Before his death on Feb. 1, 1981, Donald W. Douglas created thousands of military airplanes as well as 10 generations of successful commercial airplanes. Of the Douglas DC-1 through DC-10, the most famous and beloved of this line is the DC-3.
The DC-3 was the first airplane that could make money flying passengers, without relying on the generous mail subsidy the government provided to commercial carriers. It had safety features unheard of, propeller feathering technology, adjustable  pitch props, cabin insulation from weather and noise, hot meals and more. The DC-3 gave the public a feeling of safety and comfort and fostered major growth in commercial aviation both in the United States and around the world.
As the C-47 military variant, it was unrivaled as a troop transport, parachute plane and air ambulance. After the war, it went back to the civilian airlines and fostered a boom in commercial aviation--again! Thirty years after it was born, it was reborn into a new role none could have imagined--as "Spooky" the gun ship.In recent years it was reborn again as a turboprop. All this and more was the result of one man who had a vision.
In 1921, Donald Douglas invested his entire savings of $600, and began his company with 18 square feet of space in the rear of a barbershop in Santa Monica, Calif. By 1944, the Douglas Aircraft Company was the fourth largest company in the United States. It had six factories worth more than $194 million, 160,000 employees and a payroll of $400,000,000.
A need for safer airplanes
In March 1931, a TWA Fokker F-10A trimotor crashed into a Kansas wheat field, killing all eight on board, including Knute Rockne, legendary Notre Dame football coach. Shortly after the crash, all 33 of Fokker's F10As were grounded. This caused a near standstill in the operations of TWA, Pan American Airways and others relying on that aircraft.
William Boeing, Douglas' only competition on the West Coast, had been building military aircraft. Boeing had developed an all-metal, open cockpit bomber design, however, his design lost out in a government competition to a Glenn L. Martin Company design.
Some saw its potential as a civilian transport. The XB-9 bomber was modified extensively, and what rolled out was the Boeing 247. The 247 was a streamlined, stressed skin, all metal, twin-engine, low-wing monoplane that reflected creature comforts unheard of in other airplanes. It had carpeted floors, reclining seats, steam heat and a cabin insulated from weather and noise.
The 10-passenger airliner cost $68,000, and Boeing estimated that the total operating costs were two and a half cents per mile. United Airlines advertised the plane as the "Three-Mile-a-minute Airliner."
TWA went to Boeing to place an order for the 247. Boeing was agreeable, but only after it filled an order for 60 for United Airlines. The order tied up Boeing's factory, thus ensuring that United's competitors would not share the prestige of flying the first modern all metal airliner for at least two years. Boeing's refusal to increase their manufacturing capacity forced TWA to look to Douglas.
The "Birth Certificate of the DC Ships"
On Aug. 2, 1932, 38-year-old Donald Douglas opened a letter he later called "The Birth Certificate of the DC-3." Jack Frye, TWA vice president of operations, signed the letter. TWA wanted to purchase 10 or more all metal, trimotor monoplanes.
The specs called for a gross weight of 14,000 pounds, a range of 1,000 miles, a capacity to carry 12 passengers and two pilots, and takeoff fully loaded on two of the three engines. After the engineering team developed a proposal, Arthur Raymond, assistant chief engineer, and Harold Wetzel, general manager, boarded a train for New York to present it to TWA.
"We traveled by train for two reasons," said Raymond. "We had much ground to cover and hundreds of details to lay out, and I needed secluded time to work out my performance figures. Also, we really wanted to get there."
During that period, the airlines had seen a sharp increase in accidents and neither man wanted to become a statistic. The state of commercial air travel in 1932 was expens ive, unreliable and dangerous.
Raymond flew home on a TWA Ford Trimotor. He knew what TWA was looking for--something like the Ford Trimotor, only better. When Raymond boarded the aircraft, nicknamed the "Tin Goose," he received the usual "comfort pack," which included cotton for his ears, smelling salts for if he felt faint, and an airsick cup.
The trip radically changed Raymond's idea of what to design. What came off the drawing board was a twin-engine, low-wing, all-metal monoplane. For safety, the engineers decided the wheels wouldn't fully retract. In the up position, the main gear wheels protruded from the nacelles about half their diameter. In a wheels up emergency landing, the low wing would help shield the passengers, and the half-extended wheels would cushion the landing, or so the design logic went. Except for the Boeing 247, most U.S. aircraft, including the Fokker, Ford and Boeing trimotors, were high-wing, fixed gear.
The DC-1 and DC-2
On July 1, 1933, at 12:36 p.m., 332 days after Douglas received Frye's letter, the main gear of a DC1 left the ground. It was the beginning of the end for the Fokkers, Condors and other wood and fabric airplanes.
The DC-1 went on to meet TWA's requirements, and they ordered 20 more. With suggested changes, the DC-2 was born.
