Clearing The Normandy Landing Zones of Gliders

Discussion in 'Airborne' started by Cee, Jul 3, 2022.

  1. Cee

    Cee Senior Member Patron

    All my photos of WW2 gliders in a deteriorated state I keep in a folder called "Relics". Relics is not the best word to use to convey what actually happened to the gliders abandoned in the fields they landed in. In Normandy the biggest concentration of gliders was on LZ 'N' near Ranville. Did the landowners/farmers receive any government assistance in their removal which would have been a major job? Note how the wings and parts of the fuselage have been systematically dismantled on a couple of the horsas in the second photo below. I thought it best to confine this examination to Normandy, but if you have any knowledge of removal methods used in Holland or Germany please chime in.

    LZ 'N' Ranville.jpg Horsa gliders Ranville 1946.jpg

    Regards ..
     
  2. brithm

    brithm Senior Member

  3. Cee

    Cee Senior Member Patron

    Hi,

    That looks like the glider repair and recovery program? How many did they actually recover? Suspect just a small percentage with the rest left to rot in the fields to be dealt with locally.

    Please stick up your "relic" pics if you wish. The most famous, the remains of Coup de Main gliiders at Pegasus Bridge:

    bhc007157-edit-2.jpg

    Regards ...
     
    Last edited: Jul 5, 2022
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  4. Dave55

    Dave55 Atlanta, USA

    I bet the farmers made good use of all those large, relatively flat aluminum panels though. Chicken coops, barn roofs, etc
     
  5. chrisgrove

    chrisgrove Senior Member

    Aluminium panels? Horsas were made of wood, weren't they?
    Chris
     
  6. Dave55

    Dave55 Atlanta, USA

    You're 100% right. I blew another one.

    The Horsa was composed largely of wood; it was described by aviation author H. A. Taylor as being: "the most wooden aircraft ever built. Even the controls in the cockpit were masterpieces of the woodworker's skill"

    Airspeed Horsa - Wikipedia
     
  7. Cee

    Cee Senior Member Patron

    Yes the fuselage and wings of British gliders were wood based. Much of the smaller installed equipment was made of metals. There are examples in England after the war of Horsas being converted for use as cottages, caravans, sheds and I suspect chicken coops. So I imagine they were employed in similar ways by the French.

    Was there a system in place to deal with all the parts that came off the concentrated LZs? British gliders were big.

    Regards ...
     
  8. Cee

    Cee Senior Member Patron

    Or they could have burned them where they sat and then collected the metal bits afterwards? No idea if that method was used, suspect not.

    Regards ...
     
  9. Temujin

    Temujin Member

    Here’s a YouTube of US Forces returning gliders (they were repaired in the field) to England

    Just A Car Guy: Glider retrieval after D Day

    Another colour film of pilots practicing the “snatch pick up” of gliders



    And this article on recovery by snatch pick up, with statistics of “how many” gliders were recovered this way during WW2

    https://explorenorth.com/library/aviation/RescueGliders.pdf

    Table of US recoveries from link above:

    And of course, I haven’t been able to find out if “ANY” were recovered by Allied Salvage Units…..still looking
     
    Last edited: Jul 6, 2022
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  10. Temujin

    Temujin Member

    Information from the source below:

    Recyclable


    Critics contend that the glider had a life expectancy of only one airborne operation since most assaults left the powerless aircraft destroyed beyond repair or unsalvagable. This statement is true as far as those gliders shot down or that skidded to a halt after hitting natural or man-made obstructions. Figure Two below, compiled from the 82nd Airborne Division after-action report for Operation MARKET-GARDEN, illustrates most gliders and cargo assigned to individual units landed in serviceable condition, and few casualties were evident.

    There were other circumstances, all preventable. First, retrieval of gliders had a low priority due to combat requirements and hundreds sat on secured LZs for several weeks before recovery aircraft or repair teams received permission to enter the area; by then, exposure to the elements had already taken its toll. Just to give an example, 97 percent of the gliders used by American forces in the Normandy landings were left to rot in narrow pastures in which they landed. Second, limited numbers of qualified recovery crews and pick-up equipment proved insufficient for handling the thousands of gliders involved in a major airborne operation. Third, lax security measures around LZs after an operation led to damage by vandals or theft by civilians who chopped up the plywood fuselages for fuel. Fourth, glider pilots whose job it was to help clear the LZs of spent fuselages and prep them for recovery returned to their staging areas in England, in most cases, three days after landing. Finally, because of a wartime economy tooled up for mass output, logisticians found it easier to replace than recover used stocks with new inventory taken right from the production line.

    Source: THE RETURN OF THE GLIDER
     
    Last edited: Jul 6, 2022
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  11. Temujin

    Temujin Member

    Last edited: Jul 6, 2022
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  12. Temujin

    Temujin Member

    Last edited: Jul 4, 2022
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  13. Cee

    Cee Senior Member Patron

    Hi Temujin,

    Thanks! From the standpoint of glider repair and recovery that is great material. Also came across the following quote with regard recovery after Operation Varsity:

    ------------------

    AIRBORNE OPERATIONS IN WORLD WAR II,
    EUROPEAN THEATER - By Dr. John C. Warren

    The gliders in VARSITY had fared much worse
    than their occupants. A caretaker detachment
    sent in on D plus 2 found them in bad shape with
    most of their clocks and compasses gone. Some
    600 repairmen arrived on 4 April and repaired
    148 Wacos enough so they could be snatched"
    and flown to Grimberghen for complete overhaul.
    In the case of the big British gliders, pick-up tac-
    tics were not considered feasible. Of those con-
    veniently located and in good condition, 24 were
    disassembled and hauled away by road to a base
    where they could be repaired, reassembled, and
    flown back. The rest of the American and British
    gliders were salvaged. Salvaged materiel from the
    Wacos alone filled 47 trucks and 30 trailers.
    Nevertheless, the fact remains that less than 17
    percent of the American gliders and 6 percent of
    the British gliders which had landed east of the
    Rhine were recovered in usable condition.


