The Soviet Li-2 and the American Douglas DC-3: Scarcely Identical "Identical Twins"

Video from the channel Владимир Моторин about Douglas DC-3, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 19:57. Video type: Documentary.

Informational piece in Russian, narrated by its author, comparing the Soviet Li-2 with the Douglas DC-3 it came from. It traces the origin of the American aircraft, the USSR's purchase of the licence, and the changes made by Soviet industry.

In 1932 the airline TWA requested a trimotor to replace its Fokkers. Douglas convinced it that two engines would suffice and built the DC-1. On 18-19 February 1934 that aircraft crossed the United States coast to coast in 13 hours and 4 minutes. From it came the DC-2, with more powerful engines and a fuselage 61 cm longer. American Airlines then requested a version with 14 berths for the New York-Chicago route, and that is how the DC-3 was born. By 1938 DC-3s accounted for more than 90% of US civil transport.

In the USSR, Aeroflot was growing fast in 1932 with outdated aircraft such as the K-5 and the ANT-9. In 1935 a commission led by Tupolev bought a DC-2. In 1936 the DC-3 licence was signed, which included 18 aircraft, one of them disassembled, and stays by Soviet technicians in the United States.

Factory 84 in Khimki converted the measurements to the metric system, recalculated the structure's strength and introduced the master-template technique. The aircraft used M-62IR engines. Myasishchev, its first chief designer, was arrested and sent to a prison design bureau. Because of the substitution of materials and changes to the structure and equipment, the PS-84 was heavier and performed worse than the original: according to the author, the cheap paint cost it up to 20 km/h. It was also built in Kazan, at factory 124. In June 1941 Aeroflot had 72 PS-84s, and by the end of that year the factory had moved to Tashkent. From September 1942 the simplified military version was named Li-2, after chief engineer Boris Lisunov, and after the war the name was also applied to civil aircraft. It was built between 1938 and 1953.