Posted on 08/31/2009 12:26:48 PM PDT by llevrok
With its gleaming aluminum skin and black and white stripes, the Douglas DC-3 sitting next to the runaway at Thun Field in Pierce County wears its history well, thanks to Dan Merritt and Eric Thun.
Its classic tail-dragger lines – cockpit and wings higher in the air than the tail that rests on a single tire – evoke another era. Two 1,200-horsepower engines power the three-bladed props that almost seem to touch the fuselage. Cloth covers the flaps and the rudder.
Three years ago, Merritt and Thun first saw the plane on a cold snowy day at an airport in Bennington, Vt.
Its tires were flat; the interior was just the framing under the aluminum skin. The once elegant passenger seats had been dumped in a pile.
But its two 14-cylinder Pratt & Whitney engines were in fine shape. Corrosion on the plane was minimal. They went to work on it.
“It was blowing snow, blizzardy,” recalled Thun, 54. “Everyone at the airport thought we were nuts.”
The man who owned it had bought it with the idea of turning the interior into three bedrooms and a kitchen and then flying his family around the world. His dream died unfulfilled.
A NEW JOURNEY
Merritt and Thun knew what they had: a plane that many consider the greatest airplane design of its time or, some would argue, of all time.
After three cross-country trips to Vermont and six full days of working in the cold, the DC-3 was ready to fly.
They loaded up a 55-gallon drum of oil to feed the engines if needed, filled the tanks with 800 gallons of fuel and headed west.
Sixteen flight hours later, with stops in Ohio and Nebraska, Merritt landed the DC-3 at Thun Field. They then flew the plane to Thun’s farm near Elma, which has an airstrip, for the restoration.
It would take Merritt and Thun three years until they could fly it back to Thun Field, which they did two weeks ago.
“It’s one of the coolest airplanes ever built,” said Merritt, 43. “It’s definitely the funnest to fly.”
Merritt flies Boeing 757 jets for Northwest Airlines but he’s always hankered to own a DC-3, the plane that transformed commercial air travel in the 1930s and 1940s. The Douglas Aircraft Co. built 10,655 of them. Many are still flying but only about two dozen owned by private individuals are still operational, Merritt said.
Most of all he liked flying them: smooth like a jet with a low not-unpleasant drone from its engines, he said.
He flew them in the early 1990s when he worked for an air cargo company. Back then, he helped a group reclaim a DC-3 for a family looking for a family airliner. Besides being a pilot he also is a airplane mechanic.
Merritt admitted he thought he would never own one. Finding one cheap enough to buy and still capable of restoring was not going to be easy, he said.
“The plane found us,” Merritt said. A friend of a friend told them about it.
Merritt was skeptical. Even after seeing it for the first time he wasn’t sure. “I kind of decided not to buy it,” he said. “It looked like a lot of work.
“Eric talked me into it.”
PREVIOUS LIVES
The big twin-engine plane was destined for the life of a commercial airliner with TWA when World War II interfered.
Instead it became a troop-carrier plane, designated as the C-53 Skytrooper by the military. It dropped paratroopers over Sicily and then thundered over Normandy on D-Day. It dropped troops over the Netherlands during Operation Market Garden.
It belonged to the 62nd Troop Carrier Squadron. The squadron motto was “Primas in Toto,” Latin for “First in Everything. Thun recreated the patch of the squadron officer’s club and placed it on the DC-3 tail. It includes the motto.
The tail also has the troop carrier insignia still used today by the Air Force.
Bullets once raked its thin skin.
Thun, who restored the interior of the plane and researched its history, said he found the names of about 20 GIs written in pencil on the skin between the frames. He copied them down and took photographs of them before covering them with insulation and an interior skin.
Thun even tracked down the original pilot, 1st Lt. Richard D. Stevens, and called him at his home in Texas.
“He thought it was pretty neat,” Thun said. “He said it was such a good machine.”
Both Merritt and Thun entertain the idea of flying to the 62nd Squadron’s reunion some day if there are still enough men around from the old days.
After the war, Thun said, the plane went into service with TWA until the 1950s. It was then owned by a couple of corporations. A skydiving company used it for 10-15 years. Finally, a series of private owners took over.
Merritt said the previous owners had put a lot of money into the plane. Its avionics or cockpit instrumentation is first rate, he said. They estimated value of the restored plane at about $200,000.
He still had to replace a large section of the plane’s outer skin to aft of the doorway. Years of skydiver use had left it banged up.
A GIFT
The interior of the plane is done in gray and silver. Thun was able to salvage and re-upholster the seats. They even have their original cup holders.
He designed an overhead storage system above the seats that include airliner seat lights.
Thun even installed a restroom complete with an airline sink on a black tile countertop.
Toward the front of the plane is an eight-foot couch that was originally in another DC-3.
Thun said an oldtimer at Thun Field had salvaged it from a garbage dump. “I have something you can use,” he told them when they first flew the plane into the airport. He gave it to them for nothing.
When the plane is on the ground, the interior space takes a little getting used to. Because of its tail-dragger design, the floor slants upwards from the rear to the cockpit at an 11-degree angle.
