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Sky Master: The Story of Donald Douglas
Sky Master: The Story of Donald Douglas
Sky Master: The Story of Donald Douglas
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Sky Master: The Story of Donald Douglas

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This book, originally published in 1943, is a biographical account of Donald Douglas (1892-1981), the influential American aircraft industrialist, engineer and aviation pioneer who designed and built the Douglas Cloudster—the first airplane with a payload greater than its own weight. Douglas was the founder of the Douglas Aircraft Company in 1921 (the company later merged into McDonnell Douglas Corporation) and, under his leadership, the company became one of the leaders of the commercial aircraft industry, engaging in a decades-long struggle for supremacy with arch-rival William Boeing and the company he founded, Boeing. A gripping read for aviation enthusiasts.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 21, 2016
ISBN9781787201743
Sky Master: The Story of Donald Douglas
Author

Dr. Frank Cunningham

Dr. Frank Cunningham (1911-1972) was a newspaper journalist, film and television scriptwriter and award-winning literary author. He is the author of five “best of the year” books, including his biography of General Stand Watie, Confederate Indians (1959). He received numerous distinguished writing awards as well as honorary life memberships in many literary organizations, such as the Manuscripters of Los Angeles, the International Mark Twain Society, the Penguins and the Hollywood Branch of the National League of American Pen Women. Dr. Cunningham received the Military Service medals of the S.C.V. and O.S.B. and was on Special Duty, Army of the United States, G-2, Military Intelligence in 1941. Honored with a Life Membership in the Confederate High Command, Major-General Cunningham, CHC, headed the Fort General Stand Watie Outpost, Los Angeles and commanded the Confederate Armies of the Far West.

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    Sky Master - Dr. Frank Cunningham

    This edition is published by PICKLE PARTNERS PUBLISHING—www.pp-publishing.com

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    Text originally published in 1943 under the same title.

    © Pickle Partners Publishing 2016, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

    Publisher’s Note

    Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

    We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

    SKY MASTER:

    THE STORY OF DONALD DOUGLAS

    BY

    FRANK CUNNINGHAM

    TABLE OF CONTENTS

    Contents

    TABLE OF CONTENTS 5

    DEDICATION 6

    ACKNOWLEDGMENT 7

    ILLUSTRATIONS 8

    I 11

    II 42

    III 72

    IV 88

    V 103

    VI 108

    VII 120

    VIII 142

    IX 155

    X 168

    XI 182

    XII 199

    XII 209

    REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 232

    DEDICATION

    TO MOMMIE AND POP AND GONDEE...

    ACKNOWLEDGMENT

    Many people have aided me in making possible my research for the story of Donald Douglas. I wish to thank Mr. William E. Douglas; Mrs. Donald Douglas; Mr. A. M. Rochlen, Director of Industrial and Public Relations, Douglas Aircraft; Mr. Jack Anderson, Assistant Director, Industrial and Public Relations; Mr. Bert Lynn, Industrial and Public Relations; Miss Patsy Kelly, Head Librarian; Mr. John V. Thompson, Assistant Director of Welfare; Mr. Eric Springer, Manager of Douglas El Segundo Plant; Mr. S. O. Porter, Personnel Director; Mr. George Strompl, Director of Standards; Mr. Harold Mansfield, Director of Public Relations, Boeing Aircraft Company; Mr. William Wagner, Manager of Publicity and Photography, Ryan Aeronautical Company; Mr. E. E. Watts, Public Relations Department, The Glenn L. Martin Company; Mr. Carl Apponyi, Director of Public Relations, Northrop Aircraft; Mr. Edmond R. Doak, President, Doak Aircraft Company; Mr. Al Essig, The Essig Company, Ltd.; Mr. Bill Henry, columnist, Los Angeles Times; Mr. Ted Cate, Vice-President, Western Air Lines; Mrs. Lorraine Sherer, Los Angeles County Schools; Mr. Frank A. Taylor, Curator of Engineering, U.S. National Museum; Mrs. Joy Bright Hancock, Editorial Research Section, Bureau of Aeronautics, Navy Department; the Pictorial Section of the U.S. Signal Corps. In the numerous files of aviation publications reviewed none was of more value than Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft.

