History Of The Douglas Aircraft Company - From Glory To Demise (Part 3)

foreign to explore the history of the Douglas Aircraft company this is part three of our video series so if you haven't watched Parts one and two yet I highly recommend doing so last time we looked at the company's history from 1929 until the end of the second world war it was a period that saw Douglas dominate the commercial airline market with the DC-3 and then saw it expand to produce a truly staggering amount of aircraft during the second world war today we're looking at the final Decades of the company those that take it from 1945 until its merger with McDonald in 1967 which gave birth to the McDonald Douglas corporation like with part 2 A lot of aircraft were produced during this time period so we will discuss the aircraft in general rather than going into specific details as this video is on the history of the company as a whole and later on individual aircraft will get their own in-depth video so we begin today with the end of the second world war following the surrender of Imperial Japan on VJ Day itself Douglas received a telegram it told him that the government was immediately canceling most of its existing orders orders that had been so great in size that they had necessitated the operation of no less than six manufacturing plants Douglas had known that this day was coming and he had been preparing for it for some time but even so the end of the war came far earlier than he had expected and he was faced with the sudden challenge of shrinking his company in Rapid time the result was that within just a few short weeks the leasing of the plants in Chicago Oklahoma City and Tulsa was stopped with the government stepping in to require the facilities as originally planned and over 90 000 people were laid off from the Douglas Workforce though it had also been built under the wartime emergency plant facilities program program The Long Beach plant wasn't given over to government control not all existing orders had been canceled and enough c74s were on order to justify Douglas purchasing the majority of this plant in November of 1946. though Long Beach and the other facilities had produced an astonishing amount of aircraft during the war the Douglas Aircraft company itself had not massively grown from the standpoint of Finance combined profits from the war years amounted to just 1.5 percent and this left Douglas with fewer reserves of cash than he could have wished for the lean post-war years that were now his company's new reality the history of Douglas's immediate post-war years which take things to the outbreak of the Korean War are in some ways a mirror image of the later interwar years whereas before Douglas relied on orders for tried and tested commercial designs whilst experimenting with various military projects it's now relied on tried and tested military designs and had to get inventive when it came to airliners of the military designs the ones that were still on order in quantity were the c54 sky master and the ad1 Skyraider though I say in quantity it didn't really amount to much for comparison's sake the company had produced over 11 500 aircraft in 1944 but in 1946 it built just 127. it's more wonder they had to lay off over a hundred thousand people but although only a handful were produced in 1946 the new Skyraider was an aircraft that held much promise the origins of the Skyraider came from a wartime need to replace the Douglas SPD dauntless which whilst an excellent aircraft in its own right was still a pre-war design Douglas had initially lost out on a chance to produce a replacement as Curtis Wright had won a contract act for the sb2c helldiver but as some people will know from the video where we covered the interesting history of that particular aircraft things did not go too smoothly and the Navy sought out Alternatives in case a replacement was rapidly needed now this initially resulted in the abortive Destroyer which will get its own video in the future but following meetings between Douglas engineer at heinemann and rear Admiral Lawrence Richardson the company was given yet another reprieve to submit a new design in the summer of 1944. this reprieve did come with something of a caveat heinemann could submit a new design to the Navy certainly but it had to a make use of the powerful right r3350 duplex Cyclone a twin row supercharged 18 cylinder radial and B heinemann had to submit this new design proposal by 9 am the following day after work until 3 AM when exhaustion forced them to quit heinemann's design team had put together just enough for a reasonable design proposal and the next day it was submitted to the Navy and was subsequently approved with the SBD dauntless out of production this reprieve was a Lifeline for heinemann and the El Segundo division who at the time were in danger of having zero naval contracts by the end of 1945. because of this every conceivable effort was put into making this new design a superior to the competition this competition included the Kaiser fleetwing xtbk and the Martin X BTM both of these aircraft were highly Advanced and featured very high payload capabilities heinemann realized that to be successful their design not only had to be able to carry more but it also had to be lighter better performing and most importantly in the emerging world of Highly complex power plants it had to be as simple and as reliable as possible to maintain this design philosophy would eventually pay dividends because over 3 000 Douglas ad ones would eventually be produced against just 151 Martin a.m mallers and just five of the Kaiser fleetwing prototypes the Skyraider proved to be exceedingly reliable and capable and because of this it remained in service far into the jet age not being retired from service in the US until the mid-1970s the success of the ad1 was one of Douglas's biggest Financial assets in the sparse years that spanned in 1946 to 1950 and it helped two particularly offset some dramatic Investments that the company was beginning to make in the commercial Market in this market Douglas faced two major sources of competition the first was ironically its own success following the war large numbers of c-47s and C5 54s the military variants of the DC-3 and DC4 went up for sale as Surplus naturally a large number of these were acquired by various Airlines around the world who promptly converted them back to their commercial specifications now whilst this did provide Douglas with some security as they could at least manage the provision of spare parts it did provide them with a challenge for developing a brand new airliner they had to a produce something significantly better than their existing designs but B produce it at a competitive price point that skirted very close to the line that separated profit from loss this challenge was further exacerbated by the other major source of competition and that was designs being built by Lockheed and Boeing in 1943 the prototyped Lockheed xc69 had made its first flight and now in the post-war years it was being adapted for commercial use as the l049 constellation similarly Boeing was working on their model 377 strata Cruiser which was a commercial variant of the c97 strata freighter which itself was a transport version of the B-29 Superfortress both of these designs represented a significant commercial threat not only were they both equipped with pressurized cabins which the Douglas's Flagship DC4 lacked but they also had significantly faster cruising speeds and they could carry at least 