Ordered by the U.S. Army Air Service, Douglas built five Douglas World Cruisers to attempt the first flight around the world. The first DWC, a prototype delivered for test and evaluation, made its first flight in November 1923. Douglas soon received a contract for four production aircraft. On March 17, 1924, four DWCs left Clover Field, Santa Monica, Calif., for Seattle, Wash., the official starting point. While in Seattle, Boeing employees exchanged the planes' wheels for pontoon floats for the long over-water flights. It was also in Seattle that the planes were formally named for four major American cities, Seattle, Chicago, Boston and New Orleans. On April 4 the four took off from Sand Point on Lake Washington on the first leg of their long flight. The Seattle, trapped in fog on April 30, crashed on an Alaskan mountainside. After walking ten days through the frozen wilderness, the two-man crew safely reached Dutch Harbor. The other three DWCs continued on and were kept flying with the help of 15 extra engines, 14 extra sets of floats and duplicates of all airframe parts, stashed at various sites around the world. On June 26 they reached Calcutta in India where the floats were replaced with wheels. The DWCs departed Orkney Island in Scotland on July 30, again as seaplanes. On August 3, with nearly three-quarters of the flight completed, the Boston made a forced landing in the mid-Atlantic. The crew was rescued and reunited with the Chicago and New Orleans on September 3 in Nova Scotia. Two days later the prototype DWC joined the group and was named Boston II, so the original's crew could complete the flight. On September 28, as landplanes, they returned to Seattle. They had logged 27,553 miles in six months and six days, flown over 28 countries and crossed the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The flight was the greatest feat in aviation up to that time and earned Douglas Aircraft Company its motto, First Around the World.