Curtiss C-46 Commando
1940 airlifter family
The Curtiss C-46 Commando is a low-wing, twin-engine aircraft derived from the Curtiss CW-20 pressurized high-altitude airliner design. Early press reports used the name "Condor III" but the Commando name was in use by early 1942 in company publicity. It was used primarily as a cargo aircraft during World War II, with fold-down seating for military transport and some use in delivering paratroops. Mainly deployed by the United States Army Air Forces, it also served the U.S. Navy/Marine Corps, which called it R5C. The C-46 filled similar roles as its Douglas-built counterpart, the C-47 Skytrain, with some 3,200 C-46s produced to approximately 10,200 C-47s.
After World War II, commercial adoption lagged when the C-46 was unable to meet certification requirements for passenger service by scheduled airlines in the United States. Some scheduled carriers (including the first scheduled cargo airlines) flew it for cargo. So-called irregular air carriers, subject to separate rules, flew C-46s for both freight and passenger flights. Accidents in the early 1950s drove the Federal government to crack down, limiting C-46 takeoff weights and forcing operators to modify the aircraft to meet modern requirements. Nonetheless, almost 400 C-46s were in airline service globally in 1960. The C-46 continued in U.S. Air Force service in a secondary role until 1968.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Curtiss C-46 Commando” is 1940 airlifter family. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Curtiss, C-46 and Commando, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Curtiss C-46 Commando” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.