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ENDPAPER
A Boeing 727, the most successful commercial transport in avi-
ation history, climbs through a bank of cumulus clouds in this
painting by the distinguished British artist Frank Wootton. De-
signed for short hauls, the three-engined aircraft brought the jet
age to hundreds of small and medium-sized cities and towns

around the world.
THE JET AGE
1
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This volume is one of a series that traces the adventure and

science of aviation, from the earliest manned balloon ascension
through the era of jet flight
THE EPIC OF FLIGHT
THE JET AGE
by Robert J. Serling
AND THE EDITORS OF TIME-LIFE BOOKS
TIMI I III BOOKS Al I XANDRIA \'ll« .INIA

Time-Li e Books Inc. THE AUTHOR © 1982 Time-Life Books Inc. All rights reserved.
is a wholly owned subsidiary of Robert J. Serling's career as an aviation writer No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by
any electronic or mechanical means, including information
TIME INCORPORATED began when he edited aviation news for Unit- storage and retrieval devices or systems, without prior written
FOUNDER: Henry R. Luce 1898-1967 ed Press International, and it evolved into permission from the publisher, except that brief passages may
full-time book writing. He has written numer- be quoted for reviews.
Editor-in-Chief: Henry Anatole Grunwald Second printing. Revised 1984.
President: Richard Munro
ous works of fiction and nonfiction about avi-
J. Printed in U.S.A.
Chairman of the Board: Ralph P. Davidson ation in the jet age, including Loud and Clear,
Published simultaneously in Canada.
Corporate Editor Jason McManus The Probable Cause, The Electro Story. The School and library distribution by Silver Burdett
Group Vice President, Books: Joan D. Manley President's Plane is Missing and the histories Company. Morristown, New Jersey.
of four airlines — Eastern, Western. Conti-
TIME-LIFE BOOKS INC. nental and North Central.
TIME-LIFE is a trademark of Time Incorporated U.S.A.
EDITOR: George Constable Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data

Executive Editor: George Daniels
Serling. Robert J.
Director of Design: Louis Klein
THE CONSULTANTS for The Jet Age The jet age.
Editonal Board: Roberta R. Conlan. Ellen Phillips.
(The Epic of flight)
Gerry Schremp. Gerald Simons, Rosalind Stubenberg. Richard K. Smith, the principal consultant, is
Bibliography: p.
Kit van Tulleken. Henry Woodhead a former historian at the National Air and Includes index.
Editorial General Manager: Neal Goff
Space Museum in Washington, D.C. He is 1 Aeronautics. Commercial — History. 2. Jet transports —
Director of Research: Phyllis K Wise
the author of several aeronautical histories, History. I. Time-Life Books II Title HI. Series.
Director of Photography: John Conrad Weiser
TLS52.S47 1982 387.7'42'09 82-6019
including First Cross! The U.S. Navy's Trans-
PRESIDENT: Reginald K. Brack Jr. ISBN 0-8094-3362-1 AACR2
atlantic Flight of 1919. which was awarded ISBN 0-8094-3363-X
Senior Vice President William Henry (lib. bdg.)
Wee Presidents George Artandi. Stephen L. Bair. the 1972 history prize of the American Insti-
Robert A. Ellis. Juanita T. James. Christopher T. Linen, tute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He also
James L. Mercer. Joanne A Pello. Paul R. Stewart serves as American literary editor of the Brit-
ish aviation monthly Air International.
THE EPIC OF FLIGHT
EDITOR: Dale M. Brown R. E. G. Davies. a noted aviation histori-
Senior Editor Jim Hicks
an, has worked for British European Air-
Designer: Raymond Ripper
W. Mark Hamilton
ways, Bristol Aircraft, the de Havilland Air-
Chief Researcher
Editorial Staff for The Jet Age
craft Company and Douglas Aircraft. The
Picture Editor: Robin Richman author of A
History of the World's Airlines
Text Editor- Lee Hassig and Airlines of the United States Since 1 914.
Writers Laura Longley. Glenn Martin McNatt.
he is a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical
John Manners. Victoria W. Monks
Researchers Carol Enquist Beall. Gregory A. McGruder
Society and served in 1982 as the Lindbergh
(principals). Barbara Brownell. Anne Munoz-Furlong, Professor of Aerospace History at the Nation-
Dominick A. Pisano, Jules Taylor al Air and Space Museum.
Assistant Designer: Anne K. DuVivier
Copy Coordinators: Stephen G. Hyslop. Anthony K Pordes
Picture Coordinator BetsyDonahue
Editorial Assistant: Caroline A. Boubin
Special Contributor: Lynne Bair
Editorial Operations
Design Ellen Robling (assistant director)
Copy Room: Diane UUius
Production: Anne B. Landry (director). Celia Beattje
Quality Control: James J. Cox (director). Sally Collins
Library: Louise D. Forstall
Correspondents Elisabeth Kraemer-Singh (Bonn); Margbt

Hapgood. Dorothy Bacon (London): Miriam Hsia. Susan
Jonas, Lucy T. Voulgaris (New York); Maria Vincenza Aloisi,
Josephine du Brusle (Paris); Ann Natanson (Rome). Valuable
assistance was also provided by: Judy Aspinall (London);
Cheryl Crooks (Los Angeles); Felix Rosenthal (Moscow);
Judy Greene. Christina Lieberman (New York):
Mimi Murphy (Rome)
CONTENTS
1 A leap into the future 19
2 America enters the jet age 55
3 The race to catch up 83
4 A clash of titans 103
5 The fastest — and the biggest 125
Acknowledgments 172
Bibliography 172
Picture credits 173
Index 174
Precursors of the jets
"Spend a Two-Week Vacation Abroad? Why Not?"

asked a Pan American advertisement in 1946, trumpeting
both the end of wartime travel restrictions and the begin-
ning of a new day in commercial aviation. Eager to reclaim
their prewar markets and expand them, the airlines put
into service the largest, most luxurious piston-engined
planes ever designed.
In the United States, the development of transports had
surged ahead during the War. Douglas. Boeing and Lock-
heed all had long-range airliners with pressurized cabins
on the production line within a year of V-J Day. And it was
these planes, with their vastly increased capabilities, that
the airlines flocked to buy.
Expecting a postwar boom in domestic and internation-
al travel among the well-to-do, the big carriers courted the
same first-class trade upon which they had based their
business in the 1930s. Seven-course meals, champagne
and gifts of orchids and perfume were amenities calculated
to distract travelers from the inevitable noise and vibration
of the propeller-driven planes, especially on 10- to 12-
hour transatlantic crossings. And one-class seating on
many flights encouraged socializing in the lounges and
dining areas, giving the aircraft the ambiance of ele-
gant ocean liners. Some of the planes even boasted
sleeping berths.
But the high fares such lavishness required excluded
middle-class travelers; by 1950 most of the airlines were
struggling to fill seats on their first-class flights. The future
lay in low fares, high-density seating — and ever more
speed. Already in the air. as the days of wine and roses
aboard the piston airplanes ended, were the prototypes of

the jet airliners that would change the character and spirit
of air transportation forever.
Four generations of propeller-driven Douglas airliners sit on

the ramp at the factory in Santa Monica. California In the
background is a Super PC 3 In front ofltai
DC -4 and a DC -6 And in the foregi oDC T.hutofthe
line before the arrival of jet transport 01 \ht
The DC-6: the "ultimate in travel relaxation"
The DC-6 Dayplane-Sleeper could berth 26

passengers or seat 52. Promoted as the
"ultimate in travel relaxation." it contained
lounges fore and aft of the cabin, and
a buffet area in the middle of the plane.
8
*
•
•
Tl
1
V
A flight attendant tucks in a blanket on the
upper berth while a passenger retires below.
Such berths, wade up before takeoff, took
just 30 seconds to ready. Both sleeper and
daytime accommodations could be used at
the same time in some versions of the DC-6.
A young model who would go on to fame

r-r as Marilyn Monroe relinquishes her coat to
a Pan American flight attendant to store

in a cloakroom Overhead racks would
not appear until the onset oj the irt oge

during the next decade
The Stratocruiser: offspring of the War
A double-decked Boeing 377 Stratocruiser

wings over Rio de Janeiro. Cruising at 340
mph. the 70-ton plane, a descendant of the
B-29 bomber of World War II fame, was the
biggest and fastest airliner flying in 1948.
Carrying only 61 passengers in 6.600 cubic

feet of "ambling space." the Stratocruiser
boasted a forward family travel compartment
and a lounge on the lower level
below the midship galley.
10
A steward serves wine to a couple eating
dinner. The designed by Boeing,
tray-tables,
A passenger adjusts his tie in the men's
were the first to attach to seats.
dressing room. Flying at 25,000 feet
avoided most turbulence and allowed
Passengers relax in the lower-level lounge.
passengers to move about the plane safely.
Reached by a spiral staircase, the softly lit
compartment was decorated with rich fabrics
and leather to suggest a fine club.
The Constellation: an ocean-hopping beauty
Put into service in 1957, the triple-tailed

Lockheed 1649A Constellation brought
Passengers board a TWA night flight
even; West European capital within nonstop
reach of New York. It carried 56 passengers.
to Europe. TWA received its first Connies in
April1957 but had them in service for only
18 months before rival Pan Am inaugurated
A flight attendant offers coffee to a card-
jet flights over the North Atlantic.
playing couple. The spacious lounge
featured colorful murals and an observation
sofa facing a starboard window.
r*
I
12
fl European diversity
The de Havilland Airspeed Ambassador,

powered by two Bristol Centaurus engines,
was British European Airways' standard
short-haul airliner from 1952 to 1958. The
plane's 550-mile range made it ideal for
BEA's routes on the Continent.
Passengers enjoy a meal aboard the

Ambassador's luxury Silver Wing service.
The high ceiling of the cabin was popular
for the extra roominess it provided.
ELIZABETHAN CLASS
14
1
w ' —J I!.'.
The double-decked Brequet 763 Deux-

Ponts, a French military transport adapted to
civilian use in 1953, was one of the first
airliners fitted out for mass travel. Though
only one third larger than an American
DC-6, the craft carried almost twice the
number of passengers: 59 in tourist class on
its upper deck and 48 in second class on its
lower deck; there was no first class.
Cars are loaded through a rear door in

the lower deck of the Deux-Ponts. To
convert the deck, the hinged passenger
seats were folded flat against the cabin walls.
Stillborn giants
Taking off with the aid of rockets, a 92-ton

Lockheed Constitution struggles aloft in
1946. Underpowered in spite of four 3,500-
hp engines, the plane failed to reach its
proposed 5.000-mile range and never went
Ullllllli
into commercial service.
The only Bristol Brabazon ever built stands

outside the hangar at Filton. England.
Weighing 145 tons, the eight-engined craft
carried only 80 passengers. Before the
Brabazon could fly. the runway had to be
extended, houses razed and a road diverted.
A ConvairXC-99. able to carry 400

passengers, makes its debut in San Diego in
1947. Powered by six pusher engines, this
descendant of the massive B-36 bomber
was intended as a troop transport and cost
$15 million to develop. Only one was built.
16
ff
Hurtling into the sky with a power almost five times greater than that of a piston-engined DC-6, the de Havilland Comet, the first jetliner, leaves Lon
1
fl leap into the future
largecrowd had gathered at

