[SOC] Fw: UK DC3s grounded for Health and Safety Rules

[Bert H. Cook]

Bob Krueger wrote:
> Probably way too long for a SOC entry but anyway........  de bob WB9UKQ
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> Subject: UK DC3s grounded for Health and Safety Rules
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>> Some interesting facts about the old Goony Bird.
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>> It's carried more passengers than any plane in history but now the DC3 has
>> been grounded by health and safety rules
>>
>> By MICHAEL WILLIAMS -Last updated at 21:54pm on 24th February 2008
>>
>> 'It groaned, it protested, it rattled, it ran hot, it ran cold, it ran
>> rough, it staggered along on hot days and scared you half
>> to death.
>> 'Its wings flexed and twisted in a horrifying manner, it sank back to
>> earth with a great sigh of relief. But it flew and it flew
>> and it flew.'
>> This is the memorable description by Captain Len Morgan, a former pilot
>> with Braniff Airways, of the unique challenge of flying
>> a Douglas DC-3.
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>> The DC3 served in World War II , Korea and Vietnam and was a favourite
>> among pilots
>> For more than 70 years, the aircraft known through a variety of
>> nicknames - the Doug, the Dizzy, Old Methuselah, the Gooney
>> Bird, the Grand Old Lady - but which to most of us is simply the Dakota
>> has been the workhorse of the skies.
>> With its distinctive nose-up profile when on the ground and extraordinary
>> capabilities in the air, it transformed passenger
>> travel and served in just about every military conflict from World War II
>> onwards.
>> Now the Douglas DC-3 - the most successful plane ever made, which first
>> took to the skies just over 30 years after the Wright
>> Brothers' historic first flight - is to carry passengers in Britain for
>> the last time.
>> Romeo Alpha and Papa Yankee, the last two passenger-carrying Dakotas in
>> the UK , are being forced into retirement because of -
>> yes, you've guessed it - health and safety rules.
>> Their owner, Coventry-based Air Atlantique, has reluctantly decided it
>> would be too expensive to fit the required emergency
>> escape slides and weather radar systems required by new European rules for
>> their 65-year-old planes, which served with the RAF
>> during the war.
>> Mike Collett, the company's chairman, says: "We're very saddened."
>> The end of the passenger-carrying British Dakotas is a sad chapter in the
>> story of the most remarkable aircraft ever built,
>> surpassing all others in length of service, dependability and achievement.
>> It has been a luxury airliner, transport plane, bomber, fighter and flying
>> hospital and introduced millions of people to the
>> concept of air travel.
>> It has flown more miles, broken more records, carried more passengers and
>> cargo, accumulated more flying time and performed more
>> "impossible" feats than any other plane in history, even in these days of
>> super-jumbos that can circle the world non-stop.
>> Indeed, at one point, 90 per cent of the world's air traffic was operated
>> by DC-3s.
>> More than 10,500 DC-3s have been built since the prototype was rolled out
>> to astonished onlookers at Douglas's Santa Monica
>> factory in 1935.
>> With its eagle beak, large square windows and sleek metal fuselage, it was
>> luxurious beyond belief, in contrast to the wood-and-
>> canvas boneshakers of the day, where passengers had to huddle under
>> blankets against the cold.
>> Even in the 1930s, the early Dakotas had many of the comforts we take for
>> granted today, like on-board loos and a galley that
>> could prepare hot food.
>> Early menus included wild rice pancakes with blueberry syrup, served on
>> bone china with silver service.
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>> Technical specifcations of 'Old Methuselah'
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>> For the first time, passengers were able to stand up and walk around while
>> the plane was airborne.
>> But the design had one vital feature, ordered by pioneering aviator
>> Charles Lindbergh, who was a director of TWA, which placed
>> the first order for the plane.
>> The DC-3 should always, Lindbergh directed, be able to fly on one engine.
>> Pilots have always loved it, not just because of its rugged reliability
>> but because, with no computers on board, it is the
>> epitome of "flying by the seat of the pants".
>> One aviator memorably described the Dakota as a "collection of parts
>> flying in loose formation", and most reckon they can land
>> it pretty well on a postage stamp.
>> Captain Len Morgan says: "The Dakota could lift virtually any load
>> strapped to its back and carry it anywhere and in any weather
>> safely."
>> It is the very human scale of the plane that has so endeared it to
>> successive generations.
>> With no pressurisation in the cabin, it flies low and slow.
