The race to circle the globe has its roots in the first flight made by the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk—though it took nearly 20 years for the technology of aviation to advance to the point where such a concept became feasible.
Donald Douglas, in fact, made his first stab at the design that would inform the successful round-the-world model back in 1915, in collaboration with Boston millionaire Porter Hartwell Adams. A couple of years later, Douglas would develop another variation, the Model S seaplane, for the Glenn Martin Company.
In 1920, under the first iteration of the company that would become DAC, the Davis-Douglas Aircraft Company, Douglas’ team of engineers built the Cloudster. The Army Air Corps took a shine to the land-based sportplane its initial prospectus to Douglas, now on his own, in 1923—but he already had a better answer: the DT series.
The Douglas DT-2 on land gear served as a torpedo bomber for the U.S. Navy, and it could also fly on floats. [Credit: Naval History and Heritage Command]
Having sold several to the Navy, Douglas felt the DT-2 was a mature product ready for a new expression. He submitted the design with a handful of proposals for round-the-world requirements. The brass back in D.C. loved the idea, and dropped other manufacturers from the competition, which had included the Fokker T-2.
When I traced the history of Donald Douglas in researching “Honest Vision: The Donald Douglas Story,” one intriguing event in his life took place during a trip he made with his family to England, Scotland, and around Europe in May 1935. The impetus for the trip? An invitation to deliver the Royal Aeronautical Society’s Wilbur Wright Memorial Lecture in London.
To track down the details of that event, I contacted the librarian for the Royal Aeronautical Society in Farnborough, England. Brian Riddle paid careful attention to my request, and I was able to go a step further and visit their archives on a research trip to the UK in 2014. Excerpts from the lecture, and its publication in the Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society in November 1935, warranted inclusion in the book–and with the permission of the Society, of course.
Mr. Riddle and I have stayed in touch on a couple of other research questions–and he also asked, after the book’s publication, if we would mind sending a copy for review. Not only is that review forthcoming in the new RAeS magazine, Aerospace, but “Honest Vision” has now joined the stacks within the library itself.
Honestly, I could not think of a more fitting place for this labor of love to reside. Thank you to the Royal Aeronautical Society, and to Mr. Riddle, for your enthusiasm to preserve the story of Donald Douglas.
We’d traveled to Santa Monica on the day before, to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the DC-3’s first flight. Because the weather on the actual day, December 17, 2010, threatened low clouds and rain, we planned to fly with a friend in Betsy’s Biscuit Bomber, a C-47 based in Paso Robles, on the afternoon of the 16th, from the Santa Monica Airport at 3:30 pm, to match the time that Carl Cover first took a Douglas Sleeper Transport to the skies in 1935.
But we had time to kill—a dangerous thing for a pilot crew—so I told my pals Dan and Matt that we’d drive down San Vicente Boulevard, so that we could see the house that Donald Douglas had designed and built, in 1927, for his family. Well, what we *could* see of it, hidden behind its long stucco walls.
We parked and walked along the sidewalk to the front gate, which had been braced with the Olde English style lamps that Doug favored. I peered through a crack…you couldn’t really see a thing from the road. “Should we see if anyone’s there?” said Dan. I hesitated. It never occured to me to ring the bell, to disturb whoever lived there. But it was early afternoon on a weekday—so in my mind, no one was likely to answer.
But someone did. And introducing himself as the house manager, the man asked what we wanted. Dan told him we were in town to celebrate the DC-3, that we knew the house as Doug’s own. And next thing we knew, the gate parted, opening onto a drive down which strolled Douglas, the kind estate manager, who offered to show us around.
I was stunned, not believing our luck. Jim Douglas, Doug’s son, had told me that he hadn’t seen inside the house since it was sold, following his parents’ divorce, in the mid 1950s.
