Glider Pilot Combat Training

Letters from a glider pilot.

In the midst of reorganizing my office I came across letters between myself and some of the glider pilots. Doug Wilmer responded was talking to me about glider pilot combat training in this segment of his letter.

"As far as getting you information on your specialty (ground training of the WWII Glider Pilot) it is spaced out through much of our history and will not be easy to run down. the Glider program used mostly it's own members to train each other - I taught map reaading in a week course at a pool in Roswell, NM and later at Bowman Field in Louisville, KY taught the M-1 Carbine rifle. I had been in the Field Artillery since July of 1939 and had been trained along with many other Glider Pilots that transferred over from many different branches of the service. it is the feeling of many of those like myself taht have been writing and thinking about the whole subkect of WWII GP's that some of our guys got almost as good as "Rangers" otheresin the beginning got little or nothing. My weapon's training was excellent and I qualified on every weapon used by the Airborne - at Louisville we used the facilities at Fort Knox, KY and were at that time kept in good physical condition - running 5 miles a day".

~ Doug Wilmer, October 10, 1989.