The Legacy of Lincoln AFB Base Flight C-47 43-49507


Thanks to Marion "Farmer" Brown of Missouri for sending these photos in. As a member of the 818th Supply Squadron in the later days of Lincoln AFB, Mr. Brown served on the Base Equipment Management Office team tasked with packaging base equipment for use at other bases. While serving on the base's rifle marksmanship team, he flew aboard a Lincoln base flight C-47 "43-16140" to a meet in Colorado. This aircraft subsequently moved on to Blythesville Air Force Base in Arkansas shortly before Lincoln closed.

After a number of years of searching, Mr. Brown tracked down the serial number of another C-47 once stationed at Lincoln, 43-49507. During 1966, this aircraft progressed to Bergstrom Air Force Base in Texas where its life continued onto retirement in June 1975. As it retired, it had over 20,831 hours in the air and was the last operational C-47 in U.S. Air Force service.

Today, marked in the colors of a D-Day paratrooper C-47, 43-49507 lives on at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. One more Lincoln aircraft that escaped the scrappers.