The name Douglas has long been associated with outstanding U.S. naval attack aircraft—especially the SBD Dauntless, AD Skyraider, A3D Skywarrior, and A4D Skyhawk. These aircraft were the progeny of the Douglas DT, the U.S. Navy’s first successful torpedo plane.
Donald Douglas and his friend David R. Davis established an aircraft company in Los Angeles in 1920. Douglas had entered the U.S. Naval Academy in 1909 but resigned as a midshipman in 1912 to pursue a career in aviation. He studied aeronautical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating in 1914, after which he remained briefly at MIT and then was associated with several aircraft firms, twice serving as chief engineer for the Glenn Martin Company. He also served, briefly, as chief civilian aeronautical engineer for the Army Signal Corps.
The Davis-Douglas Company’s first product was the Douglas Cloudster, a chunky single-engine biplane that its designers hoped would be the first aircraft to fly nonstop across the United States. The plane—only one was built—had limited success, being modified to carry five passengers and the pilot in open cockpits.
Douglas adapted the basic Cloudster design to produce the DT-1, a single-place torpedo plane, which could be fitted with either wheels or twin floats. Powered by a 400-horsepower Liberty engine, the aircraft had a welded steel fuselage frame, with aluminum covering on the forward and center sections, and fabric covering the rear. The wings had a wood structure covered by fabric, while the tail surfaces were fabric-covered welded steel. The aircraft’s wings folded back through 90 degrees to parallel the fuselage for carrier stowage. The DT-1 could carry a 1,835-pound torpedo semi-recessed under the fuselage; alternatively, an auxiliary fuel tank could be fitted in place of the torpedo.1
The Navy ordered three prototypes in 1921, with the first being assembled in the Goodyear airship hangar in East Los Angeles. It first flew—fitted with floats—in November 1921. The Navy’s reaction was positive, the other two prototypes were reordered as two-place DT-2s, and 38 additional aircraft were ordered. The second crewman was an observer/gunner, firing a flexible .30-caliber machine gun.
Even as the first DT-2s were being delivered to squadrons, the aircraft gained notoriety for its performance. In June 1923 Navy pilots flying from San Diego established a series of world records for seaplanes. Five were set by DT-2 aircraft.
On 6 June, Lieutenant (junior grade) Mainard A. Schur set a speed record of 72 mph for 500 kilometers, and Lieutenant Robert L. Fuller set distance and duration marks, carrying a 2,205-pound payload for 205 miles in 2 hours, 45 minutes. The following day, Lieutenant Earl B. Brix set an altitude record of 10,850 feet while carrying a 551-pound useful payload. And Lieutenant Cecil F. Harper set the altitude record of 13,898 feet for planes with no useful payload. On 12 June, Schur set three world records with an endurance flight of 11 hours, 17 minutes; a distance mark of 792.25 miles; and a speed of 70.5 mph for a 1,000-kilometer course.
The initial deliveries of the DT-2 began at San Diego in October 1922 and continued into 1924. The first squadron to fly the aircraft was Torpedo Squadron 2. The acquisition of 40 DT-2s from Douglas was complemented by 6 aircraft from the Naval Aircraft Factory in Philadelphia, 11 from the Dayton-Wright Company in Dayton, Ohio, and 20 more from the Lowe-Willard-Fowler Engineering Company, of College Point, Long Island, New York. Thus the single DT-1 was followed by 77 DT-2s. Three of the latter were converted into long-range scouts for the Navy with a modified fuselage and additional fuel capacity. These were redesignated SDW-1. Engine modifications to other DT-2s led to the designations DT-3 through DT-5.
In 1924 the Norwegian government placed an order with Douglas for a DT-2B, followed by a short, licensed production run in Norway.
Marine Corps units as well as Navy squadrons flew the DT-2 and its variants. Most aircraft were fitted with floats and operated from seaplane tenders and land bases. Beyond the planes being used as torpedo aircraft and contributing significantly to the early development of the weapons and tactics, Navy DT-2s fitted with floats were used in 1924–25 for catapult tests from the pioneer carrier Langley (CV-1).
While the Navy loaned the Army Air Service two DT-2s for parachute trials, there was a far more significant link between the DT series and the Army. In response to an Army requirement for an aircraft to attempt the first around-the-world flight, Douglas proposed a modification of the DT design, the Douglas–World Cruiser (D-WC). The Army was impressed with Douglas’ proposal although the service had not previously purchased Douglas aircraft.2
Subsequently, four DWC aircraft were ordered for the globe-circling flight plus one aircraft for trials. The DWC differed from the DT-2 in having an increased fuel capacity for greater range, and the cockpits for the pilot and crewman were moved closer together. Like the DT, the DWC could be fitted with either floats or wheeled landing gear.
The four operational DWC aircraft—named Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, and Seattle—took off from Lake Washington near Seattle on 4 April 1924, flying toward Alaska. The Seattle crashed into a mountain in Alaska; its two-man crew survived. Later in the odyssey the Boston was forced down while crossing the Atlantic, the crew being picked up by the scout cruiser Richmond (CL-9). The two surviving aircraft successfully crossed the Atlantic and, then joined by the trials aircraft now christened Boston II, the fliers returned to Seattle on 28 September 1924.
The Douglas aircraft proved to have remarkable stamina during the 175-day trip, which took the Army crews 28,945 miles around the Northern Hemisphere. Their flight time was 371 hours at an average speed of 78 mph. The flight was also a testament to Army logistics, which had prepositioned supplies and spare engines as well as mechanics around the world.
The service career of the DT-2 with the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps was relatively brief; the last, an experimental DT-6, was discarded in January 1927. The DT-2B series served with the Norwegian Naval Flying Service until 1940.
The Douglas Aircraft Company of Santa Monica, California, followed the DT series with the T2D/P2D twin-engine aircraft.3 And in turn came the long line of Douglas dive and torpedo bombers, and attack planes that served in U.S. Navy and Marine Corps and many foreign squadrons. The final U.S. Douglas aircraft was a TA-4J Skyhawk, retired in 2003.
1. Detailed descriptions of the DT-series aircraft are found in Gordon Swanborough, United States Navy Aircraft since 1911 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1968), pp. 158–60, and René J. Francillon, McDonnell Douglas Aircraft since 1920 (London: Putnam, 1979), pp. 59–69.
2. The hyphen was later deleted, hence the service designation DWC.
3. See N. Polmar, “The Plane That Could—And Couldn’t,” Naval History (August 2005), pp. 14–15.