30 percent more passengers and cargo over longer distances Douglas's attempt at matching the competition of numerous and cheaper Surplus aircraft was to modernize and improve the existing design of the DC3 meanwhile the company would address the threats from Lockheed and Boeing by converting an abandoned wartime Army transport the Douglas xc-112 at the time it was said by some that the only replacement for the DC-3 would be another DC-3 this was an opinion held by several airliners and to a degree by Donald Douglas himself however the airlines that wanted an improved version of the DC-3 were ones that were more focused on short and medium distance flights and Douglas's own opinion reflected his financially conservative mindset Douglas was not one to often take Financial gambles and he believed that the demand for twin engine airliners like the DC-3 would still outpace that for the larger faster and more expensive 4 engine designs that had gradually emerged the result was the development of the DC3 super or dc-3s for short it was to be faster and more capable than the original DC3 while at the same time maintaining the same levels of comfort safety and efficiency to achieve this numerous modifications had to be made the aircraft had a lengthened fuselage bringing the passenger capacity up to 30. the engines were upgraded to the Pratt and Whitney r2000s which were used on the DC4 the fuselage was strengthened and two accounts for the shift in the center of gravity and improved performance the wingspan was slightly shortened and the outer sections of the Wings now had a sweep back of 4 degrees and squared off wingtips though the dc-3s did indeed provide a marked increase in performance and capability over the original dz3 it was not a competitive success the design team had underestimated the amount of modifications that would be required to achieve the new performance figures Airlines wanted and the result was that the dc-3s only shared about 25 common parts with the original DC-3 and this of course made it too expensive in the end most major airliners either continued to use existing dc-3s or they upgraded to newer bigger faster designs that were being offered at a more competitive price point the DC3 super wasn't a complete loss though for once again the US Navy had come in to save the day around 100 aircraft were eventually ordered as the r4d which came in several different variants some of these we used as staff or VIP transports some were specifically modified as cold weather transports several were used as training aircraft and a few were modified to carry radar countermeasure equipment now while Douglas struggled with the DC3 super it fared much better in its head-on competition against Lockheed and Boeing here the playing field was fairly even each company was trying to repurpose an existing World War II design for the post-war commercial market and in this particular battle Douglas would come out on top with the dc-6 its Origins went back to the DC4 even before the Prototype had flown Donald Douglas Ed heinemann and Arthur Raymond had been contemplating the idea of fitting a passenger transport with a pressurized cabin but at the time the cost of doing so was prohibitively expensive and a large amount of research and development would have to be invested the company was doing well with DC3 sales and pre-sales of the dc-4 but it couldn't justify that level of expense then the huge demands of the second world war but paid to any further considerations for commercial transports and they got to work designing military transports instead but they didn't abandon the idea of using a pressurized cabin and when the Army funded a program to improve the c54 sky Master the militarized DC4 the Douglas team submitted a proposal for impressurized Prototype known as the c54e ordered as the xc-112 it was longer and had more powerful engines than the standard c54 and it featured other systems that were required for operations at high altitudes such as a more powerful de-icing system for the wing Leading Edge in general the aircraft was a big improvement over the old c54 but the wall was over before the type had a chance to go into production by this point Douglas was aware of the developments over at Lockheed and Boeing and seeing the promise held by their new pressurized transports he organized for the xc-112 to be modified into the company's first pressurized airliner redesignated as the dc-6 it made its first flight and its commercial configuration on the 29th of June 1946. even before its first flight Douglas had received interest from both United Airlines and American who were both equally concerned as their main rival TWA had secured priority orders for the competing Lockheed Constellation despite the sharp increases in development and production costs when compared to the unpressurized airliners of the interwar period Douglas was surprised to find that they had over 100 dc-6 is on order by the end of 1946 alone the type entered service simultaneously with the United and American in November of that same year and Douglas was soon flying out to the head office of Pan-American to personally close the sale of even more boasting a huge performance and comfort improvements over the DC4 and with the aid of a strengthening World economy the dc-6 became an instant success though the Lockheed Constellation was the first to enter service Douglas's dc-6 quickly overtook the domestic markets for sales by the end of 1946 though the type didn't enter service until the following April and interest was rapidly growing overseas as well this lead in sales was then quickly reversed in the opening months of 1947 then bounced back to Douglas by the summer and then bounced back to Lockheed by the Autumn and the two companies found themselves locked in the biggest commercial battle in the age of the piston-powered airliner now Boeing on the other hand had missed the mark with its strato Cruiser whose operating costs had put it far behind on average it was just over twice as expensive to operate when compared to the dc-6 it was troubled by reliability issues which exploded its maintenance costs and in the end only 56 would be delivered as commercial airliners although the dc-6 was off to an excellent start the whole program was almost brought down in October of 1947. that month a United Airlines dc-6 had suddenly caught fire above Bryce Canyon in Utah and it had gone down killing all 52 people on board a thorough examination of the Utah crash had revealed that the fire had started somewhere in the lower fuselage but its true cause was unknown at first it was thought that it may have been due to something volatile being stowed in a passenger's luggage but then in less than a month later another DC 6 was almost brought down by fire as well but this one was able to make an emergency landing in New Mexico before the fire reached a critical point following this incident Douglas immediately grounded the entire dc-6 fleet and he sent Arthur Raymond and a team out to New Mexico to Aid in the investigation they soon found that the fire had been caused by an unexpected design flaw the team discovered that a fuel tank transfer switch had been left on during the flight although this was not a recommended procedure it was also not strictly barred by any formal directive now if the switch was left on and if one of the tanks were overfilled during ground refueling it could cause excess fuel to overflow through events at certain altitudes and air pressures this was even more likely and if the