The Great Glider Grab - Salvaging Operation Market Garden Gliders 1944 

My cousin was a private with the 101st, 506PIR. Operation Market Garden was his first campaign drop and his last - he died on Sep 20, a few days before his 19th birthday. He is buried at Margraten where his grave is well cared for by the locals. Thanks for honoring these vets with your excellent stories.

Interesting note: A British group had the idea to celebrate the 50th anniversary of D-Day, by making a glider from the blueprints used to make the original aircraft. Their plan was to fill it with volunteers who would be towed by a C-47 across the Channel and land in the glider, just like on June 6. When they approached the British government for approval, they were denied permission because they deemed the glider unworthy and unsafe for human occupancy. True story.

I was fortunate as a young man to have many elderly customers share their life experiences with me. One fought in the Spanish American war, joined the Navy afterwards and got caught up in the Boxer rebellion. Another was General Pershing's driver, and another customer told me about seeing Queen Victoria' s diamond jubilee as a young boy. He was 93 when he told me. One story that stuck in my mind was a WW2 veteran who washed out as a glider pilot. He felt ashamed of being a failure but admitted that have probably would have been killed at Normandy. I hold each of these stories dear in my memory and glad to have met these men. My advice to young people is to spend a moment to listen to old folks tales. History is being written everyday, but these are the people who lived it. I love this channel as there are so many thoughtful comments.

My late father was at Arnhem (L section 1st Airborne Divisional Signals) and he used to tell a story that during one of the exersizes on the lead up to Market Garden, there was a shortage of gliders, and an officer challenged why a particular glider was supposedly unservicable. He insisted it be hooked up to a tow plane, took it up, cast off the tow rope, carried out a few manouvres, then dove it at full speed and looped it before landing it. At which point he declared it servicable, and it was issued to ... my fathers radio crew. Needless to say they spend the whole exersize flight looking nervously at the 4 3/8th inch explosive bolts that were all that held the tail in place (see 4:00 and 4:12 where tail units have been blown off for a fast exit). He ended up being one of the few who made it back across the Rhine from Oosterbeek and the only survivor from his crew.

A security guard at one of my jobs 25 years ago was in the Korean War. He recovered tanks damaged in battle. He said he still had nightmares of what he saw inside the tanks. You don't have to be in "battle" to have PTSD. I have so much respect for ANY soldier.

Interesting video as always. Randomly met Babe Heffron and Bill Guarnere about 17(?) years ago. They were part of a tour along with some cast from BoB visiting bases in Europe. They were just sitting at a cafe on a nice afternoon (we were really surprised no one else had recognized them). All were super great about chatting with us and taking some pics with the kids. Of course we felt very fortunate to meet and thank them.

The figures are outstanding , the research astounding , Mark your 10 min video is truly remarkable!!

My father flew a Horsa in Operation Varsity in 1945. He was RAF and volunteered to join the Glider Pilot Regiment which was of course Army. He and his RAF colleagues insisted on wearing their Air Force blue uniforms and wings. He is 97 and remembers every detail as if it were yesterday. They were an extraordinary group of young men. Your videos are wonderful and much appreciated.

Imagine going to war against a well-armed, well-trained, and determined enemy in an aircraft with no engines, that had already been used, patched up, and "recovered". Truly, the Greatest Generation.

My Grandad went into Burma on one of these things, he called them crates.. He also said he met Jackie Coogan (not sure if he was his pilot or not) who was one of the pilots... Uncle Fester in the original Adams Family... :)

The final scene of "Objective Burma" has Errol Flynn and comrades in a glider that gets snatched up by a passing Dakota. It really surprised me because I had always considered gliders to be a one-shot weapon.

One of the best components of a Dr Mark Felton video are his excellent pronunciations. He is the standard that I compare other history videos with. Thank you Sir for your superior content!

My grandfather took part in Operation Market Garden as a British paratrooper and his task was to take the railway bridge which I believe the Germans blew up sometime during the battle, luckily he survived the battle but unfortunately spent the rest of war as a P.O.W

Monty's defenders tend to gloss over this disaster. It really was a very non-Montylike operation. Up to this point, Montgomery had always carefully planned his operations and marshalled his forces, sometimes painfully so. In this case, he rushed headlong into a poorly planned assault. Had he listened to his intelligence reports, he would have known that the 9th and 10th SS Panzer divisions were there. And they were no boy scouts.