We walked past the rose garden and around the back into the living room. The house was overjoyed with Christmas decorations, lending it a timeless, enchanted feeling. Douglas detailed the restoration work that the owner had completed—she was a native to the neighborhood, and most everything in the house was still original, as the only intermediate owner died without any money to remodel or fix things up.
He introduced us to the kitchen, the dining room, and the lounge, complete with its own pine-clad bar set into the wall. He showed us where the fallout shelter had been, and where Doug’s shop once stood—it was now an intimate movie theater, where once Doug had built models and tinkered with inventions with his children.
Finally, we stood in what had been Doug’s study, and I took in its somber, yet inviting warmth. I imagined his books lining the shelves—knowing that he kept special ones locked away in a hidden cupboard. I asked Douglas if he’d found it, and he smiled. Yes, and he showed us where it was—exactly where my eyes had been. It was the most logical place, but somehow, also, it made sense to me in a different way. I understood a little bit more that day about the man who led his company to create the DC-3.
He came home to his study each day during those years between 1932 and 1936, when the development of the Douglas Commercial line hit full stride, and came to a milestone with the entry into service of American’s first DST in 1936. Douglas had set out a leather-bound folder on the desk, with Doug’s initials (DWD) embossed in gilt on the front cover. Inside were a series of professional photos, shot dramatically in black and white—they were staged for an issue of Architectural Digest that neither Douglas nor I have been able to locate. These were used to help the owner restore the home to its period state.
But more so than that, they confirmed that where we stood resembled very closely the home in which Doug lived while the DC-3 came to life in the factory over in Santa Monica’s Clover Field municipal airport. I breathed in every bit of those rooms that I could, knowing that someday I would write more about this intriguing man’s life.
That was eight years ago, of course. So this year, I’m proud to wish a Happy 83rd Birthday to the DC-3, and raise a toast to 2018 during which that biography, “Honest Vision: The Donald Douglas Story,” came to life.
The Douglas C-47 Miss Virginia at Oshkosh 2018. Photo by Stephen Yeates.
I’ve spent much of my aviation life with one foot in the future, and one foot in the past.
Most recently, I spent a year and a half working with new pilots just starting their studies towards an airline transport pilot’s license, young people from all over the world, in a new country (to all of us), fighting to perfect their English along with puzzling through General Navigation—one foot in the future, one foot in the past.
At the same time (along with a team of real aviation history geeks), I brought into life the biography of a man, Donald Douglas, who changed our world a hundred years ago, as he graduated from the dewy-new MIT to establish the Douglas Aircraft Company and build the iconic DC-3.
As I continue to field DMs from students, as they struggle and succeed, and as I read news every day of the latest innovations trying to solve our questions of future propulsion, economy, and environmental care—I can’t help but be struck by the parallels back to similar questions Donald Douglas grappled with in the 1920s and 30s, as his wily band of engineers competed, collaborated, and convinced a wary public that flying around the world was not only possible, but safe—and should be something we must keep doing.
Clearly that general public took the bait, because we’re still building airplanes, we’re still needing pilots, and so much of the world’s commerce can happen because it’s possible for me to get on an airplane in Lisbon this afternoon and be in Singapore 26 hours later (with a few hours cooling my jets in Dubai).
A couple of weeks ago, the FAA hosted a symposium in Washington, D.C., seeking to loosen the hairy knot that’s choking the development of the aviation workforce. Because we live in a connected world, I participated in it livestream from my couch via Facebook.
Opening Panel of the FAA’s Aviation Workforce Symposium
Dr. Heather Wilson, Secretary of the Air Force, gives key insights into leading diversity
Snapshot from the FAA’s Aviation Workforce Symposium agenda
After conceding that the opening panel reflected the current state of affairs (and politics)—and deftly illustrated that we haven’t yet tackled diversity in our upper ranks—I was encouraged as the day moved on with a variety of thoughtful leaders from around the community floating up idea balloons that deserved more time than the space provided. It reminded me of the similar Pilot Training Reform Symposium hosted by SAFE (Society of Aviation and Flight Educators) in Atlanta in May 2011.
