Recovering the Market garden Gliders

[Jeff]

I assumed they were just left where they landed, it seems not though

[dave]

hi Jeff,
i watched it last night, as you i thought they stopped where they landed, it surprised me how many were used to Arnhem, and that there were three types used, i thought they were only the Horsa's...
i like MF's videos, always well done.

stay safe, regards,
dave...

[davebasing]

Trips to the likes of Brize and Lyneham in the sixties would reveal a large number of Horsa sections (primarily around Brize) and Hamilcars (around Lyneham) on various farms in use as sheds or chicken coups. A large number of schools then also had Slingsby Grasshoppers for use by their ATC squadrons (including at Lord Wandsworth College alongside RAF Odiham). These could be manually launched briefly by squaddie pulling power on school playing fields but were mainly mounted on swivelling mounts to teach control use when turned into wind. Never 'did' non powered types (flew one once but the go-around performance left a bit to be desired). My non powered policy however met a clash with my fondness for US military when on a trip around the Naval Air Test Center at Patuxent River back in 1991. Avoided logging their gliders but did graph this Schweizer X26A Bu159260 for posterity.
Little bit of trivia, Fred Slingsby was a gunner/observer in the Royal Flying Corps in WW1 and received a Miltary Medal when his pilot was killed in mid-air on one sortie and Fred climbed forward out of his position to the cockpit and managed to land the aircraft. Post WW1 he started the Slingsby furniture company and later went into wooden glider production. He died aged 78 in 1973, what a life.

91-cg by dave tompkins, on Flickr