fuel did overflow it trickled down to a point in the wing where it was sucked into an intake for the cabin heating system which of course would then cause the fuel to ignite the solution to the problem was in the end quite simple the fuel vents were moved further out to the outer tips of the Wings which solved the issue but the tragic Affair had deeply Disturbed both Douglas and Raymond Douglas demanded a thorough overview of the entire design of the dc-6 and if anything was found suppose even a remote fire risk it had to be changed this resulted in many small changes that cumulatively made the aircraft much safer after this the only dz6s that were ever lost to fire were the result of either poor aircraft maintenance or other external factors rather than something wrong with the design itself production of the dc-6 ended in 1958 and by which point the Douglas Aircraft company had produced over 700 models over several different Commercial and Military variants once again the demand for the type had far exceeded Douglas's modest expectations much like with the DC-3 and the company had well and truly emerged as the winner between Boeing Douglas and Lockheed in the battle of the Piston airliners however the success of the dc6 was ironically one of the many things that would lead to the company's eventual downfall it reinforced Douglas's conservative mindset that modernizing and improving existing designs often provided far better returns than designing a new Innovative and expensive commercial aircraft from the ground up and this would be a large contributing factor in the company's somewhat delayed entry into the jet age at least when it came to airliners now when it came to experimental and cutting-edge military aircraft Douglas was far more enthusiastic though the late 40s were lean years as far as military contracts went there was still enough work going around to keep things ticking over particularly for the El Segundo division this was a period of Rapid technological transition and this was reflected by the various military and experimental aircraft that were developed there between 19 1945 and 1950. the experimental xb43 which was a redesigned version of the xb42 first flew in May 1946 and it was the first jet-powered bomber to fly in the United States it would not go into production but it did Aid in the company's development of laminar flow Wings the development of new avionic systems and it exposed Douglas Engineers to the benefits and the various drawbacks of the new turbojet engine these lessons were immediately applied to the Douglas 558 skystreak which was a collaborative project between Douglas the US Navy and NACA or NACA whichever you prefer to call it originally proposed as a three-phase project the sky streak was a stubby jet-powered aircraft designed to explore the relatively unknown and relatively dangerous phenomena found at transonic speeds following this it was then to be developed into six individual and far more powerful designs that were to explore the supersonic speed range however these later plans were dropped and the sky streak was instead developed into the Skyrocket it was designed to use a reaction motor's rocket engine in conjunction with a Westinghouse j3440 both of these projects were headed by Ed heinemann the sky streak pioneered many Innovations with its airframe being designed to withstand loads up to 18g and being equipped with sophisticated cooling systems that mitigated the effects of thermal heating on the cockpit though it provided valuable research data about aircraft and aerofore performance at the transonic speed range its performance was overshadowed by the Bell X1 which broke the sound barrier in 1947. the Skyrocket on the other hand would receive the publicity that the sky streak was denied becoming the first aircraft to exceed Mark II in November of 1943 Donald Douglas considered the project one of his company's proudest achievements and at heinemann's Team freely shared their data with the aircraft industry to both further Advance the development of research aircraft and in the wake of the tragic loss of the Bell X2 to improve the general standards of safety for all experimental research aircraft moving forward the Skyrocket also saw some key involvement from Donald Douglas Jr who had been rising through the company ranks and was now head of flight test operations the development of the Skyrocket and that of several other projects highlighted the younger Douglas's Keen interest in the cutting-edge Aerospace developments being made and he would play a major role in spurring the development of some of the company's most advanced projects in the 1950s and 1960s at the same time that development of the experimental Sky streak had begun the El Segundo division had also begun work on the company his first mass-produced jet aircraft in 1946 Douglas was awarded a contract to build the xf-3d1 and like many before this was a contract issued by the US Navy its Bureau of Aeronautics wanted a twin-engined carrier-based night fighter and one that came equipped with an Airborne radar that could detect the enemies a range of 125 miles whilst flying at forty thousand feet at an average speed of 500 miles an hour owing to these very lofty requirements what would become known as the f-3d skynite had a very troubled early development early Airborne radar was very bulky and it necessitated compromises when it came to the size and shape of the airframe something which resulted in much bickering between Ed heinemann and various representatives from the bureau this bickering then turned into a considerably heated arguments when the j-34 engines underperformed and on numerous occasions heinemann had to repeatedly explain that the prototypes lackluster performance was a result of the engines being bad rather than the aircraft producing too much drag eventually the problems were mostly overcome when the f3d-2 entered into production with improved engine performance and the latest on-board systems some of which were a little smaller than those on the Prototype the Skynet was one of the best military aircraft in the world in 1951. during the Korean War it would down more enemy aircraft than any other in the US Navy and it became the first fighter to secure a kill at night using a radar without any visual identification of the target the f3d and the Douglas company at large was also a key player in the development of what would become the aim 7 Sparrow starting with projects in the second world war Douglas had begun to expand into the development of both guided and unguided missiles as well as more powerful designs that were intended to explore outer space now the development of these various systems is technically beyond the scope of today's video is when most focusing on aircraft but I will give a brief account of the major involvement of Douglas when it came to this sort of Technology as it did form a not insignificant chunk of the company's Revenue during the 1950s and 60s so in no particular order I'll cover it briefly the company was part of the collaborative effort to develop the Nike Ajax service to air missile being responsible for the aerodynamic studies and the design of its airframe it's played a key role in the development and production of the early iterations of the sparrow air-to-air missile as mentioned before and it also explored the development of Active Radar homing systems in the field of space rocketry in particular Douglas designed and manufactured the second stage of the bumper sounding Rockets which were