At that conference, we outlined a host of problems to address. Coming off of the worst recession many of us had witnessed firsthand, we discussed the lack of student starts, drop in aircraft sales, and diminishing flight hours all around that hung a dark cloud over the industry—but we were determined to fight these issues.
The ideas that came from that 2011 event (increase flight instructor professionalism, revamp the testing process, find new ways to market to the next generation) felt solid, but only through the collaborative effort between industry, government, and user groups did we come up with real change. Regardless of how you feel about the new Airmen Certification Standards, they reflect the substantial transformation that can happen when folks set aside their fiefdoms and work to create something new.
And that was the overall message I heard from the Aviation Workforce Symposium this September. We have a new landscape, with airlines around the world clamoring for personnel—not just pilots—and willing to pay for training and better wages to bring them on board. Turns out that when the real pain strikes you, what was once a nagging ache turns into an emergency you must address.
Priming the Pipeline Panel at the FAA’s Aviation Workforce Symposium
Pathways to Proficiency Panel from the FAA’s Aviation Workforce Symposium
At the symposium, the people who found success in recruiting diverse new entrants into the aviation community (be it pilots, technicians, or the host of support personnel making airplanes fly)—these folks brought up repeatedly the partnerships that had energized the process. The collaborations make it happen.
Case in point—and one I can relate to, given my recent experience: Students that have come into our training programs in Portugal typically do not have the same experience with the mechanical world that I had as a teenager. When I turned 16, more than 30 years ago, I had a car, and I learned how to change a tire, and an air filter, and the bulbs for my headlights. Today, even in the U.S., where a similar teen could also have access to a car, it might take dropping the entire front end of the car to get to the headlights—we’re so advanced, we’re no longer meant to service our own machines.
As for the young people I’ve mentored in the last two years: They not only may not have ever driven a car before coming to Portugal—some have never ridden a bicycle. It’s far from a lack of intelligence (that same kid could build an app for my iPhone), but a difference in exposure. At the same time, the airlines need more relevant skill in their initial candidates, though there may be less skill coming in the front door, a point brought up by several voices at the symposium.
We fiercely need to innovate and collaborate to attack this lack of exposure. If the flight school, and, subsequently the airline, notes this lack, and in partnership brings training into the high schools, we can solve this pervasive problem—and at the same time the industry gets to take advantage of the inherent marketing that occurs when a child encounters aviation in a natural, practical, relevant way.
We innovate in aviation in a stunning variety of ways, and I feel in my bones we’ll address our issues about fuel, noise, cost, comfort, and safety through evolutions we can’t yet visualize. The first flight around the world, in the Douglas World Cruisers in 1924, resulted from the innovation of the new aviation industry, backed by the support and investment of the Army Air Corps. Doug had witnessed the ineffective (at best) way government worked when unchecked, through his year with the Signal Corps in World War I—but he also knew that serving the greater good through this government contract could have a large financial payoff for his private-sector business.
I’d like to see the action list resulting from the Aviation Workforce Symposium—and determine the project to which I’ll sign my name. If each of us does the same, we can direct the innovation to address our problems.
One action item we can each put into play? Take a cue from entities as diverse as Boeing,Redbird Flight Simulations, and AOPA, and—using the work they’ve done in creating STEM curricula and other programs—help them find traction in our local schools and youth clubs. Supplement this greater action with other gestures to enhance it, such as donating materials and subscriptions to a local youth program or technical college.
My personal action has been giving support to our local air museum, and mentoring past students (our diverse “flock”) as they navigate their own specific course to an aviation career. Parallel to this? To counter any lack of opportunity, purposefully seek out young people who wouldn’t otherwise get a ride to the airport, and go to them where they are—maybe that kid isn’t watching airplanes from outside the fence because he or she can’t physically get there.
Collaboration wins, but it takes each of us to move the needle forward.