My uncle Jess was gliders 101st airborne, there was a drop of over 400 gliders, 14 were reusable, without repairs! His brother was 82nd airborne.

My Uncle, Staff Sgt George Davis, landed his Horsa, intact at Arnhem. Wonder if his was recovered? He spent the rest of the war in a POW camp. Liberated by the Russians.

You really have to see these gliders up close to understand how brave the troops they carried were. Most of these rickety crates looked like they were knocked together in a garage by amateur carpenters. Considering the competent British carpenters were building Mosquito bombers, they probably were. Though the US versions weren’t any better. It might’ve been more efficient to train the glider troops to build their own. The idea of re using them is understandable in one sense but in another much like recycling chewing gum.

I wonder if the glider pilot managed to duck in time when that snatched-up tow rope snapped and came flying back through the windshield.....Yikes!

The Army Air Corp Museum is one of the few places in the uk where a WACO glider and Horsa can be seen parts are still on there wants list for the Hamilcar well worth a visit

Very interesting subject to cover. Peeking behind the curtains during (and often closely after) the war sometimes is more interesting than putting a spotlight on things that have been covered thousands of times.

Recovery and salvage are really interesting topics and rarely covered. Thank you! Timely for the circular economy as well.

I believe the pick up method of returning gliders used here was similar to a system which had been used in the past to allow biplanes to receive messages from ground forces. It has been some time since I came across this but I believe that during WW1, before aircraft were fitted with radios, aircraft which were spotting for the ground forces would pick up messages using this method. Any messages coming from the aircraft were usually put inside a small container with a flag attached. It would be dropped out of the aircraft near to the command position where it would be picked up and read.

History Channel: Who are you? Mark Felton: I am you, but with fewer aliens.

Mark - you sir, are literally a machine pumping out one very interesting military documentary after another... keep up the good work!

My Granpa was pulled off of bus headed to basic training and sent to a location in Palo Duro Canyon Texas where he was tasked with building a top secret glider runway. 2 miles long 1 mile wide. Perfectly level. He warned against it as the end of the runway was into the canyon where the updraft would eventually kill several pilots before being scrapped and then he was sent to the Texas coast to begin another but the end of the war came and the need for a glider field was no longer. He then worked with a man delivering supplies by air to oil field patches. He said he never wanted to learn to fly. It was around that time he took another job where he operated a water cannon on the first fire ever extinguished by Red Adair.

I can't imagine how frightening it must have been to fly and land in these gliders. Another amazing video, Mr. Felton.

The spearhead 1st airborne was roughly handled by the germans...i love the typical British understatement.

Thank you, greetings from the Netherlands ;-)

My Uncle trained as a Glider Paratrooper. He told me after a few training landings. He was not going to go into battle in those gliders and immediately Volunteered Regular Airborne . He was assigned to the 11th ABN DIV. And went to the Philippine's.

What better way to than glide into another fascinating subject from WW2 than with Mark Felton at the controls.

Here in Brevard County Florida there are some remains, aluminum chunks, out in the Saint Johns River area of gliders from the Banana River Naval base that were used for training from WW2. Thanks Mr Felton.

My hometown is exactly in between Arnhem and Nijmegen. Its crazy to think that these guys have landed around me. There was a special role for Polish soldiers. They were the first soldiers to cross the rivers in rubber boats.

I knew a man who was a pilot who pulled gliders during the war. He was involved in the recovery operations.

U.S. Army doctrine required three all-weather paved highways to exist in front of any armored or infantry division for operational plans; to that, the Great Monty said, "Bosh!", and tried to send an entire corps up a single raised highway across open country that was defiladed and exposed virtually the entire way to Arnhem. All Market Garden accomplished was delaying the entire Allied advance for 3 months, destroyed 3,000 gliders, killed off the Red Devils as a fighting force, killed and wounded another 60,000 crack allied airborne troops and subjected the Dutch people to another 6 months of Nazi terror. It also no doubt helped assuage that pompous little glory hound's ego. The entire war effort in Europe would have been far better along had he remained in France pivoting on his Caen.

