Dr. Gregory F. Withrow

World War II historian currently writing Wayward Javelins: US Gliders from Sicily to Normandy.

[Casemate Publishers @casematepub]

Happy Father's Day from all of us at Casemate Publishers!

[Dr. Gregory F. Withrow @GregoryFWithrow]

@conniewillisx @coasttocoastam Looking forward to listening to your broadcast.

[Dr. Gregory F. Withrow @GregoryFWithrow]

Speaking at Toccoa’s Currahee Military Museum Veterans’ Breakfast this morning at 9:00.

[Dr. Gregory F. Withrow @GregoryFWithrow]

Check out the Memorial Day discussion of Detroit Mission broadcasted on Paul Woodage’s YouTube Channel WW2 TV. This is a great introduction to the level of research detail comprising the stories in my forthcoming book from Casemate Publishing, Wayward Javelins: US Gliders from Sicily to Normandy, which will be available for pre-order within the next two weeks.
https://t.co/eMnruAU2bX

[Dr. Gregory F. Withrow @GregoryFWithrow]

Hello! I'll be presenting Wayward Javelins: Detroit Mission Glider Assault on Normandy - June 6, 1944 on Paul Woodage's WW2 TV at 2:00 P.M. EST. Please join me for a a special Memorial Day tribute to the largely unknown contribution of Troop Carrier Command CG-4A Glider pilots, C-47 pilots and crews, the glider artillerymen of the 80th Airborne Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion and 82nd Airborne Division Headquarters troopers in the cross-channel airborne assault on Normandy during the pre-dawn hours of June 6, 1944. https://t.co/mJx69Ag0zK

[Mike Peters @MikeHistorian]

Thanks Paul, I hope that you enjoy reading it. Luuk and I put a lot into it.

[Dr. Gregory F. Withrow @GregoryFWithrow]

@silverlock At the Chattanooga Warhammer Store grand opening…. spaaaaths muurines!

[Dr Peter Caddick-Adams #StandwithUkraine @militaryhistori]

On the nail, alas

[Dr. Gregory F. Withrow @GregoryFWithrow]

Please join me on a very special Memorial Day tribute highlighting veterans of Troop Carrier Command's 437th Troop Carrier Group and elements of the 82nd Airborne Division, including the gunners of Batteries A and B, 80th Airborne Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion and their all-important 57mm M1 Anti-Tank Guns, delivered into the Cherbourg Peninsula during the pre-dawn hours of June 6, 1944. This program will broadcast via the internet on Paul Woodadge's YouTube channel, WW2 TV at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Monday, 26 May. The photo used in the graphic shows gunners from a platoon of Battery A, 80th AAA BN, with the Cpl. Nonah Juday standing straight and tall in the middle. Juday is still classified as Missing in Action.

https://t.co/eMnruAU2bX

These forgotten veterans and many others are detailed in never-before seen accounts via my forthcoming book from Casemate Publishers under the working title "American Transport Aviators and Gliderborne Troops from Sicily to D-Day."

The book is based on my dissertation, "Glider Gladiators: American Transport Aviators and Gliderborne Troops from Operation Ladbroke Through Operation Overlord," employing extensive primary-source analysis—unit records, veterans’ diaries, correspondence, personal interviews, and postwar assessments—to reassess the role of gliderborne soldiers, glider pilots, and tow-plane crews in Allied airborne operations. This work goes well-beyond setting the record straight regarding the reputations of the much-maligned Troop Carrier Command pilots and the gliderborne troops, those often labeled as incompetent, substandard soldiers, or even as cowards in Sicily, Burma and Normandy. This work examines how Operation Ladbroke leads to the negative perception of Troop Carrier Command pilots through Eisenhower offering them up as sacrificial lambs in effort to maintain the alliance with Britain, and how Operation Thursday becomes a proof of concept in March 1944, only two months before the launch of Operation Neptune, the airborne element of Operation Overlord. Instead of leaving these deserving individuals in historical anonymity and backseat to paratroopers, names and faces of those ridden in each of Detroit Mission’s C-47 tow planes and Waco CG-4A gliders are highlighted through detailed narratives of their harrowing journey from England into the maelstrom over the Cherbourg Peninsula during the dark morning hours of June 6, 1944. Having recovered access to original copies of Detroit Mission glider pilot interrogation reports, I shed light on an aspect of the Allied Invasion of Normandy hidden by the unreadable microfiche on file at the National Archives. With these records and many other unedited primary-source accounts, I performed a forensic analysis of Detroit Mission, adding a heretofore unseen reality to the historiography of the Allied invasion Normandy.
Two other important achievements established in my dissertation are the identification of 80 percent of the 82nd Airborne Division soldiers manifested on the 52 Detroit Mission Waco CG-4A gliders and the creation of a map plotting the specific landing sites of 49 of the 52 gliders. This includes all 16 gliders transporting the 57mm M1 Anti-Tank Guns crucial to the support in securing the bridgeheads across the only two causeways over the Merderet at La Fière and Chef-du-Pont, just west of Sainte-Mère-Église. Both aspects are totally new in the historiography of the Allied invasion of Normandy.

[Dr. Gregory F. Withrow @GregoryFWithrow]

@warsurv Should be scaled to mount upon tanks.

[Dr. Gregory F. Withrow @GregoryFWithrow]

Detroit Mission: Glider Assault on Normandy, June 6, 1944
Dr. Gregory F. Withrow
Saturday, April 18, 2026: 10:00 am-2:00 pm
Dunwoody United Methodist Church Fellowship Hall
The Atlanta World War II History Round Table
https://t.co/SgujCiMIiG
RSVP w/ Bill LeCount at 404-886-7383.

[Dr. Gregory F. Withrow @GregoryFWithrow]

@militaryhistori Everyday is a constant battle versus unethical use of AI in my high school World History classes.

[Dr. Gregory F. Withrow @GregoryFWithrow]

@militaryhistori My ancestors on both sides of my family stemming from the Picquet and the de Quincy lines. Baron Saer de Quincy, signer of the Magna Carta, was my 24th great grandfather. One might say my farm in North Georgia is the last and most western Norman fiefdom remaining.

[Dr. Gregory F. Withrow @GregoryFWithrow]

New discovery of Detroit Mission Waco CG-4A glider landing site photos!!! I constructed these posters via the my earlier research and the photos.

[Dr Peter Caddick-Adams #StandwithUkraine @militaryhistori]

Once in a lifetime opportunity: see the Bayeux tapestry in the UK. British Museum tickets go on sale.
https://t.co/eh0rNrYlSO

[Dr Peter Caddick-Adams #StandwithUkraine @militaryhistori]

Gripped by Russian (2004) TV series Shtrafbat - 'The Penal Battalion: Their Life was Worth Nothing'. 11 episodes on the gritty dramas of life in a Soviet WW2 unit, fighting Germans & the NKVD. Subtitled, highly recommended. Sadly terminated as glasnost faded.

[Dr. Gregory F. Withrow @GregoryFWithrow]

Spent three days with great people of the World War II Glider Pilots Association. Presented Detroit Mission: Chalk #19 & Chalk #38, Glider Assault on Normandy, June 6, 1944.