London Airport on the sunny afternoon of May 2. 1952. It had come to
see a most unusual aircraft, one bearing the official designation
G-ALYP. In the British lexicon of aircraft registration. G-ALYP — called,
in the phonetic alphabet. George-Able Love Yoke Peter — stood for a
new commercial transport known as the de Havilland Comet.
To most in the crowd, Yoke Peter presented a strange sight: an
airplane with no visible means one that seemed to con-
of propulsion,
found logic with its absence of familiar propellers and protruding engine
nacelles. The Comet's four engines were buried in the wings, two on
each side of the gleaming 93-foot-long fuselage that bore the blue and
white livery of the British Overseas Airways Corporation.
There were cheers as Yoke Peter wheeled away from its boarding
area, its engines howling. Yoke Peter was the world's first jet airliner,
capable of flying at nearly 500 miles an hour, more than half again as
fast as its piston-engined contemporaries. It was about to take off for
Johannesburg. South Africa, via Rome. Beirut. Khartoum. Entebbe

and Livingstone. The journey normally took 40 hours. But the Comet,
with its 36 passengers and crew of six, would get there in an unheard-of
23 V2 hours. In the environment of flight, where distance is measured not
by miles but by time, the Comet was about to shrink the globe by 40 per
cent — and render every other commercial transport obsolete. But un-
happily for this magnificent product of British skill and ingenuity, its
name would all too soon be associated with failure and disaster.
In 1952. the airplane had yet to supplant either the train or the
ship as a major mode was making inroads on them.

of travel. But it
In the few years since the end of the War. four-engined Ameri-
can planes —
primarily Douglas Aircraft's DC-4s. DC-6s and DC-7s,
and Lockheed's graceful, three-tailed Constellations — had replaced
the slower flying boats and twin-engined planes as the flagships
of the world's major airlines. Attracted by the benefits of sp>
more and more travelers were now choosing planes over trains B-
the end of the 1950s, the number of passengers carried by domesfr
U.S. airlines would exceed the numbei th.it boarded the nation's rail
roads, and international airliners would supplanl ocean liners as the
most popular way to cross the Atlantii
But even the besl oi these aircraft was limited I he I touglas I
the pi. hi.' thai inaugurated regular nonstop transatlantii

Airport on its maiden flight to Johannesburg
19
A leap into the future
was more than a 15-year-old design that had been pulled and
little The world's first fare-paying jet travelers —
including a man who had booked two years
stretched to carry more passengers plus enough fuel for the jump across
in advance so that he could be called jet
the ocean. And the four engines necessary to accomplish this feat were
passenger No. 1 —board the Comet at
behemoths that produced 3,400 horsepower each; with all 72 cylinders London Airport for its inaugural flight.
firing on cue, noise and vibration inside the cabin were numbing. More-
over, the DC-7C, though it was larger than earlier models and had a
greater range, actually flew more slowly. More powerful piston engines
were impractical. Existing ones were already a mechanic's nightmare;
balky engines all too often were responsible for delaying flights. Com-
mercial aircraft had reached a plateau.
Then along came the Comet. Within a decade after Yoke Peter's
flight to Johannesburg, travel by jet would be commonplace. And air-
lines — at least during the first giddy years of the jet revolution that the
Comet started — would be carrying more passengers at lower fares than
anyone had dreamed possible. Faraway places, once the haunts of the
rich, would become the playgrounds of everyman, transported in a few
hours by airliners that could seat more than 400 passengers. For the
elite, and for businessmen in an exceptional hurry, the flight from New
York to London or Paris would ultimately be slashed to a mere three
and a half hours, by a plane that could fly faster than the speed of sound.
20
—
The gestation of the Comet dated from 1943. when the British,
though still became concerned about their postwar role in com-
at war.
mercial aviation. During the War they had dedicated all of their aircraft
assembly lines to the production of fighters and bombers, and ceded the
transport field to the Americans. In doing so. they realized, they were
allowing their ally a tremendous lead. By 1939. Douglas' ubiquitous
DC-3 was already carrying 90 per cent of the world's airline passengers.
And in the half-dozen years that followed, the Americans managed to
perfect two other transports, ideally suited to postwar use as airliners
the four-engined Douglas DC-4 and Lockheed Constellation. The
British might never catch up.
This gloomy outlook came under the scrutiny of two successive gov-
ernment study groups, both headed by "the father of British aviation."
Lord Brabazon of Tara. and composed of airline executives, manu-
facturers' representativesand civil service aviation experts. The first
Brabazon Committee convened in 1942 and accomplished little. A year
later, however, a second Brabazon Committee was organized and over
a 30-month period came up with four proposals to move Britain into the
transport field. Two
them envisioned huge, piston-engined airliners
of
with luxurious accommodations for transoceanic travelers: both designs
turned out to be impractical. Two others argued for airliners powered by
jet engines. In one. the engine would be used to turn a propeller. Called
a turboprop, such an engine would come to play an important role in

commercial aviation, first as the power plant for the Vickers Viscount
from Britain and later for America's Lockheed Electra (pages 25-27).
Passengers came to like planes with turboprops: they were much quiet-
er than piston-engined aircraft, and airlines found them economical
and easier to maintain.
But because of the inherent limitations of propellers, which could be
made only so big before becoming inefficient, turboprops were unable
to fly much faster than piston craft, and that is why the last of the
Brabazon Committee's proposals was intriguing. The idea was to build
a transport the size of a DC-3. driven not by propellers at all but by

exhaust gases from turbojet engines that would whisk it along at 450
miles per hour. Known at the start only as the Brabazon IV. this concept
fathered the Comet and marked a new era in air travel the jet age. —
But in 1945. any jet-powered transport — particularly the Brabazon
IV — seemed more dream than practicality. Up to that time, the (el
engine had propelled only fighter aircraft, and its prodigious thirst for
fuel, in the opinion of many aviation authorities, made it economic. lllv

unsuitable for commercial aircraft But for the British tin- |et's apparent
impracticalitywas more than balanced by one Important fad '•
pulsion was the one branch i In which Britain was ahead oi
the United States —

and by a wiclf margin
Britaii largely th< n RA1 off!
ce: rank Whittli
2\
gas turbine engine be used to power a plane; instead of applying The flBCs
most of the engine's power would force
to a propeller, the turbine
enough to — of jet propulsion
the exhaust gas out of a rear nozzle with tremendous force
thrust an aircraft forward. Whittle was later to describe this turbo- The planes that revolutionized air travel
jet as "something like a giant vacuum cleaner; it sucks air at the front in the 1950s resulted from the develop-
and blows it out at the back." ment of power plants that dispensed with
was not quite that simple, of course. More than seven years would
It the pounding pistons and intermittent,
contained explosions of the convention-
go by before a working model of his invention would appear, and
al engine, using instead spinning tur-
another four years before Britain's first jet fighter, the Gloster Meteor,
bines and a steady burning of fuel.
took to the air. But this was more than the United States could With no bulky engine blocks and no
manage during that time. pistons, valves or rods to restrict their
Though several British manufacturers had gained experience making rpms, the new engines produced far
jet engines, there was only one firm at the end of the War that had both more power for far less weight than pis-
built a jet engine and designed a jet plane. The plane was the Vampire
ton engines. But they needed inordinate
quantities of fuel to generate that power.
fighter, and the company was de Havilland. The respected aircraft man-
The turbojet, the first of three basic
ufacturer was the logical candidate for transforming into reality the
engines to evolve, is both the fastest and
Brabazon Committee's proposal for a jet-engined transport, and in the thirstiest; it can be used efficiently
1947 the Ministry of Supply asked de Havilland to get on with the work. only at high altitudes, where thin air de-
Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, the tall, dignified founder of the firm, creases fuel use and drag. The other two.
exuded an enthusiasm for the project that set him apart from his peers in the turboprop and the turbofan, are ad-
aptations of the turbojet that operate
the aviation world. He seemed undaunted by many problems that
the
with greater efficiency at lower altitudes
would have to be solved before the jet could become reality. The
and moderate speeds.
biggest of these was the jet engines' extravagant fuel consumption. All three types have essentially the
In the United States. C. R. Smith, president of American Airlines, same core: At the front, whirling fans
had predicted bleakly that to achieve transcontinental or transatlan- called compressors suck air in and force
tic range, a jetliner would have to carry so much fuel that there would itunder high pressure into a combustion
room chamber where it mixes with a steady
be little for a payload. There were those in Great Britain who
stream of fuel and is ignited. The ex-
agreed, pointing out that a turbojet' s fuel consumption was at least three
panding gases funnel out the back of
times that of a piston engine.
the combustion chamber at tremendous
Like any other internal combustion engine, a turbojet will not operate speed in a narrow exhaust jet that pro-
without just the right mix of air and fuel.The limited supply of oxygen vides forward thrust. Before the exhaust
many thousand feet above the earth thus makes it impossible for the jet leaves the engine, however, it passes
to burn as much fuel as it consumes at lower altitudes, where oxygen one or more vaned disks called turbines
is
that the fast-moving gases spin. These
more plentiful. Engines of 1945 vintage, for example, gulped kerosene
turbines, in turn, drive the compressors.
three or four times as fast at 10.000 feet as they did at 30,000 feet. In the turboprop and turbofan engines,
Sir Geoffrey recognized that the solution to the fuel problem would additional turbines crank a propeller or a
be a plane that could operate
at altitudes of 35.000 feet and higher. fan at the front that creates most of the
The engines might produce less power at such heights, but and — engine's thrust.
here was the key —

less power would be required to propel the air-
craft through thin air. He asked Ronald Bishop, de Havilland' s chief
designer, and Frank Halford, the company's expert on jet engines,
to give him such a plane. Initially, it was known as the D.H.106, but
it was renamed the Comet for the Comet Racer,
a plane built two
decades earlier by de Havilland that had won the MacRobertson Air
Race from England to Australia.
Uppermost in the minds of the entire Comet team was the knowledge
that the high-flying plane would require an airtight cabin that could be
22
AIR INTAKE COMPRESSORS COMBUSTION CHAMBER EXHAUST GASES
A TURBOJET is essentially a tube that

bums compressed air and
a steady stream of
fuel, blasting exhaust out the back to
propel the plane forward. A turbine spun by
the exhaust drives the compressors by
means of a rotating shaft running down
the middle of the engine.
COOL AIR FUEL INJECTOR SHAFT TURBINE
PROPELLER POWER TURBINES
COMPI EXHAUST GASES

A TURBOPROP uses additional turbines
to make the jet exhaust crank a propeller
that provides thrust. The rapid spinning of
the turbines and their shaft must be geared
down to run the propeller at a usable speed.
A TURBOFAN'S big fan works much

like a turboprop s propeller but also helps TURBINE
to compress air passing through the COOL AIR SHAFT OMBUSTION CHAMBER
engine. Most thrust, however, comes from
air bypassing the core. This cool,
relatively slow-moving air, channeled by
the fan's shrouding, forms a surrounding
buffer for the rapidly moving, noisy
core exhaust and reduces engine noise. COMBUSTION CHAMBER
:OMPRESSORS FAN TURBINE

EXHAUST GASES
SHROUDING Mill II SHAF1
23
pumped full of air under pressure to allow passengers to breathe with-
out aid of oxygen masks. Pressurized aircraft cabins were hardly new.
But the Comet, flying above 35,000 feet, would face no other
stresses
airliner had yet encountered. In order to maintain an atmosphere

roughly equivalent to that at 8.000 feet, the pressure inside the cabin
would reach eight and a quarter pounds per square inch — some five
pounds more than the pressure outside.

