As per the title, the AH C-119 Flying Boxcar is on sale now (got mine from Just Flight but it's at other places too, nice price as well. £19.99 at JF). Looks and flies great and has a lot of cool detail and detailed systems, including working droppable paratroops. Also has one of my pet peeves of FSX/P3D addressed too, i.e. the nav lights are actually bright for a change!.

Some pics. :

Tell me the wipers are effective (i.e. it has TrueGlass or equivalent)  -- that would be too nice for the price!

6 hours ago, Mace said:

Tell me the wipers are effective (i.e. it has TrueGlass or equivalent)  -- that would be too nice for the price!

Nope, although the wipers do work, it doesn't have any fancy glass effect for rain.

In Vietnam they had a black gunship version. I saw one take off on a taxiway during a rocket attack on  Tan San Nhut one mourning.

Edited November 27, 20187 yr by PATCO LCH

My father's ex-military friends called this aircraft the "Packet" -- must have been the colloquial name for it in the military, or at least where they served in Korea and shortly after.  They called them "Packet" and never "Flying Boxcar".

28 minutes ago, Mace said:

My father's ex-military friends called this aircraft the "Packet" -- must have been the colloquial name for it in the military, or at least where they served in Korea and shortly after.  They called them "Packet" and never "Flying Boxcar".

I think the earlier Fairchild C-82, which was the C-119’s predecessor, was called the Packet (and a version with a jet booster was called the Jet Packet). Perhaps the name was carried over in the military from the C-82 to the very similar looking C-119.

Bill

Yup, the Packet was the C-82, which was designed and built in late 40s and was the precursor to the C-119 Flying Boxcar. The Packet saw some service in WW2, and of course Korea, but it was a largely unsatisfactory design, being somewhat under-powered for its intended role and not really much of an improvement in capability when compared with other aeroplanes the military had available to them, which it in fact had been intended to replace.

Nevertheless, the C-82 was useful enough to see over 200 being built and it did find its way into civilian use with a number of operators, including TWA, which used it for transporting spare parts around when other aircraft needed to be supplied for repair at remote locations, since the Packet did in spite of its disappointing lifting capabilities, have a decent range. So when viewed in the context of if being a predecessor to the C-119, the C-82 Packet can be regarded as a reasonably successful interim design, but if success is measured in numbers and users worldwide, the C-119 Flying Boxcar is the clear winner, with well over 1,100 variants built and many more operators making use of them.

Beyond their military and civilian careers, the C-82 Packet and the C-119 Flying Boxcar both had movie careers too: The C-82 Packet appearing in the 1965 Robert Aldrich film version of The Flight of the Phoenix, whereas the C-119 Flying Boxcar has art mirroring life somewhat, following its predecessor to appear in the 2004 John Moore remake of the film of the same name.

Both films are based on the book of the same title, written in 1964 by Trevor Dudley-Smith, but published under the nom-de-plume of Elleston Trevor. Trevor was a prolific author who wrote under several psuedonyms. In addition to the hit he scored with The Flight of the Phoenix, he had another literary success under perhaps his most well used psuedonym - Adam Hall - the name he used for his 'Quiller' series of secret agent novels. Like The Flight of the Phoenix, his Quiller character made it onto celluloid in the mid 60s, somewhat off the success of other spy novels in vogue at the time, as The Quller Memorandum, the Quller character also making it onto the small screen courtesy of a BBC TV series in the 1970s.

Edited November 28, 20187 yr by Chock

There used to be a small toy company, Bachmann, that made "mini planes", all sorts of civilian and military aircraft of a very small scale, made of plastic, with retractable landing gear and in the case of bombers, opening and closing bomb bay doors.  I had a C119, B17, Lancaster, Mosquito, MU2, DC10, 747, 707, P51, P38 and many other models, but sadly lost all of them over time since plastic models do not hold up too well over the years.  They can still be found thru ebay and other such sites, for much more than their original $1.00 purchase price.  I also had larger diecast civilian models, like a 727 with an opening and closing rear airstair door that my father accidentally threw out one day.  This is why I love Xplane11 and P3D add on aircraft so much because they are modeled with so much greater detail.  CAD design has made such models possible.  I also collect a few diecast car models, including a large 1918 car model my ex wife keeps for me in her home, since I do not have enough space in my apartment for them.  In twenty years or so, they will be worth much more than I paid for them, I collect rare one of a kind models in scales ranging from 1/64 on up.  I only have one diecast aircraft model, a C172 accurately detailed, I forget the scale but it fits roughly in the palm of my hand.  Even posted a screenshot of it once, here at Avsim.

John