Originally Posted by
CONSO
Uhh check your dates. Douglas ' merged' with McDonnel in 1967-68 mainly due to fubar cost accounting on DC-9. KC contract was let about 10 years later. with first flight in 1981.
Hint- try the annual report ..
Douglas Senior died in 1981
Donald Wills Douglas Jr. (July 3, 1917 – October 3, 2004) ....He was the president of the Douglas Aircraft Company, which his father founded, from 1957 to 1967, when the company merged with McDonnell Corporation. He was on the board of directors of Douglas Aircraft from 1953 until the merger, then on the board of McDonnell Douglas from 1967 to 1989.
You've seriously misunderstood both what I said and how large corporate entities operate. Douglas Aircraft Company (DAC, in Long Beach) was a division of McDonnell Douglas Corporation (MDC). McDonnell Aircraft Company (MAC, in St Louis) was another division of MDC. McDonnell Douglas Helicopter Systems (MDHS, formerly Hughes Helicopters, in Mesa) was a third division of MDC. That's three separate divisions, each with a president, all reporting to a corporate president/CEO.
DAC won the KC-10, C-17, T-45, and KDC-10 contracts. The CEO of MDC forced DAC to eat millions on KDC-10 to help ensure MDHS won the Dutch attack helo contract. In addition, after taking all the risk and cost associated with competing for, winning, and then developing & testing the aircraft and designing the production system for the T-45, MDC's CEO moved T-45 production from DAC to MAC. And oh yeah, this wasn't just an aircraft program. USN bought an entire training system, including curriculum, training devices, simulators, etc etc. MAC got it all. And oh yeah, big chunks of the C-17 ended up being built by MAC, not DAC. Not to mention big chunks of MD-11. Was the DAC president happy to eat all those dollars to help out the MDHS president? Was he happy to hand the profits of T-45 production (and to a lesser extent C-17 and MD-11 production) to the MAC president? Think about that before you answer. And of course the MDC president/CEO was happy because the overall corporation looks healthy and profitable so he gets his fat bonus. But he's cannibalized one division to prop up two others. And of course later the same guy sells the whole corporation to Boeing. And Douglas is killed in the process.
In similar fashion Boeing has primarily three divisions: Boeing Commercial Aircraft (BCA), Boeing Defense/Space (BDS) and Boeing Global Support (BGS). Each has a president and they all report to the corporate president/CEO. Would the BDS president be happy to eat billions of dollars on the KC-46 to help out BCA and (in the future) BGS? Think about that before you answer.
Now, how does this relate to the razors vs razor blades analogy which started this discussion? If Gillette had a separate razor division, a separate blade division, and separate shaving foam/gel division, would the president of the razor division be happy to take a loss to help out the blade division? Think about that before you answer. And then think about what it would take to make the presidents of all three divisions happy.