Dakotas Only - How many aircraft and where?

Hi,

The link below is to a scan of an AP from June 1945. The top right quarter of the picture is worth a look first. Any ideas where this might have been? How many aircraft can you see on the picture?

sdrv.ms/17ctNWK

A bit of a long shot this one! Files will upload over night.

MTIA

Adrian

PNK;129781 wrote:

I don't think the Americans called it the Dakota, although happy to be corrected, so would suspect it was an RAF or Commonwealth field.

Basically correct Peter, the British primarily use names for service aircraft, while the USAAF used the alpha-numeric role/mk designation primarily.
American aircraft in RAF service tended to have strong American themed names, after areas, Indian tribes etc, ie Apache, Mitchell, Baltimore etc, there are exceptions though like the Lightning & Liberator.

Dakota (Mks I, III & IV) was the RAF name for the C-47 Skytrain (away from sources but think the Dakota II was the C-53 Skytrooper variant), however the name really stuck across the whole DC-3 / C-47 line post-war and is perhaps the most widely recognised name for the type.

There was some questioning of the Dakota name being somehow derived from a company acronym, Douglas Aircraft Co Transport Aircraft (DACOTA) but there is nothing to back up this probably retrospectivly applied explanation.