#37, C-47 Skytrain: One of the Four Weapons That Won the War
On the night of June 5-6, 1944, over 800 C-47 Skytrains dropped 13,000 paratroopers behind the Normandy beaches, the largest airborne assault in history up to that point. By war's end, C-47s had dropped 60,000 paratroopers into combat and carried 300,000 wounded soldiers to rear-area hospitals. Dwight Eisenhower ranked the C-47 alongside the bazooka, the jeep, and the atomic bomb as the four weapons that most contributed to Allied victory.
The military version of the Douglas DC-3 airliner, the C-47 was simple, rugged, and ubiquitous. It flew the Hump, the treacherous Himalayan supply route to China, where turbulence and icing killed hundreds of crews. It supplied besieged forces at Bastogne and dropped supplies to Partisans across occupied Europe. After the war, C-47s flew the Berlin Airlift. Over 10,000 were built, and amazingly, some are still flying commercially today, more than 80 years later. For logistics experts and military history enthusiasts, the C-47 proved that the unglamorous transport aircraft can be as decisive as any fighter or bomber.
