Douglas Designations

American secret projects Vol 2. US Airlifters 1941 to 1961. Cox and Kaston. Crécy.
Pg 32
Model 450 C-54A
Pg 37
While developing the DC-4, Douglas also explored a series of further medium-size transport proposals to Type Specification 366 dated August 1940.

Model 366 resembled a reduced-scale DC-4 (The original design I guess) tentatively dubbed DC-6 for the commercial market. They all shared double bubble cockpit and similar wing/empennage configuration

Model 400
Model 410 December 1941
Model 425 December 1941
Model 458 November 1943

This is interesting because in between that models came the Model 423 Intercontinental bomber and XB-42 (Model 459) / XB-43 (Model 466) , sharing their design features.
Source for XB-42/43 model numbers: American Secret Projects 4 Bombers/Attack/Antisubmarine 1945-74 by Tony Buttler. Ed Crecy Pg 360/361

Pg 48

Model 415 C-74 Globemaster 19 January 1942 Revised as 415A in Feb 1942 and again in 1945
Bug eye was also proposed to be tested in the XB-19 (September 1942) replacing the existing nose section with a new one.
 
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Hi,

I search for the numbers of the R2D-1 (D-125???), R3D-1 and -2, R4D-1 and -2.

Thx
 
Antonio said:
Model 410 December 1941
Model 425 December 1941
Model 458 November 1943
Click to expand...
According to my lists, these are in error:
  • Model 410 was actually March 3, 1941.
  • Model 425 was actually November 4, 1941.
  • Model 458 was actually November 12, 1942.
Although some of the dates may vary by a few weeks, the list at large is chronological.

Maveric said:
I search for the numbers of the R2D-1 (D-125???), R3D-1 and -2, R4D-1 and -2.
Click to expand...
  • R2D-1 was DC-2-125 (c/n 1325/1327), but also DC-2-142 (c/n 1404/1405)
  • R4D-2 was DC-3-388 and also DS-419.
I do not know the spec/model numbers for the R3D-1/-2/-3 and R4D-1, unfortunately.
The DC-5 series were DC-5-510, -511, -518 and -535, but the Navy examples were not impressed (contrary to the Air Forces' C-110), so thy must have had specific model numbers which I do not know.
 
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Thanks Stargazer, that helps me. May I ask you another question about Doglas?

Do you also have the factory designations for all Douglas O aircraft (Observation)?

Thx Maveric
 
Stargazer said:
SOME INSIGHT INTO DOUGLAS'S EARLIEST MODEL NUMBERS

The earliest Douglas Model number properly identified is "109" (as in DC-1-109). What about the first 108? Did they exist? Were they used at all?

A finding aid recently published on the web has enabled me to lift at least a corner of the veil.
It is entitled The Donald Douglas Collection of Corporate Documents, Engineering Drawings and Library Materials 20-01-07 and was prepared by K. Williams.
Published by the Museum of Flight Archives in Seattle, it is unfortunately full of typos but after some adequate processing and cross-referencing it I have been able to extract some useful data from it.

The second and most interesting part of the 141-page document is entitled "Douglas and Davis-Douglas Company Engineering and Model Drawings" and lists all the company drawings that are part of the museum's collection.

A list of 990 distinct entries is provided (with a few near-duplicates), each pertaining to a particular company drawing. For each entry we get the following information:
  • MANUFACTURE – This is in fact the name of the manufacturer as it appears on the document. Most of the time it is "The Douglas Company" but sometimes it's "Douglas Aircraft Company, Inc.", "The Douglas Aircraft Company", "Davis-Douglas Company" and even "Courier Monoplane Co - Long Beach, CA" (more on that later). Two entries are "Boeing Airline Company" and one is "Bendix Products". Altogether a not very revealing or interesting piece of data.
  • MODEL – This is a very interesting element but you have to clear all the typos first: "O-24" for O-2A, "C-478" for C-47B, "XOL" and "XDL" for XO-2, "XO-1A" and "XO-19" for XO-14... all the result of some badly calibrated OCR software (but of course working from vintage scans probably didn't help). Hyphens are often missing, so you can get "O2B", "O-2-B" or "O-2B" for exactly the same type...
    Interesting entries here are the 1925 "XNO-1" (an Army Night Observation project); the 1927 "Milan III" (related to the M-3 mailplane?); "Douglas Special Observation Plane", the initial company name of the XO-14; the Model "COD" (for Corps Observation Douglas, maybe?); as well as the presence of an obscure 1929 type, the Courier Monoplane Co. MT-1 (Douglas involvement, if any, is not known).
  • DRAWING NUMBER – Surprisingly, this is the most interesting piece of data in the list. Why? Because many of the drawing numbers give us a key to the early model numbering system used at Douglas! Once the list has been reordered by drawing number, a clear pattern suddenly emerges.
    Each distinct Douglas model has drawings that start with a distinct number! Earliest found is "4" (although the type is described as "unknown") and the last is "48", which is the 1927 M-4S mailplane.
    Sequence of numbers is perfectly chronological and matches almost exactly the sequence of the constructor's numbers, but of course not exactly because some models were never built, and also because the order in which the contracts were obtained did not always match exactly the order of construction.
  • TITLE – Unsurprisingly, a description of the drawing. Usually technical details, but sometimes you get full plans ("Douglas Bomber B-43 Model Plans" sure sounds good!). If anyone's near Seattle... (hint, hint).
  • DATE – When it's known, this provides a range of years that shows for how long a certain model was studied/developed/modified at Douglas. There are however a few typos here too, some of which become obvious when reorganizing the list by Models (identical model, identical date, drawing numbers in the same sequence but totally different year is a good sign of that).
Below is a small chart of the early model numbers that clearly emerge from analyzing all this data. Of course, the types described as "unknown" may not necessarily remain unknown if someone with a good knowledge of early Douglas planes could actually go through these documents.
It is also likely that some of the many documents that have no drawing number indicated might contain Detail Specification numbers or other elements of identification of some kind.
(NOTE: In case any of you should think the whole thing is a figment of my imagination or that I drew hasty conclusions, I can send you by e-mail the Excel file which contains my reworking of the original data, in case you're interested).



4?nd
9​
O-21924-29
10​
DT-2B1924
11​
Commuternd
12​
M-41925-28
13​
DOS1924-30
14​
DAT, C-11924
16​
XNO-11925
18​
T2D-11925-29
20​
?nd
22​
?1926
26​
O-2BS1927
27​
XA-21925-27
28​
Navy Training Planend
29​
O-2C1926
31​
Milan III1927
32​
Douglas Special Observation Plane, XO-141927-28
36​
Type XII Bombernd
39​
?nd
48​
M-4S1927
Click to expand...
Hello Stargazer, you couldn't find anything between numbers 48 and 109?
 
Maveric said:
Hello Stargazer, you couldn't find anything between numbers 48 and 109?
Click to expand...
Nope. Otherwise it would be here!
But you know, you don't have to quote my entire post, a simple relevant line (the title in this case) was enough to know what you were talking about... ;-)
 
Maveric said:
Thank you, I am extremely grateful for your excellent work. I am always driven by hope...
Click to expand...
The only thing that's standing between us and great leaps forward in our research is the willingness of museums to organize their archives. Think of all I was able to dig out at the Bellanca Archives a few months ago just from what was readily available online (I can't even begin to imagine what I could have found if I'd been able to visit!)
 

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