Mexican DC-3

Fuerza Aérea Mexicana (Mexican Air Force) Douglas DC-3C

It looks official, but there are no DC-3s listed in the Mexican Air Force's current inventory.

DC-3

American Airlines Flagship Detroit DC-3, Bowman Field Louisville KY.

Flagship Detroit

The Flagship Detroit was manufactured in early 1937 . . . It was the twenty-fourth DC-3 in American’s fleet which eventually totaled eighty-four aircraft. American Airlines flew the Detroit in regular passenger service until 1947

Bowman Field

Established in 1919, Bowman Field is one of the longest continuously operating, general aviation airports in the United States. Conveniently located approximately five miles from downtown Louisville, Kentucky, Bowman Field is situated on 426 acres. There are 17 buildings, including the historic Art Deco Administration Building that was built in 1929.

The V-2 Missile Heist

The V-2 Missile Heist
Mark Felton Productions

Another obscure story about WW2. The Nazis test fired a V-2 missile in Poland and the Polish Home Army found it, concealed it, took it apart and smuggled it out via a C-47 Dakota (the military version of the DC-3).

I didn't realize that the Germans had built and launched so many V-2's, the total was over 3,000. There is a good clip of a C-47 coming in for a landing on a grass field.

Flying from Brindisi Italy to Krakow Poland

I plotted the locations on a Google Map just to see how far it was: 680 miles. The plane took off from San Pancrazio Airfield in Brindisi Italy.

The Old Guard

The Old Guard | Official Trailer | Netflix
An action packed but very silly movie. Charlize Theron plays an immortal tough girl leading a gang of three immortal tough guys in a battle for truth, justice and something or other. There are some good fight scenes, one between Charlize and the new girl in the back of a DC-3 while in flight. Charlize has another good one with the head of the bad guy's security force in a glassed in skybridge. There are also a couple of good gunfights and a couple of grisly massacres.

The bad guy is Merrick, the youngest CEO of a pharmaceutical company. Where have we heard that before? His company is named Merrick, which looks a whole lot like Merck which is a real drug outfit. Is someone in Hollywood pissed at Merck? Or is this a case of 'any publicity is good publicity', but in this case they didn't even spell the name right. Who knows what goes through the heads of marketing guys?

Spoilers follow. Merrick meets his comeuppance when Andy hits him in the neck with an her special ax of oblivion and then Nile tackles him and they fall out through what was a plate glass window a minute ago but is now just a big hole. Right . They fall 15 stories and land on top of a car. Both are crushed dead, but Merrick stays dead and Nile recovers in a few seconds and they all ride off into the sunset happy and satisfied that they killed, killed, killed the bad guy.

Wikipedia article

Pic of the Day - Air Niugini

DC-3 P2-SBD (ex VH-SBD) at Port Moresby Airport in December 1974. Photo by peter lea

Port Moresby, that would be in New Guinea. We've been there before, sort of. Niugini, that's a funny sounding name, except how would I know? More like it's funny looking, which kind of goes along with it being from the far side of the world. Then I tried working out how I would pronounce it, and, doh! I'm back where I started: Niu = New, gini = Guinea, Niugini = New Guinea. Wikipedia agrees, sort of.

ALSIB

ALSIB - Alaska Siberia air road

Comrade Misfit tells us about a C-47 that was found in Siberia. During WW2 we flew thousands of airplanes to Russia to support their war effort on the Eastern Front. It's 6,000 miles from Great Falls Montana in the USA to Krasnoyarsk, Russia in Siberia, which is still 2,000 miles from Moscow. A C-47 (military version of the DC-3) cruises at 200 MPH, so flying time to Krasnoyarsk would have been 30 hours. Its range is 3600 miles, so it could have made the trip without too many stops. The Bell Airacobra was twice as fast, but its range is only 500 miles so it would have been having to stop every hour or so.  The USA and Canada put in a big effort to build airfields all along the flight path and a highway to support them. I imagine once you got over the Bering Strait facilities were a little farther apart.

Google Map of ALSIB

How many screws do you need?

DC-3 Wing Attachment Flange and Bolts

Iaman has been perusing the Hollywood archives again:

Watching a good old John Wayne movie, with Marshall Dillon (James Arness) as a fellow pilot flying a C-47 [DC3] 

I wonder alot about airplane wing spars.  Wondering about the main DC3 wing spar, I didn't find wing spars. Each wing was attached with ~365 1/4' bolts on a flange. 

Neat DC-3 site.

Pratt & Whitney R-1830

One of the 30 mechanics at Anderson Aeromotive in Grangeville, Idaho, working on a Pratt & Whitney R-1830 Twin Wasp radial engine.

No connection with Precision Aeromotive in Texas, at least none that I know of.

Idaho's climate has got to be more conducive to careful, precise, machine work than Houston could ever hope to be.

Iaman reminices:

I had a college summer apprenticeship rebuilding Pratt & Whitney R-1830 radial engines at Hobby Airport in Houston Texas. I just learned of the Pratt & Whitney R-1830

"A total of 173,618 R-1830 engines was built, and from their use in two of the most-produced aircraft ever built, the B-24 bomber and DC-3 transport, more Twin Wasps may have been built than any other aviation piston engine in history."

What I remember was grinding the ends of the piston rings,  slipping the pistons into the big heavy finned jug cylinders,  shell blasting parts, putting on 1000's of locking cap nuts, my hands being soaked in solvent. Then the testing of a the engines in a bomb proof runup room.  The smoke and noise of testing,  after weeks of teardown and cleanup, inspection, reassembly, amongst the roar of the test  the chief mechanic saying "hear that tick.....something's amiss......."

... just a couple of months in oily steel machine sheds of Precision Aeromotive. The owner was an old old guy, Pappy. He lent me a old Pratt & Whitney dogeared pamphlet, that guiltily I never returned, funny the things remembered. As with cooking, my epidermis couldn't handle the constant assault of the greasy machine environment & southern hot humidity. As with many of my ventures, I liked the idea so much better than the reality.

What I remember hearing about this was that the working conditions were poor (summertime in Houston with no air conditioning in a greasy garage), wages were pitifully low and that he was working on a horribly expensive piece of machinery. It just didn't add up. Here airplanes are supposed to be these precision machines, carefully assembled by master craftsmen and what we've got is a gang of grease monkeys beating these engines together with hammers.

P.S. Anderson Aeromotive has a short video clip of an engine test run.

The daredevil pilots of Colombia - the vintage Douglas DC-3 plane

(HK-2494) 2 Days Flying In A Douglas DC-3 / Colombia (Original Sound)
Maybe I'm a sucker for airplane stories, but this one just sucked me in. I watched the whole thing (all 25 minutes) in one go. Vunderbar!

Update July 2019 replaced missing video. I think I found the right one.