The LAST airworthy French Douglas DC3
Video from the channel VORTEX GENERATOR about Douglas DC-3, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 10:43. Language: French. Video type: News.
What's being announced
At La Ferté-Alais airfield, the pilot of the only airworthy Douglas DC-3 in France presents the aircraft and the association that maintains it, Un Dakota sur la Normandie. He explains that the aircraft was born as a military C-47 Dakota. It served at the end of the Second World War in China, Burma and India, supplying American and British troops behind Japanese lines, and was equipped to tow gliders.
Background
The aircraft passed through the Royal Air Force and the Royal Canadian Air Force, spent a long time in Canada and carried the Queen of England and Field Marshal Montgomery. It arrived in France in the early 1990s. After a serious engine failure it was abandoned at an airfield in Brittany, with trees growing between the ailerons and the fuselage, and was headed for scrapping when the association bought it. The restoration to return it to flight took a year and a half, with up to 24 volunteers working at once. The pilot also recalls the Dakota's role on the night of 5 to 6 June 1944, when around 900 aircraft gathered in southern England, and later in the Provence landings, in the evacuation of the wounded and in the repatriation of prisoners and deportees.
What it means
The association has a core of about a dozen people. Maintenance is done in winter and the aircraft flies from April to October at air shows across Europe. There are two other DC-3s in France close to being airworthy, but they are not certified. The pilot insists it is not a crude aircraft: it has three-bladed propellers and asymmetric exhausts designed to reduce cabin noise, an autopilot, and certification to fly in known icing conditions.