(See front cover)
One afternoon this week a huge, shiny-new plane will be towed out on to Douglas Aircraft Co.'s 63-acre field at Santa Monica, Calif. While it lies there in the sun, sleek, lazy-looking and long, the thousands of spectators who line the field will wonder not whether DC-4 will fly—they will be reasonably certain that it will do that—but whether it will prove itself the super-plane it was designed to be. U. S. airlines will be watching too, for if DC-4 can do what it promises—carry a big payload cheaply—U. S. commercial aviation may at last strike the quotation marks off "commercial."
To many a plain U. S. citizen, DC-4's name is as mysterious as the plane itself, but most of the crowd at the airfield will know that DC-4 means simply "Douglas Commercial Airplane, No. 4."
To the man whose creature it is, that shorthand name means a great deal more. As Donald Douglas waits with the rest of the crowd to see this embodiment of his 46-year career take off for its crucial test, he may well be turning over in his mind some of the things that name does mean. Blueprinted in his mind are such facts and specifications as these:
¶DC-4 is the biggest, almost the fastest land transport plane in the U. S. It has a wingspan of 138 ft. 3 in., overall length of 97 ft. Nearly three times as heavy as the familiar DC-3, which is at present the favorite transport of all U. S. airlines, DC-4 will carry 42 passengers as a day plane, 30 passengers as a sleeper. Its top speed will be 240 m.p.h. Its 32½ tons will hurtle through the air a full mile in 15 seconds.
¶ An airliner's reputation for safety means as much to an airline as an only daughter's reputation means to a mother. Every line talks proudly & loudly of impressive passenger mileages without mishap. DC-4's chief safety device is its four engines, developing 5,600 h.p., powerful enough so that any two, even two on the same side, will keep it flying at 7,000 ft., any three will carry the plane 5,000 feet above the highest mountain in the U. S. Furthermore, if one engine fails on takeoff (this possibility has given nightmares to many a DC-3 pilot, whose plane has only two engines), the plane can still get off the ground.
¶ DC-4's cruising range will be 2,200 miles, which means that it will be able to cross the U. S. in two easy jumps.
¶ With Boeing's 307, DC-4 is the first commercial transport plane with a pressurized cabin. Its passenger compartment will be kept at low-altitude air pressure for passengers' comfort while the plane flies high, above bad weather. Overweather flight has been one of commercial aviation's greatest developments in the last decade, and Douglas planes have taken the lead in making a high curve the shortest traveling distance between any two points in the U. S. DC-4 will heighten the curve, shorten the distance. Without pressurized cabins, planes now fly as high as 14,000 feet; with them, passengers will feel no discomfort at DC-4s service ceiling, 22,900 feet.