Airspeed Horsa

Some of them finished up on the edge of the airfield at Arnehem ....seen here whist on a holiday late 70s...

The airfield is nicely censored on Google !

Try Bing Bird's eye - I think it is not pixelated there,

de Havilland used a Horsa fitted with a replica of the Comet nose. It was towed by a Halifax to test the Pilot's visibility and the effect of rain on the windscreen.

It is not all that well known that the Horsa (along with the Hotspur and Hengist) had the requirement to drop parachutists written into their specification. The Horsa's container bomb cells were positioned such that to allow the inner containers to be dropped the main undercarriage had to be dropped first - the main reason the Horsa had a landing skid.

The attached figure is from the AFEE report of the parachuting trials conducted from the Horsa showing a full load of 20 paratroops with kit bags. Strict despatch sequence was required as exit was simultaneously from both the front and rear doors to maintain the cg. Probably the reason why paratroop operations were never carried out from the Horsa.

The Horsa also had trials conducted with the dropping of a full load of supply panniers from the cabin, to achieve this a two track roller conveyor (as wooden as the aircraft itself) was devised, mechanically linked to maintain the sequence and cg. It is possible that these supply drop trials from the Horsa were the first ever use of an aircraft mounted roller conveyor to drop stores, a method which is almost universal today as the Horsa trials pre-date the use of a similar roller conveyor installation (metal) in the Dakota.

Most, but probably not all will know that the Shawbury Horsa ended up going to the Netherlands. It now resides in the large Overloon museum.