Kind: captions
Language: en
while preparing for the d-day invasion
the allies realized that they needed to
capture the bridges on the road from
normandy to paris
along with other strategic targets
before the landings
otherwise they'd risk getting trapped on
the beaches
but how could they get men behind enemy
lines without being detected
the answer was gliders silent flying
machines that could carry up to 12
men or even a jeep the plan was to tow
them across the english channel with
c-47 planes
in the early morning hours before the
landings when they reached the drop zone
their tow ropes would be cut and then
the pilots would have only three minutes
to land the gliders
but these gliders were made of mostly
wood and fabric
and they were to land in total darkness
the mission was so dangerous in fact
that the head of airborne operations for
d-day predicted in a letter to general
eisenhower
that 70 of the gliders would be lost and
up to half the men
just how dangerous these planes were is
something that can be tested today
using state-of-the-art engineering
technology
daso systems is a french engineering
company that can digitally model
vehicles
in such detail that you could test what
could go wrong
before anything does blueprints become
three-dimensional
and function in ways that simulate
real-world situations
cars can be crashed without crashing the
laws of physics can be applied
inside the mainframe but getting a
working
high-tech model from the poorly
preserved world war ii era blueprints
was impossible as soon as we zoom in we
cannot read
all the dimensions it will be quite
impossible okay
so the dasso engineers came to the fagan
fighters world war ii museum
in granite falls minnesota to use laser
technology to measure this meticulously
restored glider
more than 2 billion measurements are
recorded from different angles
to create one precise digital replica
of this vintage plane you can turn
around
you can you can zoom in zoom out go
inside the cockpit
there it is the daso team can now launch
the wood and
fabric glider but this time in the world
of virtual reality
now you can control through the joystick
and we can
see when you move on the left to the
right
while this may look a bit like a video
game the physics required to fly the
glider
are very real and built into the
software getting into the details
is very important for me because you can
you can't explain things if you don't
have the details
temperature airspeed and thermodynamics
accurately come into play
we can simulate crashes or we can also
test
what is the reaction force from the
landings
what is the effect on the structure on
the people
really difficult to find a place to land
actually
even in the world of virtual reality the
landing is a harrowing feat
nah not so easy to do the first reaction
i had
is to say i will never go inside
one with which is flying because it's so
dangerous
on the morning of d-day the glider
operations went better than expected
with less loss of life than predicted
these were some of the very first
soldiers to touch french soil on d-day
and they played an essential role in the
success of the operation