![]() ![]() The wheels would retract into the engine nacelles for better streamlining. It would be a low-wing monoplane with semimonocoque fuselage and wings with a then-new “honeycomb” construction. Instead of three engines, Douglas engineers came up with a twin-engine design. Douglas, Sr., head of the company that built several mail planes and the famous Douglas World Cruisers that had circumnavigated the globe in 1924, later called the Frye letter “the birth certificate of the DC ships” because it spawned a new era in aircraft design for Douglas that took advantage of new aeronautical developments then coming into being. The letter was sent to the presidents of the Curtiss-Wright, Ford, Martin, Consolidated, and Douglas. The lucky bidder would receive an order for “ten or more trimotor transport planes.” The letter asked for bids for an all-metal monoplane to be manned by a crew of two, with a maximum gross weight of 14,200 pounds, a range of 1,080 miles at 145 miles per hour, and the capacity to carry twelve passengers. The progenitor of the ubiquitous Gooney Bird was the DC-I, which came about through a specification issued by Jack Frye, president of Transcontinental and Western Air (now Trans World Airlines) on August 2, 1932. Smith, former president of American Airlines, was “the first airplane that could make money just by hauling passengers.” It was the first aircraft to land at both poles and, according to C. It has not only filled the roles mentioned above but has also served in every country on every continent in the world, once broke the coast-to-coast speed record, and set nineteen other national and international speed records. It was on December 17, 1935, the thirty-second anniversary of the Wright brothers’ famous first flights, that the first DC-3 took to the air to begin a saga of accomplishment unmatched by any other aircraft design in the world. It may surprise you that the DC-31 C-471R4D celebrates its fiftieth birthday this month. And while it is not in the military inventory anymore, it is still plying the world’s airways and doing its duty in other countries in peace and war as it has always done. It received its baptism of fire during World War II, proved its durability during the Korean War, and demonstrated its unusual versatility during the Vietnam War. Most readers of AIR FORCE Magazine will not need an introduction to the Gooney. But the name most commonly applied to this Grand Old Lady of the Skies is Gooney Bird, named after the albatross, a seabird known for its endurance and ability to fly great distances. ![]() The airlines referred to it simply as the Three their pilots called it Old Methuselah, Placid Plodder, Dowager Duchess, Doug, or the Dizzy Three. Turret variant with “large winter garden”.Trivia Question: What transport aircraft designed to carry twenty-one passengers has hauled more than 100 and has been transformed into a fighter, bomber, amphibian, glider, tow plane, laundry, classroom, crop duster, flying loudspeaker, hospital, wire layer, command post, mobile home, chicken coop, restaurant, fire fighter, and chapelĪnswer: The Douglas DC-3, also known in the Air Force as the C-47 (plus other designations) or Sky-train and in the Navy as the R4D.The following submarines can be represented with the decals: U 292, U 318, U 998, U 1004. Also noteworthy is the highly detailed hull representation with rivets and welds. New components are included to represent the wooden deck with engraved pressure vessels and the Atlantic stem. Thanks to better structural steel, the boats could now dive to 250 meters. An erectable snorkel mast for fresh and exhaust air ducting, movable in the model, and four watertight pressure vessels with 5-man life rafts were further features of these submarines. This is represented in the model true to the original with two 20 mm Flak twins as well as a 37 mm M42U anti-aircraft gun. In order to be able to defend themselves better against air attacks when surfaced, the Type VII C/41 submarines were given a turret superstructure extended to form a large conservatory. ![]() The pack tactics only rarely led to the successful detection of ship convoys, and special U-fighter planes now patrolled wide areas. By this time, operational conditions had changed completely. From the summer of 1943, a total of 91 type VII C/41 submarines were put into service. ![]()
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