Now the DC-3 has been grounded by EU health and safety rules 'It groaned, it
protested, it rattled, it ran hot, it ran cold, it ran rough, it staggered
along on hot days and scared you half to death.
'Its wings flexed and twisted in a horrifying manner, it sank back to earth
with a great sigh of relief. But it flew and it flew and it flew.'

This is the memorable description by Captain Len Morgan, a former pilot with
Braniff Airways, of the unique challenge of flying a Douglas DC-3.

________________________________




It's carried more passengers than any plane in history but - Now the DC-3
has been grounded by EU health and safety rules









The DC-3 served in World War II, Korea and Vietnam and was a favorite among
pilots

For more than 70 years, the aircraft known through a variety of nicknames -
the Doug, the Dizzy, Old Methuselah, the Gooney Bird, the Grand Old Lady -
but which to most of us is simply the Dakota has been the workhorse of the
skies.

With its distinctive nose-up profile when on the ground and extraordinary
capabilities in the air, it transformed passenger travel and served in just
about every military conflict from World War II onwards.

Now the Douglas DC-3 - the most successful plane ever made, which first took
to the skies just over 30 years after the Wright Brothers' historic first
flight - is to carry passengers in Britain for the last time.

Romeo Alpha and Papa Yankee, the last two passenger-carrying Dakotas in the
UK, are being forced into retirement because of - yes, you've guessed it -
health and safety rules.

Their owner, Coventry-based Air Atlantique, has reluctantly decided it would
be too expensive to fit the required emergency escape slides and weather
radar systems required by new European rules for their 65-year-old planes,
which served with the RAF during the war.

Mike Collett, the company's chairman, says: 'We're very saddened.'

The end of the passenger-carrying British Dakotas , is a sad chapter in the
story of the most remarkable aircraft ever built, surpassing all others in
length of service, dependability and achievement.

It has been a luxury airliner, transport plane, bomber, fighter and flying
hospital and introduced millions of people to the concept of air travel.

It has flown more miles, broken more records, carried more passengers and
cargo, accumulated more flying time and performed more 'impossible' feats
than any other plane in history, even in these days of super-jumbos that can
circle the world non-stop.

Indeed, at one point, 90 per cent of the world's air traffic was operated by
DC-3s.

More than 10,500 DC-3s have been built since the prototype was rolled out to
astonished onlookers at Douglas's Santa Monica factory in 1935.

With its eagle beak, large square windows and sleek metal fuselage, it was
luxurious beyond belief, in contrast to the wood-and- canvas bone shakers of
the day, where passengers had to huddle under blankets against the cold.

Even in the 1930s, the early Dakotas had many of the comforts we take for
granted today, like on-board loos and a galley that could prepare hot food.

Early menus included wild rice pancakes with blueberry syrup, served on bone
china with silver service.




For the first time, passengers were able to stand up and walk around while
the plane was airborne.

But the design had one vital feature, ordered by pioneering aviator Charles
Lindbergh, who was a director of TWA, which placed the first order for the
plane.

The DC-3 should always, Lindbergh directed, be able to fly on one engine.

Pilots have always loved it, not just because of its rugged reliability but
because, with no computers on board, it is the epitome of 'flying by the
seat of the pants'.

One aviator memorably described the Dakota as a 'collection of parts flying
in loose formation', and most reckon they can land it pretty well on a
postage stamp.

Captain Len Morgan says: 'The Dakota could lift virtually any load strapped
to its back and carry it anywhere and in any weather safely.'

It is the very human scale of the plane that has so endeared it to
successive generations.

With no pressurization in the cabin, it flies low and slow.

And unlike modern jets, it's still possible to see the world go by from the
cabin of a Dakota.

(The name, incidentally, is an acronym for Douglas Aircraft Company
Transport Aircraft.)

As a former Pan Am stewardess puts it: 'From the windows you seldom look
upon a flat, hazy, distant surface to the world.

'Instead, you see the features of the earth - curves of mountains, colors of
lakes, cars moving on roads, ocean waves crashing on shores and cloud
formations as a sea of popcorn and powder puffs.'

But it is for heroic feats in military service that the legendary plane is
most distinguished.

It played a major role in the invasion of Sicily, the D-Day landings, the
Berlin Airlift and the Korean and Vietnam wars, performing astonishing feats
along the way.

When General Eisenhower was asked what he believed were the foundation
stones for America's success in World War II he named the bulldozer, the
jeep, the half-ton truck and the Dakota.

When the Burma Road was captured by the Japanese and the only way to send
supplies into China was over the mountains at 19,000 ft, the Chinese leader
Chiang Kai-shek said: 'Give me 50 DC-3s and the Japs can have the Burma
Road.'

In 1945 a Dakota broke the world record for a flight with an engine out of
action, traveling for 1,100 miles from Pearl Harbor to San Diego, with just
one propeller working.

