The USAAF Looks for Something Better than a C-47

Loading a Jeep into this RAAF C-47 shows it wasn't ideal for large or bulky loads.

During the interwar period of the 1920s, US military air transport was modest at best and consisted primarily of "off the shelf" civilian designs that were modestly modified with things like reinforced cabin floors and wider doors but were essentially airliners without seats. Until 1934, for example, the US Navy and Marine Corps relied on Ford Trimotors for transport! The arrival of the Douglas DC-2 offered a big improvement in capability for the US military. With war clouds looming in Europe and Asia in the 1930s, the US Army Air Corps went about looking for something better than adapted DC-2s. Bids were requested and Douglas offered an attractive proposal for upgraded DC-2 aircraft better tailored to military transport operations. Not long after, General Henry "Hap" Arnold became head of the USAAC (which later became the USAAF) and being a personal friend of Donald Douglas, was well aware of a DC-2 upgrade in the works that was the result of a marathon telephone conversation between Donald Douglas and the head of American Airlines, C.R. Smith. That aircraft was a leap in performance and capability over the DC-2 and at the time was called the Douglas Sleeper Transport (DST). In due time, of course, the DST became the DC-3 but General Arnold saw the DST's design and performance as an ideal basis for a transport. Army officials met with the designer of the DST, Arthur Raymond, and the C-47 was born. When the war finally broke out with the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, the C-47 wasn't yet in production and suddenly the branches of the US military needed air transport aircraft. The C-47 Skytrain (Dakota in RAF service) made its first flight on 23 December 1941 as Douglas embarked on a major facility expansion to meet the demand for the C-47. At production peak in May 1944, the company was building just under 19 C-47 aircraft each day! Despite the massive expansion and number of C-47s needed, the Army did have several issues with the C-47 but it was the best aircraft available at the time. There were three main issues the Army had- the first was that the tailwheel configuration and side cargo door made it difficult to load large items. Secondly, the maximum payload was too light as it was based on the maximum civilian load for the DC-3, and thirdly, the Army felt that as it was a DC-1/DC-2 derivative, it was old technology. With the United States now in the war, the Army thought that aluminum production was best used for armed combat aircraft and that cargo aircraft which operated in support roles ought to use non-strategic materials. While there was never a formal competition for a C-47 replacement but rather a series of issued requirements, quite a bit of money was spent over the course of the war to develop a transport that was better than the C-47. 

Budd C-93/RB-1 Conestoga

At the outbreak of war, several aircraft made out of the non-strategic materials made the first attempt at replacing the C-47. The first came from the E.G. Budd Company of Philadelphia- they had developed the shotweld technique for joining two pieces of metal- it used a short burst of electrical current to bond two pieces of metal. Invented in 1932 by a Budd engineer, shotwelding was used on the products Budd was known for- railroad cars and road vehicle bodies made of stainless steel. In discussions with the US Navy, Budd hired an aeronautical engineering staff to design a shotwelded (therefore no rivets) transport that would be made of readily available stainless steel. The Navy ordered 300 to be designated the RB-1 and the Army ordered 600 to be designated the C-93. Though made primarily of thin-gauge stainless steel, the wing aft of the spar and the moving surfaces of the tail were fabric covered to offset the weight of the steel. 

The design of the Conestoga was radical for the day and set the pattern for an efficient military transport even to this day. A high mounted wing allowed for an unobstructed main deck with a tricycle landing gear to keep the main deck level and low to the ground to ease loading. An aft loading ramp/door allowed rolling stock to be driven on/off of the aircraft. The flight deck sat up above the main cargo deck to maximize the cargo volume of the fuselage. In addition, there was an integrated hoist in the cargo deck to ease loading an locations that lacked ground equipment. The first flight was on 31 October 1943 and three prototypes conducted the flight test program. Using the same engines as the C-47, the Conestoga was underpowered and possessed sluggish handling- pilots joked that for a plane made by a railroad car company, it sure handled like one! By time time cost overruns and construction delays were resolved at the Budd factory, aluminum production had vastly increased in the United States and the need for an aircraft made of non-strategic materials diminished. The Army canceled its order for the C-93 and the Navy reduced its order from 300 to just 25. Just 17 RB-1s were delivered to the Navy by March 1944 and that small number served primarily as hacks for naval air stations. With such a small number in the fleet, the Navy found the RB-1s uneconomical and sold them off as surplus in early 1945 before the war even ended. Twelve Conestogas were purchased by a new cargo operation, National Skyways, that was founded by a group of pilots that had once served with the American Volunteer Group in China. National Skyways would later change their name to Flying Tigers- but that's a story for future blog article!

Curtiss C-76 Caravan

Another aircraft from the Army's concerns in 1941 that was a contemporary of the Budd C-93/RB-1 Conestoga was the Curtiss C-76 Caravan. The company was engaged by the Army that year to build a transport aircraft that like the Conestoga, would not only be made out of non-strategic materials but also exceed the performance and utility of the C-47. The Caravan was designed by the chief designer at Curtiss, George Page, who was also responsible for the C-46 Commando. While the Conestoga would be made of stainless steel, Page elected to use wood for the Caravan but interestingly, the only high performance aircraft at the time in production made from wood, the De Havilland Mosquito, wasn't used as a source of expertise. De Havilland used a layered plywood construction using a lightweight balsa wood core that made the Mosquito strong but light. Curtiss engineers instead favored mahogany in layers- being a much denser wood than what was used on the Mosquito, the Caravan soared in weight. Despite this, the Army helped Curtiss secure large stocks of mahogany and a number of furniture manufacturers were set up as component subcontractors with final assembly at Curtiss's new plant in Louisville, Kentucky. 

Much like the layout of the Conestoga, the C-76 Caravan featured a retractable tricycle landing gear to keep the main deck level. It also had a high wing layout for an unobstructed main deck hold and also put the flight deck above the main deck. Instead of an aft loading door and ramp, the Caravan had a swing nose that opened to the side ahead of the flight deck. The prototypes were built at existing Curtiss facilities in St. Louis as well as the new Louisville plant with the first flight on 3 May 1943. The flight test program was a disaster. The aircraft, using the same engines as the C-47 but made of dense mahogany, was woefully underpowered with a cargo payload not much more than the C-47. On the first flight, the aircraft vibrated so badly the flight test crew made a hasty return to the St. Louis Lambert Field. On the second test flight, the prototype literally shook itself apart with the loss of the pilots. In addition, when empty, the Caravan had to be ballasted to maintain its center of gravity- amusingly, the ballast needed to maintain an empty load CoG was more than the maximum payload! The control surfaces suffered from buffet and even shook while the plane was on the ground if it was windy. The wing spar failed load testing eight times, only holding up to 40% of the predicted maximum load. The Army wasn't pleased and was more than happy to cancel their order for 175 C-76s, particularly as aluminum production had vastly increased as the war progressed. Only 14 aircraft were built and most spent their days as ground instructional airframes. 