very heavily modified versions of the V2 but the company's biggest claim to fame was its work on the larger launch vehicles of the 50s and 60s Douglas developed and produced the PGM 17-4 which was the United States first operational ballistic missile though it was quickly eclipsed as a weapon of war with the emergence of the ICBM the Thor became the foundation of the family Delta of rockets with NASA and Douglas signing a production contract in 1959 though the military models were dogged by Guidance problems which led to some spectacular explosions those used by NASA who allowed more freedom for modifications achieved an outstanding level of reliability in 1966 Douglas was proud to report that of the 189 four launches all but nine had been successful by this point Douglas had also produced the s4b which was the third stage of the Saturn V rocket used in the Apollo Moon program it also formed the foundation for Skylab which was the only Space Station built and exclusively operated by the United States but along with producing various missiles and launch systems Douglas also got involved with the development of bombs underwing pylon systems avionics and ejection seats the company went through a period of huge diversification between 1948 and 1966 one that started from a need to keep the company afloat in a time of reduced sales and that ended with it having far more projects than it could manage and when coupled with the high cost of its Airline projects would have disastrous results but putting that aside for the time being we'll take a look at the rest of the company's history first before we get to the chaos that unfolded in 1966. by 1950 military contracts once again formed the bulk of the company's business accounting for approximately 87 percent of all sales though the dc-6 had proven to be popular it had not been enough to offset the combination of a post-war slump produced military demand and ever increasing development costs 1947 had been a particularly Bleak year when the company posted its first ever loss of 2.1 million dollars and its Workforce had shrunk to approximately 1 7 of its World War II Peak by the time the Korean war broke out the company was back in the black though and a big part of this was thanks to the c-124 globemaster though it looked like it had been stung on the nose by a bee this large cargo hauler and true transport soon became the standard airplane of its type to operate with the US Air Force the combined effects of the Korean War and the development of the Cold War in general soon led to a rapid increase in military aircraft production existing World War II designs which had been sent off to Korea in a panicked hurry were soon joined by Douglas A.D skyraiders f3d skynites c118s the militarized version of the dc-6 and the aforementioned c124 additionally work was well underway on the developments of the a3d Sky Warrior which was a jet-powered strategic bomber and work was also underway on the f4d skyray which would become the first U.S Navy aircraft that could achieve Mach 1 in level flight though it would never see combat arriving too late for the Korean War the skyray was a deeply striking design and one of my personal favorites from the early Cold War period so definitely expected to see an in-depth video on that particular aircraft in the future the sudden influx of production orders meant that by the mid-1950s the Douglas facilities were once again operating near their maximum capacity Santa Monica continued production of the dc-6 and began mass production of the military transports Long Beach worked on the c-124 and the Douglas b66 and El Segundo went back to its old trick of producing a naval aircraft in frightening numbers being responsible for the production of the f3d and f4d Fighters as well as the ad1 soon to be renamed as the A1 that 80 3D and it was also tooling up for the production of the A4 Skyhawk the A1 Skyraider and the A4 Skyhawk were by Far and Away El segundo's biggest success stories Douglas would produce just under 3200 a1s with the type forming a significant chunk of its entire post-war production and just under 3000 A4 Skyhawks would be built under both the Douglas name and then later on as McDonald Douglas after 1967. the years immediately following the Korean War were ones that once again saw the Douglas company experience healthy Financial growth net income grew to 18 million in 1953 and then doubled again to 36 million in 1954 while employment gradually increased from 25 000 up to 71 000. by the end of 1953 Douglas had a record backlog of just over 2 billion dollars worth of aircraft on order and it would spend the rest of the decade in a very strong financial position but not everything was as rosy as the numbers would make you think and the 1950s would Mark the beginning of a quiet gradual series of events some highly obscure some glaringly obvious in hindsight which individually did not always amount to much but collectively would seal the company's fate just a decade later now the downfall of the Douglas company is a relatively complex topic but broadly speaking it boils down to three key things firstly there is Douglas's reluctance to initiate the development of a jet-powered airliner and this allowed his competition to get ahead and the company was forever playing a game of catch-up secondly the company's luck ran out when it came to securing large military contracts which left it financially vulnerable to potential cost blowouts from its commercial designs and thirdly the company's structure and its culture became disjointed particularly after Douglas Jr took the helm in 1957 and this led to poor interdepartmental communication which ultimately led to financial chaos all of these things more or less happened simultaneously as well which really didn't help things but now in this video we're going to look at them in order of topic rather than chronology so that I'm not bouncing between three different points of discussion every minute or so which would probably make this video far too chaotic to follow so we'll start with The Airliner problem as that was technically the first of the three to really arise and this begins with the Douglas dc7 this would be the last piston-powered airliner that the company would produce and in fact it was one that Douglas himself didn't really want to produce either by the early 1950s he had already given thought to the idea of a jet powered airliner but he wasn't yet ready to commit although the US military had rapidly transitioned into the jet age Douglas believed that the commercial Market would take much longer he believed that jet technology was still too expensive to allow airliners to be competitively profitable and he believed that the industry in general needed to conduct more research to make sure that jet airliners were safe they would after all fly higher and faster than anything before requiring more advanced pressurized cabins avionics fuel systems Etc Etc and all of this added many many more potential points of failure because of this Douglas hesitated to begin development work on a jetliner despite learning of the development of the de havilland's Comet and the company only conducted quite low-level research for his part he was more than happy to continue sale of the dc-6 which was proving to be exceedingly popular but at the same time several Airlines particularly American Airlines were insisting upon an improved follow-up they wanted something that could do a Non-Stop transcontinental flight between New York and LA in under eight hours