I just found out that the fabled Douglas DC-3 has added yet another chapter to its seemingly endless history. And this is an airplane that was considered obsolete at the beginning of World War II.
The plane was built in 1935 as an improvement of the DC-2, the first successful passenger airliner. It was slightly bigger and equipped with sleeping accommodations for long-haul passengers.
When the war broke out at the end of 1941, commercial flight was pretty much shuttled to the back burner as America focused on building high-performance bombers and fighters.
Even so, the Army Air Corps took a look at the DC-3 and realized it could be stripped down and used to haul cargo. All kinds of cargo from paratroopers to weapons and vehicles got from point A to point B inside a DC-3. The joke was, if you could get it into the plane, the plane could deliver it.
Apparently, that included biscuits. It all started in New Guinea in 1942 when scantily-armed American and Allied troops took on a strong and well-equipped Japanese army in the steaming jungles of that South Pacific nation.
Food, the stuff that armies run on, was being brought in to the country at Port Moresby. Unfortunately, the only way to get it to the front lines was by native carriers. And that was painfully slow. And when it sat around waiting for transport, it often spoiled in the tropical sun.
That’s when the 317th Troop Carrier Group’s 57th Squadron started packing up supplies, including food, into canvas and burlap bags and dropping them at the front lines by parachute. The planes were quickly dubbed Biscuit Bombers.
The bombers worked so well that they later moved the effort to the Philippines, where moving supplies through heavy jungle terrain was likewise deemed impossible by any other means. Literally thousands of tons of food and supplies were dropped during the war.
Another page in this book took place in 1946 during the Berlin Airlift. The Soviets had cut off the city of Berlin from the west, and the airlift – using DC-3s – was launched to bring in food, equipment and even coal to heat and supply the city.
While landing at the airfield, plane crews noticed hundreds of children lined up at the fence. Seeing a chance to spread a little good cheer, the plane crews began dropping bags of chocolate by parachutes fashioned from handkerchiefs.
Amazingly, the venerable DC-3s are still flying more than eight decades after being pronounced obsolete. They’ve been spruced up with bigger engines and new electronics, of course. And they still haul freight, including people. They just don’t drop biscuits anymore.
