this time with two
rear-mounted Pratt
& Whitney JT8D
powerplants. The
wing had a moderate
24% of sweepback,
wide-span double-
slotted trailing edge
aps, airbrakes on
the upper surfaces,
and boundary-
layer fences on the
undersides. There
was a tricycle undercarriage layout and a
‘T-tail’ con guration raised the tailplane and
elevators well clear of the jet efflux.
From the start, the aircraft was laid out
for two-pilot operation. It was intended as a
competitor for the Caravelle, which was by
then in service and for the BAC One-Eleven,
which was under development. It was also to
have a full two-year lead over Boeing’s 737
design.
Construction of what had now become
the DC-9 was initiated on July 26,1963,
at which date no rm commitments had
been received. However, by the time of the
prototype’s maiden ight on February 25,
1965, a total of 58 had been ordered. The
rst ight, of 2hrs 13min duration by N9DC,
took the aircraft from the Long Beach plant in
California to the nearby Edwards AFB, where
the test programme, involving a further four
examples in due course, was carried out.INTO SERVICE
Certi cation of the DC-9 was granted on
November 23, 1965. The rst operator
was Delta Air Lines, whose initial example,
N3304L, was handed over at the Douglas
plant on October 7, 1966 and christened Delta
Prince by stewardess Carol Marie Koberlein,
foregoing the usual bottle of Champagne, for
one that contained water from 20 rivers on
the Delta route network. Later that day it was
own to the airline’s Atlanta base, from where
sister ship N3305L operated the world’s
rst DC-9 airline service on December 8, to
Memphis and Kansas City.
The opening production version of the
DC-9 was the series 10 (also called the
DC-9-10), with sub-designations being
allocated to individual airline customers. It
had been designed to suit the needs of theUS domestic carriers, and the standard all-
passenger version could hold up to 90 seats.
Convertible cargo/passenger versions
were built for Trans-Texas Airways as
the series 15MC (Multiple Change) with
reinforced ooring and a cargo door, and
for Continental Airlines as the series 15RC
(Rapid Change) with its passenger seats
mounted on pallets for speedy tting and
removal. Production of the series 10 totalled137 airframes, with the biggest customer
being Trans World Airlines (TWA), which
ordered 20.
The series 10 proved reliable in service,
but its seat/mile costs were higher than
those of the BAC One-Eleven. From the
DC-9’s inception, Douglas planned to
develop a range of variants with differing
seating capacity and range options, andso the series 30
was produced as
a higher-capacity
DC-9, offering
improved operating
economics to
compete more
effectively with
the sales threat
from Boeing’s
upcoming 737, and
others. The series
30 incorporated a
14ft 11in (4.5m) fuselage ‘plug’, to provide
accommodation for 105 passengers in
standard layout or 115 in high-density
con guration. Other changes included
wingtips extended by 4ft, the inclusion of full-
span leading-edge wing slats, and the tting
of 14,000lb (62kN) thrust JT8D-7 engines
as standard. As with all DC-9 models, the
series 30 was also offered in all-cargo or
passenger/cargo versions.
The rst example ew on August 1,
1966, and the series 30 entered service
with launch customer and the most proli c
operator of the variant, Eastern Air Lines,
on February 1, 1967. On April 28 that year
Douglas merged with the McDonnell Aircraft
Corporation to form McDonnell Douglas. The
interests of the two constituent companies
did not clash, as McDonnell was primarily
a manufacturer of combat aircraft, and
production of the DC-9 continued under the
Douglas name.UNUSUAL VERSIONS
Specialised adaptations of the series 30
were also built for the US military. A total
of 21 served with the USAF as the C-9A
Nightingale aeromedical transport, and a
further three on VIP duties with the Special
Air Missions Wing as the VC-9C. The variant
was also used by the US Navy and US
Marine Corps as the C-9B Skytrain II logistics
support aircraft – 24 new series 30s were
purchased, and a further ve examples were
later acquired from airlines and converted for
military service. The Kuwait Air Force also
operated two series 30s as C-9Ks.
In all, a total of 662 series 30 airframes
were constructed – the best-selling DC-9
variant – and the -30 went on to have a
long service life, with KLM, Scandinavianhttp://www.aviation-news.co.uk 57The USAF’s 68-8934 was one of 21 C-9A
Nightingale aeromedical transport versions
of the DC-9-30 delivered to the air force
during 1968 and 1969. Key CollectionA Northwest Airlines DC-9-32 in the nal version of the airline’s livery. A number of DC-9s passed to Delta Air Lines with that carrier’s take-over
of Northwest in 2008. Key Collection“Construction of
what had now
become the DC-9
was initiated on
July 26, 1963, at
which date no fi rm
commitments had
been received...”
56-61_dc9DC.mfDC.indd 57 04/04/2018 12:58