Memorial Day - the Most Expensive Holiday

[GAHorn]

The real meaning of the Memorial-Day holiday is meant to honor all U.S. soldiers who have Died serving their country…. Who gave up the Most Precious Possession they had. (Veterans Day celebrates those who have Served.)

Originally called Decoration Day, Memorial Day's history goes back to the Civil War. It was declared a national holiday by Congress in 1971.

As we enjoy the Holiday…Never Forget the Why….

[GAHorn]

Here’s some Memorial Day visuals…

Imagine …you’re a conscripted soldier…told to sit on a wooden box in a throw-away wood-and-fabric glider … guided by a two-week-wonder glider-pilot…. to be towed and abandoned over unknown territory …hopefully to survive a once-in-a-lifetime landing on a non-airport field without flipping-over….and then, expected to run into combat.

What would your thoughts be?

And IF you were one of the guys up-front…. how much confidence would you have that 1200 lb 3-inch howitzer held down by ropes to the floor….won’t end up in your Back.. during that upcoming landing…? (the breech-end of that gun can be seen between the soldiers…the barrel will be up-between the “pilots”.)

CLICK to ENLARGE Pics

[hilltop170]

Those 2 guys ahead of the howitzer are the pilots! Good incentive for them to make a nice landing!

[n2582d]

Budd Davisson wrote an interesting article on the Waco CG-4A glider 30 years ago. Regarding the pilot’s incentive to make a smooth landing to prevent getting crushed by a howitzer he writes,

The airplane has some beautifully Goldbergian (as in Rube) operational features. For instance, the complete nose section, pilot seats and all, hinges up and out of the way so the cargo can be loaded straight in simply by pulling a couple of pins. A side benefit to that concept is it can be unloaded even quicker and protects the pilots in a really neat way. The gliders were sized to carry 13 men with combat equipment or a 75 mm howitzer attached to a jeep, or a jeep pulling a trailer load of ammunition. A healthy cable runs from the top of the hinged nose section back down the top of the fuselage, turns through a pulley and is then attached to the back of the jeep or howitzer. Then, as soon as the glider touches down a latch is tripped on the nose section so, if the load breaks free and tries to exit the front of the glider, its movement forward will yank the nose and the pilots up out of the way. In effect the airplane vomits out its load without squashing the pilots.

I knew that Cessna made furniture during the war years but apparently the reciprocal was also true; Davisson writes that furniture manufacturers like Ward Furniture were contracted or sub-contracted to make Waco gliders. Other manufacturers like Gibson Refrigerators and Baldwin Pianos were also contracted to produce them.

[DaveF]

For the first few decades of my life, Memorial Day was a nice holiday to kick off the summer. Then I visited the Henri-Chapelle cemetery in Belgium to visit the grave of my mother-in-law’s first husband, killed in the Battle of The Bulge in December 1944, and I haven’t thought about it the same way since.

[cessna170bdriver]