That's All, Brother

When the war began, John Donalson, who flew with the Alabama National Guard’s 106th Observation Squadron, which was assigned to the Pacific theater, was transferred to Europe. Normally, he flew a Douglas C-47 Skytrain that he had named Belle of Birmingham, in honor of his home state's largest city. But for Operation Overlord, the 1944 invasion of Normandy which opened the western front, it was necessary to cut holes in the plane's fuselage for extra equipment. Donalson, by then commanding the 438th Troop Carrier Group of the 87th Troop Carrier Squadron, part of IX Troop Carrier Command, refused, and so he was issued another C-47 to lead the formation of those aircraft which dropped paratroopers onto the shores of France.[5]

The C-47 issued to Donalson had been built three months earlier at the Douglas Aircraft plant in Oklahoma City. It was delivered the day after completion to what was then the United States Army Air Forces at Love Field in Dallas; from there it was flown to Baer Army Air Field in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Five weeks later it was flown to England by the Air Transport Command.[6] Donalson named his new plane That's All, Brother, as a personal message to Adolf Hitler that Nazi Germany's dominance of Europe would soon be ended.[3]

Paratroopers on their way to the drop zone on D-Day morning

On the morning of June 6, That's All, Brother led 800 planes that dropped over 13,000 American paratroopers onto the French coast. It was chosen for the job because it had been equipped with radar that could find the beacons dropped to mark drop zones by an earlier group of paratroopers known as The Pathfinders.[4] Allied troops held their beachhead despite heavy initial losses, and slowly began liberating France. The C-47 was used in other operations in Western Europe later that year, including Market Garden, and Repulse (part of the resupplying of Bastogne), and in 1945's Operation Varsity, part of the invasion of Germany.[7]

By the end of the war, the plane had been flown back to the United States and decommissioned. It was sold on the civilian market as surplus. During the decades after the war it passed through 12 private owners, who generally kept it in good condition, never crashing or seriously damaging it as they put it to a variety of uses, although none of them were apparently aware of its historic importance.[4] It was modified into a more conventional DC-3 configuration and painted in a scheme common to such craft during the Vietnam War.[3]

The plane's rediscovery began in 2006. That year Staff Sergeant Matthew Scales, assigned to the 106th Air Refueling Squadron, the descendant of the 106th Observation Squadron, began researching the unit's history. Most focused on the squadron's work in the South Pacific, but he learned that a former member of the 106th had flown the lead plane on D-Day. "I didn't understand how this was possible, as, on June 6, 1944, my squadron was about as far away from Normandy as humanly possible," he recalled later.[5]

The next year Scales transferred to the Air Force Historical Research Agency to better do his research. He found the records of Donalson's transfer from the 106th to fly C-47s. Along with those records was That's All, Brother's military serial number as well as the tail number it had borne as a civilian aircraft, allowing him to track it to its owner in Mesa, Arizona.[5]

Initially, Scales thought the man's plane was the Belle of Birmingham, Donalson's usual aircraft. The current owner had restored it to airworthiness, and promised to keep it in good condition when he learned of its historic importance. Later, Scales learned of its true identity, and called the owner back.[5]

By then, however, it had been sold to Basler Turbo Conversions of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, to be modernized into a BT-67, one of four the company makes from old DC-3s every year,[lower-alpha 2] a process which leaves only 30 percent of the original aircraft’s parts. The owner had flown it to Wittman Regional Airport, where Basler is based, and the company had put it in their boneyard to await the procedure, scheduled to begin within six months.[3]

After the plane's serial number was found, proving it was That's All, Brother, stories were published. Organizations and private collectors called Basler, making offers to buy the plane. Eventually the Commemorative Air Force (CAF), an organization which restores and flies vintage planes, primarily to exhibit at air shows, took possession of the C-47.[3]

The CAF set itself the goal of restoring the aircraft not only to the point of airworthiness but having it participate in the D-Day 75th anniversary ceremonies in 2019. While the organization's Minnesota Wing provided sufficient volunteer labor to assist the experts at Basler, it needed money as well.[3] In 2015, after the rediscovered plane was put on public display for the first time at the EAA AirVenture Oshkosh air show,[8] a CAF executive started a Kickstarter campaign; its original goal of $75,000 was quickly surpassed, ultimately raising around $330,000 in what has been described as one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns ever.[3]

Contemporary film footage revealed the aircraft's name, which made raising money to save it even easier. Basler's expertise quickly proved necessary when the initial assessments revealed substantial metal corrosion, requiring 1,600 hours of repair work. The Kickstarter money also went to buy replacement wiring for much of the plane.[8]

During the corrosion repair, research was able to find some patches of the original paint remaining, allowing experts to match those colors with modern paints. When repainting the plane as it was in 1944 for the invasion, some imperfections found on pictures of the plane from that era were replicated for historical authenticity. The black and white invasion stripes near the plane's tail were done crudely, much as they had been done hastily, with whatever brushes were available on the day before the invasion when they were originally applied. The stripes were left off one of the troop doors, again consistent with That's All, Brother's appearance on the morning of D-Day, since planners chalked numbers on each plane to guide troops to their assignments.[9]

That's All Brother at the Military Aviation Museum, Virginia Beach following an airshow.

In 2017 That's All, Brother was assigned to the Central Texas Wing of the CAF, based in San Marcos. Filmmaker Nik Coleman began a feature-length documentary about the restoration. The wings were rebuilt and most of the mechanicals installed,[8] including the original Pratt & Whitney R-1830 Twin Wasp engines[9] and propellers. According to Basler's president, about 85% of the original plane was restorable. Volunteers from the CAF, especially one from Oklahoma, looked all over the world for authentic World War II-era parts to cover the rest. A removable plate with vintage gauges hides modern avionics equipment for navigation and communications, including automatic dependent surveillance – broadcast.[3]

At the end of January 2018, the restored aircraft made its first flight in years, a short test circuit from Wittman. It was livestreamed to viewers around the world on Facebook.[2] Pilot Doug Rozendaal, who had been part of early efforts to find and restore the C-47, described it as "almost squawk-free".[3] Afterward, it was flown to San Marcos so the Central Texas Wing could finish the restoration, turning the plane into a flying museum.[2] "We want this to be the most authentic D-Day C-47 on the planet," said the CAF's Adam Smith.[5]

External video
"'That's All, Brother Paris Airshow from the Cockpit"; in-cockpit and external video from the Paris Air Show

In the year after its first flight, That's All, Brother, logged 100 more hours in the air going to and from various air shows. At Wings over Dallas, a World War II-themed show in October 2018,[3] attendees paid $249 a seat for short rides, with the aircraft's interior rebuilt to look exactly as it had on D-Day, with bare metal seats, belts, and an (overhead) anchorline cable to which the paratroopers would attach their Static line.[9] All seven flights sold out.[10] The aircraft was also featured during the 2019 Paris Air Show.

External video
"'That's All, Brother' C-47 Ride Along at SUN 'n FUN 2019"; video shot from aircraft by passenger

Another goal of the restorers has been to identify the paratroopers who went to Normandy aboard That's All, Brother and reach out to them or, more often, their descendants.[5] Two grandchildren of Donalson, who had died in 1987 after having risen to the rank of major general, rode the aircraft at an Alabama air show in early 2019.[4] In March 2019, the CAF learned that one of the few surviving D-Day paratroopers was not expecting to attend the 75th anniversary ceremonies in France due to his own failing health. They took the plane on a special trip to Dayton, Ohio, where he lived, so he could see the restored aircraft (which was not the one he had jumped from) and ride in it.[11]