Douglas C-47 Army
The Douglas C-47 Skytrain — the military DC-3 that flew paratroopers into Normandy and supplies into Berlin — captured as a twin-engine RC scale warbird in U.S. Army livery.
About
The Douglas C-47 Skytrain is the military variant of the legendary DC-3, an airframe that began life as the Douglas Sleeper Transport (DST) on December 17, 1935, with chief test pilot Carl Cover at the controls. The DC-3 was designed by an engineering team led by Arthur E. Raymond after a marathon late-night phone call from American Airlines CEO C. R. Smith persuaded a reluctant Donald Douglas to develop a sleeper version of the existing DC-2 — a project Douglas only agreed to after Smith committed to a launch order of twenty aircraft.
When the United States entered World War II, civilian DC-3s were commandeered for the war effort and the production line was ramped up to military specifications. The C-47 Skytrain — known as the Dakota in British and Commonwealth service, the R4D in U.S. Navy service, and "Gooney Bird" in unofficial American shorthand — was used for troop transport, cargo, paratrooper drops, glider towing, and supply parachute drops. C-47s flew the Berlin Airlift, dropped paratroopers into Normandy on D-Day, and crossed "the Hump" from India to China across the eastern Himalayas. More than 10,000 U.S. military DC-3 variants were built, and combined with civilian DC-3s and Soviet and Japanese license-built versions, total production passed 16,000 airframes.
In Army Air Force olive-drab and stars-and-bars livery, the C-47 silhouette became one of the visual signatures of WWII Allied logistics — and the airframe's continued service into the 21st century (DC-3s still fly active commercial and military missions in 2025) makes it one of the longest-serving aircraft in aviation history. The unmistakable twin-radial silhouette is one of the most-modeled WWII transport subjects in modern RC scale flying.
In the simulator
A demanding twin-engine warbird transport. The C-47 in our sim has the kind of inertia and deliberate handling that suits a serious cargo aircraft — twin-engine throttle coordination, asymmetric-thrust awareness on takeoff and landing, and the kind of unhurried pattern flying that real C-47 pilots flew. Use it to practice serious twin-engine scale technique. Pairs well with airport-class landscapes that have proper runways. A natural sibling to the Douglas C-47 Dakota (RAF service livery) and Douglas DC-3 Eastern Airlines (civil livery) in this same pack — same airframe, three different liveries representing the type's military and civilian careers.
