The Marine Corps Had Gliders at Parris Island, 1942
In May 1942 the government photographer Alfred T. Palmer spent part of a week at Parris Island, South Carolina, with a 4x5 camera and color film.
Transcript
Page Field, May 1942
R001 Marine glider pilot in training at Page Field, watching take-offs, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
Thirteen months after this photograph was taken, the Marine Corps ordered every aircraft in it out of existence.
R002 Marine glider in training at Page Field, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
Alfred Palmer spent part of May 1942 at Parris Island, South Carolina, with a four-by-five camera and colour film.
R003 Marine glider at Page Field, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
These colours are not a guess. Nothing here has been colorized. Palmer shot Kodachrome transparencies, and this is the colour that came off the film.
R004 Marine glider at Page Field, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
He photographed two things at Parris Island that most people do not know the Marine Corps ever had.
R005 Training gliders at Page Field, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
The first was a fleet of gliders.
R006 Training gliders at the Marine Corp's Page Field, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
Yellow, unarmed, engineless, and lettered US MARINES along the nose.
Why the Corps wanted gliders
S01a
Updegraph, U.S. Marine Corps Special Units of World War II (HQMC, 1977), p. 47.
The idea came from Crete.
S01
Updegraph, U.S. Marine Corps Special Units of World War II (HQMC, 1977), p. 47.
In May 1941 the Germans took the island largely from the air — with seventy-five gliders carrying seven hundred and fifty troops.
R007 Marine lieutenants studying glider piloting at Page Field, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
The Secretary of the Navy wanted to know whether it would work in an amphibious landing. A glider was cheap, quiet, and could land men where no powered aircraft could.
S02
Updegraph, U.S. Marine Corps Special Units of World War II (HQMC, 1977), p. 47.
So the Corps went looking for pilots, and it was specific about who it wanted.
A call would be issued for volunteers, the record says — preferably second lieutenants.
The lieutenants
R008 Marine lieutenant, glider pilot in training at Page Field, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
Which is why nearly every man Palmer photographed at Page Field is a lieutenant. Glider Group 71 had been organized that April, with twenty officers and two hundred and eighteen enlisted men.
R009 Marine Lieutenant, glider pilot in training at Page Field, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
The captions rarely give a name. Marine lieutenant, glider pilot in training. That is the whole record of him.
R010 A marine glider pilot in training, a lieutenant, at Page Field, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
Yellow life vest, leather helmet, goggles pushed up.
R011 Marine glider pilot in training at Page Field, is watching take-offs, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
Palmer photographed them in the cockpits, waiting.
R012 Marine lieutenants, glider pilots in training at Page Field, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
Two to a glider — a pilot and a copilot, the second seat eventually meant for a noncommissioned officer.
R013 Marine glider pilot at Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
One of them waves at the camera.
R014 Marine lieutenant, glider pilot in training, at Page Field, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
They are young, and they are volunteers, and they have been handed an aircraft with no engine.
R015 Marine Lieutenant, glider pilot in training at Page Field, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
Palmer worked them like portraits. Low angle, hard May sun, the sky behind.
R016 Marine Corps lieutenant studying glider piloting at Page Field, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
He shot this one standing on the wing.
R017 Marine lieutenant, glider pilot in training at Page Field, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
And this one against nothing at all.
How you launch a glider
R018 Preparing for take-off at the glider pilot training program, Page Field, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
Then the working day. Preparing for take-off, his caption says.
R019 Marine power plane which tows the training gliders at Page Field, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
A glider cannot start itself. Everything at Page Field depended on the aircraft that pulled it into the air.
R020 Marine lieutenant by the power towing plane for the gliders at Page Field, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
A biplane trainer. Palmer calls it the power plane which tows the training gliders.
R021 Marine lieutenant by the power plane which tows the training gliders at Page Field, Parris, Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
In one caption he gives it a better name. The aerial tug boat.
R022 Marine lieutenant with the towing plane for the gliders at Page Field, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
He kept photographing the pilots through the propeller.
R023 Marine lieutenants, pilots, by the power tow-plane for the training gliders at Parris Island's Page Field, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
Two of them, waiting on the tow.
Over the island
R024 Marine gliders being towed from Page Field, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
And then they went up.
R025 Marine Corps gliders in flight out of Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
Palmer went up with them, and this is the part of the assignment nobody else has.
