A BORDO del DC-3: un AEREO ASSURDO che HA FATTO LA STORIA!

Video from the channel VOLARE about Douglas DC-3, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 21:45. Language: Italian. Video type: Onboard.

The video, filmed at Volandia, the flight museum near Malpensa, combines a review of the history of the Douglas DC-3 with a visit to the museum's example: first from the outside, from engine to tail, and then inside, from the cargo door to the flight deck.

Outside, the two Pratt & Whitney R-1830 radial engines are visible, 1,200 horsepower each, with variable-pitch propellers passing very close to the fuselage. The landing gear is conventional, with a tailwheel; it retracted hydraulically into the engine nacelle, leaving part of the wheel exposed, which provided support in an emergency landing. Notable features include the wing's riveting, the flaps that continue under the fuselage, and the fabric-covered control surfaces, lighter because there were no servo controls and they were operated by cables. On display, the tail is raised to allow easier access; on the ground, the high nose kept the propellers away from the surface on unprepared airstrips.

Inside, you can see the large cargo and paratrooper door typical of the C-47, the lavatory, the baggage compartment, rear seats, square windows with ashtrays and curtains, the galley, and the navigator's station with its dome for astronomical navigation. In the cockpit there is simple instrumentation, with the airspeed indicator in miles per hour, the mixture, propeller pitch and throttle levers, radios added in 2012, the L-shaped control yoke, the Gyropilot that maintained attitude using gyroscopes, the emergency compass suspended on rubber mounts against vibration, and the flap and gear levers.

In the 1930s, United had bought 60 Boeing 247s and TWA had bet on the DC-2. American Airlines asked Douglas for an aircraft with berths for night flights, which gave rise to the Douglas Sleeper Transport and, later, the seated DC-3. The first flight was on 17 December 1935. By the end of the decade, more than 90% of commercial flights in the United States used this model. In the Second World War it became the C-47 Skytrain and the RAF's Dakota. More than 16,000 were built, about 607 of them civilian DC-3s between 1935 and 1942 and more than 10,000 for the US forces, plus about 4,900 Soviet Lisunov Li-2s and about 500 Japanese L2Ds. At least 150 remain in service.

Volandia's example was built in 1944 as a C-47B-10-DK and passed to the RAF as a Dakota IV, flying VIPs in Malaysia, Burma and Britain. Demilitarised in 1952, it flew with the British Air Charter and from 1954 operated for some 40 years in Africa, including in South Africa, Rhodesia and Katanga. It later reached Perugia, and in 2012 it was bought by Volandia, which flew it to Malpensa on 11 April. It has logged more than 23,400 flight hours.