page_title: That's All, Brother
section_title: Military service
hierarchical_section_title: That's All, Brother / History / Military service
caption_attribution_description: English: Original caption: See You in Berlin. Resolute faces of paratroopers just before they took off for the initial assault of D-Day. Paratrooper in foreground has just read Gen. Eisenhower's message of good luck and clasps his bazooka in determination. Note Eisenhower's D-Day order in hands of paratrooper in foreground.
context_page_description: That's All, Brother is a Douglas C-47 Skytrain aircraft that led the formation of 800 others from which approximately 13,000 U.S. paratroopers jumped on D-Day, June 6, 1944, the beginning of the liberation of France in the last two years of World War II. After the war it was returned to the United States and sold to civilian owners, eventually falling victim to neglect until it was found in an Oshkosh, Wisconsin, boneyard in 2015, facing imminent disassembly to be converted into a modern turbine aircraft. It has since been restored and is part of the Commemorative Air Force.
  The C-47's name, painted on its nose, was chosen by Air Force Lt. Col. John M. Donalson, commander of the 87th Fighter-Bomber Squadron, who flew the plane during the operation, as a "message to Adolf Hitler" that Nazi Germany's days were numbered. It was successfully flown again in 2018, and has been exhibited at air shows. After further refitting it has been flown across the Atlantic with other historic aircraft that took part in the invasion, to commemorate its 75th anniversary.
context_section_description: When the war began, John Donalson, who normally flew with the Alabama-based 106th Observation Squadron, which was assigned to the Pacific theater during the war, was transferred to Europe. Normally, he flew a Douglas C-47 Skytrain that he had named Belle of Birmingham, in honor of his home state's largest city. But for Operation Overlord, the 1944 invasion of Normandy which opened the western front, it was necessary to cut holes in the plane's fuselage for extra equipment. Donalson, by then commanding the 438th Troop Carrier Group of the 87th Troop Carrier Squadron, part of IX Troop Carrier Command, refused, and so he was issued another C-47 to lead the formation of those aircraft which dropped paratroopers onto the shores of France.
  The C-47 issued to Donalson had been built three months earlier at the Douglas Aircraft plant in Oklahoma City. It was delivered the day after completion to what was then the United States Army Air Forces at Love Field in Dallas; from there it was flown to Baer Army Air Field in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Five weeks later it was flown to England by the Air Transport Command. Donalson named his new plane That's All, Brother, as a personal message to Adolf Hitler that Nazi Germany's dominance of Europe would soon be ended.
  On the morning of June 6, That's All, Brother led 800 planes that dropped over 13,000 American paratroopers onto the French coast. It was chosen for the job because it had been equipped with radar that could find the beacons dropped as "pathfinders" to mark drop zones by an earlier group of paratroopers. Allied troops held their beachhead despite heavy initial losses, and slowly began liberating France. The C-47 was used in other operations in Western Europe later that year, including Market Garden, and Repulse (part of the resupplying of Bastogne), and in 1945's Operation Varsity, part of the invasion of Germany.
caption: Paratroopers on their way to the drop zone on D-Day morning
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