A DC-3 landed in Whitehorse late Wednesday afternoon as part of its commemorative flight from Montana to Siberia.

Alaskan pilot Dwayne King plans to reach Siberia for May 9 – Soviet Victory Day – or the day Nazi Germany surrendered to the Russians in the Second World War.

The flight also commemorates what was known as the Lend Lease Program, which saw the U.S. lend allies supplies and materials during the war.

Thousands of aircraft bound for Alaska and Siberia touched down in the Yukon to refuel during the Second World War.

Whitehorse aviation historian Bob Cameron explained today it was referred to as the Northwest Staging Route, and was part of the Alcan project to build the Alaska Highway and several airports to accommodate the military aircraft.

Some 7,000 planes flew the Northwest Staging Route during the war, Cameron said.

“Most of those 7,000 were fighters and bombers that were on their way to Russia on the Lend Lease Program,” he said.

Cameron said at the same time Pan America was flying DC-3s, or what was referred to in wartime as C-47s, to haul supplies in support of the Alcan Project.

“There was as many as a dozen a day going in and out of here,” he said.

Helping to co-ordinate Wednesday’s event was Janna Powell, executive director of the Yukon Transportation Museum.

Powell said King and his crew arrived from Watson Lake at 4:10 p.m., not long after a pair of U.S. fighters touched down, coincidentally.

As part of the commemoration event, the crew is offering rides.

In Watson Lake, they flew around a school group in the morning.

Last evening, they took nine locals, including Powell, on a ride to the marge of Lake Laberge.

“I think every time they stop, they are happy to take people for a flight because it is a whole experience you do not get these days,” she said.

“You know, it is noisy and shaky and jumpy. There is something about it that is pretty special.”

The DC-3 was scheduled to depart for Anchorage this morning.

The history of the DC-3 in the Yukon is well-entrenched, as it is around the world, Air North president Joe Sparling said this morning.

“They were probably the first large aircraft involved in scheduled service really anywhere in Canada, but certainly in the Yukon,” he said.

“They started or were instrumental in the growth of many airlines around the world, including ours.”

Sparling said all of the local Yukon airlines in the past used DC-3s to haul freight and passengers.

Air North retired the last of its five DC-3s in 1997, he pointed out.

And it is the DC-3 that still steals the show on the weekly TV series Ice Pilots about the trials and tribulations of Yellowknife’s Buffalo Airways and its old workhorse.

The museum’s executive director said another group, the Bravo 369 Flight Foundation, will be flying and documenting the Alaska-Sibera route this summer.

They’re scheduled to arrive in Whitehorse July 24 with three aircraft of Second World War vintage, Powell said.

Powell said the foundation pilots will be flying a DC-3, a Ryan Navion and a T-6 Texan trainer, also known as the Harvard.

Former Yukon commissioner Doug Bell trained on a Harvard, she pointed out.

“So we have arranged for him to have a ride.”