Wind tunnel model of the Waco C-62

There was a third aircraft that stemmed from the Army's 1941 call for something better than the C-47, but it never flew. Waco Aircraft had been building both training and assault gliders for the military and they tendered a design that received the designation C-62. Like the Curtiss C-76 Caravan, the Waco design was made out of wood and featured a high wing and rear loading door/ramp. The tadpole-shaped aircraft had the empennage cantilevered over the aft ramp on a boom. The undercarriage was fixed as well. Using the same engines as the C-47, the Army placed orders for 13 pre-production examples and 240 production aircraft. However, again, like the Conestoga and Caravan, the anticipated shortage of aluminum never occurred and the C-62 was canceled. Allegedly the first aircraft was nearing completion at the time of the cancellation, but this hasn't been confirmed. 

Fairchild C-82 Packet at the National Museum of the USAF

The last aircraft that sprang from the 1941 call was the Fairchild C-82 Packet. Designed by Fairchild's chief designer, Armand J. Thieboldt, the original plans were for the C-82 to be made of wood. Like the other three aircraft, the Packet had a high wing and tricycle landing gear to allow for a level main cargo deck that was unobstructed. The flight deck was raised above the cargo deck and a twin boom layout was chosen to leave the tail area completely clear for straight though loading and unloading. With the fortunes of war shifting in favor of the Allies in the summer of 1942 after the Battle of Midway and an expansion of domestic aluminum production eased shortage concerns, the USAAF requested that Fairchild abandon wood for the C-82 and go with aluminum. Of four aircraft designs for a C-47 replacement, the decision to switch to aluminum more than likely contributed to the reasons why the Packet did get to production and service. Being the last submission probably saved the design as it was also redesigned to take a more powerful engine, the Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp instead of using the same engines as the C-47. As a result, the C-82 had the highest cargo payload of the four designs. 

First flight took place on 10 September 1944 at Fairchild's plant in Hagerstown, Maryland. The first series of flights were so encouraging that the USAAF ordered 100 C-82s just 18 days after the first flight. With an eye towards the coming invasion of Japan, North American's Dallas plant was planned for an additional 1000 C-82s on top of an additional 100 from Fairchild for a total of 200 from the Hagerstown plant. The first C-82s were delivered to the USAAF in June 1945 but the sudden end of the war with the Japanese surrender in September 1945 resulted in the cancelation of the North American production run at Dallas with only just three Dallas-built C-82s being built. Despite the drawdown in US military forces, the C-82 Packet was the C-47 replacement the USAAF wanted and the 200-aircraft order from the Fairchild plant in Maryland stood to fulfill postwar airlift requirements. Five C-82s participated in the Berlin Airlift, bringing in heavy equipment and vehicles that couldn't be accommodated onto the Douglas C-54 Skymasters. Operational use of the C-82 revealed several shortcomings, the most concerning of which was that with a full load, a C-82 with one engine out couldn't maintain level flight. Thieboldt and his team at Fairchild went about improving the C-82 design first by incorporating more powerful engines in the form of the Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major as well as a host of other improvements to satisfy the newly-independent US Air Force's concerns. Originally designated XC-82B, the changes were so significant that a new designation was assigned to the upgrade which became the C-119 Flying Boxcar. The first flight was made on 17 December 1947. As C-119s were delivered to USAF units, the C-82s were retired. A total of 220 Packets were built. Quite a few Packets had long civilian careers, but that's a story for future blog article! 

Source: The Legacy of the DC-3 by Henry M. Holden. Wind Canyon Publishing, 1996, pp 141-148. Information also from National Museum of the USAF, Wikipedia and www.c82packet.com. Photos: Wikipedia, Australian War Memorial, National Museum of the USAF. C-62 wind tunnel model from R/C Groups forum.

The Rocky History of Ariana Afghan Airlines

Ariana's logo- note the use of the Pan Am font

Prior to the Second World War, air services to Afghanistan were adventurous to say the least, given the inhospitable terrain of the area. Most air links to South Asia of the day that connected the region to Europe passed via India and were controlled by primarily the British. The first air links to Afghanistan, however, came by way of the Soviet Union starting on 14 September 1926 when the Russian airline Dobrolyot connected Kabul to the other Central Asian cities under Soviet control with Junkers F13 monoplanes. Dobrolyot was founded in 1923 to develop air services in the Soviet Union and in 1932 it was Dobrolyot that formed the nucleus of a new airline, Aeroflot. Dobrolyot's air services to Kabul continued until the outbreak of the Second World War. Interestingly enough, Dobrolyot was not the only foreign airline active in Afghanistan in the interwar period- DLH (Deutsche Luft Hansa, predecessor to today's Lufthansa) also opened air services to Afghanistan. At the time, DLH was looking to extend its route network to China where there were substantial German business interests. However, remaining bitterness from the First World War stymied DLH's attempts to open routes to China via India, so going through Afghanistan was seen as a short cut around British influence in the area. DLH extended its network eastward from Istanbul to Baghdad in October 1937 and then extended again from Iraq to the Iranian capital of Teheran in April 1938. Two weeks later, DLH extended its network again, this time connecting the Afghan cities of Kabul and Herat via Teheran and at the time, it was the furthest corner of DLH's airline network. Services ended abruptly, though, in August 1939 on the eve of the outbreak of the Second World War. 

Air services to Afghanistan were spotty at best and ad hoc for the duration of the Second World War  and aside from a small air mail service using Hawker Hart biplanes, it would be an American businessman in India who would forge new air links into Afghanistan again at the end of the war. New York native Peter Baldwin had served with the US Army Air Force in India during the war and returned in 1945 leading a US government mission to oversee the disposal of surplus USAAF aircraft in the region. His job finished, he elected to stay in India and in 1947 formed a company in Bombay (Mumbai today) for the sales of light aircraft and airport equipment. By 1950, he had his own fleet of thirteen Douglas DC-3s that he was flying all over the region on charter flights all over India, the Middle East and as far as Africa. His small charter operation even operated Hajj flights to Mecca. It was in this capacity that he came into partnership with the Afghan government. 

The DC-3 services were a boon to a country without railroads.

