Reflecting on the DC-3 at 75

In an interview in 1948 with Australia’s doyen of aviation writers, the late Stanley Brogden, Douglas Snr explained that the idea for the DC-3 came when Smith and his chief engineer Bill Littlewood were flying in a Curtis Condor. “Smith wanted to combine the width of the Condor with the technology and speed of the DC-2 and beat the competition with a true transcontinental sleeper plane,” Douglas said.

After some considerable internal discussion at American involving a wider, longer ranged DC-2, Smith spent $300 on a two-hour phone call speaking to Douglas about the concept. “I did not like it at all.

Why should I have liked it? I had plenty of DC‑2s on order. But he said he would give me an immediate order for 20 sleeper DC‑2s,” Douglas recounted to Brogden.

The order eventually was 10 Douglas Sleeper Transports and the balance the 21-passenger version –the DC-3.

As Smith did not have the money, he flew down to Washington DC to see an old friend Jesse Jones who was running the Reconstruction Finance Corporation for President Franklin Roosevelt. “e talked Jones into a $4. 5 million loan. That is how the DC-3 started as the sleeper DC-2,”Douglas recalled.

The Douglas Sleeper Transport (DST), or DC-3, was anything but a sleeper and awoke the world to air travel and air cargo –it would never be the same again.

However, even by first flight, the management at Douglas was still not aware of the potential for the DST –as it was still called at that time –as apparently no photos were taken of the event.

The logbook of the first DST, X14988, records a three-hour run-up of its Wright Cyclone engines at noon on December 14.

The run-up was repeated two days later.

Then on December 17 1935, not the 22nd as suggested in some journals, Douglas Aircraft Company chief pilot and VP sales Carl Cover, accompanied by flight engineers Fred Stineman and Frank Collbohm, boarded X14988 at 2. 15pm and ran the engines up for about 30 minutes and taxied for takeoff at Clover Field, Santa Monica.

Collbobm, who occupied the right hand seat, recalled 40 years later in the McDonnell Douglas Spirit magazine that “it was just a routine flight. I can’t separate it in my mind from any other test flights we made in those days. ” Chief designer Arthur E Raymond, also quoted in the same publication, doesn’t remember the event either. “When the plane was ready I suppose Carl and others simply got aboard and took off. ” And takeoff it did at 3pm for a 1 hour 40 minute flight, landing just as dusk was approaching.

And with it, nightfall came for virtually every other commercial aircraft flying in the world. By 1939, 95 per cent of all passengers in the US were flying on DC-2s or DC-3s.

By December 1941 Douglas had delivered 507 DC-3s, of which 434 had gone to airlines.

American Airlines intended that the DC-3 be just a wider version of its predecessor with just 15 per cent new parts, but significant redesign work meant that the DC-3 only had 10 per cent of parts in common with the DC-2.

While it made most aircraft obsolete, the DC-2 had some problems. According to famous DC-3 historian Arthur Pearcy, the DC-2 had propeller and fin icing problems, was nose heavy, difficult to land and was directionally unstable because its fin was not large enough. It also had heavy ailerons and rudder.

American’s Littlewood and his assistant Otto E Kirchner went out to Santa Monica to help with the design of the DC-3. But the DC-3 had one small problem with directional stability which showed up quickly in test flights and a dorsal fillet was added to the vertical tail.

At the 40th anniversary of the DC-3’s first flight Raymond heaped praise on Littlewood’s input to the design. “He was an extremely capable engineer,” Raymond said. Raymond gave Littlewood virtually a free hand in establishing the dimensions of the cabin and deciding what went in it and in the cockpit layout. “We worked together without any friction. Thus the DC-3 was the product of teamwork between the user and the builder. ”

Innovations

The technical improvements over the DC-2 and other transports were almost endless and many shaped aviation into the future. American insisted on duplicate instruments for pilot and copilot as an added safety measure and new cockpit lighting for night flying. Automatically retracting undercarriage was introduced along with foot brakes.

