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You will not find too many books or articles about the glider missions for Sicily that mention American glider pilots participating in this British operation. Letter, from glider pilot Samuel Fine to Mrs Yates explaining her nephew's death in the Ladbroke Operation. Hours: Open Tuesday through Saturday 10:00 am-5:00 pm and 1:00 pm-5:00 pm on Sunday.Video Courtesy of National Archives / NWWIIGPA collection The Silent Wings Museum is the only museum in the United States-and probably the world-dedicated solely to the interpretation and memory of the seemingly forgotten World War II glider program. A research library is also housed at the museum. Interactive kiosks provide the patron with audio-visual interviews with pilots, while other kiosks feature film footage from the war. A theater provides the visitor with a 15-minute film highlighting the glider program. A separate space, the Combat Gallery, houses examples of the cargo carried by the gliders, including a small bulldozer, a Jeep, 75mm howitzer, quarter-ton trailer, and even heavy machine-gun and mortar teams. The Hangar Gallery also includes an Aeronca L-3, a TG-4 training glider, a British Horsa cockpit section, and other glider-related exhibits. The 40,000-square-foot museum houses one of the few fully restored CG-4A gliders in the world. Outside the museum’s entryway, a vintage World War II C-47 stands guard, offering a preview of the exhibits inside. The old terminal building was completely refurbished and expanded to include a soaring, glass-walled Hangar Gallery.
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Interior of the spacious main hall of the Silent Wings Museum with its centerpiece-a restored Waco CG-4A glider-on display. In 2002, the former Lubbock civilian airport terminal, which was standing virtually empty after a new terminal was built at Lubbock’s Preston Smith International Airport in 1975, became the new home of the Silent Wings Museum. In the late 1990s, the aging pilots were determined to find a new home, with new ownership, for the museum. SPAAF and the legacy of the glider pilots both seemed to be fading from history when, in the mid-1980s, a group of veteran pilots decided to launch their own museum in Terrell, Texas, east of Dallas. A new, modern air terminal was built during the 1950s on the western edge of the old base while the cantonment portion of the base steadily disappeared. A C-47 “Skytrain” transport plane of the type used to tow gliders in WWII stands outside the museumĪfter the war, SPAAF was closed and the facility returned to the City of Lubbock. Located on municipal airport property leased by the Army from the city, SPAAF was a vital link in the training process for glider pilots. World War II uniforms on display along with a Laister-Kauffman TG-4 training glider and nose section of a British Horsa glider in the background.Īpproximately 80 percent of these forgotten flyers trained at South Plains Army Airfield (SPAAF) in Lubbock, Texas-located approximately 330 miles west of Dallas-going through their advanced training and receiving their “G” Wings at SPAAF. The pilots then became infantrymen, performing “ground-pounder” tasks until they were released to make their way back to their home airfields for additional missions. They flew their unarmed and unarmored CG-4A gliders on one-way missions behind enemy lines in support of Allied airborne divisions, such as the 82nd, 101st, and 17th Divisions. In the United States, these huge “flying-boxes-with-wings” were piloted by a small corps of about 6,000 specially trained volunteers. A mannequin demonstrates how the hinged nose of a CG-4A could be opened to allow for large cargo to be loaded and unloaded. and British operations at Normandy, into Southern France, Holland, and finally across the Rhine into Germany relied heavily on airborne elements.įor these operations to succeed, the paratroops on the ground needed instant support in the form of reinforcements and resupply, otherwise they could not have held their ground. During World War II, the use of airborne forces to “vertically envelop” the enemy went from an untested theory to a major part of offensive tactics, first for Germany and then the Allies.