In 1951, the Kabul government established a branch of the Royal Afghan Air Force that was tasked with civil aviation development with Colonel Gulbar Khan as the head of what was called the "Hawabazi Mulki". Colonel Khan worked out a partnership with Peter Baldwin to form a new Afghan airline which was established on 27 January 1955 as Aryana Afghan Airlines in Kabul with Peter Baldwin holding 49% ownership of the airline and the Kabul government owning 51%. I haven't been able to determine if the airline's first three DC-3 aircraft were from Baldwin's charter operation, but it would make sense given his signifcant ownership in the new venture. The first services were launched at the end of 1955 connecting Kabul to Mazar-i-Sharif in the north near the Soviet border via the city of Kunduz. What had taken a week on the region's poor roads now only took three hours. 

During the Pan Am years, the Ariana chief pilot was a Pan Am pilot

On 27 June 1956, the Kabul government signed an air transport and development agreement with the United States. At the time, both the Soviet Union and the United States were eager to get Kabul's business and the Afghans astutely played both sides off each other to get economic development agreements. The air agreement with the United States included Pan American buying out Peter Baldwin's interest in Aryana. As a result, Pan Am become responsible for all operational and technical matters and also changed the spelling of the airline's name to Ariana, ostensibly to eliminate any possible references to the word "Aryan" that had been corrupted by the Nazi regime during the Second World War. On 3 June 1956, an Ariana Douglas DC-4 with an all-Afghan crew trained by Pan Am departed New York for Kabul to begin Hajj flights to Mecca. The DC-3s were used for internal domestic services that connected Kabul to Herat, Kandahar, Kunduz, Mazar-i-Sharif, and Maimana. New Delhi was connected to Kabul via the Indian city of Armistar and Karachi, the Pakistani port city, was connected via Kandahar. The DC-4 was used to connect Kabul to Teheran, Beirut and Damascus via Kandahar where American economic development funds were used to build a modern airport and terminal facility. 

Ariana launched services to Europe on 11 September 1959 on what they called the "Marco Polo Route" which used the DC-4 on services to the Turkish capital of Ankara via Beirut. The flight then continued on to Prague and then terminated in Frankfurt. The airline had to replace its DC-4 with a larger DC-6B as adventurous European tourists began to fly the "Marco Polo Route" to Kabul. The airline soon found that it was more profitable for the DC-6B services to bypass Kabul and instead fly Kandahar to New Delhi. Political instability in the region in the 1960s resulted in the termination of services to Karachi and the services that connected Frankfurt to New Delhi could only be flown twice a month- soon after, European services were cut altogether with Ariana's westernmost destination being Beirut by 1962.

Ariana Afghan 727-200

Ariana was near dormant when American development funds arrived again in 1963. This was a time of superpower rivalry and Afghanistan was no different than any other non-aligned nation of the time that had both American and Soviet interests competing for influence. Ariana got an extremely low-interest loan (it was pretty much a gift) that included a second Douglas DC-6 and two ex-Pan American Convair CV-340s to replace the DC-3 on the domestic services. A third CV-340 was purchased from Allegheny Airlines and this allowed a return to Karachi via Kandahar as diplomatic relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan improved. In July 1965, Ariana opened DC-6 services to the Uzbek capital of Tashkent in a pooling agreement with Aeroflot and in the following month, services to Europe resumed with DC-6 services from both Kabul and Kandahar to London Gatwick, stopping only in Beirut and Frankfurt. In April 1968, Ariana got its first jet equipment with a Boeing 727-100 which replaced the DC-6s on the European services. The route to London was reconfigured to route via Teheran, Istanbul and Frankfurt, but as Ariana had no fifth freedom rights, only Kabul/Kandahar-bound passengers could be boarded at London Gatwick. That first 727 crashed in dense fog on approach to London on 5 January 1969, but two more 727s were added- the first a lease from World Airways that was bought outright and a second purchase from Executive Jet Aviation, arriving in 1971. 

Ariana Afghan Airlines Tu-154- note the continued use of the Pan Am font!

The domestic routes of Ariana were spun off under a subsidiary airline called Bakhtar Afghan Airlines. This was a political move more than anything else as some Afghan officials wanted to limit US influence in the northern tier of cities along the Soviet frontier- this was accomplished by cutting Pan Am out of Bakhtar's operations. In 1973, Bakhtar took delivery of three Yakovlev Yak-40 trijets, becoming one of the few non-Soviet client state customers for the 28-seat feeder jet. Pan Am was still needed in the Ariana international operation, though, as Pan Am sold Ariana a Boeing 720B on very generous terms (again, it was pretty much a gift) in May 1973. That year, though, on the heels of a severe drought 1971-1972, Prime Minister Mohammed Daoud Khan seized power in a non-violent coup, deposing King Zahir Shah and ending the Afghan monarchy. A republic was proclaimed to institute economic reforms but only political instability was established as various Afghan leaders relying on tribal loyalties began to vie for control of the country. A series of coups followed starting in 1978, but despite this, Ariana launched Douglas DC-10 Series 30 services with a single aircraft in October 1979 on its services to London which could now be served nonstop. On 24 December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan which for all intents and purposes ended Ariana's operations. The two 727s and DC-10 were parked and eventually sold off under Soviet pressure by 1985. Its regional subsidiary, Bakhtar, took over Ariana's operations with two Tupolev Tu-154M aircraft starting in 1987, but the following year the Ariana name was resurrected and Bakhtar's domestic routes and operations folded into Ariana. 

Ariana's sole Douglas DC-10

The country descended into outright civil war following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. Communist President Najibullah's regime only lasted to 1992 and with the Taliban takeover in 1996, worldwide sanctions crippled what was left of Ariana's operation. Pakistan set up a temporary maintenance base for the airline in Karachi, and only Dubai remained as the airline's only international destination. During the Taliaban's regime, Al-Qaeda operatives were given Ariana identification to allow them to move arms, personnel and opium shipments between Dubai and Pakistan. There were indications that Russian arms dealers were operating Ariana during this period. By November 2001, only a month before US-led forces toppled the Taliban regime, Ariana was finally grounded for good. Ariana would be resurrected in the post-Taliban era, but that's a subject for another blog posting in the future!