You didn't mention aluminium (or aluminum). The gliders - particularly the American Wacos) were full of aluminium which was a resource the Allies were desperately short of throughout the entire war. It was really precious stuff and worth recovering. How precious? Well, the US Army signal corps was forced to use steel for the casings, chassis and internal struts of many of its later radio sets because of a critical shortage of aluminium. Steel, although plentiful, is nearly twice as heavy as aluminium so that was a significant and very unwelcome weight penalty - especially for portable sets. Whilst the US was undoubtedly the 'Arsenal of Democracy' in WW2, we may not know that the British Empire & Commonwealth was a vital supplier of RAW MATERIALS to America. Many billions of dollars worth of rare and precious metals (refined or as ores), - things like chromium, molybdenum and gold - were supplied, along with fibre, woven fabrics, quartz (for radio crystals) and particularly rubber (the only free world source was British Ceylon - and synthetic rubbers, neoprene and so on, were far from successful in the war) along with vast quantities of petroleum products from British refineries in the Middle East as well as foodstuffs from Oceania were sent to America and US troops - particularly in the Pacific, SEA and CBI theatres via 'reverse lend lease'. American Lend-Lease supplies accounted for LESS than one-fifth of even just the British Isles war production; useful, sure but not the 'total dependence' that US revisionists have attempted to claim ever since WW2.

FYI, (at least) one of the C47s that were used to pull them out is still flying. She is appropriately named ‘Drag ‘em Oot’ operated by Aero Legends at Headcorn Aerodrome in Kent. We used to jump from her at Normandy and Arnhem every year for the commemorative events…

The oddly hilarious in context counterpoint to this was over in the Pacific, where Carrier Air Crews were being told to not waste time repairing damaged Hellcats. Just toss it overboard and get a new one out of the box. Grumman was producing them so much faster than they were being lost. The Navy was running out of parking spaces, but they didn’t want to slow down the production lines or lay people off with the war ongoing.

Very informative, I had assumed the gliders were scrapped or burned after use. Whilst on the topic of Market Garden, any chance you could do an episode on the Polish General Stanslaw Sosabowski?

My grandfather landed the 82 airborne in the Nijmegen sector in a cg4a.he said some glider pilots were killed when the tow ropes snapped back.

Pronounced 'Wayco'. 'Wacko' is best used to describe the whole concept of Market Garden.

My father's a pilot on a C-47. He towed one and sometimes two gliders at D DAY and market garden. I toured one in a Houston museum one day , scary for sure.

I'm far from an expert, but the biggest problem with Market-Garden is that there was little if any room for error. Every part had to succeed or the whole thing would fail. Monty screwed up and he was just trying to save face.

Gentlemen! This is a story you will tell your grandchildren and mightily bored they will be! 😉 Many thanks to Dr Felton for this gem 😀

A relative and I visited The Silent Wings Museum in Terrell, Texas before its relocation. The museum had interesting displays of memorabilia and a restored glider. The glider pilots were often chaps disqualified from flight school due to eyesight or other reasons. But in reality, they were exceptionally capable, sticking one-try landings while overloaded with men and equipment. As an aside, my relative had grown up working in the fields not far away, watching the English fliers train to return home for the war. As always, another excellent Mark Felton video.

I'd have hated having to ride one of these in WW2! Terrifying! Having being Airborne qualified in '89. Give me a parachute.

Bleeding heck. Surfing U tube and Mark has been on for 11 minutes. 1.5k views. Good Lord. Must be a "must watch' jobbie. And it is!

The failure of Marketgarden does not diminish the effort and sacrifice of those that conducted the entire operation.

No one that reviewed the plan for Market Garden heard the part about the narrow road? Seems like a colossal oversight to me.

My father serviced in Iceland for two years in the Signal Corp and his unit was shipped to England and he was attached to the 101sr Airborne as a glider trooper. He never mentioned any combat jumps but the training flights weren’t fun. I remember him saying that the glider pilots had flunked out of bomber school.

