From the Jan. 14, 2011, Massapequan (NY) Observer.
The 75th anniversary of the DC-3 was recently celebrated with a taxi run on the runway of Republic Airport where the museum has a military version of a DC-3, the only operational one in NY Tri-State area. It is one of the nearly 11,000 built by the Douglas Aircraft Company and other manufacturers licensed to build them.
On December 17, 1935, 32 years to the day of the Wright Brothers first flight, the first DC-3 lifted off the runway in Santa Monica, California. By 1936, DC-3s were transporting passengers between Chicago's Municipal Airport (now Midway) and Newark.
Back then, a passenger paid $47.18 for the 4-hour flight operated by Flagship Illinois. Within three years, 95% of all U.S. passenger flights were on DC-2s or DC-3s.
By December 1941, Douglas had delivered 503 DC-3s, of which 434 had gone to airlines.
By the end of World War II, production had hit a high of one aircraft every 34 minutes on some 10,654 military model DC-3s.
Oh, Those DC-3s. --GreGen
The USS North Carolina (BB-55) My all-time favorite warship. As an elementary school student in North Carolina, I donated nickels and dimes to save this ship back in the early sixties.
No comments:
Post a Comment