Douglas' real commercial success began when American Airlines entered the picture. American had a fleet of Curtiss Condor biplane sleepers, Ford and Fokker trimotors, and needed to modernize their fleet. They were losing millions of dollars, and they wanted a modern airplane, with sleeper berths, since that attracted the luxury passengers. They ordered several DC-2s. The DC-2 was a vast improvement over their previous airplanes but it was too narrow to fit a comfortable sleeper berth. American Airlines decided they needed a bigger airplane.
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Photo Courtesy Boeing
Passengers dine on a TWA DC-2.
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The engineers began to redesign the DC-2. Sketches of the proposed sleeper closely resembled the later DST. Douglas had been reluctant to take on a new design. The DC-2 was in full production with 102 airframes already manufactured, and another 90 orders ready for the assembly line. A new model meant new tooling--an expensive gamble.
The engineering drawings suggested the new design would be wider and have the DC2 center section and outer wing panels, but have a larger cockpit and tail surface than the DC2. When Douglas engineers reviewed Littlewood's drawings, they estimated they would reuse about 80 percent of the original DC-2 design.
The DC-3
On July 8, 1935, American Airlines sent Douglas a telegram, ordering 10 of the new transports. The actual specifications for the proposed airplane arrived at Douglas Aircraft on Nov. 14, 1935. Before the first flight of the DC-3, American Airlines had also doubled their initial order to eight DSTs and 12 DC-3s.
"We gave Bill (Littlewood) almost a free hand in establishing the dimensions in the cabin and deciding what went into the cockpit layout," said Arthur Raymond. "The DC-3 was a product of teamwork. This was the primary reason it was so successful."
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| Photo Courtesy Boeing |
| A steward made up the berths on the Douglas Sleeper Transport. The individually curtained berths gave complete privacy. |
What rolled out of the shop was much more than the engineers had put on paper. It was a new aircraft, both in design and size. It had a wider and longer fuselage, greater span, larger empennage area, stronger landing gear and more power than the DC-2. The final product used only about 10 percent interchangeable DC-2 parts.
On Dec. 17, 1935, the DC-3 began to move down the runway at Clover Field, slowly at first, but within 1,000 feet, it lifted off effortlessly. The lives of millions of people throughout the world for decades to come were about to change.
The DST configuration was the first aircraft off the production line. American Airlines used it in a day-plane configuration until the DC-3 came off the line in September 1936. Coast to coast air travel on American Airlines' new DST sleeper service began on Sept. 18, 1936, reducing the time to 15 hours westbound and 19 hours eastbound.
American Airlines' DC-3/DST was the first American aircraft to have hot kitchen facilities. No longer did captive passengers have to eat boxed lunches consisting of a cold sandwich and a piece of fruit. Now flight attendants served hot, full course meals--and they were free.
In 1936, the DC-3 helped American Airlines show its first profit in years--$4,590. By 1937, their earnings were up more than $1,400,000, with a 22 percent increase in revenue passengers. The DC-3 enabled the airline to fly passengers only and show a profit.
World War II
By Dec. 7, 1941, the Army Air Corps had ordered 957 C-47s. By December 1942, Douglas received orders for 5,500 C-47s and its variants.
In February 1944, when the Army asked Douglas to manufacture an additional 2,000 C-47s. June saw another order for 1,100 C-47s. The last order, for 1,469 C-47 and its variants, came in July 1944, but not all of this order was completed.
Douglas delivered 2,000 C-47s by April 1944, in time for the D-Day invasion. By that time, the Oklahoma City plant was turning out a record 1.8 C-47s an hour, besides the other aircraft it was producing. In May 1944, two plants, Oklahoma City and Long Beach, produced 573 completed C-47s. Working 31 days, the production output was equivalent to 18.5 planes a day. In May 1945, the Long Beach plant alone produced more than 415 C-47s, in addition to 120 Boeing B17 bombers in the same month.
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| Photo Courtesy FAA |
| The Federal Aviation Administration's DC-3 is on the National Historic Record and currently tours air shows. In its former life, it was used as an airways check airplane. |
The Army wanted a large cargo-loading door, and that was a challenge. Douglas engineers realized that to cut the door opening they would need to reinforce the airframe or the tail would fall off. With the new door opening, the Army could roll a Jeep or small artillery piece into the airplane, but the floor wouldn't support the weight. Reinforcing the floor added even more weight to the airplane. Engineers trimmed and changed the shape of the rudder and stabilizer slightly until they got the desired results.
Although the C-47 was a universal transport the constant military modifications resulted in such an assortment of models, and designations, it became difficult to track them. In all, there were 55 variants, all having their roots in the DC-3.
The C-47 had a major influence on the outcome of the war. During the first airdrop of the Sicilian Campaign, called Operation Ladbroke, on June 9, 1943, 147 aircraft, including 112 C-47s towing 137 Waco CG4, and eight Horsa gliders carried 1,600 British troops. It was the most successful aerial assault of the invasion. The glider missions that followed were disasters.
