For U.S. Aviation, 1935 was a very good year. It was the year that C.R. Smith, the new president of up-and-coming American Airlines, got an edge on his competition. Hoping to win customers by offering more comfort on long coast-to-coast trips, Smith asked Donald Douglas to design a modem "sleeper," so passengers could spend part of the journey tucked into Pullman car-type berths. Douglas answered, reluctantly, with the Douglas Sleeper Transport, which, in its daytime configuration, was the 21-passenger DC-3 ("DC" for Douglas Commercial).
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