Primus in Toto – First in Everything. That is the meaning of the Latin phrase painted within the emblem of the 62nd Troop Carrier Squadron emblazoned on the nose of a beautifully restored Douglas C-53D Skytrooper The Yacht Club that was the subject of much attention during the 2024 EAA Airventure at Oshkosh. It is an aircraft with an incredible history behind it and a big journey ahead of it still, as it prepares to fly to a new home in Brazil.
The aircraft in question was originally manufactured at Douglas Aircraft’s Santa Monica, California, factory as construction number 11665, it was delivered to the United States Army Air Force as serial number 43-68738 on March 30, 1943, and was flown first to Daggett Army Airfield (now Barstow-Daggett Airport), CA, then to Long Beach to receive further modifications before proceeding eastward on its way to Europe. According to its Army Air Force record card, 42-68378 was flown to Sedalia Army Airfield (now Whiteman AFB), MO, and Lawson Army Airfield at Fort Benning (now Fort Moore), GA. Soon afterwards, 42-68738 was flown to Morrison Field (now West Palm Beach International Airport), FL, to join the 62nd Troop Carrier Squadron, 314th Troop Carrier Group, 52d Troop Carrier Wing. Morrison Field was also the last stop in the continental United States for aircraft set to fly the South Atlantic ferry route.
During the Second World War, aircraft being ferried from the United States to northern Europe flew the North Atlantic route through Labrador, Greenland, and Iceland on the way to Britain, while those headed to North Africa and the Mediterranean left Florida to make refueling stops through the Caribbean, British Guiana and Brazil before crossing the South Atlantic to West Africa via a stopover on British-held Ascension Island. Those headed to Egypt typically landed in Africa in the British colony of Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana) before proceeding through Nigeria and Sudan, while others flew to French West Africa (modern-day Senegal, Mali, Mauritania, Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Benin) before flying to Algeria and Tunisia.
As part of the 62nd TCS/314th TCG, 42-68738 left Morrison Field on May 11, 1943 on the South Atlantic route to join the 12th Air Force in Tunisia. On May 13, the final German and Italian forces in North Africa surrendered to British and American forces, but as the German and Italian prisoners of war were being brought into custody, the Allies were already in the midst of clandestine preparations for Operation Husky; the invasion of Sicily. Meanwhile, 42-68738 and the rest of the 314th TCG made refueling stops in Puerto Rico, Antigua, and British Guiana before making their way through Brazil, with the last airfield in the Americas being Parnamirim Airport in Natal, on the easternmost tip of Brazil’s Atlantic coast. From there they proceeded to Ascension Island, where they rested and refueled at Wideawake Field before proceeding to Dakar in modern-day Senegal. From Dakar they flew over the Sahara Desert and landed in Kairouan, Tunisia, to await preparations for Operation Husky.
As the men of the 62nd Troop Carrier Squadron waited for the invasion, they slept in tents staked near their planes and the gliders they were to tow into battle. The men had to deal with heavy rainfall that forced them to rebuild their bivouacs after every storm came through, along with snakes and spiders. Amenities were few and far between, with the men initially having to wait for their cots to arrive in Kairouan, and showers were provided through a captured Italian army water truck.
42-68738’s wartime records show that the aircraft would participate in the largest airborne assaults in the European Theater of Operations, such as Operation Husky (the invasion of Sicily), the invasion of Normandy, Operation Market Garden, and Battle of the Bulge. 42-68738 would sustain several close calls, such as when it was damaged on December 23, 1944, when an 88m Flak shell exploded off the left aileron, rendering it inoperable. But the flight crew on The Yacht Club was able to safely land at an American forward airbase and be repaired to fly again. In March 1945, The Yacht Club also participated in the final major airborne operation in Europe during WWII, Operation Varsity, the crossing of the Rhine in Germany. When the war in Europe ended on May 8, 1945, the US Army Air Force began rotating many of its now-surplus bombers and transports back to the United States, where on October 28, 1945, it was stricken from the USAAF’s inventory and offered for sale through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the War Assets Administration.
