Snapshot 6 featured an SAAF Harvard at the Ysterplaat Air Show in 1995. This image is of another WW2 veteran at the 75th anniversary celebrations for the SAAF.
The C-47 Dakota served with the SAAF between WW2 and the late 1990s as a key transport, survey, target tug and maritime patrol aircraft. The full story merits a book of its own but the Dakota captured in these photos, 6832, encapsulates the history of the Dak in South African military service.
6832 was supplied to the RAF under Lend/ Lease as KG443, delivered to South Africa via Bermuda in April 1944 and given the second SAAF serial allocated to C-47s. Serving with #5 Transport Wing during the war years, 6832 moved to 28 Squadron SAAF in 1946, followed by 27 and 44 Squadrons and 25 Squadron between 1975 and 1979. Maritime reconnaissance duties with 35 Squadron, based at Ysterplaat, followed until retirement from active duty in 1992. The old Dak escaped a late-life conversion to AMD turboprop specification and retired to the SAAF Museum at Swartkop -apparently at the request of members of its 1952 crew. SAAF information maintains that 6832 made her last flight on March 3rd 1995 when she flew from Swartkop to the 35 Squadron facility at DF Malan, Cape Town International Airport. In fact, as the photos show, she certainly flew at the 75th Anniversary Show on the following day and parked-up at Ysterplaat following her display.
It seems likely that 6832 returned to DF Malan by air shortly afterwards and remained there for several years. Subsequently transferred to the Museum at Ysterplaat by road, restoration began in 2003 and, when I visited in 2025, was ongoing.
Dakotas in SAAF service fall into clear blocks of serial numbers. The first aircraft to reach South Africa were supplied under a Lend/ Lease contract between the USA and the RAF and each Dakota carried an RAF serial. Deliveries began in April 1944 and ferry flights across the Atlantic southern route via West Africa proceeded at a steady rate of 2-4 per month. Upon arrival in South Africa, each Dakota was given an SAAF serial number and the full, contiguous block of (58) aircraft numbered from 6831 to 6858. Assigned to #5 Transport Wing SAAF, one of the new Dakota fleet’s primary duties was to transfer South African troops between their home bases and North Africa where they were fighting alongside the British Eighth Army. Additionally, the SAAF was given further transport responsibilities in the Mediterranean theatre and 28 Squadron SAAF was formed at Almaza, Egypt, in July 1943 with five Dakotas and a selection of Wellingtons and Ansons. The Dakotas had already been in service and carried RAF serials. Initially operating from Castel Benito in Libya, the Squadron moved to Maison Blanche, Algiers, in June 1944. 28 also operated a number of detached flights as the war in the western desert ebbed and flowed. These included Rabat at Ras-el-Mar in Morocco, Oudna in Tunisia, Pachino in Sicily and Bari in Italy. By the time the Squadron returned to South Africa in October 1945, they were operating 26 Dakotas.
A second squadron, #44 SAAF, was equipped in the same way as from March 1944 and their aircraft were employed ferrying personnel and freight from points as far west as Takoradi in Ghana, as far east at Karachi and as far south as Sudan and East Africa. Four aircraft were also detached to assist 267 Squadron RAF in supporting the partisan forces in the Balkans. By the end of 1945, 44 Squadron were operating flights from Cairo West in Egypt and Bari in Italy alongside 267 and 512 Squadrons RAF. 44 Squadron disbanded at Bari in December 1945 and, although it subsequently reformed in late 1953, none of their Dakotas returned to South Africa.
Inevitably, some of the aircraft failed to survive the war owing to accidents and, when their work was complete in North Africa, some Dakotas remained behind. Fifty-one individual Dakotas flew for 28 Squadron during the war and, of these, seven were lost in accidents and four were struck-off-charge. At least twelve of the Squadron’s aircraft moved on to new postings with ACSEA in south-east Asia while four were demobbed or broken-up at the Foreign Liquidation Commission’s (FLC) Payne Field facility in Egypt. Three moved to other RAF squadrons (such as 512 who shared operations from Bari aerodrome) or Maintenance Units. This left 21 ex-58 Squadron Dakotas heading home to South Africa along with another five aircraft which are not listed as being flown by either 28 or 44 squadrons (1). The total fleet of 26 aircraft received SAAF serials in the block 6859 to 6884.
(1) Information largely from Air Britain’s all-embracing history of the DC-3 written by JMG Gradidge and Jennifer Gradidge.
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