His 32nd birthday—and what a present for Donald Douglas.
The Douglas World Cruisers, now the four of them assembled at Sandy Point, in Washington State, floated at their moorings on April 4, with fog conspiring to ground them for the day.
The crowd dispersed, only to return the next morning. Would this be it? April 5? But no, that morning, Major F.L. Martin—the flight’s commander—broke the prop on ship number one, the Seattle.
The morning of the 6th held promise, and the promise held as the quartet departed at long last, to the cheers of the crowd.
Donald Douglas and Lt. Eirk Nelson share a candid moment on departure day. [Credit: Douglas/”Sky Master”]
An image of Douglas and Nelson shows the easy stance between them—they’d struck up a friendship during Nelson’s months of duty in stationed in California preparing the ships for the flight. Douglas’ face remains gaunt, perhaps from the illness he’d just come through, or from the stress and worry ahead of the biggest moment of his professional life to that point.
Bets went against the four airplanes making it around the world—or even making it through Alaska. But they launched for Prince Rupert, British Columbia, under the escort of a gaggle of well-wishing aircraft. They would only follow along for a few miles… and then the Cruisers were on their own.
On their way up to Seattle, the Douglas World Cruisers could not make the journey nonstop.
At least not three of them traveling together, the Seattle, the Chicago, and the Boston. The trio landed on March 19, 1924, at the Vancouver Barracks, in Vancouver, Washington, just across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon.
They attempted to continue northbound, but the weather forced them to return to the Barracks to wait it out.
“The flight arrived at Vancouver, Wash., at 12:05 p.m., time of flight being 1 hour, 5 minutes. Vancouver is directly across the Columbia River from Portland. We were met by the mayor of Portland, the mayor of Vancouver, General Kuhn, the Commanding General of Vancouver Barracks, and many others of prominence in addition to a large crowd from Portland and Vancouver.”
-Major F.L. Martin, Army Air Service, Pilot of the Seattle [courtesy of the National Park Service website: https://www.nps.gov/articles/douglasworldcruiserspearson.htm]
A Douglas World Cruiser being serviced at the Vancouver Barracks on the flight up to Seattle. [Credit: Willard Carroll/National Park Service]
The quartet of airplanes made their way up from California to the Seattle area beginning on March 17, with high hopes.
From Sky Master: The Story of Donald Douglas: “For half a year the Air Service had been working on the final plans on their aerial expedition. The flight was to leave from Santa Monica, cover some twenty-two countries and approximately 25,000 miles, [and] return to Santa Monica in August.
“The foreign lands to be visited or flown over were Canada, Alaska, Russia (the Kamchatka Peninsula), Japan, China, Indo-China, Siam, Burma, India, Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Rumania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Austria, Germinay, France, England, Scotland, the Danish Faerce Islands, Iceland, and Greenland.
The globe-circling course as viewed from the North Pole also carried the images of several crew from the Douglas World Cruisers round-the-world flight. [Credit: From “Sky Master: The Story of Donald Douglas,” by Frank Cunningham]
“During the flight, the airmen were to soar over numerous bodies of water, such as the Gulf of Alaska, North Pacific Ocean, Yellow Sea, China Sea, Gulf of Siam, Bay of Bengal, Persian Gulf, The Straits, English Channel, the North Sea, the North Atlantic Ocean, the Denmark Strait, the Davis Strait, and the Gulf of St. Lawrence.”
But that was if the intrepid adventurers could make it past the western coast of the United States.
Misfortune descended upon Captain Martin’s airplane, the Seattle. As he flew up the San Joaquin Valley towards points to the north, Martin made a forced landing. From Sky Master: “He didn’t know it then, but that was nothing compared to what was to come a short time later.”
The foundation for the Douglas Aircraft Company started with a woman’s financial support: Charlotte Douglas married Donald in 1916, and cashed in a life insurance certificate she had in savings of $2,000 in 1922 to help launch Douglas Aircraft following his break with Davis.
