About the DC-3 Plane

As Douglas introduced in 1933 its novel concept of the DC series ( a single DC-1, followed by a series production of the DC-2 in 1934) , the company had a ground breaking design in hands that would soon conquer the world.
The DC-2 was the twin engine all metal aircraft with state of the art features as retractable landing gear and variable pitch propellers in a streamlined and smooth design, as the world had not seen before.

 

Dakotas were built until 1946, there is no other transport in the world that equals its ruggedness and longevity.
The aircraft is still operational in numbers in this new age, after 70 years of public service in war and peace.

The aircraft that dominated American civil aviation in the early 1930’s were the Trimotors from Fokker and Ford, made of tubular steel frames, clad with canvas and ply-wood.
Their appearance as flying string bags turned overnight archaic when the shiny and clean DC-2 arrived in the field.
The rapid advance of aviation technology yielded an even more dramatic turn of the tide as the stretched version of the successful DC-2 arrived in 1936. It was this DC-3, that would change the world of aviation for once and for all, with a speed, a payload and a range, that almost doubled when compared to the earlier generation of Trimotors.

 

Dakotas fly in low and slow, to places where no Boat, Jet or Truck can go.

In his memoirs, General Dwight Eisenhower cited the C-47 as one of the most important instruments of victory over Nazi Germany. Until the debut of the four-engine Douglas C-54, which did not enter service until 1944, the C-47 was the most capable transport aircraft of World War II. Beyond doubt it was the most versatile operationally and the most important strategically. The C-47 was a forgiving aircraft, easy to fly and easily maintained under primitive field conditions. Many aircrew and passengers owed their survival in crash landings to its rugged construction, and its resistance to battle damage was legendary.

History took the DC-3 into WWII, making it a military cargo/paratrooper aircraft (the C-47) that was built in massive numbers of 17.000 or more. The result was that after that war, the market was flushed with a versatile and reliable transport aircraft, that could be purchased for extremely low prices. Until today, the survival of this aircraft into the New Age, can be declared by that high production numbers and it reputation as a 3-tons payload transport that can land on almost any piece of land, sand, gravel or grass, And for a price which is only a fraction of what any other turbo prop would cost, handling that same 3 tons of cargo to remote or primitive short airstrips.
There is a limited future for this aircraft, where she can thrive for another decade or so at the last frontiers of this world.
Its modernized version with Turbo prop engines will probably survive for (much) longer than that.