Of Wings & Things

Aircraft manufacturers have long been adept at leveraging designs to gain as much utility — and production — as possible.

The dual tracks of commercial transport and military airlift had more in common in the 1940s than today. It was an era before low-sitting, end-loading, and air-dropping cargo behemoths defined military transport procurement. The need for moving large numbers of troops and large numbers of airline passengers over long distances had some commonality back then.

World War II blunted the development of pure civilian transports for the duration, but big players in the airline business, including Pan American Airways, had important wartime transport duties. Pan American also had enough clout to influence the development of a super transport for the Navy that might one day also be an ocean-spanning airliner.

As the fledgling U.S. Army Air Service was still figuring things out, in 1924 it created the C-Class of aircraft to include cargo and personnel transport, doing away with an earlier T-series that indicated Transport.

And C-Cargo it has been ever since, starting with the original Douglas C-1 biplane, introduced in 1925.

The McDonnell Aircraft Company expressed a fondness for paranormal or spooky aircraft names.

This may date back to the company’s ambitious XP-67 fighter design during World War II occasionally referred to as the Bat or Moonbat, although the official nature of such a moniker is unclear.

Nonetheless, McDonnell — later McDonnell-Douglas and now part of the mega Boeing holdings — ran through a list of names with its ensuing jet fighters, including Phantom, Banshee, Goblin, and the F3H Demon.