Overview

The Douglas Super DC-3 (military R4D-8, later C-117D) is the airplane the DC-3 could have become: a 1949 rebuild with 1,475 hp Wright R-1820 Cyclones, a longer fuselage, a shorter squared wing and taller tail, and main gear that folds flush into the nacelles, cruising near 217 knots against the DC-3’s 180. On paper it is faster, hauls more, and flies better on one engine. Yet it arrived too late: airlines had already committed to the DC-4 and the Convair-liners, so Douglas sold just five civil examples before the line closed.

The one operator who wanted it was the U.S. Navy, which rebuilt roughly a hundred wartime R4D airframes to R4D-8 / C-117D standard and flew them into the 1970s. That, not the airline market, is why a Super DC-3 exists to buy at all: the survivors are Navy-surplus warbirds in collector and museum hands, not a used-aircraft-market type. A buyer who only needs a working radial twin should buy the far more common DC-3; the Super DC-3 is for the collector who wants the rarer, faster, better-performing member of the family and will accept its scarcity.

Key Features for GA Buyers

• Faster and stronger than a DC-3. The 1,475 hp Cyclones lift a roughly 31,000 lb gross, about 6,000 lb more than the DC-3, cruise near 217 kt, and climb about 1,300 fpm, with better single-engine performance.
• Cleaner, modernized airframe. A shorter squared wing, taller square tail, flush-retracting main gear, and semi-retractable tailwheel cut drag and updated the 1930s design.
• Navy pedigree and support base. The R4D-8 / C-117D population means military manuals, spares, and warbird-community expertise exist for the type, unusual for an aircraft of only five civil builds.

Trade-offs

• Extreme rarity. Only five civil DC-3S were built plus roughly a hundred Navy conversions, so this is a collector and museum aircraft, not something offered for sale in any number.
• Bigger radial economics. Two 1,475 hp Cyclones burn more than the DC-3’s Twin Wasps, roughly 120 gph of avgas, and carry the same scarce-radial-expertise and reserve burden, so direct operating cost runs above the DC-3’s.
• Thin data and military provenance. Most survivors are ex-Navy, so a civil owner inherits military paperwork, and published performance and cost figures are sparse because so few were sold.
• A two-crew, endorsement-heavy airplane. Like the DC-3 it needs high-performance, complex, and multi-engine endorsements and realistically two pilots.

See Also

• Beechcraft 18 – the smaller vintage twin-radial taildragger, a lighter utility peer Compare
• Beechcraft 18 Turbo – the turbine-converted Twin Beech, a modernized radial-twin alternative Compare
• Douglas DC-3 – the classic, far more common Twin Wasp original this modernizes Compare