The excellence of the DC-2 (and DC-3) had been a sore-point for the British aviation establishment since the KLM’s ‘Uiver’ had come a close second in the MacPherson race in October 1934. Imperial did respond by ordering the legendary Short Empire flying-boat and the unsatisfactory and late AW Ensign. There was no ban on ordering Douglas airliners but any such order would have produced howls from Parliament and British industry. The first British order for Douglas airliners was BA Ltd’s order for 9 DC-5s placed at the end of August 1939 when the amalgamation of BA Ltd and Imperial was already decided so they would have flown for BOAC from Spring 1940 but the order was cancelled within days of the declaration of war. With the fall of France the desperate shortage of British air transport capacity became apparent and from Autumn 1940 the British Purchasing Commission in Washington had to start shopping for any transports they could get e.g. old DC-2s and the less popular Lodestars (there was a large queue for DC-3s!). There was however a steady supply of Hudsons to Britain and it would be interesting to find out how many were never fitted with turrets and instead used as transports by the RAF and BOAC.

The flagshipdetroit pdf suggests all American Airlines DC-2s got the wide fin

In the youtube the aircraft taxying has the narrow fin but in the climbout shot and landing shots it has the wider fin.

In the centre of the nosecone of the American DC-2s with wing lights there seems to be a clear panel….maybe an ADF acrylic ‘window’ ?

http://www.flagshipdetroit.org/FSD/History-DC-3_files/LegacyofTheDC-3__FrankAtzert.pdf

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_Vt7DVglw8

Regards

Mark Pilkington

Those trees are massive and seem close to the aircraft? The China Eastern colourful scheme 6 down is unusual. Impressive collection

The KLM Douglases were marked like the BOAC WWII fleet in camouflage with red/white/blue bands under the large black British registrations and flew a Dutch flag on the ground, but as far as I know didn’t wear the Speedbird or BOAC or KLM lettering. KLM were given permission to paint the individual bird-names on the Douglases e.g. Ibis on the DC-3 shot down and Zilverreiger on this one
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Photographic-Prints-Douglas-DC-3-Raf/dp/B003HY85JE/ref=sr_1_2?s=kitchen&ie=UTF8&qid=1356372437&sr=1-2 http://www.flickr.com/photos/biblarte/4647577344/sizes/o/in/photostream/
and view at Lisbon
http://www.flickr.com/photos/biblarte/4647577344/sizes/o/in/photostream/

Ah yes, always happy to stand corrected. KLM more or less joined with BOAC for European ops, with Dutch crew members flying BOAC’s transatlantic route on BOAC aircraft (experience that served them well post war with KLM). The services operated by KLM were BOAC’s (Lisbon springs to mind), and crew were interchanged with BOAC, but some aircraft remained property of KLM (the pre-war ones that made it to England mainly). Most of the KLM/BOAC aircraft were in camo c/s, with BOAC titles and Dutch flags on them.

Mark….I also thought DC-2s all had nose lights until I saw this photo(2nd post this thread and below) which I believe shows an ex-Delta DC-2 (furthest from camera), so it is quite possible the fuselages on the sea freighter are DC-2s but I don’t know any more about the shipment.
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/875359a838e378d0.html

I’m not sure they are DC-2’s, they dont seem to have the twin landing lights fitted to the nose, which I understood was a feature of all of the production.

I suspect these are later Military C39 derivitives of the DC-2 which retained the narrow flat sided fuselage of the DC-2 but had DC-3 fins / tails, and deleted the nose mounted landing lights, which had been retained on the earlier C33 Military derivitive.

As the fins are removed its difficult to confirm that the tails are DC-3 based, but the nose seems to clearly lack the landing lights.

Regards

Mark Pilkington

And for an example of DC-2 sea shipment , possibly for the RAF scroll 69 down on
http://www.warbirdinformationexchange.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=13327&start=315

More of a book than a thread, alertken! :)….here’s some photo links to Pan Am Ferries operation (Flight 3) at Natal ca.25Sep 1941. Top shot shows DC-2 NC14966 landing over DC-2s US8,9,10 and DC-3s NC25623 andNC33642
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/9a507a577f408da7.html
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/3bb6ad19817bd0d5.html
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/ce1c3c1ca0213c59.html
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/65f96282b1fba9df.html
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/14ccd71f7fe95fa8.html
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/627be28f06075064.html
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/032b5361ec83c1e1.html
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/875359a838e378d0.html
(images 4&5 are wrongly dated 1943, image 7 of US9 and NC14966 shows the differences there can be in DC-2s, fin shape, door LH or RH, nose lights or wing lights)

I’ve just noticed (4Jan2013) Hart Preston shot the pic of U.S.9 and the narrow fin DC-2 as the LH third of a panorama from the old Air France Hangar at Natal (the centre and RH third of the pano stitched together automatically but I had to tweak the LH join a little)….the panorama includes all of PAA Ferries flight 3

Here’s YR-GAD at Marseilles (1941ish?)….got seized by the Romanians along with LOT’s Lockheeds, possibly previously painted as G-AGAD in the Air France hangar at Bucharest under the auspices of the British Air Attache, the Earl of Granard, but never reached BOAC

And here’s evidence that G-AGBH served on the Whitchurch-Lisbon route in WWII

Also known as the Caproni PL3 , googling gets you 2 pics
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sdasmarchives/4823797733/