Mission Composition and Purpose
Elmira consisted of 176 C-47 Skytrain troop carrier aircraft acting as glider tugs, 36 CG-4 Waco gliders, and 140 Horsa gliders, divided into one serial of 26 and three serials of 50 tug-glider combinations. One additional C-47, which had returned to base earlier in the day without dropping its stick of paratroopers, accompanied the last flight of the mission. The planned and briefed landing zone for the gliders was LZ W, located two miles (3 km) southeast of Sainte-Mère-Église, but a smaller landing zone had also been put in operation that morning north of the town on Drop Zone O.
Elmira was considered an essential mission, delivering two battalions of glider artillery and 24 howitzers to the 82nd Airborne. It consisted of four serials of aircraft, the first to arrive ten minutes after mission Keokuck, a similar but much smaller mission to reinforce the 101st Airborne Division. To reduce congestion over the landing zones, two serials of mission Elmira were delayed two hours until just before sunset. These carried both battalions of glider field artillery and their guns. Because the missions were flown on British Double Summer Time, both were daylight missions, with the first wave taking off at 1907 and arriving at 2104, and the second wave taking off at 2037 and arriving at 2255.
Read more about this topic: Mission Elmira
Famous quotes containing the words mission, composition and/or purpose:
“It is the mission of the twentieth century to elucidate the irrational.”
—Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1907–1961)
“Give a scientist a problem and he will probably provide a solution; historians and sociologists, by contrast, can offer only opinions. Ask a dozen chemists the composition of an organic compound such as methane, and within a short time all twelve will have come up with the same solution of CH4. Ask, however, a dozen economists or sociologists to provide policies to reduce unemployment or the level of crime and twelve widely differing opinions are likely to be offered.”
—Derek Gjertsen, British scientist, author. Science and Philosophy: Past and Present, ch. 3, Penguin (1989)
“If God bestowed immortality on every man then when he made him, and he made many to whom he never purposed to give his saving grace, what did his Lordship think that God gave any man immortality with purpose only to make him capable of immortal torments? It is a hard saying, and I think cannot piously be believed. I am sure it can never be proved by the canonical Scripture.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)