Silent Wings at War: Combat Gliders in World War II

Silent Wings at War: Combat Gliders in World War II by Lowden, John L.. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9781560981213.

The pilots were known as "suicide jockeys" and the aircraft they flew were called "flak bait." Attached to hemp or nylon ropes and towed aloft by modified bombers or transport aircraft, Allied combat gliders were used in some of the riskiest missions of World War II: both day and night landings miles behind enemy lines carrying specially trained assault forces. In Silent Wings at War, John L. Lowden combines his own recollections with those of thirty-nine fellow veterans to create a vivid, gritty, jocose memoir of war as he and they lived it. Lowden recalls that casualty rates ranged from 60 percent in Sicily to 25 percent in the Rhine River crossing. In some operations, men were thrown into battle with the hope that enough would survive to accomplish the objective. Before a nighttime resupply of antitank artillery to Normandy, it was anticipated that 50 percent of the men and equipment would not be able-bodied or usable after the landings. Silent Wings at War records a lesser-known chapter of World War II history, distinguishing true tales of courage and humor from a long line of fiction about wartime. Covering training and strategy, as well as German, British, and American glider design, Lowden focuses on seven major Allied operations: from Sicily to Bastogne to the final Rhine River crossing, and British commando raids in the China-Burma-India Theater.