Originally Posted by
Zionstrat2
Couple of hours later they walk us out to board on an ancient I mean ancient DC-3. Totally lit me up coolest thing I'd ever seen.
It was the cargo variant with the humongous side door and my mom was hesitant from the beginning.
The vast majority of what is around as a "DC3" is actually the US military variant, the C-47. These had the large rear cargo door, whereas the passenger DC3 didn't, and most of these were turned out before WW2 and didn't last too long afterwards. There were a wide range of postwar modifications, though most kept the basics of the freight door as this impacted later resale value, or even the ability to hire them out as freighters..
Originally Posted by expatrick
As I mentioned above, the Soviet built version, Li-2 (from 1947) gives passenger experience flights at summer month weekends from Budaörs airfield in Budapest.
This turned up at Duxford a few years ago in the D-Day commemoration flights, with lots of other examples, in (postwar) Hungarian airline Malev colours, and indeed was the aircraft the US army parachute display team used as a jumpship, but glossed over that in WW2 and at D-Day Hungary was on the Axis side ! Although it looks the same as a DC3 the Li-2 was built with Soviet tooling, instead of the US tooling that Douglas used of course, so little is interchangeable.