Vintage Aircraft Allows Restorers to Soar Into the Past

Twin propellers on a 52-year-old silver-and-red Douglas DC-2 slowly chugged, then whirred rapidly as smoke poured from exhaust pipes.

Hats flew off the heads of many in the crowd of about 300 as the 14-passenger plane, once heralded “as the most luxurious transport in the sky,” turned and headed down the runway, then soared into the air. Everybody applauded and cheered.

It was turn-back-the-clock Saturday at Long Beach Airport.

Honored by Roosevelt

In 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt presented Donald W. Douglas, president of Douglas Aircraft Co., the prestigious Collier trophy for producing DC-2s and called the DC-2 “America’s greatest achievement in aviation in 1935.”

There were 156 DC-2s that rolled off the assembly lines in Santa Monica from 1934 through 1936. The DC-2s were followed by more than 10,600 DC-3s produced from 1935 through 1945. About 2,000 DC-3s are still in service throughout the world.

But, so far as is known, only eight DC-2s have survived. And only two of those are still flying, one privately owned in South Carolina--and the one that flew for the first time in 12 years Saturday at Long Beach.

“Wow! Look at her go,” shouted Harold Krausnick, 71, as the DC-2 became airborne. “That’s what we’ve been looking forward to for five years.”

Krausnick is one of a couple of dozen longtime and retired McDonnell Douglas employees who have helped restore the DC-2 ever since the Douglas Historical Foundation acquired the airplane in 1983. “When we got her she was a basket case,” said Krausnick.

Retired Douglas test pilots Dan Colburn, 64, and Bud Milligan, 68, flew the rejuvenated DC-2 on the first flight since restoration began. Milligan flew DC-2s for Panagra airlines in Chile and Argentina in the early 1940s.

Fully in Command

“How did the controls behave, Dan?” shouted John Winton, 72, who headed the cockpit restoration effort, as Colburn pulled the plane to a stop and leaned out the pilot’s window.

“Like a million dollars,” responded Colburn with a big grin.

Milligan and Colburn flew above Long Beach for 45 minutes cruising at 140 m.p.h. The plane’s top speed is 205.

Dewey Smith, 50, vice president of communications for Douglas and president of the Douglas Historical Foundation, told how $150,000 was raised by raffles, donations and other means to restore the DC-2, which was originally delivered for $75,000 to Pan Am March 17, 1935.

The old plane was later owned by Mexicana Airlines, Aviteca Guatemala and from 1952 to 1971 was used to airlift U.S. Forest Service smoke jumpers to forest fires in Montana and Idaho. Stan Bernstein of Tulsa bought the plane in 1971 and a year later donated it to the Donald Douglas Museum in Santa Monica, which leased it to the foundation for 15 years.

The aviation buffs plan to fly the restored DC-2 around the country to various air meets.

“This baby sat forlornly at Santa Monica Airport rotting away until five years ago when a group of us decided to save it from the scrap heap and restore it,” explained Smith. “It has been a labor of love ever since.”