The DC-3 also incorporated the major steps forward pioneered in the Boeing 247, DC-1 and DC-2, such as Jack Northrop’s multi-cellular wing and clean aerodynamics developed under the guidance of Dr Oswald of the Californian Institute of Technology.

Other innovations were variable speed propellers, autopilot, powered brakes and wing flaps.

The DC-2 itself was a quantum leap over the competition, so much so that some thought the design a fake. In 1934, when Sir Roy Fedden, head of Bristol Engines, showed a photo of the DC-2 to the UK Government Technical Directorate Development Staff, they refused to believe it was a real aircraft.

The British press ridiculed KLMRoyal Dutch Airline’s entry of its shiny new DC-2 into the MacRobertson Air Race from London to Australia in 1934.

They were sceptical that the DC-2 could compete against the best from Europe.

Newspapers described the American aircraft’s entry as “American propaganda” and “an audacious assumption that such a ship could expect to compete with the fastest planes and designs from the continent. ” But compete it did and despite carrying a full crew of five together with three passengers, travelling 1000 miles further and making five more stops to meet the obligations of its airline’s regular Amsterdam- Batavia (Indonesia) service, the DC-2 came in second to a souped-up racing plane, the twin engine de Havilland Comet, which carried just two pilots.

The host of innovations and the sleek design gave the DC-3 unmatched economics.

According to Pearcy, Douglas in his address to the board of directors in early 1936 said: “The DST’s payload is one third more than any of the previous airliners. ” More important he emphasised, “our estimates show that it costs about 69 US cents per mile to operate the plane which is about on a par with the costs of operating the Ford Tri-Motor. The difference is the DST carries three times as much in payload. ” Douglas also informed the board that a modified version of the DST – the DC-3 – was moving down the production line.

In fact the DC-3 cost about 71. 6 US cents per mile to operate – in 1939 dollars – compared to the 14-passenger DC-2’s 67. 4 US cents, but the additional seven seats meant that the seat-mile costs were 3. 4 US cents compared with the DC-2’s 4. 8 US cents.

The DC-3’s performance was extraordinary for its day. As late as 1934 American was operating a service across the US that was taking 38 hours and 30 minutes westward. Passengers took the overnight train from New York to Cleveland before boarding a Ford Tri-Motor for a six stop trip to Dallas. Finally, there was a seven stop trip in a Condor to Los Angeles. The DST/DC-3 did the whole journey in 17 hours 45 minutes with three stops.

Passengers also loved the additional soundproofing introduced in the DC-3, with one British trade journal commenting at the time that: “Travel in the DC-3 is the most restful affair that can possibly be imagined. The reflections from the wide spread of metal wings and from the discs of the slow running airscrews would send even the most wide-awake European dictator into a pleasant slumber. ” And while there is no record of European dictators flying on the DC-3, movie stars loved that sort of quietness, not to mention the performance and the safety.

American was able to boast that one DC-3 flight’s passenger list included Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Murray Silverstone, head of United Artists, Charles Chaplin and Sam Goldwyn.

AA also introduced other innovations to lure passengers to flying including the fastillmous Admirals Club, the naming of which followed Smith’s love of all things nautical, plus the airline added eight 11 passenger stretched limos to take passengers from their homes or businesses to the airport.

And because of the DC-3 and DC-2’s safety record, insurers for the first time offered flight insurance in 1937. Passengers could buy $5000 cover for 25 US cents. In the same year life insurance was offered to airline pilots and the practice of temporarily cancelling life insurance policies when passengers set foot on an aircraft was discontinued.

Time magazine commented: “That insurance companies can now bet US$5000 to two bits against a passenger being killed on a flight of some 800 miles is one of the best pieces of publicity which US airlines ever had. ” American followed this up with a thought provoking and effective advertisement featuring CR asking: “Why Dodge This Question: Afraid to Fly?” For the record, the first DST entered service on June 25 1936 between Chicago Municipal Airport (Midway) and Newark, which served the New York market. Passengers paid US$47. 19 for the four hour flight, which was operated by NC16002 Flagship Illinois.

