Douglas DC-3/C-47

• History
• Technical Data
• Selected References

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The Douglas DC-3 is considered by some the most successful civil aircraft ever built. The chief engineer was Arthur Raymond (1900-1999). The technical innovations incorporated by the Douglas team included retractable landing gear, wing flaps, variable-pitch propellers, stressed-skin structure, and flush riveting. These innovations set many standards until the development of the jet engines (1950s).

The first airplane flew in 1935. The airplane was built in nearly 11,000 by the end of 1944. By then it accounted for over 90 % of the world commercial aircraft. In 1940 a revised version (designated C-47) was launched. 18,000 were built in all, many of them after the war in countries other than America (including the Soviet Union).

Legends still accompany the name of the DC-3, as being virtually indestructible (also due to the 500,000 rivets of its airframe). Stories are told of a DC-3 that lost part of its wing when the airplane scraped a mountain in Arizona, but managed to fly on.

A DC-3 was once dugged out of an Icelandic glacier months after being abandoned in a storm, and found to be in working order; during WW-II a Japanese fighter rammed a DC-3 and fell to earth, while the American pilot flew back home and was credited with a kill.

This adds to an incredible safety record, that made the aircraft useful for anything from commercial traffic (all the major airlines in America, and later elsewhere) to military deployment (WW-II, including D-day in Normandy, 1944; Berlin airlift, 1948, Korean war, 1950, Vietnam War, 1960s etc.)

President Eisenhauer said the DC-3 was one of the West’s four weapons, the other ones being the jeep, the bazooka, and the nuclear bomb.

Many DC-3s are still in service (about 2000 by some count). The photo above was taken at a small airfield in southern Arizona, Dec. 1997. The airplane was about to take off with a team of parachuters.

• History Notes