Transport: Douglas

Last week a stock model Douglas transport plane zipped across the U. S. from Los Angeles to Newark in 12 hr. 3 min. It made but one stop—at Kansas City. Although it failed by nearly two hours to equal the coast-to-coast time of Roscoe Turner’s racing plane, it broke the transport record and clearly showed that a 12-hr, transcontinental passenger service is possible, if not yet practical.

Few days later the record-breaking Douglas was scheduled to make a dawn-to-dusk round-trip flight between Newark and Lines’ new Miami to high-speed inaugurate schedules Eastern with Air Douglas equipment. Pioneered by TWA, which put up $140,000 for its development, the Douglas Luxury Airliner is now used by Eastern Air. General Air Lines, American Airlines, Pan American Airways, Royal Dutch Air Lines, Deutsche Lufthansa, Swissair, Spanish Airlines and Austrian Airlines.

Considered by many the most important advance in aerial transportation since the Wright biplane, the Douglas DC2 bears the name of a mild-mannered, retiring Californian named Donald Wills Douglas. Probably the strangest thing about Donald Douglas is that he seems always to have made money building airplanes. A member of the class of 1913 at Annapolis, he left before graduation, finished up at M. I. T. in 1914. He joined Glenn Martin at Los Angeles as chief engineer, left in 1917 to become chief designer for the aviation section of the U. S. signal corps. In 1920 Donald Douglas, at 28, started his own company, on a shoestring. He won a Navy contract against heavy competition, built four planes for the Army’s round-the-world flight in 1924, concentrated on military aviation until 1930.

His real fame did not come until this year when his big, all-metal, high-speed, 14-passenger transports began replacing other older makes on the nation’s airways. His factory at Santa Monica, which employed 600 hands a year ago, today has 3,200. So great is the world’s admiration for the Douglas Airliner that even when Douglas Aircraft Co. omitted its semi-annual dividend last February—cash was needed to finance unfilled orders—the stock strengthened its position in Wall Street.

Handsome, well-built, Donald Douglas at 42 looks younger than his years. He shuns crowds, prefers the company of a few old cronies. A mediocre pilot, he rarely flies his own planes but does most of his business traveling by regular airlines. His days off he spends yachting. His six-meter boat Gallant represented the U. S. in the last Olympics, and his schooner Endymion has been Pacific Coast champion for the past four years.