The Douglas World Cruiser Chicago, the 1924 First Flight Around the World, and the Open-Cockpit Biplane Still Hanging in the Smithsonian

In 1924, the U.S. Army Air Service completed the first flight around the world, using open-cockpit Douglas World Cruiser biplanes. Of the four aircraft that started, the one named Chicago flew the entire route and survives today, hanging in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. The journey covered roughly 27,000 miles over 275 days, three years before Charles Lindbergh crossed a single ocean.

What Was the Douglas World Cruiser?

The Douglas World Cruiser was a single-engine biplane built specifically to fly around the world. In 1924, aviation was barely two decades old - airplanes were made of wood, wire, and fabric, engines were unreliable, and there were no useful weather reports or navigation aids over most of the planet. A pilot flew by compass, watch, and eyesight.

The Army turned to a young builder in Santa Monica, California, named Donald Douglas, whose company was only a few years old and working out of a former movie studio. Douglas took a torpedo bomber he had already designed, stripped out the military gear, and rebuilt it for the mission.

Crucially, the design allowed the wheels to be swapped for large wooden floats, because the route crossed oceans with no runways - only water. Douglas also enlarged the fuel tanks so the aircraft could carry roughly six times the fuel of the original design. Range meant survival.

Each aircraft carried a Liberty V-12 engine producing 420 horsepower, spanned about 50 feet, and cruised at roughly 90 miles per hour. There were two open cockpits - one for the pilot, one for the mechanic - with no heater, no radio, and only a small wind deflector for protection.

Which Aircraft Made the 1924 Around-the-World Flight?

The Army built five World Cruisers: one prototype for testing and four for the flight itself. The four were named for American cities: Seattle, Chicago, Boston, and New Orleans. Eight men flew them - a pilot and a mechanic in each aircraft.

The mechanic in the back seat was not a passenger. These men kept the Liberty engines alive with their bare hands and even changed entire engines in the field - on beaches, riverbanks, and dusty fields - rather than in hangars.

The Route: How the Flight Went Around the World

The expedition left Seattle on April 6, 1924, heading north and west toward Alaska. The early legs were defined by fog, ice, and freezing water, where local fishermen and cannery workers refueled the aircraft by hand, one five-gallon can at a time, straining the fuel through chamois to remove water.

From Alaska, the crews island-hopped through the Aleutians to Japan - the first aircraft ever to make that crossing - then flew down the coast of Asia through China, Indochina, and India. Cold gave way to tropical heat, with engines running hot and the men battling dysentery and exhaustion. They then crossed the deserts of the Middle East, Europe, and finally faced the North Atlantic.

Behind the flight stood one of the first global military supply chains ever assembled. The Army, Navy, and steamer lines pre-positioned spare engines, parts, and floats at points all along the route, laid down ahead of the crews like a trail across the world.

What Happened to the Four Aircraft?

Two of the four World Cruisers were lost during the flight, but all eight men survived.

• The Seattle, the flagship, flew into the side of a mountain in Alaskan fog. Its crew - expedition commander Major Frederick Martin and mechanic Sergeant Alva Harvey - survived and walked out of the wilderness over 10 days to reach a fishing village. Command passed to Lowell Smith, who flew the Chicago.
• The Boston went down over the ocean between the Orkney Islands and Iceland after its oil pressure failed. Pilot Leigh Wade and his mechanic survived, but the aircraft capsized and sank while a Navy ship tried to hoist it aboard.

To let the Boston’s crew rejoin the final leg, the Army rushed the original prototype - nicknamed the Boston II - up to Nova Scotia. The Chicago, the New Orleans, and that replacement aircraft landed back at Seattle on September 23, 1924.

Why Does the Chicago Still Matter?

The flight covered roughly 27,000 miles in 275 days, with about 371 hours in the air - the first time in human history anyone had flown around the world, and Americans did it first, beating competing attempts from Britain, France, Italy, Portugal, and Argentina.

The achievement launched Douglas Aircraft, which adopted the slogan “First Around the World” and went on to build the DC-3 and the airliners that shrank the planet. A straight line runs from those two biplanes limping home across the Atlantic to every jet flying today.

The Chicago, flown by Lowell Smith, completed the entire route and has been preserved at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum since the 1930s. It hangs not far from the Spirit of St. Louis, yet the Chicago flew around the entire world three years before Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic - with two men aboard and no radio.

Its sister ship, the New Orleans, also survived and is preserved in a museum collection in California. Two of the four aircraft remain with us more than a century later, a preservation story as remarkable as the flight itself.

Key Takeaways

• The 1924 Douglas World Cruiser flight was the first successful flight around the world, departing Seattle on April 6 and returning September 23, 1924.
• The journey covered about 27,000 miles over 275 days, with roughly 371 hours in the air, at around 90 mph in open-cockpit biplanes.
• Four aircraft started (Seattle, Chicago, Boston, New Orleans); two were lost, but all eight crew members survived.
• The Chicago completed the full route and hangs today in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum; the New Orleans survives in California.
• The flight predated Lindbergh’s solo Atlantic crossing by three years and helped establish Douglas Aircraft as a builder of world-changing airliners.