    ILLUSTRATIONS

    DONALD DOUGLAS

    DONALD’S MOTHER

    DONALD DOUGLAS AS A BOY

    DOUGLAS FAMILY IN FRONT OF BROOKLYN HOME

    HAROLD AND DONALD IN A ROWBOAT

    FANTASTIC BALLOON MINERVA

    CLEMENT ADER’S AVION

    HIRAM MAXIM’S AIRPLANE—1894

    STRINGFELLOW’S MODEL TRIPLANE—1868

    LANGLEY AERODROME BEFORE LAUNCHING

    PROFESSOR SAMUEL PIERPONT LANGLEY AND CHARLES M. MANLY

    ORVILLE WRIGHT FLYING AT FORT MYER—1909

    DONALD DOUGLAS IN NORWAY

    MODEL NUMBER ONE

    LIEUT. ELY LEAVING LAUNCHING PLATFORM

    THE NAVY’S FIRST DIRIGIBLE, THE DN-1

    DOUGLAS’ APPOINTMENT TO THE FACULTY OF M.I.T

    U.S. ARMY’S FIRST AIRPLANE

    FIRST WRIGHT BIPLANE AT KITTY HAWK

    EARLY MARTIN FACTORY

    GLENN L. MARTIN, BARNSTORMER

    FIRST MARTIN PLANE DESIGNED BY DOUGLAS

    ERIC SPRINGER, ONE OF AMERICA’S GREATEST TEST PILOTS

    FIRST PLANE BUILT BY BOEING

    DOUGLAS READY FOR FLIGHT IN 1917

    ALLIES WARTIME AIRCRAFT

    MORE ALLIES WARPLANES

    THE NAVY F5L

    THE NAVY N-9

    BRITISH FLYING BOAT

    MARTIN BOMBER MB-2 OVER WASHINGTON

    FOUR GREAT MEN IN AVIATION

    DONALD DOUGLAS WITH DAVID R. DAVIS

    THE CLOUDSTER BEGINS TO TAKE SHAPE

    GROUP IN FRONT OF THE CLOUDSTER

    THE CLOUDSTER COMPLETED

    WILLIAM AND DONALD DOUGLAS, JR

    GALBRAITH P. RODGERS

    OBSERVER CHECKING ERIC SPRINGER’S BAROGRAPH

    DOUGLAS CLOUDSTER PLANE

    HEAVILY ARMORED GAX TRIPLANE—1922

    JIM GOODYEAR BESIDE THE FIRST DT PLANE

    HARRY WETZEL

    TORPEDO CARRIED BY DOUGLAS PLANES

    THE FIRST WORLD FLIGHT

    THE WORLD CRUISER CHICAGO

    DONALD DOUGLAS AND ERIK NELSON

    WESTERN AIR EXPRESS’ M-2 AND THE DOUGLAS DC-3

    FIRST PASSENGERS ON WESTERN AIR EXPRESS

    ED HUBBARD AND WILLIAM BOEING

    INITIAL CARGO SHIP, THE C-1C

    DOUGLAS O-2MC FOR THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT

    UNITED STATES COAST GUARD DOLPHIN

    NAVY PD-1 FLYING BOAT

    8A PURCHASED BY SWEDEN

    FRANK HAWKS’ SKY CHIEF

    IRAQI FLYING OFFICER

    DOUGLAS DC-5

    THE 300TH DOUGLAS DIVE BOMBER

    DEVASTATOR (TBD) TORPEDO BOMBER

    LAND BASED DAUNTLESS (A-24) DIVE BOMBER

    DOUGLAS DAUNTLESS DIVE BOMBER FLOWN BY THE U.S. MARINES

    JOHN NORTHROP

    ERIC SPRINGER

    EDMOND DOAK

    DOUGLAS TORPEDO BOMBERS ON AIRCRAFT CARRIER

    THE DB-7 (BOSTON) AND THE A-20 (HAVOC)

