Rethinking the design of the Waco CG-4A troop/cargo glider.

Here's what the hurricane looks like to me now. 48 hours of intermittent rain ranging from drizzle to the occasional bellygusher. I don't know about the other parts of town, but my neighborhood is situated between a bayou and a retaining pond. So the biggest problem may only come next week when all the water from Houston Inner city comes flowing downstream. May flood my favorite kite-flying meadow and flush out another poor little stray cat my wife just has to 'rescue'.

My main gripe right now is that with the panic before the storm every other store is 'pre-emptively' closed and every other venue is
'pre-emptively' cancelled. So I am now left passing my time reacting to posts on AH.com
 

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Here's what the hurricane looks like to me now. 48 hours of intermittent rain ranging from drizzle to the occasional bellygusher. I don't know about the other parts of town, but my neighborhood is situated between a bayou and a retaining pond. So the biggest problem may only come next week when all the water from Houston Inner city comes flowing downstream. May flood my favorite kite-flying meadow and flush out another poor little stray cat my wife just has to 'rescue'.

My main gripe right now is that with the panic before the storm every other store is 'pre-emptively' closed and every other venue is
'pre-emptively' cancelled. So I am now left passing my time reacting to posts on AH.com


I trust you are adequately stocked up on the all important liquid potent potable supplies. I hope your Hydro (Canadian speak for electricity) stays on. You're not allergic to cats I hope? Do you Texans living near bayous get alligators? Will this hurricane flush them out? The scariest thing we get coming out of the water up here is beavers. If an alligator ever came out of our nearby pond I think I would scream like a little girl and fall into a blind panic. Or maybe not. We do have snapping turtles.
Best wishes and try to stay dry Texan.
 
Just build a variant of it that has more solid construction for training purposes.

Or at the very least devote a lot more attention and effort to the inspection and maintenance of the group of Waco gliders selected to be used for pilot training. Those gliders would be acquiring a lot more flight hours.
 
Actually the Waco glider was designed to be picked up after its mission, flown back and reused. I believe the target was to get up to four missions out of one glider. There actually was one large-scale attempt to retrieve as many gliders as possible after the liberation of the Netherlands.
No idea if they got anywhere close to retrieving the 75% of their gliders needed for a four mission lifespan but at that time it probably didn't matter anymore because it was highly unlikely there would be another large-scale glider assault in Europe, and shipping their refurbished gliders to Okinawa would probably be more expensive that just ordering new ones.

But yes, the whole idea of picking up the gliders afterwards demonstrates the key point of your first post, the one about the Waco CG-4 being at the same time dead simple and needlessly complex. Like the saying goes that 'a mule is a racehorse designed by a comity', the Waco was an extremely simple assault glider co-designed by army buricrats.
 
Actually the Waco glider was designed to be picked up after its mission, flown back and reused. I believe the target was to get up to four missions out of one glider. There actually was one large-scale attempt to retrieve as many gliders as possible after the liberation of the Netherlands.
No idea if they got anywhere close to retrieving the 75% of their gliders needed for a four mission lifespan but at that time it probably didn't matter anymore because it was highly unlikely there would be another large-scale glider assault in Europe, and shipping their refurbished gliders to Okinawa would probably be more expensive that just ordering new ones.

But yes, the whole idea of picking up the gliders afterwards demonstrates the key point of your first post, the one about the Waco CG-4 being at the same time dead simple and needlessly complex. Like the saying goes that 'a mule is a racehorse designed by a comity', the Waco was an extremely simple assault glider co-designed by army buricrats.


Take a close look at the video when they're attempting the first snatch take-off. About the 1:50 mark you can see the tow rope break and one end flys back and smashes into the front of the CG-4A damaging the nose and leading edge of the glider. I wonder how the right hand side pilot fared.
 
One simple solution to the pick-up problem was the fitting of some Jacobs engines, and flying it out again. Eventually, this concept evolved into the assault transport, subject of my latest doodles.
 
One simple solution to the pick-up problem was the fitting of some Jacobs engines, and flying it out again. Eventually, this concept evolved into the assault transport, subject of my latest doodles.

Are we going to see your latest drawings soon?
 
Assaulttransports.png


Probably don't have to wait long. An engineer named Lew Stowe started arguing with aerodynamicists about the efficacy of a rear cargo ramp/door on the Laister-Kauffman CG-10 and some of his thoughts and doodles appeared on the C-17, et al.
 
Nice pix. The Budd Conestoga was a spotwelded corrugated stainless steel shimstock creation. The pictured airplane looks like some postwar British item.

As an aviator, the last place I'd want to be is piloting a Waco with a jeep behind me. The pilot (singular) should be located in a slender roll bar equipped cockpit above the leading edge of the wing. This way all the wreckage could slide forward under him.

The idea of full span flaps with tip spoilers for roll control sounds ideal- and simpler pilot training with no adverse aileron yaw. Maybe even a two control setup like an Ercoupe.

I recall as a kid seeing newsreels of a Waco glider fitted with a pair of small radials (Jacobs?) taking off with a partial load.

Dynasoar
 
Nice pix. The Budd Conestoga was a spotwelded corrugated stainless steel shimstock creation. The pictured airplane looks like some postwar British item.

The Budd was built OTL from stainless steel and the Curtiss Caravan was built from mahogany, in case of a shortage of aluminum which didn't happen. The Conestoga was a poor aircraft, and the Curtiss wasn't as good as poor. I worked at DH Canada in the '60s during the Buffalo days, and I have my own ideas about the abilities of a properly designed tactical transport.
My doodles are only based on history and WI, like a war-time Bristol Freighter.

As for losing sleep about sitting in front of a jeep, I'd probably lose more worrying about what protection there was in front of me.
 
and the Curtiss wasn't as good as poor.
Why were the Curtiss planes built during the war so bad? The Curtiss Hawk and Tomahawk/Kittyhawk were good planes, but it seems everything else they built during the war fell apart or caught fire. Your thoughts?

BTW. I thought the DHC Caribou and Buffalo were awesome planes. It was a damn shame that the US Army was forced to give them up to the USAF, who dumped them as fast as they could.
 
Can we suggest ... just get over the Not Invented Here and licence build the Airspeed Horsa instead?
That would certainly save me the time to read the 1,262 word OP. I so wish this site had a character limit or some means to encourage brevity.
 
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