The DC3 Miracle Landing That Defied All Logic

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

Documentary about the Douglas DC-3 that traces its development, its commercial success, its transformation into the military C-47 transport and its long later life. It opens with an episode from August 1957: over Missouri, an Air Force plane runs out of fuel, the crew bails out by parachute, and the aircraft, with no one on board, lands intact. Among those featured are a paratrooper from the 82nd Airborne Division, a D-Day pilot, a TWA stewardess, a Berlin woman who lived through the blockade, and a pilot who still flies a cargo DC-3.

In 1932 Jack Fry, head of TWA, writes to Donald Douglas asking for a plane to rival the Boeing 247, of which United had ordered 59 units. The 1931 crash of a TWA plane in Kansas, which killed coach Knute Rockne, had led the airline to demand three engines. Engineer Arthur Raymond proposes a twin-engine design, the DC-1, which Charles Lindbergh, TWA's technical advisor, receives with scepticism. More than 200 tests in the Caltech wind tunnel lead to a wing with slight sweep, wing-fuselage fairings and flaps. The DC-1 is never mass-produced; in May 1934 the 14-seat DC-2 appears. Afterwards C.R. Smith, of American Airlines, orders ten sleeper planes with 14 berths for 795,000 dollars; to fit them, the fuselage is widened. Replacing the berths with seats gives birth to the DC-3, with 50% more passengers and only 3% more fuel burn, making it the first profitable airliner.

The DC-3 nearly halves the 25 hours it used to take to cross the United States, and by 1939 350 units had already been built. In the Second World War it becomes the C-47 (Dakota in the RAF), with a cargo door and reinforced floor; in 1944 one rolls off the line every 34 minutes. On the eve of D-Day 821 fly in the first wave and only 21 fail to return; as air ambulances they evacuate around three quarters of a million wounded. In the Berlin airlift, the first C-47s land on 26 June 1948; there are 25 accidents and 101 deaths before the blockade is lifted in May 1949. It also serves in Korea and Vietnam. In 1946 the last DC-3 is built and 1,500 are flying, many in the hands of small regional airlines; some still carry cargo, such as the one that hauls 1,300 tonnes a year to Catalina Island.