Le Douglas DC-3, Un avion Mythique Partie 1

Video from the channel Take_Off Découverte about Douglas DC-3, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 20:09. Language: French. Video type: Documentary.

An educational video in French, first part of a series on the Douglas DC-3, the twin-engined propeller aircraft for civil and military transport that Douglas Aircraft built between 1936 and 1945. It covers its origin, its characteristics, its main civil and military variants, the manufacturing licences, and who used it.

In mid-1935, C. R. Smith, president of American Airlines, wanted to outdo competitors flying the Boeing 247 and the DC-2, and asked Donald Douglas for a bigger, more luxurious derivative of the DC-2. At Douglas the idea was received with little enthusiasm, since the DC-2 was selling well. After a two-hour phone call, Smith committed to buying 20 aircraft, with berths in the first ten. Arthur Raymond's team designed the Douglas Sleeper Transport (DST), which had to retain 85% of the DC-2's parts and whose structural calculations were largely done by American's engineering office. The prototype flew on 17 December 1935 at Clover Field, present-day Santa Monica. The day version seated 21 passengers, compared with the 14 berths originally planned.

It measures 19.64 m in length, 28.95 m in wingspan and 5.16 m in height, with a cruising speed of 330 km/h and a range of 2,200 km. It carried Wright Cyclone engines of 1,000 hp at takeoff and Pratt & Whitney R-1830 Twin Wasps, which ended up being the most widespread. In 1936 it cost between 90,000 and 110,000 dollars. More than 13,000 were built in Santa Monica, Oklahoma City and Long Beach, at a rate of up to two per hour. It was built under licence in the USSR (PS-84, later Lisunov Li-2, about 2,930 units) and in Japan (Showa and Nakajima L2D, 487). Its variants include the DC-3A and DC-3B, the C-47 Skytrain (Dakota to the British, Gooney Bird to its crews), the C-53 Skytrooper, the R4D, the experimental XCG-17 glider, the AC-47 gunship of the Vietnam War, and the Basler BT-67 turboprop. The US Army bought 225 civilian DC-3s. The French Air Force used about 135 C-47s until 1971, and Air France flew DC-3s until 1968. In 2013 one was still supplying the Antarctic base Concordia.