INTERNACIONAL (Aviones que Cambiaron el Mundo) Douglas DC-3 - Documentales

Video from the channel Mega Aeronáutica about Douglas DC-3, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 46:07. Language: Spanish. Video type: Documentary.

A documentary about the Douglas DC-3, presented as the aircraft that defined the way the world flies: its origin as Douglas's response to a request from TWA, its transformation into the C-47 military transport during the Second World War and its long subsequent civilian life. The narration alternates with testimonies from veterans, a former flight attendant, a Berlin woman who lived through the blockade, and a pilot who still flies it.

In the early 1930s flying was expensive, noisy and uncomfortable: a ticket from New York to California cost about 300 dollars. In 1931 a TWA aircraft broke apart in flight over Kansas with nine people on board, including coach Knute Rockne. Boeing responded with the 247, considered the first modern passenger aircraft, but United Airlines cornered its production with an order for 59 units. In 1932 Jack Frye, of TWA, wrote to Donald Douglas asking for a rival. Engineer Arthur Raymond designed the twin-engined DC-1, refined through more than 200 tests in Caltech's wind tunnel; from it came the 14-seat DC-2, unveiled in May 1934. At the request of C. R. Smith, of American Airlines, Douglas widened the fuselage for a sleeper aircraft with 14 berths; replacing the berths with seats gave birth to the DC-3.

Using only 3% more fuel than its predecessor, it carried seven more passengers, and the documentary presents it as the first profitable airliner; it cut the coast-to-coast trip, which previously took 25 hours, nearly in half. By 1939, 350 units had left the factory and more than 80% of United States passenger aircraft were DC-3s. Converted into the C-47 with a cargo door and reinforced floor (Dakota in the RAF), it could carry 28 soldiers or a jeep, dropped paratroopers the night before D-Day and, according to the documentary, evacuated 750,000 wounded. After the war it boosted regional airlines, with 1,500 aircraft in service in 1946, and together with the C-54 sustained the Berlin Airlift that began in June 1948. The last DC-3 was built in 1946, but hundreds remain in operation.