Source: Airlines of Asia Since 1920 by R.E.G. Davies. Palawdr Press, 1997, pp 84-88. Photos: Marc Riboud/Magnum Photos, Wikipedia, National Archives

The Rise and Fall of Mohawk Airlines and Opening the Door for Frank Lorenzo

Robinson DC-3 crew with Robert Peach on the far right

In the days following Pearl Harbor, the US Civil Aeronautics Board suspended all awards for new air services given the wartime situation. However, the CAB soon realized that air services would need to expand the support the growing production effort for the war. On 11 July 1944 the CAB issued an judgement that created a new category of airline called a feeder or local service airline that would funnel passengers and goods from smaller communities to larger cities for connections to the large established trunk airlines of the day like the "Big Four" of United, Eastern, American, and TWA. One of the early pioneers to take advantage of the CAB's decision was an aerial photographer and inventor named C.S. Robinson in Ithaca, New York. His work with aerial photography before the war led him to developed a metal spring like shock mount for his cameras that was superior to the rubber mounts of the day that became hard at high altitude. Robinson's factory to support the war effort was in Teterboro, New Jersey and he commuted between Teterboro and Ithaca in his Fairchild 24. Finding a constant stream of people who wanted to hitch a ride with him to New Jersey, he decided to start his own airline to connect upstate New York to the New York/New Jersey area and on 6 April 1945 Robinson Airlines began airline services from Ithaca and New York City using three Fairchild 24s. With traffic growing, Robinson expanded to larger aircraft and hired pilots as fast as he could to meet demand. One of his new hires was a former Navy patrol pilot and lawyer named Robert Peach. 

Peach was decorated Navy pilot in the Pacific with two Distinguished Flying Crosses and at the time he joined Robinson Airlines, he was finishing law school at Cornell and wanted to get back into flying part-time. With the rapid growth of demand out of Ithaca, Robinson's laid back management style wasn't conducive to a growing airline and the finances according suffered in the immediate years after the end of the Second World War. Edwin Link, the developer of the Link Simulator that was vital to training pilots, had a factory in Binghamton, New York and was willing to invest in Robinson if there was a change of leadership to assure a return on his investment. Link provided the seed money to allow Robinson to upgrade to Douglas DC-3s and by 1952 Robert Peach had risen through the ranks to Robinson to gain the attention of outside investors. He ended up buying Robinson Airlines outright which assured Link's continued investment in the airline. One of his first acts as head of the airline was to hold a contest to rename the airline and that's how it became Mohawk Airlines. 

Robert Peach at the christening of Mohawk's first One-Eleven

Link's investments weren't enough for Mohawk as Peach pushed for an increase in the usual subsidy the CAB gave to local service airlines. It was a role that raised Peach's prominence in the airline community as he advocated for more support for the smaller airlines. In those days, the CAB had a subsidy given to airlines for routes they flew and Peach pushed for the CAB to treat local service airlines like Mohawk on the same basis as the large established trunk airlines. At the time the Eisenhower Administration wasn't too keen on the idea of increasing subsidies to local service carriers, but Peach and the other local service carrier heads had two important allies- one was Donald Nyrop, the head of the CAB at the time (who later became the head of Northwest Airlines) and Texas Democrat Representative Lloyd Bentsen. When the CAB opened up for applications for local service carriers in 1945, certification was provisional. Bentsen's proposed legislation would make certification of the local service carriers permanent, placing them on better footing with the established trunk carriers and opening the door to increased subsidies from the CAB. President Eisenhower signed the bill after it was unanimously passed by both houses of Congress in 1955. 

Mohawk's BAC One-Elevens increased its stature in the industry

Beginning 1962 Mohawk under Peach's leadership grew tremendously. I had previously written about Mohawk's fight to acquire jet equipment in the form of the BAC One-Eleven that culminated in Peach winning the fight and the first Mohawk BAC One-Eleven, christened "Ohio" flew its first revenue services on 25 June 1965. In addition, Fairchild-Hiller FH-227 turboprops were also put into service to replace the piston twins with Mohawk reaching its zenith in 1967 with route awards from the CAB to Detroit, Cleveland and Boston. The floor fell out from underneath Robert Peach and Mohawk Airlines in 1968. On 23 June that year, the BAC One-Eleven "Discover America" crashed on a flight from Elmira, New York, to Washington, DC. The cause was a valve failure in the APU that resulted in an inflight fire that compromised the tail structure. Two weeks later, a new air traffic controllers union called Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) that started in New York City staged a slowdown to protest inadequate staffing and excessive overtime. Working to the letter of the rules, air traffic back up around numerous chokepoints that led into the New York City area. From July to August, the PATCO action proved disastrous to many airlines, but more so to Mohawk given its route structure. Peach even tendered a bill to the FAA for costs incurred during the PATCO slowdown as a protest. In the following year, a general downturn in the economy then hit Mohawk's passenger numbers. By 1970, the nation was in recession and every airline was losing money and this further added to Mohawk's woes. To save costs, many local service carriers were handing off services to smaller cities to commuter airlines with the CAB subsidy "flowing through" from the local service carrier to the commuter airline. Mohawk's rival, Allegheny Airlines, was already doing this with their "Allegheny Commuter" brand. The CAB permitted this as long as the local service airline would step back in should the commuter airline cease services to any of the communities. 

Frank Lorenzo at the time of his takeover of Texas International

At Mohawk, the pilots saw the outsourcing to commuter airlines as a threat to their jobs (some things in the airline industry never change and this is still a contentious issue in airlines today). One minute before midnight on 12 November 1970, the pilots went on strike after the failure of negotiations and Mohawk was essentially shut down as an airline. The debts that Mohawk incurred upgrading to the BAC One-Eleven and FH-227 aircraft were piling up against declining traffic. The pilot's strike was a nail in Mohawk's coffin as the management turned to a small New York City aviation consulting firm to assist with a turnaround. This small firm was Jet Capital, founded in August 1966 by two Harvard business school graduates, Frank Lorenzo and Bob Carney. With a small office in the prestigious Pan Am building in Manhattan, Lorenzo and Carney had a stock offering in January 1970 that netted them $1.5 million in "seed money". They had earlier provided financial consulting to Detroit-based cargo airline Zantop  that got their name out in the industry. Lorenzo met with Robert Peach on numerous occasions and Jet Capital offered Mohawk a restructuring plan that essentially resulted in Lorenzo controlling Mohawk Airlines. At the time, Lorenzo was only 30 years old- and his plan to take over Mohawk was a bit much for the Robert Peach and the board to swallow. With the airlines' fortunes waning quickly, Peach instead allowed his long time rival Allegheny Airlines to purchase Mohawk. By this time the slow slide of Mohawk meant that Peach had less control over Mohawk than what was the case in 1967. On 20 April 1970, he had lunch with Frank Lorenzo thanking him for his services and offer but that the board had decided to sell to Allegheny. After lunch, Robert Peach went home to prepare for a speech he was to give that night, but instead shot himself in the head, the loss of Mohawk too much to bear for him. 

Robert Peach wasn't only airline boss to kill himself after dealing with Lorenzo. That will be the subject of a future post on this blog as we track Frank Lorenzo's rise to prominence in the airline industry. The sale of Mohawk to Allegheny left Jet Capital with its seed money from its stock offering burning a hole in their pockets. Lorenzo came tantalizingly close to getting control of an airline, something he had long wanted since he was a teenager. In 1971, Mohawk wasn't the only airline in need of a financial turnaround. Based in Houston was Texas International and it wasn't long before they engaged Frank Lorenzo's services that year. But you'll have to wait for another blog article to find out how that went.....

