During what came to be called the Golden Age of Flight in the first half of the 20th century, the Douglas Aircraft Company so revolutionized the aviation industry that its DC-2s and DC-3s were flying more than 90 percent of all U.S. airline passengers by the end of the 1930s. By the mid-1940s, all but 25 of the 300 airliners operating in the United States were DC-3s, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.
Scroll through this gallery to see examples of the important roles these airplanes and their variants have played across aviation history.
