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In 1912 Donald Douglas was a young Annapolis midshipman who preferred sailing on the Severn and making model airplanes to studying navigation and naval tactics. One day Midshipman Douglas climbed to the second floor of the Naval Academy dormitory, let fly a glider he had built. The toy banked, swooped, hit a passing admiral on the head. The result: Donald Douglas left Annapolis abruptly, next year took up the study of aeronautics at M. I. T. After his graduation he worked for Glenn L. Martin, then one of the foremost U. S. airplane designers. First he was an engineer, then was put in charge of Martin's Cleveland factory, and finally, at the age of 25, became vice president and chief engineer. When he decided to strike out on his own in 1920, he had saved just enough to feed his family for six months. Within that six months he persuaded a young Los Angeles millionaire named David R. Davis to finance him, and the two of them hung their hopeful shingle (DAVIS DOUGLAS CO.—ENGINEERING DEPT.) in the window of the Pico Barber Shop in Santa Monica.
The reasons why Donald Douglas has expanded in 18 years from that pint-sized barber shop to a plant covering 1,315,974 square feet are two: He believes that it takes dreamers and technicians, not businessmen, to make airplanes; he has the uncanny ability of finding the right experts from among his old cronies. Donald Douglas has surrounded himself with a group of congenial, practical-minded Jules Vernes. Perhaps the most important of these is Arthur E. Raymond. Son of the late Walter Raymond of Raymond-Whitcomb, he looks more like a professor than a boss. His first job with Douglas was filing fittings; now he is chief engineer. Harry Wetzel, general manager and the closest thing to a hard-hitting executive in the organization, studied industrial engineering at Penn State, subsequently served as aircraft production engineer in the U. S. Air Corps. Carl Cover, vice president for sales, had little to do with building DC-4, but in accordance with Douglas tradition, he will fly the ship on her tests next week.
A tall, weather-beaten Pennsylvanian, Cover has none of the dramatic fatalism of a movie test pilot. Cool and reliable, he was once an army flying instructor. When he was testing the DCi, the port engine almost died when the plane was only 50 ft. up. He calmly wheeled for a landing, missing a tree by feet. As the engine picked up he decided not to land, flew on for a successful test with the engine sputtering all the way.