Bishop's team of airframe engineers began churning out designs. Of
the dozen or so configurations that were considered seriously, the most
promising was for a four-engined, tailless craft with elevators and aile-
rons built into wings swept back 40 degrees. This arrowhead shape was
calculated to extract the most speed possible from each pound of thrust.
Before committing himself to so radical a design. Bishop had the
idea tested. He had the standard wings and tails of three de Havil-
land Vampire fighters replaced with triangular wings, each with a differ-
ent angle of sweepback. But flight tests disclosed serious control

problems. As a result, Bishop abandoned a tailless plane in favor of a
more conservative design; at a small sacrifice in speed, wings would be
swept back only 20 degrees.
The Comet's external appearance and its vital statistics were fairly
well fixed by early 1947. The airframe would be as light as de Havilland
knew how to make The aluminum skin, for example, would be only
28
/iooo of an inch thick
it.
—
"no thicker than a postcard," marveled one
British writer —
and it would be fastened to the plane's skeleton with a
special glue called Redux, thus eliminating rivets and making the plane
still lighter. Four de Havilland Ghost turbojets would propel the Comet
and its three dozen passengers at nearly 500 miles per hour.
de Havilland engineers' estimate of the Comet's
Satisfied with the
performance, BOAC ordered eight of the airliners and reserved first

refusal on any
built after the first 14 came off the assembly line. Sales
were contingent, of course, on the jetliner's meeting all British civil

airworthiness requirements.
No one at de Havilland doubted that the Comet would do so. From
the cutting of the first metal to the final certification flights, it would be
the most stringently tested British airplane to date. Regulations de-
manded, for example, that the Comet's cabin hold 16V2 pounds per
square inch of air pressure, double the actual pressure that would be
allowed in the fuselage at the aircraft's maximum cruising altitude. But
Bishop's chief structural engineer. Robert Harper, insisted on an extra
margin of safety; he designed the Comet fuselage to withstand an inter-
nal pressure of more than 20 pounds per square The wings passed
inch.
a torture test in which the tips were repeatedly raised and depressed
three feet from their normal positions. The landing gear was extended
and retracted thousands of times — with sand mixed in the grease that
lubricated it. to simulate the worst possible conditions.
During the many months required to complete the batteries of tests,
de Havilland was silent about its new project. At one point Sir Geoffrey
24
The onlv U.S. turboprop ever in regular
commercial service, the Lockheed Electra
carriedmore than 80 passengers at better
than 400 mph but soon lost out to faster jets.
The turboprop: a versatile hybrid
Just over a year before the Comet's ini- ways like a conventional piston-engined
tial test flight, the prototype of another plane. Moreover, its vastly greater power
revolutionary aircraft became the first enabled it to carry larger loads at higher
jet-powered airliner to fly. The plane, the speeds than comparable conventionally
British Vickers Viscount, was not. how- powered aircraft.
ever, what is sometimes referred to as The Viscount went into commercial
a pure jet. It was a turboprop, using service early in 1953 and became one of
propellers powered by the turbines of jet the most widely used of all short-haul
engines (pages 22-23). planes Other turboprops. including the
Though not as fast as a turbojet, the Lockheed Electra (above) and the
Viscount had other advantages. For one shown
craft
thing, it was far more fu> :itatlow followed A few of th<
altitudes and moderate speeds, and thus

more useful on short fliq! her.
run
25
The Russian Tupolev 114. a converted bomber design, used 12. OOO-hp turboprop engines to turn pairs of 18-foot contrarotating propellers.
In production longer than practically any other commercial transport, the 50-passenger Fokker F-27 became Europe's largest-selling airliner.
26
De Havilland Canada's 20-passenger Twin Otter, with its sturdy fixed undercarriage, was designed for use on primitive airfields in the bush.
27
felt obliged to react publicly to rumors about the aircraft's shape,

speed and cruising altitude. The reports, he said, "have been based on
conjecture, and whilst they are not without a glimmer of truth here and
there, the general effect of categoric statements at so early a stage in the
1 '
project is inevitably misleading.

Sir Geoffrey's caution was not without purpose. He had no inten-
tion of disclosing valuable information to potential competitors, par-
ticularly manufacturers in the United States, before the Comet had

even flown. Nor did he care to publicize the false starts, wrong turns
and divergent views inherent in the creation of a new plane. (For
example, both BOAC and British South American Airways, which had
placed orders for six Comets, preferred more powerful Rolls-Royce
turbojet engines to the de Havilland-designed Ghosts. Eventually the
two airlines agreed to accept the first 14 Comets with Ghost engines,
provided that the next model, to be called the Comet 2, was powered
by Rolls-Royce engines.)
Comet test flights began July 27. 1949, less than three years after the
start of full-scale design work. This was no mean feat for a company
that, until only five years earlier, had been single-mindedly building
warplanes. Sir Geoffrey was on hand to witness the first flight, as were
many of those who had labored so diligently to bring the airplane to life.
Among the outsiders present was Sir Frank Whittle, who had recently
been knighted by King George VI for inventing the turbojet.
In charge of evaluating the Comet — and first to fly it — was de Havil-

land's chief test pilot, John Cunningham. Accompanied by a crew of
engineers to monitor the aircraft's performance, Cunningham eased the
jet's throttles forward, and the Comet took effortlessly to the air. Whittle.
who had been ill, declared that the sight of the silver plane streaking
over the airfield was better than any medicine. Cunningham, after a
half-hour flight that took the Comet to 10,000 feet, pronounced the jet
"Very promising. Very quick."

And so it was. Over the next three years, as de Havilland's new jet
was fine-tuned for airline service, the entire globe became Comet-
conscious, and the airlines beat a path to the de Havilland door. Air
France. British Commonwealth Pacific, France's Union Aeromaritime
de Transport, Canadian Pacific, Japan Air Lines and the Royal Canadi-
an Air Force were among the Comet's first purchasers.
Sir Miles Thomas. BOAC's enthusiastic chief, told a New York audi-
ence that eventually the Comets would be flying to America's East
Coast and beyond. When that happened, he predicted hyperbolically.
"New Yorkers will be able to take a swim in Bermuda and dry them-
selves athome." But only one U.S. airline joined the jet parade. Some
five months after Yoke Peter's first flight to Johannesburg, Juan Trippe,
chairman of Pan American World Airways, ordered three Comet 3s, a

more powerful version of the plane that was still on the drawing boards.
Trippe, as usual infatuated with any airplane that represented a major
technological advance, ordered the Comets because there was no U.S.-
28
Putting the Comet to the test
A jet engine is mounted behind the nose section of a Comet to help technicians determine noise levels inside the cockpit.
Months before finalizing designs for the lage in it. then manipulated pressures in-
Comet jetliner in 1946, the de Havilland side and outside the cabin to simulate
Aircraft Company undertook an exhaus- conditions the Comet would experience
tive testingprogram of all the jet's com- in cold, rarefied air at 38.000 feet. The
ponents and assemblies. nose section was brought to nine pounds
The most critical of these involved the of pressure — almost
per square inch
Comet's structure. To determine how a pound more than the normal Comet
well the wings would stand up to the pressure would be — and the
in-service
stresses of flight, they were secured in procedure was repeated 2.000 times.
a huge rig and flexed beyond their de- Other fuselage sections were subjected
sign limits. But when it came to prov- to almost double that amount 16.5—
ing out the fuselage, de Havilland de- pounds per square inch.
cided that static testing — subjecting the The results of these stress tests were
plane to pressure alone, without mo- just what de Havilland designers and en-
tion — would be adequate. gineers had hoped for: The Comet held
De Havilland constructed a decom- up beautifully, convincing them that they
pression chamber and placed the fuse- had built th> jet imaginable
29
A wooden mock-up of the Comet is used to experiment with design changes.
A Comet nose is grafted to a Horsa glider fuselage for windshield tests.
Sir Geoffrey de Hauilland operates the nose-wheel steering mechanism.
30
fa*
The fir* Con
SI
Three years after work on the Cornet began, the plane completes a handling
its first flight, trial that the test pilot declared "entirely successful."
32
1*
made jetliner on even a distant horizon. To goad American plane build-
ers into the game, Trippe kept on his desk a draped model of the Comet.
Whenever a factory representative visited, he whisked off the cover,
revealing the British competition.
Trippe's contract with de Havilland stipulated that the Comet 3
must satisfy American safety regulations before Pan American would
accept delivery. There was in fact some likelihood that the Civil
Aeronautics Administration would not grant the Comet an airworthi-
ness certificate. The CAA had already expressed reservations about
the square corners of the aircraft's windows, where stresses could
build, leading to metal fatigue, and recommended oval windows in-
stead. The location of the Comet's engines, in the wings close to the
cabin, also troubled the CAA. If an engine were to disintegrate in flight, it
would be more likely to destroy the plane than an engine hung below
the wing, away from the fuselage.
The de Havilland Company felt confident that it could assuage
the CAA's doubts. Pressurization tests on the Comet fuselage had
clearly demonstrated the strength of the square window frame: one
had withstood a pressure of 100 pounds per square inch, more than a
12-fold margin of safety. As for engine failure, turbojets — because
of their smooth operation — would enjoy a long and trouble-free
life. Moreover, placing the Comet's turbojets in the wings was sound
aerodynamics. The wing would be more streamlined, and having the
Comet's engines near the fuselage would make the plane easier to
handle if an engine were to fail on takeoff. In any event, there
was time for de Havilland to modify the Comet to the CAA's satisfac-
tion; Trippe's order would not be filled until 1956. four years after
BOAC's first commercial flight.
In service with BOAC. the Comet was an immediate hit. In the initial
year of operations, the sleek jetliners carried almost 28.000 passengers

a total of 104.6 million miles. Even the Royal Family put its stamp of
approval on the jet; the next year the Queen Mother and Princess
Margaret flew Comet from London to Rhodesia.
in a
By May 1953. de Havilland had on hand firm orders for 50
Comets and negotiations were in progress for another 100. And BOAC.
which had estimated that it would have to fill 72 per cent of the
seats on each Comet flight to break even, found that in the firsl
12 months. Comets averaged 88 per cent of capacity The Count
seemed an unqualified suco
But there was cause for concern, too The Cornel had th
rious accidents tint year, The firsl two occurred on takeoff; In both
cases, the jetliners simply failed to I airborne Miraculously,
no one died In the fli - blamed on the pllol
Bui ; firsl mishap,

