PP-AVJ  Douglas DC-3                                     (c/n  7333)

                            

                                Empresa de Transportes Aerovias Brasil, S.A. was founded in 1942 by Lowell Yerex, the American
                                entrepreneur who had founded the TACA consortium of airlines.  Yerex had his finger in many pies
                                and also founded British West Indian Airways in Trinidad as an alternative area of investment away
                                from the predominantly US-dominated region served by the TACA enterprises.  .Anyway, Aerovias
                                Brasil, in addition to the lucrative Rio to Sao Paulo air corridor route also flew the inland route from
                                Rio de Janeiro to Belem.    Early equipment comprised of  Lockheed 12s and 14s, but by 1945 a
                                fleet of DC-3s (to eventually number over 30) was in service.     PP-AVJ was built in 1942 as a
                                C-53-DO (i.e. originally destined to be an airliner, but diverted to the military during WW II).  It
                                was assigned the USAAF serial 42-15538.  After WW II it went to TACA de Salvador as YS-21,
                                and then was transferred by Yerex to TACA de Costa Rica where it became TI-75 and finally to
                                his Brazilian carrier as PP-AVJ.   In 1954 Aerovias Brasil merged with REAL to form the REAL-
                                Aerovias Brasil consortium.    PP-AVJ appears to have been sold (or leased?) at that time to
                                Servicios Aereos de Defesa Rural Jahu and became PT-CGL.  Oddly, this ex Aerovias machine
                                was acquired by VARIG who, by August of 1961 had also acquired the assets of the REAL-
                                Aerovias Brasil consortium.   With VARIG it became PP-VDM.    Following a period in storage
                                at Manaus in the 1980s, this old DC-3 was saved from the scrapyard as a static display, and now
                                reposes in a city square in Carajas in the state of Para..  I am indebted to Lineu Carneiro Saraiva
                                for the contemporary image of it below.   Interestingly, at the Museu Aeroespacial in Rio de Janeiro
                                there is a restored C-47A masquerading as PP-AVJ.     In actual fact this latter machine is a
                                C-47A-90-DL (c/n 20555, and ex 43-16089) and was the former Brazilian Air Force  FAB2024.
                                It does, however, serve to illustrate the very nice red  livery which was worn by the aircraft of
                                Aerovias Brasil in the 1940s and 50s. .