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    From:  Jim White

     Date:  September 11, 2014

Subject:  75 Years Old and Still Flying  [Never sent as a message.]

I wasn't keeping track of what kind of plane I was flying in but my first flight in a DC-3 could have been Setpember 16, 1954 between Kimpo Air Base in Korea and Tachikawa Air Base in Japan.

    From:  Steve Pennington

     Date:  March 5, 2014

Subject:  75 Years Old and Still Flying

Loved working on the old Goons in Vietnam.  We had EC-47s at both of the bases I was assigned to, all '42 and '43 built models.  Our base flight hack was a '42 built C-47, "Balls 3" (tail number 0003).  We used to send it to Clark and the FE would bring back San Miguel in the big bottles.  At Danang we had the AC-119K gunships.  Also enjoyed working on them.  They kept the bad guys' heads down after dark.

Cheers.

SLP

["Goons" doesn't refer to the Mafia.  The DC-3 was sometimes called the "Gooney Bird."  Webmaster]


    From:  Bob Nelson

     Date:  March 5, 2014

Subject:  75 Years Old and Still Flying

Hey, let's be nice to the C 119, my dad worked on that airplane in Hagerstown, Md.  Gee, now that I think about it, I hope he didn't work on that particular plane.


    From:  Ron Hesketh

     Date:  March 4, 2014

Subject:  75 Years Old and Still Flying

My first ride in a DC3 was in 1960 when I sang with the White Sands Missile Range glee club & we flew to northern New Mexico to sing for a native Indian tribal ceremony.
I was sitting in a right wing window seat and as soon as we took off, oil began to come out of the cowling of that engine.  We had to circle back & land.  I found out that a mechanic had put an il seal in backwards.
To me, at a young age of 20, that was a scary ride.
My next ride was only a couple months later when I flew back to Ohio to get married.  I flew in a DC3 VIP plane from Ft. Bliss to Lowry Air Force Base in Denver.  I then endured almost two days of misery aboard a C 119 flying boxcar from Lowry to Wright Patterson AFB in Ohio. The props in the 119 could never be synched and that made for a miserable pulsing dinn the entire trip. (sitting in a web sling as my seat)
Ron Hesketh


    From:  Joe Ciokon

     Date:  March 3, 2014

Subject:  75 Years Old and Still Flying

Heading home from Panama in 1963, after the first PanAm DC-8 jet airliner landed at Tocumen Airport.  We departed in our DC-3 from Howard AFB, CZ.

JoeC


    From:  Bill Altman

     Date:  March 4, 2014

Subject:  75 Years Old and Still Flying

22 Sept., 1973,  free fall Jumps number 241 and 242 exited at 15,000 feet over Quantico drop zone from Marine Corps reserve version of the DC3.  Marines designate this aircraft as c-117D


    From:  Bob Nelson

     Date:  March 3, 2014

Subject:  75 Years Old and Still Flying

Had my first DC-3 ride in 1961 heading for basic training.


    From:  Steve Sevits

     Date:  March 2, 2014

Subject:  75 Years Old and Still Flying

See attachment for more on the 1985 PBS file on the DC-3.


[There was a previous message on this topic, most likely from Steve Sevits, but I can't find it.  Webmaster. ]


    From:  Steve Sevits

     Date:  April 2, 2014

Subject:  75 Years Old and Still Flying

25 years ago PBS did a half century special on the DC-3, which remains a classic film today.  There has never been an in-flight breakup of a DC-3 due to structural failure.

There was a London to Sydney air race and KLM took second prize with a DC-2 with a regular passenger flight flying the standard passenger route which was longer than the race route.  That plus the fact that Howard Hughes wanted a plane which could cross the Rocky Mtns. with one engine out (they were thinking in terms of a tri-motor) and the DC-3 was the result and the legend has been going on ever since.

Steve (the other one)

DC-3 at 75

March 2014

In addition to the 455 DC-3 commercial transports built for the airlines,

10,174 were produced as C-47 military transports during World War II.


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