    TOMMY TOMLINSON

    DOUGLAS DC-1 TRANSPORT

    JACK FRYE

    A PAN-AMERICAN DOUGLAS IN SOUTH AMERICA

    MAJOR V. E. BERTRANDIAS WITH A DC-2 IN CHINA

    DUTCH BUYERS HAVE LONG FAVORED DOUGLAS-BUILT PLANES

    DOUGLAS TRANSPORT OVER THE ALPS

    WINGS FROM SANTA MONICA—FOR CZECHOSLOVAKIA

    PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT PRESENTS THE COLLIER TROPHY TO DONALD DOUGLAS

    HENRY GUERIN

    GEORGE STROMPL

    DOUGLAS AERIAL BIRTHDAY PARTY IN A DC-4

    THE DOUGLAS PLANT GROWS IN TWENTY YEARS

    THE DC-4 TAKES ON WAR PAINT

    A PENNSYLVANIA CENTRAL DC-3 BEING WEIGHED

    RIVETERS AT WORK

    THE B-19 IN FLIGHT

    MAJOR STANLEY UMSTEAD, BRILLIANT ARMY FLYER

    THE ENORMOUS TAIL OF THE B-19

    CLOSE-UP OF THE B-19 IN WAR ATTIRE

    BILL HENRY, WAR CORRESPONDENT

    AIR MARSHALL WILLIAM BISHOP, RCAF, AND DONALD DOUGLAS

    BARBARA DOUGLAS

    DONALD DOUGLAS AT THE HELM OF THE ENDYMION

    PATSY KELLY, DOUGLAS HEAD LIBRARIAN

    WOMEN IN THE AVIATION INDUSTRY

    EXPERIENCE TEACHES YOUTH

    HEADS OF THE IMPORTANT DOUGLAS WELFARE DEPARTMENT

    DONALD DOUGLAS AND WILLIAM HAWLEY BOWLUS

    DOUGLAS DAUNTLESS (SBD) SCOUT BOMBERS IN FORMATION

    ON GUARD

    MARS AND MAN

    TROOPS POUR ABOARD SKYMASTER

    I

    From his place on the bench, a Brooklyn judge peered down at a young man before him. The judge spoke: William Douglas, on this day of April 6, 1892, you are supposed to start jury service. Have you any good reason to be excused?

    William Douglas looked up at the judge, hesitated.

    Don’t be so nervous, the judge continued. You’ve been on a jury before. Good Lord! Douglas, you act as if you’re going to have a baby.

    That’s it, Judge. I’m going—that is, my wife’s going—Oh, Judge, she’s having a baby right now!

    And so William E. Douglas was excused from jury duty, hastened to his home, arriving at about the same time as a baby boy, soon to be named Donald Wills Douglas.

    At the National Park Bank the following day Assistant Cashier William Douglas passed around strong black cigars in honor of the second son in his family. And the puffs of thin tobacco smoke spiralled upward into a sky that was in the days to come to be harnessed to the uses of man by airplanes bearing the name of that newborn child—Donald Douglas!

    To Brooklyn, however, the birth of the Douglas baby was of no metropolitan importance. There was a great deal of news of local and national interest to attract the attention of the people, and since the city did not know that the world stage would have its future life pattern changed by the new Douglas infant, no reporter came from the Brooklyn Eagle to get a story of the event.

    On the day that Donald Douglas was born, the nation was centering its attention on James G. Blaine and wondering whether he would permit his name to be put in nomination as a candidate for the presidency of the United States. In Europe, anarchists were exploding bombs and throwing a scare through the throned capitals of the Old World. In the Sandwich Islands, the Queen was being protected by double guards and her palace at Honolulu had been sandbagged. In Venezuela, prisons were being filled with revolutionists and hundreds were being impressed into President Palacios army. In Brooklyn, N. Y., ministers were blasting their indignation at the local lecture of Colonel Robert Ingersoll, atheist. A few Brooklyn ladies may have stopped in to peep at the new Douglas child, but most of them were very busy with the bargain sales at the local department stores. Many years were to pass in Brooklyn before Fortune Magazine at the other end of the bridge was to say, in 1941, The development of the airplane in the days between the wars (World War I and World War II) is the greatest engineering story there ever was, and in the heart of it is Donald Douglas.

    It was nearly 100 years before the birth of Donald Douglas that John Duncan Douglas had in 1799 come from Scotland to New York as a youth, worked his way up in the lumber business until he was one of New York’s most successful lumber operators and builder of many homes in what is now the Greenwich Village section. This lumber business today is still being carried on by descendants of the Scotchman.

    Edward Douglas, John Duncan Douglas’ son, had started his business life as an apprentice to a manufacturing jeweler, but when the War of the Secession had ruined the jewelry business he had joined his father in the lumber business at Albany, New York. Later, when the lumber industry along the Erie Canal had lost its profitable operations, Edward had returned to New York and married a Miss Wills. It was from the Wills family that Donald Wills Douglas received his middle name.

    William Douglas, the son of Edward Douglas, started out in business as an errand boy in a coffee and tea house, but soon changed his job to that of runner in the National Park Bank. As he progressed in the bank he married Dorothy Hagen-Locher, a young girl of German and Scandinavian descent. Soon the couple acquired a comfortable home in Brooklyn and a son named Harold. Two years later Donald arrived.

