Wednesday, July 27, 2011

An icon under the Southern Cross

Every May Racing Carnival, a silver Skyliner rumbles into Warrnambool Aerodrome filled with punters from the Big Smoke. This remarkable aircraft’s story began reluctantly in California long ago.

Gooney Bird departing Warrnambool Aerodrome
a C-47 military transport built in 1945
serving with the RAAF until 1987
still working out of Essendon

In the beginning . . .
It all started with a $335.59 phone call between American Airlines president C. R. Smith and industrialist Donald Douglas in 1934. Smith wanted a sleek new transport based on the revolutionary all-metal DC-2, which had just won handicap honours in the MacRoberston Air Race between London and Melbourne.
As a teenager, Cyrus Smith started his career managing a western clothing store in Minerva Texas. Attracted to aviation, his no-nonsense approach to business and straight talking style propelled him to the leadership of American Airlines. His vision was to fly airborne sleepers on the route between New York and Los Angeles. Douglas, who founded his aircraft empire in a Los Angeles barber shop was conservative and cautious. Smith’s proposal worried him. The Great Depression was biting hard, American Airlines was cash strapped, and no one else was building airliners with beds. But Smith argued that only Douglas had the skills to construct a suitable aircraft and eventually wooed the recalcitrant engineer.
The Douglas Sleeper Transport flew on 17 December 1935, accommodating 14 passengers in luxury berths, with dressing rooms and a honeymoon cabin up front. Then, in a stroke of genius, Douglas ripped out the beds for a day version called the DC-3. The extra space allowed 28 seats and the first airliner to turn a profit from passenger services took off, making all its hangar mates obsolete overnight. In four years, air travel grew five-fold and the Douglases accounted for 90% of it.
Downunder, the first DC-3 arrived in 1937 for the Melbourne to Sydney run with Australian National Airways. The rugged planes were ideal for Australian conditions and soon became a common sight in our skies. For decades, aircraft designers failed to reproduce its versatility. Operators claimed the only replacement for a DC-3 was another DC-3. So it served tenaciously on Australian scheduled services for forty years.
The venerable Skyliners are now semi retired. Of the 182 once on the Australian civil register, about 15 remain airworthy. You can still experience the 30’s style and curious thrill of walking uphill to your seat. Order a Manhattan and settle back in plush comfort with old-fashioned leg-room. Glimpse the aviators at work through half drawn curtains. There is nothing like a flight in the world’s most successful airliner.
Five fabulous facts
1943 General MacArthur is allocated Australian DC-3 VH-CXE for personal transport. To avoid offending dignitaries, the crew paint a nude on the starboard side of the fuselage hidden from the boarding door on the port side, and call her Shiny Shiela. The General approves but a staff officer doesn't and has it removed. The crew's revenge is to use the call-sign sexy [CXE] over the radio.
1947 The last of 10,645 [total number hotly debated] C-47/DC-3s leaves Douglas’s Oklahoma City plant.
1957 A Frontier Airlines DC-3 hits a mountain and loses 12 feet of wing. The remaining 500,000 rivets and the two pilots hold it together for a safe landing. Repaired, it returns to service in less than a month.
1967 Douglas Aircraft Corporation is declared bankrupt and Donald Douglas retires after 55 years in the business. Cyrus Smith leaves American Airlines the following year.
2011 The logbook of the restored VH-ABR Kanana currently based at Tullamarine records operating hours that add up to almost eight years in the air. In 1938, it was the third DC-3 to arrive in Australia and flew the last scheduled flight of type for Ansett-ANA in 1972.

VH-ABR Kanana 'the quiet' resting on the apron
still airworthy after a long hard working life
surviving 4 emergency belly landings
"they don't make 'em like they used to"

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