Battle of Britain Memorial Flight - Dakota

Sunday 27th July ONLY

Kwicherbichen (say it out loud, you'll get it) is a very American aircraft and an example of the machine which would go on, after the war, to essentially create the airline industry- the Douglas DC3.

This particular example, ZA947 wears some distinctive black and white stripes with considerable pride - they denote that the aircraft was part of D-Day and specifically her role was to drop paratroopers on the eve of the historic event, and then carry out re-supply missions afterwards, along with evacuating casualties.

You might therefore wonder what that's got to do with airlines. Well, when the war was over thousands of examples of an aircraft which could pretty much do anything, particularly carrying people, were sat idle. Some enterprising people fitted them with seats and put them to work as, well, airliners. In fact, they still do and the DC3 continues to offer passenger services usually in remote locations where there's not much of a runway, the weather's bad and absolutely every aircraft in the skies is of no use whatsoever, apart from the truly phenomenal DC3.