WW II-Silent Wings Museum TB04

Travel bugs seem to regularly disappear from urban caches and at caching events.  Please drop this item in rural or Premium Member Only caches.  Transport the bug in the original plastic bag for as long as the bag lasts—then the chain and tag won't tangle with other items.  Otherwise, take this bug everywhere—no permission is needed to leave the US. 

Keychain Pendant (WACO-CG4A). This item was purchased at the Silent Wings Museum, Lubbock, TX. The museum preserves and promotes the history of the World War II military glider program. The facility is located on the site of the World War II South Plains Army Air Field, where about 80% of the glider pilots were trained between 1942 and 1945. Depicted is a WACO CG4A, the most widely used United States troop/cargo military glider of World War II. Among many exhibits, the museum houses a faithfully restored example of the nearly the nearly 15,000 WACO gliders built during the war effort.

The CG-4A was constructed of fabric-covered wood and metal and was crewed by a pilot and copilot. It had two fixed mainwheels and a tailwheel. The CG-4A could carry 13 troops and their equipment. Cargo loads could be a jeep, a 75 mm howitzer, or a ¼ ton trailer; they were loaded through the upward-hinged nose section. C-47s were usually used as tow aircraft. CG-4As went into operation in July 1943 during the Allied invasion of Sicily. They participated in the American airborne landings in Normandy on 6 June 1944, and in other important airborne operations in Europe and in the China-Burma-India Theater.

The WACOs were conceived and built to be retrieved and reused. On the battlefield a tow cable was elevated to be available for a low-flying tow plane equipped with a tail hook. However, gliders were generally considered expendable by high-ranking European theater officers and combat personnel and were usually abandoned, or destroyed, after the initial landing. Despite this general lack of support for the recovery system, several gliders were recovered from Normandy and even more from the Operation Market-Garden in the Netherlands and Wesel, Germany.