investiga i sharp look al tl
thai pilots .itt. i |hei aii polnl

» i< i
m
x>»
the wing and prescribed a modification that would add lift at low speeds. Tense before the first test flight of
The third Comet accident, which occurred on the first anniversary of the Comet prototype, on July 27, 1949, Sir
Geoffrey de Havilland (in fedora),
BOAC's historic inaugural flight to Johannesburg, was a different matter Ronald Bishop (center), the Comet's
altogether: A Comet plunged into a violent thunderstorm six minutes designer, and an unidentified executive
after taking off from Calcutta and disintegrated in mid-air. wait for the aircraft's takeoff. Sir Geoffrey
With the causes of the accidents presumably understood, neither de had gambled four million pounds $16 —
million —
on the jet's development.
Havilland, the airlines nor British aviation authorities were worried
about the Comet's future. To be sure, two of the crashes had unmasked
in the jet a peculiar vulnerability on takeoff. But there was never a new
transport built that did not develop unsuspected bugs — and this prob-
lem had been corrected promptly. The Calcutta crash was written off as
no more than a freak accident; turbulent air within a severe thunder-

storm can tear apart the stoutest airplane.
So the Comets continued to fly, enhancing British pride and piling up
airline profits — until January 10, 1954.
On that day a BOAC Comet departed from Rome's Ciampino
Airport bound London. The aircraft was G-ALYP Yoke Peter.
for —
Before takeoff, Captain Alan Gibson had promised the crew of
another BOAC airliner that he would report to them how high the
clouds reached above the Mediterranean; if the clouds extended no
34
LA*k
higher than 15,000 feet, was powered by piston
the other plane, which
engines, could fly above them and enjoy a smoother trip. At 10:50 a.m.
Gibson radioed the Rome airport that he was breaking through the
overcast at 26.000 feet en route to his planned cruising altitude of
36,000. One minute later, he began a transmission to the second BOAC
airliner below, registration G-ALHJ.
"George How Jig from George Yoke Peter." the message started.
"Did you get my ..." And then, silence. Captain Gibson never com-
pleted his message. Less than a minute after he was interrupted, Italian
fishermen near the island of Elba saw the remains of his airplane plunge
flaming from the clouds into the sea. Yoke Peter, six crew members and
29 passengers had perished.
In England. BOAC's chairman. Sir Miles Thomas, was shocked; nei-
ther he nor anyone else familiar with the airplane could do more than
speculate about what had happened above 26,000 feet to destroy the
Comet. Nor could Sir Miles wait for crash detectives to solve the mys-
tery. Less than 40 hours after the Elba disaster, he voluntarily grounded
his airline's entire fleet of seven Comets. "As a measure of prudence,"
his cautiously worded announcement said, "the normal Comet passen-
ger services are being temporarily suspended to enable minute and
unhurried technical examination to be carried out at London Airport."
Three jetliners were in England when the grounding order was issued.
The remaining four, scattered through the BOAC system, were ferried
home carrying only mail.
As soon as the accident had been reported, the Ministry of Civil
Aviation's Accident Investigation Branch launched an inquiry. Less
than 24 hours later, a parallel investigation began under the supervision
of a hastily organized committee composed of representatives from
Test pilot John Cunningham (right)
discusses the Comet prototype with two

giants of jet aviation. At left is Sir Frank
Whittle, pioneer developer of the turbojet;
beside him stands Frank Halford, designer of
the Comet's Ghost engines, which can be
seen buried in the plane's wing.
With its streamlined, 93-foot-long fuselage,

gracefully swept 115-foot wingspan and
cniising speed of just under 500 mph. the
Comet ushered in a new era of air travel.
Wearing the colors of the British Overseas
Airways Corporation, this plane, registered
G-ALYP and known by its radio call
sign. Yoke Peter, inaugurated the world's
first passenger jet service.
36
—
Great Britain's wonder plane
When the de Havilland Comet began more than twice the distance U.S. ex-
commercial service in 1952, it created perts then thought possible.
—
an immediate sensation and consider- Passengers were seated four abreast
able alarm among observers on the oth- inthe Comet's air-conditioned cabin.
er side of the Atlantic: "Whether we like The plush forward compartment could
it or not," said the editor of American seat eight around two tables used for tea,
Aviation Magazine, "the British are giv- cocktails and meals, while the aft section
ing the U.S. a drubbing in jet transport." held 28 travelers in recliner seats.
And indeed this was the case. The The vibration-free jet engines — and
Comet's four 4,500-pound-thrust turbo- above
the fact that the aircraft flew well
jet engines, developed from designs pro- —
most turbulence made for a marvel-
duced during the 1930s by British inven- ously smooth ride. "To compare it with
tor Frank Whittle, made the plane the an ordinary plane is like contrasting sail-
fastest commercial transport of its day. A ing with motorboating," wrote BOAC
fully pressurized fuselage enabled it to fly president Sir Miles Thomas in the Lon-
passengers comfortably through the thin don Sunday/ Times. And one passenger
air of the stratosphere, eight miles up, bestowed what was perhaps the ultimate
where jet engines operate most efficient- compliment after her first flight. Asked
ly. And wing tanks for 7,500 gallons of for her impression of the Comet, she re-
fuel gave it a range of 1,750 miles plied unselfconsciously: "I fell asleep."
37
BOAC, de Havilland and the British Air Registration Board, which had
granted the Comet its airworthiness certificate.
Unfortunately, the sleuths had little to go on. The Italian fishermen,
rushing to the scene of the accident, recovered 15 bodies, which were
morgue for autopsy. The British Admiralty organized a salvage
sent to a
operation a week after the crash, but raising Yoke Peter from 500 feet of
—
water if this feat could be accomplished at all —
would take luck
and considerable time.
In the absence of hard evidence, speculation abounded. Sabotage
came to mind quickly and was infinitely more palatable as a cause for
the tragedy than the idea of a fatal flaw in the aircraft. If sabotage was
eliminated, the next most logical explanation seemed to be that a tur-
bine blade had snapped off and ruptured a fuel tank, causing an ex-
plosion. Turbine blades failed so rarely, however, that this explanation Near Calcutta, a BOAC ground party
seemed unlikely. Other theories ranged from a breakup in severe turbu- searches debris of a Comet for bodies of 43
lence, sometimes encountered in clear skies, to an explosion of fuel passengers killed in a crash on the first
anniversary of the liners maiden flight,
vapor in an empty tank.
May 2, 1953. The jet apparently
Sir Victor Tait, BOAC's operations director, made one further sug-
broke up in a thunderstorm, strewing
gestion: that metal fatigue had somehow weakened the fuselage, allow- wreckage across an eight-mile area.
38
"
Brought to the island of Elba by fishing

boats, the bodies of 15 victims of the Yoke
Peter crash are loaded onto a flatbed
truck for removal to the local morgue.
A surgeon who examined them noted.
"They showed no look of terror. Death
must have come without warning.
ing the air pressure inside to burst it like a balloon. It was true that, during
testing, the Comet prototype had developed a fatigue crack in the wing
after the equivalent of only 6.700 hours of flying time. But the flaw had
been corrected before the airliner went into production. Besides. Yoke
Peter had accumulated only 3.682 hours of flight time before crashing
and an airliner with less than 4.000 hours on the airframe is considered
virtually brand-new and hardly a candidate for metal fatigue.
But unless Yoke Peter could be exhumed from its watery grave off
Elba, the crash investigators could neither confirm nor deny any hy-
pothesis. Taking the only course open to them, they guessed at the
cause of the accident. After examining the grounded Comets and study-
ing their plans in detail, they recommended 50 modifications that they
were would solve the problem, whatever it was.
certain
The principal fixes were the installation of armor-plated shields be-
tween the engines and fuel tanks, reinforcement of fuel lin< I fire
detectors, new smoke detectors and improved safeguards against the

accumulation of hydrogen, an explosive by-product of battery opei
ation. In effect, the committee weighed all possibilities covering mi>
fire and explosion and tried to apply preventives for each
On February 4. 1954. Sir Miles Thomas annoum vd thai BOAC had
accepted the investigators' suggestions and 47 days latei tin modified
Comets began flying again The first to take 'iff did SO with e\
filled, once more underlining the public's confl In the |<
Even as the <
vessels of the R
and |un the diffh ult
search f< oth
lisappointn
19
out to be a freighter sunk during World War I. On another occasion, a

televisioncamera produced an unsettling image of a woman's face; it
proved to be part of an ancient stone statue.
But by the end of February, the Navy had retrieved a large section of
Yoke Peter's tail, plus skin from the rear fuselage, several seats and the
two sections of fuselage containing the lavatories and the galley, com-
plete with unbroken bottles of tonic water. Subsequent searching
brought up all four engines, the undercarriage, wing spars, huge hunks
of fuselage and more of the skin that covered it. On March 31, the
grapples hooked Yoke Peter's entire forward section the cockpit —
with the flight engineer's body still strapped to the seat and part of
the cabin minus the roof.
Recovered wreckage was sent to Britain for examination by scientists
of the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, headquarters for

British aeronautical research, which rendered technical aid to the Minis-
try of Civil Aviation's Accident Investigation Branch.
As the remains Yoke Peter accumulated on the floor of an RAE
of
hangar, the Comet was dealt a second devastating blow. On April 8.
1954, only two weeks and two days after resumption of jet service,
another of the BOAC jetliners disappeared.
The aircraft was G-ALYY, Yoke Yoke, on a flight from Rome to
Cairo. It was climbing to its assigned altitude of 35,500 feet when
radio contact suddenly ceased. There were no eyewitnesses this time
the accident occurred at night —
but five bodies, two seats and a hand-
ful of personal effects were found bobbing in the sea near the vol-
canic island of Stromboli.

