DC-3 and DC-4 Aircraft Gallery Pages now on line!

We are plugging away on significant expansions to our website offerings in 2026, supporting updates to our physical displays at our museum in Bloomington, MN, as well as bolstering our usefulness to researchers, historians, and everyone interested in aviation history.

In our substantial Aircraft Gallery “wing” of the website, already this year we’ve added pages for the early Waco and Laird biplanes – very fitting to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Northwest’s founding. Now in early April 2026 we can add the venerable Douglas DC-3 and Douglas DC-4 to our album of 65 different aircraft types!

The DC-3 page alone has more than 120 images posted, with most coming from our own archive housed at Flying Cloud Airport, which includes big collections from the family of North Central Airlines’ longtime leader Hal Carr, and former Northwest Airlines pilot James Borden.

There are just a few more aircraft type galleries left for us to complete and we are racing towards the finish line! There are also many other new features for our online presence in development that we’ll be telling you about in upcoming months.

We are always on the lookout for more and unique photos of aircraft, airport facilities, office and maintenance work, employees, and anything else that can help us better tell the stories of commercial aviation in the Northland. If you have photos or digital files, or can contribute in other ways, see our options at our Memberships and Donations page.

Wisconsin Central begins Duluth – Twin Cities nonstops

There was a time, long before Deregulation, when Herman and the NWA logo flew together in harmony. One of these moments is immortalized here in a hallway at the Duluth airport on February 10, 1952 – Northwest had long since ceased its seaplane connection from Duluth Harbor to Minneapolis and it wasn’t until this point when nonstop flights finally started to allow connections at MSP.

There were frequent passenger train routings between the Twin Ports and Twin Cities at the time, so the appeal of a flight was to allow for faster access to points beyond. Hence, WIS advertised the coast-to-coast reach of Northwest. By Fall 1952, WIS would be operating three DC-3 roundtrips daily on the route, with a flying time of one hour.

Present at the inaugural ceremony in Duluth for the start of DLH-MSP nonstops on Wisconsin Central were (from left) Otto Lachmund, Chair of the Duluth Airport Board; Francis Higgins, President-Wisconsin Central; Dorothy Good of the Pantour Travel Agency; Senators Gordon Butler and Julian Hagberg, both members of the Duluth Airport Board; and Earl Olson, manager of DLH. Photo from the Hal Carr collection at the NWAHC.
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