RIVIA QUESTION: What trans- T port aircraft designed to carry The DC-3 is fifty years old twenty-one passengers has hauled more than 100 and has been trans- this month and still flying. It formed into a fighter, bomber, am- may be immortal. phibian, glider, tow plane, laundry, classroom, crop duster, flying loud- speaker, hospital, wire layer, com- mand post, mobile home, chicken coop, restaurant, fire fighter, and chapel? ANSWER: The Douglas DC-3, also known in the Air Force as the C-47 The (plus other designations) or Sky- train and in the Navy as the R4D. The British called it the Dakota. The airlines referred to it simply as Grand Old the Three; their pilots called it Old Methuselah, Placid Plodder, Dowa- ger Duchess, Doug, or the Dizzy Three. But the name most com- Gooney Bird monly applied to this Grand Old Lady of the Skies is Gooney Bird, named after the albatross, a seabird known for its endurance and ability BY C. V. GLINES to fly great distances.

AIR FORCE Pagazine / December 1985 14. Most readers of AIR FORCE Mag- continent in the world, once broke The letter was sent to the presi- azine will not need an introduction the coast-to-coast speed record, dents of the Curtiss-Wright, Ford, to the Gooney. It received its bap- and set nineteen other national and Martin, Consolidated, and Douglas. tism of fire during World War II, international speed records. It was Donald W. Douglas, Sr., head of the proved its durability during the Ko- the first aircraft to land at both poles company that built several mail rean War, and demonstrated its un- and, according to C. R. Smith, for- planes and the famous Douglas usual versatility during the Vietnam mer president of American Airlines, World Cruisers that had circumnav- War. And while it is not in the mili- was "the first airplane that could igated the globe in 1924, later called tary inventory anymore, it is still make money just by hauling passen- the Frye letter "the birth certificate plying the world's airways and gers." of the DC ships" because it spawned doing its duty in other countries in The progenitor of the ubiquitous a new era in aircraft design for peace and war as it has always done. Gooney Bird was the DC-1, which Douglas that took advantage of new came about through a specification aeronautical developments then Golden Anniversary issued by Jack Frye, president of coming into being. It may surprise you that the DC-31 Transcontinental and Western Air Instead of three engines, Douglas C-471R4D celebrates its fiftieth (now Trans World Airlines) on Au- engineers came up with a twin-en- birthday this month. It was on De- gust 2, 1932. The letter asked for gine design. It would be a low-wing cember 17, 1935, the thirty-second bids for an all-metal monoplane to monoplane with semimonocoque anniversary of the Wright brothers' be manned by a crew of two, with a fuselage and wings with a then-new famous first flights, that the first maximum gross weight of 14,200 "honeycomb" construction. The DC-3 took to the air to begin a saga pounds, a range of 1,080 miles at 145 wheels would retract into the engine of accomplishment unmatched by miles per hour, and the capacity to nacelles for better streamlining. any other aircraft design in the carry twelve passengers. The lucky Three-bladed Hamilton propellers world. It has not only filled the roles bidder would receive an order for whose pitch could be controlled by mentioned above but has also "ten or more trimotor transport the pilot inside the cockpit would be served in every country on every planes." attached to 710-horsepower Wright

Whether in civilian livery or warpaint, the Gooney Bird has done yeoman-like work on every conti- nent over the last fifty years.