For a second time in little more than three months, the Comets were
grounded. As shaken as anyone by the second crash was Britain's
Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill, who decreed that the cause must
be discovered no matter what the effort cost, either in funds or manpow-
er. For this was no ordinary crash probe; at stake was the reputation of
Britain's aircraft industry and the role of the jet in air travel.
To lead the search for the Comet's killer, the Cabinet appointed Sir
Arnold Hall, the calm, pipe-smoking director of the RAE. All British
aviation regarded Hall as the classic English "boffin," a scientist with a

single-minded concentration that blotted out everything but the task at
hand. That Hall and the RAE assumed the dominant role reflected both
the importance of the inquiryand its complexity. The Royal Aircraft
Establishment was the embodiment of objective science, and science
would have to answer the Comet riddle.
By May 1, the Navy had recovered approximately two thirds of Yoke
Peter, an exceptional performance considering that the aircraft had
broken into several thousand pieces over 100 square miles of ocean.
However, the wreckage was arriving at Farnborough at too slow a pace
for Hall — some of it came by battleship. Hall had at his disposal a huge
U.S. Air Force cargo plane, loaned to the RAE under a NATO agree-
ment that expressly forbade flying it outside the British Isles. Sir Arnold,
40
a red-tape cutter all his life, dispatched the plane to pick up wreckage
without waiting for official permission.
Each scrap that arrived at Farnborough underwent immediate exami-
nation, analysis and testing. One was missing a
of the plane's engines
turbine blade. Perhaps, after all, the theory that a blade had snapped off
and pierced a fuel tank was correct. But the lead was false. The experts
found the turbine casing intact; the blade had been dislodged by
the force of the crash.
Hall guided the inquiry in a different direction. He was intrigued by
the fatigue crack that had appeared in the Comet prototype. Wasting no
time, he began to examine the possibility, also favored by Dr. Percy B.
Walker, head of the Structures Department at Farnborough, that such a
crack had doomed Yoke Peter. Hall instructed Walker to build a tank
around the fuselage of one of the grounded Comets. The wings pro-
truded from a hole in each side of the tank; gaps were sealed to make
the tank watertight. The seats were replaced with ballast to simulate a
load of passengers, then tank and cabin were flooded with water.
Dr. Walker's intentwas to expose the plane to a lifetime of pressuriza-
tion cycles by a method that other companies would use to test their
new jetliners: Water pressure inside the fuselage was to be raised and
lowered while the wings were flexed to simulate flight. If the pressure
produced an explosion, the water in the tank would cushion it.
The tank was completed in six weeks, thanks to Sir Arnold's constant
prodding, and the Comet's make-believe yet grimly realistic "flights"
began. The pressure of the water in the cabin was raised to the eight and
a quarter pounds per square inch that would have been the case for a
Comet flying above 35,000 feet; it was held there for three minutes and
then lowered again while the wings were moved up and down by
hydraulic jacks. Dr. Walker calculated that each pressurization cycle in
the tank was the equivalent of a three-hour flight. When carried on 24-
hours nonstop, such testing would age the Comet nearly 40 times faster
than actual airline service.
Meanwhile, the head of RAE's Accidents Investigation Section, Eric

Ripley, began hanging the remnants of Yoke Peter on a wooden skele-
ton in the shape of a Comet. Literally as well as figuratively, the pieces of
aviation's greatest jigsaw puzzle were beginning to fit into place.
The wreckage being loosely assembled on Ripley's wooden frame
showed mounting evidence that the cabin had failed first. There were
blue smears on parts of the tail, and chemical analysis showed that they
came from seats. Thisseemed to indicate that the tail was intact when
Yoke Peter broke up above Elba; some force had hurled objects in the
cabin against the tail. Scratches on the port wing contained streaks of
fuselage paint. Conclusion: The wing was intact when a piece of the
fuselage hit it with such power as to brand the wing with paint.
To such irrefutable evidence, Professor Antonio Fornari, the distin-
guished Italian pathologist who had performed the autopsies on the
bodies recovered from Yoke Peter, added still more. Never, he said,
41
had he seen such traumatic injuries — ruptured hearts, torn lungs and
fractured skulls. In his opinion, the passengers and crew could only have
died "by violent movement and explosive decompression."
RAE scientists had become convinced that the source of the Comet's
troubles lay in the fuselage. But they could not say where or how. The
answer came on June 24. after the Comet in the water torture tank had
been subjected to the equivalent of 9.000 flying hours. Engineers told
Sir Arnold Hall that the cabin would no longer hold pressure.
When the tank was drained, the RAE scientists blanched at what they
saw. There was a split in the fuselage. It began with a fracture in a corner
of an escape hatch window and extended for eight feet, passing directly
through a window frame in its path. Examining the window. RAE metal-
lurgists found the telltaleand crystallization of metal fa-
discoloration
tigue. If this Comet's fuselage had not been wrapped in a watery shock
absorber, the entire cabin would have exploded with bomblike force.
The two Comets that crashed apparently had done exactly that.
In mid-August. Hall received final corroboration when Italian trawlers
brought up a large section of Yoke Peter's cabin roof. Flown to Farnbor-

ough and inspected eagerly, it proved to be a virtual carbon copy of the
Comet in the tank. A large crack had started in the corner of a navigation
window on top of the fuselage and had grown instantly into a wide
fracture. This opening, like the escape hatch window, had square cor-
ners, a grim reminder of the U.S. Civil Aeronautics Administration's
misgivings about the Comet's square windows.
It is axiomatic that no aircraft accident has a single cause. Every crash
results from the interplay of several factors that culminates in human or
mechanical The square design of the windows, the Comet's
failure.
ultimate Achilles heel, was but one link in a deadly chain of circum-
stances that started long before any Comet flew.
To build an airliner whose profitability depended on its ability to fly
high and fast, de Havilland had made the plane as lightweight as possi-
ble. Had the skin been thicker, it might not have fatigued so quickly. It
was no secret at the time that the Comet would have to withstand
pressurization stresses no airliner had ever before encountered, and the
Comet's fuselage met or surpassed all existing structural standards. But
—
no one at de Havilland or at the Air Registration Board had antici- —
pated the effects on the fuselage of the Comet's unusually fast climb to
cruising altitude and quick descent to land. Rapid changes in altitude
resulted in rapid changes in pressure that flexed the airframe enough to
cause metal fatigue at the corners of the windows.
The Comet 1 never carried another passenger. Comet 2 and Comet
3 never flew commercially. And the gallant, pioneering plane's epitaph
was written in the coldly impersonal words of the British government's
official findings: "The problem of securing an economically satisfactory
safe life of the pressure cabin of an aircraft needs more study both in
design and by experiment if the highest possible safe structure is
to be achieved.'" That would take another four years. -^-^
42
Vf
Caskets of the Comet crash victims are borne through Porto Azzurro, Elba, in a funeral cortege four days after the bodies were retrieved from the sea.
43
~+**+a/L-
umiiURMiaaHKHMiniar»t<
"
Stalking the Comet's

fatal flaw
When in April 1954 Sir Arnold Hall of the Royal Aircraft

Establishment at Farnborough, England, was asked to find
out why two Comet jet airliners had broken up over the
Mediterranean earlier that year, he divided his staff into
groups so that it could pursue different lines of inquiry
simultaneously and come to a conclusion sooner than
might otherwise have been possible. One group not only
took a Comet on test flights but simulated flights on the
ground, reproducing as closely as possible the conditions
under which Yoke Peter and its sister ship. Yoke Yoke,
had met disaster. These experiments were intended to
eliminate all possible causes save the actual one. thus pro-
viding circumstantial evidence of the Comet's fatal flaw.
A second group, like coroners seeking the cause of
death in a mutilated victim, pored over the wreckage of
Yoke Peter recovered by the Royal Navy. "To achieve a
desirable degree of certainty."' Sir Arnold said, "it was
most important to find the piece that carried the finger-
prints of the cause. " After reconstructing sections of the jet
on a wooden frame at Farnborough. however, the investi-
gators realized that vital parts were still missing.
To guide the salvage crews fishing for the remaining
pieces, ingenious tests were conducted using 20 models
J
/36 the size of a Comet. The replicas, designed to disinte-
grate in mid-air. were taken up 835 feet in a balloon and
launched at a velocity of 90 feet per second to represent
proportionally Yoke Peter's speed and altitude at the time
of the accident. Mathematicians studied the pattern in
which the fragments scattered and were able to suggest
likely spots on the seabed where major sections of the jet
might be found. In a short time, most of the rest of the

plane was recovered and the detective work went on.
Italian eyewitnesses recreate in chalk

the Comet Yoke Peter's fiery plunge into the
sea. "I heard three explosions, " one
fisherman said. "Then several miles away. I
saw a silver thing flash out of the clouds.

By the time 1 got there, all was still again.
IMHBH^H n
An underwater television camera dangles m lamps attached to the camera pierces the murky depths to reveal the cabin floor.
from aship's pulley. When suspended
20 feet above the seabed, the wide-angle
lens could scan a 320-square-foot area.
From watery grave

to aeronautic autopsy
The retrieval of Yoke Peter, said one

Royal Navy captain, was simply "a mat-
'
ter of time and luck. It was also a matter

'
of applying the very latest underwater

salvage techniques.
Ships equipped with sonar located
promising projections on the sea floor
and marked the sites with flagged buoys.
A salvage vessel dropped anchor near
each buoy and lowered an underwater
television camera. Whenever something
showed up on the screen, an operator in
a diving chamber guided the 4V2 -ton
claw of a crane down to retrieve it.
After three months of work, about

three fourths of the Comet was brought
up and sent to England. All four jet en-
gines were given a clean bill of health,
and investigators began a painstaking
examination of the rest of the wreckage
to determine what had caused the Com-
et to break up.
An Italian trawler nets a big catch —the first major part of the jet's fuselage to be recovered.
Sailors on the deck of the salvage vessel Sea Salvor glean and hose fragments of Yoke Peter smeared with muck from the sea floor.
Surrounded by villagers, officials make a preliminary inspection of one of the de Havilland Ghost engines on a pier at Portoferraio, Elba
1
. It*-
The crew's hatch (center) and equipment

bay door beside it Yoke Peter's
lean against
nose. Absence of fire damage to the —
The severed tail with Speedbird
forward cabin indicated that it had separated emblem and the call letters G-ALYP intact —
from the burning fuselage in mid-air. rests on a frame. The cabin roof (left)
shows a pressure dome formed when the

fuselage struck water open-end first.
**'» <9
m
h
Yoke Peter, skeletal on a wooden frame, lies ringed]
u_ ira*ii k «n»«ii\iaMl\MU
I its skin and contents in a hangar at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Famborough Reassembling it was "like a 3-D jigsaw puzzle,'' a reporter marveled.
Transformed from posh airliner into flying lab, a Comet under test displays a double row of devices for recording in-flight loads and stresses.
Tempting a tiger Comet disasters were due to explosive Evidence from another experiment
decompression of the passenger cabins, one conducted in the comparative safety
at 35,000 feet he took the precaution of ordering that of an RAE lab — confirmed Sir Arnold's
the test planebe flown unpressurized, belief that violent depressurization had
Twenty members of Hall's staff volun- even when at a maximum altitude of destroyed Yoke Peter. A plastic 1/10
teered to conduct performance tests in a 35.000 feet. As a result, the observers scale model, complete with bulkheads,
Comet that were to push the airliner to its and crew had to wear oxygen masks, 28 seats and six mannequins, was placed
limits. "They were going as close to the and several suffered from the bends in an evacuation chamber. While the
tiger as possible." said one investigator, severe joint pain caused by nitrogen model was pressurized, the exterior pres-
"hoping it would not get them.'" bubbles in the bloodstream. sure was brought to a high-altitude level
The jet s seats were removed and the To everyone's relief, the Comet went to duplicate actual flight conditions. A
plane was wired with instruments con- up 50 times without incident. "The test high-speed movie camera captured the
nected to recording machines installed in flights covered possibilities which proved when a section of the cabin roof
result
the forward half of the main cabin. negative," Hall said, "but added to the was blown off with a small explosive
Because Sir Arnold suspected that the process of isolating the real cause." charge (right).
"
A dramatic sequence of frames showing a Shots taken from another angle show
model of the Comet's fuselage subjected to a section of the model's roof (top) being
explosive decompression reveals how 56 blasted off (middle) and the contents
passengers and crewmen met sudden death. being shot through the hole (bottom). "The
"An instantaneous and powerful force in tube became," said Sir Arnold, referring
the cabin," Hall said, "threw most of them to the fuselage, "what the lavman might
upwards against the roof." describe as a compressed-air gun.
the fuselage caused the difference be- Yoke Uncle, submerged a
Uncovering its fuselage in
tween interior and exterior pressure to quarter of a million gallons of water in a 112-
the final clue go up and down as if the plane were foot-long tank, undergoes a fatigue test.
taking off. flying to 30,000 feet and de- Hydraulic rigs in the huts to the left of the
Months of weeding out possible causes scending. Hydraulic .acks waggled the
Comet controlled pressure within the cabin.
for the disasters left Sir Arnold with one wings to reflect actual flying conditions.
primary suspect: metal fatigue. He de- The tank was periodically drained,
cided that the only way to find if such and slowly new evidence accumulated.
fatigue had caused the crashes was to The pressure changes had pulled rivets
subject a Comet to untoward strain. through the skin and caused cracks in the
Yoke Uncle, a jet that had flown as fuselage, frame and floor beams. After
long as Yoke Peter, was selected for test- the equivalent of 3.057 flights, a large
ing. Workmen built a rubber-lined steel split suddenly appeared at the forward
tank around the fuselage. Yoke Uncle escape hatch. Had the jet been aloft, it
Exterior and interior views of the escape
was then submerged in water and sub- would have immediately broken up as hatch where the cabin firstsplit show that the
jected to pressure changes simulating the the pressurized air inside the fuselage window stayed in place, but that the metal
effects of a continuous series of three- forced its way out with explosive effect. frame popped out. In flight, such an incident
hour flights. Water pumped in and out of The Comet's fatal flaw had been found. would have destroyed the plane at once.
K»
r*iuuim>nr I
dm:
America enters the jet age
In 1950, two years before Yoke

