Talk:C-47 Skytrain

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Front view of a C-47 "Skytrain".
Lackland AFB, San Antonio, Texas (March 2007).

The article says that C-47s were manufactured in Tulsa, OK. While Douglas had a factory there, my sources indicate that C-47s were manufactured at a different factory in Oklahoma City, which is now part of Tinker AFB. Anyone know which is correct? Tulsa or Oklahoma City? Dabarkey 05:18, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

The item at http://www.faqs.org/docs/air/avc47.html has impressive sources. GraemeLeggett 08:54, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

This source seems to be consistent with the books that I've consulted: http://www.ok-history.mus.ok.us/enc/airmanu.htm. The Tulsa plant built bombers and the OC plant built C-47s. Oklahoma City planes had a DK appended to their identifier (e.g. - C-47-2-DK) while Tulsa planes had a DT appended (e.g. - A-26B-15-DT). Several other sources refer to Tulsa as the "bomber plant". I think I'll stick to Oklahoma City. Dabarkey 04:46, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Edited to add the part about the C-47's bringing in supplies to the embattled Allied forces during the Battle of Bastogne. - RegBarc 05:15, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lisunov

Lisunov and Li-2 are mentioned exactly once, in a section header. They need to be explained. Not only to make the wiki better, but now I'm curious.--J Clear 00:24, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Importance

Official U.S. Air Force aviation display sign for a
C-47 Skytrain located on Lackland AFB, San Antonio, Texas (March 2007).

I've bumped the importance rating down to "High", since the article doesn't really mention any significant state of "well-knowedness" the aircraft has (and I don't think, off the top of my head, that very many people would have heard of it). Feel free to bump it back up if this is just me being unaware of how well-known this thing is. Kirill Lokshin 16:33, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I rated "top" since it was the primary transport for the US in WWII (dropping troops in all major airborne ops, flying supplies in both theaters), and also the military variant of the DC-3, the first successsful airlner aircraft. Its probably pretty well established in the public conciousness. Could probably go either way, "top" or "high." Maybe this will be the first debate in the Military Hitory Wikiproject over the importance ratings. I'd be interested in the input of some other project members. While not contentious for me, I think maybe this would be a good starting point in finding out how we will rate these articles.--Nobunaga24 22:50, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

The C-47 was one of the most important aircraft of the 20th century and this article is clearly in need of expansion, so I think that it justifies a 'top' rating. --Nick Dowling 10:40, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Use of apostrophes

I noticed that this article makes use of both "C-47's" and "C-47s" when referring to the aircraft in plural. Please use consistent punctuation when writing articles on Wikipedia. At the moment, I have changed all instances of "C-47s" to "C-47's" as this will avoid confusion with a non-existent model of the C-47, the C-47s.

I doubt anyone is going to be confused and look for an S model. And I'd rather not be consistently wrong. http://www.apostrophe.fsnet.co.uk/ --J Clear 00:03, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that when using a letter in plural, you are supposed to use an apostrophe (C's for example). This is discussed in Eats, Shoots & Leaves—a great book by the way, I recommend that you read it. Also, the website you linked to says nothing about the plurals of letters that are hyphenated to numbers; however, I did soon after check with a professional editor who said to go with the version without the apostrophe. JR98664 05:41, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

This (see rule 8) also disagrees with Eats. But it wouldn't surprise me at all if there were conflicting rules out there. It's not like we have a compiler that's going to complain. And I can't claim to be perfect here myself, but by coincidence I had just looked up the first reference for a friend earlier in the day. This states it can be used for the non-possesive plurals of single lower case letters, but allows that some editors prefer them for numbers and uppercase, too. --J Clear 00:57, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why so many RAF units?

Out of curiosity, why are there so many RAF units that are listed for use of the C-47? Is this documented?--Signaleer 22:09, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removed all units from page

There is no need to list every unit that has flown the C-47, the numbers would be staggering and it is irrelavent for basic information about the aircraft on an online dictionary like Wikipedia. If someone wants to contribute with facts versus listing every unit that ever fielded and flown the aircraft, please add away. --Signaleer 16:04, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree, but to preempt anybody re-adding the lists we've often spun such gigantic wastes of space off into new articles, such as List of PBY Catalina operators and the like, simply adding a {{main}} tag. ericg ✈ 18:50, 10 January 2007 (UTC)