All the instruments you'll even need

Here's the complete cockpit instrument panel for the Waco CG4A glider.

And here's a description of the flight controls. Note the last sentence.

Gliding Along

Well, here we go with yet another blog.  Sometimes, only a blog will fill the bill.  This one is going to be about World War Two Gliders.  Whenever we find new stuff about those aircraft and their courageous crew, we will put it here in this blog so it is easy to find and share.
The photo is the cockpit of the Waco GC4-A.  We found it in this Wiki about that aircraft:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_CG-4

Another view of the WACP CG4A cockpit is below

Here's the key to the cockpit controls

Martin Litton Glider Account #1

This account of Martin Litton's WWII glider pilot experience is excerpted from The Sequoia Forest Keeper website:  http://www.sequoiaforestkeeper.org/martin_litton__president.aspx

During WWII, in July 1941, Martin was called to active duty to serve as the campaign in Europe was heating up. His fascination with flying had him choose to serve with the Army Air Corps. Due to his colorblindness, Martin was disqualified as a P-40 fighter pilot but with his stubborn tenacity he found a way to beat the tests and convince the doctors that he had no such problem when he applied to become a glider pilot. He trained on every aircraft available before they allowed him to train as a glider pilot. It takes a special kind of pilot to fly gliders because every mistake can prove fatal, so Martin was thrilled to be among the elite group of glider pilots to serve.

In 1942, he married the love of his life, Esther, but their honeymoon was cut short by his immediate deployment to the 82^nd Airborne’s 325th Glider Infantry Wing to fly sorties over Europe.

His unit was involved with Operation Market Garden which successfully kept the German Army from destroying the bridges in the Nijmegen sector of Grave, Netherlands. Martin piloted the 15-troop glider the Waco CG4A. They flew behind enemy lines on September 18, 1944. The glider came under fire as Martin flew his payload of troops and equipment toward Nijmegen. One wing was shot through and one of the soldiers on the plane was hit with shrapnel in the buttocks. After they landed, another soldier used his bayonet to dig out the metal and filled the wound with sulfa before bandaging it.  

As Martin and three of his men walked through the battlefield toward the newly liberated towns of Belgium; they surreptitiously advanced along the road but at times had to avoid being detected by enemy troops by breaking off reeds from nearby marshes and then using them as snorkels to swim completely submerged in roadside canals. A few times they were forced into firefights with the enemy and even captured a few prisoners in the process. After many days they finally made it into Brussels and noticed other soldiers in town who were all in clean uniforms. They on the other hand, were quite a sight, covered in mud and manure from head to toe. Their smell matched their look and Martin felt quite embarrassed slinking into town and trying to stay unnoticed but they were discovered. Instead of recoil, the newly liberated townspeople grabbed them up and treated them as heroes. They were given food and drink as they related the success of the 325th Glider Infantry Wing during the second day of Operation Market Garden.

Soon they found their way to an inn where they were able to clean up and rest. Most of the gliders were recovered from the battlefield, rebuilt, and then reused with Martin flying several more missions.

While he was resting in Brussels before heading back to England where the 82^nd Airborne was stationed, he had time to explore a bit with his Kodak Senior six-20 camera. As the war continued and R&R was mandated, Martin wouldn’t rest but spent his time exploring the natural marvels of Europe. After Market Garden he rested at Ullapool, Scotland on the eastern shores of Loch Broom. When the 325^th base was transferred to France, he would take R&R on the Mediterranean around Monaco. He took photos of people shopping, doing laundry, going to church, children playing, all while the war raged around them. Occasional gunfire from random combat was juxtaposed by everyday living. The reality of war is that life continues until it is stopped.

On one mission, he was shot down, and after several days of firefights with German soldiers, hiding in marshes and walking along roads, he made it safely back to Brussels, Belgium.

http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_27047165/martin-litton-legendary-conservation-leader-dies-at-age

Fedarko's comments to Boston NPR re: Martin Litton

Martin Litton (left) and unidentified solider in from of Litton's Waco-CG4A "Old Kern River II"

MELISSA BLOCK: I mentioned that Martin Litton served as a glider pilot in World War II. Did he talk to you about that experience and what may have carried over into his later life?

KEVIN FEDARKO: He did talk about it and people sometimes ask, where did Martin get this fire and this rage from? And I think that part of the answer resides in his experiences in World War II. His job was to pilot a motorless glider with no defense system, often crammed with ammunition, or gasoline, or medical supplies or soldiers. The men who piloted those machines crash-landed their gliders behind enemy lines. Often they would be piloting their gliders through a hail of antiaircraft fire and these were extraordinary missions. They required an exceptional degree of courage and I think after having gone through that experience and endured that ordeal, standing toe-to-toe and battling with engineers of the Bureau of Reclamation or logging companies in Northern California paled in comparison. I don't think that there's anything that Martin confronted later in his life, including running class 5 rapids at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, that ever really seemed quite as bad as crash-landing a glider behind enemy lines in Europe.

http://www.wbur.org/npr/368282862/martin-litton-remembered-as-fervent-conservationist