page_title: Douglas DC-3
section_title: Design and development
hierarchical_section_title: Douglas DC-3 / Design and development
caption_attribution_description: Douglas Dakota DC-3 (G-ANAF) of the Air Atlantique Historic Flight at Hullavington Airfield, Wiltshire, England, taking off. The aircraft is operated by Air Atlantique on behalf of Thales Group for development of the Nimrod radar. The radome under the cockpit contains a rotating parabolic antenna. A new pitot tube was fitted to the nose (the original tube under the nose would interfere with the radar). The APU behind the starboard wing provides electrical power for the radar systems. Note the added vertical stabiliser behind the tail wheel. The aircraft was built in 1944 and apparently operated as part of the Berlin airlift. Photographed by Adrian Pingstone in May 2005 and placed in the public domain.
context_page_description: The Douglas DC-3 is a propeller-driven airliner which had a lasting effect on the airline industry in the 1930s/1940s and World War II.
  It was developed as a larger, improved 14-bed sleeper version of the Douglas DC-2.
  It is a low-wing metal monoplane with conventional landing gear, powered by two 1,200 hp Pratt & Whitney Twin Wasp radial piston engines.
  It has a cruise speed of 207 mph, capacity of 21 to 32 passengers or 6,000 lbs of cargo, and a range of 1,500 mi, and can operate from short runways.
  The DC-3 had many exceptional qualities compared to previous aircraft. It was fast, had a good range, was more reliable, and carried passengers in greater comfort. Before the war, it pioneered many air travel routes. It was able to cross the continental US from New York to Los Angeles in 18 hours and with only 3 stops.
  It is one of the first airliners that could profitably carry only passengers without relying on mail subsidies.
  Following the war, the airliner market was flooded with surplus transport aircraft and the DC-3 was no longer competitive due to its size and speed.
context_section_description: "DC" stands for "Douglas Commercial". The DC-3 was the culmination of a development effort that began after an inquiry from Transcontinental and Western Airlines (TWA) to Donald Douglas. TWA's rival in transcontinental air service, United Airlines, was starting service with the Boeing 247 and Boeing refused to sell any 247s to other airlines until United's order for 60 aircraft had been filled. TWA asked Douglas to design and build an aircraft that would allow TWA to compete with United. Douglas' design, the 1933 DC-1, was promising, and led to the DC-2 in 1934. The DC-2 was a success, but there was room for improvement.
  
  The DC-3 resulted from a marathon telephone call from American Airlines CEO C. R. Smith to Donald Douglas, when Smith persuaded a reluctant Douglas to design a sleeper aircraft based on the DC-2 to replace American's Curtiss Condor II biplanes. The DC-2's cabin was 66 inches (1.7 m) wide, too narrow for side-by-side berths. Douglas agreed to go ahead with development only after Smith informed him of American's intention to purchase twenty aircraft. The new aircraft was engineered by a team led by chief engineer Arthur E. Raymond over the next two years, and the prototype DST (Douglas Sleeper Transport) first flew on December 17, 1935 (the 32nd anniversary of the Wright Brothers' flight at Kitty Hawk) with Douglas chief test pilot Carl Cover at the controls. Its cabin was 92 in (2,300 mm) wide, and a version with 21 seats instead of the 14–16 sleeping berths of the DST was given the designation DC-3. There was no prototype DC-3, and the first DC-3 built followed seven DSTs off the production line for delivery to American Airlines.
  The DC-3 and DST popularized air travel in the United States. Eastbound transcontinental flights could cross the U.S. in about 15 hours with three refueling stops while westbound trips against the wind took ​17 ¹⁄₂ hours. A few years earlier such a trip entailed short hops in slower and shorter-range aircraft during the day, coupled with train travel overnight.
  A variety of radial engines were offered for the DC-3. Early-production civilian aircraft used either the nine-cylinder Wright R-1820 Cyclone 9 or the fourteen-cylinder Pratt & Whitney R-1830 Twin Wasp, but the Twin Wasp was chosen for most military versions and was also used by most DC-3s converted from military service. Five DC-3S Super DC-3s with Pratt & Whitney R-2000 Twin Wasps were built in the late 1940s, three of which entered airline service.
caption: Ex-military Air Atlantique C-47B at RAF Hullavington in 2005
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