Having flown quite a few hours on DC-3s the one thing that I notice that is missing throughout this thread, is the item on the Pre-Take Off Check List:

Controls = Full & Free !!!!!!!!!!!!

Even the mighty.......
 

Place Rolls Royce Hucknall Flight Test Establishment. Time About 1630Z on a warm Friday afternoon in April 19 plonk

SATCO "Ere wassat Dak up to"

'Dak', having lumbered round the turning cirlce at the end of 26 has lined up/ revved up and seems to be sitting having a ponder almost as if thinking about aviating

SATCO 'Cooee, got a problem cock'

'Silence'

By now I've got the duty nockerlers on him and am surprised to see a gnomic figure trot into view from around the fin. (Fus door on blind side of tower)

'Someones on the runway George says I. Hang on no....It's only one of the crew......Removing the elevator locks...'

Dak 'Sorry for delay Hucknall....cleared for take off?'

SATCO Cleared as planned. Enjoy your flight back to Farnborough lads

By now DAK is lumbering past the tower proudly bearing its Empire
Test Pilots School markings.....

10 mighty steely eyed trainee/would be TP's had spent the day checking out RR's finest. I often wonder what would have happened if he's lumbered off the runway and thumped onto the newly constructed but not yet open M1

https://aviation-safety.net/database...?id=19590126-0

Apparently the crew decided to park on the civil dispersal whilst they popped off for a spot of lunch.

Because of the risk of tropical storms, the Malaysian ground crew were in the practice of locking the elevators on the Malayan Airways DC3s and naturally assumed that the Royal Air Force locked them too.

209 Sqn, which was 267 Sqn two months earlier, had three DC3s.

This is one of them.

D.C.3 Elevator Locks
 

This link takes you to a page commemorating a well known and tragic RCAF Dakota crash were 21 airmen died in September 1946, because one elevator had not been removed before take-off.
http://gent-family.com/Estevan/estevandakotacrash.html

Tony Broadhurst

That accident really is a shocker.