DC-4

(See front cover)

One afternoon this week a huge, shiny-new plane will be towed out on to Douglas Aircraft Co.'s 63-acre field at Santa Monica, Calif. While it lies there in the sun, sleek, lazy-looking and long, the thousands of spectators who line the field will wonder not whether DC-4 will fly--they will be reasonably certain that it will do that--but whether it will prove itself the super-plane it was designed to be. U. S. airlines will be watching too, for if DC-4 can do what it promises--carry a big payload cheaply--U. S. commercial aviation may at last strike the quotation marks off "commercial."

To many a plain U. S. citizen, DC-4's name is as mysterious as the plane itself, but most of the crowd at the airfield will know that DC-4 means simply "Douglas Commercial Airplane, No. 4."

To the man whose creature it is, that shorthand name means a great deal more. As Donald Douglas waits with the rest of the crowd to see this embodiment of his 46-year career take off for its crucial test, he may well be turning over in his mind some of the things that name does mean. Blueprinted in his mind are such facts and specifications as these:

P:DC-4 is the biggest, almost the fastest land transport plane in the U. S. It has a wingspan of 138 ft. 3 in., overall length of 97 ft. Nearly three times as heavy as the familiar DC-3, which is at present the favorite transport of all U. S. airlines, DC-4 will carry 42 passengers as a day plane, 30 passengers as a sleeper. Its top speed will be 240 m.p.h. Its 32 1/2 tons will hurtle through the air a full mile in 15 seconds.

P: An airliner's reputation for safety means as much to an airline as an only daughter's reputation means to a mother. Every line talks proudly & loudly of impressive passenger mileages without mishap. DC-4's chief safety device is its four engines, developing 5,600 h.p., powerful enough so that any two, even two on the same side, will keep it flying at 7,000 ft., any three will carry the plane 5,000 feet above the highest mountain in the U. S. Furthermore, if one engine fails on takeoff (this possibility has given nightmares to many a DC-3 pilot, whose plane has only two engines), the plane can still get off the ground.

P: DC-4's cruising range will be 2,200 miles, which means that it will be able to cross the U. S. in two easy jumps.

P: With Boeing's 307, DC-4 is the first commercial transport plane with a pressurized cabin. Its passenger compartment will be kept at low-altitude air pressure for passengers' comfort while the plane flies high, above bad weather. Overweather flight has been one of commercial aviation's greatest developments in the last decade, and Douglas planes have taken the lead in making a high curve the shortest traveling distance between any two points in the U. S. DC-4 will heighten the curve, shorten the distance. Without pressurized cabins, planes now fly as high as 14,000 feet; with them, passengers will feel no discomfort at DC-4s service ceiling, 22,900 feet.

That DC-4 may find the actual ceiling of air traffic's enormous room was suggested fortnight ago by Arthur E. Raymond, Douglas' vice president in charge of engineering. He pointed out to the Chamber of Commerce in Washington that there are three good reasons why transcontinental transport planes will never have to fly much higher: 1) the higher they fly, the more oxygen and pressure equipment is necessary, which subtracts from potential payload (passengers and freight); 2) the overwhelming majority of U. S. passenger business is in short hauls, for which "substratosphere" flight is useless, since the time used for climbing and gliding eats up what is saved by high flight; 3) because there is little wind in the substratosphere and because prevailing winds at lower levels are westerly, highest altitudes do not make for highest speeds on West-East flights.

P: Most interesting structural innovation of the DC-4 is its retractable tricycle landing gear, with a large wheel in the nose. Thanks to this forward wheel, DC-4 will always be in flying position, horizontal, tail up. No tail skid is necessary because the tail will never be near the ground. Passengers in sleeper planes will no longer be wakened by the rearward slant at each landing. The plane can take off relatively quickly, can "fly into" a landing. Blind landings will therefore be less dangerous, and, contrary to general belief, fields will not have to be extended for landing nor huge catapults employed to get DC-4 into the air.

P: Like a kangaroo's pouch, DC-4's large belly compartment will enable the plane to carry 6,500 pounds of freight. This is a delight to the airlines, for a 200-lb. transcontinental passenger brings them no more revenue than 200 pounds of air express, and mailbags eat no sandwiches.

