Southern California's Santa Monica Airport (KSMO) now has a fitting tribute to its history as a center of airline manufacturing with the installation of a full size DC-3 monument.
It's hard to imagine tony Santa Monica being an aviation manufacturing hotbed, but not too many decades ago it was home to the production line of the most successful airliner in the world, the Douglas DC-3. The company produced thousands of DC-3s and DC-4s in Santa Monica and fully intended to continue with its high-powered DC-7, but the city, when asked to approve a much-needed runway extension, declined. Douglas eventually pulled up stakes and moved to Long Beach.
The monument was funded through a grant from a Boeing employee group and by the Museum of Flying, which is scheduled to open in the spring of 2011. For more information and to see a very cool time-lapse record of the installation, visit museumofflying.com.
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