AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 173 / 321

Plate 173 of 321 · Early jet age · Airliner and military transport

Douglas DC-6 & C-118 Liftmaster

VC-118A 53-3240, painted as Douglas VC-118A Liftmaster 53-3240, the VIP C-118A of the Special Air Missions fleet that flew Presidents Kennedy and Johnson on shorter trips, displayed at the Pima Air & Space Museum, Tucson, Arizona: the military DC-6A, Douglas’s pressurised four-engined transport with four Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp radials driving three-bladed propellers, a long circular-section fuselage, a straight-tapered wing with 7° dihedral and twin-wheel main gear retracting into the inner nacelles: a black nose cap, light blue over the flight deck sweeping into a light-blue window cheatline with a bronze pinstripe and white stripe beneath, light blue under the nose, white upper fuselage and fin, polished natural metal below and on the wings and nacelles, ‘UNITED STATES OF AMERICA’ on both sides, the presidential seal by the port door, star-and-bar insignia ahead of the fin, the US flag and ‘33240’ on the fin and ‘USAF’ under the port wing, as photographed at Pima (no DC-6 or C-118 is preserved in a UK museum; shape from the US Navy R6D-1 three-view checked against photographs; the fin height follows the published 28 ft 8 in rather than the drawing’s side view, and stencils are left off).

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as Douglas VC-118A Liftmaster 53-3240, the VIP C-118A of the Special Air Missions fleet that flew Presidents Kennedy and Johnson on shorter trips, displayed at the Pima Air & Space Museum, Tucson, Arizona: the military DC-6A, Douglas’s pressurised four-engined transport with four Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp radials driving three-bladed propellers, a long circular-section fuselage, a straight-tapered wing with 7° dihedral and twin-wheel main gear retracting into the inner nacelles: a black nose cap, light blue over the flight deck sweeping into a light-blue window cheatline with a bronze pinstripe and white stripe beneath, light blue under the nose, white upper fuselage and fin, polished natural metal below and on the wings and nacelles, ‘UNITED STATES OF AMERICA’ on both sides, the presidential seal by the port door, star-and-bar insignia ahead of the fin, the US flag and ‘33240’ on the fin and ‘USAF’ under the port wing, as photographed at Pima (no DC-6 or C-118 is preserved in a UK museum; shape from the US Navy R6D-1 three-view checked against photographs; the fin height follows the published 28 ft 8 in rather than the drawing’s side view, and stencils are left off). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.4 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (DC-6, C-118A, VC-118 & R6D); engine, crew and dimensions are for the VC-118A 53-3240 modelled here.

History

The VC-118A Liftmaster

Douglas’s four-engined DC-4 had served the US forces as the C-54 Skymaster throughout the Second World War, but it was unpressurised, and airlines wanted something that could fly higher and faster, above the weather. Douglas lengthened the fuselage, pressurised it and fitted Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp engines in place of the DC-4’s smaller radials. Ordered by the Army Air Forces as the XC-112A, the prototype first flew at Santa Monica on 15 February 1946, and the DC-6 went into airline service with American and United in the spring of 1947, competing head to head with Lockheed’s Constellation.

Its start was troubled. After two DC-6s caught fire in the air in late 1947, one of them crashing at Bryce Canyon in Utah, the fleet was grounded for four months while the cause, fuel venting into a cabin-heater air intake, was found and cured. Douglas then built the DC-6A, a strengthened freighter with cargo doors, and the DC-6B, a longer airliner without them, which many pilots thought the finest piston-engined airliner ever made. The US Air Force bought the DC-6A as the C-118A Liftmaster and the US Navy as the R6D-1, and both flew them as long-range transports and VIP aircraft well into the jet age. The first presidential DC-6, Harry Truman’s VC-118 ‘Independence’, entered service in 1947.

Douglas built 704 DC-6s of all kinds before production ended in 1958. They flew on airline routes across the world, and as the jets took over they moved on to charter, freight and fire-fighting work. A few still fly cargo in Alaska. None is in a UK museum.

This airframe

VC-118A Liftmaster 53-3240

53-3240The airframe modelled

53-3240 (construction number 44611) was built as a C-118A and completed as a VIP transport, the VC-118A, and delivered to the 1254th Air Transport Wing, the Special Air Missions fleet that flew the President and senior officials, on 23 December 1955. In the early 1960s it carried Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, using the call sign ‘Air Force One’ whenever the President was on board. Kennedy took it on shorter trips and into airfields too small for the new Boeing jets, among them flights to the short strip near his family home at Hyannis Port. It later went back to general VIP work, and on 18 June 1975 it was retired to the Military Aircraft Storage and Disposition Center at Davis-Monthan, next door to the Pima Air & Space Museum, Tucson, where it is now displayed among the museum’s former presidential aircraft. The model shows it as photographs of it at Pima do: a black nose cap; light blue over the flight deck sweeping into a light-blue window cheatline with a bronze pinstripe and a white stripe beneath; light blue under the nose; white upper fuselage and fin; polished natural metal below and on the wings and nacelles; ‘UNITED STATES OF AMERICA’ on both sides; the presidential seal by the port door; star-and-bar insignia ahead of the fin; the US flag and ‘33240’ on the fin; and ‘USAF’ under the port wing. Its shape comes from the US Navy’s three-view of the R6D-1, the Navy’s twin of the C-118A, checked against photographs. The fin height follows the published 28 ft 8 in rather than the drawing’s side view, the sizes and positions of the markings are estimated from photographs, and stencils are left off.

Where to see one

Not on charge

VC-118A 53-3240, flown by President Kennedy, is at Pima Air & Space, Tucson; Truman’s VC-118 ‘Independence’ is at the National Museum of the US Air Force. None is in a UK museum.

All 321 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.