The DC-5 was developed in 1938 as a 16-22 seat[1] civilian airliner, designed to use either Pratt & Whitney R-1690 Hornet or Wright R-1820 Cyclone radial engines.

The fuselage was about two feet above the ground, so loading of passengers and cargo was easier than aircraft with the then-standard conventional landing gear.

[4] A very early design change was the addition of a 15-degree dihedral to the horizontal tail group to negate a hint of an aeroelasticity problem.

Another significant modification was adding exhaust stacks to the engine nacelles, which was retroactively incorporated after the series entered production.

The prototype DC-5, Douglas serial 411, was built at El Segundo, California, with 1,000 hp Wright R-1820-44 Cyclone engines.

The other two were sold to the Netherlands-Indies Government for use by KNILM (with no affiliations with KLM, despite having their head offices in Amsterdam) from Batavia (now Jakarta, Indonesia) from 1940 onwards.

The aircraft arrived at Haifa in May 1948, and from there it went to Sde Dov, where its markings were removed and the name "Yankee Pasha – The Bagel Lancer" was crudely painted on the nose by hand.

On bomber missions the aft loading door was removed and bombs were rolled out of the opening "by a judicious shove from a crewman's foot.

When it was no longer serviceable due to a lack of spares, the airframe was stripped of its engines and instruments and the last DC-5 was reduced to scrap in Israel sometime after 1955.