Survivors
Several DC-6s are preserved in museums. In all, There are 147 surviving aircraft including 47 airworthy ones.
- The most well-known is President Harry S. Truman's VC-118 Independence (s/n 46-505), which is preserved at the National Museum of the United States Air Force, at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. The aircraft is on display in the Museum's Presidential Hangar.
- A DC-6B currently owned by Red Bull was once the private luxury transport of Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito.
- As of March 2010, there was a C-118 located in the "bone yard" of MCAS Cherry Point, North Carolina. This was at one time the official aircraft of the Commandant of the Marine Corps. The aircraft was often left open to the weather and has deteriorated quite a bit. The interior is damaged, but the airframe is largely intact.
- The Navy's initial R6D, Bureau Number ("BuNo") 128424, was converted along with six other 128XXX-series Buno R6Ds to VC executive transport configuration. BuNo 128424 was delivered to VR-21, NAS Barbers Point in February 1955 and remained in service 28½ more years until October 1, 1983. It was used as a flag transport for the Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet. BuNo 128424 is now located at the National Museum of Naval Aviation at NAS Pensacola, Florida.
- A DC-6B ZS-MUL #45329 named Empress of Suva is preserved on a small holding at Wallmanstahl, north of Pretoria South Africa. This aircraft was stored at Swartkops Air Force Base for over 10 years After two years of restoration by enthusiasts, it was ferried to Wallmanstahl, where a temporary runway had to be constructed.
- A restored USAF C-118 Liftmaster is located at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey. This aircraft is notable as the aircraft in which Elvis Presley returned to the United States after serving in the US Army in Germany. Presently, as of October 2009, under restoration.
- DC-6A B-1006, built in September 1958, spent most of its life in Southeast Asia, and now resides at Coventry Airport, England. After serving with the CIA and Royal Air Lao, it was bought by Air Atlantique Group in 1987. Its last commercial flight was on October 26, 2004, although it was later featured in the 2006 James Bond film, Casino Royale. No longer flying, it has now been turned into a static restaurant based at Coventry airport, as the "DC-6 Diner".
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Famous quotes containing the word survivors:
“I want to celebrate these elms which have been spared by the plague, these survivors of a once flourishing tribe commemorated by all the Elm Streets in America. But to celebrate them is to be silent about the people who sit and sleep underneath them, the homeless poor who are hauled away by the city like trash, except it has no place to dump them. To speak of one thing is to suppress another.”
—Lisel Mueller (b. 1924)
“I believe that all the survivors are mad. One time or another their madness will explode. You cannot absorb that much madness and not be influenced by it. That is why the children of survivors are so tragic. I see them in school. They don’t know how to handle their parents. They see that their parents are traumatized: they scream and don’t react normally.”
—Elie Wiesel (b. 1928)