Operation Huskey 1 involved 226 C-47s and 3,400 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division. Eight C-47s were lost to enemy action. Operation Huskey 2 was nearly a complete disaster. After 144 C-47s dropped 2,000 troops to reinforce the 82nd Airborne, 23 C-47s were lost, and more than 60 were badly damaged. Operation Fustian, on July 13, involved 132 C-47s. Of those, 14 C-47s were lost and 50 badly damaged; 27 returned without completing their drops. After that, the USAAF used special "invasion" markings for all Allied aircraft.
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| The American Airlines DC-3 in the foreground, c/n 4976, started with Braniff Airlines as NC45340; during the war it became a C-53C registered as USAAF 42-2032. In 1993, it was still airworthy as N999Z. The irony that AA is phasing out DC-10s (background) |
On June 6, 1944, the invasion of Europe by Allied Forces began. Part of this contingent was the largest airborne armada ever assembled to that point. The first wave of transports included 821 C-47s. In the first 24 hours, there were at least 1,674 sorties by C-47s, towing 513 gliders, from more than 20 bases in England. At the height of the invasion one C-47 took off every 11 seconds, with an average of 20 paratroopers aboard each aircraft. They flew in waves of four abreast, and stretched more than 200 miles from the southern coast of England to the Cherborg Peninsula.
"The steady stream of transports kept coming and coming in an endless sky train. The awe of it stopped the fighting in some sectors as men looked skyward with unbelieving eyes," CBS correspondent Charles Collingwood reported.
Between Sept. 17, 1944 and March 24, 1945, more than 10,000 C-47s hauled more than 6,000 gliders into combat. By the end of the war, the C-47 had carried 22 million tons of goods and flown 67 million passengermiles. The C-47s under the Air Transport Command logged on the average 15 to 19 hours a day in the air.
For every use found for the C-47, someone created a new nickname. Americans called it the "Gooney Bird," "Doug," "Dumbo," "Old Fatso," "Charlie 47," "Skytrain," "Skytrooper" and "Tabby." The British called it the "Dak" and the "Dakota," a clever acronym, DACoTA, which stood for Douglas Aircraft Company Transport Aircraft.
Civilian pilots called it the "Three," "Old Methuselah," "The Placid Plodder," "The Dowager Dutchess," "The Flying Vagrant" and the "Dizzy Three." In Vietnam, it earned the sobriquets "Puff the Magic Dragon," "Puff," "Spooky" and "The Dragon Ship."
Most people remember "Gooney Bird." Some say the name came from the South Pacific where small atolls were the home of the wandering albatross, the giant seagull like bird noted for its powers of flight, and sometimes unflattering, but safe landings. Some GIs said the C-47 looked like the bird, with a heavy body and long wings, and mimicked the bird in its struggle to get off the rain soaked dirt fields.
Berlin Airlift
On June 24, 1948, the Russians blockaded the land routes into the Allied sector of Berlin. The USAF and the RAF used C-47s (and the C-54) as the leading edge of a 15month airlift of food, medicine and fuel that neared the total tonnage moved during World War II.
At first, C-47s comprised 85 percent of the total aircraft flown. Many flew with 8,000-pound payloads, again greatly exceeding the Douglas specifications. In the first three months of the blockade, C-47s made more than 12,000 round trips between West Germany and Berlin. One C-47 flew continuously for 327 hours, 27 minutes.
Total Production
The total military versions of the C-47 variants were 10,291. Douglas records also show that of the 10,632 machines built, three were built as spares; this figure doesn't include the post-war DC-3C, DC-3D and DC-3S (Super DC-3), which were remanufactured airframes, and in the case of the Super DC-3, assigned new construction numbers. An additional 487 Japanese DC-3s were manufactured by the Showa Company, and according to one reliable source, 6,157 Russian Li-2s were manufactured, bringing the grand total to at least 17,276 airframes.
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| Photo By Fred Blechman |
| Clay Lacy's United Airlines commemorative 1945 DC-3/C47 is based at Van Nuys Airport. |
"Never in our wildest dreams did we imagine what the next half-century would bring," Arthur Raymond, chief engineer on the DC-3 project, told this author in 1988. "Ten thousand DC-3s? Are you crazy?"
In 2008, there are somewhere between 1,000 and 1,400 DC-3 airframes worldwide. Most will never fly again. Low-lead fuel has taken its toll on the piston engines, and high maintenance cost--as high as $1,600 per hour--has resulted in some survivors heading to the scrap pile, or a museum. For those of us who have piloted, or flown in one, we will remember the magic. She always brought us home.
Henry Holden welcomes comments, questions, anecdotal stories and new information on the DC-3/C-47.
Contact us at: douglasdc3@optonline.net
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