Peter's historic maiden flight to Johannesburg, William M. Allen, the
president of the Boeing Aircraft Company, went to England to check
out the Comet. He was accompanied by Maynard Pennell, Boeing's
chief of Preliminary Design, and together they attended the Farnbor-
ough Show, a major aviation fair held every two years.
Air
Allen and Pennell stood among other luminaries on the grassy slopes
overlooking the and awaited the first public appearance of
airfield
the plane. As the new jetliner approached, not even the metallic
timbre of the public address system could muffle the pride in the
announcer's voice. "This aircraft," he proclaimed above the mur-
murs of the awed crowd, "has an unrivaled cruising speed of 490 miles
per hour at 35,000 to 42,000 feet. An aircraft with extraordinary com-
mercial capabilities ..."
The Comet screamed over the field at full throttle, only a few hundred
feet off the ground, then curved up sharply and effortlessly like a huge
silver knife slicing through the sky. Allen turned to his British host.
"Appears to be a fine airplane," he commented graciously. But

in the mind of this competitive businessman, the seeds of chal-
lenge had been sown. At dinner that night, he asked Pennell what he
thought of the Comet.
"It's a very good airplane," Pennell said.
"Do you think we could build one as good?"
"Better," Pennell assured him. "Much better."
Back at headquarters in Seattle, Allen, Pennell and the Boeing brain
trust began to assess the prospects for a Boeing success in the jetliner
field. Of the five major U.S. airliner manufacturers, Boeing alone pos-
sessed experience in building large jet aircraft. Douglas and Lockheed
had produced between them nearly a dozen types of jet fighters; Con-
vair and Martin had built only experimental jets. But the six-engined
Boeing B-47 jet bomber had been flying for nearly two years and was
in full production; an even larger, eight-engined jet bomber, the B-52,
was only two years away from roll-out and initial test flights. To be
sure, these were military airplanes, but much of the experience ac-
Emerging from its hangar, Boeing's $16 million 707 prototype

makes its public debut as America s first jet transport one month
after Britain's ill-fated Comet was grounded.
55
quired in producing them would apply to creating a civilian transport.
There was no evidence that Boeing's American rivals were doing

much more than daydream about building passenger jets. In Burbank,
California, where Lockheed's Clarence L. "Kelly" Johnson ran his
Advanced Development Projects Staff out of a cluster of offices known
as Kelly's Skunk Works, preliminary design studies were under way on
several jetliner concepts. The most promising was for a double-decked
plane with four turbojets mounted on each side of the fuselage near the
tail. But with the exception of the talented denizens of the Skunk Works,
no one at Lockheed took this or the other schemes seriously.

In Santa Monica, a few miles to the south, Douglas had no specifics
on paper. As early as 1943, company officials had sounded out a num-

ber of airlines on a plan to build a small, jet-powered flying laboratory
that would provide some insights into the feasibility of a commercial jet,
but the idea had received a cool reception. So company continued

the
its concentration instead on the profitable business of producing DC-6s
and DC-7s, the world's best-selling airliners. At Convair and Martin,
both busily engaged in cranking out twin-engined piston transports, the
notion of building jet airliners sparked not much more of a response.
Boeing knew the risks involved in launching an airliner. Though the
company enjoyed a reputation second to none as a builder of heavy
bombers, it ranked far behind Douglas and Lockheed in the airliner
field. Four times in its four-decade history Boeing had attempted to gain
transport supremacy but had been dogged by failure. First there was the
Model 80, a three-engined, fabric-covered biplane that carried 12 pas-
sengers in what was unusual luxury for the 1920s the craft boasted —
upholstered seats, reading and the first stewardesses on any
lights
American airliner. Introduced in 1928 on the Chicago-San Francisco

route by Boeing Air Transport, the plane proved to be sturdy and
reliable. But it could not match the popularity of the all-metal Ford Tri-
motor monoplane, which had appeared two years and it was

earlier,
very slow. One wag said that "when you saw it on the horizon coming
into Great Falls from Butte, you still had time to drive to the downtown
post office, pick up the mail,
and get back to the field before it landed."
Only a handful of Model 80s were ever built.
Next came the 247, a twin-engined, all-metal monoplane. It entered
service in 1933 hailed as the world's fastest airliner, and was for
it —
almost a year. Then virtually overnight, the newer, faster and bigger
Douglas DC-2 rendered the 247 obsolete.
Boeing's third try involved a prewar transport, the B-307 Stratoliner,
which had the distinction of being the world's first airliner with a pressur-
ized cabin. The more than a passing resemblance to
Stratoliner bore
Boeing's B-17 Flying Fortress; its dirigible-shaped fuselage had been
mated to the wings and tail of the famous bomber. World War II made
the B-17 a legend, but it destroyed any chance of commercial success
for the Stratoliner. Airlines, eager to keep up with the times, showed no
enthusiasm for a plane that had been designed before the War.
56
Inside Boeing's wind tunnel, top engineer
Edward C. Wells looks over a 707 test model
built to scale,one of four that required some
5.000 shop hours to develop. This early
design, featuring a pair of low-slung pods
with two turbines each, was later modified to
include four separate engine pods.
Boeing's response was to come up with the Stratocruiser, a commercial

version of its new four-engined military tanker, the C-97, purchased by
the U.S. Air Force for in-flight refueling of long-range bombers. The
Stratocruiser was loved by passengers and hated by the airlines. The
flying public appreciated its roomy comfort; the Stratocruiser had two
decks, a cocktail lounge on the lower level —

and a few models even
had sleeping berths. But the plane was unreliable and expensive to
operate. In competition with the new, faster Douglas DC-6 and Lock-
heed Constellation, both four-engined airliners with pressurized cabins,
the Stratocruiser turned out to be an economic disappointment for
Boeing. Between 1944 and 1950, only 55 were built; in that same time,
Douglas produced 175 DC-6s and Lockheed built 232 Constellations.
With the delivery of the final Stratocruiser, Boeing seemed to be out
of the commercial transport business entirely. Yet Boeing's president
Allen, a lawyer who had risen to the top of the company hierarchy by
virtue of his skill in contract negotiations, was only too aware of an
unpleasant fact of life: Boeing would never prosper if it attempted to live
off military business alone.

The was made to go ahead with the jetliner. Allen and his
decision
team inaugurated comprehensive design studies. Almost from the start,
they thought big. Though Allen and Pennell had been impressed with
the Comet's performance, they regarded its relatively small size as a
drawback. Boeing's engineers were convinced that to be as economical

to operate as a piston-engined plane, a jetliner would have to carry at
least twice as many passengers.

To design a prototype, Boeing engineers first searched through their
blueprints to see if they could put together a jetliner from wings, tails and
fuselages already on hand. The initial design carried the designation
57
Model 367-64, the 64th variation in the Stratocruiser series, and it

did resemble the older plane in its rather fat, if larger, fuselage and
modestly sweptback wings, each fitted with a single pod contain- a
its
"The biggest blunder
ing two jet engines.
The engine arrangement had been copied from Boeing's jet bomb-
Safety was their main
When the DC-8 was still on the drawing
ers, but the designers were not happy with it.
boards and the 707 existed only in pro-

consideration: If one engine exploded, it could easily damage the ad-
totype, Britain again had a chance to
joining one. They on four separate engine pods, two
settled therefore seize the lead in commercial aviation
slung under each wing. This would not only solve the safety problem with the Vickers jet. a giant plane offering
but would distribute the engines' weight (at 3,500 pounds, each engine the advantage of transatlantic range.
was almost half again as heavy as Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis). While Designed for military transport as well
wind tunnel tests confirmed the wisdom of the arrangement air cur- — as airline service, the V.1000 was to car-
rents flowed undisturbed past the engines and across the wings they — ry
ing
100 passengers 2,900 miles at a cruis-
speed of 500 mph. But the develop-
also revealed that the whalelike fuselage would create prohibitive air
ment cost proved too high for the RAF,
resistance, slowing the aircraft and making it uneconomical to fly. The and BOAC could not assume the ex-
designers now set about changing the fuselage's shape. pense alone. So the jet, 80 per cent com-
Although modifications were swinging the aircraft increasingly away pleted, was scrapped in 1955 in a move
the project director would later call "the
from the Stratocruiser concept, Boeing continued to number the
biggest blunder of all."
new designs as if they still bore resemblance to the old piston-
engined plane, designating the last of the series Model 367-80.
"It was partially a bit of camouflage." an official was later to ad-
mit. "We wanted people to believe we were going the Stratocruiser

route with the jet. It was quite early that in-house, we began calling it
something else." They called it the 707 — the 707th design in the long
line of airplane concepts at Boeing.
Whatever the jet's final 707 must be able
form, Allen insisted that the
to serve as both a commercial transport and. with only minor alteration,
as a military tanker. He knew from Boeing's experience with the Strato-
liner and the B-17 that there was economy in building a plane with
interchangeable components. Allen also knew that the Air Force soon
would be in the market for a new jet tanker. Boeing's C-97 could not fly
high enough to refuel B-47 and B-52 jet bombers at their operating
altitudes. If the Air Force bought the plane, putting its stamp of approval
on it, the airlines would be bound to flock to the jet.
There was some evidence that the airlines were interested in a pas-
senger jet. Early in 1952. before Boeing's work on the 707 became
common knowledge. United Air Lines embarked on an experiment
called Operation Paper Jet to determine whether 550-mile-per-hour
jets could mesh with much slower piston-engined traffic. Daily, for more
than a year, theoretical aircraft completed two round-trip flights coast-
to-coast — on paper. They were assumed to cover the distance non-