>> And unlike modern jets, it's still possible to see the world go by from
>> the cabin of a Dakota.
>> (The name, incidentally, is an acronym for Douglas Aircraft Company
>> Transport Aircraft.)
>> As a former Pan Am stewardess puts it: "From the windows you seldom look
>> upon a flat, hazy, distant surface to the world.
>> "Instead, you see the features of the earth - curves of mountains, colours
>> of lakes, cars moving on roads, ocean waves crashing
>> on shores and cloud formations as a sea of popcorn and powder puffs."
>> But it is for heroic feats in military service that the legendary plane is
>> most distinguished.
>> It played a major role in the invasion of Sicily , the D-Day landings, the
>> Berlin Airlift and the Korean and Vietnam wars,
>> performing astonishing feats along the way.
>> When General Eisenhower was asked what he believed were the foundation
>> stones for America 's success in World War II he named
>> the bulldozer, the jeep, the half-ton truck and the Dakota.
>> When the Burma Road was captured by the Japanese and the only way to send
>> supplies into China was over the mountains at 19,000
>> ft, the Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek said: "Give me 50 DC-3s and the
>> Japs can have the Burma Road ."
>> In 1945 a Dakota broke the world record for a flight with an engine out of
>> action, travelling the 1,100 miles from Pearl Harbour
>> to San Diego , with just one propeller working.
>> Another lost a wing after colliding mid-air with a Lockheed bomber.
>> Defying all the rules of aerodynamics, and with only a stub
>> remaining, the plane landed, literally, on a wing and a prayer.
>> Once, a Dakota pilot carrying paratroops across the Channel to France
>> heard an enormous bang.
>> He went aft to find half the plane had been blown away, including part of
>> the rudder.
>> With engines still turning, he managed to skim the wave-tops before
>> finally making it to safety.
>> Another wartime Dakota was rammed by a Japanese fighter that fell to
>> earth, while the American crew returned home in their
>> severely damaged - but still airborne - plane and were given the
>> distinction of "downing an enemy aircraft".
>> Another DC-3 was peppered with 3,000 bullets in the wings and fuselage by
>> Japanese fighters.
>> It made it back to base, was repaired with canvas patches and glue and
>> then sent back into the air.
>> During the evacuation of Saigon in 1975, a Dakota crew managed to cram
>> aboard 98 Vietnamese orphans, although the plane was
>> supposed to carry no more than 30 passengers.
>> In addition to its rugged military service, it was the DC-3 which
>> transformed commercial passenger flying in the post-war years.
>> Easily converted to a passenger plane, it introduced the idea of
>> affordable air travel to a world which had previously seen it
>> as exclusively for the rich.
>> Flights across America could be completed in about 15 hours (with three
>> stops for refuelling), compared with the previous
>> reliance on short hops in commuter aircraft during the day and train
>> travel overnight.
>> It made the world a smaller place, gave people the opportunity for the
>> first time to see previously inaccessible destinations
>> and became a romantic symbol of travel.
>> The DC-3's record has not always been perfect.
>> After the war, military-surplus Dakotas were cheap, often poorly
>> maintained and pushed to the limit by their owners.
>> Accidents were frequent.
>> One of the most tragic happened in 1962, when Zulu Bravo, a Channel
>> Airways flight from Jersey, slammed into a hillside on the
>> Isle of Wight in thick fog.
>> All three crew died and nine of the 14 passengers, but the accident
>> changed the course of aviation history.
>> The local radar, incredibly, had been switched off because it was a
>> Sunday.
>> The national air safety rules were changed to ensure it never happened
>> again.
>> "The DC-3 was, and is, unique," wrote the novelist and aviation writer
>> Ernest Gann, "since no other flying machine has cruised
>> every sky known to mankind, been so admired, cherished, glamorised, known
>> the touch of so many pilots and sparked so many
>> tributes.
>> "It was without question the most successful aircraft ever built and even
>> in this jet age it seems likely the surviving DC-3s
>> may fly about their business for ever."
>> This may be no exaggeration. Next month, Romeo Alpha and Papa Yankee begin
>> a farewell tour of Britain 's airports before
>> carrying their final passengers at the International Air Tattoo at RAF
>> Fairford on July 16.
>> But after their retirement, there will still be Dakotas flying in the
>> farthest corners of the world, kept going with love,
>> dedication and sheer ingenuity.
>> Nearly three-quarters of a century after they first entered service, it's
>> still possible to get a Dakota ride somewhere in the
>> world.
