The Tuesday club is starting to restore the DO-5 fuselage

Sunnuntai 11.9.2022 - Tuesday Club member


Suomeksi

Aviation Museum Society Finland owns a DC-3 (C-47) DO-5 fuselage with elevators and rudder. The wings are still lacking. The fuselage of the DO-5 came to the possession of the Aviation Museum Society in 2018, otherwise the fuselage would have ended in the scrap yard. The ex- Air Force DO-5 last served as a ground training device with the parachute jumping school at Utti. The DO-5 fuselage owned by Aviation Museum Society has already been used as prop in two movies.

Blogi_2022-22-01.jpg

The intention of Aviation Museum Society is to refurbish the DO-5 fuselage so that it could be presented in different outdoor occasions. It would then be possible to get acquainted to the interior of the aircraft. The passenger cabin of the fuselage will be preserved in its existing parachuter training appearance with the canvas benches along the walls. The fuselage will be available to film makers’ needs in the future, too.

Blogi_2022-22-02.jpg

Blogi_2022-22-03.jpg

The fuselage refurbishment of DO-5 is beginning at the Aviation Museum Society’s Tuesday Club. This is why the fuselage is on the yard of the Finnish Aviation Museum. Well, it will not be ready tomorrow by far, for the club members have their work cut out for them with the refurbishment of the fuselage. But, maybe by the end of spring 2023 the work will be so much advanced, that we could dare to take the fuselage on display at the National Air Show at Turku. Well, time will show.

Blogi_2022-22-04.jpg

Blogi_2022-22-05.jpg

Blogi_2022-22-06.jpg

Blogi_2022-22-07.jpg

The beginning of the autumn season for the Tuesday Club has been spent on preparations for the DO-5 fuselage refurbishment. One of the tasks will be the removal of the vertical stabilizer, rudder, elevators, the rear cone, nose cone and other parts of the aircraft that were stored in the cabin, to a storage container which was brought to the vicinity of DO-5. The horizontal stabilizer, which was stored under the fuselage, was also moved into the container.

The parts that had been in the cabin had to be taken away, because they filled the fuselage so that moving in there was difficult, dangerous even, not to mention working in the cabin during the restoration process.

Blogi_2022-22-09.jpg

Blogi_2022-22-10.jpg

Blogi_2022-22-11.jpg

In the restoration of the fuselage, we will concentrate at first on the cockpit. There we’ll have to, amongst other things, to seal the windows and possibly replace them partly with new ones, to detach the pilots’ seats for refurbishment, to clean the cockpit surfaces and remaining equipment and to paint the wall surfaces.

Also the renewal of the totally opaque cabin windows is on the work list. That would be familiar to the club members, because in 2015 we renewed the cabin windows of the DC-3, OH-LCD, which at the moment is a glorious landmark at the yard of the Finnish Aviation Museum.

Blogi_2022-22-12.jpg

We have already accomplished something in the field of restoring, when the legendary DC-3 mechanic Pauli “ Speedy” Fallström replaced the broken tail wheel with a new one.

Photos: Lassi Karivalo

Translation: Matti Liuskallio

Avainsanat: aviation history, restoration, Tuesday Club, DO-5;DC-3, C-47, Dakota