stop, fueled with mathematical computations and graphs intended to
simulate a real operation. On paper at least the flights were an unquali-
fied success. But at the time only Pan American World Airways had the
money buy jets and it had already placed orders with de Havilland for
to
Comets. United and the rest of the large U.S. airlines were mortgaged
up to their flaps, having spent some $600 million, as of January 1, 1952.
58
—
A model of the V.1000 clearly shows the distinctive shape of its wings. Constmction halted, the V.1000 sits abandoned in the Vickers shop.
on hundreds of new DC-6s, Constellations. Stratocruisers. Convairs

and Martins.And the Air Force had yet to persuade Congress to appro-
priate money for replacing the C-97.
Boeing wanted to see the 707 fly, it could not count on help
If
from the airlines; it would have to pay the development costs itself.
—
On April 22. 1952 just 10 days before the Comet began carry-
ing passengers —
the Boeing board of directors authorized the ex-
penditure of $15 one fourth of the company's net worth, for
million,
the development of a prototype. It was a step into the void. Should

the Air Force or the airlines decline to purchase the plane. Boeing would
face possible bankruptcy.
With the company's future at stake, Boeing set about the immensely
complex task of creating the best airliner it knew how to build. The
design was refined in more than 4,240 hours of aerodynamic testing in
wind tunnels. The entire airframe was constructed on a fail-safe princi-
ple —
no structural component could give out without another compo-
nent assuming the additional burden. The wings, fuselage and tail were
exposed to all kinds of stress; one wing snapped only after it was subject-
ed to loads more than 110 per cent above the maximum stress it would
encounter under the most severe flight conditions. Triple-strength
round windows, plug-type doors that sealed tighter as the plane flew
higher, spot welds instead of rivets for greater strength — these and
other features would make707 the strongest airliner ever built.
the
—
Perhaps the wisest decision and certainly the most prescient
involved the skin of the aircraft. Months before the Comet's tragic vul-
nerability to explosive decompression became known. Boeing engi-
neers specified aluminum for the skin that was four and one half times as
59
^^BH
Christening the 707 prototype at its roll-
out in May
1954, Bertha Boeing, wife of the
m
company founder, breaks a bottle of
champagne against the jet's nose, much to
the delight of president William Allen.
1
The day was a special triumph for Allen,
who had boldly risked the firm s future
on the development of a commercial jet.
thick as the Comet's, to resist tearing. Moreover, at frequent intervals,

they welded to the inside of the skin "tear stoppers" made of titanium, a
metal as aluminum but stronger than steel. Thus, wherever a
light as
metal-fatigue rupture might start, it would soon encounter a titanium

strip blocking its deadly path. But there was little chance that the skin
would crack. Boeing put a 707 fuselage through 50,000 pressurization

cycles, and still the vital sheath of metal remained intact.
The finished plane was immense. It weighed 160,000 pounds. The

fuselage, 128 feet long, stretched eight feet farther than the distance
covered by Wilbur Wright on man's first powered flight, and the nose
gear alone was heavier than the Wright brothers' Flyer.
The 707 made its first flight on July 15, 1954, with A. M. "Tex"
Johnston, Boeing's chief test pilot, at the controls. For an hour and 24
minutes, Johnston put it "She wanted to climb like a
through its paces.
rocket," he reported excitedly upon landing. The Boeing people were
overjoyed; they knew they had a viable jet airliner to sell to any comers
and a jump on potential American competitors.
But for all its initial success, the 707 was far from a perfect plane. It
could not, for example, carry enough fuel to fly a full payload nonstop
And test flights quickly disclosed that actually was
across the Atlantic. it
underpowered. Though its Pratt & Whitney JT3P engines were almost
three times as powerful as the Comet's Ghost turbojets, the 707
weighed half again as much as the Comet. When heavily loaded in hot
weather, required so much runway to become airborne that it would
it
be unsafe to operate from most airports. To solve the problem hundreds

of gallons of cold water were injected into the engine's air intakes during
the takeoff The water lowered the engine temperatures, making the
roll.
air within denser so that more fuel could be burned. The result was
1 000 pounds more thrust at the moment it was needed most. Eventual-
,
ly engines of greater power would be substituted for the JT-3s.
—
Other problems some of them disconcerting even to an experi-
60
s
A M "Tex" Johnston. Boeing's colorful

chief test pilot, checks out the 707
cockpit shortly before taking the jet aloft on
its maiden flight Johnston was so bedazzled
by the plane's performance, goes the story.
that when he returned to the pilots' ready
room to change his clothes he marched into
the shower still wearing his cowboy boots.
enced hand such as Johnston — arose during the exhaustive program of

test flights necessary before the 707 could be declared safe. After con-
ducting a series of runway braking tests. Johnston and his crew climbed
to 22.000 feet for other tests when someone
they heard a sound "like
shooting off both barrels of a 12-gauge shotgun in the cockpit.'* An F-86
Sabrejet was being used as a chase plane, observing the tests from close
by; its pilot radioed Johnston that black smoke was pouring from his
wheel-well doors. Johnston lowered the landing gear and the chase
pilot reported that some of the jet's 10 tires were on fire. Johnston
extinguished the flames by increasing speed and managed to land
the jet in one piece.
Boeing's engineers soon discovered that the 707' s brakes were at
fault. During the braking tests before the flight, they had become over-
heated and caused the tires to burst, then catch fire. Though the cir-
cumstances that caused the incident were unlikely to be duplicated
under normal operating conditions, Boeing redesigned the brakes to
dissipate heat more quickly.
Johnston had another scare when he was diving the big jet at its
maximum speed. The plane suddenly began to shudder. Johnston
slowed down to stop it before the plane became uncontrollable. "Ap-
preciable vibration" was his laconic report upon landing. That was more
than an understatement; the jolting had loosened the flight engineer's
instrument panel from its latches. The trouble was traced to the failure of
a small component in the tail, intended to keep the rudder from shaking
the airplane to pieces at high speed.
Interspersed among the test flights were demonstration rides for
Air Force officials and airline executives from around the world.
For most it was their first exposure to the silky-smooth power of
jet flight and was no better tour conductor than Johnston. He
there
particularly enjoyed showing off the 707 to senior airline pilots,
who were allowed to take over the controls.
61
'
When Johnston himself put the plane through its paces he could do
so dramatically. Once he was asked to make a low pass over the Gold
Cup Hydroplane Boat Races on Seattle's Lake Washington. This was The Tu-104 jet's twin engines provided
Allen's idea, his way of impressing members of the Aircraft Industries up to 30,000 pounds of thrust and gave the
plane a cruising speed of 500 mph.
Association, who were aboard a specially chartered yacht. As the 707
screamed composure dissolved. He watched aghast
into view, Allen's
as Johnston put the only 707 in existence through two complete barrel
rolls at high altitude, then dived and rolled the huge plane again, directly
over the yacht.

tural strength,
It was an impressive demonstration
but for a heart-stopping moment Allen
of the plane's struc-
had visions of a
" ==~ —Q >4 j\
$16 and seam. Later he is
million investment splitting at every rivet *
27 © ~ *
supposed to have chastised Johnston. But the industry officials who had
witnessed the stunts gave the 707 valuable word-of-mouth advertising.
Boeing, of course, needed all the publicity it could get for the new
plane and it went to great pains to promote the 707 and to remove —
any doubts people might have about flying in a jet. One sales tool used
was a movie. entitled Operation Guillotine. It offered visual proof that
the Comet's problem would not afflict the 707. The film, shown to every
potential customer beginning in 1955. opened with a shot of a pressur-
ized airliner fuselage, structurally similar to the Comet's, mounted on a
platform. Above it, like swords of Damocles, hung two huge steel
blades. In slow motion, the blades dropped, piercing the fuselage. At the
two points of penetration, the metal skin began to split and curl outward,
faster and farther until suddenly the entire fuselage burst like a ripe pea
pod, ejecting seats, dummies representing passengers, overhead bins,
even the cabin floor.
The camera then focused on a 707 fuselage reinforced with titanium

tear stoppers. Five big blades sliced through the skin, and there was
never a person in the audience who did not wince in anticipation.
Nothing happened. Little puffs of air could be heard escaping from the
wounds, and that was it — no disintegration, no explosive decompres-
sion. Plainly, if a tear occurred in a 707, the pilot would have plenty of
time for a descent to a safe altitude as passengers donned automatically
deployed oxygen masks.
Boeing signed up its first customer March 1955; the U.S.
in Air Force
ordered a fleet of 29 jet tankers. There were no civilian orders yet, to be
sure, but the military contract served as a psychological as well as finan-
cial boost. Nor was the Air Force purchase of the 707s lost on the
apparently slumbering giant to the south. In early June. 1955, Douglas
Aircraft announced that it would design and produce a jet transport, the
DC-8. The race was on.
In many ways. Douglas was accepting greater risks than Boeing had
when it undertook the 707 two years earlier. Douglas would not have a
military contract to help defray development costs. Nor would there be
time to create a prototype. The first DC-8 would have to be almost

perfect the day it flew, and it would have to be better than the 707.
Douglas had not been asleep all the time. Only a month after
62
UU
fl bomber with seats
During an early thaw in the Cold War, the bombardier sat in the Badger. In con-
the first Soviet jet transport to be seen trast, the four cabins aft were almost
in the West, Aeroflot's Tupolev 104, Edwardian in their decor, with lacy cur-
roared into London on a diplomatic mis- tains hanging over windows in the parti-
sion. Arriving in March 1956, at a time tions and porcelain figurines lining glass-
when the Comet 1 was grounded and fronted cabinets in the buffet. The jet
the 707 was not yet carrying passen- also featured two clothes closets, three
Red jet was described
gers, the so-called commodious lavatories and lounge seat-
by the press as "a veiled threat." "a ing, and it provided meals cooked to or-
smug boast" and "a sneering challenge der. But because the Tu-104 could carry
to Western jet development." London's only 50 passengers and was a gulper of
Dai'/y Mail even worried that the Tu-104 fuel. Western makers were quick
aircraft
was "more advanced than anything like- to agree that it posed no real. threat to
ly to be available in Britain or the U.S. for them. Not surprisingly, the Tu-104 never
at least three years." broke into the world jet market.
Adapted from the Russians' Tu-16 But the 250 or so that flew for Aeroflot
Badger bomber, the jetliner represented were tremendously successful within the
an odd marriage of warplane and com- vast Soviet Union, where they slashed
mercial transport. Its flight deck resem- flight times between such distant cities as
bled the bomber's, with the navigator Moscow and Irkutsk from 14 hours to
located in the glass-encased nose where five and a half.
63
The Tu-104 cockpit, unorthodox for an airliner, features a wide aisle, overhead autopilot and fans for keeping pilot and copilot cool.
Passengers play chess beside a model of the Tu-104. The plane operated most efficiently at 33,000 feet.
64
I*
65
Boeing's board of directors had approved the construction of the 707

in 1952. Douglas established a secret Special Project Office so hush-
hush that only a handful of executives knew of its work, which was to
draw up specifications for the DC-8. Later that year. Douglas invited
the airlines to Santa Monica for the unveiling of a full-scale mock-up of
the result, a 560-mile-per-hour plane that, the visitors were told, could
be in service by 1958 — providing they demonstrated their interest with
orders. To the disappointment of the Special Project Office, the airlines
exhibited far greater interest in Douglas' plans for the ultimate in piston
transports: the DC-7, an enlarged DC-6 with nonstop transcontinental
and transoceanic range.
Douglas had undertaken the DC-7 1952 at the instigation
project in
of American Airlines' president C. R. Smith, who wanted a plane that