AIR FORCE Magazine December 1985 On December 17,1935, this first of more than 10,000 other Gooney Birds took to the air for an hour-and-forty-minute flight around the Santa Monica, Calif., airport. A DST (Douglas Sleeper Transport) version of the DC-3, this aircraft was later "drafted" and designated as a C-49E. The plane crashed in October 1942. Cyclone air-cooled radial engines. 4, 1933. When it was obvious that designation—the DC-3. When the The cabin would seat passengers in the Douglas design was meeting all 185th DC-2 or a military variant was two rows of six passengers each. the specifications, TWA placed or- pushed out of the hangar, the first There would be a small galley and a ders for twenty-five more with DC-3 was rolled out beside it. Three lavatory, the latter a "first" for air- slightly altered structural changes. models of the new version were of- line passenger comfort. The cabin The fuselage was to be longer and fered: a twenty-one-passenger day would be heated and noise-insu- wingspread wider so that fourteen plane, a fourteen-passenger luxury lated. In the cockpit, the two pilots passengers could be carried. The DST "Skysleeper," and the four- would have the new gyroscopic in- Douglas engineers saw that they teen-passenger "club-car-of-the- struments and Sperry automatic pi- were really designing a new aircraft air" "Skylounge." American Air- lot, making the DC-1 the first com- and labeled it the DC-2. lines placed the first quantity order mercial plane to be equipped with There was only one DC-1 built and, on June 25, 1936, became the such devices. because the DC-2 immediately out- first airline in the world to put the When the Douglas design was dated it. The first DC-2 was accept- new plane into service. Shortly submitted to TWA, Frye asked ed by TWA on May 22, 1934. Others thereafter, Donald W. Douglas re- Charles A. Lindbergh, then a con- followed, and one of them was pur- ceived the coveted Collier Trophy sultant, what he thought about it. chased by KLM Royal Dutch Air- from President Roosevelt for having Lindbergh liked it, but recom- lines. Christened Uiver, it was en- developed "the most outstanding mended that TWA specify that the tered in the 1934 MacRobertson twin-engined transport plane." This aircraft had to prove it could take off Trophy Race, better known as the plane, the President said, "by rea- with a full load from any point on London-to-Melbourne Derby. To son of its high speed, economy, and the TWA system on one engine! everyone's surprise, the DC-2 fin- quiet passenger comfort, has been ished second in the 11,000-mile generally adopted by transport lines The DC-1 Appears competition to a souped-up British throughout the United States. Its Douglas engineers thought they fighter plane. The result was a sud- merit has been further recognized could meet this latest requirement, den interest by the world's airlines by its adoption abroad, and its influ- so a contract was signed on Septem- in this transport, which had not only ence on foreign design is already ber 20, 1932. On June 22, 1933, a raced the distance without difficulty apparent." sleek, shiny craft sixty feet long but had nonchalantly carried mail with a wingspread of eighty-five feet and three passengers. Air Corps Interest was rolled out into the bright sun- While orders for DC-2s poured While the airlines found they light. On July 1, 1933, the DC-1 (for into the Douglas factory at Santa could make money with the DC-3, Douglas Commercial, first model) Monica, Calif., American Airlines the war clouds gathering in Europe made its initial flight and began a prepared a new set of specifications prompted the US Army Air Corps series of tests that culminated in a that called for a passenger capacity to study all types of aircraft. Ex- successful single-engine takeoff of twenty-one. This meant another perts pored over the DC designs and from Winslow, Ariz., on September stretch to the fuselage and a new made exhaustive flight tests of the

96 AIR FORCE Magazine / December 1985 DC-2 and -3. The DC-1 was bor- out that the Air Corps designated which, although a little wing heavy, rowed from TWA briefly to test the the major model as the C-47. How- was flown away. Naturally, it was Sperry autopilot; 1,600-gallon fuel ever, more changes were made, re- called the DC-21/2. tanks were installed, which tripled sulting in a few more variants with • Another badly shot-up Chinese its range. more designations: C-48, C-49, DC-3 with more than 1,000 bullet Eighteen DC-2s, modified to Air C-50, C-51, C-52, C-53, and C-68. holes was patched up with canvas Corps specifications, were ordered Of these, only the C-49 and the C-53 cut from a missionary's awning. by the Air Corps and designated were produced in quantity. The only Capt. Harold Sweet flew it with six- C-33s. New specifications were or- difference between the C-47 and ty-one refugees from Chungking to dered, resulting in new designa- these two was that the C-49 was the a military base in India. In flight, tions: XC-32, C-32A, and C-34. "Skysleeper" version of the DC-3 many of the patches came off. Sweet While these were being tested and and the C-53 had a wide door for use recalled, "We could hear an eerie the DC-3s were being produced to as the paratroop model. After the whistle even over the roar of the airline specifications, the Air Corps war, a plushed-up version of the engines." Fifteen minutes from his asked for changes, and one DC-2 C-47 became the C-117, and one destination, Sweet radioed his esti- with a DC-3 tail was constructed Super DC-3, with squared-off wing- mated time of