Released last week just in time for the 80^th Anniversary of D-Day, <> 09 is a bundle package featuring the Douglas C-47 and the Waco Glider. These two aircraft are famous for their operations together during the D-Day landings of June 6, 1944 and offer an interesting experience in Microsoft Flight Simulator. Are they worth a purchase? I dig into it!

A bit of history

Douglas’ DC-3 is an aircraft of aviation legend. Developed as an airliner originally, as war loomed the company modified the aircraft with military transport in mind. Over 10,000 C-47s were produced, a number that far exceeded the civilian DC-3 (only 607 were produced), such was the importance of military airlift during WWII. The C-47 was a reliable workhorse and was powered by a pair of Pratt & Whitney R-1830-90C Twin Wasp engines.

The military variant of the DC-3 had a few modifications made to make it suitable for operations. A strengthened floor, a larger folding cargo door, an attachment point for a hoist and a shortened tailcone for glider towing were just some of the modifications. C-47s were used for transporting cargo, people, dropping paratroopers, and air dropping cargo as well.

Meanwhile, the Waco CG-4 was the most wildly produced American cargo/glider with 13,903 of these simple aircraft produced. First flown in May 1942, the aircraft was able to transport troops, small vehicles and cargo. The intended purpose was to have the CG-4A’s towed to range of their targets and then glide into the landing space. These were essentially one time use aircraft and had minimal use of strategic materials used in their construction.

Visuals and sounds

Aeroplane Heaven generally do a very good job with the visuals on their aircraft projects and both C-47 and Waco hold up well in this regard. High resolution textures, good material work generally, and pretty good modeling on the whole add up to a believable aircraft visual.

The C-47 is quite similar visually to Aeroplane Heaven’s DC-3 which was added to the sim in the 40^th Anniversary edition. There are some unique features to the aircraft so its not purely a copy and paste although it is ultimately a very similar aircraft. Visually the C-47 has a military inspired livery and equipment with a cargo door on the standard version and a paratrooper door installed in the same location on the “lead ship” variant. There’s lots of little detail changes which help make a C-47 a C-47 and so that’s great.

The default package comes with only a couple of liveries and while good they are lacking some things like the stars and bars – which apparently MSFS hasn’t licensed so they don’t want to display them. Aeroplane Heaven have released a package of liveries that fill the gap so you can get a bunch of different 1940s era C-47s complete with appropriate markings of the time.

I do have a few complaints. There are some rough textures on the interior in a few places and some of the padding scattered around the aircraft seems too shiny to my eye. Yes you want to display some depth here on the texturework but I think the highlights are a little too much. The more obvious issue to me is the rough edges on the propeller arcs which have an obviously polygonal shape.

There are also some nice touches with good wear and tear in appropriate places, gauges are sharp and easily readable, and the engine start-up procedure does involve a fair bit of smoke. The backup compass mounted on a mount shakes around appropriately too which is nice. One reviewer noted some rough animations on start as well but things seem to go smoothly for me.

Over to the Waco which is a very simple airplane by comparison. This glider was built enmasse and was intended to be cheap and disposable which you can see by the lack of any real features on the inside. It does have an instrument panel, trim and other control systems but they are rudimentary. The animations for the control cables are great as they are right in your vision as you move the wheel. Love that!

Once landed a release button will very suddenly transform the aircraft into its cargo release position without any animation. But it does show the glider in its final configuration with a jeep and troops on the ground.

Paratroopers can be dropped from the C-47 and the experience with this is adequate. You can see the troopers in the back before you drop (unfortunately they are still there after the drop) but you do get a slightly jittery animated drop from the back with the troops tumbling out and opening their chutes. The chutes themselves are a bit jittery too as the models seem to be animated in connection with the C-47 itself. This isn’t unlike what we’ve seen with the paratrooper drop from AzurPoly’s C-160 so its just a limitation of the platform.

The sounds for the C-47 are average to decent. I love the wind sounds in the cockpit which pitch up and down as the speed increases and decreases. The engines do drone a bit and while they have the character of a radial engine somehow don’t feel punchy enough to me to rate them as great. They are adequate to good but they don’t make me go “wow those sound just like the DC-3 that flies over my house.” Other gear and flap sounds are also decent.

Systems

The C-47 is configured as a WWII era C-47 would be configured with era appropriate gear. There’s no GPS option in this one! The DC-3 that Aeroplane Heaven made has a couple of variations on the cockpit which helps bring the aircraft into the modern era but this one focuses wisely on recreating that historical era feel.

The basics are all there, instrumentation is good, and the aircraft has some good visualizations of some of the radio navigator positions in the back too. The instrumentation in the station function though there is no interactivity there so it is effectively non-functional. That’s typical for a lot of aircraft in this series so no major marks against from me.

Radio and navigation systems which, for the most part, are all there. There’s a radio compass which is the ADF system that many are familiar with. It seems workable.

The aircraft is also equipped with a gyro autopilot. Its not a sophisticated modern autopilot system but it does enable you to hold attitude and control bank and climb angle which gives a modicum of control over the aircraft while saving you from manually controlling it over longer hauls. To turn it on you need to make sure the hydraulics system leaver is set to gyropilot or the system won’t turn on – that took me some searching to get that right.

The glider system works fairly well too with the C-47 being selectable from the equipment list and is necessary to haul the Waco up into the air. A C172 will not cut it. Once there you need to follow above and behind the C-47 or the line will get cut. There’s no ability to do long haul operations and so you are limited to being carried up and then released at around 3,000 feet on the reciprocal from which you took off. Still, it does let you at least fly the glider for a bit in different locations.

Both aircraft have reasonably comprehensive manuals available which cover some of the quirks of both types. You can get the manuals for those and other aircraft in the sim from here.

Final thoughts

Famous Flyer 09: C-47 and CG-4A bundled together represents a reasonably good experience for the average flight simmer pilot. At $14.99 USD there are limitations of what can be expected and with that in mind I think is largely fulfills what is possible at the price point.

The Waco CG-4A is unfortunately limited to very local to airport operations and is worth a flight or two but it doesn’t keep me coming back for flight after flight unfortunately. The C-47 is worth it on the other hand for a classic warbird experience with some customized features and historical options, the cargo doors and the paratroop dropping, do provide some unique experiences that you don’t get with the free DC-3. On the other hand, you can do 90% of the same thing with the classic cockpit DC-3 and a C-47 livery. So it really depends on if you want that extra authenticity or not.

I’ll hesitantly suggest that this is a good buy if you very specifically want the C-47 and want to have a bit of fun gliding the Waco CG-4A in. Its not a bad experience but it is a limited one.

I will suggest too that if you’re looking for an even more authentic C-47 experience that the IL-2: Sturmovik Great Battles C-47 will let you fly combat missions over Normandy and drop far better animated troops if that’s the sort of thing you want to go for. That C-47 is excellent in nearly every way while this one is just very good. It really depends on what you want out of your sim experience and for many I think this C-47 will be a fun experience.

Screenshots