The Douglas World Cruisers and the First Flight Around the World in Nineteen Twenty-Four

In 1924, the United States Army Air Service completed the first flight around the world, using four open-cockpit Douglas World Cruiser biplanes. The journey covered roughly 27,000 miles over 175 days, beginning and ending on Lake Washington in Seattle. Of the four aircraft that departed on April 6, 1924, only two - the Chicago and the New Orleans - completed the full circle on September 28, 1924.

Why the Army Wanted to Fly Around the World

In 1924, only six years after the end of the First World War, most of the public still viewed the airplane as a carnival act - something barnstormers looped over county fairs. The idea of riding a flying machine clear around the globe struck sensible people as reckless.

But an international race was on. British, French, Italian, and Portuguese teams were all working the same problem, and the United States Army Air Service was determined to plant its flag first.

The Army turned to a young airplane builder in Santa Monica, California, named Donald Douglas - the same designer who would later give the world the DC-3. At the time, Douglas was a hungry engineer with a solid torpedo airplane to his name. The Army asked him to build a machine that could do the impossible, and he delivered the Douglas World Cruiser.

What Made the Douglas World Cruiser Special

The World Cruiser was not a sleek record-setter. It was a big, honest biplane: wooden wings, fabric skin, and two open cockpits, one behind the other. Up front sat a Liberty engine - twelve cylinders producing more than 400 horsepower, the same powerplant that had carried American aviation through the war.

The clever part was that the aircraft could change its footwear. Over water it wore two large pontoon floats and landed like a boat. Over land, the crews jacked it up, pulled the floats, and bolted on wheels.

They carried spares of everything. Whole spare engines were staged ahead of them at ports around the world by the Navy and the State Department, because everyone knew the airplanes would break. The only question was whether the men would break first.

The Four Aircraft and Their Crews

The Army built four World Cruisers, each named for an American city representing a corner of the country:

Seattle - the starting line
Chicago - the heartland
Boston - the East
New Orleans - the South

Eight men set out: a pilot and a mechanic in each machine. The mechanic mattered every bit as much as the pilot. When you’re stranded on a beach in the Aleutian Islands with a cracked cylinder and the nearest hangar is 4,000 miles away, the man who can fix the engine is the man who saves your life.

Leading the expedition was Major Frederick Martin, flying the Seattle.

The First Crash: Losing the Lead Airplane in Alaska

The expedition lifted off on the gray morning of April 6, 1924, and turned north - up the coast of British Columbia, into Alaska, and out toward the Aleutians. It is some of the least forgiving flying country on Earth: flat fog that closes in without warning, williwaw winds screaming off the mountains, and a cold that settles into the bones of an open cockpit and stays there.

Near Port Moller, Major Martin and his mechanic, Sergeant Alva Harvey, became separated from the others in the fog. Feeling his way through the murk, Martin flew the Seattle straight into the side of a mountain.

Both men survived the crash. Then they walked - for ten days through the wilderness, living on emergency rations, until they stumbled into a coastal fishing cannery, alive.

Martin’s order to the rest of the expedition was simple: do not wait for me. Keep going. Command passed to a young lieutenant flying the Chicago, Lowell Smith, who carried the effort from that point forward.

The Route: Around the Entire Planet

From the Aleutians, the crews crossed the North Pacific, hopping to the Kuril Islands and down into Japan - the first American aircraft ever to land there - where enormous crowds greeted them.

They pressed on down the coast of China to Shanghai, then through Southeast Asia: French Indochina, Siam (modern Thailand), and Burma. From there they crossed to India and up through what is now Pakistan into the desert.

The contrast was brutal. Men who had nearly frozen over the gray Aleutian sea now roasted in the same open cockpits over the Indian and Arabian deserts, with Liberty engines running hot enough to worry every mile. They flew through monsoon rain and over jungle where an engine failure meant vanishing without a trace.

The route continued up through Persia to Baghdad, across to Constantinople, and into Europe - Vienna, Paris, and London - where the crowds grew larger at every stop as the world’s newspapers caught the story.

The North Atlantic and the Loss of the Boston

The hardest water was still ahead. To get home, the crews had to cross the North Atlantic - three years before Lindbergh proved one man could do it in a single hop. They had to island-hop the top of the world: from the Orkneys above Scotland to the Faroe Islands, then the long cold reach to Iceland, Greenland, and Labrador.

On that stretch, the expedition lost its second airplane. The Boston, flown by Lieutenant Leigh Wade and his mechanic Henry Ogden, developed oil-pressure trouble as the Liberty gave out. Wade set the biplane down on the open ocean swells and waited for rescue.

A Navy ship found the crew, but the Boston was damaged during the attempt to hoist it aboard, took on water, and sank. The men lived; the airplane did not. Only the Chicago and the New Orleans were still flying.

The Homecoming

The two survivors reached Labrador and then American soil, where the country came out to meet them. Tens of thousands gathered at every stop to see the two weathered, oil-streaked biplanes - patched and repaired a hundred times over - that had become the most famous flying machines on the planet.

The prototype used for testing was brought in and named Boston II, so Wade and Ogden could rejoin the formation for the triumphant final leg across their own country.

On September 28, 1924, the Chicago and the New Orleans settled back onto the water at Seattle - the same lake, the same shore, 175 days after they had left.

The Numbers Behind the First Round-the-World Flight

The final tally is worth stating plainly:

Roughly 27,000 miles flown
About 370 hours in the air
Approximately 74 stops in more than two dozen countries
175 days from first takeoff to final landing

They crossed the Pacific, Asia, Europe, and the Atlantic - the first flight around the world, ever, flown in wooden biplanes with open cockpits before much of the world believed it was possible.

Where the Aircraft Are Today

The Chicago, which led the expedition home, hangs today in the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. The New Orleans also survives, on display in California. You can still stand beneath their wings and look at the wood, the fabric, and the big Liberty engines that carried them over every ocean on Earth.

The story endures not as one heroic leap but as 175 days of grinding, dangerous, unglamorous work - pulling a cylinder on a foggy beach, walking ten days out of a mountain range, setting a dying airplane down on the open Atlantic. It was accomplished one leg, one repair, and one bad-weather day at a time.

Key Takeaways

The first flight around the world was completed by the US Army Air Service in 1924, using four Douglas World Cruiser biplanes.
The flight began at Lake Washington, Seattle, on April 6, 1924, and ended at the same spot on September 28, 1924 - a span of 175 days.
Of the four aircraft - Seattle, Chicago, Boston, and New Orleans - only the Chicago and New Orleans completed the journey; the Seattle crashed in Alaska and the Boston was lost in the North Atlantic.
The expedition covered roughly 27,000 miles, about 370 flight hours, and some 74 stops across more than two dozen countries.
The surviving aircraft are preserved today at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum (Chicago) and in California (New Orleans).