AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 170 / 352

Plate 170 of 352 · Second World War · Military transport

Douglas C-54E Skymaster

C-54E 44-9144, painted as Douglas C-54E Skymaster 44-9144 (c/n 27370, civil N500EJ), ‘Spirit of Freedom’, the flying Berlin Airlift memorial of the Berlin Airlift Historical Foundation, as flown from the 2000s until a tornado wrecked it at Walterboro, South Carolina, in April 2020: a four-engined military transport with a long circular-section fuselage, four Pratt & Whitney R-2000 Twin Wasp radials driving three-bladed propellers, a low wing spanning 35.8 m, a single tall fin and a tricycle undercarriage, shown level on its wheels with the cargo door closed: natural metal overall with black de-icing boots on the wing, tailplane and fin leading edges, a black anti-glare panel on the nose, a red ‘Z’ cheatline with ‘SPIRIT OF FREEDOM’ and small national flags above it, the round Berlin Airlift badge below the cockpit, the star and bar on both sides of the rear fuselage and above the port wing, two red bands with ‘DOUGLAS C54-R5D’ and ‘BERLIN AIRLIFT’ on the fin, and black propeller blades with yellow tips (shape from the US Air Force manual’s C-54D three-view scaled to the published span and length, checked against a second three-view and photographs of this aircraft).

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as Douglas C-54E Skymaster 44-9144 (c/n 27370, civil N500EJ), ‘Spirit of Freedom’, the flying Berlin Airlift memorial of the Berlin Airlift Historical Foundation, as flown from the 2000s until a tornado wrecked it at Walterboro, South Carolina, in April 2020: a four-engined military transport with a long circular-section fuselage, four Pratt & Whitney R-2000 Twin Wasp radials driving three-bladed propellers, a low wing spanning 35.8 m, a single tall fin and a tricycle undercarriage, shown level on its wheels with the cargo door closed: natural metal overall with black de-icing boots on the wing, tailplane and fin leading edges, a black anti-glare panel on the nose, a red ‘Z’ cheatline with ‘SPIRIT OF FREEDOM’ and small national flags above it, the round Berlin Airlift badge below the cockpit, the star and bar on both sides of the rear fuselage and above the port wing, two red bands with ‘DOUGLAS C54-R5D’ and ‘BERLIN AIRLIFT’ on the fin, and black propeller blades with yellow tips (shape from the US Air Force manual’s C-54D three-view scaled to the published span and length, checked against a second three-view and photographs of this aircraft). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (2.2 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (C-54 & R5D (DC-4)); engine, crew and dimensions are for the C-54E 44-9144 modelled here.

History

The C-54E Skymaster

Douglas began the DC-4 in the late 1930s with five American airlines as a four-engined airliner able to fly coast to coast. The first design, the DC-4E of 1938, was big, pressurised and too complicated, so Douglas started again with a smaller, simpler aircraft: unpressurised, with a single tall fin, a long circular-section fuselage and a tricycle undercarriage. The airlines ordered it, but after Pearl Harbor the US Army Air Forces took over the production line, and the first aircraft flew at Santa Monica on 14 February 1942 as a military C-54.

The C-54 Skymaster became the long-range workhorse of the Army’s Air Transport Command and the Navy’s Naval Air Transport Service, which called it the R5D, flying troops, freight and casualties across the Atlantic and the Pacific. Its range and reliability made the ocean crossings routine. One, the VC-54C nicknamed ‘the Sacred Cow’, was built as President Roosevelt’s personal transport, with a lift for his wheelchair, and carried him to the Yalta conference in 1945.

When the Soviet Union cut the land routes to West Berlin in June 1948, the C-54 became the backbone of the Berlin Airlift, flying coal, food and flour from Rhein-Main and Wiesbaden down the air corridors into Tempelhof and Gatow, often landing every few minutes, until the blockade ended in 1949. It served again in the Korean War. Douglas built 1,163 for the armed forces and 79 new DC-4s for the airlines after the war, and many military aircraft went on to fly as airliners and freighters; in Britain, Aviation Traders at Southend rebuilt 21 as Carvair car ferries with a raised cockpit and a nose door.

This airframe

C-54E Skymaster 44-9144 ‘Spirit of Freedom’

44-9144The airframe modelled

44-9144 is a C-54E-DO, c/n 27370, built by Douglas for the US Army Air Forces and passed to the US Navy in May 1945 as the R5D-4 BuNo 90414. After a long civil career it was bought in 1993 by the Berlin Airlift Historical Foundation of New Jersey, which flew it as ‘Spirit of Freedom’, a flying memorial to the airlift with a museum in its cabin, to air shows in America and Europe; in 1998 it visited Coventry and Manchester. A tornado wrecked it at Walterboro, South Carolina, on 13 April 2020, and the Foundation now flies a C-54D in the same colours. None is in a UK museum. The model shows it as flown in its last years, standing level on its wheels: natural metal overall with black de-icing boots, a black anti-glare panel on the nose, a red ‘Z’ cheatline with ‘SPIRIT OF FREEDOM’ and small national flags above it, the Berlin Airlift badge below the cockpit, the star and bar on the rear fuselage and the port upper wing, two red bands with ‘DOUGLAS C54-R5D’ and ‘BERLIN AIRLIFT’ on the fin, and black propeller blades with yellow tips. Its shape comes from the US Air Force manual’s C-54D three-view scaled to the type’s span and length, checked against a second three-view and photographs of this aircraft. Under-wing markings and small stencils, which no photograph shows clearly, are left off, and the flags and badge are simplified.

Where to see one

Not on charge

Survivors are in the United States and elsewhere abroad, some still flying. None is in a UK museum.

All 352 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.