and that was something that the dc-6 simply couldn't do though he initially resisted them the heads of American Airlines and Pan-American eventually convinced Douglas to produce one last piston airliner now Douglas was resistant to this mostly because it would force him to use the right r3350 duplex Cyclone which was the only engine that was powerful enough and available in quantity this was the same engine that powered their successful ad1 but it had brought the company considerable headaches this was in fact nothing new this same engine had also powered the B-29 super Fortress and it too suffered from a Litany of engine problems a lot of this stemmed from the fact that they frequently overheated a result of putting a lot of power into a relatively small and complex package but American Airlines were insistent and Douglas eventually formalized production of the dc7 after receiving a contract of sale for 25 to be sold to them as soon as it was ready the Prototype dc-7 first flew in May of 1953 and it entered service with American Airlines in November of the same year later on it was joined by the dc-7b which was a longer range version designed for Pan American that could carry up to 100 passengers but the company struggled to find buyers overseas this changed with the dc-7c this was also designed for Pan Am who now wanted an airliner that was capable of making non-stop transatlantic flights to Europe this model had more powerful engines and an extended wingspan to allow for larger internal fuel tanks it began flying in 1956 and it became the first airliner that was capable of reliably completing transatlantic flights both to and from Europe as prevailing winds had always made the westbound flight far more challenging its ability to make the Atlantic Crossing reliably soon resulted in export orders flowing in from the various European carriers with KLM being the biggest customer immediately ordering 15. though it was proving to be a successful design and in many ways it was viewed as the Pinnacle of The piston-powered Airliner only 338 dc-7s were built compared to just over 700 of the preceding dc6 as Douglas had feared the right duplex Cyclone proved to remain a highly recalcitrant engine and numerous mid-flight engine failures hurt its reputation some airliners retired to the dc-7 after just five years of service whilst retaining their older dc-6s for considerably longer additionally for Douglas the dc-7 was considerably more expensive to produce and this combined with all the engine problems meant that the type was a net loss for the company in general in fact Harry strangman who was the company's Vice President of Finance at the time had remarked that if it wasn't for the military aircraft being built by the El Segundo division the company could have well faced bankruptcy due to the dc-7's costly development but cost was not the only thing that curtailed the production of the dc-7 the bigger Factor at play was the true emergence of the jet airliner though the comet was our already in service on the other side of the Atlantic Donald Douglas and his chief engineer Arthur Raymond were still hesitant to fully commit to an all-jet commercial transport although the company now had significant experience in developing jet-powered aircraft Douglas knew that the airline industry as a whole currently operated 1.5 billion dollars worth of piston-powered aircraft and he doubted it could stomach the financial burden of a rapid transition and in his defense this was an opinion that many airliners shared instead Douglas found himself in favor of meeting in the middle and he allowed the company to begin several design studies for a turboprop airliner instead one of which being a heavily modified dc-7 however in secrecy he also initiated a secret project in June of 1952 to work on designing a purejet powered airliner just in case though he still found it doubtful that they should fully commit to the idea until several more years had passed the fatal accidents involving the de Havilland comets in 1954 which led to the type's grounding pending investigations seemed to confirm Douglas in his reservations but now an old rival had come back to haunt him the Boeing Company though well known for its production of bombers during the second world war had been thoroughly beaten and embarrassed in the competition to develop commercial piston-powered airliners this had always been a bit of a sensitive subject for Bill Allen the president of Boeing since 1945 and who had worked for the company since 1930. Boeing had gained experience in producing large jet aircraft with the Boeing B-47 strata jet and the B-52 strata Fortress and with the piston engine market so thoroughly dominated by both Douglas and Lockheed Bill Allen knew that his company had but one choice it had to take its experience in building large jet bombers and gamble everything thing on building the world's first successful jet airliner the result was that Douglas and many an airline executive for that matter was considerably shocked when Boeing unveiled its model 367-80 in July of 1954. Douglas was shocked because he was expecting Boeing to unveil a new prototype fuel tanker something that his company was also developing as part of a competition for the Air Force he had not expected Boeing to take a 16 million dollar gamble one which would break Boeing if it backfired to jointly develop a brand new jet airliner as well but they had and both the Air Force and the airline industry suddenly really liked what they saw the immediate interest in what would become known as the Boeing 707 Force Douglas to fully commit his company into the jet airline Market lest they lose their relevance and dominance in this field this led to the rapid development of the Douglas DC 8 which would become the company's biggest Financial investment the need for the dc-8 to be successful was then further highlighted when Douglas lost out on an opportunity to produce a fuel tanker for the Air Force this was a particularly bitter blow as it had been expected that the Air Force would split contracts between both Boeing and Douglas as the Air Force was calling for several hundred of these tankers to be built over a relatively short time but the work was given to Boeing exclusively and this allowed Boeing to absorb a much of the 707's development costs with lucrative military contracts after round-the-clock development work Douglas announced the DCA program publicly in June of 1955. though Boeing now had a considerable Head Start and Douglas expected the 707 to enter service a full year before the dc-8 there were some advantages to coming second in this particular race as the dc-8 was still in many ways a paper airplane merely existing on the drawing board it gave the Douglas sales team an opportunity to go out and speak with various airliners and find out what they specifically wanted in a Jetline of the future it also gave them an opportunity to ask the airliners what they liked and didn't like from the competing design that was being advertised by Boeing though many airlines gave conflicting answers some of which could never be entertained one big result was that the dc-8 would be designed to have six abreast seating in two rows of three and this gave it an advantage over the Fiverr breast seating arrangement of the Boeing 707 which had a row of three and a row of two Douglas was also able to use larger and more fuel-efficient engines which had not been ready for Boeing at the time and this made the dc-8 a very attractive alternative even