    Even at an early age young Don showed qualifications of leadership. The family lived in a two-story house, the backyard of which jutted against a ten-foot bank formed by a street on a higher level. On this miniature hill Don would gather the small boys of the neighborhood and furnish them with wooden swords and paper caps. Thus would be re-enacted the battles of King Arthur, the fight of Alfred against the Normans, the charge up Cemetery Ridge of Pickett’s gray-coated line at Gettysburg, or the surge of the Rough Riders at San Juan Hill. And always in the lead, as Arthur, or Alfred, or Pickett, or Teddy Roosevelt, was Don Douglas.

    Two of Don’s top heroes were Wallace and Bruce, the Scotch patriots who warred against England. This is easily understood when the background of the Douglas family is considered. The name represents the Gaelic dhu glas, dark water, and the family has long been famous in the history of Scotland. Probably the initial Douglas to leave his imprint on the pages of recorders was William de Douglas; however, Don’s family traces itself back to James Douglas, who was born in 1286 and was called Good Douglas by the Scotch, Black Douglas by the English. This variance in nomenclature was the result of James’ part in the Scotch-English wars. When James Douglas returned to his home in Scotland after a long stay in Paris schools, he found his estate seized by the English. A short time later James cast his lot with Robert Bruce, who with Wallace led the untiring fight of the Highlanders, and fought in many battles. Douglas routed Sir John de Mowbray, was given command of the war in the South; Bruce, himself, commanded in the Highlands. James Douglas conducted so many successful destructive raids on the English border that the harassed English named him Black Douglas. On one occasion he seized an enemy castle by disguising his men as black oxen and another time came within the proverbial inch of capturing the English monarch Edward III. Douglas is mentioned in an old ballad, But by and rade the Black Douglas, and wow but he was rough!

    Before Robert Bruce’s death in 1329 the Scotch leader made an unusual request of his friend. Bruce asked that Douglas carry his heart to Palestine, as Bruce had never been able to fulfill his vow to make a crusade. Sir James Douglas accepted the mission, and set out with Bruce’s heart in a silver casket. But he was doomed to travel only a short distance on the route to the Holy Land. In Spain he was attacked by Moors. The luck which had carried him to victory in sixty of the seventy battles he had with the English turned against him at a time when he most needed it. He was killed.

    As a result of Sir James Douglas’ ill-fated pilgrimage to Palestine, the coat-of-arms of the Douglas family since that time has carried a human heart, symbolic of the courage of men like Wallace and Bruce and James Douglas.

    It was almost six hundred years after Sir James fell under Moorish blows in 1330 that the heart of Douglas was to carry another battle that was to be of great importance to the world. This was a conflict against indifferences and blindness. This time the heart was to go on another pilgrimage; a hegira to convert the people of the world to modern aviation’s place in man’s sphere of life. When Donald Douglas formed his first aviation company, his trademark, the insignia of this Douglas—who dared odds that were as heavy as those against the Scot patriots—was the red heart. To that red heart was added a symbol that was to make the name Douglas more powerful in warfare than all the bowmen, pikemen, knights, and raiders of the days of Wallace and Bruce. The symbol was a pair of wings. Today over Scotland, Douglas planes soar to see that the British Isles stem the tide of the Axis. In Palestine are men with the fighting heart of Sir Robert Bruce—not men who carry a silver casket, but men who ride the silver wings of Douglas fighting planes with all the courage that youth has always cherished.

    When young Don’s family moved for their summers from Brooklyn to a home near the yacht club on Long Island Sound, Don still played his games, but this time he was Eric the Red, John Paul Jones, Columbus, or a paddle wheel captain racing down the Mississippi. Or perhaps he was John Fitch experimenting with steamboats or a sailor fighting in the no-verdict battle between the Virginia and the Monitor in the War between the States.

    Don’s father had rented a rowboat equipped with a center board and mast and Don’s mother taught Don and his brother Harold to sail around the harbor. Don’s excursions on the Sound brought to him the love of the sea. All his waking hours he would spend boating; the roll of the waves, the fine spray of the surf was a lure to his boyish imagination. So fascinated was Donald by the water that his father bought him a house boat and for a time the family lived in it.

    Don had read the old poem about Sir Patrick Spens and he would sit on the deck of the house boat and tell the sad tale to the waves. Soon he had memorized the verse and at the slightest suggestion he would start off:

    "The King sits in Dunfermline toun

    Drinking the blude-red wine;

    ‘Oh, whaur will I get a skeely skipper

    To sail this gude ship of mine?’