Golden age

On May 30 1935 Douglas delivered the 23rd Wilbur Wright Memorial Lecture on the progress of commercial aircraft to the Royal Aeronautical Society in London.

Douglas told the Society that aviation was in a “golden era”. He listed a host of contributing factors for the emergence of airliners such as the Boeing 247, DC-2 and yet to fly DC-3.

“An alert and ambitious military technical personnel played its part in accelerating the brains of our designers. A growing competition among the airlines spurred the development of faster and safer airliners. A need on the part of the manufacturers for a broader market for their products and an ability, represented in favourable balance sheets, to seek this with newer and newer types, both military and civilian added to activity in this field,” Douglas said.

And he passed credit to Lockheed for its “early attempts at really fast airplanes”, saying it pointed the way to others what might be done. “But beyond all this, and certainly marking the time as one of real accomplishment, has been the fact that all agencies concerned in and contributing to aviation have been most alert, cooperative and constructive. ” Douglas added: “Our engines have been developing at a pace to permit the airplane designer to raise his sights from time to time. Our instruments and radio people have aided tremendously by furnishing us with means to fly in bad weather. Propeller makers have been most helpful, and in fact, I can say that the development of the variable pitch propeller to the point it has reached today is probably the most fundamentally important development of the period. Without it many of our present airliners would be impractical. ” In a prophetic snapshot of the future of aviation, Douglas added that “for the first time speed through the air was only one function to be solved in the solution of the equation of a successful ship. Speed of inspection and maintenance during fuelling stops, and studies to cut the time required to make replacements, were given great consideration. ” The DC-2’s engine installation was a revolution in its day with plug connecting fuel and electrical lines enabling an engine change in two hours.

Douglas also highlighted comfort as a major factor. “Comfort was studied with care and sound engineers developed efficient and practical methods of eliminating the formerly disagreeable and tiring noise of the air transport. Heating and ventilation comparable to that found in modern buildings was effected after the aid of related industries was obtained. ” Even Orville Wright commented on the soundproofing of the DC-3. When TWA inaugurated its DC-3 service to Dayton where Orville lived, he went to inspect the shiny new aircraft, although declined a flight. Wright told Ingells: “There is plenty of room and the seats are comfortable. They tell me too, that it’s so sound proof that the passengers can talk to each other without shouting. This is a wonderful improvement.

Noise is something that we always knew would have to be eliminated in order to get people to fly. Somehow it is associated with fear. ” The advance in the DC-3’s sound proofing, which reduced the noise in the cabin to around 65 to 70 decibels, was put in context by AA pilot and famous author Ernest Gann who said: “A Ford Tri-Motor clangs along at 105 decibels, a number which almost exactly matches its cruising speed. ” Impact The DC-2 and DC-3’s impact on the world’s economy was immense. In the US, passenger numbers leapt 265 per cent from 572, 265 in 1934 to 2. 09 million in 1939 and increased 54 per cent in 1940 to 3. 16 million.

Passenger fatality rates plummeted from one per 11,000,000 miles in 1936 to one per 81,000,000 miles in 1940. In 1939 the ‘Scheduled Airlines of the United States’ were awarded the Collier Trophy for flying 17 months without a single fatality. And those millions of passengers replaced mail contracts as the airlines’ major source of revenue. In 1931 the fledgling US airline industry earned US$24 million, of which 82. 5 per cent was from mail and the balance passenger revenue. By 1940 the figures were almost reversed with 70 per cent of the total industry revenue of US$76 million coming from passengers and the balance from mail and express cargo.

So great was the aircraft’s impact that by 1938 the DC-3 was carrying 95 per cent of all commercial traffic in the US and by 1939 was carrying 90 per cent of the world’s airline traffic. And airfares had dropped by 50 per cent from when the DC-3 entered service. And on February 16 1937 American Airlines proclaimed in an advertisement that it was the first airline in the world to carry one million passengers.

