Douglas Dolphin
1930 multi-role flying boat family by Douglas
The Douglas Dolphin is an American amphibious flying boat. While only 58 were built, they served a wide variety of roles including private air yacht, airliner, military transport, and search and rescue.
Design and development
The Dolphin originated in 1930 as the "Sinbad," a pure flying boat without wheels. The Sinbad was intended as a luxurious flying yacht. Undaunted by the lack of demand, Douglas improved the Sinbad in 1931 so that it was amphibious, and could land on water or land. The improved aircraft was named "Dolphin", however this did not represent the end of development, as many detail improvements were made, including an increase in the length of over a foot and changes made to the empennage, engine nacelles and wings. The Great Depression had curtailed demand for such extravagance as a "flying yacht", but Douglas managed to interest the United States Coast Guard who not only bought the Sinbad, but 12 Dolphins.
Operational history
The first two were purchased by Wilmington-Catalina Airline to fly passengers between Los Angeles and Santa Catalina Island, becoming the first successful Douglas airliners. Subsequent examples were ordered by the United States Navy and U.S. Coast Guard for use as transports and search and rescue craft. The U.S. Army Air Corps ordered several under the designations C-21, C-26, and C-29.
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This entry incorporates text from “Douglas Dolphin” 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.