When I got into the DC-3 I found it a bit of a shock, very much something that belonged in a museum when compared to a Twin Otter, say. You could see how modern it must have been in its day but that was just in comparison with what had gone before.
The ergonomics were just a nightmare, stuff like two handles you reached behind your left shoulder to grab, one with a row of rivets so that you didn't mix up the flaps (just plain, drag-only ones) with the gear. Then the gear had this goofy system with a little lever you had to operate in the correct sequence lest you break the downlock, with a flimsy flip-over bail as a safety mechanism.
You could just imagine a group of bright guys just having to make this up as they went along, pioneering design work on one of the first modern airliners.
The wipers were run by hydraulics, so that H-5606 would drip out on my knee while rain dripped in everywhere from the segmented windscreen. On the other hand you did have a very nice sliding side window for fresh air, great in the Bahamas but not so nice in cold weather, I bet, especially considering the truly bizarre avgas-burning hot water boiler behind the RHS that made up the heating system.
Then there was the galvanised tin pail that made up the sanitary system, another area of my responsibility!
One day we were rumbling along towards Georgetown in the Bahamas, taking a load of German dentists and doctors out to see a real-estate development they were eager to throw cash away on. One by one these clowns made their way to the cockpit to enjoy the nostalgia of the Goony Bird. One said to me, "Ah! You haff here a dream job!" when all I could think was that here, truly, stood a man with more money than sense.
We would keep two jerry cans full of straight 50-weight and throw one in each engine on our turn-around out in the Bahamas before heading back to Opa Locka, where we would douche down the oil drips as part of the post-flight procedure, using an old pump-type fire extinguisher.
I could not wait to get away from that piece of junk, just an accident waiting to happen. One of them had this odd vibration in cruise from Number Two, when it turned out that the overhaul shop had put one of the three prop blades in there one tooth out of register. Later the whole nose case came apart, just tired old alloy bits about 40 years old.
Conventional wisdom was that this bird was so over-engineered that it would fly forever. Well, some guys penetrated a cell at low level just south of Freeport one night and found out different, when eyewitnesses reported a large red glow in the sky that must have marked the point where a wing came off. Sod that for a lark!