    -----------------

    In this thread I am also interested in how the other damaged gliders that did not qualify for recovery were removed from the landing zones and have changed the thread titled to better reflect that. Photos of those remainders sometimes have a story to tell.

    Regards ...
     
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  14. morrisc8

    morrisc8 Under the Bed

    After Arnhem the Germans burnt the Gliders, a few they could not get to were left. Original photos from my collection.
    Keith
    Arnhem 1945 photo DZ . 5a close up of burnt out gliders .jpg Arnhem 1945 photo DZ  1 close up gliders.jpg
     
  15. Aeronut

    Aeronut Junior Member

    My father was in the 51 HD who reinforced the 6th Airborne to the East of the Orne River/Canal. He told me that the remains of Horsa gliders were put to good use in providing top cover to slit trenches and dug outs on what was a quite static front. He was also quite proud of the protective case for the photo of my mother he made using Perspex salvaged from a Horsa.

    There is newsreel film of gliders leaving for Operation Varsity, close examination reveals some Mk II Horsa with the remains of invasion stripes on the wings. As Varsity was the debut for the Mk II I can only surmise that some Mk I wing panels recovered from Normandy were used for the Mk IIs.
     
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  16. Cee

    Cee Senior Member Patron

    The following photos were found at the River Dives Assocation site. Said to be the work of a M.M. Pontais, date unknown, some possibly taken on LZ 'N'. The Horsas have all been stripped down to the fuselage in a similar fashion. Was CN 101 a Tonga or Mallard glider?

    Pontais-5.jpg Pontais-7.jpg Pontais-8.jpg Pontais-9.jpg Pontais-10.jpg

    Regards ...
     
    Last edited: Jul 4, 2022
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  17. Cee

    Cee Senior Member Patron

    The attached photo below is one with a story to tell. It shows the remains of the glider that I believe crashed against a stone wall just above Ranville. If it was the one piloted by Staff Sergeant P.W.B. ''Bill" Musitano it would have been CN 119. As can be seen it has been partially disassembled and cleared away.

    bhc007123.-2jpg.jpg

    More on the crash and the men involved can be downloaded from here:

    https://icedrive.net/s/wyaRi6wj5Y6hgWAuufyBi95yw9wD

    Regards ...
     
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  18. Cee

    Cee Senior Member Patron

    A member pointed me to an interesting article on Le Grand Bunker Museum site which can be read translated below:

    "THE REMAINS OF 7 HORSA GLIDERS UNEARTHED IN NORMANDY
    Posted in ARCHEOLOGICAL EXCAVATIONS
    by Musee Grand Bunker

    The D-Day landing has not yet revealed all its stories.

    The Grand Bunker, museum of the Atlantic Wall and its team have uncovered the remains of 7 HORSA gliders, they had landed on June 6, 1944 in the town of Saint Aubin d'Arquenay. Fabrice CORBIN, curator of the museum located in Ouistreham, was very attentive to events related to the D-Day landings. He had in his possession aerial photos showing an impressive quantity of gliders, which had landed, not on Ranville or Bénouville, but on Saint Aubin d'Arquenay.

    Lieutenant Geoffrey Sneezum, a British veteran of the 12th Battalion "The Devonshire Regiment" confirmed all these facts, being there himself. 104 gliders took off on June 6, 1944 at 6:40 pm. They landed between Rommel's asparagus at 8:52 pm and at 9:20 pm on Landing Zone W.

    A few years later, "in the years 46-47", the owners of the fields, anxious to use their land, buried the remains of these gliders. Roger Mallet, 12 years old at the time, remembers that an air strip was built on the plain so that all these gliders, which could be repaired, could be flown back to England. Another, testifies: as a child, I used to play on the abandoned gliders in the plain. I was even reckless because I played with plastic or with strips of machine-gun cartridges that were lying around on the ground.

    Fabrice CORBIN, with the agreement of the owners and with the help of his team, undertook excavations in search of these gliders. In holes 20 meters long by 4 meters wide and 2.50 meters deep, they pulled out various objects: glider wing supports, complete landing gear, shock absorbers, shell containers, ammunition boxes, etc ..."


    A few photos from the article showing unearthed glider parts.

    photo fouilles 148.jpg photo-fouilles-126.jpg photo fouilles 152.jpg

    The two gliders seen in attached photo I believe landed on LZ 'W'.

    LZ 'W'.jpg

    Regards ...
     
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  19. Aeronut

    Aeronut Junior Member

    Interesting to see that the Hamilcar in those photos has already lost its nose and canopy. The noses made instant chicken sheds whilst the canopy is the part of a Hamilcar that has survived the most (the only part of a Hamilcar on display in several museums) as they made excellent garden cloches.
    This is a photo of the Army Flying Museum's store at Middle Wallop with the doors open, ignore the Skeeter as top right is the museum's spare Hamilcar canopy; the other is in position on the restored Hamilcar fuselage section.
    IMG_3807.JPG
     
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  20. Cee

    Cee Senior Member Patron

    Not sure if this is the same Hamilcar but its canopy is missing as well ...:)

    Pic_TetrarchHamilcar-2.jpg

    From the Pegasus Archive.

    Regards ...
     

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