Le DC3

Video from the channel Just the Job about Douglas DC-3, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 26:51. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

Early-1980s British television documentary that reviews the history of the Douglas DC-3 from the DC-1 to its civilian use at that time. It combines explanations of the aircraft with testimonies from pilots, owners and enthusiasts.

It all starts in 1932 with a letter from Jack Fry, of TWA, to Donald Douglas. The airline asked for a plane with a top speed of 185 mph and a ceiling of 21,000 feet. The specification called for a trimotor, but Douglas solved it with two engines. The only DC-1 was delivered to TWA on 13 September 1933 for 65,000 dollars and broke several records, including the US coast-to-coast speed record. The first of 225 DC-2s reached TWA on 14 May 1934. That year, American Airlines ordered a sleeper plane: Douglas widened the wings and lengthened the fuselage of the DC-2 to fit 16 berths, and with 24 seats in their place the DC-3 was born. In the Second World War, its military version, the C-47, was key at Normandy and at Arnhem, where 161 Dakotas took off on 17 September 1944. It also supplied troops from the air in Burma. After the war it took part in the Berlin airlift.

It was the first large all-metal transport aircraft. It had variable-pitch propellers, low-pressure tyres for grass runways, a wing joined to the fuselage by 760 bolts that could be changed overnight, and a low wing that let it float in a water landing. On board it offered full standing height, a lavatory, stewardesses, meals, dual controls and an autopilot. Eisenhower listed the C-47 among the four decisive elements of the Allied victory. Pilot Jimmy Edwards tells how he was shot down near Nijmegen and how he landed the plane by sticking his head out of the hatch. Mike Keegan started his airline from a wingless, engineless DC-3 he bought for 250 pounds and lived in for nine months. Those interviewed point out that it has never had structural failures or a fatigue life limit. At the time around 500 DC-3s were flying worldwide, ten of them in the United Kingdom. Harvest Air was preparing one in Southend to fight oil pollution. The documentary also covers the first anniversary of the Friends of the DC3 association at Duxford.