I don’t remember just when it happened or what the spark was but one day while still at Laon I decided I wanted to fly gliders. The “Soaring” magazine was available in the base library and I was drawn to the many German glider companies advertising their sailplanes. I chose the one closest to Stutgartt because it was familiar to me. I met with Herr Wolf Hrith a WWII German ace but also an admirer of the American way. He had come to the US in the early thirties and flew gliders at Harris Hill in New York and Cape Cod. MA. Apparently there where many German professors that immigrated to the US in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s and we should credit them for their many contributions. One made it to Starksville. MS. where he went on to be one of the worlds most famous for developing boundary layer control. Yeah, it worked, but the work to keep it working was just too labor intensive and the idea died. Yeah, Gus Raspert did not make any head lines but he is one of my many mentors.

Anyhow Wolf said he would have Max Beck of the soaring school at Hornberg get in touch with me. Sure enough I soon got a brochure in the mail in English inviting me to come to their glider flying school and Max Beck also a WWII ace encouraged me to come. He said I would have fun. I talked with Marty Mapes my model airplane flying buddy that could speek German and we decided to go. It was spring but snow was still on the ground. Marty was starting from scratch and I just watched as he went through the early learnings of flying. Mean while I had checked out in several of the available gliders and the Bergfalke fit pretty good. I soon made the first rung of the ladder toward a “silver C award” by climbing more than 1000 meters above the lowest altitude point shown on the barograph tape. Marty and I stayed in the only gast haus in Degenfeld, a village a few miles southeast of the flying field. The rooms though unheated were clean and comfy, the big down ticks kept us warm as we slept. I learned to love brown bread dipped in the soft boiled egg each morning. The gast haus packed lunches of sandwiches and milk for us each day and suppers, something different every day but always good. I think I gained weight while there. Marty was about ready to solo and Max encouraged us both to stay on for another week. Marty called his wife to let our bosses know that we wanted to stay another week, she did, we got our leaves extended and Josie and Nelly drove over and joined us for the rest of the time we were there.

During the weekend when there was a crowd at the field, Max came over
shortly after 10AM and said “take the Berkfalke and don’t land till after
four PM. That was well over the five hours endurance I needed to climb
one more rung up the “Silver C ladder”. I made it, ridge soaring the
whole time, but a couple of times when the wind died down a bit I wondered if I would have to land but each time the wind came back and I
was able to climb back up to a more comfortable altitude. That night at
the gast haus I had to buy drinks to celebrate my achievement. We met some really interesting people that weekend, there where two professors from Heidelberg University. A Phd from Hielbraun that was working on a plasma propulsion system for use in space, another was Martin Schemp who was a partner with Wolf Hirth in Schemp-Hirth Industries. Yeah, we where among some of the movers and shakers of German industry. We made friends as fellow glider pilots and exchanged Christmas cards for years but Nelly and I never felt rich enough to buy a glider.

We made all our launches from a winch. It had a Maybach truck engine
coupled to a fluid coupling which drove the drum that wound up the six
millimeter wire rope that did the pulling at the end of the cable was a small parachute to provide drag after the glider released so the winch driver could wind in most of the cable before he let the last little bit
fall to the ground. There was an interchangeable weak linkabove the parachute that was designed to break before you could pull the wings off the glider. We changed the weak links depending on which type of glider was being launched. And different gliders had different tow hooks those that had their hooks in the nose tended to be pulled nose down before reaching maximum altitude so some of the glider factories installed hook up’s nearer the center of gravity and they could gain a few more meters of altitude on a launch. A winch launch was really something, almost 60 degrees of climb just after take off tapering off toward the top of the arc and then hanging on for just a few seconds more to pick up speed so you could use the extra speed to zoom a little higher. A 1000 meter cable would give about three to four hundred meters at release and that happened in just a few seconds. Yeah, Navy pilots talk about the catapult launches being something special but a winch launch must be a close second. During our final week at the glider school Marty soloed and I succeeded in flying a little over 50 km to complete the requirements for my “Silver C”. Yeah, we partied, Nelly got in a drinking contest with one of the German girls at the gasthaus and when I took her up to go to bed she was like a wet rag. As I tried to undress her to put her in bed she would just sink to the floor and lie down. I finally got her in the bed and went back down for supper but no more drinks, we all had enough… Marty and I made a few more flights and Max even let me fly his personal Weihe sailplane that was pretty high performance for its time. We all said our good byes and headed back to Laon. But many of the people we met were long remembered and many of them exchanged Christmas cards with us for years. Nelly was good about that.

As time went on I found the French glider club that had hosted the world
glider championships in the early 1950’s. I got a few rides with them
and was finally checked out in the same Bregaet 901 that Paul Macready used to win the world soaring championship a few years earlier. It doesn’t get much better than that. I was bitten by the soaring bug and still marvel at the feeling I got when climbing in a thermal and thinking hey I’m doing this with out an engine. It really has been a great life… Bob