I remember the night that this accident took place. An unnecessary tragedy caused by a faulty combustion heater, a very cold night and an incompetent crew. I recall that the crew tried to claim that Rick Nelson was free basing cocaine or some such garbage as the cause of the fire. The copilot apparently reset the heater circuit breaker multiple times until a fire started.
A link to the Rick Nelson accident report
https://www.baaa-acro.com/sites/default ... /N711Y.pdfLink to a more detailed report
https://www.caseygerry.com/2015/04/20/t ... sons-dc-3/So, some DC-3s did have combustion heaters with other than the hot air system from the exhaust muff. I’ve been looking at pictures of various DC-3s and paying particular attention to the exhaust systems. A number of them have shorter exhaust stacks and a few have multiple short stacks as on the Super DC-3. Those airplanes would most likely have combustion heaters.
High gross Twin Beeches had ejector exhaust with multiple short stacks and had to switch to combustion heaters in the wheel wells from the efficient hot air heaters similar to those on C-47s. The damaged blood circulation in my feet is a testament to how ineffective these heater combustion heater installations could be. Great when everything worked properly, but you were out of luck if the ducting to the cockpit was less than perfect or if you didn’t shut the heater down soon enough on landing. That could pop the over temp circuit breaker in the wheel well. If you forget to check it before the next take-off, you were out of luck for that flight and it would invariably be a 6 hour leg with ambient temperatures below zero Fahrenheit.