A glider, I assume, but which one?

I'm betting it was a Laister-Kauffman (X)GC-10 'Trojan Horse'.  It could carry 40-50 troops/a Deuce and a half/a couple of 105mm howitzers/or a Long Tom.    First flight in 1943,  a couple of prototypes were built & tested.    990 were ordered, but the order was canceled.    The intent was that they would be used in the invasion of Japan.

IIRC from the longest 19 months of my working career in Binghamton, NY there was a glider training base in the southern tier of New York State.   And IIRC there was a museum somewhere near Ithaca

I'm guessing that it is a Laister-Kauffman CG-10.

If that's it, it was a protoype for a heavy troop glider to be used in the invasion of Japan.

I tried Google image search and while it didn't come up with this there were some near misses.

That's a keeper of a photo!

Bill

https://usautoindustryworldwartwo.com/laister-kauffman.htm

Interesting article. 

Totally off topic so I'll quit after this: the St. Louis arena which was Laister-Kaufmann's factory space, was a free spanning dome designed by Gustel Keiwitt, who later was a a part of the dome design team for the Astrodome.

Bill

And to get completely wrapped around the axle, there is an online company which will sell you the flight manual for the GC-10

I was wrong above, the glider center is in Elmira not Ithaca

what pulled it?

seastallion53

what pulled it?

a C-54

oh ok.you would need 4 engines.

Thanks to everyone who has responded. The photo turned out to be far more interesting than I imagined it could be. 

I have always assumed that we were visiting an air show, but obviously it wasn't quite that. That the glider was at a glider training facility in Elmira makes sense. Elmira would have been an easy drive from our home in Savona. 

One of my thoughts when I was studying the photo was that the aircraft looked like it could easily be converted to a powered aircraft. Then I read in Wikipedia that the company that made it did consider mounting engines on it. It could have been an early Herc!

Two asides, based on the information that the glider could carry a deuce-and-a-half truck and a long tom field artillery piece:

• In Vietnam in 1966, my Marine Corps company was transported into Quang Nam Province in deuce-and-a-halfs (halves?!) on the first day of Operation Double Eagle II. We drove through the city of Tam Ky, north of Da Nang. That was the only city I saw in Vietnam. On the same day I witnessed the death of very young VC: a Marine shot him with his M14 just below his right buttock, shattering his hip and upper femur and rupturing his femoral artery. I was a hospital corpsman, but there was nothing I could do for him. He bled out in only a couple of minutes.

• On our second or third day in Vietnam, I was walking casually through our bivouac area, waiting for something to do, when the world ended. Or, in other words, a long tom hidden in trees only 30 feet or so from me, at my left, fired a single round. I had no idea the gun was there. I have little doubt that that blast contributed to my extremelhy troubling hearing problems in my left ear — loud, 24/7 tinnitus; hyperacusis (extreme sensitivity to loud sound), and inability to make sense of human speech or music (in that ear). Fortunately, my right ear is in reasonably good shape for an old guy.)

Enough OT for now. Does anyone know if a kit of the GC-10 exists?

Bob

Hi, Bob -

A quick look over at Scalemates seems to show that the only kit for a Laister-Kauffman aircraft is the TG-4 glider, a much smaller trainer.  Sadly, I think you're in the same boat as I am, hoping to find a model of a 1972 Plymouth Fury or an Oxford class AGTR U.S. naval vessel. 

Really cool that you've been able to solve the mystery of the photograph, though!

daniel

gomeral

Hi, Bob -

A quick look over at Scalemates seems to show that the only kit for a Laister-Kauffman aircraft is the TG-4 glider, a much smaller trainer.  Sadly, I think you're in the same boat as I am, hoping to find a model of a 1972 Plymouth Fury or an Oxford class AGTR U.S. naval vessel. 

Really cool that you've been able to solve the mystery of the photograph, though!

daniel

@daniel:

I was mainly curious about the existence of a kit, even though I would be unlikely to build one. There are so many models that I would like to build, among kits that already exist, that I have trouble making up my mind what I want to buy next. A GC-10 would certainly fit in with my modelling goal, which is to build models of every aircraft or ship that I have had personal experience with or have studied as a result of my interest in WWII, such as the Navy TBM-3E I mentioned. 

Among the serious contenders in the “stash of my mind” are the corvette HMCS Snowberry and the Fairey Swordfish torpedo bomber. I learned a lot about corvettes while assembling my philatelic exhibit about the Battle of the Atlantic; the father of a friend of mine, a Swordfish observer, was one of the few survivors of the 1941 Channel Dash attack on two German capital ships, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau. My friend has given me an Channel Dash “event cover” (an illustrated, stamped enveloped) signed by his father as well as a book about the Channel Dash and a photo of his father.

There certainly are (or aren’t!) some models that I would build in a blink (a long blink — I’m the the world’s slowest model building). Among them are 1/72 models of a Douglas DC-2 and a Hiller Raven helicopter. I actually have two different models of the Raven, both so badly designed that they have proved to be impossible to build. A more-advanced collector couild probably make gems out of them, but I can’t, not yet. 

Bob

Yes this has been a fun thread. 

Note the glider is a CG-10A which may help youir search.

Philatelist? Now I get your forum name.

Bill

GMorrison

Philatelist? Now I get your forum name.

You know, I'm kinda embarassed I didn't make that connection myself!  Perhaps I didn't because although my dad is/was an avid stamp collector, he always told me that philately would get me nowhere...

Bobs got it licked !

Bill