The Douglas World Cruisers, the 1924 Army World Flight, and the First Time Anyone Flew Around the Planet

On April 6, 1924, four open-cockpit biplanes lifted off from Lake Washington at Sand Point Naval Air Station in Seattle and began the first aerial circumnavigation of the Earth. 175 days later, two of the original aircraft returned to the same water. The 1924 Army World Flight covered 27,553 miles across 28 countries on six continents - and proved things about air power, logistics, and aircraft design that would matter for decades.

The Race No One Had Finished

The 1920s were the decade of the great aviation contests. Around the world. Across the oceans. Faster, farther, higher. The British were attempting it. The French were attempting it. The Portuguese had an effort underway. National prestige and military credibility rode on these flights.

Brigadier General Billy Mitchell had been lobbying for an American attempt since at least 1922. Mitchell was a difficult man - talented at making enemies in Congress and in Army leadership - but he believed in air power with a missionary’s certainty. Going around the world first would demonstrate what the Army Air Service could do and validate everything he had been arguing for years.

The problem was that no suitable airplane existed.

Building the Douglas World Cruiser

The Army surveyed existing aircraft and found nothing capable of the mission. Existing bombers lacked range. Military flying boats couldn’t handle the full route. So the Army went to a manufacturer in Santa Monica, California, and asked for something new.

Donald Douglas was 31 years old and had started his company less than four years earlier. He had trained at MIT and built a reputation for practical, reliable aircraft. The Army’s requirements were extreme: a plane that could fly around the world, operate on either pontoon floats or wheeled gear, withstand tropical heat and arctic cold and salt air, and be maintained by field mechanics working from pre-positioned supplies.

Douglas based his design on a torpedo bomber already in production, heavily modified it, and called the result the World Cruiser. It was a biplane powered by a Liberty 12 engine producing approximately 400 horsepower - the same war-era powerplant that had served in the Great War. Two crew members sat in open cockpits: pilot forward, co-pilot and mechanic behind. The floats could be swapped for wheels in a matter of hours, because the route required both.

One detail worth noting: Donald Douglas was born on April 6, 1892. The planes he built to fly around the world lifted off the water on his 32nd birthday.

The Army ordered four aircraft plus a spare. Each was named for an American city: Seattle, Chicago, Boston, and New Orleans.

The Crews

Major Frederick Martin commanded the flight and flew the Seattle. He was methodical and deliberate - the kind of officer who checked everything twice and then considered a third check.

Lieutenant Lowell Smith flew the Chicago. He was 29 years old, a soft-spoken Californian who had already logged significant long-duration flight time during an aerial refueling endurance attempt. Smith was calm in the cockpit and practical on the ground.

Lieutenant Leigh Wade flew the Boston. Lieutenant Erik Nelson flew the New Orleans. Each pilot was paired with a second crew member serving as both co-pilot and mechanic. These men were as essential to the mission as the pilots - they would be rebuilding engines through tropical nights and sub-arctic chill at stops across four continents.

Alaska and the First Loss

The opening legs went north: up the British Columbia coast, into Alaska. Southeastern Alaska in April means low ceilings, rain, and fog that settles into valleys and sits on ridgelines.

On April 30, Major Martin was navigating the Seattle visually up the Alaska Peninsula, following landmarks as pilots did when instruments offered nothing useful in poor weather. The mountains in that region rise straight out of the water and exceed 10,000 feet. The clouds were low.

The Seattle flew into fog. And into a mountain.

Martin and his mechanic, Sergeant Alva Harvey, both survived. Injured and stranded on a remote ridgeline in one of the most inaccessible stretches of North America, they spent ten days walking out, living on emergency rations, eventually reaching a fox trapper’s cabin near Port Moller. Both men made it out. The Seattle did not.

One of four aircraft was gone before the formation had reached the Pacific. Lowell Smith took command of the three remaining planes and turned them west toward the Aleutians.

Crossing the Pacific

The Aleutian chain appears manageable on a map - islands stretching toward Japan, a route you can island-hop. In practice, the Aleutians produce some of the worst aviation weather on earth. Systems from Siberia and the Gulf of Alaska collide there, fog descends in minutes, and sea swells that look reasonable from altitude become walls of water on final approach to a float-equipped biplane.

The Army had anticipated this. Fifteen complete spare Liberty engines had been shipped by boat to ports around the world before the planes ever left Seattle. Fuel, oil, spare parts, and tools were pre-positioned at dozens of stops along the entire route. The logistics chain was as technically complex as the flying, and it had to hold at every link.

