Douglas

Miss Montana, a restored Douglas C-47A/DC-3C that was used in aerial firefighting after World War II, returned to Helena, Montana, on Monday, August 5, 2019, to commemorate a mission in which 12 of 15 smokejumpers, plus one person on the ground, lost their lives fighting the Mann Gulch Fire following their drop from the airplane. […]

The D-Day Squadron, which flew 15 C-47 variant airplanes to Europe for the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Normandy Invasion and the 70th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift, reported at EAA AirVenture on its successful mission and plans for future airshow and education outreach. Eric Zipkin, chief pilot and aircraft commander on Placid […]

Only one of her kind remains: The Douglas DC-7B was a workhorse for several airlines during its tenure in the 1950s and 60s, but none still fly save for N4887C. The airplane has had maintenance completed this summer at the Coolidge Municipal Airport in Arizona in advance of a ferry flight to its new owner—announced […]

The event took years to plan, months to prepare, weeks to position and practice—and one day to execute. On the early evening of June 5, 2019, as clouds brooded over the Normandy countryside, a formation of Douglas C-47s and other DC-3 variants delivered on the mission to re-create a critical paratrooper drop commemorating the 75th […]

July 22, 1921: The Douglas Aircraft Co. incorporates, with its main base in Santa Monica, California, in an old movie studio. April 1936: The first Douglas Sleeper Transport is delivered to American Airlines. 1943: The 2,000th C-47 rolls out of the production hangar at Long Beach. 1944: More than 100 C-47s fill the skies over […]

Last week the Museum of Flying at Santa Monica Airport celebrated the 80th anniversary of the first flight of the Douglas DC-3, a flight that took off from SMO on December 17, 1935. A ceremony was held at the newly renovated DC-3 monument right outside the main entrance to the museum. The monument was first […]

A very special airplane made its first flight since undergoing a complete restoration at Paine Field in Everett, Washington. The Historic Flight Foundation’s DC-3 took to the skies over the weekend in its distinctive Pam Am paint scheme. The history of the foundation’s DC-3 began in 1944 as a C-47 in Asia, flying for the […]

Southern California’s Santa Monica Airport (KSMO) now has a fitting tribute to its history as a center of airline manufacturing with the installation of a full size DC-3 monument. It’s hard to imagine tony Santa Monica being an aviation manufacturing hotbed, but not too many decades ago it was home to the production line of […]

One woman’s look back at how the Douglas has lived to fly for 75 years.

In the early ’60s, when I went wrong and started hanging out at the aerodrome, common wisdom was that the DC-3, while a grand old airplane, had outlived its usefulness to the military, the airlines and even corporate operators. Its death knell was tolling to signal the time had come to relegate these antiques to […]