This idea was dismissed until October 1938 by which time Student had risen to major-general and was appointed Inspector of Airborne Forces. Further field testing convinced Student that a vehicle was needed to deliver the heavy weapons for the lightly armed parachute troops. The Luftwaffe opened a parachute school as a result in 1937. He reported back to his superiors in Berlin details of a 1,500 man parachute drop and the large transport gliders that he had seen. Luftwaffe Colonel Kurt Student visited Moscow as part of the military collaboration programme with the Soviet Union. Larger gliders were then developed culminating in an 18-seater at the military institute in Leningrad in 1935. In 1932, the Soviet Union demonstrated the TsK Komsula, a four-place glider, designed by GF Groschev that could also be used for cargo.
By 1934, the Soviet Union had ten gliding schools and 57,000 glider pilots had gained licences. The early sporting objectives of gliders were quickly overtaken in the Soviet Union and in Germany by military applications, mainly the training of pilots. As a result, German aircraft designers turned their attention toward the practical development of unpowered aircraft, with a pilot remaining in the air in a glider for more than 20 minutes and a national glider competition emerging by 1922. The development of modern gliders was spurred by the Versailles Treaty following World War I, under the terms of which Germany was prohibited from constructing certain high powered airplanes. 4.1United States Army, Army Air Forces, and Air Force.5.2 United States Navy and Marine Corps.5.1 United States Army, Army Air Forces, and Air Force.Also, advances in powered transport aircraft had been made, to the extent that even light tanks could be dropped by parachute. Helicopters have the advantage of being able to extract soldiers, in addition to delivering them to the battlefield with more precision.
The Soviets also experimented with ways to deliver light tanks by air, including the Antonov A-40, a gliding tank with detachable wings.īy the time of the Korean War, helicopters had largely replaced gliders. This heavier equipment made otherwise lightly armed paratroop forces a much more capable force. Larger gliders were developed to land heavy equipment like anti-tank guns, anti-aircraft guns, small vehicles, such as jeeps, and also light tanks (e.g., the Tetrarch tank). Furthermore, the glider, once released at some distance from the actual target, was effectively silent and difficult for the enemy to identify. Gliders, on the other hand, could land troops and ancillaries in greater concentrations precisely at the target landing area. Landing by parachute caused the troops to be spread over a large drop-zone and separated from other airdropped equipment, such as vehicles and anti-tank guns. Troops landing by glider were referred to as air-landing as opposed to paratroops. Most nations seriously attempted to recover as many as possible, to re-use them, so they were not originally intended to be disposable, although resource-rich nations like the US sometimes used them as if they were, since it was easier than recovering them. The one-way nature of the missions meant that they were treated as semi-expendable leading to construction from common and inexpensive materials such as wood. Once released from the tow craft near the front, they were to land on any convenient open terrain close to target, hopefully with as little damage to the cargo and crew as possible as most landing zones (LZ) were far from ideal. Most military gliders do not soar, although there were attempts to build military sailplanes as well, such as the DFS 228. These engineless aircraft were towed into the air and most of the way to their target by military transport planes, e.g., C-47 Skytrain or Dakota, or bombers relegated to secondary activities, e.g., Short Stirling. Military gliders (an offshoot of common gliders) have been used by the military of various countries for carrying troops (glider infantry) and heavy equipment to a combat zone, mainly during the Second World War.
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