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This aircraft was built in December 1943 as a Douglas C-47A-DK in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma as serial number 12205 for the United States Air Force (later the United States Army Air Force) who in turn issued it the military serial number 42-92408. This serial was left unused and the aircraft was transferred to the Royal Air Force under the lend-lease programme as FZ647 "H" (The "H" was the radio call sign).On being impressed into the Royal Air Force, the aircraft was know as a "Dakota Mark 3".
On June 5th and 6th, 1944 she is confirmed as having been a glider tug with no 512 squadron RAF and was used in "Operation 'Coup de Main' / Operation Tonga", the first stage of the Airborne assault in the Normandy landings in June 1944. In between the main airborne operations of D-Day, Arnhem and the Rhine crossing, it carried out casualty evacuation and general transport duties. Following the end of hostilities it flew missions to the Middle East before moving to Egypt in early October 1945. A further move that month took it to Italy, from where it flew various routes including Greece, Egypt, Romania, Austria, the UK and also within Italy.
In February 1946, it returned to the UK. After the military service she was demiltarized and thoroughly overhauled at Scottish Aviation and sold to THY ( Türk Hava Yolları )Turkish Airlines as TC-EKE on the 25th of July 1946. It served THY faithfully for 12 years until sold in 1958 to Ethiopian Airlines in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She served Ethiopian Airlines for no less than thirty three years, in both war and peace. During 1969 she was leased to the Ethiopia-United States Mapping Mission to be used in the aerial photography of Ethiopia and Djibouti, based at Lidetta Airfield in Ethiopia. As one of the longest serving of Ethiopian Airlines DC-3's (DC-3 is the civilian version of the military nomenclature, C-47) it was eventually sold in April 1991 to Swaziland based, Mozambican Airline, Scan Transportes Aéreos as C9-STF.
It carried food throughout Mozambique during the devastating civil war, mostly under command of the late Captain Oscar Hermansson. In mid 1996 she was removed from service, stripped of useful components (to be re-used on other Dakotas) at Rand Airport, Germiston, and later transported by road to Cape Town for static display. |
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