PC/WI: Make the Boeing 307 Stratoliner as successful as the DC-3

WILDGEESE

Gone Fishin'
This is the quite beautiful looking Boeing 307 Stratoliner of which a mere 10 where built.

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How can you make this aircraft as successful as the Douglas DC-3 in numbers sold?

You can class in military sales as well if you want.

Regards filers
 
The Boeing 307 was certainly a beautiful airplane. The fuselage was designed for pressurization (Stratoliner) during a time when actual stresses and effect of fatigue cycles were imperfectly understood. Conservative design resulted in a substantially overweight airplane, relatively worse than the similarly designed for pressurization Curtis C-46.

The Stratoliner wing was similar to the B-17 and postwar survivors were fitted with actual B-17 wings. A B-17 based unpressurized cargo ship with a light weight fuselage would probably been preferred to the Liberator based C-87 series- particularly if the turbos were retained to facilitate overloaded takeoffs.

Dynasoar
 
Taken at face value I'd point at Dynasoar's post above. IMO it would have carved a niche for itself if the war hadn't interfered, but economics just weren't in it's favor. TBH competing with the DC-3 is just REALLY hard - it was just about the perfect aircraft for the era, capable of just about anything to some degree of success and produced in truly immense numbers as a direct result. Really though the thing that hurt the stratoliner more than anything was the war. It wasn't ever likely to sell in the thousands (although neither did the DC-3, civil versions produced as such were only around 600) but it was, and would have remained for a few years, easily the best option for transcontinental service in the US. At the same time, the DC-4 was on the horizon and while it didn't get factory pressurization until the DC-6 this was theoretically an option (a realistic one as well - Canadair did build their North Stars - otherwise just Merlin powered DC-4s - with it) my guess is that a lot of companies would hold out for the more familiar product with a decent degree of commonality.

The best shot would be a Stratoliner that drops the pressurization (or at least is much more a provision for it than a standard feature), has a lot more commonality with the B-17 and gains enough range to comfortably fly Pan Am's oceanic legs pre-war. Even then though it just sounds an awful lot like the DC-4E, which is fine except that the airlines would have thought much the same as they did about the 4E - too big, give us something cheaperl; at which point we're back to the production DC-4 and most companies inclination to stick with Douglas.
 
For use as a cargo plane during WW2 the 307's 12 foot wide fuselage might have come in handy. An advantage over even the excellent C-54.
 
The fuselage was designed for pressurization (Stratoliner) during a time when actual stresses and effect of fatigue cycles were imperfectly understood. Conservative design resulted in a substantially overweight airplane, relatively worse than the similarly designed for pressurization Curtis C-46.
That would seem to be the main possibility for improvement - find some way to advance knowledge of high altitude flight and pressurisation so that they don't overbuild the fuselage. Even then however I doubt Boeing would be able to sell as many of them as Douglas did the DC-3, as Bureaucromancer mentions it was simply the perfect aircraft for its time period.
 
What really hurt the Stratoliner was Boeing was focused on the B-17. The Stratoliner had the same wings and engines has the B-17.
If you take a look at the tail of the B-17 and the tail from later model B-17s you can see they took the tail fin off the Stratoliner.
The Stratoliner did pioneer the modern airliner layout. If it wasn't for World War II the Stratoliner would have received more development and eventually displaced the flying boats for transatlantic service.
Post-war Boeing focused on the 317 Stratocruiser an airliner with the wings of a B-29 which would have dominated the postwar long-range airliner market if it wasn't part it's maintenance heavy engines.
 
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The Douglas Commercial-3 was the right Aircraft on the right Time
For a good price, in 1936 was around $60,000
And Douglas took every order for DC-3 aircraft, unlike Boeing that Refused orders so long they have a production run.
Like on Boeing model 247, the competitor of DC-3

One moment, is this about Boeing model 307 ?
Yes, but the Model 307 is in complete another league a Heavy Airliner based on the B-17 Bomber
and here lies it's problem, it's price of $315,000 for that you get five DC-3
Next to that The Model 307 had mishap that it's production was interrupter by WW2, after 10 units build Boeing went for B-17 mass production.
 
In retrospect, the early pressurized transports, Boeing Stratoliner and Curtiss Commando (Model 20 or C-46) were designed to operate in the worst weather, headwind and turbulence altitude band; 20,000 +/- 3,000 feet. The stratosphere, where the air is essentially calm and stratified is taken to begin at 36,090 feet above SL. Nothing up there but Wiley Post and later the TWA turbosupercharged Northrop Gamma.

Dynasoar
 
The reason the DC-3 was so popular is because thousands are available post-war as military surplus at a low price with a large supply of spare parts. Thousands of experienced air crews familiar with the type were readily available eliminating the need for expensive pilot training.
 
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