Douglas C-54 Skymaster
If there is a single area in which the human race gained the most during World War II, it would be in the area of transportation, particularly air transport. At the beginning of the war the world was a huge globe covered by thousands of miles of ocean and uninhabited land mass, but by the time it ended it had all been brought together, thanks largely to the four-engine transports of the United States Army Air Transport Command, particularly the Douglas C-54. By mid-1945 the C-54 had come to symbolize the modern international airline system, a system that linked the entire world and reduced travel times from weeks and months to days and even hours.
The C-54 was the result of a prewar civilian design the Douglas Aircraft Company developed as a successor to its highly successful DC-3. The original design, later designated as the DC-4E, featured a pressurized cabin to allow high altitude operations in relative comfort, but the design was too expensive for the cash-strapped airline industry of the Depression years and was put on hold. Instead, the company decided to develop and market the basic DC-4, an unpressurized all-metal four-engine monoplane with transoceanic capabilities, and a design that would be far less expensive than the pressurized model the company had originally envisioned to compete with Boeing’s Stratoliner. It wasn’t until 1942 that the new airliner was ready for its first flight and by that time the country was at war. All of the DC-4 production that had been ordered by the airlines was appropriated for military use and it wasn’t until the end of the war that the four-engine transport finally put on airline paint. In the interim, the C-54 had become the workhorse of the US Army Air Transport Command and was perhaps the most important airplane to come out of the war. It was also one of the most costly, second only to the B-29 in cost per model. Initial purchase costs were more than half a million dollars in 1940, and even though production costs dropped, the cost per airplane was still more than a quarter of a million dollars in 1945.
Although little thought had been given to military air transportation in the 1920s and 1930s, by 1940 the War Department was starting to recognize the need for long-range transports, primarily to provide transportation for government officials and important dispatches to the far-flung regions of the world. A new need that developed just before the war was to return Army ferry pilots to the United States from overseas delivery points. The newly established need for long-range transports became so great that when the Army received its first Consolidated B-24 Liberators, eleven were converted into transports even though the type had been developed to fill a requirement for a long-range bomber to replace the Boeing B-17. The converted Liberators were assigned to the recently established Air Corps Ferrying Command to establish a route system over which multiengine aircraft could be delivered to the combat zones. They were also adopted as a means of delivering dispatches and transporting high level personnel to and from England. On July 1, 1941, Lt. Col. Caleb Haynes took off from Bolling Field outside of Washington, DC on the first run of the “Arnold Line,” a transoceanic military airline service. Routes were soon established to other destinations; in one case an Army Liberator flew the new Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Averill Harriman, to his assignment in Moscow.
In December 1941, as the United States suddenly found itself at war, the War Department immediately reclaimed a number of military aircraft that had been built for delivery to England and other Allies. Among the repossessed aircraft were a number of Consolidated LB-30 Liberators, a special version of the four-engine bomber that had been built to British specifications. While most of the repossessed Liberators were sent to the Pacific to join the 7th Bombardment Group, a number were converted into transports and joined several similarly modified B-24s in establishing air routes across the Atlantic and Pacific. The need for four-engine transports was so great that the War Department ordered large numbers of B-24s converted to the transport role as the C-87 Liberator Express. The Ferrying Command also had its eye on Douglas Aircraft Company’s new DC-4, which the military designated as the C-54, although the command hedged its bets by also ordering the twin-engine Curtis C-46.
On March 26, 1942, the C-54 made its maiden flight. Since it was a basic transport and needed no modification for military use, deliveries to the Army Air Forces began a few weeks later in June. The original DC-4 had been conceived as a passenger-carrying airplane; production aircraft came from the factory with fixed seats and a floor that lacked the reinforcement necessary to transport heavy cargo, so they were initially assigned primarily to transport high priority passengers and dispatches. The first Army C-54s were operated by civilian contract crews employed by Pan American Airways on a scheduled run south out of Miami to Natal, Brazil. The route was soon expanded to North Africa and by October C-54s were flying to England by way of Marrakech. Since the early C-54s were configured primarily to carry passengers, the Army requested a new model equipped with foldable metal bucket seats that would allow quick conversion from passengers to cargo, which was starting to become a major military air transport commodity as US forces deployed throughout much of the world. Designated as C-54As, the new version didn’t become available for military testing until February 1943. The first operational airplanes entered service a month later. A second modification, the C-54B, was equipped with canvas seats instead of the metal buckets of the earlier version in a weight-saving move; the easily stowable seats also allowed transportation of large crates and other items of cargo, including aircraft engines and small vehicles. The B-model also featured additional fuel capacity to increase range. The C-54B entered service in the spring of 1944.
While awaiting the introduction of the C-54, the Army cast its lot with the C-87 and the proposed Curtis C-46, which was still under development although deliveries were imminent. A third contender was Lockheed’s tri-tailed C-69 Constellation, but priority for P-38 production at the Lockheed factories caused its development to be held back. Boeing’s C-75 Stratoliner suffered due to its comparatively small payload capabilities – only 4,000 pounds at maximum range – although its pressurized cabin was a desirable feature. Douglas had designed a large transport designated as the C-74 while Boeing was working on the C-97, but neither airplane would be available until after the war. Meanwhile, the Army turned to production airline aircraft and modified bombers to fill its transport needs.
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