you to completely imperceptibly penetrate far into enemy territory, and the design, almost completely devoid of metal parts, will "save" from radars. Therefore, it is likely that someday the theme of landing gliders will be reborn from the ashes. And only the fantastic fighter Blohm und Voss BV 40 will forever remain a part of history.