arrival. When he ar- and called the C-38. Subsequent tips and tail surfaces, designated the rived, the base commander asked, tests proved successful, and an YC-129, was converted from a C-47 "Why did you bother to call us? We order was placed for thirty-five and purchased by the Air Force. could hear you coming fifty miles C-39s, which were DC-2s with DC-3 The Navy bought 101 of this con- out!" That Gooney, of course, was tails and modifications inside to car- verted model. Three more were sold named Whistling Willie. ry cargo. to Capital Airlines. • Several Gooneys were used as As was often the case before Pearl bombers during World War II. Maj. Harbor, aircraft procurement deci- Stories of the Goon Archie C. Burdette led two planes sions were made too often by men As could be expected, any plane of the 317th Troop Carrier Squadron who had never flown and were not that has survived a half century of that dropped twenty-eight barrels of acquainted with the capabilities and the toughest kind of flying has napalm on Caribou Island at the en- limitations of aircraft. Army offi- spawned many stories, most of trance to Manila Harbor to burn out cers with no knowledge of flight them seemingly unbelievable but the last of the Japanese resisters. In characteristics insisted that the true. Here are some that have been Burma, Maj. Richard L. Benjamin loading door on the new C-39 be documented. of the 1st Air Commando Group in made wider to accommodate a 75- • A Chinese airline DC-3 that was India piloted a "B-47" that dropped mm field piece. One insisted that strafed by a Japanese fighter had to 500-pound bombs and several boxes the aircraft's floor be rebuilt so that make a forced landing. One wing of fragmentation bombs on an en- it would remain while on the was completely destroyed. The emy truck convoy driving along the ground. Another wanted the floor- only available spare wing panel— Burma Road. boards covered with a sandpaper- ten feet shorter—belonged to a • Col. Charles D. Farr and Capt. like material so that paratroopers DC-2, but had the same wing attach- John A. McCann of the 443d Troop wouldn't slip as they went out the ing points. It was put on the DC-3, Carrier Group in Burma installed door (a good idea that was adopted). Others wanted modifications to car- ry litter patients or urged that it be outfitted as an airborne office or that it drop paratroopers and sup- plies. Someone asked for the in- stallation of hooks on the outside of the fuselage to carry spare pro- pellers and wing panels. (During World War II in the Pacific, P-40 wings were attached underneath the fuselage of C-47s for transport to front-line fields.) In an attempt to satisfy some of these separate requirements, single purchases were made of a C-41. C-41A, and C-42. The engine horse- power was boosted by the installa- tion of 900-hp Wright Cyclone en- gines to accommodate the increased weight. Later, the power was again increased by the installation of 1,150-hp Pratt & Whitney engines. n Vietnam, the venerable Gooney Bird took on a new role and a new designation. During this prewar period, so The AC-47 Spooky mounted three side-firing 7.62-mm Gatling guns, each with a many changes were made inside and capacity of 18,000 rounds per minute, for counterinsurgency missions.

AIR FORCE Magazine / December 1985 97 two .50-caliber machine guns in the back to the States after the Tokyo damage but not enough to prevent aft section of two Gooneys. "The Raid in 1942, was flown out of China the crew from bringing it home. guns had a radius of action of about on a China National Airways Corp. • Any collection of stories about 160 degrees, about eighty degrees of (CNAC) DC-3. "There were more the Gooney Bird would not be com- elevation and a like amount of decli- than seventy-five people on that plete without the tale of the time one nation, minus, of course, the con- plane," Doolittle recalled. "Twenty- of them was officially credited with tour of the tail and wing assembly, one women, twenty-one children, bringing down a Japanese Zero. about which there was a lot of head- ten Indians, twenty-one soldiers, This C-47, piloted by Capt. Hal M. shaking among the pilots," accord- and one exhausted lieutenant colo- Scrugham, was flying a routine car- ing to McCann. Both planes were nel named Doolittle. When we got go mission in Burma when his plane used successfully during low-al- on the ground, I told the pilot that if was attacked by a pair of enemy titude drop missions. Side-firing, pi- I'd known he was going to take off fighters. He pushed the Gooney into lot-aimed 7.62-mm Gatling guns with that many people aboard, I a dive to the treetops. The Zeros were installed on Gooneys in Viet- would have walked home." This followed. The first one broke off the nam to give them a new sobriquet— wasn't a record, however. More attack as the Gooney leveled off. "Puff the Magic Dragon" or than ninety refugees were flown out The second one tried to ram the "Spooky," and a new designation, of Peruvian flood areas in an Air helpless transport as Scrugham AC-47. Force Gooney in 1947. During the pushed the throttles full forward. • Although designed to carry Vietnam War, a DC-3 with three The Zero knocked the rudder off the about 5,000 pounds of freight, crew members evacuated ninety- Gooney, but did not bring it down. Gooneys have carried much more. eight refugee orphans and five at- The Zero kept right on going and

The Gooney had a reputation for being a tough old bird. De- spite major structural damage to its center section after a midair collision, this C-47 made it back to its base.

