December 17, 1935

Company pilot Carl Cover, along with Fred Stineman (copilot), and Frank Collbohm (flight engineer) make the first flight of the Douglas Sleeper Transport, the first of 10,654 DC-3s and derivatives Douglas will build between 1935 and 1947 takes place at Clover Field, Santa Monica, Calif. The US military will use the military version, the C-47, in three wars. A number of civilian and foreign “Gooney Birds” were still in use in the late 1990s.