P: Five experts--two pilots, a flight engineer, a steward, a stewardess--will control the DC-4, and they will have at their disposal every conceivable check on their own fallibilities. There will be, for instance, eleven independent radio transmitters and receivers, among them a teletypewriter to take weather reports. Auxiliary motor generators will make DC-4 sending sets just as powerful as control sets now in use at landing fields.

P:To make passengers feel at home, there will be steam heating, air conditioning, running water, electric cooking aparatus. A dictaphone will be supplied to the executive who cannot waste time while traveling at 240 m.p.h.

"United We Fly." DC-4 is Donald Douglas' big baby, but three years ago it was a gleam in another man's eye. William A. Patterson, president of United Air Lines, is a small man, quick-moving, quick-witted. In his Chicago office his papers heap two desks. Between the desks, in a swivel chair with well-oiled casters, Mr. Patterson shuttles back & forth. What has made the papers so many and the shuttling so nervous was a bad situation and a good idea. The bad situation: the wasteful competition between U. S. airlines, particularly in independently developing expensive experimental planes, then all investing in a standard plane--first the DC-2, then the DC-3. The good idea: that U. S. airlines should use the collective knowledge of their engineers, pilots, technical and traffic advisers, eliminate competitive waste by financing a common plane.

It was in September 1935 that United's Patterson went to competitors with his appeal: "United we fly, divided we los.e money." Six months later United, Transcontinental & Western Air, American, Eastern and Pan American signed a contract, crux of which was that for 18 months none of them would invest in any four-motored air transport between the gross weights of 43,500 lb. and 68,500 lb., other than DC-4. These lines advanced Douglas comparatively little for the experiment. Nine-tenths of the expenses, which DC-4 will have to pay back by selling itself,* have come out of the well-filled Douglas sock. None of these lines is bound by contract to buy a single DC-4, and presumably will not, unless the plane comes up to all its specifications. And 18 months in the aviation business is a long ime. Early in 1937 T. W. A. and Pan American ordered nine Boeing 307s (Flying Fortresses with transport fuselages), which weighed just under the contract limit. Indications now are that the finshed 307 will weigh 45,000 Ib. Last week American, having waited out the 18 months, was on the verge of tumbling for six 307s. The Boeings will be ready for airline service before the Douglas plane. T. W. A., Pan American and American all protest that they are still behind the co-operative idea, but Mr. Patterson is naturally uneasy.

Plans to Plane. To see that his plane does come up to specifications' is Donald Douglas' job. Primarily a designer, he can and does fly a plane on occasion, but he doesn't like flying very much. What he does like, besides sailing, is building planes for other men to fly. DC-4 was the work of scores of experts, the result of the most intricate plans ever drawn for a single plane. But, though Douglas himself did not drive a single one of the 1,300,000 rivets in DC-4's skin & bones, he knows exactly where each one is and why it is there, knows how many hours and minutes it would take to replace them.

The experimental DC-4 which will take to the air next week is really the fourth DC-4. First was a "mock-up"--a full-sized wooden replica, exact in every detail, for a study of space requirements, load placement, general structure. DC-4 No. 2 was a perfect scale model, with 8 ft. 3 in. wingspan. This Lilliputian transport "flew" through 1,100 hours and $25,000 worth of wind tunnel tests at the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at Caltech. Third stage was a Spanish Inquisition by Douglas engineers, who systematically squeezed, banged, shook, stretched, heated, froze, destroyed every part, every material. They built huge testing machines many times as valuable as the part they were testing. In the end the experts were satisfied that every inch of the plane could stand twice as much stress as would ever be brought to bear. Fourth DC-4, fruit of this triple experimenting, represents $992,808 for labor and engineering, $641,804 for materials and overhead.

Donald Douglas, having spent all this money, has his fingers crossed. If DC-4 does what is expected in its test flights, it will be just another good Douglas product. If it fails, Donald Douglas will somehow have made the second crucial mistake of his life. The first was perhaps the most fortunate accident which has ever befallen commercial aviation.

