McDonnell Douglas C-9

The McDonnell Douglas C-9 is a military version of the McDonnell Douglas DC-9 airliner. It was produced as the C-9A Nightingale for the United States Air Force, and the C-9B Skytrain II for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. The final flight of the C-9A Nightingale was in September 2005, and the C-9C was retired in September 2011. The U.S. Navy retired its last C-9B in July 2014. Two C-9Bs remain in service with the U.S. Marine Corps.

Design and development

In 1966, the U.S. Air Force identified a need for an aeromedical transport aircraft and ordered C-9A Nightingale aircraft the following year. Deliveries began in 1968, and the C-9As were used for medical evacuation, passenger transportation, and special missions from 1968 to 2005. The C-9A aircraft were named for English social reformer Florence Nightingale (1820–1910), the founder of modern nursing.

After selecting a modified DC-9 for passenger and cargo transport, the U.S. Navy ordered its first five C-9Bs in April 1972. The C-9B aircraft have provided cargo and passenger transportation as well as forward deployed air logistics support for the Navy and Marine Corps. (The original "Skytrain" was the famous C-47 of the World War II era, developed from the civilian DC-3.) A C-9B was also chosen by NASA for reduced gravity research, replacing the aging KC-135 Vomit Comet.

McDonnell Douglas

McDonnell Douglas was a major American aerospace manufacturing corporation and defense contractor formed by the merger of McDonnell Aircraft and the Douglas Aircraft Company in 1967. Between then and its own merger with Boeing 30 years later, it produced a number of well-known commercial and military aircraft such as the DC-10 airliner and F-15 Eagle air-superiority fighter.

The corporation was based at Lambert–St. Louis International Airport near St. Louis, Missouri, while the headquarters for its subsidiary, the McDonnell Douglas Technical Services Company (MDTSC), were established in unincorporated St. Louis County, Missouri.

History

Background

The company was formed from the firms of James Smith McDonnell and Donald Wills Douglas in 1967. Both men were of Scottish ancestry, graduates of MIT and had worked for the aircraft manufacturer Glenn L. Martin Company.

Douglas had been chief engineer at Martin before leaving to establish Davis-Douglas Company in early 1920 in Los Angeles. He bought out his backer and renamed the firm the Douglas Aircraft Company in 1921.

McDonnell Douglas MD-11

The McDonnell Douglas MD-11 is a three-engine medium- to long-range wide-body jet airliner, manufactured by McDonnell Douglas and, later, by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Based on the DC-10, it features a stretched fuselage, increased wingspan with winglets, refined airfoils on the wing and smaller tailplane, new engines and increased use of composite materials. Two of its engines are mounted on underwing pylons and a third engine at the base of the vertical stabilizer. It also features a glass cockpit that decreases the flight deck crew from the three required on the DC-10 to two by eliminating the need for a flight engineer.

Development

Origins

Although the MD-11 program was launched in 1986, McDonnell Douglas started to search for a DC-10 derivative as early as 1976. Two versions were considered then, a DC-10-10 with a fuselage stretch of 40 feet (12 m) and a DC-10-30 stretched by 30 feet (9.1 m). That later version would have been capable of transporting up to 340 passengers in a multi-class configuration, or 277 passengers and their luggage over 5,300 nautical miles (9,800 km). At the same time, the manufacturer was seeking to reduce wing and engine drag on the trijet. Another version of the aircraft was also envisaged, the "DC-10 global", aimed to counter the risks of loss of orders for the DC-10-30 that the Boeing 747SP and its range were creating. The DC-10 global would have incorporated more fuel tanks.

Breguet 941

The Breguet 941 was a French four-engine turboprop STOL transport aircraft developed by Breguet in the 1960s. Although widely evaluated, it was not built in large numbers, with only one prototype and four production aircraft being built.

Design and development

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the French aviation pioneer Louis Charles Breguet developed a concept for a Short Take Off and Landing (STOL) aircraft using four Free-turbine turboshaft engines to drive a common power shaft, which, in turn drove four oversize propellers, which were evenly spaced along the leading edge of the wing with large, full-span, slotted flaps, with the arrangement known as "l'aile soufflée" or blown wing.

An initial, experimental prototype, powered by four Turbomeca Turmo II engines, the Breguet 940 Integral, first flew on 21 May 1958, and was used to prove the concept, demonstrating excellent short field performance. This led to an order being placed in February 1960 for a prototype of an aircraft employing the same concept, but capable of carrying useful loads. This aircraft, the Breguet 941, first flew on 1 June 1961.

C9

C9, C09 or C-9 may refer to:

Organizations

Associations

Transportation

Military/Weapons