Air Force Museum
Waco CG-4A
The CG-4A was the most widely used U.S. troop/cargo glider of World War II. Constructed of fabric-covered wood and metal, the CG-4A was crewed by a pilot and copilot. It could carry 13 troops and their equipment or a jeep, a quarter-ton truck or a 75mm howitzer loaded through the upward-hinged nose section. Usually, C-46s and C-47s were used as tow aircraft.
In depth
History & service
Flight testing began in 1942, and the CG-4A first went into operation in July 1943 during the Allied invasion of Sicily. It also participated in the D-Day assault on France on June 6, 1944, and in other important airborne operations in Europe and in the China-Burma-India Theater. Until late in the war, gliders were generally considered expendable in combat and were abandoned or destroyed after landing.
Fifteen companies manufactured over 12,000 CG-4As, with 1,074 built by the Waco Aircraft Co. of Troy, Ohio. The glider on display was built by the Gibson Refrigerator Co. in Greenville, Mich., and accepted by the U.S. Army Air Forces in July 1945.
The aircraft in figures
Maximum towed speed: 150 mph · Span: 83 ft. 8 in. · Length: 48 ft. 4 in. · Height: 12 ft. 7 in. · Weight: 7,500 lbs. loaded · Serial number: 45-27948
Aircraft change the battlefield
In the First World War, aircraft became valuable because they could see beyond the front line. Reconnaissance and artillery observation affected decisions on the ground. Once that information mattered, opposing forces had reason to attack the aircraft gathering it. Fighters, defensive armament, and increasingly specialized missions developed around this contest over observation and freedom of movement.
The aircraft were fragile by later standards, but their crews worked inside a rapidly expanding military system. Training, maintenance, replacement aircraft, photography, communications, and weather reporting supported each sortie. Improvements in engines and armament changed tactics, while the pressures of combat exposed weaknesses that might have taken much longer to discover in peacetime.
Personal stories should be read alongside those systems. A uniform or a named aircraft connects the war to an individual, but the individual depended on many others and operated under constraints that skill could not eliminate. Aircraft from opposing sides show how designers answered similar problems in different ways. The later military collections in Dayton and at Udvar-Hazy reveal what endured: the need to gather information, protect friendly forces, move people and supplies, and coordinate action across distance. The scale changed enormously; the relationship between an aircraft's design and the job it had to perform remained fundamental.
