By 1942 "Pelikaan" might as well have been a Dakota- she was apparently daubed with camouflague paint (here I've reconstructed this from grainy B&W photos taken at the crash-site... oops, there is a spoiler for you) and had most of her seats pulled out to aid delivery of supplies to Allied forces struggling to slow the invasion. To the servicemen and Dutch civilians the Pelikaan had already carried to Australia, this hard-working DC-3 and its famous pilot Ivan Smirnoff, was a life-saver. He'd already flown his wife and many others to safety- now there was time for one more night-flight across the wide Timor Sea. A decorated WW1 fighter ace for Imperial Russia and an experienced airline pilot, Smirnoff had probably thought he'd seen it all in the chaotic days leading up to this last flight from Java, but hours before take off, a local businessman arrived with a mysterious, "valuable" brown-paper package. It was intricately sealed, and Smirnoff was asked to deliver it to the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. He wasn't told its contents. So naturally he tossed upwards of 300,000 British pounds worth of diamonds onto the plane without really appreciating what he was doing and got on with what pilot's do best- pre-flight checks. He had a "valuable" crew of three, plus five servicemen, and a Dutch mother (a KLM worker) and a baby to get to Broome, Western Australia. Pelikaan, at that moment the most valuable DC3 on Earth, was expected to reach Broome shortly after 9AM on March 3rd 1942... Which makes this year the Seventieth Anniversary of the "Battle of Broome." To be continued... Rendered in Vue 8 Esprit. (Thankfully, it seems it was close to being a full moon that night- otherwise this would be a very dark render indeed!) Assets- Neil's versatile DC3 model (available elsewhere) retextured to represent the "Pelikaan" in her militarized form.