Flying Missions in Africa

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"We went to Blida, Algeria, which is 60 kilometers outside of Algiers. And we flew copilot on C-47s while we were there. And we would fly flights from Blida to Casablanca, Blida to Gibraltar, Blida to Cairo. And they were long flights, boring. Then they gave me an assignment to take eight glider pilots down to Accra, South Africa, which is on the Gold Coast. We assembled two gliders down there, and we were gonna fly them back to Blida, which would be the longest towed flight in history. We assembled the gliders in 30 days and flew them back to Blida, and when we landed there, there were gliders all over the field. While we were in Accra, the Allies had opened the Mediterranean so the ships could go in and out. And they had dumped a bunch of gliders in [Blida] to be assembled....

We had a historian with us to write everything, see? He wrote about the birds and the bees in the jungle and the mountains, and said a little squib about gliders. He didn’t do much for us [laughs]. So we didn’t get any credit for that – longest glider flight in history…towed flight."