Would ANY airline name its flagship that today? Now it's...
Posted on 10/25/2023 1:10:43 PM PDT by Red Badger
Perfectly aerodynamic for its airspeed. I saw a show in the 80s that said there are DC3s with over 200,000 air miles. No sign of stress fracturing anywhere. Perfect for short rough runways.
Would ANY airline name its flagship that today? Now it's...
Similarly, I was flown in a C-46 from Malmstrom AFB to Elmendorf in the Mid 1950’s.
It was bumpy, cold and uncomfortable.
Return flight in a KC-97 was a lot quicker and better.
I still can’t get used to canvas seats.
I jumped out of a C47 at Fort Benning during jump school. It was going so slow that it was almost as easy as jumping out of a helicopter.
PBY Catalina?
When I got to Vietnam in 1966, the C-47 was used as Puff the Magic Dragon gunships. We saw them fairly often. The tracers made quite a light show, but I remember the sound just as much. It was like one long and loud fart. Everyone tried to imitate it. We were starved for entertainment, I guess.
For me it was either 1980 or 1981, coming back to Oregon from California on a Forest Service flight. Lots of thunderstorms and a very rough ride that night.
Appears to be a C-43 with modified engines. They look like turbo-jets?
I have damn near that many miles on my 1975 Cessna 172M.
Turbo Props.
Great aircraft. Parachute Drop Zones across the country have used them for jump operations for years. I have hundreds of skydives from them.
They should never have stopped building them. It might be the perfect plane.
They would land then taxi to the chain link gate, do a 180 and leave one engine idling as they dropped and picked up passengers.
To this day, I still smile when I see one and hear that radial at idle. Pure music!!!
See them all the time, I live in Alaska.
Flew a DC-6 out to one of the remote USAF RADAR sites. Interesting trip. One that I lived thru.
Buffalo Airways seems to have collected 6 flightworthy airplanes and many many many spare engines, they seem to make quite a enterprise of shipping engines around canada and the untied states. There is tons of DC3 porn on their shows and youtube.
For north America.
There were 20+ to fly into oshkosh for the 70 years past D-DAY and nearly 30 at D-Day 70th. I think a flight of 10 made the trip from Halifax to the Ireland/UK/France on a single day. There provably are 30 doing cargo flights on demand, and another 40 flying to airshows 100+ hours a year. Another 40 in the US flying occasionally or just being someones private ride. Beyond the trainers, it is the most common airshow bird and fan club hauler.
The place they are not at is Africa because 100LL is $10/gal anyplace one wants to do a cargo hop to.
‘72-’73 I worked on N27R, Ray Peters pilot. One weekend he wanted to fly it, but did not have copilot. I shut shop down and went with him. Not rated for DC3. He let me fly for 30 minutes. Great memories. Would have lost my job if boss gound out, was worth it. SELS 200 hours at time.
They served me well
Them and Beech D18s
Pilots were another story lol
If you bought one in the 80s you could be sure DEA had painted it with transponder gear and were taking pics of whoever was looking at it to buy
Helluva bird
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