>> I recently took a DC-3 into the heart of the Venezuelan jungle - to the
>> "Lost World" made famous in the novel by Sir Arthur
>> Conan Doyle.
>> It is one of the most remote regions on the planet - where the venerable
>> old planes have long been used because they can be
>> manoeuvred like birds in the wild terrain.
>> It's a scary experience being strapped into a torn canvas chair, raked
>> back at an alarming angle (walking along the aisle of a
>> stationary Dakota is like climbing a steep hill) as you wait for take-off.
>> The engines spew smoke and oil as they judder into life with what DC-3
>> fans describe as "music" but to me sounded like the
>> hammering of a thousand pneumatic drills.
>> But soon you are skimming the legendary flat-topped mountains protruding
>> from the jungle below, purring over wild rivers and the
>> Angel Falls , the world's highest rapids.
>> Suddenly the ancient plane drops like a stone to a tiny landing strip just
>> visible in the trees.
>> The pilot dodges bits of dismantled DC-3 engines scattered on the ground
>> and avoids a stray dog as he touches down with scarcely
>> a bump.
>> How did he do it without air traffic control and the minimum of
>> navigational aids?
>> "'C'est facile - it's easy," he shrugged.
>> Today, many DC-3s live on throughout-the world as crop-sprayers,
>> surveillance patrols, air freighters in forgotten African
>> states and even luxury executive transports.
>> One, owned by a Houston lumber company, had mink-covered doorknobs while
>> another, belonging to a Texas rancher, had sofas and
>> reclining chairs upholstered with the skins of unborn calves.
>> In Jaipur , India , a Dakota is licensed for flying wedding ceremonies.
>> Even when they have ended their aerial lives, old Dakotas have become
>> mobile homes, hamburger stands and hen houses.
>> One even serves as a football team changing room.
>> Clark Gable's private DC-3, which once ferried chums such as John and
>> Bobby Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra and Ronald
>> Reagan, is in a theme park in San Marino .
>> But don't assume it won't run again. Some of the oldest hulks have been
>> put back in the skies.
>> The ancient piston engines are replaced by modern turboprops, and many a
>> pilot of a modern jet has been astonished to find a
>> Dakota alongside him on the climb away from the runway.
>> So what is the enduring secret of the DC-3?
>> David Egerton, professor of the history of science and technology at
>> Imperial College , London , says we should rid our minds of
>> the idea that the most recent inventions are always the best.
>> "The very fact that the DC-3 is still around, and performing a useful role
>> in the world, is a powerful reminder that the latest
>> and most expensive technology is not always the one that changes history,"
>> he says.
>> It's long been an aviation axiom that "the only replacement for the DC-3
>> is another DC-3".
>> So it's fortunate that at least one seems likely to be around for a very
>> long time to come.
>> In 1946, a DC-3 on a flight from Vienna to Pisa crashed into the top of
>> the Rosenlaui Glacier in the Swiss Alps.
>> The aircraft was not damaged and all the passengers were rescued, but it
>> quickly began to disappear as a blinding snowstorm
>> raged.
>> Swiss engineers have calculated that it will take 600 years for it to
>> slide down inside the glacier and emerge at the bottom.
>> And it wouldn't be surprising to discover that it's still in perfect
>> working order.
>>     
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           Interesting story about the DC-3's. I learned to fly at age 
16(1956) as part of my prep school training at McIntyre Military School 
in Middletown, RI. The school had a training program for it's Aviation 
Cadets, with the Navy, at the Quonset Pt. Naval Air Station across the 
bay from Newport, RI. My Dad was CO of one of the 4 training squadrons 
there. My classmates and I, in the program, first learned, and soloed in 
the N3N, then graduated to the SNJ. I got a Multi-Engine Certificate in 
the Navy SNB(the civilian Beechcraft C-18) which was a popular Navy 
transport at that time. The summer of 1957, just before my Senior year, 
I spent 6 weeks of the summer with my step-mothers family at Claramore, 
OK. Uncle John, owned a small Ait Transport company, with 4 DC-3's. I 
flew with his son, the same age I was, flying farm, and oilfield parts 
and equipment around the southwest for the summer. After my High School 
Graduation I went into the Navy and on to a College NAVCAD program. I 
flew some, but mostly Air Crewed, as an ECM specialist from late 1958 to 
62. I no longer fly, but I will always remember my experiences in the 
DC-3, the summer of 1957. Thanks for the DC-3 story. Bert, K6CSL #763