Another in RNZAF service lost a wing after colliding mid-air with a Lockheed
bomber. Defying all the rules of aerodynamics, and with only a stub
remaining, the plane landed, literally, on a wing and a prayer at Whenuapai
Airbase.

Once, a Dakota pilot carrying paratroops across the Channel to France heard
an enormous bang.

He went aft to find half the plane had been blown away, including part of
the rudder.

With engines still turning, he managed to skim the wave-tops before finally
making it to safety.

Another wartime Dakota was rammed by a Japanese fighter that fell to earth,
while the American crew returned home in their severely damaged - but still
airborne - plane and were given the distinction of 'downing an enemy
aircraft'.

Another DC-3 was peppered with 3,000 bullets in the wings and fuselage by
Japanese fighters.

It made it back to base, was repaired with canvas patches and glue and then
sent back into the air.

During the evacuation of Saigon in 1975, a Dakota crew managed to cram
aboard 98 Vietnamese orphans, although the plane was supposed to carry no
more than 30 passengers.

In addition to its rugged military service, it was the DC-3 which
transformed commercial passenger flying in the post-war years.

Easily converted to a passenger plane, it introduced the idea of affordable
air travel to a world which had previously seen it as exclusively for the
rich.

Flights across America could be completed in about 15 hours (with three
stops for refueling), compared with the previous reliance on short hops in
commuter aircraft during the day and train travel overnight.

It made the world a smaller place, gave people the opportunity for the first
time to see previously inaccessible destinations and became a romantic
symbol of travel.

The DC-3's record has not always been perfect.

After the war, military-surplus Dakotas were cheap, often poorly maintained
and pushed to the limit by their owners.

Accidents were frequent.

One of the most tragic happened in 1962, when Zulu Bravo, a Channel Airways
flight from Jersey, slammed into a hillside on the Isle of Wight in thick
fog.
All three crew died and nine of the 14 passengers, but the accident changed
the course of aviation history.

The local radar, incredibly, had been switched off because it was a Sunday.

The national air safety rules were changed to ensure it never happened
again.

'The DC-3 was, and is, unique,' wrote the novelist and aviation writer
Ernest Gann, 'since no other flying machine has cruised every sky known to
mankind, been so admired, cherished, glamorized, known the touch of so many
pilots and sparked so many tributes.

'It was without question the most successful aircraft ever built and even in
this jet age it seems likely the surviving DC-3s may fly about their
business for ever.'

This may be no exaggeration. Next month, Romeo Alpha and Papa Yankee begin a
farewell tour of Britain's airports before carrying their final passengers
at the International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford on July 16.

But after their retirement, there will still be Dakotas flying in the
farthest corners of the world, kept going with love, dedication and sheer
ingenuity.

Nearly three-quarters of a century after they first entered service, it's
still possible to get a Dakota ride somewhere in the world.

I recently took a DC-3 into the heart of the Venezuelan jungle - to the
'Lost World' made famous in the novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

It is one of the most remote regions on the planet - where the venerable old
planes have long been used because they can be maneuvered like birds in the
wild terrain.

It's a scary experience being strapped into a torn canvas chair, raked back
at an alarming angle (walking along the aisle of a stationary Dakota is like
climbing a steep hill) as you wait for take-off.

The engines spew smoke and oil as they shudder into life with what DC-3 fans
describe as 'music' but to me sounded like the hammering of a thousand
pneumatic drills.

But soon you are skimming the legendary flat-topped mountains protruding
from the jungle below, purring over wild rivers and the Angel Falls, the
world's highest rapids.

Suddenly the ancient plane drops like a stone to a tiny landing strip just
visible in the trees.

The pilot dodges bits of dismantled DC-3 engines scattered on the ground and
avoids a stray dog as he touches down with scarcely a bump.

How did he do it without air traffic control and the minimum of navigational
aids?

''C'est facile - it's easy,' he shrugged.

Today, many DC-3s live on throughout-the world as crop-sprayers,
surveillance patrols, air freighters in forgotten African states and even
luxury executive transports.

One, owned by a Houston lumber company, had mink-covered doorknobs while
another, belonging to a Texas rancher, had sofas and reclining chairs
upholstered with the skins of unborn calves.

In Jaipur, India, a Dakota is licensed for flying wedding ceremonies.

Even when they have ended their aerial lives, old Dakotas have become mobile
homes, hamburger stands and hen houses.

One even serves as a football team changing room.

Clark Gable's private DC-3, which once ferried chums such as John and Bobby
Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra and Ronald Reagan, is in a theme park
in San Marino.

But don't assume it won't run again. Some of the oldest hulks have been put
back in the skies.

The ancient piston engines are replaced by modern turboprops, and many a
pilot of a modern jet has been astonished to find a Dakota alongside him on
the climb away from the runway.

So what is the enduring secret of the DC-3?

David Egerton, professor of the history of science and technology at
Imperial College, London, says we should rid our minds of the idea that the
most recent inventions are always the best.