Capt. John Mowat once hauled tendants from the village at Da Lat exploded against the mountain. The eighty live sheep and sixteen shep- to set what must be the all-time rec- other enemy fighter fled. herds with baggage and equipment, ord. which totaled 11,000 pounds. Dur- • The damage sustained by Animal and Amateur Aviators ing the Berlin Airlift, C-47s aver- Gooneys that continued to fly has Although the tales above have aged somewhere between 6,000 and become legendary. In addition to been verified, there are some that 7,000 pounds of varied cargo. One several midair collisions in which cannot. Yet they persist in aviation pilot, whose manifest said he was the Gooneys survived, battle dam- lore. For instance, there's the story hauling pierced aluminum planking age to many was so severe that they of the C-47 that ran out of fuel over from Wiesbaden, actually hauled a never flew again after being safely Missouri. The crew parachuted and load of pierced steel planking. landed. Capt. Jack Farris, pilot of watched as the Gooney gently cir- Hardly able to get above the tree- Geronimo, which was carrying cled and then landed gracefully tops along the corridor to Berlin, he paratroopers, had a six-foot hole wheels-up in a pasture. Another flew the distance at full throttle and blasted in the fuselage, lost a por- crew bailed out of a Gooney when crunched down his Gooney at Tem- tion of the rudder, and managed to both engines malfunctioned en pelhof to discover that he had just nurse the aircraft across the Medi- route to Tempelhof during the delivered about 13,500 pounds! terranean after a mission to south- Berlin Airlift, leaving the crew • The Gooney has often carried ern France. Another Gooney col- chief's dog aboard. The plane's en- many more passengers than the lided with a German fighter that gines, acting erratically, kept the twenty-one the designers originally plowed through the center of the fu- Gooney airborne far into East Ger- intended. Jimmy Doolittle, called selage, causing severe structural many, where it landed in a farmer's 98 AIR FORCE Magazine / December 1985 field with only minor damage. The dog was unhurt. It is said that to this day the Russians cannot figure out how the Americans taught a dog to fly. Flying the Gooney was not diffi- cult for a qualified pilot, but transi- tion training was necessary. Or was it? A nineteen-year-old mechanic at Naha AB on Okinawa didn't believe he needed any instruction for his flight in May 1962. The airman, as- signed to the 51st Field Mainte- nance Squadron, for reasons only he and his psychiatrist know, de- cided he wanted to fly one of the base's Gooneys. Although he had only seven hours of instruction in a light, single-engine plane, he was apparently convinced that the C-47 was so easy to fly that he could do it alone. The grandfather of all Gooney Birds is the lone DC-1. The plane was used as a When no one was looking on a flying laboratory and set many speed records. After crashing in in 1940, late afternoon, he boarded a parts of the plane were salvaged and are still used on religious holidays there. Gooney, started engines, and taxied out without radio contact with the tower. The base was alerted, and Whatever Happened to the DC-1? when it was established who was aboard, Capt. Dallas H. Pope and After TWA took delivery on the DC-1, it was used for a number of flight tests—so many that the press dubbed it "the laboratory plane." In February 1934, Jack Frye Lt. Col. Robert E. Woody took off and Eddie Rickenbacker set a nonstop coast-to-coast record from Burbank to in another Gooney to try to talk the Newark, taking the last load of mail east before President Roosevelt canceled all air airman down. As they flew forma- mail contracts in February 1934. tion and began to talk with him, they Later that year, the Department of Commerce and the Army Air Corps used the DC-1 to test the new Sperry automatic pilot, which was linked to a radio compass found that the cover to the airspeed and used for navigational purposes. Additional gas tanks were installed to boost the pitot tube had not been removed, fuel capacity from 500 to 1,600 gallons. but had been partially torn by the In 1935, two years after its maiden flight, the DC-1 was loaned to the National wind. His airspeed reading was Aeronautic Association for an attempt to set new records for speed, distance, and about twenty percent less than the load. Within a three-day period, it smashed nineteen marks. Following this, Howard Hughes. largest TWA stockholder, planned a record-breaking round-the-world actual speed. flight. He decided that the