| This aircraft was built as C-47A 42-24238 and delivered to USAAF on 8/23/43. Then diverted to RAF as Dakota Mk.III s/n FL517 with No. 512 Sqdn at Hendon. Shortly thereafter transferred to No.511 Sqdn at Lyneham in Wiltshire. On 11/14/45 the plane went to No. 1381 Transport Conversion Unit. Was stored for short period with No. 33 Maintenance Unit and on 11/27/46 it went to Scottish Aviation at Prestwick Airport. On 1/13/47 it was registered as G-AJAZ and sold to Westminster Airways Limited during the Berlin Airlift. 12/3/48 the plane was sold to Iberia in Spain as EC-ADR, Fleet No.51. On 12/16/65 the plane went to the Spanish Air Force, coded first as T3-61, then 745-61 and finally 901-12. After a few years it was WFU and placed in storage at Cuatro Vientos. On 8/1/79 the plane was registered N8041B to Robert Korastinsky of Air Classik in Dusseldorf, delivered to the Dusseldorf-Lohausen Airport Museum on 9/3/79. On 9/25/85 the plane was dismantled and sent to a museum at Sinsheim, near Frankfort. Last report (1988) was the plane was “mounted on a plinth with Museum Airlines titles.” (info from Arthur Pearcy’s 1988 “Douglas DC-3 Survivors”) |