First aerial circumnavigation

In the early 1920s several countries were vying to be the first to fly around the world. The British had made one unsuccessful around-the-world air flight attempt in 1922. The following year, a French team had tried; the Italians, Portuguese, and British also announced plans for world-circling flights. This high-level Army enterprise, under the command of Major General Mason M. Patrick, Chief of the Air Service, would have the support of the Navy, Diplomatic Corps, Bureau of Fisheries and Coast Guard Services. When the head of Davis-Douglas, Donald Douglas, was asked for information on the Davis-Douglas Cloudster, he instead submitted data on a modified DT-2, a torpedo bomber that Douglas had built for the US Navy in 1921 and 1922. The DT-2 had proven to be a sturdy aircraft that could accommodate interchangeable wheeled and pontoon landing gear. Since the aircraft was an existing model, Douglas stated that a new aircraft, which he named the Douglas World Cruiser (DWC), could be delivered within 45 days after a contract was awarded. The Air Service agreed and sent Lieutenant Erik Henning Nelson (1888–1970), a member of the planning group, to California to work out the details with Douglas. Douglas, assisted by Jack Northrop, began to modify a DT-2 to suit the circumnavigation requirements. All the internal bomb carrying structures were removed with additional fuel tanks added to the wings and fuselage fuel tanks enlarged in the aircraft. The total fuel capacity went from . The prototype met all expectations, and a contract was awarded for four more production aircraft and spare parts. The last DWC was delivered on 11 March 1924. The spare parts included 15 extra Liberty engines, 14 extra sets of pontoons, and enough replacement airframe parts for two more aircraft. The aircraft were equipped with no radios nor avionics of any sort, leaving their crew to rely entirely on dead reckoning to navigate. ==Douglas World Cruiser aircraft and crew==

• Seattle (No. 1): Maj. Frederick L. Martin (1882–1956), pilot and flight commander, and SSgt. Alva L. Harvey (1900–1992), flight mechanic (failed to circumnavigate) • Chicago (No. 2): Lt. Lowell H. Smith (1892–1945), pilot, subsequent flight commander, and 1st Lt. Leslie P. Arnold (1893–1961), co-pilot • Boston (No. 3)/Boston II (prototype): 1st Lt. Leigh P. Wade (1897–1991), pilot, and SSgt. Henry H. Ogden (1900–1986), flight mechanic (failed to circumnavigate) • New Orleans (No. 4): Lt. Erik H. Nelson (1888–1970), pilot, and Lt. John Harding Jr. (1896–1968), co-pilot The pilots trained in meteorology and navigation at Langley Field in Virginia, where they also practiced in the prototype. From February to March 1924, the crews practiced on the production aircraft at the Douglas facility in Santa Monica and in San Diego. ==Team circumnavigation==

Four aircraft, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, and New Orleans, left Clover Field, Santa Monica, California, on 17 March 1924, for Sand Point in Seattle, Washington, the official start of the journey. The individual aircraft were christened with waters from their namesake cities, prior to departure from Seattle where Boeing Company technicians configured the aircraft for the long over-water portion of the flight, by exchanging wheels for pontoon floats. just 13 days after the British, under Stuart-MacLaren, set off from England in the opposite direction, they left Seattle for Alaska. Shortly after departing Prince Rupert Island on 15 April, the lead aircraft Seattle, flown by Martin with Harvey (the only fully qualified mechanic in the flight), blew a hole in its crankcase and was forced to land on Portage Bay. The three remaining aircraft continued, with Chicago, flown by Smith and Arnold, assuming the lead. Tracing the Aleutian Islands, the flight traveled across the North Pacific, landing in the Soviet Union notwithstanding the lack of entry permission. The flight continued through Thailand and on to Burma where they came within earshot of MacLaren during a torrential downpour east of Akyab, MacLaren having just resumed his attempt in the aircraft delivered by the Americans and sheltering on the surface at the time. Visual contact was not made and the Americans were unaware of their proximity to MacLaren. The flight arrived in Paris on Bastille Day, 14 July. From Paris the aircraft flew to London and on to the north of England in order to prepare for the Atlantic Ocean crossing by re-installing pontoons and changing engines. After a hero's welcome in the capital, the three Douglas World Cruisers flew to the West Coast, on a celebratory multi-city tour, stopping, on 22 September, at Rockwell Field, San Diego, for new engines French, Italians and Argentinians failed. The Douglas Aircraft Company adopted the motto, "First Around the World – First the World Around". The American team had greatly increased their chances of success by using several aircraft and pre-positioning large caches of fuel, spare parts, and other support equipment along the route. They often had several US Navy destroyers deployed in support. At prearranged way points, the World Flight's aircraft had their engines changed five times and new wings fitted twice. ==Itinerary==

