RAAF Dougals Dakota A65-94

A65-94 entered the RAAF in 1945 and was retired from service in 1999 - the longest serving aircraft in the RAAF and likely to retain that title

Now in the hands of the Historic Aircraft Restoration Society A65-94 (civil registration VH-EAF) was in Broken Hill today having flown a bunch of mining execs over from Sydney.

A few photos of a magnificent machine on the ground
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

What a nice old plane!!!!

 

Hey! Cupholders!

Beautiful! They are such graceful looking planes, even on the apron.

 

What service did it perform in its latter years?

 

Steve- My first flight in an airplane was in a C-47 of about the same vintage in 1959. My father was the pilot and we flew from Oslo, Norway to Wiesbaden and back.

Great old birds and that one looks like she is in perfect condition.

Some of our KC-135s and B-52Hs have had similar service lives. For the BUFF, 1962 to 2012 for a few of them. Getting close.

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

Not sure... I'll find out

Great story! This was my first look inside the "Dak" but I haven't yet had a chance to go up in it.

PS: I think the BUFF is amazing - front line aircraft for more that half the life of manned aircraft!

 

Hi Terry,would a lot of the planes still flying ,be at the end of there life as far as hours re the frame?

 

Rob- No, many of them were designed using slide rules and engineering rules of thumb so they were over-built out the kazoo. Nobody wanted their part to fail, so they are very stout. Now they are built with computer models which design them to take out every excess ounce.

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

In Melbourne there is one that does a 45 min flight over the city and bay each saturday as a dinner show,been doing it for 20 plus years,I can always pick its engine pitch as it gets close and will turn to my partner and say "its the gooney bird"
Ansett airlines still have one they bought just before the war in there musueum in fall working condition.Bought in 1938 for $64,000 aust dollars.
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

Rob- A P-51 or P-47 was ~$50k in 1944/45, so not a bad deal for an airliner with twin engines. After the war, you could buy an brand new, zero hours P-38L for $1200 from Lockheed. A used Gooney Bird would probably have been less, but the airlines were still buying new ones then.

The last Gooney I flew on was a feeder airline bird I flew from Dallas, Texas to Roswell, New Mexico in 1965. They disappeared from airline service here fairly quickly after that.

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

You are correct , Terry, in the transformation of the design process. I saw it with the B-52, KC-135, and 707 when the engineers did use the slide rule and 26 digit hand cranked Marchand calculating machines. Then, when everything was figured out, an engineering top dog sometimes would look at the drawings and start hand waving and directing a thicker skin here, longer runout there, and, " I don't care what stress says, do it this way." They were usually right on, too. Then on the 777 when we were using nothing but computers, I saw the same thing happen, the old timers exercising their black art. These types of men are no longer with us and the bean counters and sales people influence too much of the design process. Witness Boeing's latest program that was modeled after the "modern way" of building our widgets and toasters and let someone else do what we used to do. A harsh lesson was learned here and most of the work is coming back " in house". I worked at Boeing from the KC-97G,B-52 thru the 777 and came back to work for two years on the advanced models of the 747 that eventually segued into the 747-8. I didn't work on the 787 and I'm glad of that because everyone that I know there knew what was going to happen but the bean counter's business plan prevailed. That won't ever happen again.

 

There is a C-47 that flies daily out of Long Beach hauling freight and mail to Catalina Island and up and down the coast. Nothing sounds like those big round engines.

Kurt O.

 

While the majors dropped the DC-3 like a hot potato, the feeder airlines used it for 20 more years. I have never flown in a DC-3, but my wife flew from Miami to Marathon in the Keys via a Provincetown Boston Airways (PBA) DC-3 up until the early 80's. I have pics of her and her twin sister getting on a the Gooney for that hop. PBA flew DC-3's on that route until 1987!!! I'm sure that somewhere there is a -3 that is being used in some third world country for scheduled flights to this day.

You know the END is coming when the last DC-3 shuts down for good.

 

I have ridden in the Gooney many times in the service and with West Coast Airlines in the 60's then I got to fly one from Spokane to Pasco, Wa. I got to fly the Boeing 247 with Jack Leffler before it went to the Museum of Flight and what a difference! The 247 was like a big twin engine Cub, the DC-3 was like a bigger twin engine Cub but with some hair on its chest. Both were great fun. The nicest , though, was the Lockheed Model 10. Smaller but very easy to fly with nicely balanced controls, quicker and more responsive.

 

A65-94 spent from 1982 until 1998 (then retired in 1999 or 2000 - got some conflicting info) in the ARDU (Aircraft Research and Development Unit) and was used as a flying testbed in a number of forms. As far as I can find out work carried out at ARDU included calibration of radio navigation aids as well as testing objects that would then be hung off other aircraft (aerials, instruments, etc). The idea was that the performance of the C-47 was so well understood (and stable) that any variations could then be attributed to the device being tested.

 

http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/5151972/Museum-piece-to-the-rescue

We must be OK for a while yet!

 

One of my all time favourite aircraft thanks for the share, do you know if there is still a flying DC-3 in Perth? I remember it around 2006 but didn't get a chance to fly on it and would love to do it now.

 

I 1st flew in one over Fiji on a domestic route in 1968.

 

Terry, I grew up in Albuquerque...

I remember when Frontier Airlines (the ORIGINAL Frontier) flew ONLY DC-3's into ABQ.
Green and White livery. Watched my parents get on the DC-3's and fly off. They flew over our house many times a day.

(Continental was flying Convair 340's - and later Vickers Viscounts, and TWA was flying Martin 404's and Connies - the arrival of the 'Super G' Connie was big in our newspapers) I remember when a TWA Martin 404 flew right into the Sandia Mountains bordering ABQ. Oops, I'm digressing.

 

The good old days. If you were an officer in the USAF in the 50s and were assigned overseas, you were allowed a choice of an ocean liner or a prop airline trip to the port or airport nearest your assignment. The cost was about the same. So moving to Oslo, Norway in 1958, we had the choice of 18-24 hours on a DC-6/7 or Connie or a 7 day trip on the Stavangerfjord. We took the boat and had a great trip.

Returning, we already had reservations and a huge bon voyage party scheduled on a liner. Pan-Am had just introduced the 707 into service to Oslo in 1961 and won the DoD contract for transporting personnel to Norway and back. So the ocean liner was cancelled and we flew back to NY. It was a great adventure for me at the time, but my parents were really disappointed, especially since our car would have been on the boat with us.

Really long take-off roll on those old 707s, with water being injected and huge billows of smoke coming out of the turbo-jets. No fans then. Lots of room between seats, unlike now. The good old days, but hardly anybody could afford to fly back then. Times change.

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

Water, " ADI" Anti- Detonation Injection. two hundred fifty gallons of distilled water on every wet take off. Looking back on those days really emphasizes the antiquity of it all then. I worked many hours of overtime on the 707's, saw the first take off and also the first take off of the first PAA 707. I had been with Boeing for 11 years at that time and had gone from the BMP B-50 modification program, KC-97G, B-52, 367-80, KC-135, and the 707. It was a wild and fast moving time. Thirty four at the time.

 

it's that dang gooney bird ...

gorgeous ...

 

http://www.amazon.com/DC-3-Legend-Anniversary-Photographic-Tribute/dp/0615228771


Excellent book, published for the 75th anniversary of the aircraft.....