Originally Posted by
Eric Janson
The DC-3 was designed to maintain on one engine. This means that whatever height the engine fails at is your circuit altitude if an engine fails on take-off.
Trying to climb engine-out will quickly put you below Vmc unless you are empty. There are several accidents where this happened.
Older aircraft are not certified to current standards.
Your final statement is broadly correct, and probably includes the accident type.
But your first two paragraphs regarding the DC-3/C-47 are sweeping statements, Eric. Goes without saying the performance varies enormously with the conditions, as well as the all-up weight. In a sea-level, UK-based public-transport operation in the late 1960s, we had to demonstrate - following an engine-failure soon after take-off - a climb to circuit height, followed by a circuit, approach and landing. The CofA-renewal air test recorded the rate-of-climb figures on each engine separately. Admittedly these were done at fairly low weights, but the expectation was that the aeroplane was flyable on one engine up to our MTOW of 28,000 lb in temperate conditions. Not that we would have wanted to put that to the test, because we preferred to nurture our old Twin Wasps...
In the same airline group at the same time, to put the above in context, the twin-jet BAC One-Elevens were operating under Performance "A" rules which - as
fox niner states above - demanded a single-engine, second-segment climb-gradient of at least 2.4%.