D-Day Airplane - C-47

We toured the Wiskey-7 C-47 airplane.

During World War II, C-47 airplanes were first deployed to Northern Africa where they brought supplies in and carried out the wounded. Several hundred were manufactured in California during 1943. When crossing the Atlantic, they commonly followed a northern route which included refueling stops in Maine, Greenland, Iceland and Scotland.

During D-Day operations around 250 C-47's were used to drop paratroopers in France. The side doors of the aircraft were removed, the paratroopers jumped from low altitudes, and their shoots were opened automatically upon aircraft exit by attaching a rip cord cable to a metal wire running down the middle of the top of the aircraft. The metal wire is visible in the photo below, left.

The kids didn't think it looked like a comfortable vehicle for travel,

but were very impressed with all the buttons and gadgets in the cockpit. They decided flying a plane must be difficult.

The home for this particular aircraft is an airplane museum in Geneseo, NY. For a few days just before the 75th D-Day anniversary in 2014, it was on display at the Ramstein AFB in Germany and then it was flown in reenactment missions for the anniversary celebration.





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