Source: Airline Executives and Federal Regulation: Case Studies in American Enterprise from the Air Mail Era to the Dawn of the Jet Age by Walter David Lewis. Ohio State University Press, 2000, pp 295-318. Hard Landing: The Epic Contest for Power and Profits That Plunged the Airlines into Chaos by Thomas Petzinger. Times Business/Random House, 1996, pp 38-43. Photos: Historical Images (historicalimages03 on eBay), Wikipedia, PostcardPost.com

The Indian Night Air Mail Service

The Indian Night Air Mail Service network.

In the late 1940s the rail and road infrastructure of India was already inadequate for the task of linking the newly-independent nation. While the sub-continent had a fairly dense rail network as a legacy of its time under the British crown, its reliability was sketchy at best and with the growing demands of the Indian commercial sector for better mail service, on 30 January 1949 the government inaugurated the Indian Night Air Mail Service- the world's first overnight air mail service- keeping in mind, that FedEx as Federal Express launched its overnight package delivery service in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1973. Since space was a premium at daytime flights, it was decided that air mail would move at night and this had the added advantage of making overnight delivery possible in what may very well be also the world's first example if not one of the earliest examples of a hub-and-spoke operation. Under this system, the four main cities of India also happened to form each of the four corners of a diamond- New Delhi to the north, Bombay to the west, Calcutta to the east, and Madras to the south. Connecting these cities was a central location at the city of Nagpur in central India. 

The system was quite simple- letters postmarked for overnight air mail were delivered to each of the corners of the NAM system in the evening and loaded on aircraft. These aircraft, all then flew in the first part of the night to the central processing and sort facility at the Nagpur Airport. Mail would be offloaded and sorted to waiting aircraft that would return to their origin airports in the second half of the night. The following morning, the mail would be delivered- a speed and convenience not only unheard of an India's business environment of the day, but probably in just about any business center worldwide in 1949! For an aircraft like the Douglas DC-3 that was ubiquitous in those days, each leg would take about four hours, making overnight delivery possible. To facilitate the sort process, any aircraft leaving any of the cities already had the mail sorted and stowed aboard in batches, minimizing the ground sort and loading time at Nagpur. 

Indian Airlines Douglas DC-4s were popular on the NAM.

To operate the NAM, the Indian government took bids from the domestic airlines of the day. First off the block to run the NAM was Indian Overseas Airlines which flew the inaugural services on the night of 30-31 January 1949. Even though Indian Overseas was based in Nagpur, it probably got the rights to operate the NAM with an unrealistically low bid and it quickly found it couldn't keep up the pace required. The dominant domestic airline, Indian National Airways, was called in to take over the NAM from Indian Overseas for most of that year until Himilayan Airways took over operation of the NAM on 15 October 1949. Two years later Deccan Airways moved its base from Hyderabad to Nagpur as part of its bid to run the NAM and did so for two years. In 1953 when the Air Corporations Act was passed which nationalized the Indian airline industry, Deccan would be one of eight airlines (including prior NAM operators Himilayan Airways and Indian National Airways) that were amalgamated into the new domestic airline, Indian Airlines. By default, the NAM which at the time was in the hands of Deccan Airways, went over to Indian Airlines which would pretty much operated the NAM for the rest of its history. 

Indian Airlines postcard featuring the Vickers Viscount.

By 1958 passengers were also carried on the NAM- the "red eye" flights of the day. With the DC-3s being too small for both the mail loads and passengers, Indian Airlines used Douglas DC-4s on the routes from Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta. For the New Delhi route, two aircraft were used on each flight- a Vickers Viscount would carry the passengers and a DC-3 (sometimes a DC-4 based on need) carried just the mail. With the Delhi passengers flying on the faster Viscount, they got to Nagpur earlier and had a few hours layover before boarding their connecting flights to Bombay, Madras, or Calcutta. The terminal in Nagpur boasted facilities for passengers to freshen up and get a snack and even watch a movie while waiting for their connecting flights. The ground operation in Nagpur was honed down to precision, being accomplished only 90 minutes' time. An average night would see 11,000 lbs of mail, 9,000 lbs of freight, and up to 200 passengers pass through Nagpur. As some of the ground handling personnel at Nagpur were illiterate, colored labels were used to identify each destination. To facilitate the collection of the overnight air mail in each of the four destination cities, mobile post offices in specially marked vans were set up at specific locations in each city. Each van would receive mail until 8:30pm when it would then deliver the mail to the airport for the flights to Nagpur. On some nights in the 1960s, there would be as many as 10 flights headed to Nagpur over the course of the night.

The Indian Night Air Mail Service ran continuously until 1973 (ironically when Federal Express launched its overnight package delivery service). The low postal rates provided by the Indian government were cited as not being enough to warrant continuation of this historic service. Various attempts were made up into the 1980s to restart the NAM, but were never profitable enough to last long. 

Sources/Photos: Airlines of Asia Since 1920 by R.E.G. Davies. Palawdr Press, 1997, p29-32. "Nagpur Junction: Speeding India's Night Air Mail" by Patricia Stroud. Flight, 12 September 1958.

The Birth of Indian Commercial Aviation and Its Father

The pre-war network of Tata Air Lines.

Rather curiously amongst Britain's possessions in the interwar years of the 1920s and 1930s, commercial aviation remained neglected in India in comparison to what was taking place elsewhere in the Empire. Some of this was due to perceived stereotypes of the day that the vast majority of India was made up of illiterate peasants and that the British government through New Delhi conducted business with select members of the Indian aristocracy. Some of this was also due to the perception that India already had an extensive rail network that made airlines superfluous. And for many in the main British overseas airline of the day, Imperial Airways, the priority interest in the region was the development of a route connecting the United Kingdom with Australia with India being more of a refueling stop along the way. Whatever the misconceptions and prejudices of the day, development of commercial aviation in India prior to the Second World War became the purview of the country's growing merchant class who saw commercial aviation not just as a tool for business, but also as a business opportunity in a modernizing nation. Foremost amongst these individuals was J.R.D. Tata, the youthful head of the Tata Sons conglomerate which by the 1930s was already the largest business enterprise in India with holdings in manufacturing, textile mills, iron works, and even hydroelectric plants. J.R.D. Tata was so enamored with aviation that he himself learned to fly, earning the first pilot's license to be given to an Indian. 

