While growing up as a young aviation enthusiast in the north west of England during the 1970s, the only Digby that I had ever heard of was "Digby-The Worlds Largest Dog' as seen in books, films and cartoons, but as I became more serious about aeroplanes I discovered that this name also applied to an airfield in Lincolnshire (with strong Canadian ties) plus a variant of the twin-engined Douglas B-18 Bolo, which had been acquired by the Royal Canadian Air Force during 1940 as a stop gap bomber and maritime patrol aircraft. The Douglas B-18 began as a 1934 request by the United States Army Air Corps for a bomber that could carry double the bomb load of the Martin B-10, which was just entering USAAC service. The Douglas Aircraft Company used its successful DC-2 airliner as the basis of this design, which was given the company designation DB-1 and it incorporated the wings of the DC-2 plus the tail of the DC-3 along with a new deeper fuselage containing a bomb bay capable of housing 4.400lb of bombs and gun positions in the nose, mid-upper and ventral positions. The DB-1 was in direct competition for a USAAC contract against the Boeing Model 299, which eventually became the B-17 Flying Fortress, and the cash strapped USAAC obviously had an eye on the coffers because the twin-engined Douglas bomber, which cost $58,500 was chosen against the four-engined Boeing -a hefty $99,620 in comparison. Another thing in Douglas's favour was the fact that their DB-1 design could go into production almost straight away because the Douglas transports which formed much of the structure were already in production in comparatively large numbers.
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