It is amazing to me how little Germany could think that it could fight the entire might of the Soviet Union, the United States and the British Empire of 1944. Germany was out numbered by what, 8 to 1 or was it 7 to 1. Such ingenuity by the Americans and British, amazing. Thank you Mark Felton, your stories are wonderful.

Back in those days (including before the war) recycling and re-use of everything was a normal part of culture.

Can't believe it was ever considered to be economically or militarily valuable to try and reuse non-engined aircraft which I would assume were mostly made of wood. Surely it would have just made sense to have broken down those that were useful for spare parts and left the rest than resources on engineers, aircraft, and fuel in flying them back to base

In the dutch movie 'De slag om de Schelde' (english title = the forgotten battle) there is a scene of these glisers being towed and what that was like, especially under fire. I mean, no armor whatsoever on those things.

Pre-emtively saying good work Mark, Keep up the good work!

There is an unrestored Waco glider in my local WW2 aviation museum here in Idaho. It was converted into a camping trailer at one point!

As a history lover and history channel, you’re always learning some new that you never knew about! That’s the beautiful thing about history. I never even considered or heard of recovering the gliders from Operation Market Garden. Outstanding job Dr. Felton!

This is fascinating Mark. I always wondered what happened to all the gliders that were used in Market Garden and other airborne drops where they were used.

Timeless! Although I somehow missed this episode 2 years ago, it is just as interesting today as it was then. Thanks for posting these interesting and educational videos. 🙂👍

"A Bridge too far"

Flying a C-47 at low altitude, at speed, to hook up with a glider and pick it up. Just an average workday back then. Hot damn

You never cease to amaze me with presenting WWII knowledge I hadn't learned before. Thank you, sincerely.

those glider snatch video shots were really cool, many thanks!! (sometimes i worry abut why i enjoy this obscurata so much)

OK So as an aircraft mechanic let me just say that glider recovery sounds like the crap end of the stick as far as maintenance details go. I feel for those guys working out in the rain and artillery fire!

Great video - Can you imagine the trepidation of a glider pilot sitting in a patched up machine waiting for a C47 to fly over and pick up your tow rope! You would imagine yourself about to be catapulted into the nearest tree!

Interesting as always. Especially in interest from the allied nations to repurpose and repair war equipment to not waste precious materials. To bad it's a fsr cry from todays military where the military industrial complex has started to lock software and repairs behind heavily profited repair services performed by civilans.

Absolutely amazing video. Thanks much for your efforts to pull this together. Cheers from Brazil.

Dr Felton is the definition of unbiased reporting of historical topics. No one is perfect but great thought and research are on display in each of Dr Felton’s videos. I know that I can trust the title of each video to not be switch bait to get me to click on. When today’s environment of changing history to fulfill certain political agenda’s is taken into consideration that you can’t trust anything or anyone without doing your own research this is one channel I don’t have to do anything but just watch to learn something new. Dr Felton takes out bias and just presents everyone with real history. For a man from across the pond to report on Operation Market Garden without painting to rosy of a picture of it and stay on task about glider’s reuse is fabulous. Thanks.

“First out where the paratroopers!” When a glider was clearly visible already on the ground.

Getting picked up by a plane flying over.... that's so crazy! the forces put on both planes, must be a very frightening moment for both pilots. Incredible that the planes don't get ripped apart!

There has been a book written recently that puts the failure of Market Garden at the feet of Gen. Gavin of the 82nd Airborne. It was his confused commands on the day and his decision to move his troops to the Groesbeek Heights led to the failure to capture the bridge.

Holy crap, I wonder how that glider pilot was on the receiving end of the tow line!

My grandfather was on one of those gliders.🇺🇸

I visited Nijmegen and Arnhem to see the battlefields , a very interesting and somber tour , it was good to meet veterans too and hear their stories.

My mother had a cousin who was a glider pilot. He returned after the war with white hair. He was in his 20s.

Loved the video Mark. The Waco (pronounced Wah-Co) airplane company has a very interesting history. Initially they made biplanes in Troy Ohio, near the wright brothers's Dayton. They designed their glider for the war, subcontracted it out, and pretty much disappeared.

