[ Douglas Aircraft Company ]

[ Cover Title ] Douglas DC 4 [ Douglas Aircraft DC-4 or DC-4E Promotional Brochure ]

Heckman. [ Clover Field, Santa Monica, CA ]: Douglas Aircraft Company circa 1938-1939. [24] pages. 6 x 9 inches. (17 3/4 inches wide with fold-out extended). Pictorial wrappers. Front wrapper has a fold-out showing the DC-4 cut-away diagram and key to general arrangement. An excellent example. Near Fine. Wraps. [27912]


Throughout this brochure, the airplane depicted is referred to as the DC-4. The aircraft depicted however resembles most closely the experimental aircraft DC-4E, an aircraft developed by Douglas before World War II: "Following proving flights by United Airlines of the DC-4E it became obvious that the 52-seat airliner was too large to operate economically and the partner airlines [American Airlines, Eastern, Pan American, Trans World and United] recommended a long list of changes required to the design. Douglas took the new requirement and produced a new design, the DC-4A, with a simpler unpressurized fuselage, R-2000 Twin Wasp engines and a single fin and rudder. Both designs included tricycle landing gear, unlike the predecessor 2-engine DC-3." (wikipedia)

The most distinctive feature of the experimental DC-4E is the Douglas Triple "S" Tail, shown in the cutaway of the plane and several other illustrations. The tail on the eventual DC-4 was a single fin and rudder system. The technical plane specifications are different from the eventual airplane design. The timeline of planes in the brochure ends with 1938 showing the Triple "S" Tail DC-4. An artists' depiction of the Douglas factory is dated 1939.

So we have a very early 1938-39 transitional marketing/design piece, produced when Douglas still thought its original experimental design would work. The brochure provides some interesting historical insight into the development of the airplane. We've seen one example in the original mailing brochure dated 1939. Brochures from the production era (1940s) of the final DC-4 design are relatively common unlike these transitional examples (which are 80+ years old as I write this!)

The brochure was produced by Essig Co., Ltd., Advertising. Wrap-around color illustration by Heckman, signed in the illustration on the rear cover.

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