R026 Marine Corps gliders in flight out of Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
Two gliders under tow, out over the South Carolina coast.
R027 Marine Corps gliders in flight out of Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
Yellow wings over green water.
R028 Marine Corps gliders in flight out of Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
The tidal creeks of the low country.
R029 Marine Corps glider in flight over Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
A single glider crossing a road, from directly above.
R030 Marine Corps glider in flight out of Parris island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
The beach, and the marsh behind it.
R031 Marine Corps gliders in flight out of Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
And here is the depot itself — the barracks in their rows, and a glider passing over them.
R032 Marine Corps gliders in flight out of Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
Parris Island in May 1942, from a training glider.
R033 Marine Corps glider in flight out of Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
Free of the tow, the machines were beautiful and almost silent.
R034 Marine Corps glider in flight out of Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
Palmer photographed one against a thunderhead.
R035 Marine with the gliders at Page Field, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
On the ground, in the heat, a Marine with the gliders.
R036 Marine with the training gliders at Page Field, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
Tail number 04386.
The balloons
R037 Marine Corps barrage balloon, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
The other thing Palmer photographed at Parris Island was even stranger.
R038 U.S. Marine Corps, bedding down a big barrage balloon, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
The Marine Corps had barrage balloons, and it kept squadrons of them on this island.
R039 Barrage balloon, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
A barrage balloon is not a weapon. It is an obstacle. You fly it on a cable and you make the sky above a target too expensive to enter.
S03a
Updegraph, U.S. Marine Corps Special Units of World War II (HQMC, 1977), p. 55.
The Corps got the idea from the British.
S03
Updegraph, U.S. Marine Corps Special Units of World War II (HQMC, 1977), p. 55.
Relying on British experience with balloons over London, the record says, it appeared that fifty to a hundred balloons were required to provide adequate area defense.
S04a
Updegraph, U.S. Marine Corps Special Units of World War II (HQMC, 1977), p. 55.
Not everyone agreed. The argument inside the Corps was whether an advanced naval base could ever be attacked from the air at all.
S04
Updegraph, U.S. Marine Corps Special Units of World War II (HQMC, 1977), p. 55.
The Corps' own history calls that objection noteworthy for its shortsightedness, and adds one sentence: nowhere was any mention made of attack by carrier-based aircraft.
R040 Barrage balloon, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
The argument was made before Pearl Harbor. The balloons won it.
R041 Barrage balloon, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
So Palmer found them on a field at Parris Island, being wrestled down by hand.
R042 Barrage balloons, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
Bedding down a big barrage balloon, he wrote.
R043 Barrage balloons, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
They are enormous, and in his film they are silver against a violet sky.
R044 Barrage balloons, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
One aloft, one still on the grass.
R045 Parris Island, S.C., barrage balloon
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
A section of the barrage, riding above the trees.
R046 Marine Corps barrage balloons, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
Two of them out over the scrub.
R047 Marine Corps barrage balloons, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
Close up, the thing looks less like an aircraft than a fish.
R048 Marine Corps barrage balloons, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
Fins, seams, and a great deal of hydrogen.
R049 Marine Corps barrage balloons, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
Each squadron needed four thousand high-pressure cylinders to keep its balloons full.
R050 Marine Corps barrage balloons, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
And a man on the end of a line, holding one down.
Two days in June 1943
R054 Marine Corps glider in flight, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
Both of these programmes ended in the same week.
S05
Updegraph, U.S. Marine Corps Special Units of World War II (HQMC, 1977), p. 53.
In February 1943 the Corps ordered that no further steps be undertaken in the glider program until more pressing needs in the Pacific were met.
R026 Marine Corps gliders in flight out of Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
The Pacific was islands and jungle. There was nowhere to land a glider, and the Corps had worked that out after Guadalcanal.
S06
Updegraph, U.S. Marine Corps Special Units of World War II (HQMC, 1977), p. 53.
On the twenty-fourth of June 1943, the Commandant terminated the Marine glider program.
S06a
Updegraph, U.S. Marine Corps Special Units of World War II (HQMC, 1977), p. 53.
The gliders on order went to the Army. So did ten that had already been delivered, and which the record says had never been flown.
S07
Updegraph, U.S. Marine Corps Special Units of World War II (HQMC, 1977), p. 60.
Two days later, on the twenty-sixth of June, the Army agreed to take the balloons as well.
S07a
Updegraph, U.S. Marine Corps Special Units of World War II (HQMC, 1977), p. 60.
