Why Glider Pilots Flew Into Normandy Without A Single Bullet To Shoot Back With

Two miles inland from Utah Beach, a plywood glider carrying an American general slides across wet grass toward a line of hedgerow trees, and there is nothing anyone aboard can do to stop it, because the aircraft has no engine, no brakes that work fast enough, and no weapon of any kind. In the seconds that follow, the highest-ranking Allied officer killed on D-Day dies without a single German soldier ever firing at his aircraft. This is the story of the roughly six thousand American glider pilots of the Second World War, most of whom volunteered only after the regular Army Air Forces had already turned them down for something else, and who flew unarmed, unarmored, engineless aircraft into the most heavily defended coastline in the world, then picked up a rifle and kept fighting once they landed. WHAT THIS DOCUMENTARY COVERS ● The crash of the "Fighting Falcon" glider and the death of Brigadier General Don Pratt on D-Day ● The origin of the Allied glider concept after Germany's 1940 assault on Eben-Emael ● The design and construction of the Waco CG-4A "flying coffin" ● The August 1943 St. Louis air show crash that killed Missouri's lieutenant governor ● Who became a glider pilot: relaxed medical standards, South Plains Army Airfield, Texas ● The invented rank of "Flight Officer" and why the Army created it ● How a CG-4A was actually flown: tow ropes, single-attempt landings, zero weapons ● Air Chief Marshal Leigh-Mallory's warning to Eisenhower of 70% airborne casualties ● Rommel's asparagus: the anti-glider pole obstacles planted across Normandy ● The six American glider missions of June 6-7, 1944: Chicago, Detroit, Keokuk, Elmira, Galveston, Hackensack ● What happened to glider pilots after landing, with no assigned combat role ● The postwar neglect and eventual recognition of the glider pilot program