Jetrader - January/February 2011 - 20

aviation history

Douglas Aircraft Company …a history continued
By Bill Bath The DC-3 was a commercial success, and the expansion of air travel over longer distances soon prodded the U.S. airlines to demand that Douglas Aircraft Company develop a larger capacity aircraft with transcontinental range. To help ﬁnance the new aircraft, American, Eastern, Pan American, TWA and United all chipped in to cover the cost of designing and building the prototype. American and Pan The ﬁrst DC-4E developed to meet a United Airlines requirement for 42 passengers in day capacity or American dropped out, the latter preferring 30 in sleeper conﬁguration. Photo from 1938 edition of Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft. the then-under-development Boeing 307, which would be pressurized with a pressure differential of 2.5 psi (17kPa) to an equivalent cabin altitude of 8,000 1,163 delivered through January 1946; this total includes deliveries feet (2,440 meters) when ﬂying at 14,000 feet (4,480 meters). This to the British Royal Air Force Transport Command and the United was important when carrying 33 passengers over the North Atlantic States Navy, who gave it the designation R5D. None of the initial 24 with its frequent turbulence. production aircraft needed to fulﬁll airline orders was delivered as TWA also ordered ﬁve of the Boeings for its New York-Los Angeles the U.S. Army Air Force requisitioned them and renamed them C-54 route but continued to stick with Douglas for the DC-4 development. Skymasters. With Britain and France already at war with Nazi Germany since 3 The engines were P&W R-2000s, modiﬁed R-1830s with the 14 cylSeptember 1939, following the invasion of Poland on 1 September, inders bored out an additional 0.25 inches (6.35mm) to give an origiPan Am’s delivery of the ﬁrst of three aircraft in April 1940 limited nal 1300 hp using 87-octane fuel. When concerns from the military its use to its Latin American routes. were allayed that they would not have sufﬁcient 100/130-octane The photograph above from the 1938 edition of Jane’s All the fuel for combat aircraft and cleared the C-54 to use the same rated World’s Aircraft, shows the ﬁrst DC-4E developed to meet a United Airfuel; the power was eventually increased to 1450 hp (1065 kw). lines requirement for 42 passengers in day capacity or 30 in sleeper Interesting side note: The R-1830-76 was the world’s ﬁrst proconﬁguration. Although the E (experimental) prototype DC-4 ﬁrst duction two-stage, two-speed supercharged engine; installed on the ﬂew in mid-1938, it did not receive its Certiﬁcate of Airworthiness Grumman F4F-3 Wildcat ﬁghter, it played a major part in the Battle until May 1939. United did some evaluation ﬂights with 52 seats, but of Midway, June 1942. its performance fell short of their needs and the complex AC electriThe U.S. Army Air Force Air Transport Command used the C-54 on cal and powered ﬂight control booster systems were expensive to a regular transatlantic schedule, which peaked with an average of maintain; so it was back to the drawing board for a simpler design 20 double-crossings a day. East bound with the prevailing winds, with a single ﬁn and rudder. It was the ﬁrst commercial airliner with the aircraft could make it to the UK with a refueling stop at Gana tricycle landing gear, which permitted a constant diameter fuseder carrying a mixture of passengers and freight. Westbound usually lage back to the tail section. As a result, it was a fairly straight-forrequired an additional stop at Greenland or Keﬂavik, Iceland, after ward exercise to lengthen the 94-foot, 10-inch fuselage to 100 feet the threatened invasion by Germany was averted by British military for the later pressurized DC-6 and 112-foot, 4-inch DC-7 models after intervention. Apart from the original 24 airline models, 928 were the war. These designs of course were far more complex structurally delivered with cargo doors to the military in various versions terand in systems design than the basic unpressurized DC-4. minating with the C-54G. President Roosevelt’s personal VC-C-54-DO What happened to the E prototype? It was sold to the Japanese was named Sacred Cow, but the C-54B-1-DO of Winston Churchill had who reversed engineered it to produce the Nakajima G5N bomber. no ofﬁcial name. With approximately 11 G5Ns built, it was a complete ﬂop and the After the war, Douglas built an additional 79 civilian aircraft, DC-4E ended one of its test ﬂights at the bottom of Tokyo Bay. plus a large number of ex-military models were converted to airThe ﬁrst revised aircraft was delivered on 14 February 1942, 13 line use, usually with 44 seats, though some of the charter airmonths after the United States entered the war, with a total of lines would cram in 86 passengers, including my sister-in-law on 20 The ofﬁcial publication of the International Society of Transport Aircraft Trading

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