Before the afternoon meeting, General William Lee, accompanied by Principal McNair, found John, who was preparing for the meeting. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 Apparently, Lieutenant Colonel Willis had already reported to General William Lee about the idea of trying to conduct alternating out-of-cabin training in two formations, and the "father of the American Airborne Forces" was interested in John's "whimsy".

Twenty minutes before the afternoon session began, William Lee approached John to hear what else the thoughtful young man had to say about airborne warfare. Originally, William Lee only regarded John as a nimble-minded junior, but when he learned that John was still the owner of Hughes Aircraft Company, his attitude immediately changed and he invited him to come and talk in detail after the meeting.

John could guess why William Lee would take the initiative to invite him to his place. At lunchtime, Gavin and the others mentioned that General William Lee was having a headache not finding a suitable military glider. John estimated that William-Lee would most likely have asked Hughes Aircraft Company to design and produce a military glider for him.

In 1940, although the parachute operation had achieved a lot of success, its many shortcomings gradually began to be revealed. First of all, paratroopers are easily scattered in a large area due to strong winds, and it is difficult to quickly assemble and form effective combat effectiveness after the airdrop.

Secondly, paratroopers who are engaged in operations in the enemy's rear have to conduct a lot of parachute training in addition to military training in peacetime, and there is a high demand for transport aircraft and elite soldiers. Paratroopers are trained much longer than ordinary infantry, and they are not easy to replenish.

Third, troops conducting assault operations behind enemy lines need to be equipped with a certain amount of artillery and armored vehicles when capturing important strongholds of the defenders, and the technical problem of parachuting large weapons and equipment has not yet been resolved.

At this time, the use of gliders is the best option for the airborne forces of various countries. Heavily armed combat teams rush to the battlefield on gliders, and after landing, they can quickly enter the battle in general. Moreover, they do not need to conduct special parachute training in peacetime, and artillery and vehicles can be transported to the battlefield as glider loads.

In addition, the glider does not require an engine or a complex control system, it is towed by a transport aircraft to take off, unhook near the target and glide on its own to reach its destination, where a lightly trained soldier can maneuver it for landing. And it has a very short landing run, so you don't need a decent runway, and you can land on a slightly flat piece of ground.

At the same time, the glider is inexpensive, with only a wooden fuselage and a few rudimentary gauges, which can be used as a disposable consumable without thinking about recycling.

At present, the airborne troops of Germany and the Soviet Union have formed military glider units and have played an important role in airborne operations. When the Germans attacked the Belgian fortress of Eben-Emer last year, they used 42 DFS 230 gliders to send 493 special operators into the fortress and successfully seized control of the fortress.

Inspired by this successful example, the British have recently been working military gliders. John had heard from his time in London that they were working on a giant glider with a wingspan of 27 meters that could carry 32 infantry or 3.2 tons of combat equipment.

Influenced by these pioneers, William Lee naturally did not ignore the role of gliders when building the first airborne troops in the United States. When William Lee was formulating the "air infantry" plan, he envisioned the 503 Brigade including a parachute infantry regiment, a glider infantry regiment, a parachute engineer battalion, a glider field artillery battalion, and a glider anti-aircraft artillery battalion, as well as a medical company, a communications company, a maintenance company, a quartermaster company, and a logistics company, totaling more than 5,000 people.

At present, only one parachute infantry regiment in the whole brigade is in place, and it can barely be regarded as on the right track of training, and nothing else is yet to be seen. (At the beginning of World War II, the establishment of the US airborne division was 2 parachute infantry regiments, 1 glider infantry regiment, 1 artillery battalion and other auxiliary units, a total of 8,500 people, and later each division added 1 paratrooper regiment or glider regiment, and the artillery was also strengthened into an artillery regiment, the number rose to nearly 13,000 people.) ）

William Lee has been busy with the formation of glider infantry regiments lately. However, at present, the US military does not have special military gliders at all, and civilian gliders are too small in size to meet the needs of airborne operations. Recently, most aircraft manufacturers have been busy snatching huge orders from the British and the Army Air Corps, and they do not look down on such worthless "wooden toys".

Listening to Gavin, William Lee has been anxious about this issue for a long time. Today, John, the "aircraft manufacturing tycoon", took the initiative to send it to the door, and William Lee naturally inevitably wanted to beat his idea.

John is no stranger to gliders. When he was still in middle school, his first exposure to flying was a glider. In his previous life, when he was transiting at Lubbock Airport in Texas, he also visited the World War II Glider Museum in the old terminal (during World War II, it was a military airfield, and 80% of the U.S. military's glider pilots were trained here), and he learned about the history of the U.S. military's use of gliders.

Historically, there are two main types of military gliders equipped by the US Airborne Forces. The initial CG-4A was capable of carrying 2 crew members and 13 infantry personnel or 1 jeep (howitzer) plus 7 soldiers. Later, due to the slow speed of the CG-4A (only about 200 km/h) and weak protection (the fuselage can even shoot through pistol bullets), it performed poorly in the Normandy landing, and the US military launched the XCG-16 large military glider.

With a wing area of 105.9 square meters and a aspect ratio of 7:4, the aircraft is capable of carrying 42 infantry personnel or 4.8 tons of cargo. Even with a fully stocked 105mm howitzer and a dozen artillery pieces, it can glide at a speed of 354 km/h.

It's a pity that by the time the XCG-16 was massively equipped with troops, a whole set of methods against military gliders had already been figured out. For example, the "Rommel asparagus" (a kind of wooden pole with a diameter of about 20 centimeters and a height of between 3 and 4 meters) that the Germans set up in large numbers in the plains of the Western Front. Explosives were placed on the top of the pole or directly connected with wire), which effectively hindered the large-scale landing of the glider.

To be honest, the business of military gliders is not small, and nearly 14,000 CG-4A gliders have been produced in history, and it is good to make a good profit. The reason why John didn't have the idea of this business before was mainly because with the production capacity of Hughes Aircraft Company, it was already very tight to complete the current orders for H-1, D-2, and P-51. Moreover, the historical life of such a thing as a military glider is not too long, and it will be gradually eliminated in a few years. Putting a lot of effort into this kind of project is a bit more than worth the cost.

However, if William Lee took the initiative to come to the door, he would not mind buying the other party's face and getting involved in this business. Anyway, in order to expand production capacity recently, Hughes Aircraft Company has acquired several small aircraft manufacturing enterprises, and the R&D and design personnel are somewhat redundant. It's a big deal to arrange for them to design a military glider, and then find an OEM to sell the license later.

As for the other equipment of the Airborne Forces, John had a lot of "new ideas" that he wanted to exchange with William Lee.