Photos from WWII

I'm looking thru the photos in a coffee table book "The DC-3".  I'm struck by the number of photos from WWII, showing DC-3's at a variety of Podunk airports, loading or discharging passengers.  Somehow, in the depths of an existential war, the American economy can produce civilian air service into tiny burgs way out in the Great Plains. And do it with modern state-of-the-art aircraft too.  No beat up biplanes or wrinkly Ford tri-motors,  the Douglas DC-3 was top of the line in 1942.