Unlike Europe, the New Delhi government expected any airline established to be self-funded without any subsidy or assistance. This proved to be significant barrier for any sort of entry into the market, but given that Tata Sons Limited was the largest business in India, funding would be no issue at the start. In July 1932 J.R.D. Tata established an aviation department in the company as private enterprise and on 15 October 1932 launched services connecting Karachi (Imperial Airways' main gateway to India at the time) to the southern city of Madras via Ahmedabad, Bombay and Bellary with a very modest fleet of two De Havilland Puss Moths which could carry two passengers plus the pilot. Tata himself flew the inaugural flight. It was quite an investment for Tata Sons Limited- the New Delhi government didn't just refuse to provide any subsidies, any investment in landing fields and navigational aids was non-existent as well. However, Tata's early success resulted in a ten-year air mail contract that did help offset the investment costs. Over the next several years Tata embarked on route expansions within India along with progressively larger aircraft like the De Havilland Dragon. By 1938 Tata Air Lines served every major city in southern India with connections to Karachi, New Delhi, and Colombo.

Disembarking from a Tata Air Lines DC-3.

During the Second World War, Tata Air Lines proved vital to supporting the war effort and with more contracts in hand, aircraft as large as the Douglas DC-2 were acquired along with further investment in the airport facilities at each of the cities it served, all under J.R.D. Tata's guiding hand. By the end of the war in 1945 not only had Tata expanded services to include every major Indian city, but had earned a position of prominence and reputation that would enhance India's aviation status in the world. The experience of running a scheduled airline to meet the exacting demands of the Allied war effort gave not just Tata valuable experience, but a whole host of other Indian carriers as well, the most prominent of which after Tata Air Lines was Indian National Airlines. By the time of India's independence in 1947 with the subsequent formation of Pakistan, Burma and Sri Lanka, Tata Air Lines found itself not just India's largest domestic airline, but also India's primary international airline as well. Tata Air Lines was on sound financial ground with surplus Douglas DC-3s now filling its fleet needs. On 29 July 1946 J.R.D. Tata took his airline public, raising a significant amount of capital for modernization of the airline's fleet. As part of the airline becoming a publicly-traded corporation, the name was changed to Air India with Tata himself at the helm. One of his first acts as head of the new Air India was an agreement with Howard Hughes' TWA whereby Air India acted as TWA's agent in India in exchange for technical assistance and training and an interchange link to the United States via TWA's own route network. In April of that year, Air India received its first postwar aircraft, the Vickers Viking. Given Air India's status as India's premier airline, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru asked Tata for Air India to be the nation's "chosen instrument" for international expansion (the fact that Tata had already ordered Lockheed Constellations undoubtedly helped). In March 1948 Air India was organized as a joint corporation split between J.R.D. Tata and the Indian government and the first two Lockheed Constellations were delivered to what was now branded as Air India International. On 8 June of that year, "Rajput Princess" and "Malabar Princess" would inaugurate Air India International's first Constellation services to London. 

Air India's early fleet were former Tata Air Lines DC-3s.

Significantly behind the new Air India International were a motley group of domestic carriers, of which the most prominent was Indian National Airways. The other seven airlines were of varying fiscal health and some even were still operating pre-war aircraft. Seeking rationalization in the airline industry of the nation, the Air Corporations Act of 1953 was passed which, in essence, nationalized the airline industry of India. J.R.D. Tata's Air India International obviously shoed-in for the all international services and the remaining seven airlines were merged into one entity named Indian Airlines which would have responsibility for all domestic services- the model being that of BOAC and BEA in the Great Britain. The nationalization of Air India International took place in June 1953 and it was allowed to keep two domestic trunk routes, Bombay-Calcutta and Bombay-New Delhi, in a complex pool agreement with Indian Airlines. The infusion of government capital allowed Air India to order not just Lockheed Super Constellations, but also the new De Havilland Comet as well in order to compete on a more even footing with BOAC's Comet services to the region. Ultimately the Comet order was canceled following the Comet tragedies that struck BOAC, but Air India's Super Constellations stretched its network throughout Asia to Africa and even to Moscow and the rest of Europe. By this time Air India had the clout to join the pooling agreement that BOAC and QANTAS had on the London-Sydney route. Beginning in December 1959, revenues between London and Sydney were split with BOAC getting 51%, QANTAS getting 28% and Air India getting 21%. But the most important aspect of the agreement was Air India getting Fifth Freedom rights from London- in the early 1960s this allowed Air India to launch Boeing 707 services to New York JFK via London Heathrow. 

For over forty years J.R.D. Tata remained at the helm of Air India from its first incarnation as a private company in his business conglomerate to its rise as an international carrier operating Boeing 747s across the globe (South America excepted). He would retire from Air India in 1980 and in 1982 at the age of 82 he re-enacted his inaugural Tata Air Lines flight from Madras to Karachi in a restored De Havilland Leopard Moth- and he did it solo. 

J.R.D. Tata

As an interesting footnote to the story, a few years before J.R.D. Tata retired, he gave a speech to a conference of Pacific area travel agents in New Delhi. After his customary review of the trends in the airline industry, he offered up a few predictions for the future of the airline industry that today are remarkably accurate:

-He anticipated the need for jetliners bigger than the 747, specifically pointing out opportunities for a 750-seat twin-deck jetliner.

-He accurately had predicted the pace of long-term growth in passenger numbers.

-He praised Sir Freddie Laker and his ideas on low-cost fares to stimulate more passenger traffic and was convinced that such budget fares were the wave of the future for the industry.

-He bemoaned the lack of foresight by the Indian government in investing in its aviation infrastructure, predicting that lack of capacity would be the biggest threat to the airline growth in India in the future.

-He questioned the economics of the Concorde and felt that supersonic flight would have little bearing on the future of jetliner development. 

Source: Airlines of Asia Since 1920 by R.E.G. Davies. Palawdr Press, 1997, p6-59.

The 1938 Hurricane Relief Flights That Led to the Air Transport Command

The relief efforts following natural disasters have often reminded me of the first humanitarian airlift in the United States after a natural disaster. It was September of 1938 and one of the few Category 5 storms to strike the US mainland had just come ashore with unprecedented destructiveness in New England, causing widespread devastation throughout Long Island, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts.

While the forecasting technology of the day paled in comparison with what we have today, there are sufficient meteorological records from 1938 that give an impressive picture of what historians call "The Long Island Express". The storm formed off the coast of West Africa and tracked westward. Lacking offshore weather buoys, the US Weather Bureau (the National Weather Service's predecessor) relied on reports from ships at sea to track the progress of the storm. From a climatological standpoint, most hurricanes in the late part of the hurricane season that form in the Eastern Atlantic usually track to the west and curve back to the northeast, remaining out to sea and having little effect on the US East Coast.

