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JAMES SMITH McDONNELL
1 899- 1 980
BY ARTHUR E. RAYMOND
jAMES SMITH McDONNELL was an aeronautics engineer and busi-
nessman whose foresight and dynamic leadership created one of the
world's great aerospace manufacturing organizations.
He was born in Denver, Colorado, on April 9, 1899, and died on
August 22, 1980, in St. Louis, Missouri. Educated in the schools of
Little Rock, Arkansas, he entered Princeton in 1917 and graduated
in 1921 with a Bachelor of Science degree and honors in physics.
Deciding upon a career in aviation, he joined the Army Air Corps
for flight training at San Antonio, Texas, and was given his wings as
a Reserve Second Lieutenant in January 1924. Meanwhile, he had
enrolled in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the only uni-
versity offering graduate courses in aeronautics at that time, from
which he received a master's degree in aeronautics in 1925, one of a
class of four.
For the next four years he worked in various aircraft companies in
a number of positions, including that of Assistant Chief Engineer
with the Stout Metal Airplane Company of Dearborn, Michigan,
designer of the Ford Trimotor.
Starting out on his own in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Mr. McDon-
nell and his associates built a two-place low-wing airplane to com-
pete in the $100,000 Guggenheim Safe Airplane competition in
1929. Though this airplane, which he called the "Doodlebug," was
unsuccessful in that effort, he spent a year making demonstration
flights around the United States in the hope of finding a market for it
199
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MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
as a popular, inexpensive flying "flivver." The Depression was
against him, and after abandoning this effort he became an engineer
and test pilot with Great Lakes Aircraft in Cleveland, Ohio, moving
on to the Glenn L. Martin Company of Baltimore, Maryland, as a
Project Engineer. In five years with Martin he had become Chief
Project Engineer for land planes, but he decided the time had come
for him to form his own firm.
Starting with $165,000 from savings, family, friends, and busi-
nessmen, the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation of St. Louis, Mis-
souri, was incorporated in 1939. At first it was a struggle and, while
the company was developing its own products, it depended largely
on subcontracts from other aircraft companies to survive. But by
1943 McDonnell had begun to establish itself as a major long-time
source of fighters for the military services, from the FH-1 Phantom
to the F- 18 Hornet.
In the 1950s the company expanded its work in missiles to cover
spacecraft and in 1959 obtained a contract for Mercury, this country's
first orbital vehicle, following with one for Gemini.
In 1967 the McDonnell Douglas Corporation was formed through
merger with Douglas Aircraft Company of Santa Monica, Califor-
nia, noted for its famous DC series of commercial airliners as well as
numerous Army and Navy combat aircraft and missiles such as
Thor and Nike. This merger fulfilled a long-held desire of Mr.
McDonnell, who held a high regard for Donald Douglas, because
subcontracts from Douglas had played a major part in enabling his
company to survive its early years and because each company sup-
plied strength the other needed.
In his business life Mr. McDonnell was noted for his attention to
and knowledge of detail, his careful handling of funds, his willing-
ness to speak his mind forcefully and effectively, and his high sense of
ethics. He looked upon company products as a result of team effort,
insisting that his employees be called teammates and that they think
of him as Mr. Mac or, in his later years, as Old Mac. Unconven-
tionality never bothered him.
Anyone who worked closely with him soon learned he would
accept no vague thinking or incomplete preparation. A slight,
bespectacled man with piercing eyes, he had the ability to concen-
trate totally on the subject at hand and would brook no distractions.
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JAMES SMITH McDONNELL
201
Nobody could listen long (and sometimes it had to be long) to Mr.
Mac without sensing his enthusiasm and being stimulated to partici-
pate in it. He operated in a large area but was also intensely per-
sonal. His family meant much to him and he enjoyed family life.
Combined with his strong interest in and contribution to national
defense was a conviction that peace is two-sided: armed strength and
an effective international peace-keeping organization. He said,
"There is nothing contradictory about supporting preparedness as
the surest safeguard against war and at the same time supporting the
United Nations. On the contrary, these are complementary con-
cepts. They mark the surest road to peace. "
Mr. McDonnell devoted much of his life to fostering the United
Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. From 1965
until his death he actively served the United Nations Association of
the United States as a member of its Board and was National Chair-
man from 1975 to 1977. He was a pioneer in granting all his
employees a paid vacation on United Nations Day.
His interest in the probing of space was also strong, arising from
curiosity about the nature and meaning of the universe and life. He
was intensely interested in the human mind, brain, and genetic
makeup and in how to realize the human potential. He was at heart
profoundly religious in this quest, seeking a better personal contribu-
tion toward making the world more peaceful and a better setting for
mankind.
Through the McDonnell Foundation and the McDonnell Aero-
space Foundation, family and company philanthropic funds, Mr.
McDonnell oversaw the distribution of millions of dollars for charity
and support of medical and scientific research. His philanthropy was
in the McDonnell style of holding to large visions, and the major
part of it was directed to the Washington University in St. Louis in
such projects as the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences as part
of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, the McDonnell
Medical Sciences Building, and the McDonnell Department of
Genetics. His most recent contribution was $5.5 million in May
1980 to establish the McDonnell Center for Studies of Higher Brain
Function. A grant also helped make possible the construction of the
McDonnell Planetarium in St. Louis's Forest Park.
Mr. McDonnell was elected to the National Academy of Engi-
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MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
peering in 1967. He served on marry community, state, and national
committees. He was a member of the Advisory Board of the Center
for Strategic and International Studies; the Industry Advisory
Council of the Department of Defense; President N~xon's Aviation
Advisory Committee; the National Alliance of Businessmen; Presi-
dent Johnson's Citizens' Committee; and the Atlantic Council of the
United States, to name a few. He actively served on the Board of
Trustees of the U.S. Naval Academy Foundation, Washington Uni-
versity, and Washington University Medical School and Associated
Hospitals, among others.
He was the recipient of six honorary degrees and many honors
and awards, including the 1963 Daniel Guggenheim Medal, the
1966 Collier Trophy, the 1972 Forrestal Memorial Award, and the
1980 National Academy of Sciences Hunsaker Award. He was an
Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and
Astronautics and the Royal Aeronautical Society and an Enshrinee
in the Aviation Hall of Fame.
The McDonnell Douglas Corporation today is a diversified com-
pany with 1979 sales of more than $5 billion, about equally divided
between commercial and government business, facilities in numer-
ous locations within the United States and Canada, and 83,000
personnel.
In accepting the Forrestal Award Mr. McDonnell said:
As I cast my mind back over fifty years, what impresses me the most? It is very
clearcut. It is the rapid pace of creative evolution that has been going on, the
rapid pace at which the human mind is delving deeper and deeper into the
mysteries of this fantastic fairyland universe in which we find ourselves con-
sciously existing. Not only is the human mind using the methods of basic
science, technology, and engineering. Man is reworking the evanescent stuff of
nature into new patterns and combinations that can be developed into things
useful to mankind, and the rate at which it is occurring is pyramiding.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
smith mcdonnell