Charlotte also led the team of women who hand-stitched the fabric covering the wings and fuselages of the Cloudster and Douglas World Cruisers, and performed subsequent detail work within the shop.
Women crafted the fabric covering for the fuselage and wings of the Douglas World Cruisers. [from “Together We Fly: Voices From the DC-3” by Julie Boatman Filucci]
She served as the social director, a counterpoint to Donald’s reserved nature, up until their bitter divorce in 1953.
Douglas, however, was far from finished with having women serve in vital roles for the company.
Peggy Tucker began her time with DAC in the 1930s as a driver, and worked her way up into roles ever closer to “Doug”—to the point where they began an affair leading to their marriage as soon as the ink was dry on his divorce.
As Peggy Douglas, she installed herself literally as the gatekeeper to the executive suite—not as a secretary but as the corporate deputy to Doug.
March 17, 1924, marked a St. Patrick’s Day to remember for the Scottish Douglas clan of Southern California.
While recovering from the illness that had barred him from attending the events surrounding the impending departure of the Douglas World Cruisers, Donald Douglas surely smiled at least a little bit. For his ambition to grow the Douglas Aircraft Company by means of incredible feats of aviation history were about to take flight.
Robert Arnold, grandson of Douglas and Gen. Henry “Hap” Arnold, recalled his mother Barbara’s memory of her own grandmother’s recollection of the occasion. “Granny [Arnold came] up for some of these events from San Diego, and during one of them, Hap put her in the back seat of [one of] the World Cruiser[s] and took her up for a spin. And Granny was about 4 foot 10 inches and always wore big hats, and always a charming and, for her time, a highly educated woman.”
The Douglas World Cruisers lined up at Clover Field on the departure day, March 17, 1924. [Courtesy of the Santa Monica Public Library]
“Doug” watched the send off in a checkered cap and horn-rimmed glasses, striving to look the part of the nonchalant man-of-the-world he strove to be.
On the morning of the grand departure, the airplanes stood ready to go, but fog blanketed Clover Field. After a two-hour delay, three of Cruisers lifted off. It was 9:30 a.m., according to “Sky Master.”
What about the fourth? Lt. Nelson’s airplane, Ship Number Four, the New Orleans, sat in San Diego, only just completed the day before. Nelson made his way up the coast solo to join his compatriots in Seattle.
Of all the best laid plans, the launch of an around-the-world flight still ranks as a prodigious undertaking—and that’s in the modern era, with reliable aircraft, satellite imagery, and global weather sourcing. Any number of calamities grave and minor could conspire to scuttle the start of the epic journey proposed by the U.S. Army Air Corps for its quartet of Douglas World Cruisers.
Still, hope springs eternal—and certainly it did in the Roaring Twenties. March 16, 1924, was selected as the target, and the city of Santa Monica hosted its World Flight Day on that pleasant Sunday. With a high of 65 degrees F and no precipitation, it would have made a perfect day to take off from Clover Field for points north but for one thing.
The entire Douglas family—at the time, Donald, Charlotte, Donald Jr (born in 1917), William (1918), and Barbara Jean (1922)—fell ill to whooping cough and missed the festivities. The family would catch up to the mighty DWCs as they were prepped to go in Washington state a couple of weeks later.
And who would fly these ships of wood and metal and fabric around the world? Each one would carry a pilot and a technician—one to fly and one to keep it flying—and the roster represented what the Air Corps considered to be its top ranking pilots, as well as ones capable of the mission ahead.
In Ship Number One: Major F.L. Martin, commander of the World Flight and Commandant of Chanute Field in Rantoul, Illinois; and Staff Sergeant A.L. Harvey, mechanic.
In Ship Number Two: Lt. Lowell Smith, a transcontinental ace and holder of the world’s endurance record at the time; and Technical Sergeant A,H. Turner, technician.
In Ship Number Three: Lt. Leigh Wade, former test pilot at McCook Field; and Staff Sergeant A.H. Ogden from the First Pursuit Group in Detroit.
