The Douglas Aircraft Corporation was founded on 22nd July 1921 by Donald Wills Douglas Sr, who had previously been involved in the Davis-Douglas Company, in Santa Monica, California. The new company gained initial publicity from the 1924 first circumnavigation of the world by air, which used the special designed Douglas World Cruiser Aircraft. Also at this time, the company produced a variety of aircraft for the American military. Initially, these were torpedo bombers but later they began manufacturing reconnaissance and airmail aircraft. This proved successful and by 1926 the company was producing 100 aircraft annually and had also begun amphibious aircraft production and moved to a new site at Clover Field, Santa Monica.

In 1934 the company began the production of the DC-2 twin-engine aircraft which was followed in 1936 by the DC-3. Both of these designs were part of the Douglas Commercial (DC) series. The DC-3 would prove to be a very successful design with 607 civil aircraft being produced, with around 16,000 military and foreign-built examples being produced.

The Second World War would be a time of great growth for the company and it would be the 5th largest producer of equipment for government contracts. During the war, it would produce 30,000 aircraft, including the C-47 Skytrain, A-20 Havoc, SBD Dauntless and A-26 Invader, and employed 160,000 people across seven sites in California, Oklahoma and Illinois. Douglas would also form part of the BVD (Boeing Vega Douglas) Consortium that would produce the B-17 Flying Fortress.

The end of the conflict would result in a server contraction of the Douglas Company. Due to the end of government contracts and the large number of surplus aircraft on the market the company was forced to reduce its workforce by 100,000.

The post-war period would also see a great deal of research into new aircraft designs and these resulted in the DC-6, introduced in 1946, and the DC-7, produced from 1953 as the company’s last propeller-driven commercial aircraft. From March 1946 it would also begin work on a contract to investigate intercontinental warfare as part of Project RAND, which would later become the RAND Corporation. They also began production of jet-propelled aircraft for both the US military, with the 1948 built F3D Skyknight and later the F4D Skyray, and civil operators. In 1958 the company introduced the DC-8 to try and compete with the Boeing 707. The 1950s would also see the company’s involvement in several missile programmes, producing components for the Skybolt and Thor missiles, as well as the design of the S-IVB stage of the Saturn rockets for NASA.

Despite the company’s success by 1967 the company was struggling to meet the demand for the DC-8, DC-9 and A-4 aircraft. It was also short of funds due to the development costs of the new DC-10. As a result, it entered into merger talks with the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation. These were completed on 28th April 1967 and formed the McDonnell Douglas Corporation.