In 1951, at the age of 10, I had my first airplane flight. My father worked for Studebaker, the car and truck manufacturer. The company plane, a DC-3, was being sent from South Bend, the company’s H.Q., to pick up my dad at Pittsburgh. As a courtesy, the pilots arranged for me to ride along. What a thrill! Unfortunately, there was a serious thunderstorm, and we couldn’t land in Pittsburgh. So, we went somewhere else to refuel (and grab a few sandwiches) for the return home without my dad. I guess he got back some other way.
The first Douglas DC-3, initially built for American airlines, was delivered in 1935. It had 21 passenger seats in two rows of two seats each. The plane was an incredible success; over 90% of commercial flight in the world were made by DC-3s by 1939. By the end of civilian production in 1943, Douglas had built 607 DC-3s. In its military version, the C-47 Skytrain (see following posts), over 16,000 of the planes were produced by Douglas in California and contractors in Japan and the Soviet Union. In 2023 an estimated 150 of the planes were still flying.
I could only find two black-and-white photos of the Studebaker corporate plane and they had different liveries. So, I made the model with a paint-job that might have been like the real plane. The tail number was copied from one of the photos and the company logo on the tail was the official Studebaker logo in 1951.
#DC-3 #Douglas #plane #Stdebaker #Blender #Cycles
