Warbird Information Exchange

In another thread, CG-4's were discussed. I never got to pick the brain of the CG-4 Crew Chief I met (he passed away before I got to do that) so I'll ask the WIX:

1. Did Waco Design the aircraft, or was it a purchased design?

2. If Waco designed it, why wasn't it accompanied by the Waco reputation of their cabin class planes? My understanding was they were well built.

3. Other than the famous photo of the major structural failure of a wing, where the Mayor of St Louis and other dignitaries were killed, what other records of Waco CG-4 glider structural failures and crashes is in existence?

4. Was it built on a Type Certificate?

I am wondering if this is just an aircraft which got a bad rap, or if it was a truly bad aircraft. After all, the Horsa was wood and it doesn't have any of the bad reputation of the CG-4.

No, aircraft designed for military use are not certified for commercial operation...in other words thge F-22, or even the C-17...hasn't been FAA approved the way that a Boeing or Cessna would have to be.

That's why we never saw B-17, C-124, or surplus C-141s or even KC-135s as airliners.

(To put it simply, warbirds are licensed as "Restricted" "Limited" or "Experimental" ...and are approved for some uses...firefighting, cargo, etc...but not as passenger carriers for hire. It gets complex...despite their similarities to commercial aircraft, you can't put a surplus military KC-135 part on a commercial 707..or convert an OH-58 into a civil Jet Ranger used for charter operations....but you can use 58s for crop spraying, law enforcement or personal use.)

Back to the infamous CG-4 crash, I believe it was attibuted to faulty manufacturing (Robertson, if memory serves correctly...yes the same Robertson who Lindbergh flew the mail for). If it had been a design issue, they wouldn't have made as many as they did, and remember the USAF used them into the late 40s as rescue aircraft.

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Remember the vets, the wonderful planes they flew and their sacrifices for a future many of them did not live to see.

Waco CG-4

I think it wasn't so much that the glider was a horrible design. It was okay as far as combat gliders go, it was the mission and how they were used in the tactical combat arena that was horrid. Like airships and blimps, and the Fuller extraction system, and rocket powered fighter planes, some ideas "looked good on paper" but had flaws that were borne out in actual use. Most recently a good example would be the Osprey Vstol. It was actually in the production stage before it had to be put on hold.
Landing anything off field is a hair raising experience. We used to land the tow planes off field to retrieve gliders when I worked at a gliderport and it never failed to get the heart pumping. Now imagine doing that in a big heavy glider that has a high sink rate. Now imagine at night into the teeth of the german army in occupied territory!
Even by WW II standards the casualty rate was considered unacceptable. Just one of the lessons learned in the course of that war.

First: My L5 has a type certificate- it was totally conceived for the military and used by the military, but went through the type certificate process at some point during its life. And it was NOT built on the 105 type certificate- it was the Stinson Model 76, not Model 105, but I suspect Stinson used a whole lot of data from the 105 when they went through the type certification process. There are also other aircraft which were type certificated- C54, DC-3, C45, UC78. I am just wondering if they ever took the CG-4 through a type certification process.

Second: As for employment of the Glider, I can agree with Marine Air on the comparisons with the Rocket airplane, Fulton Extraction System, and other ideas that were bandied about, used in a limited fashion, and then abandoned as inappropriate for the time. But I can't agree with the total assessment that Gliders were a bad idea. Fort Eben Emael, Skorzeny's raid to retrieve Mussolini, and Glider Landings at Myktina and Market Garden went well, and there was a whole slew of projects during and after the end of the war which were extensions of the entire vertical envelopment concept- the C82 and C123 were both outgrowths of Glider programs which turned into aircraft later on. There was also a little known experiment here in Baltimore with Sea-landing gliders developed for the USMC by the Allied Aviation Corporation. The idea of moving tactical units of soldiers finally had its day. Of course, the concept was taken to its final development with the rapid rise of the helicopter's reliability and tested (very extensively) in Vietnam.

So I agree and disagree that the Glider was a flop, but my real questions are about the actual construction of the CG-4, and its reliability as a platform (night landings, untrained and unskilled pilots, bad loading aside). Has anybody out there got any real hands on experience with the CG-4 or even the CG-13? I know they used Phenolic extensively throughout the airplane, but I am wondering about things like spar construction, wing attach angles and spar carry through, etc. No burning need to know, just curious after the comments on the CAF's CG-4.

Speaking of CG-4's, where are the survivors today? I'm aware of the one at the Natl Museum of the USAF and the one at the Air Zoo. Where are the others? Didn't one burn up in the Yankee Air Force hangar fire?

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Ain't no sunshine when she's gone!

There is a museum in Lubbock, Texas called the Silent Wings Museum. They have one restored.

I'm sure you know the C-54, DC-3/C-47, C-45 and C-78 were all civilan designs before they were "drafted". The DC-3 was certified long before its military career while airlines had orders for DC-4/C-54s before war production took over the Douglas production lines.
Beech 18 and Cessna's "Bamboo Bomber" were also in production before the war.

Given their history and pre-war use, it was easy to convert military versions of these planes to civil uses after the war.

As an example, postwar you could buy from Aircraft & Steel Supply company of Wichita a Cessna manufactured kit to make your UC-78/AT-17 into a approved Cessna T-50.

As far as your l-5 is concerned...L-5s when modified to CAA-standards were approved for civil use in 1945. The certification process may have been done by Sentinel Aircraft of Dexter, MI, whicjh bought a lot of surplus L-5 parts.
Why was the L-5 certified while other planes weren't? There was a market for them. They could do something useful or were light planes that could be bought fairly cheaply. That's why (as an example) the two seat twin-engine trainers (AT-9 and AT-10) disn't survive into the civilian world...they were too small and too expensive to operate as a private plane.

The reason why the CG-4 was never certified for civilian use...easy. There was no use for it.
It certainly wasn't a sailplane and it wasn't any good for private flying (remember,there were no "warbirds" back then) and I doubt if cargo gliders or airliners would have been welcome by anyone. What would you do with the thing...especially if you had to have an expensive air launch by a DC-3. The only thing civilians ever wanted CG-4s for were the wooden crates they came in. A lot eneded up af farm sheds.

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Remember the vets, the wonderful planes they flew and their sacrifices for a future many of them did not live to see.

The YAF CG-4 wa destroyed in the hangar fire. Another survivor not many people know about is at the Fighting Falcon Museum in Greenville, Michigan, though I believe its just a fuselage.

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Matt

There is a CG-4, complete at the 101st Airborne Army museum at Fort Campbell ,Ky .
Plus I saw a CG-15 for sale recently in FLorida. Supposed to be an updated CG-4.
We have been looking for an example in middle Tenn. and have located two training landing sites. The gliders were abandoned after one flight, where they landed, but unfortunately the army apparently collected them all up after the war in this area. We keep hoping to find a wing made into a shed roof, etc. or a fuselage used as a chicken coop!

Yanks is restoring a CG-4A in Chino.

Whaaat???

http://pma275.navair.navy.mil/index.cfm?fuseaction=news.detail&news_id=137

"Osprey receives green light for full-rate production" October 19, 2005

The Museum in St Mere Eglise has an original G-4 used on D-Day.

That just doesn't look right.

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www.tailhookstudio.com

I had a lot of photos to choose from. Guess why I picked that one!

Shall I post a CG-4/15 list of survivors?

I made one, and it's as accurate as I could get it.

Please do Wolverine!

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Ain't no sunshine when she's gone!