The Last Time, DC-3

At 10:22am at Whiteside County Airport, Rock Falls IL. the call came to "Start your engines". 52 radials coughed and smoked and came to life with a beautiful sound. Of course the video on my camera decides to throw a "Murphy" and I have no sound/motion to share with you. If you are interested in photos let me know and I can post a few. The weekend event  preceeding this was also threatened by weather but in the end the sun came out and all 20000 visitors and participants had a great time.

 In spite of some challenging weather, and the never-ending maintenance logistics involved in flying a 75-year-old airplane, at one point, 28 DC-3s and C-47s -- and one of two of the only flying DC-2s in the world -- were parked on the ramp at Whiteside County Airport, in Rock Falls, Illinois. Of those, 23 airplanes formed up in the skies over Illinois on Monday, July 26, to create a record-setting mass formation -- the largest formation of these aircraft to occur since World War II. That morning, the event’s organizers received a call from EAA clearing the formation into the AirVenture airspace at 2,500 feet MSL. EAA had solved the logistics of recovering and parking a multitude of the large airplanes (each with a wingspan of 96 feet) in the midst of water-soaked show grounds, and the arrival could come into Oshkosh as originally intended.

The flight maneuvered on to a 40-mile final for a show pass down Runway 9 at AirVenture. With the Herpa DC-3 as lead and coming over top, the order was given: "This is it boys, tighten her up, lights on, smoke on!" After passing directly over AirVenture, the flight broke for landing on 5-second intervals and formed a single-ship line of 23 DC-3s perfectly spaced with gear down at 100 knots, and landing checks complete. The continuous conga line of expertly spaced Douglas aircraft was cleared to land on Runway 18. All aircraft were down and clear in an amazing 16 minutes and 34 seconds.