'The very fact that the DC-3 is still around, and performing a useful role
in the world, is a powerful reminder that the latest and most expensive
technology is not always the one that changes history,' he says.

It's long been an aviation axiom that 'the only replacement for the DC-3 is
another DC-3'.

So it's fortunate that at least one seems likely to be around for a very
long time to come.

In 1946, a DC-3 on a flight from Vienna to Pisa crashed into the top of the
Rosenlaui Glacier in the Swiss Alps.

The aircraft was not damaged and all the passengers were rescued, but it
quickly began to disappear as a blinding snowstorm raged.

Swiss engineers have calculated that it will take 600 years for it to slide
down inside the glacier and emerge at the bottom.




The most asinine ruling ever dreamed up by a nightmare bureaucracy!!! I
especially appreciate the part requiring "escape slides". On it's belly,
you can step down from the aircraft floor to the ground. And the article
left out the tale of the "DC-2-and-a-Half" After being shot up by Japanese
fighters, the damaged wing of a DC-3 was replaced with one from a DC-2. It
was then loaded up with refugees and flown to safety.

Semper Fi

Johnny Blaze

A great aircraft....

Wanna buy one?? This one just went off ebay this past week....didn;t meet the minimum bid..

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/DC-3-C-47-Unbeleviable-D...79&#ebayphotohosting


JD...did you find this article published somewhere recently? Len Morgan used to write for Flying Magazine and poasted away a few years ago. He often wrote about DC-3's....

S/F

quote:

poasted

Typo = passed

we still have a dc-3 flying out of our local airport. way back in 1987 i worked on the avionics, did the ifr and glideslope cert which ment i had to have access to the log books. this paticular one made the d-day parratroop drops and was used again in the market garden drops AND made the big drop accross the rhine! i could go back and find where the bullet holes had been repaired! every day but sunday you can hear it take off n fly up north to drop of some auto parts. gotta luv the ol goony bird!

you will still find the "Yankee Lady" at the Willow Run (YIP)Airport outside Belleville,Michigan.Classified as an R4D (Ready for Duty)It belongs to the Yankee Air Museum along with the B-25 Mitchell and a B-17.These three Birds still fly to Wright Patterson AFB and back on a regular basis carrying admirers and fans for $400.00 a head. A Bargain to fly in such Historic birds any day.All three A/C were saved from a huge devastating Hangar fire August of 04'by the few volunteers who were there that late evening repairing and restoring Museum Aircraft.With no Tugs available they manhandled the B-17 out to the Tarmac and then managed to get the other two out before the Historic hangar built by Ford Motor Company became a conflagration that could be seen for miles.Google the Yankee Air Museum and see the photos and the schedule for upcoming events.A postscript here,When Parachute Riggers "A" school was still at NATTC Lakehurst,N.J.All graduating classes were taken aloft in a "Gooney Bird" over the Piney woods for the Graduating Jump.What a Ball!An NB-6 parachute and about five minutes of floating wonder.Semper Fi!fellow Jarheads.........

Remember taking a hop out of MCAS Cherry Point sometime in 1970 to an Air Force Base in South Carolina, Shaw I think. We went to change an engine on Phantom that went down.

The seats were arranged facing to the rear. A few families were on board flying to vacation destinations. A very nice experiance.

Flew in one once from Oki to Iwakuni...smooth ride and very comfy...

Saw one eat a sea gull taxing out of the fuel pits at Cherry Point.

I never flew on one but when the engines whined, then fired, pop,pop,pop, catches and roars, then the flames from the exhaust.

The memories.

yep, took a military hop from El Toro to Glenview NAS in Chicago, i think we stopped somewhere in Texas to refuel....

also, i think i flew one when i went to the Phillipines on R&R in '66.....

Hi Aviation Types,
I was an R4D Crew Chief from 1953 to 1957. Any other R4D Aircrewman still around? What followed next, I was a HUS-1 (H-34) Crew Chief. I know some of those are still around.
S/F
Tipath

quote:

A postscript here,When Parachute Riggers "A" school was still at NATTC Lakehurst,N.J.All graduating classes were taken aloft in a "Gooney Bird" over the Piney woods for the Graduating Jump.What a Ball!An NB-6 parachute and about five minutes of floating wonder.Semper Fi!fellow Jarheads.........

I had the pleasure of making two parachute jumps out of the R4D at Lakehurst (the second was an incentive jump for being #2 in the class).
It is hard to believe it was over 42 years ago. I had posted a picture of the plane just before we boarded it (April 1966), but I have since forgotten what I had to do to post the picture.
If anybody is interested in seeing the photo please tell me how to post it.

Hi Jhodges1,

Just quick question. Did you ever have anyone else in your family that was a Marine parachute rigger?

S/F
Tipath

Jon,
Thanks for your reply. The reason I ask was. During the Korean War the NCOIC of our parachute loft in VMF-115 was named Hodges. He was either a Tech. or Staff Sergeant.

S/F
Tipath