though it wouldn't get on the scene first the result was that in October of 1955 United Airlines who had been tipped to go for the Boeing 707 instead placed an order for 30 dc-8s at a cost of 175 million dollars not long after this Boeing made a last minute and costly decision to redesign the 707 increasing its wing and fuselage to match the dc-8's capabilities and the ridiculously and expensive competition between the big airliners was well and truly on the DCH program was as much of a gamble for Douglas as the 707 was for Boeing it cost twice as much to develop and produce when compared to the dc7 but it was expected to to produce triple the revenue in commercial operations this was in part thanks to a much lower operating cost per mile thanks to the Jet's highest speed and because of this the dc-8 was predicted to be almost 25 percent cheaper to operate than the dc-6 by the time the first dc-8 was ready for its Maiden flight the first 707s as predicted were about to enter service but the race between Douglas and Boeing was still neck and neck orders for both companies were beginning to pile up although most airliners were reluctant to invest heavily into Jets as they were considerably more expensive they also knew that if their competitors did it first they would be doomed and so even though most of the airline industry wasn't quite ready to go to Jets yet most of them were essentially forced to do it anyway and so once again the demand for a new expensive and quite experimental airliner once again exceeded Donald Douglas's expectations he watched the DCA to make its Maiden flight from Long Beach on May 30th 1958. it was a significant year for the company it officially signaled its entry into the world of the jet airliner and it was also the First full year where Donald Douglas wouldn't manage the day-to-day running of operations that task now fell to his son in 1957 Donald Douglas Jr was made president of the Douglas Aircraft Company he'd been with the company since 1939 gradually moving up through the ranks his earliest work was on the development of the c54 transport then he'd worked on various experimental projects eventually being responsible for test flight operations and he became the director of the company's research labs and testing division in 1949. two years later he was elected as vice president of the company and in 1953 he became a member of its Board of directors in many ways Douglas Jr was like his father he was a hard driven young man who was passionate about his work and like his father he had to developed a love for the sea in 1932 he had earned a silver medal at the Summer Olympic Games in the six meter yacht class and in later years he owned a successive series of fine sailing craft but in many other ways the two men couldn't be more different senior was quieter and more reserved Junior was more extroverted in sociable senior had patience perhaps too much patience at times and his son was the opposite passionate and sometimes quick tempered the DCH project was a prime example of their differences Don Jr had pushed for the development of a jetliner as soon as it was feasible believing that speed would be the deciding factor in the commercial Market of the 50s and 60s but old Douglas felt that it was too risky and he'd adopted a more conservative and incremental approach with the appearance of the Boeing jetliner forcing his hand this conflict over the future of The Airliner resulted in many arguments behind closed doors but despite their differences the two men would ultimately support each other Don Jr put his full effort into the development and testing of the dc-7 despite thinking it's a waste of time and Douglas senior did not impede the various design studies that were initiated in the 40s and early 50s to explore the possibility of jet-powered commercial transports their Unity was not merely from a common desire to see their company succeed despite their diverging Visions on what that success would entail but because they had recently found some common ground besides a love of sailing though the two had nearly disowned each other over Don Jr's marriage before the war they had now been United by divorce Don Jr and his wife had split not long after the war and after a long estrangement Donald Douglas and his wife Charlotte went through a hotly contested and painful fully public divorce in 1953 like many divorces it essentially split the Douglas family down the middle with the five children essentially being forced to take sides but Donald Douglas senior was very surprised to see his hot-headed son joining him Don Jr's steadfast and unwavering support of his father during the long drawn-out proceedings did much to repair their relationship and despite their creative and personal differences Douglas would be equally supportive of his son when he handed the reins of the company over to him in 1957 but when Don Jr did take over in 1957 he was inheriting something of a poisoned chalice though he did not yet know it his father's reluctance to transition into the jet age was not a fatal Mistake by itself but events would now unfold that would seal the company's fate when Douglas and Boeing were racing to develop their commercial Jets between 1950 before and to 1958 the airline Market had been experiencing a period of massive growth passenger mileage was increasing by about 15 percent on average each year between 1953 and 1957 inclusive and the economy was growing just as quickly but when the dc-8 and 707 were beginning to enter service between 1958 and 1959 the situation had changed dramatically Airline demand had slumped and as the 1960 recession began neither the 707 or the dc-8 had been sold in the numbers expected this was further compounded by the fact that both aircraft had failed to meet range and fuel efficiency guarantees which required costly modifications and this resulted in a further drop in sales usually the year that an airliner entered service it would coincide with a boost in sales but when the dc-8 entered service in 1959 only 18 aircraft was sold that year despite well for a hundred being on order this was bad enough on its own and it mirrored the problems of the dc-7 whose own development cost exceeded its sale value but the losses of the dc-7 had been offset by the huge orders for military aircraft that were being built by the El Segundo division now things had changed because El Segundo was rapidly running out of work in 1952 the company had received a contract to produce what would become the venerable A4 Skyhawk but little did the division know that this would be the last big military contract it would ever receive from the U.S Navy existing contracts for the f3d ad1 f4d and a3d were completed respectively in 1953 57 58 and 61 and then nothing else really followed there had been hopes that the promising f5d1 skylancer would get a big contract but it didn't to make matters worse us El Segundo was also now without its chief engineer Ed heinemann who'd been responsible for the company's most successful military design since the late 1930s had resigned in 1960. he and Donald Douglas Jr did not get on very well at all and when Douglas began restructuring the company he made heinemann vice president of the company's European division it was a role that heinemann neither wanted or was suitable for and after a brief stint in this role he left the company for good the absence of his leadership and strong drive for quality control would soon be keenly felt that being said even if Ed heinemann hadn't been essentially