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Douglas Aircraft

 

Since 1921, Donald Douglas and his father had controlled the funds of the Douglas Company and had reinvested all but a small amount of the profits. By the fall of 1928, the net worth of the company had grown to $2.5 million. This was an extraordinary achievement, considering that Douglas had needed a $15,000 loan just seven years earlier to get started. In November 1928, the company reorganized and became the Douglas Aircraft Company Inc., a publicly traded company. Some of the cash that was received went into building a new plant in Santa Monica. The company, thus, became the first of the aircraft manufacturers to choose southern California as its permanent residence, as so many aircraft companies would in the future. In January 1932, Douglas bought just over a half share of John "Jack" Northrop's El Segundo operation to create the Northrop Corporation as a partially owned subsidiary of Douglas Aircraft.

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The wing of a DC-1 held up even when a stream roller was driven over it.

Douglas' successful round-the-world flight in 1924 brought huge orders for the Douglas Company, including an order from the Army Air Service for 27 C-1s, the military transport version of the Douglas World Cruiser. This plane was similar to the DWC but could carry six to eight passengers or, if the seats were removed, cargo instead. The first C-1 flew at Santa Monica on May 2, 1925. Douglas also built a series of mail planes in the mid-1920s that flew millions of miles across America for several small airlines that carried the mail. The company also built a series of observation planes in the mid-1920s, the O-2, for the U.S. Army Air Service.

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Douglas Aircraft tested the strength of the aileron on the DC-1 by piling bags of 80-pound shot on it.

In 1929, Douglas combined his love for the sea with aviation and built his first flying boat—the Sinbad, a prototype of the Dolphin series, which he designed for the luxury commercial market. But the stock market crash and the resulting depression virtually eliminated the commercial market and meant that most of the 58 Dolphins ended in military hands. Military orders during the next few years kept Douglas financially sound when so many other U.S. companies had to close. In 1930, the Army bought seven Douglas gull-wing B-7 bombers and five O-35 observation monoplanes, and the series of observation biplanes that had begun in 1924 remained in production until 1936, with almost 800 built. This steady income allowed Douglas to take more of a risk with a commercial airliner.

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The one and only DC-1, first of the Douglas Commercial family of aircraft. It first flew on July 1, 1933.

On March 31, 1931, Knute Rockne, the famous football coach, was killed when a wooden Fokker trimotor crashed. It had suffered a structural failure partly because of its wood construction. Consequently, the Civil Aeronautics Authority grounded the plane and insisted on so many modifications that the Fokker was taken out of service, leaving the company to return to solely European production. The industry realized that it had to come up with a safer plane—an all-metal plane. United Airlines turned to its companion company, Boeing, which came up with the highly successful Model 247. But Boeing would not commit to providing planes to one of United's competitors, Transcontinental and Western Air (TWA), so in 1932, TWA vice president Jack Frye turned to the other aircraft companies.

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The Douglas DC-2, 1934. Sales of this plane eventually reached 156.

Frye decided that TWA would issue its own specifications for a passenger airliner. On August 2, 1932, he invited five aircraft companies to submit designs for his plane. His specification called for a three-engine all-metal monoplane. One of his requirements was that the plane be able to take off fully loaded with only two of the three engines operating out of any airport TWA used. This was a rigorous requirement because TWA flew out of some airports at high altitudes or where the temperatures were high.

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Early stewardesses were all nurses and would lose their jobs if they got married.

Although Douglas hesitated at first because he anticipated the need for fewer than 100 of these planes—a risky investment considering the development costs—he responded with a much more advanced design. It was a twin-engine plane that would incorporate features of Jack Northrop's strong tapered wing and a floor that wasn't divided by a spar. Douglas received the DC-1 prototype contract on September 20, 1932. The DC-1 flew on July 1, 1933. Calling on the expertise of a talented Douglas team, Douglas had built an all-metal monoplane with tapered wings, retractable landing gear, and two 690-horsepower (515-kilowatt) Wright nine-cylinder air-cooled radial engines that drove its variable-pitch propellers. It sat 12 passengers and had a large lavatory, a small galley, and a soundproofed cabin with heating ducts. After 200 test flights and ironing out some problems, including carburetors that had been installed backwards and caused the engines to cut off when climbing, the plane was approved for service. TWA officially accepted it in December 1933.

