On Dec 28, 6:23*pm, "Morgans" wrote:

Jim: *Interesting concept, at the very least. *I think there are times that
such a use could have been made, but the stealth of such a landing would be
pretty minimal, I would suppose.
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Roger that.

What was the 'stick' for a DC-3? I read somewhere that the push for
the C-46 -- even the name 'Commando' -- was driven by the fact you
needed a whole damn air force of DC-3's to put a credible number of
troops on the ground AND in the correct positions. C-46, the stick
was about twice that of a C-47... but at about 4x the cost, thanks to
tooling amortization of the latter by pre-war civilian demand. So
when they DID get the required amount of lift... it was stolen! The
C-46 went to air-supply the China theater because the DC-3 couldn't
make it over the Hump with a credible cargo on-board.

The DC-3 was just what the air lines wanted; cheap to build,
economical to operate, and with a load capacity that was a close match
for the markets & routes of that era. But turn it into a weapon of
war and you find you needed so damn many of them that ANY idea of a
'stealthy' insertion was little more than a bad joke. Indeed, good
pre-event intel virtually pin-pointed the drop zone... as it did for D-
Day... if the German CinC hadn't been a total Fruit Loop, consulting
his astrologer fer crysakkes!

-Bob