Dad's WWII Scrapbook sees the light of day (1 Viewer)

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Found this:

Excerpted from:
World War II Glider Pilots
edited by Turner Publishing

The Bureau's (US Army recruiting) publicity campaign coincided with the beginning of a combined war bond sales and military recruitment drive. The US Treasury Department and The Army Air Corp had planned the drive together. It was to begin in Washington, DC and then go on tour of the country. A military road show called the Air Cavalcade was to be the main attraction of the drive. The Cavalcade boasted the newest American fighters and bombers, a borrowed British Spitfire and a German Messerscmitt 109 fighter that had been captured in North Africa. The new P-39 and P-40 fighters were thought to be the stars of the show.
At the last minute, the Air Corps decided to add a glider to the road show to capitalize on the national attention the show would draw. The Air Corps scrambled to find a plane to use and came up with a small 2 place Laister-Kaufman, a civilian sailplane. Staff Sergeant William T, Sampson II, a training student at the Elmira Flying School was suddenly pulled from training to fly in the show.
Thanks to advanced publicity, 50,000 people crowded the observation stands at Washington's National Airport to watch the Air Cavalcade arrive on June 28, 1942. First the big, powerful warplanes landed and taxied to parking positions along the end of the runway. Then there appeared in the empty sky an Army L-1A pulling the tiny glider piloted by Sergeant Sampson. Sampson cut loose from the L-1A and began a silent, graceful series of turns and banks in it's descent. Sampson executed a skillful and perfect landing right beside the other planes, much to the delight of the enthusiastic crowd. The spectators made a beeline to Sampson's glider ignoring the other planes. The Air Corps could not have asked for a better reception of it's glider program. And it was a reception that was repeated throughout the country during the Cavalcade's two-month tour.
 
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I know these pics have been seen a bunch of times before, but I found them fascinating in that they were not published until a YEAR after the fact.
 

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