DC3 passenger entrance doors. left/right/or on both sides together?

[Centaurus]

DC3's in 1940 had passenger entrance door on the right hand side of the fuselage whereas most military Dakotas and civilian DC3's in Australia, anyway, had the passenger door on the left side of the fuselage (facing forward) Is it possible that the DC3 was designed to have two passenger doors at the rear of the fuselage - in other words customer option such as one on the left OR right or both left and right?

[barit1]

Is it possible that the DC3 was designed to have two passenger doors at the rear of the fuselage - in other words customer option such as one on the left OR right or both left and right?

Exactly right. The launch customer, American Airlines (1935) ordered the right-side door, and Wright Cyclone engines. Shortly after, United Airlines ordered the left-side door and P&W Twin Wasp engines.

Other customers (Capitol, Delta, export customers, etc.) ordered various combinations of the above.

Early 60s, I recall Lake Central Airlines ships all were P&W power, but some ships had R/H doors, some were L/H.

EDIT: Doors on both sides? It's possible of course, although I'm not aware of the need for this option...

[JW411]

Something in the very deep recesses of my mind makes me think that there was an international convention that decided to standardise on port doors somewhere around 1938?

[Spooky 2]

Not really a lot different than some CV240's having the ventral stair option while most had the fwd port side airstair. Choices, even then, were what it was all about. :ok:

[pigboat]

I've never heard of the doors on both sides of the fuselage, for one thing it would probably unacceptably weaken the aircraft structure. As barit1 says, the DC-3 had the airstair door and the aft baggage door on either the right or the left side and either Wright or Pratt engines, depending on company preference. Ex-military C-47 aircraft had a large, two part, cargo door on the left side and were powered by the Pratt 1830. I have heard the military chose Pratts because they needed the Wright engines for the B-17, dunno how true that is. Many C-47's converted to civilian use had an airstair built into the forward section of the cargo door.

For nostalgia buffs, spend awhile on this website from the now-defunct Mohawk Airlines.
Mohawk images. (http://www.postcardpost.com/MohawkImages.htm)

Scroll down the home page to the Tom Kirn Photos link and there's a Wright powered DC-3 with the door on the right. I suspect it's an ex-Lake Central Airways machine as barit1 has indicated. Lake Central became part of Mohawk, if I remember right, and Mohawk was itself folded into Allegheny which became USAir.

[WHBM]

The DC3 Right-hand door was an option taken by both American (the pioneer operator of the DC3) and United, and also by KLM in Europe. Other operators in the USA and Europe chose a left-hand door. The main reason was what an airline had operated previously, to fit in with their ground support equipment and terminal arrangements. All the initial aircraft were right-hand, for these operators, it took a while for the left-handers to be produced. I think Eastern were the first to order it. Note that the KLM (and all other European pre-war operator) aircraft were all shipped over as parts by sea and assembled by Fokker in the Netherlands, so it is a bit surprising that they offered both options as well.

I don't see any record of dual doors, but there were a few subsequent conversions from right to left to suit later operators. Once WW2 came along and the big volume production started for the military, no more right hands were built.

[A30yoyo]

WHBM...All the DC-2s and DC-3s supplied via the Fokker sales agency were completed by Douglas and test flown in the USA before ferrying to the US East coast for sea shipment to European ports where Fokker engineers merely bolted the wings and detached components such as propellers back on at the nearest airfield to the port, and test-flew them. (Just as engineers in Australia and Japan did with sea-freighted Douglases)
AFAIK Fokker didn't even make the interiors. Towards WWII I think there was a little shuffling of orders in Europe resulting in Swissair having some DC-3s with LH and some with RH doors

[barit1]

pigboat:Lake Central became part of Mohawk, if I remember right, and Mohawk was itself folded into Allegheny which became USAir.

Lake Central was absorbed directly by Allegheny, as was Mohawk. So (initially at least) Allegheny had a real mixed bag of Wright/P&W/RH/LH versions. Also, by the time LC was absorbed, they had Nord262s and CV340s, some of which were converted to CV580s.

In the late 60s Mohawk's DC-3s were scheduled to be replaced by -- FH227's?? -- but deliveries were delayed, so the DC-3s had to be kept in service a few more months. Mohawk rehabbed the livery and interiors in 1890's railcar style, called it Gaslight Service, and served beer and cigars in a creative marketing attempt to retain customers!

[Fris B. Fairing]

DC-3 VH-ANR had doors on both sides - but not simultaneously! Originally ordered by KLM, the aeroplane was delivered with a small passenger door on the right side. After the war, when the aeroplane found its way into the fleet of Australian National Airways. it was converted to a left hand door for commonality with the ANA fleet. I've heard of conversions from small door to big door and back again but never a door on both sides at the same time.

Regarding the merger of Allegheny and Mohawk, wasn't there some debate whether to call it Alimony or Mahogany?

Rgds

[seacue]

If you were SLF on the airline, you knew it as Agony Airlines.

Robinson Airlines started in 1945. It was purchased in 1952 by Robt Peach and the name changed to Mohawk. Mohawk merged into Allegheny Airlines in 1972. Mohawk Airlines - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_Airlines)

[pigboat]

Thanks barit1 and seacue. Fris you have your answer to what some people called it. Not a few employees also I might add. :D

Allegheny began as All American Airways using single engine aircraft. They tried a rather neat arrangement for picking up the mail without landing. They'd hang a mail bag on a wire between two poles, then snatch the mail using a hook on a kind of trapeze affair attached to the belly of the aircraft. I don't know how well this worked, I seem to remember they used an SR-9 and maybe a Norseman. There was a kind of diorama of the operation at the USAir learning center, out past Robert Morse College in Seweckly.

Back when we began doing our recurrent training at Allegheny, they had only the three sims, a DC-9, the FH-227 and the BAC1-11. In those days visual simulators were a luxury, so Allegheny had built a huge vertical wall with a miniature airport and it's environs attached to it. There were little houses, trees, streets etc. and a camera connected to the sim ran along a track that showed that showed the location of the sim (aircraft) in relation to the runway. I seem to remember the maximum ceiling was around 700 feet with a few miles viz, enough to carry out a circling approach anyway. The first sim instructor I had at Allegheny was a retired PanAm captain who had flown the Boeing 314.

[barit1]

As a college student our class (ca.1964) visited the UAL ops center in Chicago, and they had a visual "simulator" similar to Allegheny's. The camera was on a rig giving six degrees of freedom, a fair representation of the airplane's maneuvering.