I recall a recently completed timeline where in the Royal Navy elects to maintain it's CATOBAR Carrier capability through to the present day. One of the butterflies is that British Aerospace partners with McDonnell Douglas to license-build F/A-18 Hornet's in early 80s (as a replacements for Britain's aging fleet of F-4s and EE Lightnings), and much wider export of the Hornet in general. Seems to me that this would offer a significant boost to the odds of both McDD's and BA's survival.
AHC: McDonnell Douglas Survived and is Successful
- Thread starter KingSweden24
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I'd say no for two main reasons – it was cancelled around the time of the Boeing 707's first flight and doesn't appears to have affected their thinking, and as a military aircraft, even a transport, there are enough differences between it and a civilian airliner. That's what got me thinking about the Comet, as a jet-engined airliner in revenue service it would have more chance of giving people a nudge.
Whilst Boeing is the actual legacy company to survive the merger the standing joke is that McDonnell Douglas bought Boeing with Boeing's own money due to how it was the McDonnell Douglas managers who wound up in charge afterwards. Aside from being sceptical that the number of licence produced aircraft involved would be large enough to make much real difference all any extra income would seem to do is put them in a slightly better position during the merger talks with Boeing. If you want a surviving McDonnell Douglas then I think you need them to retain a large enough share of the commercial airliner market to both keep them profitable and cause monopoly concerns over any merger with Boeing.
BAE had the maintenance contract for the F15 with USAFE during the cold war.
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I'm licking the look of that! . . . would love to have seen these babies flying.
Well in that case Boeing should've put a KC-777 version into the bid instead. As the USAF already had the KC-10 (175,000 lb cargo) it was obvious really that they would possibly go with that class of aircraft in cargo capability instead of the KC-46 (65,000 lb)
Even the KC-135 carries around 85,000 lb non fuel.
The USAF converted some KC135 to carry cargo after the USAF had groundings of C5A's back in the early 80's
I'd stick with the turboprops IMHO, the required engine thrust and SFC just didn't exist yet for jet engines in the mid 50s. There could be a C-132B with 8 TF33 turbofans in B-52 style pods, or better yet, a turbofan derivative of the J75: the "JT4D". If the KC-10 order was doubled or tripled, would that bring stability or arrogance to McDD? One would hope that an assured production line would give some breathing room to develop a DC-10/11 twin, though it might be ASB...
Just for fun, here's a KC-10 Promotion film. Enjoy!
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Having the DC-9/MD-80 not be louder than a Godzilla attack and more fuel-guzzling than a Hummer H1 might help in that department
I don't know if it would save the company, but McDonnell Douglas had an excellent human spaceflight team after Gemini, rockets like the Delta-Thor and the Saturn IVB. All of which might have enjoyed strong orders in a no-Shuttle 1970s and 1980s.
I doubt Big Gemini would ever fly, but the work done on it could end up flying in small space stations. The Delta rocket could have been further expanded and developed without the interruption of the Shuttle, growing the Delta into something that could launch manned capsules was quite doable and Delta would have a strong presence in the commercial launch market just as OTL. The SIVB might have ended up as the second stage for a clustered Titan SRM first stage - a design that NASA was extremely interested in after the end of Apollo.
fasquardon
I doubt Big Gemini would ever fly, but the work done on it could end up flying in small space stations. The Delta rocket could have been further expanded and developed without the interruption of the Shuttle, growing the Delta into something that could launch manned capsules was quite doable and Delta would have a strong presence in the commercial launch market just as OTL. The SIVB might have ended up as the second stage for a clustered Titan SRM first stage - a design that NASA was extremely interested in after the end of Apollo.
fasquardon
The company was also developing the DC-X single-stage-to-orbit rocket to support the Strategic Defense Initiative. In a continued Cold War where SDI remains active, even if in a more limited capacity, the DC-X might actually take flight and enter service. The result would be a viable vertical-takeoff/vertical-landing reusable rocket almost two decades before SpaceX put its Falcon 9 into service. Interestingly, some of the McD engineers who worked on the DC-X were later hired by Blue Origin to design its own rockets.