According to author Douglas Ingells, the transformation was put into context by Grover Loening, one of the US’s pioneer airmen and famed aircraft designers in his book Our Wings Grow Stronger, when he reflected on the impact of the DC-3 saying: “The railroads are as obsolete today as the Erie Canal was in 1830. The handwriting is on the wall for the stream ship also. ” The DC-3 quite simply freed the airline from mail contracts, according to Smith.

“It was the first airplane that could make money just by hauling passengers. With previous planes, if you multiplied the number of seats by the fares being charged you couldn’t break even with a 100 per cent load. Economically, the DC-3 allowed us to expand and develop new routes where there was no mail pay. ” And that was really the key. The DC-3 gave airlines freedom to fly longer legs nonstop, which in itself reduced costs as well as making air travel much faster, aside from the additional speed of the aircraft.

The DC-3 cruised at 170mph compared to 110mph for the Ford Tri-Motor and had much greater range, transforming a 38 hour 14-stop transcontinental trip into three stops and 17. 45 hours. The effect was similar to what open skies and liberalisation have provided today.

Smith also added another dimension when he told Ingells that the DC-3 was the agent for standardisation that accounted for much of the growth. “It was uneconomical and unsightly to have a system full of mismatched aircraft. What was needed was one attractive type capable of carrying a sizable load a good distance and at low costs. At the time we considered the DC-3 the perfect airplane. ” By the middle of 1941 AA’s fleet consisted of 67 DC-3s, with all other types retired. And that single type model was picked up by Southwest Airlines in the 1970s and defines low cost airlines today.

Production By the end of 1941 a total of 507 DC-3s had been built and there were orders for another 369 which were transferred to the US military. Peak US production was in 1944 when 4878 were built at three plants at Long Beach, Santa Monica and Oklahoma City. In all, Douglas built 10,624 military models of the DC-3. The aircraft was also built in Japan and Russia under licence and assembled at Fokker in Holland.

Interestingly, during WW2 most of the DC-3s were built by women. Douglas employed more women by percentage – 85 per cent – than any other defence company and the company’s peak workforce was 160,000.

The women – nicknamed ‘Rosies’ after one of the first women to work in a defence factory – turned out DC-3s, or Dakotas as they were better known in Australia and the British Commonwealth, at the staggering rate of one every 34 minutes at the peak of production in mid 1944. Individually, they took three-and-a-half days to build.

(Dakota was an acronym adapted from the letters DACoTA which stood for Douglas Aircraft Company Transport Aircraft. ) At the conclusion of WW2 military C‑47s flooded the market and could be purchased for around US$8000 to US$15,000, with some picked up for US$1200 in 1945 dollars. These surplus aircraft became the backbone of the global airline system with many staying in trunkline airline service well into the 1960s and in regional airlines later still. It is estimated today that over 300 are still flying and command prices of over A$100,000.

Locally, Australia’s first DC-3 arrived in September 1937 for service with Australian National Airways, and was joined by a further three by the end of 1938.

According to the Australian National Aviation Museum at Moorabbin Airport, 200 different civil registrations were carried by DC-3 aircraft serving with more than 40 operators in Australia postwar.

Of those, 41 were operated by Ansett- ANA, over 30 with TAA, and five in Qantas colours.

According to the www. dc3. adastron. com website the numbers of DC-3s in Australia today is 65 made up of 10 flyable or almost flyable, 23 preserved, 15 labelled non-flying and 17 wrecks.

While it might be easy to lay credit for the DC-3 and the subsequent transformation of the airline system at the feet of one man, Donald Douglas, that is not the way he saw it.

When he accepted the Robert J Collier Trophy from President Roosevelt on July 1, 1935 for the development of the DC-2, he said: “There is nothing revolutionary in the airplane business. It is a matter of development.

What we’ve got today is the Wright Brothers airplane developed and refined.

But the basic principles are just what they always were. ”