The first flight of a stretched DC-8, a Dash-61, took place forty-five years ago, on 14 March 1966.
The tall landing gear and upswept tail of the original DC-8 series enabled the aircraft to accomodate
fuselage stretch with ease.

The 20'0' forward fuselage plug and the 16'8" aft plug allowed for a capacity of 251 passengers. The airlines
would learn through the Super Series what it would be like handling the huge passenger loads that would
follow a half decade later with the arrival of the wide-body jets.

So successful was the Super Series, airlines such as United, Delta and Flying Tigers would modernize them
further by taking McDonnel-Douglas up on a plan developed twelve years previous; the application of
advanced turbofan engines to the airframe. This resulted in the very successful CFM-56-powered Super 70 series.

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