Skytrain

This weekend is the Military Aviation Museum's BIG annual air show, Warbirds Over The Beach. Today, on Day #2, we had several thousand more guests coming in to see most of our aircraft get airborne.

This a Douglas C-47 Skytrain, or a Dakota as it was known by the British. It was the military version of Douglas's DC-3 airliner and was the main transport aircraft used by the Allies in WWII. It was highly capable and rugged, able to carry large payloads - 28 troops or 18 patient litters in air ambulance configuration or 6,000 lbs / 2,700 kg of cargo. Its large door allowed for large items to be transported, such as a Jeep.

The C-47 was so rugged and durable that of the 10,000+ that were built between 1941 and 1945, hundreds remain in service today around the world, not only as historical warbirds, but as passenger and cargo airliners.

This particular C-47 is doesn't belong to the Military Aviation Museum but is an invited guest to Warbirds Over The Beach, the Tunison Foundation's Placid Lassie, a genuine war hero. This plane is not a replica or another C-47/DC-3 painted to look like Placid Lassie, but the actual plane that towed gliders over France as part of the airborne portion of the Normandy invasion, and carried paratroopers for Operations Overlord (Normandy), Market Garden (A Bridge Too Far), and Varsity, dropping troops into Germany on the far side of the Rhine River.

[Jon Lip]

Great bit of research into the plane and the era. I just hope that younger people take note of these facts and understand the scale of the whole thing and how many millions of people on both sides died. Also how it changed the dynamics of countries. For instance: my brother was a result of the Americans waiting over here for the D-Day landings, and I am the son of a captured German soldier! Were it not for the war, neither of us would have existed!
These planes and exhibitions are not meant to glamourise war, but to serve as a reminder of the futility of it!

[Tim Erskine]

@jon_lip Thanks Jon. A lot of younger people are interested and do learn a lot from what we do at the Museum. We also have many teenagers who volunteer (our minimum age is 14) and they are like sponges with the information.