George Z. Bush wrote:


Out of curiosity, did you ever fly the C-46 at all, and if so, how did
it compare to the C-47? I've often wondered what the difference in run
length for take offs and landings was.

Finally.....somebody asked me something I can speak about from personal
experience. Yes, I had about a thousand hours or so in C-46s, most in the
left seat.

That's enough left seat time to have memorised the individual screw
holes in the instrument panel. From memory there were only a few
thousand made, unlike the C-47 - did many of them end up in the ETO? I
know they were common in the CBI on the Hump, but I've seen little
reference to them in Europe. I suppose the smaller numbers, extra
complexity and much greater fuel usage limited them a bit. Bigger than a
B-17, too.

operations. Needless to say, it required a bit more run length for T/Os
and landings. In the air, unless the hydraulic control boosters were
operable, it handled about like what I imagine picking up a horse one
handed might be.

I think the hydraulic boosters were removed when they were demilitarised
- I vaguely recall the pilot of one of the South American "airlines"
saying they were put back to manual and required both feet on the panel
to do anything at speed or in bad weather. I wonder if any of them are
still flying - the last one I heard of was around 5 years back. The
engines are a tad more complex than the R-1280s and I guess parts would
be a problem.

gliders. I recall once (as a lark) taking off a PSP runway in Italy on a
training flight with the wind directly on the nose at about 25 mph on
cruise settings just to see if it would do it.

There is still one at least flying locally - occasionally hear it
droning overhead and go out and watch it slowly drift across the sky. I
used to see a lot of them 40 years back coming in to our country strip
and in strong wind you'd could almost outrun them on the flare. Lovely
things. There's one from the RAAF Research & Development Unit in the
local air museum - it was taken out of service about 10 years back after
a belly landing. It wasn't repaired and the damage from the landing is
minimal - just a few small scrapes and dents which is testament to the
strength of construction.


Dave.