Sixty officers and twelve hundred enlisted men were freed from Marine barrage balloon duties. Antiaircraft guns had turned out to be the better answer.
S08
Updegraph, U.S. Marine Corps Special Units of World War II (HQMC, 1977), p. 60.
The squadrons were disbanded one at a time through that December.
R049 Marine Corps barrage balloons, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
Most of the men went to defense battalions.
What was left
R033 Marine Corps glider in flight out of Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
Neither programme ever went into combat. Between them they produced these photographs and very little else.
R051 Marine parachuting at Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
Palmer photographed one more thing that May — a parachute over the island, from a programme the Corps also gave up.
R052 Marines finishing training at Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
And the recruits, who were the reason the island existed, and who were not in any of it.
Marines finishing training at Parris Island. That is all his caption says about them.
R053 Marine statue at Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
The statue was already standing when Palmer arrived.
R010 A marine glider pilot in training, a lieutenant, at Page Field, Parris Island, S.C.
Alfred T. Palmer · May 1942 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI colour transparency. View the original.
Every frame in this film is a government photograph, free to download at full resolution from the Library of Congress. The link is in the description.
Sources
- Alfred T. Palmer, Parris Island, S.C., May 1942 — 53 frames, Farm Security Administration / Office of War Information colour collection, Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division (`LC-DIG-fsac-*`). Collection: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsac/ Every frame used is linked by its own item number in the exhibit manifest.
- Format: 4x5 colour transparency. Masters run about 9,000 px on the long edge. Working copies here came from Wikimedia Commons, which mirrors the same files.
- The scans include the slide mount; each plate is cropped inside the film aperture, so the black border and notch marks do not appear on screen.
- p. 47 — the glider programme grew out of the German invasion of Crete, May 1941; "the Crete invasion force had included 75 gliders carrying 750 troops"; the Secretary of the Navy directed the Corps to test the idea for amphibious operations; a call for volunteers, "preferably 2d Lieutenants".
- p. 51 (photo caption) and pp. 50–51 — initial glider training was at Parris Island; Glider Group 71 was organized on 24 April 1942 with 20 officers and 218 enlisted men, and moved from Marine Base, Parris Island to the Marine Corps Air Station.
- p. 53 — Glider Group-71 left Parris Island 21 November 1942; in February 1943 it was ordered "that no further steps be undertaken in the glider program until more pressing needs in the Pacific were met"; the Commandant terminated the programme "effective 24 June 1943"; the orders went to the Army, "as were ten LRW-1 gliders which had been delivered but never flown".
- p. 55 — the balloon case rested on "British experience with balloons over London"; the opponents' argument is called "noteworthy for its shortsightedness", and the history adds: "Nowhere was any mention made of attack by carrier-based aircraft."
- p. 60 — 4,000 high-pressure hydrogen cylinders were required for each squadron; on 26 June 1943 the Army agreed to assume full responsibility, "gradually freeing the approximately 60 officers and 1,200 enlisted men involved in Marine barrage balloon duties"; the squadrons were disbanded 20 February, 21 August, and 7, 8, 9 and 15 December 1943.
- The Barrage Balloon Training School was never at Parris Island. It was established at Quantico on 12 June 1941, moved to New River in September 1942 and to Camp Lejeune in January 1943 (p. 54–55). What was at Parris Island was balloon *units* — the monograph refers on p. 46 to "the January 1942 move planned for barrage balloon units then at Parris Island". The narration says squadrons, not a school, for this reason.
- The Library of Congress's own summary of FSA/OWI colour assignments lists a "Japanese-American relocation camp" under Oregon, credited to Russell Lee. The four colour frames of a relocation centre in the file are uncredited and are of Tule Lake, Newell, California. Not used in this episode; noted because the same summary table is the roadmap's index to this collection.
- One frame (`2017878636`, Marines finishing training) appears at thumbnail size to show a Black Marine in the ranks, which would be notable for May 1942 — the Corps did not begin training Black recruits until later that year, and at Montford Point rather than Parris Island. At full resolution the man is a white recruit whose face is in shadow under his cap. No claim is made about it on screen.
- The narration does not give a count of gliders on the flight line. The monograph lists the Group's equipment in spring 1942 as five two-man gliders plus two in reserve, alongside its powered aircraft; the flight-line photographs appear to show more airframes than that, and the discrepancy is not resolved here.