Originally Posted by
Asturias56
Somewhere there's a pic of a whole herd of passengers doing that on a DC-2 somewhere in the Dutch East indies - might have been in the London -Sydney Air race
A lot of DC3s/C47s/Dakotas, call them what you will, had inertia starters on the R1830s, which were basically electrically-operated motors winding up a heavy flywheel. When they sounded like the time was right, you'd move the switch from Energise to Mesh and the flywheel gear would engage the crankshaft via a clutch and the prop would turn a few blades as the crew fiddled with the booster pump, primer, mags and mixture to induce combustion noise and clouds of smoke. There was a back-up option of using a detachable low-geared manual-start handle assembly if the electric motor failed, which involved unfastening a cowling panel, mounting the thing in its position, winding the flywheel up and pulling a 'mesh' cable on command from the cockpit. Usually the %#@£?* thing wouldn't start and you'd have to repeat the process, which certainly warmed you up on a cold day. The inertia starters were gradually replaced by direct drive units from the mid-80s, which saved all that palaver but were less pleasing to the ear.
Had the same inertia starter system on the An2 (the engine was a direct copy of the Wright Cyclone) and a hand-starter on a Stearman PT17, One Dak pilot told me they'd used the prop-dome rope trick using a Mini instead of humans to pull start an engine!