Only one DC-1 was built, but it was enough to get TWA to order 20 production aircraft, which were designated the DC-2. They had a larger engine and seated 14 passengers as opposed to Boeing's 10. The plane first flew on May 11, 1934 and began service with TWA on May 18. Douglas was ready to go on and build what many consider to be one of the greatest planes ever—the DC-3.

—Judy Rumerman

References:

Bowman, Martin W., compiler. Douglas - Images of America. Stroud, Gloucestershire, England: Tempus Publishing Limited, 1999.

Francillon, René J. McDonnell Douglas Aircraft Since 1920. London: Putnam, 1979.

Gunston, Bill, editor-in-chief. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Propeller Airliners. London: Phoebus Publishing, 1980.

Morrison, Wilbur H. Donald W. Douglas – A Heart With Wings. Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1991.

Pattillo, Donald M. Pushing the Envelope: The American Aircraft Industry. Ann Arbor, Mich.: The University of Michigan Press, 1998.

 

In the early 1930s, Boeing introduced a landmark aircraft, the Boeing "Model 247", that did much to advance the state of the art of commercial airliner technology. The Boeing 247 entered service with United Air Lines. In 1932 Trans World Airways (TWA), bumped by Boeing to second priority behind United for delivery of Model 247s, contacted Douglas Aircraft to obtain a comparable airliner.

Donald Douglas SR put his crew to work on the project, and on 1 July 1933 the "DC-1 (Douglas Commercial 1)" took to the air for the first time. The DC-1 was a low-wing monoplane, with a capacity of 12 passengers, and twin Wright Cyclone R-1820 air-cooled radial engines driving three-bladed propellers. The TWA request had specified three engines, but Douglas managed to convince TWA's technical advisor, Charles Lindberg, that two would do the job.

The DC-1 was an all-metal aircraft, except for some fabric-covered control surfaces; and it was a "taildragger", with the main gear partially retracting forward into the engine nacelles, and a nonretractable tailwheel. It was effectively a prototype and only one was ever built. It was used by TWA for promotional flights and eventually ended its days in Spain.

The production aircraft was the "DC-2". It had the same general configuration as the DC-1, but it was stretched to carry 14 passengers and had more powerful Cyclone engines. It also added rubber pneumatic de-icing boots to the leading edges of all flight surfaces. TWA ordered an initial batch of 25 DC-2s. The DC-2 first flew on 11 May 1934, and entered TWA service a week later. It proved to be a popular aircraft, with several hundred built in all, and laid the groundwork for a derivative that would become truly famous, one that would reduce the groundbreaking Boeing Model 247 to relative obscurity.

In 1934, American Airlines (AA) was considering a US transcontinental air service. Given the flight speeds of the time, that implied passenger sleeping facilities on the aircraft, and so AA asked Douglas to build an enlarged version of the DC-2 that could accommodate sleeping berths.

Douglas was scrambling to meet orders for the DC-2 at the time and was reluctant to move off in another direction, but the company took the contract. Douglas developed a new version of the DC-2 that had greater wingspan, a larger tail, longer fuselage, and fuselage width increased by 66 centimeters (26 inches). The new aircraft could accommodate 16 sleeping berths, or 28 seats. Fitted with berths, it was known as the "Douglas Sleeper Transport (DST)". Fitted with seats, it was known as the "DC-3". This document will refer to the type as the DC-3 for simplicity, though production totals include some DSTs.

The first DC-3 flew on 17 December 1935, the 32nd anniversary of the Wright Brothers' first powered flight. The first production aircraft was handed over to AA in June 1936 to begin flight services between New York and Chicago. Intercontinental services began in September 1936.

Initial production versions of the DC-3 used Wright R-1820-G5 Cyclone engines with 685 kW (920 HP) each. The DC-3A featured Pratt & Whitney (P&W) R-1830 Twin Wasp radial engines with 746 kW (1,000 HP) each, and the DC-3B featured Wright R-1820-G-102 Cyclones with 820 kW (1,100 HP) each. The DC-3 quickly eclipsed the DC-2. By the time the United States entered World War II in December 1941, 430 DC-3s had been delivered, and that was only the beginning.

Greg Goebel / Public Domain