Instructions for loading a jeep into a C-47 cargo plane from Loading of Field Artillery Materiel for Air Transport, Instruction Memorandum, Field Artillery School, Fort Sill, Oklahoma, March 1943.
The C-47 airplane. This airplane has a pay load of 4900 pounds when loaded with 450 gallons of gasoline and is capable of carrying the 37-mm gun, the 75-mm howitzer and the 105-mm howitzer, M3, but no heavier weapons. Early models have a door only 70 inches wide; later models have a door 84½ inches wide which permits the 1/4-ton truck to be loaded. Weapons and vehicles are loaded by hand by means of a ramp.
Loading the ¼-ton truck into a cargo airplane.
Loading the ¼-ton truck (continued).
Interior of the C-47 cargo airplane.
I felw EC-47’s out of DaNang RVN. Eight hour missions 135 missions. We we were the predicessor of the unmanned drones. We had $10 million of super snooper computers on board.
The C-47 was the forerunner of the C-130 and the modern combat airlift mission. Those guys did amazing things with those old Gooney Birds, not only in Europe but, particularly, in the Pacific. By the time Vietnam came around, they were outdated as transports so the Air Force put guns on some and added snooper equipment to others. (No, Chico, EC-47s are not forerunners of unmanned drones. The Air Force already had unmanned drones before they EC-47s came along. They were launched from DC-130s out of Bien Hoa and Da Nang.) The C-47 and C-53 changed the course of World War II in the Southwest Pacific in 1942-43.