Douglas DC-4

The Douglas DC-4 is a four-engined propeller-driven airliner developed by the Douglas Aircraft Company. It served during World War II, in the Berlin Airlift and into the 1960s in a military role. From 1945, many civil airlines operated it worldwide.

Design and development
After the DC-4E proved to be complicated to maintain and uneconomical, Douglas responded to the Eastern and United requests for a smaller and simpler derivative. Before the definitive DC-4 could enter service the outbreak of World War II meant production was channeled to the United States Army Air Forces and the type was given the military designation C-54 Skymaster, with US Navy aircraft designated Douglas R5D. The first aircraft, a C-54, flew from Clover Field in Santa Monica, California on 14 February 1942.

The DC-4's tricycle landing gear allowed its fuselage to be of constant cross-section for most of its length, so it could be easily stretched into the later DC-6 and DC-7. 1,163 C-54/R5Ds were built for the United States military between 1942 and January 1946; 79 DC-4s were built postwar.



Operational history
The DC-4/C-54 proved a popular and reliable type, 1245 being built between May 1942 and August 1947, including 79 postwar DC-4s. Several remain in service as of 2011. An example is Buffalo Airways of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories.

Douglas continued to develop the type during the war in preparation for a return to airline use when peace returned. The type's sales prospects were affected when 500 wartime ex military C-54s and R5Ds came onto the civil market, many being converted to DC-4 standard by Douglas. DC-4s were a favorite of charter airlines such as Great Lakes Airlines, North American Airlines, Universal Airlines and Transocean Airlines. In the 1950s Transocean Airlines (Oakland, California) was the largest civil operator of the C-54/DC-4.



Douglas produced 79 new-build DC-4s between January 1946 and August 9, 1947, the last example being delivered to South African Airways. Pressurization was an option, but all civil DC-4s (and C-54s) were built unpressurized.

Purchasers of new-build DC-4s included Pan American Airways, National Airlines, Northwest Airlines and Western Airlines in the USA, and KLM Royal Dutch Air Lines, Scandinavian Airlines System, Iberia Airlines of Spain, Swissair, Air France, Sabena Belgian World Airlines, Cubana de Aviación, Avianca, Aerolíneas Argentinas, Aeropostal of Venezuela (1946) and South African Airways overseas. Several airlines used new-build DC-4s to start scheduled transatlantic flights between Latin America and Europe. Among the earliest were Aerolíneas Argentinas (1946), Aeropostal of Venezuela (1946), Iberia Airlines of Spain (1946), and Cubana de Aviación (1948).

Basic prices for a new DC-4 in 1946-7 was around £140,000-£160,000. In 1960 used DC-4s were available for around £80,000.

Variants



 * DC-4
 * Main production airliner, post-war.


 * Canadair North Star
 * Canadian production of a Rolls-Royce Merlin powered variant, plus a single Pratt & Whitney R-2800 powered aircraft.

Notable appearances in media
The DC-4 featured extensively in the 1954 John Wayne motion picture The High and the Mighty (film).

A DC-4 appears as the "Amalgamated" airliner that must be piloted by stewardess Doris Day in the 1956 thriller "Julie."

The DC-4 was used for the 1957 thriller Zero Hour!.

Survivors


Very few DC-4s remain in service today. The last two passenger DC-4s believed to be operating worldwide are based in Johannesburg, South Africa. They fly with old South African Airways (SAA) colors. They are ZS-AUB "Outeniqua" and ZS-BMH "Lebombo" and are owned by the South African Airways Museum Society and operated by Skyclass Aviation, a company specializing in classic airliner charters to exotic destinations in Africa. A 1944 built DC-4 is currently being restored in New South Wales, Australia. Buffalo Airways in Canada operates roughly a dozen DC-4s (former C-54s of various versions) for hauling cargo and aerial firefighting.