Getting out of a seat can make you feel old, Merritt said.
The cockpit puts the pilot and co-pilot up close to the windshield. “Like driving a VW Bug,” Merritt said. Windows on both sides slide open to let air in. There is no computer on board.
Next to and below to the left of the pilot’s seat is a small hatch. It’s both a cargo door and an emergency escape hatch. Its nickname is pilot black humor.
“It’s called the Hamburger Hatch,” Merritt said. Just outside are the spinning blades of the prop when the engine is on. “Go through it when the props are turning, that’s what happens.”
EXPENSIVE HOBBY
The plane is awaiting final Federal Aviation Administration approval before the two begin taking family and friends on flights around Mount Rainier or over Puget Sound. Trips to Reno and Las Vegas are planned.
What do their families think of their project? “They think it’s great,” Thun said.
Thun said he worked every day for about 21/2 years on the restoration and was only able to do that because his wife Lee Fleek has a good job and let him do it. “She is as much a part of the restoration as we are,” he said.
Thun said they are also looking around for a sponsor to help pay the cost of running and maintaining the plane. Aviation fuel is nearly $5 a gallon and the DC-3 uses 100 gallons per hour. The big tires cost $1,500 each.
A sponsor could put its name on the plane for display at air shows around the country.
For now, Thunderbird Flying Service is painted on the side of the plane. That was the name of Thun’s father’s company when he owned the airport.
Sitting inside the plane last week, Thun talked about some other amenities that would be fun to have.
How about a communication system with earphone for passengers so they hear the pilot? Or even a video camera in the nose of the plane connected to a flat screen TV?
Merritt and Thun smiled.
“It’s just bar talk,” Thun said.
Ping
Amen to that. I spent my younger days bouncing around South America in those birds. Loved ‘em. In some of my more recent overseas assignments I’ve seen some still in service on remote airstrips. They seem to be indestructible.
Small, two-engine airframes seem to be the most successful all-around. Thus the longevity and success of the Boeing 737 — the modern-day equivalent of the DC-3.
I have flown in them many times.
A great story and a great old plane. DC-3’s rule
Now that is a beautiful airplane and a first-rate paint job. I like how he blended the checkerboard motif in with D-Day invasion stripes on the underside of the left wing.
}:-)4
My dad flew The Hump in C-47s....”The Queen of the Skies” he used to call them.
I flew in one in Vietnam, Flying Tiger Airlines, from
Chu Lai to Da Nang in 1967. They couldn’t get the port engine to start so they wrapped a baggage strap around the prop hub several times then used a forklift to start it like an outboard, took four or five tries, then off it went and we were away. The copilot had to do all the wrapping so each time he had to leave the cockpit thread his way through all the Vietnamese passengers, then past some Marine grunts with guard dogs, (they didn’t like being on the plane or him) then put a step ladder down, move it to the engine, wrap the strap etc, then climb aboard again, etc.
At the time we considered it great fun.
The vietnamese all had bottles of homemade fish sauce
and were eating rice and having a grand time.
Wow, she’s a beauty!! They did a great job restoring the aircraft.
The DC-3 is a venerable warhorse that is still in service in many parts of the world thanks to a well-built, well designed aircraft.
A memorable ride aboard a DC-3 in South Vietnam. A load of assorted Navy gunboat advisors, several very hung over, catching a ride out to find our boats for two weeks of patrol.
One guy could hardly keep his head from falling off. His eyes looked like bloody bullet holes. The engines of the plane reved up and down on their own. When the pilot asked the Crew Chief if he could fix the problem the Chief replied that he didn’t think he could keep her in the air. The guy with the bloody eyes fell to his knees and began to pray.
The plane landed in the middle of nowhere as planned. Some of us exited the craft and more advisors boarded. She went back into the air with the engines still reving up and down.
What a ride. What a plane.
What a great story, Tet. Now that's flying, war on or not. That scene alone would make a great movie!! ("oh flight attendant, please bring me more rice balls....")
Thanks for your service with Air Amer...I mean Flying Tiger Airlines.
OMG I’m gonna cry. I’m already weepy this morning as it is. What a beautifil machine—and it’s a very one that I’m certain that my mom “stewed” on. Both she and my dad talk about DC-3s like it’s extra special, and I was just at Pima Air Museum and got to walk down some really great memory lanes. I wanted my son to see everything my dad flew, and was excited to show him the inside of one of the two AF1s that are so cool inside. They’ve closed them to the public now—which seems strange to me—and I was so disappointed. If I was cynical I’d wonder if it had to do with the new administration. My fave of all time is still the Connie—there isn’t a bad line on that beautiful plane—and their TWA Connie there is one my dad flew...so I always go up and touch it when I’m there and my son did too...in the 120 degrees that day. I’m thankful for pilots like the one that’s restored this beautiful DC-3. I’ll send this to my mommy. Thanks for this post, llevrok.
My first airplane flight was on a DC-3 flown by Mohawk Airlines.
I wish I could have gone to work for them.
It was known they were recruiting mechanics etc.
I just flew as a passenger.
Well, I am watching "Clash of Wings" on The Military Channel (again).
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