The DC3, the plane that changed the World.

**bob10** · 12th January 2017, 07:02 PM

**goingbush** · 13th January 2017, 04:35 PM

Apparenttly I was the designer of the DC3 , and the DC-5 if this article is to be believed

Douglas DC-5

I did however design the DC2 / DC3/ DC5 flight models for MS FlightSimulator, probably where the author got confused

I got a nice big parcel of DC-5 design information , photos etc from McDonell Douglas about 25 years ago , most of it unpublished, I guess I should scan & post it up on the internet !

I'm lucky enough to have a DC-3 only 5 minutes from home, outside the local RSL, Not even far away to warm the Landy up

**bob10** · 13th January 2017, 08:53 PM

Originally Posted by goingbush

Apparenttly I was the designer of the DC3 , and the DC-5 if this article is to be believed

Douglas DC-5

I did however design the DC2 / DC3/ DC5 flight models for MS FlightSimulator, probably where the author got confused

I got a nice big parcel of DC-5 design information , photos etc from McDonell Douglas about 25 years ago , most of it unpublished, I guess I should scan & post it up on the internet !

I'm lucky enough to have a DC-3 only 5 minutes from home, outside the local RSL, Not even far away to warm the Landy up

You are a legend , bushie. Not as much as that Land rover, though.

**goingbush** · 13th January 2017, 10:03 PM

Yes Bob, I think its probably my favourite of them all.

If all the LandRovers Ive ever owned were sitting in a line ready to be driven away and I had to chose only one to keep, this would be the one .

**bob10** · 14th January 2017, 09:10 PM

DC3 Pilot training, flying the C47.

https://youtu.be/sA_N10PQtl0

**JDNSW** · 15th January 2017, 06:19 AM

One of the less recognised assets of the DC3 is that the particular alloy used for the airframe appears to be completely immune to fatigue. This was purely an accidental feature - little was known of the fatigue properties of aluminium alloys in 1936, and nobody worried anyway.

And furthermore, the structural design was very conservative.

John

**goingbush** · 15th January 2017, 08:42 AM

Originally Posted by JDNSW

One of the less recognised assets of the DC3 is that the particular alloy used for the airframe appears to be completely immune to fatigue. This was purely an accidental feature - little was known of the fatigue properties of aluminium alloys in 1936, and nobody worried anyway.

And furthermore, the structural design was very conservative.

John

also one of the few aircraft to not have a mainspar ,

**JDNSW** · 15th January 2017, 01:10 PM

Originally Posted by goingbush

also one of the few aircraft to not have a mainspar ,

I was sort of including that in the comment about 'conservative' design.

Overall, as well as being the first airliner that carriers could actually make money with, there were a whole series of things about the aircraft that turned out to be 'special'. Part of this was probably because when Douglas started the DC- series, they had only built military aircraft, and did not know the 'right' way to do things, so everything was worked out from scratch rather than "that is the way we do it". Probably their biggest innovation was to fit only two engines, instead of the three requested by their initial customer for the DC-1, meeting the engine out performance requirements by fitting retractable undercarriage and variable pitch feathering propellers (all very new at the time).

John

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