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There's at least one C-46 operational that is on the airshow circuit. I met a fellow that flew in C-46s in the CBI flying over the "Hump" to China.
There's a cargo operation that flies out of Long Beach airport that operates DC-3s (they have at least three of them) to Santa Catalina Island. Apparently the only economical aircraft for the runway on the island.
The McDonald Douglass plant that built them, although gone now, was across the street, tested and flew the completed aircraft out of Long Beach airport, then known as Daugherty Field.
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I grew up around a DC-3 and a C-47 at the University of Tennessee. The C-47 was used by my father's group as an infrared imaging airframe. They cut a square port in the floor and bottom skin and mounted the cameras over it. My father was the photographer and worked the cameras with his feet dangling out the hatch. It was used in a CIA contract to develop the ability to remotely sense marijuana. They forwarded the project to NASA, where they were tasked with orbiting Cape Kennedy Space Center during the launch of Apollo 13. Had there been a launch abort in flight, the team was tasked with using the infrared gear to track down the capsule once it had been powered off the rocket assembly by the rocket motor in the launch escape tower.
The DC-3 was used to ferry the University of Tennessee school athletic teams to games. It suffered an interesting casualty when a Piedmont Airways DC-9 got its main mount off in the dirt while taxiing and the pilot electect to try and blast the plane pout with his engines. Unfortunately he attempted this while the stern of the ship was pointed at the general aviation ramp of Cherokee Aviation at McGhee Tyson airport in Knoxville. Once he pulled his throttles back, gave up, shut down, and exited the ship, the pilot came to realize that he had blown the control surfaces off of about forty aircraft including the U.T. Gooney Bird, and had deposited them neatly against the chain-link security fence behind the planes. My father and I arrived soon after. Piedmont flew in a crew over the hump of the Smokies from their hub in Charlotte. That crew made temporary repairs and then flew the planes over the hump to Charlotte where permanent repairs were made and certified. Amazing.
The pilot of the two Douglas planes and the U.T. Aero Commander was our good friend, Charlie Lockwood. I flew with him. Charlie was one of those guys who was absolutely dead serious about safety. If he made a short hop of five miles he'd properly preflight the plane before he took it up again and return. Charlie was killed and the DC-3 was destroyed in the '70s on the way back from a U.T. basketball game. He stopped in at a little airport to refuel and requested avgas. Before taking off he was seen preflighting the plane and checking the fuel cocks with a glass to make sure there wasn't any water in the gas. He took off, reported missing engines, tried to get back to the field, but he ran out of altitude. The FAA found that the attendant at the airport had filled the tanks with JP-4 jet fuel. Since it floats above avgas it didn't show in Charlie's fuel check. When the residual avgas ran out the engines conked out and that was that.
Bob