In 1912 Donald Douglas was a young Annapolis midshipman who preferred sailing on the Severn and making model airplanes to studying navigation and naval tactics. One day Midshipman Douglas climbed to the second floor of the Naval Academy dormitory, let fly a glider he had built. The toy banked, swooped, hit a passing admiral on the head. The result: Donald Douglas left Annapolis abruptly, next year took up the study of aeronautics at M. I. T. After his graduation he worked for Glenn L. Martin, then one of the foremost U. S. airplane designers. First he was an engineer, then was put in charge of Martin's Cleveland factory, and finally, at the age of 25, became vice president and chief engineer. When he decided to strike out on his own in 1920, he had saved just enough to feed his family for six months. Within that six months he persuaded a young Los Angeles millionaire named David R. Davis to finance him, and the two of them hung their hopeful shingle (DAVIS DOUGLAS CO.--ENGINEERING DEPT.) in the window of the Pico Barber Shop in Santa Monica.

The reasons why Donald Douglas has expanded in 18 years from that pint-sized barber shop to a plant covering 1,315,974 square feet are two: He believes that it takes dreamers and technicians, not businessmen, to make airplanes; he has the uncanny ability of finding the right experts from among his old cronies. Donald Douglas has surrounded himself with a group of congenial, practical-minded Jules Vernes. Perhaps the most important of these is Arthur E. Raymond. Son of the late Walter Raymond of Raymond-Whitcomb, he looks more like a professor than a boss. His first job with Douglas was filing fittings; now he is chief engineer. Harry Wetzel, general manager and the closest thing to a hard-hitting executive in the organization, studied industrial engineering at Penn State, subsequently served as aircraft production engineer in the U. S. Air Corps. Carl Cover, vice president for sales, had little to do with building DC-4, but in accordance with Douglas tradition, he will fly the ship on her tests next week.

A tall, weather-beaten Pennsylvanian, Cover has none of the dramatic fatalism of a movie test pilot. Cool and reliable, he was once an army flying instructor. When he was testing the DCi, the port engine almost died when the plane was only 50 ft. up. He calmly wheeled for a landing, missing a tree by feet. As the engine picked up he decided not to land, flew on for a successful test with the engine sputtering all the way.

It is a matter of some surprise to old-line, pre-Depression financiers that Douglas Aircraft Co., managed by these draughtsmen and joystick-wielders, has made money. It has always made money. For the last fiscal year the company reported a record profit of $1,081,513, and in the first quarter of this year deliveries rose approximately 100% and profits rose $169,420 (to $406,771) over those of the first quarter of 1937. In the last fiscal year Douglas Aircraft delivered 303 planes of 13 types, 194 to the Air Corps and Navy (so far his most dependable customers), 107 to commercial lines, two abroad. This year deliveries are going faster, and the factory is turning out better than one plane a day. Last year the company could afford to pay its president a salary of $43,433. Shooting experimental arrows like DC-4, whose cost ($1,634,612) will not be made up until about 50 DC-4s, are sold, is the reason why Douglas Aircraft does not make even more money than it does.

"It Takes 'Umph' Labor costs Douglas Aircraft 43% of its outlay on every plane. In headaches the toll is far greater. Labor among the 7,197 Douglas workers has resulted in two serious strikes, one at Santa Monica in February 1937, one at the Northrop Division of Douglas near Inglewood, Calif., last September. After the Northrop deadlock broke, strikers were rehired only if they agreed to sign a contract promising never again to strike, damage property, sabotage planes.

Since the strikes, Donald Douglas has showered his men with paternal pamphlets, generously peppered with platitudes and quotation marks. Typical example: "YOUR JOB AND MINE. A heart to heart talk with the boss. It takes 'umph' to be in this business. . . . We have to 'know our stuff.' . . . Efficiency calls for harmony, and harmony needs understanding. ... If you have a suggestion or complaint, don't keep it 'on ice' or let it 'burn you up.' Tell me all about it in your own words."

But neither this paternalism or slight wage increases and bonuses have cleared the corporate head. Month ago NLRB found Douglas guilty of violating the Wagner Act in the Santa Monica strike, ordered reinstatement of 45 workers, with back pay. Last week, after a Douglas appeal for rehearing had been denied by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, NLRB itself reopened the case. Meanwhile, Douglas' Santa Monica workers had umph enough to put finishing touches to DC-4. Now it is up to Carl Cover and the ship itself. If DC-4 is UP to the Douglas snuff--and providing enough passengers are eventually enticed by its numerous charms into flying, so that its operation will prove financially worth while--it will trace a high, rising curve not only for Douglas Aircraft but for all U. S. commercial aviation.

* Approximate cost of a DC-4 will be $447,000.

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