Air-Britain Archive 1-2000

The General Aviation tri-motor designed to compete against the Douglas DC-1 for TWA purchase is outlined below. It was required to outperform the Boeing 247s being built for United but if there were any other competitors for the task we have not yet heard of them.
  The aircraft was the GA-38 which was designed to carry 16 passengers at a top speed of 191 mph, as against the 183 mph of the 16-seat twin-engined Douglas. It appears to have been a development by Col Virginius E Clark of the single engined GA-43 which was already in production for a number of airlines when the trimotor was announced in February 1933. The all-metal low-wing monoplane was to have three P & W Wasps, a wing span of 76 ft 6 in and would be 59 ft 0 in long, a little smaller than the DC-1 and the production DC-2s.
  General Aviation Manufacturing, of Dundalk, Maryland was a subsidiary of North American Aviation Inc, which also controlled Transcontinental & Western Air (TWA), Eastern Air Transport and Western Air Express. It also had a substantial interest in Douglas Aircraft and was employing Col Charles Lindbergh as a technical consultant. In his view the new Douglas twin would not be able to meet TWA's requirements as well as the GA-38 but in fact the DC-1 with its Wright Cyclones and variable-pitch propellers exceeded them. Work continued for a while on the trimotor and the design was given plenty of advance promotion, as was its rival, by both North American and TWA.
  Eventually it was decided to end the inter-company rivalry within North American and work on the partially-built GA-38 came to a stop, leaving the company to write off the $800,000 it had spent on the project.