forced out of the company he wouldn't have had his position for very much longer due to the dwindling number of military aircraft on order El Segundo became unprofitable and the plant was actually closed in 1962 with production of the Skyhawk being transferred to the Long Beach facility the problems stemming from the loss of El Segundo was twofold not only did Douglas lose many skilled Engineers who couldn't relocate to other facilities but it had huge financial ramifications the drop in revenue from military contracts meant that the Douglas Aircraft Company couldn't easily absorb all of the costs incurred by the dc-8 program of which it had invested half a billion dollars in development thus far and as a result the company posted a loss of 33 million dollars for the 1959 fiscal year it posted another loss of 19 million in 1960 and although it did once again return to profits in 1961 the company couldn't afford to develop any other commercial airliners to complement the dc-8 whereas Boeing was already working on the model 720. to get around this problem the company went into business with sud Aviation who gave them the sales rights and product support responsibilities for their Caravel twin engine transport Douglas also obtained a license to manufacture the aircraft in the United United States should they secure enough sales to justify the initial outlay but once again Boeing beats them to the punch Douglas did secure some sales to both United Airlines and TWA but the sales of the new Boeing 727 quickly caught up and then overtook them Douglas quickly abandoned the idea of selling The Caravelle in the United States and it soon terminated its other agreements with sud Aviation as well viewing them as a waste of money now while Douglas was competing with Boeing for the long-haul market and while it was failing in the medium Hall Market it did not neglect the potential for a shorter range design indeed both Don Jr and Senior believed that the short haul and executive Market promised to be exceedingly popular in the jet age particularly if they could sell planes to European customers with this in mind several design studies had been initiated in the late 50s and early 60s to explore the idea of a short-range twin engine transport and in 1962 the economy and thus the company's fortunes had recovered enough for Douglas to start detailed design work on a new short haul airliner and this became known as the dc-9 up until this point Donald Douglas had always missed the mark in predicting the popularity of his commercial aircraft but for the first time his predictions about the popularity of this aircraft would be correct he expected that the dc-9 would be popular in fact it was very popular possibly too popular in April of 1963 the company formally announced the development and production of the dc-9 and in less than a month it already made its first sales to Delta Airlines the company had originally planned to produce approximately 500 dc-9s over a 10-year period but the type proved to be so appealing to customers that they already had 4 400 on order within the first three years and eventually just under 1 000 DC nines would eventually be produced the dc-9 was produced using a new risk sharing program with various parts being built in the United States Canada and Italy final assembly was done at the Long Beach plant and here the company now had a massive assembly line where on one side It produced the dc-8 and on the other side It produced the dc-9 additionally the increasing popularity of the dc-9 and thus the increasing sales allowed the company to finally invest in planned improvements for the dc-8 which had begun to lag behind the Boeing 707 in sales as a result of the 707 being offered in a variety of different shapes and sizes that Douglas at the time could not afford to match the result was the so-called super 60s there was the dc-8-6 61-62 and dash 63 the 61 and 63 models offered substantially increased payload capacity and the 62 had a much longer range their popularity quickly grew with the super 60s eventually becoming the dominant model of the dcas and this combined with the sudden popularity of the dc-9 meant that Douglas once again had to rapidly expand its production facilities in 1966. and this is where things start to go very wrong very quickly in 1966 the Douglas Aircraft Company completely lost control of its costs and in less than a year it would be facing bankruptcy and this was a perfect storm of contributing factors firstly Douglas had recently lost out on a competition to build a large strategic transport with Lockheed being awarded a contract to produce at the C5 Galaxy this all but locked out Douglas from the hugely lucrative market for producing transports for the US military for at least the next two decades and it was now using the aborted project as part of a design study into a new wide body airliner this was initially to be a double decker design intended to compete with Boeing's 747 which was now in development and although this would never fully eventuate instead evolving into the DC-10 it took vital Engineers away from the project X to improve the dc8 and build the dc-9 this meant that the people managing these existing projects had even more work to do and they were already under a considerable amount of pressure as a lot of them were quite new to the job which leads us to the second problem between 1958 and 1956 the company had lost a lot of its most experienced managers across almost all areas as well research development manufacturing sales you name it there had been a serious Changing of the Guard many of their Replacements were still adjusting to their new positions or were sometimes better suited elsewhere and this made the company very top heavy with poor communication between departments one big consequence of this was that the Douglas sales team was signing up airliners left right and Center without fully appreciating that the production facilities had no way of keeping Pace with the rapidly expanding demand this meant that the company had to very quickly organize new production facilities build new tools and hire and train more workers and this all cost a lot of money and it also led into the next big problem sourcing said Manpower in the first place as orders for the dc-8 had declined during the 1960 recession and as the supply of military contracts all but dried up the Douglas Workforce had shrunk down from 27 000 to just seven and a half thousand now all of a sudden the demand was back and that meant that the workforce had to rapidly expand now on its own this was a big problem as it was as Douglas had to wrap rapidly higher and then train thousands of workers to produce its aircraft in many ways it was similar to a situation that the company faced at the start of its involvement in the second world war but at the same time it was vastly different from the days of the second world war because the aircraft being built back then were much more simpler unlike before the company didn't just need people who could operate a simple rivet gun they needed skilled workers to produce the complex electrical systems install the advanced turbojet engines build and test the pressurized cabins the list goes on and all of this was now further exacerbated by the escalating situation of the Vietnam War Not only was Douglas struggling to hire new employees because everyone was getting drafted up but they were losing many existing qualified employees who were also being drafted up and then whilst Douglas was scrambling to a