The Boeing people, though pleased with the reception and performance of the Monomail, knew that the single-engine plane was not the final answer. If the engine failed, the plane must land. If the plane was over rough or mountainous country, forced landings meant danger. A big plane must have two engines, one of which could keep the plane flying if the other failed. Boeing went to work with this in mind.

Near Los Angeles, the young man who had been dreaming of big commercial transport planes since the Wright Brothers’ trials at Fort Meyer, also was thinking of two-engined transports that could fly on one engine. From the time Donald Douglas’ World Cruisers had circled the globe, his aircraft had grown larger and larger. His orders, however, were for Army, Navy, and Coast Guard planes; not for great commercial airliners.

Although Donald Douglas had achieved a great deal of international fame as the result of the round-the-world flight and was highly respected in military circles, few other people knew him. A quiet, industrious young man, he had put all his earnings back into his business and had continued to work on his dream of big, roomy, smooth-flying airliners. He visualized air transport flying from coast to coast and from country to country in a great network of airlines that would link the whole world.

On a hot, dry day in the summer of 1933, in Winslow, Arizona, a new two-engined transport took off from one of the highest airports on the Transcontinental & Western Airways route. Gaining altitude, the pilot cut off one of its two engines, then flew more than 200 miles over the Rockies to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Returning, the pilot cut off one engine on the take-off. With one Cyclone radial roaring, the transport took off easily and climbed steadily. The first Douglas DC-1 transport had proved itself and a dream had come true.

The DC-l was an experimental model of the new Douglas two-engined luxury air transport plane. On the night of February 18, 1934, six months after the first DC-l was tested over the Rockies near Winslow, a new Cyclone-powered Douglas took off from Los Angeles for Newark, New Jersey. This plane was the first of the famous DC-2’s. It was flown by Jack Frye of TWA (Transcontinental & Western Airways) and Captain Eddie Rickenbacker of Eastern Air Lines. They roared into Newark ahead of a snowstorm which had blotted out all the airports along the route, and were three hours ahead of schedule for a new transcontinental record of 13 hours, 4 minutes. This flight made obsolete all existing transport planes.