WACo (Weaver Aircraft Company) is correctly pronounced "WAH-CO"... not "WACKO" (or worse yet... "WAYCO" like the Texas city). FWIW, I would not feel safe piloting a hastily patched glider back to a repair facility

Two episodes within 24 hours? The Fates have blessed us!

Literally where the concept of the 4WD KERR (Kinetic Energy Recovery Rope) came from... the original "snatch strap"....

This channel is the Gold Standard.

How on earth can anyone consider the 82nd Division successful? As you stated. They relied on 30 Corps to take Nijmegen Bridge

Great video, as always. I really like them. One sort of related question: if Market Garden had succeeded and they would have crossed the river Rhine, they would still have to cross one more river before they could enter Germany: the river IJssel. A river that is also quite wide near Arnhem. I’ve never seen any plans how they wanted to tackle that problem. Does anyone know?

This looks like one of those cases where you spend $100 in fuel to tow back a wreck worth $15.

Just started reading the castle of the eagles, took me a while to get round to it and I'm glad I did, cheers for the top notch content proffeser Felton!

A gentleman I knew from the neighborhood George Vanderslice was a Medic with the 506PIR 101st Airborne and jumped into Holland armed with a Colt 45ACP that he personally showed me though in general Medics were not armed. Another page here SNAFU DOCS did a story about his experience in Belgium and I was able to contact the author in Netherlands with photos of George in uniform so he can update the story. George was active until death with the Southeastern Penna. Chapter 101st Airborne Division Association. Screaming Eagle decals were all on the bumper of his car.

This is a truly fascinating factoid you cannot find anywhere else. Thank you for your work Mark!

Uncle was a glider rider , double tow into Germany Operation "Plunder"(Varsity). 17th ABN 194th GIR Co.B

That glider snatching with the tow plane must have been dangerous as I'm sure the towplane received great drag and pull back when it engaged the glider, and I'm sure if the glider decided to shed a wing or flip that could be bad for the tow plane at very low altitude if he lost control even just briefly.

Doesn't sound like it was worth it. The ground crews probably should have cut the gliders into pieces that were small enough to fit in flatbed trucks, then the trucks should have driven it back into safe Allied territory where usable components could have been removed.

The Market-Garden operation was an enlarged version of a previous plan, Operation Comet. Neither one was regarded as likely to be successful by many of the airborne officers in both the British and American divisions

The mayor of St-Louis and 8 prominent members of the community died during a flight demonstration on a faulty locally build Waco glider in 1943. Not a good publicity stunt.

I learned something today !thanks!

The Germans there are mostly children and old men so I think everything will work out fine. Montgomery wouldn’t have his intel completely backwards, that would be ungentlemanly of him….

Oh Mark , i hate it when you mention Montgomerys name as some sort of Master Tactician. This was another of his failures, among with capturing Caen, operation Goodwood. A mediocre General at best. And his conduct after the War, obliging the town of Montgomery Alabama to ask for their Medal to be returned.

My grandfather worked for the electrical grid company in Arnhem right before the war. His job was considered essential so he wasn't drafted. He even got an early promotion to escape conscription into the German army. During Market Garden the Nazi's forced him and his colleagues to dig trenches but they ended up being used only by the British during their fights and he was very proud of that fact.

I've often wondered what it was like for the soldiers liberating Arnhem in 1945, seeing the aftermath of Market Garden - particularly the fields of gliders around Wolfheze (assuming they weren't collected and destroyed by the Germans).

Operation Market Garden. Referred to by my great-uncle 101st paratrooper, et al, as Montgomery’s Folly!

I’d want to be standing pretty far back when the plane came in to pick the glider up those guys were ballsy when that tow rope snapped back

I lol'd at the message some wag (probably one of the more doubtful salvage pilots) painted onto one of the gliders being prepared for takeoff. (glimpsed briefly just after 6:20 )

Ultimately, only one man was responsible for this disaster, and that was Montgomery, the man who ordered it, and the most overrated general in modern history. I can't think of anything he did after El Alamein that was in any way competent.

Joe Public usually only pays attention to the combat troops and their operations, but no army can win without effective logistical support!