C-47 Skytrain

The Skytrain is the heavy lift. Its hold is a weight budget rather than a head count: most units spend one of the five, but a Mammoth Heavy Tank or a Tempest MLRS spends four, which makes the C-47 the only aircraft in the game that can carry either. Unlike the Pelican Transport Helicopter, it does not hover — it lands to load and lands again to unload, and it carries no weapons at all.

How to use

Send the plane to the pickup point and order the units aboard from there: it parks where it comes down and the passengers walk out to it, so it will never go and fetch them. Told to wait over water or forest, it puts itself down on the nearest drivable tile instead of circling. Either way the ramp only opens once the wheels are down, and the climb back out takes a few seconds during which it is low and slow — pick a landing zone outside anti-air range, not one you have to fly out of under fire.

One heavy vehicle plus one light one is a full load; five light units is the other. That is what the aircraft is for: heavy armor that cannot ford a river or climb a cliff line arrives behind the enemy instead of in front of it. It has no way to defend itself, so send a Falcon Fighter ahead of it whenever the enemy has an airbase.

Anecdotes

The real C-47 dropped paratroopers over Normandy and flew freight over the Himalayas, and Eisenhower is quoted as counting it among the handful of machines that won the war, beside the jeep and the bazooka. Its crews called it the Gooney Bird.