It always amazed me that in Australia in the Fifties the airlines removed the rubber de-icing boots from the empennage of DC3's and forced crews to fly in icing conditions. The danger area was the flight to Tasmania where in winter aircraft often got iced up.
The fact was the DC3 with no de-icing boots was not legally equipped to fly in known icing conditions. Perhaps the crews worked on the premise that weather forecasting is not an exact science and the met people could only give professional advice. Pilots could take it or leave it. Those that elected not to fly because of risk of icing found their jobs in jeopardy if they tried that caper too many times.
Regardless of the commercial cost because of the additional weight of the empennage de-icing systems, it became an established practice to ignore the risks involved and blast off into icing weather. Happens all the time even now with cargo light twins doing the night runs between cities in mid winter. Few aircraft came to grief but there were some awfully close shaves. In those days, the adage that "get away with anything long enough, and the perceived risks diminishes" applied one hundred percent to those Australian operators who knowingly risked passengers lives. Department of Civil Aviation inspectors who were in awe of the airline managements run by hard nosed managers simply looked the other way.
To it's credit, the RAAF never considered removing the de-icing boots on Dakota aircraft as they knew that airframe icing was inevitable in some parts of Australia and in CB cloud formations.