As D-Day turns 80, Night Fright returns to 1944

Background on Night Fright and Charlie Walker’s acquisition of the plane

The clock had just ticked past 1 a.m. when the clouds thickened. William Watson fought to keep Night Fright, his C-47 transport aircraft, close enough to see the rest of his formation. The aircraft, and most of the 800 other C-47s flying that morning, took heavy fire from German anti-aircraft munitions. The green light at the rear of the cargo bay illuminated, and the 18 paratroopers aboard Night Fright took turns plunging 700 feet into Normandy’s abyss—unknown to the airborne soldiers. The morning of June 6, 1944, is now widely known—D-Day.

Night Fright survived, and its new owner, Charlie Walker, hopes to complete his team’s aircraft restoration by D-Day’s 80th anniversary. Ten years into the project, Walker is thrilled to have the aircraft mostly assembled, and the painting started.

“The paint scheme is the most important because it’s what gives Night Fright her true identity really,” said Walker.

Formation lights, invasion stripes and playful nose art are the finishing touches required to outfit Night Fright to its D-Day specifications, sans the 100 bullet holes it sustained.

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Night Fright takes its name from a French novel, “Night Flight,” a literary favorite of Watson, the plane’s primary pilot during World War II. “Fright” derives from the daring nature of the wartime missions. On the forward portion of the fuselage, airmen painted a cartoonish C-47 towing a glider with the words “Night Fright.”

Such nose art was typical during the war. With hundreds of C-47s in combat, the art was a source of morale for the crews and identity for practical reasons.

During the war, Night Fright flew from Royal Air Force Membury in southern England. Walker’s family owns land that was once part of the base. He plans to showcase Night Fright as an educational tribute to the area’s heroic heritage.

Membury hosted the 436th Troup Carrier Group in 1944. The U.S. Air Force disbanded the group shortly after the war but reactivated it in 1991 at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware. Dover’s Air Mobility Command Museum hosts another restored C-47—Turf Sport.

Bill Lee, a museum volunteer, helped restore and maintain Turf Sport. He explained that General Dwight D. Eisenhower directed the painting of black and white stripes on aircraft days before D-Day to preclude friendly fire from allied ships and fighters.

“By the time they were finished,” Lee said, “you couldn’t find any black or white paint left in England. Because they used every gallon of it.”

As part of Walker’s team paints Night Fright’s historic exterior, Neil Jones, an engineer, meticulously fashions the aircraft’s inner workings.

“The hydraulics are in place and all the engine oils, but they need to be tested,” Jones said.

“We can’t afford any leaks on either the fuel, oil or hydraulics.”

Further, Jones will need to evaluate Night Fright’s flight controls to ensure proper fittings and movement range.

“We’re all confident that will happen quite easily,” Jones said. “I say that; obviously, we’re touch and go at the same time.”

By trade, Jones is a C-17 engineer, the plane’s mechanical subject matter for the Royal Air Force. The C-17 is a modern-day descendent of the C-47. The “Globemaster III,” the C-17’s nickname, is a much larger, rangier troop and cargo transporter.

Jones is trained to work on the modern C-17 (left). The C-47 (right) is shown for comparison. Photos by Steve Miller

For Jones, picking up the technical manual of the comparatively ancient C-47 was a “weirdly” easy transition.

“They were both built by Douglas-slash-Boeing [in Long Beach, California],” Jones said. The similarities extend to the figurative nuts and bolts of the two planes.

“The tech orders, in a way they’re identical,” he said.

However, the actual nuts and bolts of the C-47 presented a unique challenge. Night Fright was a shell of an aircraft when Walker purchased it. McDonnell Douglas (which has since merged with Boeing) no longer manufactures parts for the plane. Douglas ceased manufacturing the C-47 in 1945.

Instead, Jones acquired a hard copy of C-47 technical orders, which included part catalogs. He cross-referenced the catalogs with Douglas’ drawings for any parts he needed.

“That gives you a full technical breakdown of the drawing, of how to fabricate, how to bend it and what type of aluminum it was made from,” Jones said.

Jones indeed fabricated most of the needed parts. Though the fabrication process is lengthy, modern-day aluminum grades give the aircraft “a huge longevity.”

“I believe that Night Fright now will last way beyond my lifetime and into kind of the next generation,” Jones said.

When Walker purchased Night Fright in 2012, he planned to have the aircraft flying by D-Day’s 75th anniversary in 2019. Now five years after the initial goal, Walker remains confident Night Fright will be in the air by 2024’s 80th anniversary.

“It’s purely down to the fact that a lot of this stuff is handmade,” Walker said.

“These are parts from the 1940s.You know, if you’re not fortunate enough to be able to find them, you have to make them.”

D-Day anniversary festivities kick off at the end of May in England.

“The first event we are going to be attending is a place called Shuttleworth in Old Warden, which is an American-themed fly-in and barbecue,” Walker said.

An American C-47 contingent will fly across the Atlantic for the anniversary. In early June, the aircraft will depart England for Normandy.

Beyond the 80th anniversary, Walker hopes to turn the Membury Estate into a World War II heritage and education site.

“The idea is to pay homage to the 436th Troup Carrier Group because of their involvement at Membury,” Walker said. “We could use Night Fright as the centerpiece to tell that story.”

“We’ve got lots of written and photographic documentation from the families of the pilots who operated Night Fright during the war.”

Walker also hopes to fly Night Fright across the Atlantic to visit the aircraft’s roots.

“We want to take Night Fright back to some of the places that are significant to the aircraft in the U.S.,” Walker said.

“Dover, with the current 436th Operations Group being based there, is right at the top of the list. We’d love to go as far west as well to where the aircraft was built in Long Beach [California].”