The C-47

The ubiquitous Gooney Bird

Eisenhower (The Supreme Commander – Part 1) allegedly said that the Allies won the war because of four pieces of equipment: the bulldozer, the jeep (The Jeep), the 2.5-ton truck and the C-47 transport plane. Another version of the quote names the C-47, the jeep, the bazooka (The Bazooka) and the atomic bomb. We’re not sure which version is correct, but it’s noteworthy that both lists include the C-47 Skytrain, the military version of the extremely popular DC-3 civilian passenger plane. Used as a troop transport, a cargo plane, a paratrooper carrier and a glider tow plane, it proved versatile, reliable and capable of carrying far more cargo than it was originally designed for.

The story of the C-47 begins with the DC series of passenger planes. In 1931, a passenger plane crashed because water seeped between the layers of the wooden wing and dissolved the glue, prompting the Department of Commerce to place restrictions on wooden wings. The Transcontinental and Western Air (TWA) airline approached several designers, including industrialist Donald Douglas, to design a three-engine all-metal plane for them with 12 passenger seats, a speed of 150 mph (242 km/h) and a range of 1,080 mi (1,740 km). Douglas doubted he could sell enough planes to cover the development costs, but still submitted a design that was actually an improvement on the requirements, as it only needed two engines. It even met an extra requirement, added by famed aviator Charles Lindbergh, who was working as a consultant to TWA: it could take off with a full load from any airport along TWA’s lines on a single engine. (It was also the first passenger plane with an onboard lavatory.)
 
The new plane was designated DC-1 (for “Douglas Commercial”). Only one was ever built, as TWA was quick to come up with new requirements that required a redesign. That one DC-1 had a colorful history: it went through a series of owners, including aviator Howard Hughes, and ended up as a reconnaissance plane for the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. It eventually crash-landed in Málaga in Spain. Parts of the wreck were scavenged by local monks, who turned the pieces into portable platforms that, apparently, are still used to carry statues of the Virgin Mary down the streets on religious holidays.

The new DC, the DC-2, was longer, carried 14 passengers, and had stronger engines. 192 were made, including two that were bought and flown by European airlines; 5 were built on license in Japan. One European DC-2, owned by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, participated in an 11,000 mile (18,000 km) intercontinental air race in 1934, where it finished second out of 20, only beaten by a purpose-built racing plane.
 
More requests for improvements quickly resulted in the DC-3, first flying in 1935. The DC-3 might be unique as the only passenger and cargo plane to still be in active commercial and military service (albeit in small numbers) as of a few years ago. It was born from a phone conversation between a reluctant Donald Douglas and the CEO of American Airlines, who wanted a sleeper version of the DC-2. The DC-2, however, was too narrow to fit berth, so another redesign was needed.

The new plane came in three version: the DST (“Douglas Sleeper Transport”) or “Skysleeper” with 14 berths, a 21-passenger day version, and the “Skylounge,” a luxury passenger plane for 14 daytime travelers. The DC-3 revolutionized air travel in America, as it could cross the country in 15 to 17 and a half hours (depending on whether it was flying with or against the wind), without many small refueling stops and overnight train travel on some stretches. It was also credited with being the first plane that could make a profit just carrying passengers, without relying on subsidized mail service.

With a new war brewing in Europe, the U.S. military quickly became interested in a reliable troop and cargo transport. Many requests for changes were made during the adoption process, quite a few by Army officers who knew little about the practical realities of aircraft. Someone wanted to widen the loading door to accommodate a cannon. Someone wanted the floor rebuilt so it would be level when the plane was on the ground. Someone wanted hooks on the outside so the plane could carry spare wings panels and propellers. (This was, eventually, done in a limited way, with some C-47s carrying spare wings for P-40 Warhawks in the Pacific.)
 
The definitive version of the C-47 “Skytrain” emerged in time. It had stronger engines, a cargo loading door, a hoist attachment, and a reinforced floor which heavy cargo couldn’t crash through. The cockpit had an astrodome added, a transparent window on the ceiling that allowed the crew to navigate by the stars at night. The tail cone was shortened to make space for the shackles that held the tow bar or tow cable for gliders. (The Waco CG-4 Glider) The floor was covered with a sandpaper-like surface so paratroopers preparing to jump wouldn’t slip.

