Airspeed Horsa

The Horsa was the RAF’s standard assault glider, a large wooden aircraft able to carry up to around thirty troops or a jeep and gun into action behind enemy lines. Towed by bombers such as the Halifax, Stirling and Albemarle or by Dakota transports and then cast off to glide silently to its objective, the Horsa carried airborne forces in the great operations of the last two years of the war: the Sicily landings, the coup-de-main capture of Pegasus Bridge in the first hours of D-Day, the Arnhem operation, and the Rhine crossing. Flown by the Glider Pilot Regiment, it delivered men and equipment with a precision no parachute drop could match.