Gliders

Found a site with some stats on western front:

A total of 1,618 of the 1,899 American gliders used in Operation Market-Garden, the Allied invasion of Holland Sept. 17-30, 1944, got through to their landing zones behind German lines with 465 trailers, 710 jeeps, 2,856 tons of ammunition, gasoline and supplies. It was the largest armada of airborne troops in history. Among the 1,700 American glider pilots in the mission, 114 were casualties, with 12 killed, 65 missing and 37 injured or wounded. Casualties among the crews of the C-47s that carried the paratroopers and towed the gliders totaled 252, with 31 killed, 66 wounded or injured, and 155 missing or taken prisoner. The American airborne troops had 10,004 casualties, with 816 killed, 2,173 wounded or injured, and 7,015 missing or taken prisoner.

Over 1,200 CG-4A gliders dropped behind Nazi lines in France on D-day into their landing zones at points near Ste.-Mere-Eglise, Carentan and Caen, hauling in 95 howitzers, 290 vehicles, 238 tons of cargo and 4,021 men. Of the 1,030 U.S. glider pilots reaching Normandy, 180, or 17.5%, were casualties. Twenty-five were dead, 31 wounded, 91 injured and 33 missing or taken prisoner.

On Dec. 24, 1944, American GPs in 12 CG-4As flew to the rescue in Bastogne, Belgium of the beleaguered 101st Airborne e Division whose commander Brig. Gen. Anthony C. McAuliffe responded with a defiant “Nuts” to the German demands that they surrender or be annihilated.
( NEVER HEARD OF, THIS IS QUITE NEW... )

All the gliders got through with 32,900 pounds of cargo for the Screaming Eagles, the 10th Armored Division and other units surrounded by four crack German panzer divisions during the Battle of the Bulge.
Thirty-five of the 50 gliders on a mission to Bastogne on Dec. 27 landed with 106,291 pounds of precious cargo. Fifteen of the glider pilots on that mission were either killed or captured when they landed in enemy territory.

American glider pilots were scheduled for Operation Eclipse, the Allied offensive planned to capture Berlin, but this glory went to the Russians in April, 1945. They were spared from an aerial invasion of Japan when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
( THIS QUITE NEW AS WELL!!)

http://www.rb-29.net/HTML/75ArivdsonMem./05.03cgliders.html

 

I think that the best German slider was the DSF 230, which was used during the battle of Eben-Emael.

This is a fortress captured in the first hours of the battle of Belgium.

P.J.: I think it was also used during the attack on Crete.

 

In allied forces the glider troops were considered inferior to paratroops, somewhat ridiculus when you looka t the capture of pegasus bridge, in Germany usually the gliders were used to deliver the higest quality assault units which would arrive in peak battle field effectiveness. Glider troops remain an underated and understudied force of the war, and are the nearest relation to modern airmobile forces, look at gran sasso, hostage rescue by gliders