History: One of the Holy Grails of aeronautics in the 1920’s was to be
the first to fly around the world. In 1923, to show it could compete in this
epic race with Europe’s great airpowers, the tiny U.S. Army Air Service
contracted with the new Douglas Company to have Donald Douglas and his designer
John Northrop design an aircraft capable of such an endurance test --
essentially the company’s ugly as sin Navy DT-2 torpedo bomber modified to
carry large fuel tanks rather than ordinance and to have pontoons (for flights
over the Pacific and Atlantic oceans) that were interchangeable with
conventional wheeled landing gear (for flights over Asia, Europe and North
America). Though tightwad President Calvin Coolidge thought the Army needed only
one plane that four crews could take turns flying, the Army‘s studies
determined a flight of four aircraft would have the greatest chance of success.
Each was named after a major American city -- i.e. Seattle, Chicago, Boston and
New Orleans. Because Seattle would be the starting point, its namesake was
designated as the flight’s flagship. The leader of the cruise was to be the 42
year old Major Frederick Martin --- handpicked by General William “Billy”
Mitchell, reportedly more for his diplomatic than flying skills because of the
many countries in which the flight would have to refuel and refit.
On April 6, 1924, America’s four entries onto
the world stage of flight and their two man crews left Lake Washington’s
Sandpoint Field on the first leg of what would be a path breaking and perilous
six month adventure. They would turn out to be not just the first, but
apparently even to this day the only, single engine open cockpit planes
to complete a flight around the world -- all without loss of life or major
injury. Even so, plane number 1 -- the “Seattle” -- still met with a violent
end. Separated from the rest of the flight over Alaska, Major Martin eventually
flew the “Seattle” into a fog draped mountain. Somehow, neither he nor his
mechanic Sergeant Alva Harvey were seriously injured. Even more remarkably, with
little more than a compass, canteen and canned meat, they somehow trekked for 10
days through knee deep snow just ahead of a snow storm before meeting a helpful
Eskimo who took them to a cannery on Alaska’s Pacific coast to Moller
Bay.
Though plane number 3, the
“Boston,” later sank during the flight’s homeward Atlantic crossing,
its crew also was rescued and -- unlike Martin and Harvey -- were allowed
a triumphal return to America in the prototype that was quickly
rechristened the “Boston II” and flown to join the remaining two
planes on their Nova Scotia to Boston leg. Major Martin would be relegated
to welcoming back his replacement in command of the flight -- Lt. Lowell
Smith -- and the other fliers when they arrived in Seattle to complete
their trip on September 28, 1924. Years later Martin suffered an even
greater ignominy: he was in the wrong place at the wrong time when as
commander of the Hawaiian Air force at Hickam Field he was relieved after
it was attacked on December 7, 1941. Though he had warned of a possible
Japanese attack, Martin ended his career commanding the Second Air Force
in Spokane Washington.
The
surviving “Chicago” is now prominently displayed in the Smithsonian’s Air
and Space Museum and the “New Orleans” is on long term loan to the Santa
Monica Museum of Flying -- the city of its original construction. In contrast,
what little remains of the “Seattle“ -- such as its broken wooden propeller
and rusted Liberty Engine -- can be found at the Alaska Aviation Heritage
Museum. However, the “Seattle” -- or its reasonable facsimile -- still may
have another a chance to finish the flight and join its sisters in its own
glorious museum display. In order to revive interest in this largely forgotten
achievement in aviation history, a group in Renton Washington currently is
fabricating their own Douglas World Cruiser -- the “Seattle II” -- which
they hope to fly around the world and then donate as a memorial to the Seattle
area Museum of Flight.
Click on
images below to see larger images
The Kit: Nicely
molded in gray plastic with little to no flash, this 1970’s era kit
contains no resin, no photo etch, no canopy masks -- none of the
“extras” we middle aged modelers with discretionary incomes have
come to expect . Nevertheless, to my uninformed retro modeling eye this
long out of production kit holds up very well to modern standards.
Indeed, a very effective low tech feature is two thin clear plastic
sheets in the shape of flattened windscreens that when bent at the
appropriate places and angles make very convincing and appropriately
thin three dimensional windshields for the pilot and mechanic. The
cockpits include seats, the appropriate style control wheels and
columns, passable decals for the instruments and rudder bars molded into
the floorboard. Small touches to the exterior include such things as the
protruding compass and fuel pump “impellers” (apparently little
propellers on sticks to generate power for various devices).
Of
course the kit includes the classic Williams Brothers instructions -- a single
poster sized two sided sheet with drawings on one side and fine print text on
the other. Missing the modern step-by-step pictures-only directions containing
supposedly universal symbols rather than English words, they are somewhat
jarring to a 21st Century modeler of Japanese and Eastern European
kits. However, in this archaic fine print is a wealth of helpful construction
and finishing information that I’ve seldom found in other than Williams
Brothers kits. On the down side, the box top claims it contains “decals to
allow finishing model as any one of five different aircraft” -- even the
“Boston II.” However, one will look in vain for the name “Seattle“ on
the decal sheet. As if to add further disrespect to the ill fated “Seattle,“
the kit was obviously designed to depict the planes as they appeared at the time
of the completion of their journey (and the way the surviving aircraft now
appear in museums). Hence, the exhaust manifolds and markings provided are only
as they appeared after they were modified en route. Any attempt to build the
planes as they would have appeared at the start of their journey, or as the
“Seattle“ which crashed before those modifications were made, requires some
significant research but only minor scratch building. Here, the instruction fine
print comes in handy, providing at least the necessary factual detail that is
not provided in parts on the sprues or decals on the sheet.
