Page "Mission Elmira" Paragraph 2

Elmira was considered an essential mission, delivering two battalions of glider artillery and 24 howitzers to the 82nd Airborne.

It consisted of four serials of aircraft, the first to arrive ten minutes after mission Keokuck, a similar but much smaller mission to reinforce the 101st Airborne Division.

To reduce congestion over the landing zones, two serials of mission Elmira were delayed two hours until just before sunset.

These carried both battalions of glider field artillery and their guns.

Because the missions were flown on British Double Summer Time, both were daylight missions, with the first wave taking off at 1907 and arriving at 2104, and the second wave taking off at 2037 and arriving at 2255.