McDonnell-Douglas Corporation
The Douglas Aircraft Company
Donald Wills Douglas was born in Brooklyn, New York on 6th April 1892. He was the son of a National Park Bank cashier. After leaving school he was admitted to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md. Despite being a naval midshipman, his interest in aeronautical engineering deepened. In 1912 he resigned from the academy before graduating to seek work in aviation. Douglas realised that if he were to make headway in aviation he needed formal education in the subject. To this end he enroled in Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he gained his BSc after only two years of a four year course. As a result of his outstanding academic performance he was offered a job as an assistant professor in aeronautics.
Donald Douglas' career leapt forwards at lightning speed, in five years from leaving M.I.T he had been a consultant to the Connecticut Aircraft Company, risen to chief engineer at Glenn L. Martin Co. of Los Angeles, California and was briefly chief civilian engineer to the Army Signal Corps Aviation Section in Washington; he also found time to get married.
By January 1920 he and his family had tired of the cool northern climate, his wife moved back to California and Douglas followed in March. On returning to California he took labouring jobs to pay the bills until he won an order from millionaire David R. Davis to build an aircraft capable of non-stop coast-to-coast flight.
The Davis-Douglas Co. was formed to build The Cloudster, the aircraft developed engine trouble during its record attempt and never reached its destination. Following this failure Davis sold his share of the company to Douglas. The navy awarded Douglas Aircraft a contract to build torpedo bombers; in the summer of 1922 the company leased the abandoned Herman Film Corporation studios in Santa Monica. It was at this site the Douglas World Cruiser, based on a DT-2 torpedo bomber was built.
By the mid-1920's Douglas Aircraft Company was a major supplier of military aircraft, during this period the company hired several people who would later become leading lights in the U.S aviation industry. Edward H. Heinemann, James Howard "Dutch" Kindelberger later of North American Aviation and John K. "Jack" Northrop whose company would become a military producer itself.
In 1929 Boeing and Pratt and Whitney formed United Aircraft and Transport Corporation (UATC). This massive enterprise encompassed air services, aircraft and component manufacture, airport services and even ran its own technical school. Part of this empire was United Airlines. Boeing built the model 247 for United airlines; this aircraft was considered the bench-mark of its day, naturally other airlines were interested in buying the aircraft. Boeing refused stating that the first 60 aircraft had been bought by United Airlines. Having been turned down by Boeing, Jack Frye, vice president of operations for Transcontinental and Western Air (T.W.A) issued a specification for a three-engined airliner of similar performance to that of the Boeing 247. The Douglas bid took the form of a low wing, twin-engine monoplane designated the DC-1 which surpassed the specification in every way. The production version was designated the DC-2, this aircraft layed the foundation of the Douglas Commercial series of airliners for the next 64 years.
The McDonnell Aircraft Corporation
James Smith McDonnell was educated at Little Rock High School in Arkansas. During the Great War he served as a private. After the war he studied at Princeton University for a BSc in Physics. Having graduated he studied Aeronautical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he gained an MSc in 1925.
He joined Ford Aviation Division as assistant chief engineer and helped to design the Ford Tri-Motor. In 1926 he took up the post of chief engineer at Hamilton Aero Manufacturing Co. Two years later he left to form his own company J.S. McDonnell & Associates. The company foundered during the depression and McDonnell took up employment with a succession of companies. He became chief project engineer for landplanes with Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Co; this was the same job Donald Douglas had held a decade before.
McDonnell resigned in December 1938 to form another company, McDonnell Aircraft Corporation which won a contract to supply components for Stinson observation aircraft. The second world war was good for McDonnell, the company won orders to manufacture components for Boeing, Douglas and Fairchild. As the war drew to a close McDonnell was working on the U.S navy's first jet fighter the XFD-1. The project was cancelled with the cessation of hostilities. The work was not wasted as the design was refined into the FH-1 Phantom. This aircraft began a long line of military aircraft with supernatural names including Goblin, Banshee, Demon, Voodoo and Phantom II.
McDonnell also had interests in rotorcraft, missiles and the manned space programmes Mercury and Gemini. McDonnell was also a pioneer in the use of computers to solve engineering problems.