DC-1 was the airplane for the job and bought it from TWA Colonel Woody, flying copilot, for this purpose in the summer of 1936. He modified it further by installing larger began instructing the airman in a engines and increasing the fuel capacity to get a 6,000-mile range. After exhaustive calm voice how to reduce the power tests, however, Hughes chose the faster Lockheed 14, in which he later circled the globe in ninety-one hours. and prepare for a landing. Hughes sold the DC-1 to Viscount Forbes. the Earl of Granard, in May 1937. By The first pass at the field was too that time, the DC-1 had accumulated 1,370 flying hours. high, apparently because the airman The DC-1's new owner kept the plane for about three months and then sold it to a could not bring himself to pull the French company. Shortly afterward, it turned up in Spain just as the civil war was drawing to a close. By September 1938, the Spanish government bought it for throttles back. Colonel Woody in- L.A.P.E. (Lineas Aeros Postales Espanoles.) It was painted a dull brown and put into structed him to go around and then service between Paris, , and . It was reportedly ordered on recon- set him up for a long, straight-in naissance missions for the Spanish Republican Army. approach. This time the errant When Barcelona fell in March 1939, government officials fled in the DC-1 to Gooney got down to fifty feet and Toulouse, France. When the war was over, Nationalist Spanish forces flew it back to , where it was handed over to the Sociedad Anon/ma de Transportes Aeros, had to go around again. A report of later named Airlines. The camouflage paint was removed, and the DC-1 was the incident tells what happened christened Negron after a famous Nationalist pilot who had been killed in action. It next: flew on regular schedules connecting cities in Spain. "By now the sun had dropped be- On a morning in December 1940, Negron arrived at Malaga from Tetuan with Capt. Rudolfo Bay in command. On takeoff from Malaga, the left engine failed, and low the horizon, and dusk was be- the aircraft crashed off the end of the runway. No one was injured, but the aircraft ginning to fall. A thin layer of scud was wrecked beyond repair. clouds had begun to form at about However, the DC-1 is still making a contribution. Monks from the nearby Malaga 800 feet, and concern was mount- cathedral salvaged metal spars and skin from the wreckage to make andas, or ing. Captain Pope decided that he portable platforms that are used during religious holidays to carry the image of the Blessed Virgin through the streets. Thus, the Granddaddy of all Gooney Birds is still could best judge [the airman's] ap- doing a job that requires strength and dependability. Somehow, it seems right that proach by positioning the nose of the DC-1 was destined to live on in this fashion. his plane underneath the tail of [the airman's] craft. Another long,

AIR FORCE Magazine / December 1985 99 straight-in approach was estab- tinue flying. They offered the Air honor the Gooney's golden anniver- lished. The landing gear and flaps Force $700 for it, and the offer was sary. There will be many of us there were set for the landing miles from accepted. After digging through the who will view that sight through a the runway. Colonel Woody estab- snow and bulldozing a takeoff strip, few tears. The Grand Old Lady of lished [the airman's] approach they flew it out at a cost of about the Skies will forever have a warm speed at slightly above landing $5,000. The Gooney was flown to place in our affections and memo- speed and told him to concentrate England for modification, but be- ries. on maintaining his wings level for fore work began, a Spanish airline lineup with the runway. He told the executive offered the plucky pair A Gooney on Ice airman to disregard his instruments $80,000, which they promptly ac- How long will there be a Gooney and to look only at the runway and cepted. The $74,300 profit enabled flying? follow precisely his instructions on them to make a down payment on a No one knows, but it's possible use of the throttles. By this method, DC-6 and keep their airline in busi- that at least one will be in the air 600 [the airman] was talked down to ness. years from now. That's because within one foot of the runway sur- H. L. "Smokey" Roland of Car- Maj. Ralph H. Tate, while on instru- face, at which time Colonel Woody diff-by-the-Sea, Calif., knew what ments, flew one onto a glacier high instructed him to cut the power and to do with a Gooney he purchased in the Alps in 1946 with twelve souls concentrate on keeping the aircraft from an airline boneyard