However, on the morning of 21 September 1938 as the storm was off the coast of Norfolk, Virginia, it made a sudden veer due north instead of continuing out to sea on a northeast heading. Not only did this storm head due north for New England, it also picked up speed with a storm motion of 70mph, making the "Long Island Express" one of the fastest moving hurricanes in recorded history.

The sudden change in direction caught most of New England unprepared and when the hurricane made landfall that night, wind speeds gusting to as high as 185mph were recorded along the coast of New England. The extreme forward speed of the storm made the right quadrant winds 70mph faster than they were and this put Long Island, Rhode Island, and eastern Massachusetts square in the crosshairs of this monster. A 12+ foot storm surge slammed into Providence, Rhode Island and all throughout the area, lines of communication were cut- roads, railroads, phone and telegraph lines. Not until Hurricane Andrew hit Florida in 1992 would there be a storm that caused as much damage as "The Long Island Express". The Boston area found itself cut off from the rest of the nation as thousands were made homeless and the local infrastructure of the area was destroyed.

Enter C.R. Smith. Two years earlier Jack Frye of TWA decided the US airline industry needed a common voice to work with the government in improving air safety and efficiency. He managed to convince C.R. Smith of American, Eddie Rickenbacker of Eastern, and Pat Patterson of United to form the ATA- Air Transport Association. Headed by a former military aviator of unqualified technical experience, Edgar Gorrell, one of the ATA's first acts under Gorrell was to propose that the airlines form a plan to organize their resources in the event of a national emergency to form what Gorrell called a "civil reserve air fleet".

Now keep in mind that this was a time when the airlines were run by rugged individualists like Rickenbacker or Smith. Just the fact that four disparate personalities of the magnitude of Smith, Frye, Rickenbacker, and Patterson even agreed to form the ATA was a miracle in and of itself. But to form a unified plan in case of national emergency? The other member airlines of the ATA balked at the idea despite Gorrell's pleadings- "If we don't have our own plan, the government will shove one down our throats!" But only one airline president backed the ATA proposal and that was C.R. Smith of American Airlines. The ATA proposal languished for two years until that dark night that the "Long Island Express" came ashore.

The only airline that operated on the New York-Boston route was American Airlines and C.R. Smith immediately assigned every available DC-3 the airline had to fly humanitarian missions to Boston Logan Airport which was pretty much the only functioning airport in the area in the hurricane aftermath. Flights were cancelled throughout American's system as DC-3s were pulled for the airlift. Within 24 hours, C.R. Smith realized the job couldn't be done alone- usually American carried 200 passengers a day between Boston and New York and on the first flight out of Boston, over 1000 people were looking for seats on American's mercy flights. With the local authorities also wanting to deploy medical personnel as well as rescue and construction crews to New England, American needed help.

C.R. Smith phoned Edgar Gorrell for an urgent request for help- Gorrell in turn telephoned Jack Frye at TWA, Eddie Rickenbacker at Eastern and Pat Patterson at United. Each of these airlines had the most capable airliner of the day, the DC-3, and Gorrell asked them to pull their DC-3s out of service to fly the humanitarian airlift. Without question, without argument, the three airline presidents had DC-3s streaming into Newark within hours of Gorrell's call. He then secured temporary route authority for them to fly the New York-Boston route from Washington (the nation's airlines had their route structures regulated by the federal government in those days).

For the seven days following the hurricane's landfall, the four airlines operated 24 hours a day, flying over 60,000 tons of medical supplies into Boston, carrying over 1000 rescue workers into the area, and flying out over 1500 refugees out of the area. Those numbers pale in comparison to the airlift that took place after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, but keep in mind that the DC-3 only carried 21 passengers and was the state of the art in 1938. American and TWA even added their older DC-2s to the airlift. Newark, as the bridgehead of the airlift, was the scene of unprecedented cooperation by the rival airlines. American's crews often led formations of other aircraft to Boston as some of TWA and United's pilots had never flown on the East Coast. Airlines shared spare parts, even mechanics to keep the airlift running.

By the time the airlift ended and the airlines and their personnel returned to normal operations, Gorrell as well as the presidents of the four airlines realized the potential of the US airline industry to step up to the plate in times of crisis. When the first bombs dropped on Pearl Harbor just three years later, Edgar Gorrell already had a template in place to organize the US airline industry to provide airlift for the war effort- during the Second World War, the Air Transport Command (ATC) was formed by the US airline industry with government backing. And to head this massive undertaking, Edgar Gorrell turned to C.R. Smith. Not only did C.R. Smith demonstrate initiative in organizing the 1938 airlift, in 1940, a full year before Pearl Harbor, C.R. Smith had already had his own experts formulating an emergency war mobilization plan involving all of the US airline industry.

On 13 December 1941 President Franklin D. Roosevelt was prepared to sign an executive order to nationalize the US airline industry. Sitting in the Oval Office with FDR on that day were Edgar Gorrell and the chief of the US Army Air Corps, General Henry "Hap" Arnold. Both of them convinced FDR to tear up the executive order as Gorrell showed the President C.R. Smith's war plan to mobilize the airlines. In his postwar autobiography Global Mission, General Arnold noted that air power was useless without air transport.

Source: When the Airlines Went to War: The Dramatic, Never-Before-Told Story of America's Civilian Air Warriors by Robert J. Serling. Kensington Press, 1997.

As the pace of technological improvements in aviation march forward, sometimes promising aircraft designs get shafted by rival designs that offer more of something- more speed, more payload, more range or just plain more of everything. The lucky ones amongst the short-shrifted go into limited production like the Bristol Britannia or the Convair 990. Some only fly as prototypes like the Avro Canada C102 Jetliner. And most never make it off the drawing boards like the Douglas C-132. Most of the ones that go into even limited production are noted by history- but there are some aircraft designs that despite that, are nearly forgotten to aviation history.

One of those aircraft was the ANT-35 from Andrei Tupolev's design bureau in the interwar period of the 1930s. The beginnings of the ANT-35 started out rather unusually in a contest held in May 1934 in the magazine "Za Roolyom" (At The Wheel) and chaired by the Aviation Research Technical Society (Avia-NITO). The contest called for a high-speed airliner in both single- and twin-engine categories that were to have a speed of 400-450 kilometers per hour, a range of 1,250-1,500 kilometers, a cruising altitude of 7,500 meters and able to carry five to twelve passengers with their baggage. Several dozen designs were submitted to the magazine and while none were actually built, the contest influenced the design of future Soviet airliners.

