| Donald Wills Douglas, Sr. | |
|---|---|
| Born | 6 April 1892 [1] Brooklyn, New York |
| Died | 1 February 1981 Palm Springs, California |
| Nationality | United States |
| Known for | Douglas Aircraft Company |
Donald Wills Douglas, Sr. (6 April 1892 – 1 February 1981) was a United States aircraft industrialist and founder of the Douglas Aircraft Company in 1921 (the company later merged into McDonnell Douglas Corporation).
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Douglas was born in Brooklyn, New York, the second son of an assistant cashier at the National Park Bank. He attended the Trinity Chapel School. After graduation in 1909, he enrolled in the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. In 1912 he resigned from the academy in order to pursue a career in aeronautical engineering. After being turned down for jobs by Grover Loening and Glenn Curtiss, Douglas enrolled in MIT. He received his Bachelor of Science in Aeronautical Engineering—the first person to receive such a degree from MIT—in 1914, but remained there another year as an assistant to Professor Jerome Hunsaker.[2][1]
In 1915 Douglas joined the Connecticut Aircraft Company, participating in the designing of the Navy's first dirigible, the DN-1. In August 1915 Douglas left for the Glenn Martin Company where he was, at 23 years old, chief engineer. Shortly after Glenn Martin merged with Wright Company to form Wright-Martin, Douglas resigned to become, in November 1916, the chief civilian aeronautical engineer of the Aviation Section of the US Army Signal Corps. Soon thereafter he returned to the newly reformed Glenn L. Martin Company, in Cleveland, Ohio, again becoming their chief engineer. Douglas would design the Martin MB-1 Bomber.[3] [4]
In March 1920 Douglas resigned from his $10,000 a year job to return to California, where he had met and, in 1916, married his wife, Charlotte Marguerite Ogg. He soon started his first aircraft company, Davis-Douglas Company [4] with finacing from partner David Davis. They worked together to attempt to build an aircraft that could fly coast to coast nonstop, the Douglas Cloudster. Following an unsuccesful attempt, Davis left the partnership, and Douglas founded the Douglas Aircraft Company.
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