    Then up an’ spake an eldern knight

    Sat at the King’s right knee:

    ‘Sir Patrick Spens is the best sailor

    That ever sailed the sea’."

    The lad would go on to explain to his listeners how Sir Patrick carried out the King’s orders to sail, was caught in a storm, and wrecked. Then Don would give the conclusion to the poem:

    "And lang, lang may the maidens sit,

    Wi’ their gowd kaims in their hair.

    A-waiting for their own dear loves,

    For them they’ll see nae mair."

    Half-owre half-owre to Aberdour

    ‘Tis fifty fathoms deep,

    And there lies good Sir Patrick Spens

    With the Scots lords at his feet."

    Appealing to Don’s interest in sea-lore, the story of Sir Patrick Spens had a dramatic narrative. When the routine of his outdoor battles became a bit tiresome or when the winter weather of Brooklyn made it impossible for him to remain outside for any length of time, Don often staged playlets, against a background of homemade scenery.

    Perhaps Don’s love of the water was occasioned by an incident which happened one summer when the family was in Connecticut. One evening, while the Douglas family was en route from their home at Riverside to a Yacht Club dance, the heavy automobile in which they were riding failed to make a curve in the road, turned over, and ended up in a ditch. Thrown clear of the car, young Douglas went headfirst into a telephone pole and was knocked out. Literally bouncing off the pole, Don was tossed into a patch of poison ivy. His mother pulled him quickly from the spot but both she and the boy acquired poison ivy. From that day forth Don was determined to stick to the sea!

    In his work at a Brooklyn Grammar School Don progressed nicely except for one point. He was a stickler for details, too much so for some of his teachers. One day Don came home angry and perturbed. His mother thought perhaps he had traded a few blows with a fellow classmate on the public school grounds. Such was not the case. His teacher had called a dog a dawg. Don had insisted that a dog was simply a d–g. His teacher had not appreciated his advice. After several such verbal bouts with his teachers, the principal of the school called on Mrs. Douglas.

    As a result of this call, Don, following his mother’s advice, transferred to Trinity Chapel School, run by Trinity Church. Don’s criterion of what is correct found a better audience there. At least he began winning prizes; once he proudly brought home a five-dollar-gold piece for an essay on the history of the church.

    King Arthur and Eric the Red and all the rest were fated for a short life in Don’s list of heroes to be emulated. His father took him on a trip to Washington. The monument was big, the White House imposing, and Mount Vernon was most certainly a beautiful estate. But to Don the most interesting of the Washington sights was a certain spot in the Smithsonian Institution, occupied by Langley’s experimental airplane engine. Immediately Don lost all interest in his G. A. Henty books. The Young Carthagenian had been excellent reading when he was fascinated by the story of Hannibal and Carthage; With Lee in Virginia had been a sympathetic treatment of the Southern cause in the War Between the States; By Pike and Dike had thrilled the lad with the tale of the Dutch fight against the Spanish invaders; and cold-hearted was the boy who wouldn’t admire Gustavus Adolphus after reading The Lion of the North.

    But now all this was forgotten. Books concerning flying became Don’s reading diet. Soon he knew everything about Langley and his early efforts to fly.

    As long as there is aviation the name Langley should be remembered even though many of the young men of today do not recall the exact part that he played in aviation’s development. Scholarly Samuel Pierpont Langley had been on the faculties at Harvard and the Naval Academy as well as Director of the Alleghany Observatory at Pittsburgh before he became Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in 1887. Langley had two research interests: the exploration of the infra-red portions of the solar spectrum; the practicability of mechanical flight. In 1891 he published Experiments in Aerodynamics and in 1893 Internal Work of the Wind. For years Langley had been experimenting with flying craft in which he used as power compressed air, carbonic acid, steam, and even rubber bands. Five years after he came to the Smithsonian he had a working Aerodrome of considerable size ready for testing, but complications postponed the actual test until May, 1896. This Aerodrome, as he called his planes, weighed about 30 pounds. Sixteen feet in length, it had wings measuring almost thirteen feet. The flying machine actually sustained itself in the air for one and a half minutes on two tests. This was the full time for which it had fuel. In November of the same year Langley made aeronautical history when an Aerodrome flew three quarters of a mile at a speed of 30 miles an hour, which was at that time the longest flight ever made by a flying machine.