The flight traveled from east to west, beginning in Seattle, Washington, in April 1924 and returning to its start point in September. It flew northwest to Alaska; across northern Pacific islands to Japan and then south Asia; across to Europe and the Atlantic Ocean. The route's most southerly point was Saigon in Vietnam ==Subsequent disposition of equipment and crew==

At the request of the Smithsonian Institution, the US War Department transferred ownership of Chicago to the museum for display. It made its last flight from Dayton, Ohio, to Washington, D.C., on 25 September 1925. It was almost immediately put on display in the Smithsonian's Arts and Industries Building. In 1974, Chicago was restored under the direction of Walter Roderick, and transferred to the new National Air and Space Museum building for display in their Barron Hilton Pioneers of Flight exhibition gallery. The aircraft was on loan from the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History and was returned in 2005. Since February 2012, New Orleans is at the Museum of Flying in Santa Monica, California. The wreckage of Seattle was recovered and is now on display in the Alaska Aviation Heritage Museum. The original Boston sank in the North Atlantic, and it is thought that the only surviving piece of the original prototype, the Boston II, is the aircraft data plate, now in a private collection, and a scrap of fuselage skin, in the collection of the Vintage Wings & Wheels Museum in Poplar Grove, Illinois. All six airmen were awarded the Distinguished Service Medal by vote of the United States Congress, the first time the award had been made for acts not in war, and they were excused from the prohibition against accepting awards from foreign countries. Later, Martin was in command of Army aviation units in Hawaii at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. His mechanic Harvey was commissioned and commanded heavy bomb groups during World War II. Nelson rose to the rank of colonel and became one of General Henry Arnold's chief trouble-shooters on the development and operational deployment of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress. Image gallery File:Douglas World Cruise - 8091771042.jpg|No. 1 Seattle, crashed/destroyed, crew survived File:DWC Chicago at NASM.jpg|No. 2 Chicago, at the National Air and Space Museum File:Douglas World Cruise - 8091774470.jpg|No. 3 Boston, August 3, 1924; sunk/lost at sea, crew survived File:DWC "New Orleans".jpg|No. 4 New Orleans, being installed at the Museum of Flying, 2012. ==Cross-equator circumnavigation==

base near Canberra in 1943 The first aerial circumnavigation of the world that involved the crossing of the equator twice occurred from 1928 to 1930, and was made using a single aircraft, the Southern Cross, a Fokker F.VII trimotor monoplane After completing the first trans-Pacific crossing on 9 June 1928, flying from Oakland, California, to Brisbane, Australia (with stops in Hawaii and Fiji), Kingsford Smith and Ulm spent several months making other long-distance flights across Australia and to New Zealand. They decided to use their trans-Pacific flight as the first leg of a globe-circling flight. They flew the Southern Cross to England in June 1929, then across the Atlantic and North America, returning, in 1930, to Oakland where their 1928 trans-Pacific flight had begun. Before Kingsford Smith's death in 1935, he donated the Southern Cross to the Commonwealth of Australia, for display in a museum. The aircraft is preserved in a special glass hangar memorial on Airport Drive, near the International Terminal at Brisbane Airport in Queensland, Australia. ==See also==