hire new employees and be not to lose existing ones the Vietnam War caused an explosion of military contracts the loss of Ed heinemann and the El Segundo division was particularly felt as orders for the A4 Skyhawk suddenly increased by an order of magnitude and the company scrambled to build them in quantity on time and most importantly within cost the result of all of this was simple although the company had a backlog that was now worth three billion dollars it suddenly posted a net loss of 3 million in the first quarter of 1966. by the end of the year this had blown outs to a loss of 27 million but the situation had to become so chaotic that some estimated that the true loss could be closer to 80 million because of all of the aforementioned problems Douglas was now making huge losses on every single aircraft it was building everything had suddenly become too expensive now much of this came as a complete shock to both Douglas senior and his son who had announced at the start of the year that the company was in fact in the best financial position it had found itself in years not staring down the barrel of a financial apocalypse unfortunately the communication structure of the company had become so disjointed that they simply weren't aware of many of the problems that had been bubbling under the surface for the past few years as things rapidly spiraled out of control Donald Douglas once again took over control of his company but he was particularly aggrieved to see the board of directors and many of the senior level managers suddenly turn on his son and blame him solely for the company's problems rapidly running out of options Douglas approached to the Wall Street firm of Lazar Freire to help him find a way out of their impending Financial collapse the management firm set up shop in Santa Monica and after a thorough examination of the situation some of which yielded some truly horrifying figures they presented Douglas with the Ugly Truth his company needed new management and more importantly it needed a lot more money and this meant they had no choice but to seek a merger during the next few weeks Douglas received offers for a merger from Fairchild General Dynamics Martin McDonnell North America and Signal oil and gas the offer from McDonald's surprised him a few years earlier James McDonnell who at the time already owned a few hundred thousand of Douglas's shares had made the offer of a merger at the time Douglas had been quite offended and had flatly refused and McDonnell had angrily sold his stock for a handsome profit for at the time Douglas was doing quite well now he was back and his offer eventually turned out to be the best the offer by McDonnell was unanimously approved on the 13th of January 1967 and government approve all swiftly followed owing to the increasing demand for Douglas aircraft in the Vietnam War everything was formalized by the spring and on the 28th of April 1967 the Douglas Aircraft Company officially ceased to exist and the era of the new McDonald Douglas company officially began Donald Douglas senior was made an honorary chairman of the board and Douglas Jr was brought on as one one of its directors working with them until 1989 the story of the McDonald Douglas Corporation is one for another day but I do want to touch on one facet of Douglas's downfall that is often a course of contention at the time of the company's collapse Douglas Jr bore the brunt of the blame for its failure but much of the criticism that was directed towards him was emotional biased and often untrue something that his father deeply regretted Donald Douglas had managed his company with a firm hand forming a tight-knit network of individuals across all levels of the company but in a way he had done his job too well he had surrounded himself with people that he worked with very well and who were very loyal to him but that was it they were loyal to him because of this loyalty many of the company's Old Guard viewed his son as just that a young impulsive man who can never fit in his father's shoes despite the fact that he had climbed the company's ranks on his own with Douglas specifically going out of his own way to avoid any hint of favoritism unfortunately it did not help that the two douglases were very different in personality and this led to an inevitable Rift in the ranks of the company when his son took over the presidency people who were used to working with the father but did not necessarily find it easy to work with the Sun the animosity That Grew between the younger Douglas and his father's old cohort led to inevitable failings almost all of them were either replaced or simply resigned from personal feeling and in the end both sides were equally to blame though Douglas Jr often received the most of it as the company was his father's namesake but this alone had not doomed the company as some people like to say there were many causes not least being his father's decision to delay entry into the jet age and giving Boeing a head start additionally even if Douglas Jr had not taken over in his father's place it's highly likely that any successor to Douglas himself would have faced some level of resistance once they'd taken charge the McDonald Douglas Corporation would continue to produce many of Douglas's designs for many years they also carried on the use of Douglas's iconic logo which went back to the Flight of the world Cruisers way back in 1924. it was a logo that Boeing would later inherit when they merged with McDonnell Douglas in 1997. if Douglas ever felt any bitterness about the loss of his company he never voiced it publicly and he bailed out with pride and dignity saying that one should never grow old where one was once great he often reflected warmly about his company's achievements over the past 40 years and he spent his retirement sailing his yacht and writing poetry Donald Douglas passed away aged 88 on February the 1st 1981 at his request his ashes were scattered over the Pacific Ocean where he had spent some of the happiest days of his life today many of his aircraft are still flying and many take pride of place as iconic displays in aviation museums around the world they continue the legacy of Douglas and his aircraft and it is a legacy that as of now has carried on for just over a century as always thank you all so much for watching and a big thank you of course to the patron supporters and I hope everyone enjoyed this final installment of what has been a bit of a marathon for me to do um again I apologize that the parts one part two and part three have been so spread out but life health issues and you know buying a house kind of got in the way of things but um I am planning to do some other longer videos in the near future so stay tuned for more longish content a big thank you of course to our wing Commander tier patrons our highest tier supporters and I'm currently working on the special video that the patreon supporters recently voted on so expect to see that at some point in early to mid-october but as always thank you all so much for your continued support and I will catch you all next time goodbye

Channel: Rex's Hangar

Views: 258,175

Keywords: douglas dc-3, douglas aviation, aviation history, commercial airliner, united airlines, american airlines, mcdonnell douglas, rexs hangar, douglas aircraft, douglas aircraft history, aircraft history, history of the douglas aircraft company, rex's hangar, douglas dc-8, douglas dc-9

Id: m8HzZBuDu4E

Length: 67min 21sec (4041 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 11 2023