In Ship Number Four: Lt. Erik Nelson, engineering officer for the World Flight; and Lt. John Harding Jr., maintenance officer.
Alternate crew members were there as well: pilots Lt. Leslie P. Arnold, and Lt. LeClair Schulze, a Pulitzer racer in 1922.
As the pilots assembled for the flight, they were supposed to bunk at the posh hotels in Santa Monica, but none would give the DWC crews special rates. I suppose pilots were cheap even back then… fortunately, the Christie Hotel in Hollywood stepped up to the plate.
From “Sky Master”: “Although an excellent hotel, the Christie wasn’t among the blue-blood establishments. The offer was accepted. When the flyers returned as heroes to Santa Monica after encircling the world, the managers of the luxury hotels begged the men to be their guests without any charge. The flyers thanked them, smiled, and returned to the Christie.”
If you pick your way along the paths that front the ocean between Malibu and the Santa Monica Pier, you’d best stay heads up from your phone, lest you get creamed by slender blondes and bronzed others ricocheting past on a run.
That’s not the Santa Monica that Donald Douglas knew—nearly a century has passed since he first walked down to the shoreline from his new house on San Vicente Boulevard in the early Thirties.
The Brown Derby chain opened in the 1920s nearby, with locations on Wilshire Boulevard and in Hollywood. Ballast bobs from the SS Catalina given away as souvenirs in 1923.
What would you have seen, though? I follow a couple of historical accounts on X/Twitter, including Pamela Grayson’s Lost Los Angeles, and the Santa Monica History Museum. Recently they’ve published a few photos from late 1923 into 1924… take a look at the pier that was—and the fire that nearly wiped out the Ocean Park Pier.
The Ocean Park Pier property was acquired just two weeks after the fire for $2 million in 1924 dollars.Aftermath from the February 1924 fire that wrecked the Ocean Park Pier in Santa Monica.The ruins of the roller coaster at the Ocean Park Pier in Santa Monica after the 1924 fire.During the 1924 fire, smoke covered the streets near the ocean in Santa Monica.
This is the scene within which the Douglas Aircraft Company finished assembly and test flying of its Douglas World Cruisers ahead of their planned launch from Clover Field (now KSMO) on March 16.
While testing on the aircraft took place throughout the spring of 1924, the U.S. Army Air Corps took official delivery of the last of the five units of the Douglas World Cruiser on March 11.
Testing on the prototype took place at McCook Field, in Dayton, Ohio, with trials on the floats in Hampton, Virginia, and again in San Diego, California. The DWC featured the 400-horsepower Liberty V-12 engine—a proven mount that the Air Corps already knew well from its use in a variety of airplane during the Great War—and it could cruise at 100 mph. According to the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum, 20,748 of the Liberty engines were built by auto manufacturers, including Ford, Packard, Buick, Lincoln, and Marmon for aviation use.
The Liberty A model V-12 engine, in the collection of the National Air & Space Museum. [Credit: Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum]
One of my most cherished books is an original edition of “Sky Master: The Story of Donald Douglas,” signed by Douglas himself. From those pages, I quote the specifications of the DWCs, from a DAC report.
“The fuselage is made in three detachable sections and is constructed of steel tubing. Wings are of the standard wood box beam and built-in rib construction. The wings may be folded back for convenience in storage. The water-type landing gear consists of twin pontoons of built-up wood construction, the top covering being of three-ply veneer, and the bottom planking being two plies of mahogany.
“The specifications of the World Cruiser are as follows: Weight, empty, as a seaplane, 5,500 pounds; disposable load, 2,615 pounds; gross weight, 8,000 pounds; as a landplane, weight, empty, 4,300 pounds; disposable load, 2,615 pounds; gross weight, 6,915. Gasoline capacity, 450 gallons [up from 155 gallons in the DT-2], or enough for eighteen hours of non-stop flight. Wing span, both upper and lower, 50 feet; height 13 feet seven inches; length, 35 feet six inches…”
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.