With its military service having ended, 42-68738 was acquired by Trans World Airlines and became a DC-3A with the airline number 303 and the registration NC86558. The work to convert the war-weary transport to a peacetime civilian airliner was carried out by the Timm Aircraft Corporation of Van Nuys, CA, a company that was founded by Otto Timm, who took Charles Lindbergh on his first flight in 1922. From the late 1940s to the early 1950s, NC86558 flew for TWA before later flying with Northeast Airlines and United, but by the mid-1950s, with larger passenger transports such as the Douglas DC-4 and Lockheed Constellation taking over the long-range routes, soon followed by the first jetliners, NC86558 was re-registered as N66W, and flown by numerous owners for a variety of purposes. Some of these early owners used N66W as an executive transport, but later on, the aircraft became a transport for skydivers for over ten years in Sandwich, IL and Xenia, OH before the aircraft found itself sitting on the airport apron at William H. Morse State Airport in Bennington, VT with the N-number N353MM (not to be confused with another DC-3 that later took up that same N-number). According to an article in The News Tribune written by Mike Archbold, the condition of the aircraft in Bennington was as follows: “Its tires were flat; the interior was just the framing under the aluminum skin. The once elegant passenger seats had been dumped in a pile.” However, it was at this point that in 2006, Eric Thun and Dan Merritt from Washington state found that the aircraft’s two Pratt & Whitney R-1830 engines were still serviceable, and that the DC-3 had only minimum corrosion and instruments in good condition, all signs that with enough work, it could be made ready for a ferry flight to Washington state.
Three trips to Vermont and six days worth of work in the snow later, Thun and Merritt loaded a 55-gallon oil drum in the aircraft now registered as N43XX and topped off with 800 gallons of avgas. After two stops in Ohio and Nebraska, the two pilots landed N43XX at Pierce County Airport in Puyallup, WA, also known as Thun Field, which had been founded by John Thun, Eric’s father. It was there that the real restoration work would begin.
During the three-year restoration, Thun and Merritt were removing the old insulation from the fuselage when they found the names of about 20 soldiers who had flown in the former C-53, written in pencil on the interior skin. After photographing and documenting the signatures they found, they put some new insulation in the fuselage. Thun also tracked down one of the wartime pilots who flew 42-68738, 1st Lt. Richard D. Stevens, who was living in Texas when he received a phone call from Eric Thun. Thun recalled that phone call he had with Stevens saying, “He thought it was pretty neat.…He said it was such a good machine.”
Thun and Merritt fitted N43XX with the refurbished and reupholstered seats found in Vermont, complete with original cup holders. The interior trim was a gray and silver scheme, with overhead storage compartments installed above the 20 passenger seats. In the rear of the plane, a lavatory with a black tile countertop for the sink was installed, and an eight-foot couch from another DC-3 was installed at the front. Thun recounted that the couch had been salvaged from a garbage dump by another pilot at Pierce County Airport, and when Thun and Merritt flew in from Vermont, the man offered them the salvaged couch for free.
Finally, the old Douglas was given a new name; Thunderbird Flying Service, in honor of the company John Thun ran when he owned the airport. The restoration was completed in 2009, and in 2013, the aircraft was acquired by Wings of Valor, LLC of Perris, CA, with the organization selling rides in Thunderbird Flying Service and flying to airshows and fly-ins at airports such as John Wayne, Flabob, Chino, Cable, Fullerton, Riverside and Long Beach. There were also opportunities for paying passengers to partake in Christmas Light Flights, where Christmas lights were strung up in the passenger cabin, and passengers were taken on night flights to see their local city lights from the air. A similar type of flight is also offered by Greatest Generation Aircraft (GGA) out of Fort Worth, TX with their Douglas C-49 Southern Cross (see this previous article here).
Another popular flight was the Murder Mystery, where the premise was around General Henry “Hap” Arnold collapsing on the DC-3 couch during a flight and being found dead. Though it was initially believed he had a heart attack, it was determined that he was poisoned, with the guests on the flight playing characters in the story before, during, and after the flight, and only after disembarking from the DC-3 would the murderer’s identity and motives be revealed.
