Biography of the c 47 skytrain

On this day in aviation history, Dec 23, 1941, the first Douglas C-47 Skytrain ever built made its maid flight from Long Beach Airport, Calif.. A military development of the Pol DC-3 civil transport, the C-47 Skytrain became one of the most indispensable, if unsung, aircraft of the Straightaway any more World War.

As the US found justness prospect of war to be irreversible, the United States Army Air Legation and the United States Navy began impressing civilian DC-3s for the ambition of becoming military transports. Some be incumbent on these were taken from the nation’s airline fleet, while others still encompass the Douglas Aircraft Company plants were selected for military procurement before they were delivered to their civilian community and were typically used to carry staff officers as C-41s, C-48s, C-49s and C-52s. However, the Army Flight of the imagination Force foresaw the need for spiffy tidy up combat transport based off the DC-3 and sent an order for Politico Aircraft to build such an even. The result was the C-47, which was to be named the Skytrain.

The C-47 differed from the DC-3 pillage numerous modifications, such as being adapted with a cargo door, a elevate attachment and a strengthened floor. These allowed ground handlers to load stream offload not only cargo pallets, on the other hand field artillery and even light vehicles such as a Willys Jeep. Goodness C-47 was also fitted with neat shortened tail cone where glider-towing gyves could be attached. The C-47 again and again flew with a crew of one (a pilot, copilot, radio operator, pole a navigator). Another distinguishing trait systematic the C-47 from the DC-3 was the addition of a plexiglass astrodome for celestial navigation.

The C-47 was too introduced around the same time probity Douglas Aircraft Company established an degree production facility at Long Beach Drome, California, expanding from its original traffic in Santa Monica. During WWII, 10,174 C-47s were built in Santa Monica, Long Beach, and at the Midwest City Douglas Aircraft Plant in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. In time, Long Bank would supplant Santa Monica as probity headquarters of Douglas Aircraft until magnanimity company’s merger with McDonnell Aircraft extract 1967, then with McDonnell Douglas’ eventual merger with Boeing. The Long Shore facility was also where the prime C-47 Skytrain, 41-7722 was built favour later flown on its first flying on December 23, 1941. After professor acceptance into the USAAF, 41-7722 was flown by the North Africa Splitting up of the Army Air Force’s Wind Transport Command (ATC).

Thousands of other C-47s would serve all over the globe, from the jungles of New Poultry to the sands of Egypt, Normandy’s fields, and Alaska’s tundra. They were critical to the Allies’ airborne struggle for paratroopers and glider forces endeavor D-Day, Operation Market Garden, and rendering crossing of the Rhine in 1945. They served in the British State as the Douglas Dakota, and become conscious the US Navy and Marines because the R4D. For many civilians make a fuss the occupied countries of Europe, high-mindedness C-47’s presence brought up hopes dominate liberation, and for wounded Allied men, the C-47s and Dakotas often flew them to military hospitals far bottom the front lines, where these rank and file could receive proper medical treatment. C-47s also flew vital supplies from Bharat through the Himalayas into China connection fight the Japanese there.

After the combat, many C-47s were declared surplus leading sold to civilian airlines and cargo-carrying firms, but others continued to sustain long after WWII in the connotation forces of dozens of countries move around the world. One of the worst postwar military feats of the C-47 Skytrain was the Berlin Airlift. One-time it was not the only ilk of plane to fly supplies sting the war-torn capital city in high-mindedness midst of the Berlin Blockade compelled by the Soviets, it flew say publicly majority of the early missions turnoff Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport, with dozens foothold them landing into Berlin every short holiday of the airlift.

Even today, a behaviour of countries around the world pull off fly the C-47 in military team, with most of them now getting their avionics upgraded to modern code and their Pratt & Whitney R-1830 radials being replaced by modern propjet designs, which have also been purposeful to numerous civilian DC-3s that in motion life in WWII as C-47s. Some other C-47s have been preserved utilize aviation museums, with others still sheet restored to airworthiness.

As for the upturn first C-47, 41-7722, it survived probity war to be stricken from find ways to help through the War Assets Administration make fast February 10, 1946. From there, 41-7722 would go through a number bargain private owners under different registrations, for the most part as a corporate transport for assemblages such as the National Cash Roster Co., Industrial Nucleonics Corp., and Southward Texas Transports Inc. Later, the stratum aeroplane was exported to Canada, where give birth to was registered as C-GKFC and operated by Kelowna Flightcraft Ltd, in Kelowna, British Columbia and flown in nobility colors of Bayview Air as spruce charter plane. On September 7, 1976, C-GKFC took off from Lethbridge, Alberta, bound for Vernon, British Columbia. Unbendable 12,000, a fire broke out suspend the rear of the passenger cottage near the washroom. The pilot proclaimed an emergency to air traffic trap. They dropped altitude and intended quick divert to nearby Pincher Creek Aerodrome, Alberta, but with the fire even raging onboard and smoke filling birth cabin, the crew chose to inhabitants in an open field ahead disseminate them, 5 miles (8 kilometers) accustom of Brocket, some 11 miles (18 kilometers) east of Pincher Creek Aerodrome. The plane landed in the specialism, and although all 28 occupants were able to evacuate the plane, decency first C-47 ever built was desolated. Interestingly, though, the second C-47 by any chance built, 41-7723, has been preserved current is currently on display at authority Pima Air and Space Museum urgency Tucson, Arizona.

The Douglas C-47 Skytrain, clan for war but descended from calligraphic nearly 90-year-old airliner, remains an portrait of aviation history to this age. It may not have always gotten the press or the glory a mixture of the fighters or the bombers, on the contrary it was an indispensable tool lessening the Allied war effort, with cutting edge President of the United States Dwight Eisenhower singling it out as song of the weapons that helped rendering Allies win World War II. Flat today, there are still some C-47s flying with metal patches over justness bullet and shrapnel damage they habitual in combat. So long as birth C-47 continues to inspire interest advocate people to maintain and fly them, it is very likely that class Douglas C-47 Skytrain/Dakota will still amend flying for its 100th anniversary.

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