The Douglas Aircraft Company emerged as a leading player in the burgeoning aviation industry in dramatic fashion when two of the company’s “World Cruisers” equipped Army Air Corps fliers in completing the first flight around the globe in 1924. Thereafter, “First around the World” became a company motto. Among the company’s many customers was the U.S. Navy—company founder Donald Wills Douglas had at one time been a midshipman at the Naval Academy before turning to aeronautical engineering. Though sometimes overshadowed by the famed combat aircraft like the SBD Dauntless, AD Skyraider, and A-4 Skyhawk, the long line of Douglas transport aircraft delivered to the Navy formed the backbone of naval aviation’s logistical operations beginning in the 1930s with the acceptance of the R2D, the military designation for the Douglas DC-2. In subsequent years, as Douglas products became staples of the airline industry in American and abroad, their naval versions performed a host of duties, dropping the first Marine paratroopers, delivering supplies and evacuating the wounded from far-flung island bases during the Pacific War, and contributing to the largest humanitarian relief operation in history as part of the Berlin Airlift. In the early 1970s, the Navy sought to expand its airlift capability with procurement of a new transport aircraft, only this time the familiar droning of propellers would be replaced by the roar of jet engines. Having taken delivery of a single Douglas DC-8 (designated EC-24A) airliner and modified it to simulate the Soviet Navy’s command and control system during naval exercises, the Navy had experience with the company’s commercial jet liners. In 1972, the Navy placed and order for its initial batch of DC-9s, which in Navy livery were designated C-9B Skytrain IIs (the first Douglas Skytrain having been the famous C-47/R4D). The first delivery of a C-9B occurred on 8 May 1973. A versatile platform in that it could accommodate up to 107 passengers or eight standard pallets of equipment in its all-cargo configuration, the C-9B’s maximum payload as originally delivered was 32,444 lbs. Subsequent addition of specialized navigation and long-range communications equipment gave the aircraft true global capability. Equipping fleet logistics support squadrons (VR), C-9Bs have spent the ensuing decades flying a host of missions in 24 hour-a-day, 365 days-a-year operations in which planes can be found delivering squadron personnel for work-ups, shuttling VIPs throughout the Far East, or transporting much-needed parts to a combat theater. In the latter role, VR-57 C-9Bs carried 95 passengers and 300,500 lbs. of cargo in one month alone during the build-up and launching of Operation Iraqi Freedom in March 2003. C-9Bs have on many occasions been symbols of hope at home and abroad, whether unloading relief supplies for victims of an earthquake in Pakistan, delivering Meals Ready to Eat (MREs) to those affected by Hurricane Katrina, or carrying blood plasma to New York City in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. With the general aging of the C-9 fleet, tougher noise control measures in place around the world, and base closures that necessitated greater range for logistics aircraft, the Navy decided to procure a version of the Boeing 737-700 design to replace the C-9Bs. The first of the C-40A Clippers entered service in 2001, and they are gradually replacing the Skytrain II aircraft, old workhorses that in their final years are largely maintained by men and women not yet born when they first took flight. Pictured here, a C-9B of VR-58 flies over Naval Station (NS) Mayport, Florida, with the U.S. Navy carriers America (CV 66) and Saratoga (CV 60) and an unidentified Royal Navy flattop visible in port. Commanders James McSweeney and Robert Velez pilot a C-9B from Naval Air Station (NAS) Pensacola, Florida, to New Orleans to deliver relief supplies after Hurricane Katrina, while the camera captures a nose-on shot of the C-9B City of San Diego on a 2003 mission. April 2008 March 2008
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