In addition to scenic flights, the aircraft was also flown on several occasions to EAA Airventure at Oshkosh, and often flew locally alongside another C-53, the Commemorative Air Force Inland Empire Wing’s D-Day Doll, based out of Riverside Municipal Airport. In 2021, however, the aircraft was sold to a new owner, and with the aircraft now set to be reconfigured once again, it was brought to Aerometal International of Aurora, Oregon, to be restored as a wartime C-53 Skytrooper. For the next three years, work was carried out, and while the aircraft has retained some passenger seats, they have been reconfigured to look somewhat like military aircraft seats so as not to take away from the historical atmosphere inside. The aircraft would also receive the name The Yacht Club, with the wartime emblem of the 62nd Troop carrier Squadron (now the US Air Force’s 62nd Airlift Squadron) over an outline of the shape of Brazil, painted on the nose of the C-53. Overseeing and participating in much of that work was Kyle Erickson, a team member in Project Development and Finishes at Aerometal, who graciously provided some insights into the restoration:
“Between myself and a few other historians, we were not able to uncover any identity or original photographs of 42-68738 during her service in WWII. I proposed she carry the name and nose art of “The Yacht Club” to pay homage to the squadron she entered the war with. The 62nd Troop Carrier Squadron, 314th Troop Carrier Group. At Aerometal, we strive to provide the most in-depth and airworthy restorations to our customers. Many projects start as a “bare minimum” to achieve airworthiness. During the process, we tend to uncover significant historical features of the aircraft that lead to deeper and more comprehensive work-scopes. This being our first full “military” restoration, we wanted to ensure that everything we touched was up to snuff in order to properly pay our respects to this particular aircraft.”
“Some of the significant challenges of this particular restoration was the severity of the structural repairs required to give this aircraft new life and a safe one at that…roughly 18,000 hours in structural repairs alone. Another huge undertaking was the historical research in achieving a proper livery and finish specifications for all the components getting overhauled. Fortunately, we have a full library of war-time Douglas Aircraft blueprints and their quite in-depth F-71 Finish Specifications. We really wanted to create a time portal with this restoration. An aircraft that people can see and touch that fully encapsulates what someone during WWII would see or feel.”
“The aircraft has been completely re-wired, re-rigged and re-plumbed to ensure its function and safety. The shuffle between technical, structure, interior and finish work was orchestrated well enough to keep everyone off each other’s toes. The livery was applied to represent the 62nd TCS liveries in late 1943, post operation Husky I and Husky II. Our interior was a little bit of a challenge, as the C-53 was a DC-3 converted for military use. These were airframes with pre-war contracts that were militarized for troop transport, medical evacuation, and supply. Our factory DC-3 seats have been fabricated and upholstered to give the feel of a military transport but with the comfort of an airliner. The original interior would’ve been the aluminum paratroop seat pans down the sidewalls with litter bearing straps or brackets on the fuselage frames; same as a C-47. The compromise to incorporate airliner seats has paid off for those fortunate enough to take a ride on this beauty.”
The Yacht Club made its debut airshow appearance at Oshkosh during the 2024 Airventure, but it is set to find a new home abroad in the WS Aircraft Museum in Campo Largo, Brazil. Established in 2015, this collection of meticulously restored aircraft already includes a Boeing-Stearman N2S, Piper Cub, T-6 Texan, and two WACO biplanes among others. 42-68738 represents the largest aircraft in the museum’s inventory, and since its return to Aurora for further work, it will make the long journey to Brazil for the first time in over 80 years. While many North Americans may be sad to see The Yacht Club leave, it must be remembered that while plenty of other airworthy C-47s and C-53s can be found in the USA, this will represent an exciting addition to the Brazilian warbird community. The museum is highly active on social media, with many of these posts relating to The Yacht Club during its restoration and its journey to Oshkosh. We at Vintage Aviation News wish the best of luck to The Yacht Club in its future travels!
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Raised in Fullerton, California, Adam has earned a bachelor's degree in history and is now pursuing his master's in the same field. Fascinated by aviation history from a young age, he has visited numerous air museums across the United States, including the National Air and Space Museum and the San Diego Air and Space Museum. He volunteers at the Planes of Fame Air Museum in Chino as a docent and researcher, gaining hands-on experience with aircraft maintenance. Known for his encyclopedic knowledge of aviation history, he is particularly interested in the stories of individual aircraft and their postwar journeys. Active in online aviation communities, he shares his work widely and seeks further opportunities in the field.
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