Osprey Publications is well known for their books on military history, aviation, naval and a multitude of other subjects. This book is from the Elite series which covers specific military units or tactics used in combat.

World War II was the first conflict with the widespread use of gliders for military operations. All though many countries used gliders the focus of the book is on English, German and United States as they were involved in the largest majority of glider operations during the war.

The author covers the origins, the gliders, the glider types, tug aircraft, glider pilots, glider delivered units and glider operations. Each section is broken down covering how each country used their gliders, how they trained their pilots and how operations were executed. The book is loaded with black and white period photographs and color drawings.

The one point in this book that found interesting was the skill of being a glider pilot. You may say, "How hard can it be? You are being towed and you just have to land". Well there is a reason that most gliders were equipped with two seats for a pilot and co-pilot. Glider pilots actually had to use a lot of skill and muscle to get on the ground safely. These pilots had to fight the turbulence from the tug aircraft while maintaining the right tension on the tow rope while usually during night operations. Once on the ground these pilots were usually physically wiped out.

I highly recommend this book to anyone that has an interest in military history or the gliders of World War II.

I would like to thank Osprey Publishing and IPMS/USA for allowing me to be able to review this book.