At major stops, mechanics working from those supplies could often swap a complete engine within a day. The Liberty engines were rated for roughly 200 hours before requiring full overhaul, and the conditions - salt air, tropical heat, monsoon moisture - were hard on machinery. The crews were essentially rebuilding their aircraft at each significant stop throughout the journey.

Across Asia and the Middle East

Japan welcomed the Americans with crowds at every harbor. In some coastal villages along the Asian route, the locals had never seen an airplane. The three planes worked south through China, across Southeast Asia, over the Bay of Bengal.

By the time the formation reached India, the flight had been underway for months. The pace was dictated by maintenance requirements, not sightseeing. Stops through the Middle East and the Persian Gulf followed the same pattern: land, refuel, service the engines, depart.

The British attempt at circumnavigation had stalled due to mechanical problems. By the time the Americans came through Europe, there was no longer a competition - just three American planes and the work of finishing.

England, Iceland, and the Atlantic Approach

The three aircraft crossed the English Channel and moved north through England and Scotland. The press was calling the flight one of the great accomplishments in aviation history. The crews pressed on to the Orkney Islands and then Iceland.

Iceland in September is not warm. The water approached 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Weather could shift from clear to instrument conditions in the time it took to top off a fuel tank. Greenland lay ahead, then the coast of Labrador and the northeastern United States.

They were nearly home.

The Boston’s Engine Failure and What the Record Shows

Leigh Wade, flying the Boston, began noticing oil pressure readings that told him something was wrong before anything had actually failed. He monitored the gauges and nursed the aircraft to the Faroe Islands. The mechanics pulled the engine apart and found damage beyond what could be repaired at a field stop.

The reserve aircraft - held precisely for this contingency - was designated Boston Two and brought forward to continue. But Boston Two had not departed Lake Washington in April. It had not crossed the Aleutians or flown over the Bay of Bengal. For the purposes of the official record, that distinction mattered.

Wade and his mechanic Ogden transferred to Boston Two and flew every remaining leg alongside Chicago and New Orleans. They landed with the formation at every stop. They came home with the rest. But the official record of the first aerial circumnavigation of the globe belongs to Chicago and New Orleans alone.

Wade finished the route anyway. That tells you something about the kind of man he was.

September 28, 1924: The Return

September 28, 1924. One hundred and seventy-five days after four planes lifted off Lake Washington, two of the original aircraft came back to the same water.

Chicago and New Orleans set down on Lake Washington. The final numbers: 27,553 miles. 371 hours and 11 minutes of flying time. 28 countries. Six continents.

Lowell Smith climbed out of the Chicago. Asked what it felt like to have just flown around the planet, he said something modest. Something practical. He was 29 years old, and he had gone around the world.

What the Flight Proved - and Why It Still Matters

The 1924 Army World Flight established things that mattered long after the attention faded.

It proved that air power could project itself globally. Pre-positioning supplies across the surface of the earth, maintaining complex aircraft under field conditions on multiple continents, sustaining an aviation operation over months - every one of those capabilities became essential when the United States Army Air Forces had to do exactly those things in World War II. The officers who planned Pacific theater supply chains had a template, even when they didn’t consciously know it.

It proved that Donald Douglas could build aircraft that worked. The design philosophy behind the World Cruiser - reliability, field maintainability, practical engineering - carried forward through his company’s subsequent work. Trace the line from the World Cruiser through Douglas observation planes of the late 1920s and you eventually reach the DC-3. Same philosophy. Different scale.

And it demonstrated, expensively, that the Aleutians will punish any pilot who underestimates them - a lesson that has been relearned at considerable cost in every decade since.

Where the Aircraft Are Today

The Chicago is on display at the National Air and Space Museum on the Mall in Washington, DC. The New Orleans is at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.

Both are worth more than a passing glance. Stand next to one and consider where it has been.

Primary accounts of the 1924 world flight are held by the Air Force Historical Research Agency. Lowell Smith wrote about the experience in detail in the years following the flight, and that is where deeper research should begin.

Key Takeaways

On April 6, 1924, four Douglas World Cruisers departed Seattle on the first attempt to fly around the world, covering 27,553 miles in 175 days with eight crew members across 28 countries on six continents.
The Army pre-positioned 15 spare Liberty engines and supplies worldwide before departure - the logistics operation was as complex as the flying itself.
The Seattle was lost in an Alaskan mountain crash on April 30; both Major Frederick Martin and Sergeant Alva Harvey survived after a ten-day overland walk-out.
Only Chicago and New Orleans officially completed the circumnavigation; the Boston finished on a replacement airframe and is not counted in the official record.
The flight’s lessons in global logistics and sustained air operations directly informed U.S. Army Air Forces planning in World War II, and the World Cruiser’s design philosophy traced forward through Douglas’s subsequent aircraft to the DC-3.