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Re: Can we make them here any more? NOW: Douglas aircraft

To: "Dave G." <dmg@bossig.com>
Subject: Re: Can we make them here any more? NOW: Douglas aircraft
From: b-evans@earthlink.net
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 21:20:06 -0700
    Dave G. wrote: "When I was in the RAF... I flew in and helped
    maintain (among many other old WW2 kites) the good old DC2 and the
    DC3. Hated those darn webbing seats...And don't forget the famous
    (ex-RAF) DC 2&1/2 which was still flying the last time I saw it in
    Malaya in 1975....


By the DC 2 and 1/2, are you talking about the old CNAC DC-3 that was 
being flown (by Americans) into the interior of China in either 1940 or 
41 (but before Pearl Harbor), and was bombed on the ground by the Japs?  
The one that they cannibalized a DC-2 for a new wing that flew just fine 
although the right wing was FIVE INCHES shorter than the left?  You 
know, I wonder if any of those old American pilots and crew who 
contracted with the Chinese are still alive.  As important as the Flying 
Tigers, they were also a remarkable bunch!!!!

Of the 156 DC-2's, only a couple are still flight-worthy.  Douglas 
Aircraft bought back an old one that they had originally sold to Pan 
Am.  They gave retired Douglas employees a hanger in Long Beach (near 
where the C-16's are built), and paid for all the costs so it could be 
restored.  It was a goose-bump giving sight to see it flying in and out 
of Long Beach and over our house!   When Douglas eventually became part 
of McDonnell, and then Boeing, I hated it when it was taken to a museum 
up in Washington.  A museum in the Netherlands has one that went from 
the Navy to KLM, and it is still flying.  It was flown almost back home 
when it came to California for a paint job a few years ago. Finally, the 
last I heard, the national museum in Australia was in the process of 
restoring a former RAAF DC-2 to flying condition.

Interestingly enough, the DC-2 also became a bomber.  When in the 
mid-1930's the Army was looking for a new bomber, a competition was 
held  Donald Douglas cnverted a DC-2 into a bomber with relatively few 
modifications, and it competed with Boeings prototype for the B-17.  
Well, the prototype crapped out, and the contract was given to Douglas 
for an eventual 250 B-10's.




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