the production aircraft at the Douglas facility in Santa Monica and in San Diego. Team circumnavigation Four aircraft, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, and New Orleans, left Clover Field, Santa Monica, California, on 17 March 1924, for Sand Point in Seattle, Washington, the official start of the journey. The individual aircraft were formally christened with waters from their namesake cities, prior to departure from Seattle where Boeing Company technicians configured the aircraft for the long over-water portion of the flight, by exchanging wheels for pontoon floats. On 6 April 1924, just 13 days after the British, under Stuart-MacLaren, set off from England in the opposite direction, they left Seattle for Alaska. Shortly after departing Prince Rupert Island on 15 April, the lead aircraft Seattle, flown by Martin with Harvey (the only fully qualified mechanic in the flight), blew a hole in its crankcase and was forced to land on Portage Bay. A replacement engine having been provided, the crew resumed their journey on 25 April, in an attempt to catch up with the other three aircraft awaiting in Dutch Harbor but which ended in failure on 30 April when the Seattle crashed in dense fog into a mountainside near Port Moller on the Alaska Peninsula. It was destroyed in the crash. The crew survived six harrowing days in the elements before finding shelter in an unoccupied cabin on Moller Bay and made it to a cannery four days later. The three remaining aircraft continued, with Chicago, flown by Smith and Arnold, assuming the lead. Tracing the Aleutian Islands, the flight traveled across the North Pacific, landing in the Soviet Union notwithstanding the lack of entry permission. The Aleuts of Atka applied the term "thunder-bird" from their mythology to the Cruisers. On 25 May, whilst in Tokyo, the team received a cable reporting "MacLaren crashed at Akyab [Burma]. Plane completely wrecked. Continuance of flight doubtful." They responded by arranging delivery of a spare plane from Tokyo to Akyab (Sittwe) on the USS John Paul Jones, transshipped in Hong Kong onto the USS William B Preston, enabling the British to continue in their attempt to be first, as the Portuguese and Argentinians also pressed on. The aircraft continued relatively uneventfully via Korea and down the coast of China to French Indochina (now Vietnam). After leaving Haiphong in the Gulf of Tonkin, the Chicago engine broke a connecting rod and it was forced to land