T
he roots of a new airliner are often
not straightforward and the DC-10
was no exception to the rule. Its
story began in 1964 when the
USAF funded preliminary studies for a new
heavy-lift cargo aircraft, which was known
as the CX-HLS (Heavy Logistics System)
project.
Boeing and Lockheed both submitted
designs, along with Douglas, as it was
still known, which had a long history of
supplying transport aircraft to the US
military. Its products were the backbone
of Military Air Transport Service and the
company was perhaps too con dent of
success.
It came as a shock when in late 1965
Lockheed won the ‘race’ for what was to
become the C-5 Galaxy.
The other loser, Boeing, had made
plans, if it did not win, to consider the
commercial potentials of the large aircraft
design. From that came the iconic 747.
No company wants to see design ideas
lost, so Douglas began to look at civil
applications for its project contender.One was the Douglas D-918 with a
double-deck fuselage and capacity for up
to 900 passengers. For its time, this would
have been far too large for the markets that
existed in the 1960s.
The spur for the building of the
ultra-large transports was the parallel
development of power plants of 40,000lb
st range. Both main US-based engine
companies, Pratt & Whitney and General
Electric, were working on projects that
would mean any large aircraft would need
only four engines.
In February 1966, Douglas began to
circulate two different proposals for a
next-generation aircraft to potential airline
customers. These were the D-950 and
D-952. Both were very large with seating
capacity of up to 524 in the former and 536
in the latter.
If either went into production, it would be
known as the DC-10. Following the launch
of the Boeing 747, proposals for the D-950
were dropped but the D-952 went on at a
slow pace, with an in-service date of 1975.
Douglas planners had looked at marketresearch of traffic trends and decided
the DC-8 and the 707 would be able to
handle demand up to the middle of the next
decade (1975). They were proved right.
There were many empty seats when the
Boeing 747 entered service at the start of
1970.
The Douglas company went through a
massive upheaval at the start of 1967. Its
long-term debt problem caught up with it,
despite a large order book for the DC-9 and
the stretched DC-8-60 series.
The McDonnell Aircraft company of
St Louis, ush with cash from selling the
F-4 Phantom II in high numbers to the US
military, came to the rescue and in April of
that year the merged company became the
McDonnell Douglas Corporation.
The aircraft that we now know as the
DC-10 was nalised at the end of 1967,
but selling it to the world’s airlines was no
easy task. It was head-to-head with the
Lockheed L-1011 TriStar.
First success came from American
Airlines, which in February 1968 ordered
25, with a further 25 options. The planAMERICAN
AIRLINES DC-10s
TRIJET TALES
American Airlines was the launch customer for the McDonnell
Douglas DC-10. Gerry Manning analyses its service with
‘American’, which spanned nearly three decades.
66 Aviation News incorporating Jets January 201866-69_american_airlinesDC.mfDC.indd 66 01/12/2017 18:27