The USGS Airplane

From the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS):

The USGS Airplane — Since today is #NationalAviationDay, we've decided to share a little slice of history with you about the USGS airplane and the role it played in our Nation's history. Yes, we definitely had our own plane back in the day.

This Douglas C–53D (N19924), crewed and operated by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), was photographed while surveying the Painted Desert, southwest of Cameron in northeastern Arizona. The aircraft’s magnetic detector is shown deployed at the end of a 100-foot cable. The edge of the Coconino Plateau occupies most of the distant background in the photograph. At the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission’s request in 1947, the USGS resumed ground studies and mapping of uranium-bearing sandstones on the Colorado Plateau to extend the work it completed there during 1939–44. USGS and U.S. Navy crews began aeromagnetic surveys in Beechcraft and Catalina aircraft in 1944. The C–53D and its crews commenced aeromagnetic surveys for the USGS in 1949. The U.S. Air Force transferred a Douglas C–47 (N19950) to the USGS in 1955, as the USGS increased its aerial surveys of radioactivity. The C–53D, restored to its original Skytrooper configuration for the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944, is now in an aircraft museum in Sacramento, California. (From Scientific Monthly, v. 78, no. 6, June 1954, cover 1 and caption on p. 364.)

You can learn more about the important role that USGS played in the Nation's efforts in war and peace at home and abroad during major U.S. conflicts from 1939 to 1961 at http://on.doi.gov/CommonDefence.

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