‘It was like flying a brick’ – How crucial were glider pilots during D-Day?

Two surviving members of the Second World War Glider Pilot Regiment (GPR) have stressed the importance of the wooden aircraft on D-Day, saying “it couldn’t have been done another way”.

Gliders, used to transport troops and supplies, were towed by bombers over northern France before gliding into the landing zone in Normandy.

Horsa gliders after landing at Pegasus Bridge
Horsa gliders after landing at Pegasus Bridge (Glider Pilot Regiment Society/PA)

The GPR has said it is not aware of any surviving members of the unit who were involved on June 6 1944.

Peter Davies, 101, of Bollington in Cheshire, flew a Hamilcar glider as part of Operation Varsity, which targeted the Rhine in Germany in 1945.

D-Day 80th anniversary
A glider being towed during the Second World War (Glider Pilot Regiment Society/PA)

“It’s a question of making a lot of judgments, I suppose. it was just the job, you didn’t think about it, it was how you did it.

“When you landed, you had 30 men around you, unlike parachutists who were spread all over the place.

“It meant the unit was a unit. How would you get a tank or 17-pounder gun on the ground? By putting them in a bloody big aircraft.

“It just so happens that the glider didn’t have any engines, but we probably carried more troops than ever jumped out of an aeroplane.”

A black and white image of a vehicle being loaded onto a glider
Gliders could carry vehicles as well as troops (Glider Pilot Regiment Society/PA)

He went on: “The guys who flew the coup-de-main and took the bridges, it couldn’t have been done any other way, that couldn’t have been done by parachuters.

“In one case there was three gliders all landing within 50 metres of the bridge, that was the epitome of navigation, timing and skill.

“These guys spent hours practising and flying certain compass headings for so long… without the bridge being taken that flank of the landing zones would have been vulnerable.”

A glider after landing
The GPR has said it is not aware of any surviving members of the unit who were involved on June 6 1944. (Glider Pilot Regiment Society/PA)

He said of the glider: “It was a very useful thing towards the end of the war and it was vital on D-Day, the gliders landed ahead of the troops and they took various important things like the Pegasus Bridge.

“They lost a hell of a lot of people, I do know that.”

Asked what it was like to fly, he went on: “It was quite an experience, there was no soaring, you just went straight down.

“It was like a mosquito made of plywood.”

Jane Barkway-Harney, 60, a teacher from Horsham in West Sussex, and the daughter of D-Day Horsa glider pilot Geoff Barkway, said the regiment had “earned its place in history”.

D-Day: British invasion aircraft
(PA Graphics)

Ms Barkway-Harney said: “If you had a plane that dropped loads of paratroops, they could be scattered over quite a wide area by the time they landed and it takes a long time for them to gather back together again and you lose the element of surprise.

“So the idea of the glider was that actually it would land silently, nobody knew it was coming and you instantly had 30 people ready to fight all on the same spot and ready to go.”

Family members of glider pilots involved in the D-Day operation are to visit Normandy.

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