Andrei Tupolev didn't participate in the contest but he had been watching it from the sidelines and decided to go ahead in August 1935 and build an aircraft to the outlined specifications. To save time and get his design into production as soon as possible, a new passenger-carrying fuselage was mated with the wings, tail, and undercarriage of the Tupolev SB (ANT-40) light bomber. To insure a high speed, special attention was paid to the fit and finish of the components to insure a smooth external line (in contrast to most Soviet designs of the day which were decidedly "rougher") for drag reduction. Two license-built French Gnome-Rhone 860-horsepower Mistral radials were used for the engines. The cabin was heated and fully-soundproofed with ten reclining passenger seats as well as individual ventilation and lighting for each seat- keep in mind that was something that wasn't standard in airliners until the start of the jet age in the 1950s- and this is 1935- in the Soviet Union, no less! Compared to other contemporary Soviet aircraft, the ANT-35 was also lavishly-equipped with a full avionics fit including autopilot, radio equipment and navigation gear.

Tupolev made sure all of the latest in aviation technology was included in the ANT-35- from close-fitting NACA cowlings on engines, oil coolers submerged in the wing roots, hydraulically-operated flaps, even rubber shock-absorbers on the engine mounts. He had every intent on making the ANT-35 not just the fastest airliner, but also the most comfortable and advanced airliner flying.

The first flight of the prototype ANT-35 was made on 20 August 1936 and at normal gross weight it easily cruised at 390 kilometers per hour, making it one of the fastest airliners of the day. The main deficiency noted on the prototype was the lack of headroom in the cabin but it was otherwise an extremely satisfactory design in the opinion of the test crews. The second prototyp,e designated the ANT-35bis, incorporated a cabin with 15 centimeters of more headroom and more powerful license-built American 1,000-horsepower Wright Cyclone radial engines. The improved version flew in late 1937 and served also as a pattern for production of what was to be designated the PS-35 airliner.

Large scale production eluded the ANT-35/PS-35, though. At the same time, the Soviet Union obtained a license to produce the Douglas DC-3 as the Lisunov Li-2 (also designated PS-84) with the same engines as the ANT-35. Although Tupolev's design was much faster, the DC-3/Li-2 could carry more passengers and cargo over a longer range and as a result, Aeroflot and the Soviet Air Force only took delivery of 9 ANT-35 airliners total. Before the outbreak of the Second World War, the ANT-35 was used on the Moscow-Prague and Moscow-Stockholm routes but in 1941 were shifted to high-priority express flights between Moscow and the cities of Lvov and Odessa. During the war the dwindling number of ANT-35s capitalized on their high speed to deliver supplies to partisans in the German rear flanks as well as medical and food supplies to encircled Red Army units. The last aircraft was retired from service in 1944 to fade into obscurity, eclipsed by the Douglas DC-3 and the many variants Lisunov built that were unique to Soviet service.

Source: OKB Tupolev: A History of the Design Bureau and its Aircraft by Yefim Gordon and Vladimir Rigmant. Midland Publishing, 2005, p64-66.

British European Airways' Dart Dakota

While the Vickers Viscount and its Rolls-Royce Dart turboprop engines underwent an exhaustive test flying program befitting its groundbreaking status as the first turbine-powered production airliner to fly, the Dart engines themselves would also fly on a variety of testbed aircraft to allow not only Rolls-Royce's engineers to gain operating experience with the new engine, British European Airways (BEA) also gained operating experience as well with the Dart Dakota, a conversion of one of the airline's DC-3s with Dart turboprops. Two BEA DC-3s were converted to Dart engines- G-ALXN "Sir Henry Royce" and the other DC-3, G-AMDB "Claude Johnson", BEA's managers, pilots, and maintenance crews gained valuable experience in turbine operations before the arrival of the Vickers Viscount.

One of the unique aspects that made testing the Dart engine challenging was that it was a purely postwar civilian engine program that lacked a large body of military operating experience that in the past made applying civilian versions of military powerplants relatively smooth. Both BEA and Rolls-Royce lacked data on the ideal flight patterns, control methods, and maintenance pitfalls for the Dart engine and the use of the two Dart Dakotas would remedy this situation- rather than flying a test program, BEA's Dart Dakotas would be integrated into BEA's routine operations to see how the engines fared in routine use.

Early model Dart engines (designated Mk. 505s) replaced the Dakota's radial engines and the nacelle installation would approximate that of the Viscount as closely as possible. As the DC-3 was an unpressurized aircraft, it was impractical to operate the Dart Dakota at lower altitudes (which would have been inefficient for the engines) or at higher altitudes (as the passengers would have needed a bulky oxygen supplementation system). As a result, BEA would employ the two Dart Dakotas for freight only services as only the flight deck crew would need oxygen to operate at the at the efficient higher altitudes.

The first scheduled "operational" service was flown on 15 August 1951 when G-ALXN carried 1.5 tons of cargo from BEA's original base at Northolt to Hannover, Germany. Following succesful introductions to service, BEA then deployed the two Dart Dakotas on all-cargo scheduled services out of Northolt to Copenhagen and Milan in addition to Hannover until the end of the trial period in 1952.

Compared to a stock DC-3, the Dart Dakotas had the following performance figures: 202 mph/325 km/h for the Dart Dakota vs. 167 mph/270 km/h with a gross weight of 28000 lbs at an altitude of 25000 feet vs. only 7000 feet for a standard DC-3. Ultimately the trial period was uneconomic, as the Dart Dakotas weren't able to fly as many hours as planned thanks to a shortage of qualified flight crews and trained engineers and maintenance crews. Technical difficulties as well resulted in numerous canceled flights and delays- but these were the very sort of problems BEA, Rolls-Royce, and Vickers wanted to see before the Viscount entered scheduled passenger services.

At the end of the trial period, G-ALXN flew for a total 538 hours in Dart configuration and her sistership G-AMDB flew for 668 total hours. Both aircraft were then reconverted back to standard DC-3 configuration, flying services with BEA until early 1962 when they were passed on to the British independent operators of the day.

Source: A Celebration of the DC-3 by Arthur Pearcy. Airlife Publishing, 1985, p99-100.

As of 2008 the largest commercial fleet of Douglas DC-3s belonged to Buffalo Airways in Canada- they have ten examples, but four are in storage at Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories. They are used for personnel and cargo transport throughout the northern part of Canada.

Four Star Air Cargo of San Juan, Puerto Rico, operates six DC-3s on freighter services throughout the Caribbean.

The largest passenger operator is currently Discovery Air Tours based at Sydney-Bankstown in Australia. They also operate six DC-3s on day and night scenic tour flights of the area.

Source: Air International, March 2009. "Douglas' Time Machine" by David Willis, p57.