Donald Wills Douglas Sr. was an American aircraft industrialist and engineer. An aviation pioneer, he designed and built the Douglas Cloudster. Though it failed in its intended purpose—being the first to fly non-stop across the United States—it became the first airplane with a payload greater than its own weight.
Douglas assisted Jerome C. Hunsaker in building the first wind tunnel, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge and was chief engineer for the Glenn L. Martin Company before organizing his own firm in 1920. His early government contracts included an order for the Douglas World Cruiser biplanes. Two of the four planes that set out on the first around-the-world flight, on April 6, 1924, completed the trip on September 28. The prototype DC-1 commercial transport and the production model DC-2 were succeededby the larger and more powerful DC-3 ]). The four-engined DC-4 military versions, Air Force C-54 and Navy R5D-1and the DC-6 and DC-7 series were commercially successful.

During World War II, Douglas manufactured the A-20 and A-26 light bombers and the SBDdive bomber. Postwar aircraft include the DC-8, DC-9, and DC-10 jet transports and the A-4 attack bomber. In 1957 he resigned as president of Douglas Aircraft but remained as chairman of the board of directors and chief executive officer until 1967, when the company became a division of McDonnell Douglas Corporation. After his death, the corporation finally merged with BOIENG corporation in 1997