Here is a light tank loaded in a aircraft or glider. What is it? Dave

Shown inside a British Hamilcar glider, this is Marmon-Herrington T-9E1/M-22 LOCUST light tank. It was too heavy for parachute-dropping, mechanically unreliable and undergunned to be useful. It was the major equipment of two Airborne Tank units that served Stateside, the 151st Co and 28th Bn. Some were used by the British in combat, glider-landed. There were 800-900 made.

Thanks, another obscure item in the US inventory.
After looking at the available pictures of the CG-10, and the other photos that came with this set, I believe this locust is inside a CG-10a. In another photo with an artillery piece, you can see the front windshield, that and the pictures are in the same number sequence, lead me to believe it's a CG-10. My education is growing all the time. Thanks again, Dave

Hello Dave,

You are lucky man -- you do have very valuable photo which is an evidence that the M22 Locust tank could be carried on board of American cargo glider. Sometimes various authors write that Locust never flew by the US-made glider(s) "because the USA did not have proper glider for it" and "only the British were able to carry this airborne tank". That's not the truth however and an evidence is in your collection. The CG-10 useful load was nearly 19,000lb meanwhile M22 weight was only 16,400lb.

Maybe such authors are too much suggested by the fact that there were tests of parachute dropping the M22 but not in one piece -- turret separately and the rest of tank separately as well. For such tests the M22 was belly-mounted under the fuselage of C-54 transport plane. What was unimaginable however then -- how to assembly heavy turret in the battlefield being under fire, as it was every time when the Allies landed by the gliders directly on the Germans' heads.

The CG-10 Trojan Horse was the best Allied glider of WWII but due to (officially) unknown reasons its R&D was too long to be ready for main Allied gliderborne assaults of that era. It was genius project but underinvested and underestimated. All the US airborne/gliderborne operations of WWII would have looked totally other than in reality if the military officials had been more open-minded towards Jack Laister led designing team of the CG-10. He was estimated as the most talented glider designer then (1930s-1940s) in the USA. Imagine that even in 1975 Laister's high-performance glider Laister Nugget won the 1975 USA 15-meter Class National Competition although the Europeans think that this Class is the field of their supremacy and their gliders.

The CG-10 photographs are unique today and very valuable. I am also lucky owner of several privately taken photos of the XCG-10.

If you are more interested in the CG-10 Trojan Horse I would recommend you to read "Air Classics" magazine mini series of two very good articles on this glider under the title of "Rise and Fall of The Cargo Glider":
• Air Classics, Vol. 27 No. 9, September 1991, Part 1 of the article mentioned
• Air Classics, Vol. 27 No. 10, October 1991, Part 2

Best regards

Greg

The two US airborne armored units were the 151st Tank Co (Abn) and the 28th Tank B (Abn).

The 151st languished in CONUS and the 28th was redesignated from Abn in Feb 44 and was sent to the Philippines in early Aug 45.

There is one more factor why Dave's photograph is very valuable. What is repeated almost everywhere is an information that M22 had to have disassembled turret to carry the tank airborne in two separate parts. Even prestigious AAHS Journal (Fall 1992 issue) in the article under the title of "The Trojan Horse from St. Louis" wrote as follows (page 196): "Among the equipment that could be carried by the Trojan Horse was the 155mm howitzer (at 13,000 pounds), the 4.5-inch, M1A1 gun (at 13,250 pounds), the standard Army 2½-ton, 6x6x truck, an M22 light tank (with turret removed), a bulldozer, and many other weapons and vehicles." The article does not explain why M22 would have to have its turret removed however. That is why the information quoted is half-truth only.

As can be seen in first post image there was no space restriction in the CG-10A to carry entire M22 tank. What is more, between November and December 1944, the supervisors of flight tests found that XCG-10A is able to fly at approx. 32,000lb gross weight which means approx. 19,000lb useful load -- M22 weight was 16,400lb. So, where is the problem which the authors do not write or write about it only partially?

The answer is in AN 09-15AB-1 document which is the "Pilot's Handbook for Army Model CG-10A Glider". Dave's photo is not a wartime propaganda or other act of manipulation because M22 really could be carried completed in the CG-10A cargo bay and Dave has the evidence. What the AAHS Journal wrote (without wider context and explanation) is against logic because the CG-10A would have never been an alternative for the C-54 transport plane which was able to carry in belly-mounted configuration turret-less M22 and the second C-54 carried then the turret to… yes, in order to what? To find somewhere both pieces in a battlefield conditions and try to assembly them asking the Germans "Hold your fire"? The solution for this problem was to be the CG-10A Trojan Horse cargo glider able to carry M22 in one piece.

The Army only, not the Laister-Kauffmann designing office, reduced CG-10A gross weight to 24,000lb of 32,000lb possible. Since the second test flight of XCG-10A such a weight was tested. The Army wanted to have its fleet of the CG-10As fully serviceable, not as in the case of CG-4As that was treated as "one way ticket" with high possibility of heavy damages after rough field landing. The Army preferred to have lighter CG-10As for problem-less rough field landings than much heavier ones performing crash landings. Simply the Army wanted to snatch the CG-10As after gliderborne assaults by the B-17s. Such a test was successful and XCG-10A was snatched from cotton patch.

In 1945 the Army defined finally take-off weights for the CG-10As and their tow planes. They called them: 23,000lb design gross weight and 25,000lb alternate gross weight. It means that -- against its abilities -- the CG-10A could not carry M22 tank in one piece. The glider would be too heavy then for standard tow planes as used by the TCC squadrons, mainly C-47s. What was written for the aircrews in the "Pilot's Handbook for Army Model CG-10A Glider" it sounds as follows: the "Army Air Forces aircraft capable of towing this glider are C-46, C-82 and B-17" (AN 09-15AB-1, page 11).

Keeping the rarity of both the M22 Locust Tank AND the CG-10 Glider in mind, I've pinned this topic to the top...

Meanwhile here's a picture of the Brussels' Tank Museum's M22. Picture taken at the Belgian Wings&Wheels Show in 2008. The Locust is fully operational following a complete rebuild.



Johan

Thanks Johan for this nice photo. Good to see M22 real size and to compare this tankette to people's size. The M22 dimensions are more characteristic for Anschluss period in Austria or Czechoslovakia in 1938, or the Polish campaign of 1939, than for modern warfare of 1944. None the less, from airborne troops point of view, the M22 would be much better reconaissance AFV than armed Jeeps.

Here is interesting PDF file under the title of "Surviving M22 Locust Tanks".