Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Douglas DC-3, anybody else fly in one?

I was a crew chief in a DC-3 back in 1980 when I worked for the NC Forest Service. We had about all the seats removed in the cabin, and I loaded it up with pumps and various fire fighting equipment.

What a great job. After a while, it was like boarding a bus. Even sitting on the jump seat between the pilot and copilot became routine. This was before digital cameras, and I totally regret not taking a bunch of pics during fire season.

We would land on some remote grassy strips and I could still see the wing tips zipping past the trees. Taking off or landing was a bumpy adventure in itself!

This link that I found sure sparked some great memories. I hope you enjoy reading about the DC-3. Check out the video too.

What a beautiful classy plane that revolutionized the airline industry.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/04/travel/aviation-douglas-dc-3/

Closest thing to a DC-3 that I've flown in is a Beech 18.

It was very cool.

Flew in one run by Piedmont Airlines in 1967 going to Fort Bragg during a hurricane. What a ride.

I rode around in a VERY well restored one owned by a cookie company for a few airshow seasons. I tried several forms of bribery to get some yoke time, but insurance policies can be strict about such things. No cool log book entry, but fun and plush travel.

I remember flying in one when I was a kid. Landed on a grass strip at the Cincinnati airport.

Quite a workhorse�

And yes, I�ve ridden in one.

The C-47 'Gooney Bird' also has a distinguished military career.

My first-ever commercial hop � Fairbanks to Anchorage, 1958 � was in a DC-3. Wien Airlines, IIRC.

Later (1959) hitched a ride in a BLM DC-3 air-dropping stuff to crews fighting tundra fires in Alaska.

I have jumped out of two or three DC-3's several hundred times. My favorite was a hotrodded model that was headquartered in Zephyrhills, Florida for years. It would get 45-50 jumpers up to 13,000' in about 25 minutes. It looked like hell but the engines were very well maintained.

RS

My weirdest sight of a DC-3 was on a high-country fire in 1956.

We kept hearing a 'plane with radial engines very close-by � LOUD � but nothing was moving in the cloudless sky.

Standing on our fire-tool cache (the top of a huge boulder), I caught movement at the edge of my vision. I looked down.

In the ca�on far below, a DC-3 was dumping smokejumpers on another fire.

1968-Had several rides in a C-47.

First airplane ride as a 10 year old child, DC3 at an airshow in Riverton WY in about 1950, Frontier Airlines gave free rides to all the kids.

Next time in one, I flew a couple of missions in a C-47 "bullshit bomber", dropping leaflets up along the Laotian border in I Corps, fall of 1968.

New Years Weekend 1958 flew out of Salt Lake City,UT to Albuquerque, NM aboard one flown by Frontier Airlines in a snow storm, it was a milk run and it landed in every cow pasture between the two cities. What a ride, have you ever tried to pee into that little stool in the tail of a DC-3 while flying through multiple downdrafts/updrafts? It can get real interesting, don't ask me how I know.

Six months later flew on another one from D.C. to Norfolk,VA can't remember the airline.

Just a few times..

I flew as an FO on one for a while, about the time for my upgrade to Captain and a Type Rating the company went bankrupt. I enjoyed my time in the seat never the less. I was in love with flying back then, now, I look at how much or how little you are going to pay me to fly. I got a call from a operator that offered me 32K a year, and little else. A go no where job. I had enough of those.

Flyboy Flem,

Ever run into any Seawolves? The first five stories in the attached link are a series that describe quite an amazing battle, with, at the end, a Spooky showing up to end the fight. Anyone you know, per chance?

Seawolf Stories

I'll have to read the links you posted but my tour was 69-70, home was Phu Cat Air Base although we rearmed refueled at Da Nang and Pleiku frequently. Ninety percent of the time we never knew who we were providing CAS for as most RO's on the ground were more interested in the mass quantities of 7.62 we could rain down on the bad guys but most of our engagements were strictly ARMY in and around Binh Dinh province.

Just a couple of flights with Air BVI in the 80s.

I trained as Radar Navigator in 1963 at Shepard AFB Texas.