The Piston Era

Douglas' twin engined aircraft development was commenced in 1932. This was more or less done to meet a Trans World Airlines (TWA) requirment of an airliner capable of competing against United Air Lines Boeing 247s. The response to this requirment evolved into the DC-1 (DC = Douglas Commercial), which first flew on July 1 1933. Less than one year later an upgraded version, designated DC-2, first flew. This led to American Airlines approaching Douglas to ask if a further improved variant, for use on trans-American sleeper service was a feasible proposition. The affermative answer was the DC-3/Douglas Sleeper Transport (DST). Through large-scale wartime production this was destined as the C-47/Dakota to be the most famous of all piston-engined airliners ever built. First flown in DST configuration between New York and Chicago, in June 1936, DC-3 production eventually totalled 10,655 aircraft before manufacture finished after the cessation of World War Two.

Jet Age

At this juncture in aviation history Douglas Aircraft Company was the dominant civil aircraft manufacturer, a position maintained through the DC-4/DC-6 and DC-7 heavy four engined transport era. However with the dawning of the jet age, supremacy moved to Boeing, where it has remained ever since. In an effort to keep it's position as a supplier of transort aircraft to the world airline industry (versus Boeing and Lockheed in particular) Douglas Aircraft Company began the search for a successor to it's DC-7 in the early fifties. Like Boeing, Douglas concluded that the future lay with turbojet-powered long-range airliner and projected designs along the lines very similar to those chosen by Boeing for it's military tanker/transport prototype, the model 367-80. When the latter took to the skies in July 1954, it heightened Douglas awareness that the large-scale adoption of jet transports was imminent. On June 7 1955 Douglas took the decision to proceed immideatly with construction and certification of the DC-8.

Details were first published in August 1955, revealing a sleek low-wing monoplane with 30deg of wing sweepback (less than the Boeing 707), four Pratt & Whitney J57 (JT3C) turbojets in underwing pods and a gross weight of 95,710kg (211,000lb) for domestic US operation (with trans-continental non-stop range) or up to 116,570kg (257,000lb) for projected overwater variants with greater range. Pan American was the first airline to order the DC-8, placing orders with both Douglas and Boeing for 20 each of their new jet transports on 13 October 1955. United followed with a contract less than 2 weeks later, and before the end of the year National Airlines, KLM, Eastern, SAS and JAL had followed suit.

Douglas announced that the intercontinental version would have J75 (JT4A) engines, with Rolls-Royce Conways as an alternative, and the gross weights began to rise, to 120,200kg (265,000lb) for the domestic version and 130,410kg (287,500lb) in the intercontinental version - both these figures increaing further after the aircraft entered service. Series numbers were adopted for the DC-8 variants at the end of 1959, when the initial domestic model became the Srs 10, and a similar version with JT4A engines for improved take-off performance the Srs 20. The intercontinental version with JT4A engines was the Srs 30 and with Conway engines, Srs 40. A further model Srs 50 with JT3D turbofans were introduced. All these models having the same overall dimensions (although some changes in wing span and chord were introduced during the course of production) and provided seating for 117 passengers in a typical mixed-class layout, or up to 189 in one-class high-density layouts, subject to suitable emergency exit provisions being made. First commercial service was inagurated on September 18 1959 by both United and Pan Am, almost a year after the Boeing 707.

In April 1965 Douglas began work on what would be known as the Sixty Series, providing different combinations of fuselage stretch and payload/range performance. Based initally on the JT3D-1 or JT3D-3 engines as used in the Srs 50, the Sixty Series comprised: The Srs 61 with the fuselage stretched by 11.18m (36ft 8in) to provide accomodation for up to 259 passengers; the Srs 62 with a fuselage stretch of only 2.03m (6ft 8in) for up to 189 passengers combined with extra fuel and aerodynamic refinements ta acheive a very long range; the Srs 63 featured the long fuselage of the Srs 61 and many of the refinements of the Srs 62 including a 1.82m (6ft) extension to the wing span, to give maximum flexibility of operation over medium to long ranges. With the introduction of the Sixty Series, the DC-8 programme was revived with a spurt of new orders. By the time production ended in May 1972, the production total for the DC-8 of all series ended at 556 sold aircraft. In the early 80ies Cammacorp in association with McDonnell Douglas launched a programme to retrofit the Dc 8 Sixty Series with the more economical and eveironmentally friendly CFM 56, thus the Dc 8-61, 62 & 63 retrofitted became the Dc 8-71, 72 & 73.

Douglas Becomes McDD

In 1967 McDonnell bought Douglas. At the time Douglas was having financial problems that amounted to over $170 million dollars in debt. They were also losing close to $500,000 on each DC-8 that was delivered because engines were in short supply and the planes sat finished but without engines for weeks. The DC-8-61 and DC-8-62 were both being flight tested, and the DC-9s orders were starting to pile up. This lead to Douglas having to hire a large number of unskilled workers, further costing them more money for training and to pay for the mistakes that were made in production. After 1967 Douglas became the McDonnell Douglas Company.

The Dc-9

In the fifties and sixties Douglas toyed with the idea of building a scaled down DC-8 to cater for the medium to short-range market, eventually the design led to the DC-9 being announced on April 8 1963, without a airline order to back the project. This followed less than three weeks later when Delta Air Lines signed a contract for 15 with 15 more on option. The design crystallized around a very similar design to that of the British BAC 1-11 (One Eleven), with a T-tail and two aft mounted engines. From the offing Douglas intended to offer a wide range of models to cater for different airline requirments, this eventually gave Douglas a significant edge over BAC in the sales battles that followed in the mid-sixties.