Aircraft # N127RL De Havilland Canada DH-6 twin Otter 300 series S/N 435
This aircraft was sold to a leasing firm in 1974 under a proposed lease to Rocky Mountain Airlines..(RMA) never optioned the aircraft and it was picked up by Office of Naval Research under a long term lease to the University of Alaska, manager of the US Navy Arctic Research Lab (NARL) in Barrow ( Point Barrow) Alaska.
It arrived in full RMA livery in Spring 1975 and flew for 4 months in the spring of 1975 in that livery before it could be painted out..I have a photo of it on skis ( before the tundra tire was fitted to the nose gear) at an ice station (APLIS 2) in late April 1975, some 120 miles north of the Point and some 30 miles west(!) with the caption, "Rocky Mountain Airlines 127 Romeo Lima where are you?" ..There is an Igloo in the background ! Rock Mountain Airlines has a copy of the photo as well. The original is at University of Alaska Fairbanks. I took it. ..
127RL was used in Polar research. She had a repair to the nose gear box as nose skiis would trip and "wrinkle" the fuselage forward of the nose gear box, (a "Twin Otter Smile" ). It had a tundra tire fitted, as did many of the rest of the ski equipped planes and continued to service Polar Ice Stations across the arctic all the way to Greenland, until at least 1984.
It crashed, totaling the aircraft, in the spring of 1984 ( I believe) at Point Barrow at NARL, killing Pat Roberts, the pilot and only occupant.