Construction: Being
a native and proud Seattleite, and hence enamored with lost causes, my choice of
which city’s plane to construct was preordained. From a construction point of
view, this meant the model would be built with pontoons because the
“Seattle” never made it to Asia for the switch to wheeled landing gear.
Also, the exhaust manifold had to be modified which was easily done by trimming
the stacks of the part that was provided and adding some stretched sprue to
match the drawing on the instructions and my reference photos. Otherwise, the
kit was constructed as per instructions.
It should
be noted that one of my biggest fears of bi-plane model construction -- the
dreaded wing assembly -- was a relative breeze. This was so because the inboard
wing struts are built into the fuselage and thereby provide the stability needed
for linking the top and lower wings. My order of battle entailed finishing the
fuselage, gluing the outboard struts onto the lower wing and after they dried,
gluing the top and bottom wing to the inboard struts and when they in turn
tried, finally warping the wings so as at glue the upper wing to the outboard
struts. The only problem I experienced was that the design of the inboard struts
into the fuselage required filling and sanding of gaps that were beyond what my
modest modeling skills allowed. Hence, the wings assembled well but my inboard
struts do not blend well into the fuselage. Filling and sanding always seem to
be my tragic modeling flaw -- proving Aristotle‘s conclusion that every tragic
hero has within him the seeds of his own destruction.
After
completion, I used stretched sprue -- with varying degrees of success -- for the
rigging. It was then finished off with a few coats of semi-gloss spray because
the photos and museum pieces both show a nice finish existed. However, like its
full scale namesake, my replica of the “Seattle” met a horrible fate -- I
dropped it after bringing it out of the garage after applying its final
coat and destroyed its floats, wing assembly and various rigging efforts. Once I
had collected my emotions after allowing my head to spend some quality time
testing the structural integrity of a wall, I remade some struts and other
pieces and tried again. It is now as you see it in the photos -- but, oh, how
wonderful it looked before the crash!Painting and Markings: The
instructions and other resources said the aircraft’s fabric surface was
“Khaki” while the upper wing was “yellow” -- but what did that mean? My
resources described the fabric color as “being a blend of chocolate-brown and
olive green” and the color of the top of the upper wing and horizontal
stabilizer as “chromate yellow.” Looking at photos of the surviving
aircraft, it appeared that the “khaki” and “orange yellow” paint chips
in The Official Monogram US Army Air Service & Air Corps Color Guide
came closest. I then did my best to mix the paint to match.
Though
nowhere mentioned in any of my resources, it was clear from examining photos
that the plane numbers on the side of the fuselage had been a different darker
color than the white decals provided with the kit. From examining photos of the
flight‘s progress, it appears the numbers were repainted white in Calcutta
when the floats were exchanged for wheels. Even a helpful archivist at the
Smithsonian (this is a wonderful service they provide by email!) was only able
to confirm that the color had indeed changed at some point but also could not
determine what that initial darker color (the only color the “Seattle” would
have had) originally was. Then the small print in the instructions came to the
rescue, informing me that “the fuselage side numbers, though originally
thought to have been orange, were repainted white.“
Accordingly,
using Testor’s “Sure thing Decal Maker” software I made two appropriately
sized orange number 1’s and two “Seattle” monikers that had been left off
the decal sheet. Because I’ve never been able to make clear decal paper work
well, I used white decal paper which is unfortunately apparent in the final
results. However, I made a far more convincing decal of the “World Flight”
logo -- the one provided in the kit was two colors on a white background and
essentially illegible. This was done by finding a photograph of the real thing
on the internet and then manipulating the image a little in Corel workshop. It
was this emblem, in fact, that became basis for Douglas‘ later “First around
the world” logo which was in turn incorporated by Boeing into its symbol when
it took over McDonald Douglas.
Conclusion: My
father, a Boeing employee during the 1950’s to 1970’s in Seattle, could
never mention a McDonald Douglas plane without adding the prefix “damn“ to
its name (e.g. at the boarding gate: “I’m not taking a damn McDonald Douglas
DC-10 am I?”). Yes, this first of the great Douglas planes looked like a
flying brick, but it could go the distance. Considering how the model appeared
before it crashed (you‘ll have to take my word on this), the kit requires only
average skill to do a quality job. It will make a beautiful model of a butt ugly
-- but historically significant -- milestone in what came to be a century of
American dominance in aeronautics.
References:
- First Flight Around the World:
April 6-September 28, 1924
,
Carroll V. Glines & Stan Cohen (2000)
The Official Monogram US Army
Air Service & Air Corps Color Guide,
Vol. 1 (1908-1941), Robert Archer (1995)
“First Flight Around the
World: The Epic Flight of the Douglas World Cruisers,” E.R. Johnson, Skyways
Magazine (2004)
“The Great Air Race of
1924,” The American Experience, PBS documentary.
Smithsonian, Air and Space
Museum (http://www.nasm.si.edu/research/aero/aircraft/douglas_dwc.htm)
Alaska Aviation Heritage Museum
(http://home.gci.net/%7Eaahm/planes/seattle.html)
The Seattle World Cruiser
Association (http://www.seattleworldcruiser.org/home.htm)
Santa Monica Museum of Flying (http://www.museumofflying.com)
Dan
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