Something You Don't See Every Day Anymore

A DC-7 taking off. They've been working towards this day for six years.



The DC-7 was the penultimate piston-engined airliner as made by Douglas Aircraft, capable of fly westbound from London and Paris to Idlewild Airport non-stop. It suffered from persistent engine problems with its Wright R-3350 turbo-compound engines and engine shutdowns were almost a routine event. One retired airline captain once said that the major difference between the DC-6 and the DC-7 was that the DC-6 was a 4-engined airplane with 3-bladed propellers, while a DC-7 was a 3-engined airplane with 4-bladed propellers.

DC-7s had flight engineers and navigators. (Earlier transoceanic airliners also had radio operators; better HF voice sets allowed the airlines to stop using Morse Code on HF and the radio operators were history.) The flight engineers were often real mechanics, not young pilots just starting out. The navigators used the sun and starts for over-ocean navigation. The much better reliability of jet engines eventually made the flight engineers obsolete. Inertial navigation systems displaced the navigators.

As soon as the airlines can figure out how to do it safely, the pilots will be gone as well.