This War Hero Still Flies

Airlifts are in the news again. Not just in Georgia, but in Germany, now celebrating the 60th anniversary of the 11-month West Berlin rescue mission that American and British pilots flew over what Winston Churchill had recently dubbed the Iron Curtain. To many older Germans who lived through the Soviet blockade of 1948-49, the most vivid memories are of supply-laden DC-3 "candy bombers" coming in low and slow, earning their nickname by dropping treats to eager children.

As dramatic an episode as the Berlin Airlift was for "The Three," which first flew in 1935 and went out of production in 1946, it was only one of many. This was the plane, after all, that first made the airline industry possible, and that was key to the Allied victory in World War II.

Lake County Museum/Corbis

For its historic contributions, the DC-3 and its various military versions have earned the right to a leisurely old age in aviation museums. And indeed, it is the world's most popular such aircraft attraction, with more than 350 viewable in the U.S. and 35 other countries. A refurbished and mounted one is being readied as part of a monument commemorating the Dec. 17 first flight 73 years ago in Santa Monica, Calif., from an airfield outside what was then the Douglas Aircraft plant. And an Eastern Air DC-3 "soars" in the rafters of Washington's Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, above several other airliners with lesser claims to history.

But as part of the Berlin Airlift celebrations, one active DC-3 from Britain made a commemorative candy-bombing flight into the German capital. And until recently, DC-3s were still giving scenic aerial tours of the city — one of several uses of the planes in that country. Far from being purely museum pieces, in fact, as many as 500 of the aircraft are, astoundingly, in service for owners world-wide.

"The DC-3 competes in today's business world because it remains unique for certain special missions," says Tom Weigt of Basler Turbo Conversion, an Oshkosh, Wis., company that overhauls the planes and fits them with modern propeller engines. These days, DC-3s mostly haul cargo, dust crops, fight fires, or patrol — thriving in rugged terrain or on rough runways unwelcoming to pampered modern planes.

With its clean, classic lines, though, the DC-3 never fails to impress. Atlanta-area flight instructor Dan Gryder pilots his own DC-3 to charity events. "It's astounding the reception the airplane still gets, in any country in any part of the world," he says. "They know the DC-3, and they love it" — though often by different names. In Britain it's called the Dakota, for example, even if the plane's fondest nickname almost everywhere is Gooney Bird, for its ungainly landing style.

Corbis

The DC-3 has had many nicknames. The supply-laden plane earned the moniker 'candy bomber' by dropping treats to children in blockaded West Berlin during the Berlin Airlift 60 years ago.

Once the plane is on the ground, though, admirers are awed at its regal, nose-high posture — the result of the small wheel that supports it aft (where passengers board for a sharp climb forward to their seats). "And in flight, it's simply beautiful," Mr. Gryder adds. With its streamlined design, well-proportioned 95-foot wingspan, and shiny aluminum skin, "it's the way an airplane should look."

For David Edgerton, the plane "radiates a strong sense of the power of the past." The author of "The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900," and a professor at London's Imperial College, he says that it "makes one realize that we live in a world shaped long ago, because the DC-3 defined forever the look of the modern airliner." Indeed, today's Boeing 737 does somewhat resemble its smaller propeller-driven predecessor. (Boeing acquired the DC-3's successor company, McDonnell Douglas, in 1996.)

The 737 has a long way to go to catch The Three, though. In just over 10 years, aircraft plants around the globe produced more than 15,000 planes based on the DC-3's design, often through licensing arrangements that also became an industry model. The exact number isn't known, because so many rolled out of factories run by America's World War II Allies, including an estimated 3,000 in the Soviet Union.

But it was as an airliner that the DC-3 first captured the flying public's imagination. At 65 feet long, it could take 21 passengers nonstop to, say, Chicago from New York — allowing airlines, for the first time, to make a profit without any subsidy from mail service.

If people would fly in it, that is. In 1935 many still thought "aero planes" were only for adventurers. (The Wright Brothers' first flight had been just 32 years earlier, not coincidentally also on Dec. 17.) But the DC-3's sleek — and solid — frame impressed passengers as an advance over the high-speed passenger trains that then were the height of elegance.

In a 1985 article I wrote for The Wall Street Journal to mark the 50th anniversary of the DC-3, chief designer Arthur Raymond explained to me that without sophisticated tests for stress on metal aircraft parts "we just built it very conservatively with an indefinite service life in mind." Among their methods: rolling bulldozers over the wing to test its strength.

The resulting plane was a hit beyond anyone's imagination. At one point, 95% of all U.S. passengers were flying in DC-3s. By the time the world became engulfed in conflict, the workhorse was carrying nine of every 10 international airline passengers.

It was to be an even busier warhorse. Franklin Roosevelt ordered more than 10,000 — designated C-47s or R4Ds for most Air Force or Navy roles — to be built as cargo or troop carriers, while calling for huge quantities of spare parts. Among the plane's many military credits: Wave after wave delivered paratroopers and supplies over Normandy's beaches during the 1944 Allied invasion of Europe. Dwight Eisenhower was quoted as listing the DC-3 among the four weapons most responsible for victory, along with the Jeep, bazooka and atom bomb. (After its Berlin Airlift duty, it was active as well in Vietnam, with the DC-3's gunship version earning a '60s-style handle: "Puff the Magic Dragon.")

With many thousands of sturdy planes and spare parts available, reasonably priced, converted Gooney Birds flocked to airline service after the plane went out of production in 1946. Gradually, with the development of larger, faster, pressurized planes, DC-3s were relegated largely to service as aerial trucks for nonpassenger uses. Still, they were popular with passengers for short hops where speed didn't matter — even on a few U.S. and British routes into the 21st century. Not until passenger-plane safety rules inspired by 9/11, in fact, did economics begin to work against the DC-3. For one thing, the cost of installing bullet-proof cockpit doors was prohibitive. The last airline flights were ended in the U.K. only this year.

In the Northwest Territories of Canada, where no new rules have been passed, Buffalo Airways still keeps six DC-3s in use at all times in scheduled and charter passenger service, including the regular connection between Yellowknife and Hay River across Great Slave Lake. "It's our flagship, and will be for the foreseeable future," says Mikey McBryan, director of flight operations. DC-3 usage is benefiting, in fact, from global mining interests searching for mineral deposits from iron ore to uranium to diamonds. And lately, Mr. McBryan says, there's added business from "all these people coming over from Europe, because we're the last place you can just buy a ticket to fly on a DC-3."

Mr. Harris, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who covered the aerospace industry, is the author of "Pulitzer's Gold: Behind the Prize for Public Service Journalism" (University of Missouri Press).

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