10-13-2016, 02:51 PM
I had never heard of this either. Makes you wonder what the failure rate was when they had hundreds dropped in combat during the war. Those guys never got the jump pay that airborne guys did either. Seems like I'd rather take my chances with a parachute than a rickety glider that, once released, has a controlled crash at the end of its flight.
That's a great question CaptO, one I don't readily have an answer for. The failure in this incident was traced to a wing strut component made by a subcontractor, one that in a bad bit of irony, that normally built caskets. It was determined that the metal was manufactured too thin for this component, I'm with you, your odds of survival would seem to be a little better in a chute than a glider.
Randy