Born in Brooklyn, Donald Douglas (1892–1981) took a keen interest, as most boys his age did, in what had taken place on Dec. 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Caroline. The age of aviation had taken flight, and Douglas, enamored with the Wright Brothers’ successful, though brief, flight, consumed all he could about the potentials of aeronautics. His enthusiasm for the skies only elevated when he witnessed Orville Wright give a flight demonstration for the U.S. Army Signal Corps in 1908.
From Annapolis to MIT
The following year, he entered the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. He spent three years at the Academy, and while not in class, he was often found building and testing model planes. Douglas was made for the air, not the sea, and therefore resigned his commission at the Academy in 1912 to attend Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He completed the four-year mechanical engineering degree in two years and remained at the school as an assistant to Jerome Hunsaker, who was head of the MIT Engineering Department.While there, he helped Hunsaker develop his wind tunnel, going so far as to redesign it. Douglas left Hunsaker somewhat bewildered by the fact that his redesign was “not only better, cost less, but was done in half the time.”
Douglas left MIT and in 1915 briefly consulted the Connecticut Aircraft Company in their effort to build the Navy’s first dirigible (DN-1), which proved to be a failure in almost every sense of the word. He was hired by the Glenn L. Martin Company as its chief engineer. When the United States entered World War I, Douglas served a year with the Army Signal Corps as Chief Civilian Aeronautical Engineer. When that year expired, he returned to Martin Co. to help design the groundbreaking Martin MB-1 bomber.
Flying Solo
In 1920, Douglas moved to California to launch his own aircraft company. He and David Davis, who would design the “Davis Wing” of the B-24 Liberator during World War II, established the Davis-Douglas Company in the back of a barber shop. The company’s first venture began with Davis advancing Douglas with $40,000 to build a plane that could take flight with a payload heavier than itself and would be able to fly coast to coast. Douglas designed the Cloudster, which successfully met the payload requirement and, on March 19, 1921, set the Pacific Coast altitude record by reaching 19,160 feet. Three months later the company attempted to fly the plane cross country, but engine failure forced the Cloudster to land in Fort Bliss, Texas (the first nonstop transcontinental flight would not be accomplished until May 1923 by the Fokker T-2). Davis soon sold his interest in the company to Douglas, and the company was renamed Douglas Aircraft Company (DAC).
The US Military Client
Despite the plane’s inability to make it across the continent, the Navy took notice and began ordering torpedo bombers from DAC. Douglas and the U.S. military would enjoy a long and successful relationship, as the company built various aircraft, including many that helped win World War II, like the TBD Devastator, the A-20 Havoc, the SBD Dauntless/A-24 Banshee, and the A-26 Invader.
Despite Douglas’s contributions to the war effort, his greatest contribution to the history of aviation arguably came well before hostilities broke out in Europe and less than a year after the Fokker flight. Noting the torpedo bombers DAC was building for the U.S. Navy, the U..S Army Air Service (precursor of the Air Force) requested a slightly modified version of the bomber―one that could land on the ground and on the water. With the nonstop transcontinental and the transatlantic flights already accomplished (the latter conducted in 1919 by the British), the Air Service set their sights on a flight around the world. This challenge had already been unsuccessfully attempted by the British and the French. The Italians and the Portuguese were laying plans for their attempt. Time was not on Douglas’s side.
Making History
He quickly got to work on modifying his plane to make it capable of landing safely at sea and on land. He also necessarily increased the plane’s fuel capacity from 115 gallons to 644 gallons. Douglas had a prototype ready for the Army to test in 45 days. Once the Army approved, Douglas built four more, which he called the Douglas World Cruisers. These two-seat single prop biplanes were powered by a 400 horsepower V12 Liberty Engine. The four Douglas World Cruisers were christened the Seattle, the Chicago, the Boston, and the New Orleans, in honor of the U..S regions.On April 6, 1924, a mere nine months after the Air Service made their request, the four planes launched west from Sand Point Naval Air Station near Seattle, which would also be the end point for the flight. Over the course of 175 days in which the planes were in the air 371 hours and 11 minutes, they covered 27,553 miles (due to the United States not recognizing the Soviet Union at the time, flying over Siberia was prohibited, which added 6,875 miles to the flight), crossed the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, and touched down in 28 countries. When the journey ended on Sept. 28, only two of the four planes, the Chicago and the New Orleans, made it back to Sand Point (the Seattle crashed in Alaska early into the trip and the Boston made a forced landing at sea and sank, but was replaced by the Boston II―all of the pilots and navigators survived).
It was a milestone achievement for America, the Air Service, and for Douglas personally. After the Douglas World Cruisers achieved the heretofore unachievable, Douglas added a motto to his company name: “First Around the World.”