in Arizona aboard. The Gooney was un- straight down the runway until it in the 1970s. He made it into a mo- damaged as it plowed into soft snow. coasted to a stop. When the plane bile home. And the airport at White- All aboard were rescued by Swiss was landed and under control, [the horse, Canada, uses an abandoned mountaineers after extensive airman] taxied to base operations Gooney as a wind tee. search and rescue attempts that and shut down the engines." Those of us who have piloted the captured the world's attention for lovable Gooney Bird feel forever more than two weeks. The plane Flying on Forever? privileged. We agree with the words was quickly covered over with Will the Gooney last forever? Al- that are often used to describe it— snow, and no trace of it could later though no one is certain, it is esti- "irreplaceable," "indomitable," be seen from the air. mated that there are about 500 "fabulous," "jack-of-all-trades." The world's press soon forgot the DC-3/C-47s still flying somewhere And we agree with the tribute paid incident, but not the Swiss. They in the world—and maybe a few not to it by Braniff Airlines Capt. Len collected the photos, magazines, flying that will be resurrected to fly Morgan, who said, "I came to ad- and newspapers featuring the crash again. One disabled Gooney that mire this machine, which could lift and rescue and placed them in their had been hoisted atop a restaurant virtually any load strapped to its museum at Bern. The next spring, in South Africa for several years back and carry it anywhere in any those who had participated in the after World War II was restored to weather, safely and dependably. rescue climbed back up to the airline service. A Gooney carcass The C-47 groaned, it protested, it plateau, located the plane, dug used as a chicken coop in Alabama rattled, it leaked oil, it ran hot, it ran down to it, and placed a capsule was put back into flying shape as an cold, it ran rough, it staggered along inside. The capsule contained cop- executive transport in the 1960s. on hot days and scared you half to ies of the articles, photos, and news Another that had landed on a frozen death, its wings flexed and twisted items. The site was quickly covered Canadian lake fell through the ice in a horrifying manner, it sank back up again. and sank. A salvager lifted it off the to earth with a great sigh of relief— This gesture had meaning to the bottom, drained it, and when the but it flew and it flew and it flew." Swiss. It was the first time that a lake was frozen again, flew it away. It was an old friend who brought transport plane had crashed in the And there are several Gooneys us through thousands of hours safe- Alps without killing everyone on abandoned by the Navy at the base ly and fairly comfortably. (No one board. The rescue had been a clas- at McMurdo Sound in Antarctica ever solved the leaky windshield sic from beginning to end, with liter- that are frozen in the ice there. problem.) And we will still stop and ally hundreds of people of many na- Someday they may be deiced to fly look skyward when we hear those tionalities pitching in to save lives. again. faithful engines purring in unison. But the reason for locating the plane A ski-equipped Air Force search- That sound is rarer now, but we and placing the capsule inside was and-rescue C-47 was dispatched to shouldn't despair. The 1986 World because Swiss glaciologists believe pick up the crew of a downed Icelan- Exposition at Vancouver, Canada, that Tate's Gooney will sink slowly dic Airlines DC-4 on top of Vatna will feature an air show next August through the ice until it slides down- Jokull Glacier in Iceland in the early 6-10 in which as many as fifty DC-3/ hill and emerges at the bottom 1950s. It landed safely, but despite C-47s from all over the world, led by sometime in the year 2500—com- repeated attempts to take off with a DC-2, will make a "flypast" to pletely intact. • JATO bottles, the Gooney wouldn't budge. Bad weather set in, and the Col. C. V. Glines, USAF (Ret.), is the coauthor (with retired Lt. Col. Wendell F C-47 was abandoned, but not for- Moseley) of three books about the DC-3: Grand Old Lady, The DC-3: The Story gotten. Two Icelanders—Kris of a Fabulous Airplane, and The Legendary DC-3. Both authors have more than Oleson and Alfred Eliasson, owners 1,000 hours of pilot time in the Gooney Bird. Colonel Glines's most recent of the crashed DC-4 and nearly article for AIR FORCE Magazine was "Jimmy Doolittle's Greatest Contributions" in bankrupt—wanted that C-47 to con- the September 1985 issue.

100 AIR FORCE Magazine December 1985