File:United States Air Force - C-47 Skytrain (cargo plane) 3 (48105531618).jpg

(South Dakota Air & Space Museum collection, Ellsworth Air Force Base, Rapid City, South Dakota, USA)

From exhibit signage:

C-47 Skytrain

Top Speed - 230 miles per hour Crew - 2-4 Range - Continental Payload - 6,000 pounds of cargo

Flying the Hump

During World War II, C-47s like this one flew over the Himalayas to supply Americans and Chinese fighting the Japanese. For three years, daily flights across the world's highest mountain range were the only way to deliver fuel and ammunition to Allied forces in China. Lighter than other transport planes, Skytrains could fly fairly high. But they couldn't clear the tallest peaks, so their crews threaded through the maze of rocky, snow-covered passes. The operation's commander said, "After the Hump, [we] knew that we could fly anything anywhere anytime."

The heavier C-46 Commando was the workhorse of the Hump, but had so many mechanical problems that crews called it a "flying coffin".

The Royal Air Force also flew C-47s over the Hump. Its British nickname was the Dakota.

Is that an atomic fly on the side?

That's the logo of a joint United States and Mexican program to combat larval flies that were feeding on cattle and sheep in the 1970s. Skytrains dropped flies that had been exposed to atomic radiation, sterilizing them. The sterilized flies mated with healthy flies, producing no offspring, and eventually the flies died off.

Planes flew precise patterns to cover affected areas completely with sterile flies. Irradiated flies are the stuff of science fiction, but the program worked.

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