Douglas Aircraft Company

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 6th of April 1924, four open-cockpit biplanes lifted off from Seattle, Washington, heading west on a mission no aircraft had ever attempted: flying all the way around the world. Five months later, two of those planes returned to Seattle to great acclaim. The aircraft bore the name Douglas World Cruiser, built by a company that had existed for less than three years. That flight put Donald Wills Douglas Sr. on the map and launched a company that would go on to produce nearly 30,000 aircraft in a single three-year stretch during World War II, design one of the most celebrated commercial airplanes ever built, and contribute to the rockets that carried astronauts toward space. How did a small California operation founded in 1921 grow into one of the defining aerospace companies of the twentieth century? And what forces finally brought it to a close in 1967?

• 2. Around the World

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  In 1923, the U.S. Army Air Service approached Donald Douglas with an extraordinary request. The Army wanted to circumnavigate the Earth by air for the first time, and Douglas proposed a modified version of the DT, a two-place, open-cockpit torpedo bomber biplane the company had already built for the U.S. Navy. The resulting aircraft was called the Douglas World Cruiser. A prototype was delivered in November 1923, and after successful tests on the 19th of that month, the Army commissioned four production aircraft. Preparing for the demands of such a journey, the Army pre-positioned spare parts along the entire route, including fifteen extra Liberty L-12 engines and fourteen extra sets of pontoons. The last aircraft reached U.S. Army hands on the 11th of March 1924. One of the lesser-known facts about this project is that it served as the first major assignment for Jack Northrop, who designed the fuel system for the World Cruiser series. Northrop would later found the Northrop Corporation. Two of the four aircraft completed the full circumnavigation; one was lost in fog conditions, and another was forced down over the Atlantic and sank. The original prototype was rechristened and joined the surviving pair to complete the North American leg of the journey. The Army Air Service followed the success with an order for six similar aircraft as observation planes.

• 3. Building a California Empire

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  Within five years of the company's founding on the 22nd of July 1921, Douglas was building around 100 aircraft per year. The company started with torpedo bombers for the U.S. Navy and expanded outward into reconnaissance planes and airmail aircraft. Early employees included Ed Heinemann, Carl Cover, and a figure who would become an industry giant in his own right: James "Dutch" Kindelberger. In the mid-1920s, manufacturing facilities sat in Santa Monica at what is now Douglas Park, at 25th Street and Wilshire Boulevard. As the workforce grew, the Santa Monica complex became so large that mail girls used roller skates to deliver intracompany correspondence. The company reorganized under the name Douglas Aircraft Company on the 30th of November 1928. By the time World War II ended, Douglas operated plants in Santa Monica, El Segundo, Long Beach, and Torrance in California, and additional facilities in Tulsa, Midwest City, and Chicago. The company also expanded into amphibian airplanes in the late 1920s and moved its main facilities to Clover Field in Santa Monica. The DC-2, a commercial twin-engined transport, appeared in 1934, and then came the aircraft that would define the company's legacy for generations.

• 4. The DC-3 and the DC Lineage

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  The Douglas DC-3 arrived in 1936 and has been described as perhaps the most significant transport aircraft ever built. In military service, it flew as the C-47 Skytrain; British forces called it the Dakota. The DC-3 was the centerpiece of what Douglas called the "DC" series, standing for Douglas Commercial. That series stretched from the DC-1 in 1933 through the DC-2, DC-3, and beyond. After the war, Douglas pressed forward with the four-engined DC-6 in 1946 and the DC-7 in 1953, the last propeller-driven commercial aircraft the company would produce. The company entered the jet age with the DC-8 in 1958, positioning it as a direct competitor to the Boeing 707. The DC-9 followed in 1965. Douglas also moved into military jets earlier, with the straight-winged F3D Skyknight delivered to the U.S. Navy in 1948 and the swept-wing F4D Skyray in 1951. The DC series earned Douglas its enduring reputation for long-lasting, dependable aircraft. Many Douglas-built planes accumulated service lives that outlasted the company itself.

• 5. War Production and Its Aftermath

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  Between 1942 and 1945, Douglas Aircraft produced nearly 30,000 aircraft, and its workforce expanded to 160,000 people. The company ranked fifth among all United States corporations in total value of wartime production contracts. Aircraft rolling off Douglas lines during that period included the C-47 Skytrain, the DB-7 (known by several designations, including the A-20 Havoc and the Boston in British service), the SBD Dauntless dive bomber, and the A-26 Invader. Douglas also joined the BVD consortium alongside Boeing and Vega to produce the B-17 Flying Fortress, and after the war it built the Boeing-designed B-47 Stratojet under license at a government-owned factory in Marietta, Georgia. The end of the war brought an abrupt reversal. Government aircraft orders stopped, surplus aircraft flooded the market, and Douglas had to cut nearly 100,000 workers from its payroll. Out of that difficult transition, however, came an unexpected new role. In March 1946, Douglas was granted the contract to research intercontinental warfare under a program called Project RAND. That project eventually evolved into the independent RAND Corporation.

• 6. Missiles, Space, and New Frontiers

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  By the 1950s, Douglas was moving into missile development. The company progressed from air-to-air rockets and missiles to full missile systems, becoming the main contractor for the Nike missile program in 1956, and then the prime contractor for both the Skybolt air-launched ballistic missile and the Thor ballistic missile program. The Thor family spawned a wide range of rocket variants, many of which fed into early space launch efforts. Douglas was also a pioneer in ejection seats, bomb racks, and surface-to-air missile systems. NASA recognized the company's engineering depth and brought Douglas in to design the S-IVB stage, the third stage used in both the Saturn IB and the Saturn V rockets. Those rockets would carry Apollo missions toward the Moon. The company had come a long way from the open-cockpit biplanes of the early 1920s: by the mid-1960s it was helping to shape the hardware of human spaceflight.

• 7. The McDonnell Merger

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  By 1967, Douglas was caught in a bind. Demand for the DC-8 and DC-9 airliners and the A-4 Skyhawk military attack aircraft outpaced the company's ability to expand production. Quality problems, cash flow difficulties, and the costs of developing the DC-10 compounded the pressure, as did supply shortages tied to the Vietnam War. After nearly four years of merger talks, Douglas and McDonnell Aircraft Corporation combined on the 28th of April 1967 to form McDonnell Douglas Corporation, with headquarters at McDonnell's facility in St. Louis, Missouri. The pairing made sense on paper: McDonnell was a major defense contractor with almost no civilian business, while Douglas brought commercial contracts that could buffer McDonnell against procurement downturns. Shortly after the merger was announced, McDonnell purchased 1.5 million shares of Douglas stock to address what it described as Douglas's immediate financial requirements. Donald Wills Douglas Sr. became honorary chairman of the merged company, a title he held until his death in 1981. His son, Donald Wills Douglas Jr., served as president of Douglas Aircraft, which continued as a wholly owned subsidiary. Former McDonnell president David S. Lewis later became chairman of the division, and his successful turnaround enabled him to rise to the presidency of McDonnell Douglas in 1969. When Boeing absorbed McDonnell Douglas in 1997, it merged Douglas Aircraft into its commercial airplanes division and retired the Douglas name after 76 years. The last Long Beach-built Boeing 717, a descendant of the DC-9, ceased production in May 2006, and the final Boeing C-17 Globemaster III was assembled at the Long Beach facility in late 2015. The former Douglas logo remains visible on that facility to this day.