McDonnell Douglas
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McDonnell Douglas was a major American aerospace manufacturer, producing a number of famous commercial and military aircraft. It has been part of Boeing since 1997.
Background
The company was founded from the firms of James Smith McDonnell and Donald Wills Douglas. Both were graduates of MIT and had worked for the aircraft manufacturer Glenn L. Martin Company. Douglas had been chief engineer at Glenn L. Martin before leaving to establish Davis-Douglas Company in early 1920 in Los Angeles. He bought out his backer and renamed the firm the Douglas Aircraft Company in 1921.
McDonnell founded J.S. McDonnell & Associates in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1928. His idea was to produce a personal aircraft for family use. The economic depression from 1929 ruined his ideas and the company collapsed. He went to work for Glenn L. Martin. He left in 1938 to try again with his own firm, McDonnell Aircraft Corporation, this time based near St. Louis, Missouri.
The war was a major earner for Douglas. The company produced almost 30,000 aircraft from 1942 to 1945 and the workforce swelled to 160,000. The company produced a number of aircraft including the C-47 (based on the DC-3), the DB-7 (known as the A-20, Havoc or Boston), the Dauntless and the A-26 Invader. Both companies suffered at the end of hostilities, facing an end of government orders and a surplus of aircraft. Both heavily cut their workforces, Douglas sacking almost 100,000 people. As part of their wartime work Douglas had established a United States Army Air Forces think-tank, a group that would later become the RAND Corporation.
Douglas continued to develop new aircraft, including the successful four-engined DC-6 (1946) and their last prop-driven commercial aircraft, the DC-7 (1953). The company had moved into jet propulsion, producing their first for the military - the conventional F3D Skyknight in 1948 and then the more 'jet age' F4D Skyray in 1951. Douglas also made commercial jets, producing the DC-8 in 1958 to compete with the new Boeing 707. McDonnell was also developing jets, but being smaller they were prepared to be more radical, building on their successful FH-1 Phantom to become a major supplier to the Navy with the Banshee, Demon, and the Voodoo. The advent of the Korean War helped push McDonnell into a major military fighter supply role, especially with the noted F-4 Phantom II (1958).
Both companies were eager to enter the new missile business, Douglas moving from producing air-to-air rockets and missiles to entire missile systems under the 1956 Nike program and becoming the main contractor of the Skybolt ALBM program and the Thor ballistic missile program. McDonnell made a number of missiles, including the unusual ADM-20 Quail, as well as experimenting with hypersonic flight, research that enabled them to gain a substantial share of the NASA projects Mercury and Gemini. Douglas also gained contracts from NASA, notably for part of the enormous Saturn V rocket. Both companies were now major employers, but both were having problems.
McDonnell/Douglas merger
Douglas was strained by the cost of the DC-8 and DC-9, and the companies began to sound each other out about a merger. Inquiries began in 1963; Douglas offered bid invitations from December 1966 and accepted that of McDonnell. The two firms were officially merged on April 28, 1967 as the McDonnell Douglas Corporation. In 1967, with the merger of McDonnell and Douglas Aircraft, Dave Lewis, then president of McDonnell, was named chairman of what was called the Long Beach, Douglas Aircraft Division. At the time of the merger, Douglas Aircraft was estimated to be less than a year from bankruptcy. Flush with orders, the DC-8 and DC-9 aircraft were 9 to 18 months behind schedule, incurring stiff penalties from the airlines. Mr. Lewis was active in DC-10 sales in an intense competition with Lockheed and the L-1011. In two years, Mr. Lewis had the operation back on track and in positive cash flow. He returned to the company's St. Louis headquarters where he continued sales efforts on the DC-10 and managed the company as a whole as President and Chief Operating Officer through 1981.The DC-10 began production in 1968 with the first deliveries in 1971. In 1977 the DC-9 "Super 80" (later named the MD-80) Series was launched. This proved to be a very successful program. The next aircraft to be launched was the MD-11, an upgraded DC-10. To date, the MD-11 remains the only modern trijet. After its launch in 1986, the MD-11 sold 200 units, but was discontinued after the merger with Boeing (see below) as it competed with the Boeing 777. McDonnell Douglas' final aircraft was launched in 1988. The MD-90 series was a stretched version of the MD-80, equipped with International Aero Engines V2500 turbofans, the largest rear-mounted engines ever on a commercial jet. The MD-95, a modern regional aircraft closely resembling the DC-9-30, was the only McDonnell Douglas jet to remain in production (as the Boeing 717) after the merger with Boeing.
In 1992, McDonnell Douglas bravely unveiled a study of a double deck jumbo-sized aircraft similar to the Airbus A3XX, designated MD-12. Despite briefly exciting the market, the study was perceived as merely as a public relations exercise to disguise the fact that Douglas was struggling under intense pressure from Boeing and Airbus. It was clear to most in the industry that Douglas had neither the resources or the money to develop such a monstrous aircraft, and the study quickly sank without trace. Interestingly, the concept was used in Boeing's later Ultra-Large Aircraft study intended to replace the 747, but ultimately the double deck concept would eventually see the light of day in the Airbus A380.
Through the years, McDonnell Douglas also produced many successful military aircraft, including the F-15 Eagle (1974) and the F/A-18 Hornet (1975) as well as the Harpoon and Tomahawk missiles. The oil crisis of the 1970s was a serious shock to the commercial aviation industry and McDonnell Douglas was forced to contract heavily and also began to diversify to reduce the impact of potential future downturns. In 1984 the corporation acquired Hughes Helicopters, soon McDonnell Douglas Helicopters.
Boeing Merger
Following Boeing's 1996 acquisition of Rockwell's North American division, McDonnell Douglas was bought out by Boeing in 1997 in a $13 billion stock-swap to create The Boeing Company (Future aircraft also became Boeing Aircraft after that). A failed joint venture in China was a major cause of McDonnell Douglas's downfall, as chronicled in Joe Studwell's book The China Dream. He describes McDonnell's returns for two decades in China as "40 Sino-US marriages among its staff and untold embarrassment."References
- Greider, William (1997). One World, Ready or Not. Penguin Press. ISBN 0-713-99211-5.
External links
- [Aircraft-Info.net - McDonnell Douglas]
- [History of the McDonnell Douglas Company from the Boeing site]
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