10,147 C-47s were produced during the war, and the plane earned many nicknames, most notably “Gooney Bird,” another word for the albatross, a bird known for being able to stay in the air for extremely long time periods and cross great distance. It’s been suggested that the nickname actually came from some specific albatrosses. According to this theory, the first plane to ever land at Midway Island was a U.S. Marine Corps RD2, the military version of the DC-2, and it encountered many gooney birds there.

The Skytrain could carry 28 passengers, 18-22 fully equipped paratroopers (though it often only carried smaller “sticks”), 18 stretchers and 3 medical personnel, or roughly 6,000 pounds (2,720 kg) of cargo. Some of these official limits were sometimes exceeded by far by both C-47s and the very similar civilian DC-3s. After the famous Doolittle Raid (America Strikes Back), which ended with B-25s landing in China, the raid’s leader Jimmy Doolittle was flown home aboard a DC-3 operated by a Chinese airline. Doolittle later recalled the crammed plane: “Twenty-one women, twenty-one children, ten Indians, twenty-one soldiers, and one exhausted lieutenant colo­nel named Doolittle. When we got on the ground, I told the pilot that if I’d known he was going to take off with that many people aboard, I would have walked home.” During the Vietnam War, a DC-3 with three crewmen and five attendants evacuated an astonishing 98 refugee orphans from a village. During the Berlin Blockade of 1948-49, one pilot participating in the airlift to West Berlin was given the wrong cargo by accident. After barely managing to make it to the airport, he learned that what the manifest claimed was pierced aluminum planking, was, in fact, pierced steel planking weighing 13,500 pounds.

The Gooney Bird was also famous for its ability to keep flying after taking appalling damage. One C-47 named Geronimo lost part of its rudder and had a six-foot hole blasted through it, but still made it home across the Mediterranean Sea from a mission to southern France. Another one had a German fighter plow through the center of the fuselage, but stayed aloft.
 
One Chinese DC-3 had one wing entirely destroyed by a Japanese fighter while on the ground. There were no available spares, but the crew managed to get a DC-2 wing, which was 10 feet shorter but had the same attachment point. They mounted the wing, took off and flew home with an asymmetric wing configuration, earning the nickname “DC-2½.” Another Chinese DC-3 had over 1,000 holes in it after surviving an attack by Japanese aircraft, and was patched up with some canvas. It finished its mission of carrying refugees to safety, but the whistling of the wind through the holes was so loud that men at the destination airbase heard the plane approaching even before the pilot called to base on the radio.

The C-47 had dozens of versions, many only produced in small numbers. A dedicated paratrooper version, the C-53 Skytrooper, was designed without cargo doors, but was built in relatively low numbers as the regular Gooney Bird was perfectly suitable for the job, and was more versatile. The Dakota was the Royal Air Force designation for their own C-47s, with some uncertainty around the origin of the name. There’s a claim it was a wordplay on "DACoTA" for “Douglas Aircraft Company Transport Aircraft.” On the other hand, it could have been just part of the wider British practice of naming U.S.-built hardware after typical American concepts, such as the P-51 “Mustang,” (The P-51 Mustang) the M3 Medium Tank “Lee” and “Grant” versions (The M3 Medium Tank), or the M4 “Sherman” (The M4 Sherman), the tanks named after Civil War generals.

The other, more surprising user of a DC-3 derived plane was actually an enemy of the U.S.: Japan. The Nakajima Aircraft Company bought the license in 1938, and developed its own military variant, 487 of which were built. The Shōwa L2D or Nakajima L2D. The first version was very similar to the C-47, but some planes had added armament: a heavier machine gun in a dorsal turret, and two lighter ones fired from fuselage hatches. As the war progressed, later versions replaced important structural components with wood due to material shortages, including wooden rudders, stabilizers, ailerons, fins, elevators and entrance doors. An all-wood version was nearing production at the end of the war.
 
The DC-3 and the C-47 went on to have a long and illustrious career after the war, flying in man variants for many militaries and civil organizations. In 1949, a Soviet-owned C-47 carried the first two men to parachute jump to the North Pole. In 1956, a naval version was the first aircraft to land at the South Pole. (In fact, several C-47s are frozen in ice near McMurdo Station on Antarctica to this day.)

The Douglas AC-47 “Spooky,” nicknamed “Puff the magic dragon,” was a gunship serving in the Vietnam War and later conflicts, firing either machine guns or miniguns through ports on the left side to provide ground troops with close air support.