McDonnell Doodlebug
airplane designed by James Smith McDonnell
The McDonnell Doodlebug is a light aircraft that was built to win the Guggenheim Safe Aircraft Competition in 1929 by McDonnell Aircraft founder, James Smith McDonnell.
Design and development
The Doodlebug was built in response to a 1927 safety contest sponsored by the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics with a prize of $100,000. The aircraft was built at the Hamilton Aero Manufacturing factory in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
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The Doodlebug is a tandem-seat low wing taildragger with a fabric covered steel tube fuselage. The landing gear featured widely spaced main wheels. The wings featured full-length leading-edge slats.
Operational history
The Doodlebug was produced too late to compete, but was granted an exemption. The aircraft's tail folded upward in initial demonstrations at Mitchel Field in New York, and allowed more extensions to repair damages. After a forced landing due to engine failure, the Doodlebug missed the opportunity to be judged in the competition. The winner of the competition was a Curtiss Tanager.
The public source identifies “McDonnell Doodlebug” as airplane designed by James Smith McDonnell. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around McDonnell, Doodlebug and airplane.
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This entry incorporates text from “McDonnell Doodlebug” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.