Detailed tour through the legendary Douglas DC-3

Video from the channel Paul Stewart about Douglas DC-3, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 11:20. Language: English. Video type: Onboard.

A guided tour of a Douglas DC-3 on display at the HARS museum in Albion Park (Australia), intercut with in-flight footage of its military relative, the C-47, also known as the Dakota, Gooney Bird, or Skytrain. The tour starts outside, moves through the passenger cabin, and ends in the cockpit.

Outside, the tour points out the fairings between the wing and fuselage, which reduce drag; the split flaps under the trailing edge; the engines — nine-cylinder Wright Cyclone 9 or 14-cylinder Pratt & Whitney Twin Wasp, with variable-pitch propellers — and the circular-section fuselage. Under the nose are the two pitot tubes, the DME and ADF antennas, and the battery compartments; the main gear is retractable with large wheels, and the tailwheel is non-steerable. Inside, the tour shows the small cargo hold, the DC-3's narrow door versus the C-47's wide one, the galley and lavatory, the sloped aisle, and the square windows, possible because the aircraft is unpressurized. In the cockpit, it covers the flap and gear controls, the manual hydraulic pump, the fuel tank selector, the pitch, throttle, and mixture levers, the trim wheels, the autopilot, the VOR, ILS, and DME instruments, the magnetos, and the escape hatch.

The DC-3 descends from the DC-1 and the DC-2, which Douglas developed after TWA was unable to obtain the 1933 Boeing 247, reserved by United Airlines. It was enlarged because American Airlines wanted sleeping berths. This particular aircraft was built in 1941 as a C-47, converted into a passenger DC-3 in 1945, and transferred to Trans Australia Airlines in 1946, with which it made the first Melbourne–Sydney flight. It was the first airliner to turn a profit on passengers alone, and more than 10,000 C-47s were built.