    Professor Langley was elated, and so well received were his experiments that President McKinley urged him to build an Aerodrome capable of carrying a man and suitable for possible use in warfare. With his assistant, Charles M. Manly, an engineer of Cornell University, who worked on a suitable motor, Langley had a full-sized Aerodrome built by 1903. The Government had appropriated $50,000 for this work. This machine weighed 730 pounds. Built of steel and supported by a sustaining surface of 1,040 feet it had two propellers and was driven by a five cylinder radial type gas engine of more than 50 horsepower. On October 7, at Widewater, Virginia, below Washington and on the Potomac, the test was held. As military observers, newspaper reporters and boatloads of spectators looked on, and with fearless Manly at the controls, the Aerodrome was partially wrecked in launching from the top of a house-boat and plunged into the water. On December 8 another attempt was a failure because of a faulty launching. The Government felt that Langley had been unsuccessful with his full-sized plane and dropped its support. Nevertheless, in 1914 Edward Doherty, under the direction of Glenn Curtiss—with some modifications of design—flew Langley’s Aerodrome successfully. It is within the realm of probability that if this Aerodrome had been launched it would have flown even as the models had and Langley would have been credited with true success. As it was, the Smithsonian Institution credited Professor Langley with having built the first successful flying machine. It was just a few days after the Widewater tests that the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk.

    Certainly Langley was not treated fairly by much of the press. One New England paper wrote, Perhaps if Professor Langley had only thought to launch his airplane bottom up, it would have gone in the air instead of down in the water. Professional wits of the press, the stage and Congress, held Langley up to public ridicule. As later on references to Ford and Brooklyn were always good for a laugh, a reference to Professor Langley would bring an outburst of laughter from uninformed people. It was not until January, 1906, that Langley’s great work was officially recognized; the Aero Club of America passed a resolution honoring his pioneering achievements in aviation. This was presented to Langley on his deathbed. The broken-hearted, wearied Langley expressed his gratitude. Asked what he wished done with the resolution, he replied, Publish it. This showed how hurt Langley had been over the lack of appreciation from the public. One of Langley’s favorite expressions when he was actively working on his Aerodromes was, What has posterity ever done for us that we should care so much for the opinion of posterity. Yet as he neared death his reaction to the belated recognition was, Publish it.

    On July 4, 1918, the first Handley-Page bomber completed in the United States by the Standard Aircraft Corporation had its maiden flight. It was named The Langley, in honor of the Professor, but alas! He was no longer alive to enjoy this just reward of his achievement.

    Fate’s wings had touched Professor Langley and for a split moment at Widewater it appeared as if he would be without question The Father of Aviation. But the Fates had decreed that this honor was to go to the Wrights. Langley had some followers and as the years passed many others sided with those who claimed he should be named the builder of the first successful airplane.

    A white hot controversy really broke after the modified Aerodrome was flown in 1914. Friends broke with friends over the issue, families were split up, and writers thundered at each other through the roar of the presses. It is said that up to the time of Langley’s death, the Wrights and the Professor had the utmost respect for each other’s endeavors and there was no personal feud between them. It was later that the dispute reached the shootin’ iron stage as the two schools of thought conflicted. Because of this question the Wrights’ Kitty Hawk machine was sent to an English museum in London instead of remaining in the United States. Orville Wright explained this by saying the Smithsonian Institution, in his opinion, had been so partial to the work of its Secretary that it had not given a fair version of the two efforts, with the resultant belittlement of the Wrights’ Kitty Hawk epic flight. All this unfortunate tilting came about as Don Douglas grew older.

    The Langley-Wright controversy was ended officially late in 1942 when Dr. Charles G. Abbot, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, acknowledged that the 1914 flights of the Langley machine, as reconditioned and altered, did not prove that the Aerodrome could have flown in 1903 before the modification. Dr. Abbot had worked for fourteen years to end the prolonged controversy, which he had inherited when he became Secretary in 1928.

    As a boy, though, Don read back in the early stories of man’s attempt to fly, so intrigued was he by the work of Langley with his Aerodromes. Soon he regaled all—and doubtless bored some—of his young acquaintances with tales about men who sought to conquer the domain of the birds.

    The lad found out that historians have traced back man’s attempt to fly as far as 3500 B.C. Ancient Babylon has left us the story of Etana, who rode the back of an eagle and from fabled Atlantis, the lost continent, are said to be stories of man’s effort to invade the air. From historic Persia has lingered the whimsical story of King Kai Kaoos, who wanted to build a flying machine. His counsellors selected four young eagles and raised them so that they would grow strong. A box-like

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