could fly farther and faster than the Lockheed Constellation used by his
competition. Trans World Airlines and Eastern Air Lines. And Douglas
provided such a plane. The DC-7s carried a power plant touted by
Douglas' engineers as "the most efficient large piston engine ever devel-
—
oped" the innovative Wright R-3350 turbo-compound radial engine.
The R-3350 used the power in the hot exhaust from its 18 cylinders to
drive a turbine on the propeller shaft. The result was a substantial
increase in power without the penalty of greater fuel consumption; it
enabled the DC-7 to cruise at 350 miles per hour with a 20 per cent
greater range than the DC-6.
Diverted by the success of the DC-7. Douglas did little work on the
DC-8, even after rumors of Boeing's 707 were confirmed. It took a visit
from representatives of Pan American World Airways in 1955 to awak-

en Donald Douglas to the reality that the jet age was about to pass his
company by. Pan Am had agreed to purchase Comets from Britain, but
the deal fell through when the plane was permanently grounded, and
the airline went shopping for another plane. Fresh from a demonstra-
tion flight aboard the 707. Pan Am executives descended on Santa
Monica to persuade Douglas up Boeing's gauntlet; a better
to take
airplane might emerge from spirited competition between builders than
from a de facto Boeing monopoly. Douglas knew what effect a Pan Am
order for the 707 would have on an industry that traditionally played
follow-the-leader in equipment. His firm would be condemned to eating
Boeing's exhaust forever.
There was no time to lose. The company needed orders for the DC-8,
but all it had to offer were blueprints, sketches, theoretical performance
specifications, the results of wind tunnel tests on models and an out-
moded, three-year-old mock-up. Who could be expected to put a de-
posit on a paper airplane?
In one respect, at least. Boeing's lead gave Douglas an advantage.
Though the 707 might be only a prototype, it was nevertheless a suc-

cessful one. and because of the fortune the plane had cost, and the risk it
had entailed to the company. Boeing would be unlikely to spend more

money on design changes for some time to come. Douglas, on the other
66
^
Behind a tableful of earlier commercial
successes, Donald Douglas shows off
a model of the DC-8. his company's last-
minute entry into the jet sweepstakes.
Starting a year after the 707 s roll-out.
Douglas plunged into building the DC-8,

pouring one billion dollars into the project.
hand, could benefit from what saw as the 707's drawbacks. For one
it
thing, it could provide a wider cabin so that more seats could be used.
Better yet, it could build a plane with a greater range. Boeing, admitted
Douglas salesmen, would have earlier deliveries, but wait about a year,
potential customers were told, for a superior product.
Douglas had to build the DC-8 right on the would be no
first try; there
time — or money — for a second attempt. Thus, the DC-8's develop-
ment program was meticulous. No fewer than 42 shapes for cabin
windows were tested before one was selected; it was not only as strong
as the 707' s but it was a third larger. The window frames were subjected
to almost 120,000 pressurization cycles to prove their durability. Three
thousand employees of various heights and weights were sent through
evacuation doors before a design was chosen that would make an
emergency exit as speedy for a 300-pound man as for a 75-pound child.
As a test of windshield strength, the bodies of four-pound chickens were
67
fired from a compressed-air gun at 460 miles an hour to simulate mid-air Drumming up orders at a convention in
Seattle. Boeing president William Allen,

collisions with birds.
second from left, uses a model to show
Then what Douglas had been hoping for happened. On October 13. distinctive features of the 707 to potential
1955. before a single DC-8 had been built, the company received its buyers from the airlines. Lacking a sales
first order. Pan Am announced it would buy 25 DC-8s —
and 20 Boeing staff familiar with the virtues of the jet. Allen
—
707s at a total cost of $269 million.
took to the road himself.
Boeing's president Allen was floored. His beloved 707. which had
been breaking every point-to-point speed record on the books, now
was five airline orders behind a jet that did not even exist. And worse
was yet to come: 12 days later. United Air Lines announced it had
signed a contract for 30 of Douglas' planes —
a contract that only two
weeks earlier Boeing had figured was in its pocket. But United techni-
cians had built a mock-up of a hybrid jetliner cabin; one side had the
dimensions of a 707 interior and the other those of a DC-8. William A.
Patterson. United's diminutive and dynamic chief, had been leaning
—
toward Boeing except for one factor the DC-8's fuselage was 15
inches wider than the 707' s. These few extra inches would allow six
passengers instead of five to sit in a row; to attempt the same feat in the
707 would have cramped customers in skimpy seats separated by an
uncomfortably narrow aisle.
Boeing refused Patterson's request to widen the 707 cabin, but it did
68
•"*—
An American Airlines delegation led by flight offer to increase the 707's seating capacity by lengthening the fuselage,
director Walt Braznell steps down from a a much simpler task than widening it. However, Boeing could not
DC-8 mock-up in Douglas' hangars. With
stretch the plane enough to match the number of seats in the DC-8. So
little more than the mock-up to sell against
the already proven Boeing prototype, United bought Douglases, even though it would have to wait at least a
Douglas salesmen emphasized the DC-8's year to get them. Suddenly Boeing had fewer than half the orders that
greater seating capacity and longer range.
Douglas had. The appeared and
airlines to be stampeding to Douglas,
Boeing could discern ghosts of failures past returning to haunt it. If the
course of events was not altered, the 707 could become another 247 or
Stratocruiser and the company might go under.
More bad news came from Pan Am's Juan Trippe, who bluntly told
Allen why he had bought so many DC-8s. Pan Am, he said, considered
the 707 merely an interim airplane, purchased solely because of its
earlier delivery date. The airline's own experts preferred the DC-8.
Optional engines —Pratt & Whitney JT-4s, with 45 per cent more pow-
er than the 707's JT-3s — and greater would allow the Douglas jet to
lift
carry enough fuel for the nonstop transatlantic range the 707 lacked.
Boeing had no alternative but to redesign its plane.
The first decision was to widen the fuselage by 16 inches, an inch
more than the DC-8. The second was to offer a second, higher-powered
version of the 707, known as the Intercontinental. It would be eight feet
longer than the standard model and would have a 12 foot greater
69
With Donald Douglas Sr. (right) and Jr.

peering from the cockpit, the first DC-8 is
rolled out on April 9. 1958. The plane

resembled the 707 but for the sweepback of
the wings and the air ducts under its nose.
70
tftfte
wingspan and 1 ,200 miles of additional range. Pan Am took one look at
the new design and changed its 20-plane order; it would still accept six
of the shorter 707s, but the other 14, plus an additional three aircraft,
would be Intercontinentals.
Boeing had turned the tables on Douglas. To be sure, Boeing re-
mained far behind on orders, but now it had two airliners that it could
pair with customers' special needs. Douglas stood pat with its single
version of the DC-8. had no choice. The crash project to design the
It
jetliner had "all but wrecked the company," said Art Raymond, Doug-
las' chief engineer, years later.
Boeing's new-found flexibility attracted orders from unexpected
quarters. Qantas, Australia's biggest airline, had flown Douglas airliners
since DC-3 days, but for its first jets, the airline switched to Boeing. What
clinched the deal was Boeing's willingness to build for Qantas the
shorter-bodied 707-138, even though no other airline would ever buy
one. Boeing won Braniff Airways' business with the same flexibility.
Braniff needed a high-powered jet for the high-altitude South American

airports that the airline served. Boeing's response was to install JT-4
engines on the standard 707.
Now was a stampede by the airlines to buy jets. American
there
Airlines signed for 30 standard 707s and took an option for 20 more.
Eastern, KLM, Delta, SAS, Trans-Canada, Japan Air Lines and Swissair
went for the DC-8. Continental, Western, TWA, Sabena, Air France,
Air India and Lufthansa chose Boeing. By the time TWA picked the
707, on February 7, 1956, Boeing had an insurmountable lead. Even
United Air Lines, which had given Douglas its biggest boost, eventually
fell partly into the Boeing camp. Patterson decided that his company
needed a smaller jet for some of its prime routes that did not require
transcontinental range. Boeing promptly proposed a shortened, lighter
version of the 707, called the 720. United ultimately purchased 28. (A
joke of the day had it that Boeing possessed a Great Fuselage Machine
that turned out one continuous fuselage from which the company cut
off pieces as long as it wished.)
Beyond Boeing's eagerness to please, there actually was little to
choose between the 707 and DC-8. Each plane had advantages and
disadvantages. Passenger capacity for both was now about the same.
Some pilots preferred the Big Eight's docility in the air; others liked the
707's greater speed and ruggedness. Still, Boeing had trounced Doug-
las in the battle for airlines' business. In 1959, it delivered seventy-three
707s, compared with Douglas' production of only 21 DC-8s.
Preferring to repeat earlier successes rather than to pioneer new
technology, Douglas had focused too closely for too long on the DC-7.
Perhaps the most devastating of Douglas' assumptions was to think that
piston-craft could compete with jets. Boeing, by contrast, had been

quick to move with the times and to adapt to the needs of its customers.
And as its reward, for the first time ever, it had a successful commercial
airliner to dispel the lingering taste of earlier failures. ^*-
71
The birth of the 707
In the 1950s aviation engineers were fond of observing

wryly that all projects were governed by Murphy's First
Law (if a component can fail, it will), not to mention Mur-
phy's Second Law (if a device can possibly be hooked up
backward, someone will do it that way). The Boeing de-
signers and engineers charged with creating America's first
jetliner, the 707, were determined that neither axiom
would come into play when they set about developing a

nearly fail-safe aircraft.
Boeing expended great and spent heavily in this

effort
quest for perfection. The team created 150 different de-
signs before settling on the 707' s configuration. Wind tun-
— including
nel testing alone cost about a million dollars
the investment of 25.000 man-hours models just to build
forwind tunnel But the most important — and,

use. at
$15,000,000, the most expensive — development work

took place in a specially walled-of f area of a manufacturing
building at Boeing's Renton, Washington, plant. There,
Boeing took the unusual step — for the day — of construct-
ing a prototype of the 707. first as a full-scale wooden
mock-up. then as a flyable aircraft.
The prototype, known according to the company's in-
ternal numbering system as Model 367-80. or simply the
Dash 80, was Boeing's chief means of overriding Mur-
phy's Laws. Equipped with an array of oscillographs and
automatic cameras that recorded every nuance of the
plane's behavior under stress, it enabled Boeing engineers
to test thoroughly and to refine all components
the 707' s
and systems before production got under way. The result
was a level of reliability astonishing for such a large aircraft.
Even after Boeing's assembly lines began turning out
707s by the score, the Dash 80' s usefulness was not over.
The prototype kept flying, testing modifications requested
by different 707 customers and eventually serving as a
test-bed for innovations employed in later designs, such as
the 727. Some 20 years after work on it began in the secret
assembly room, the Dash 80 was at last retired in 1972. It
was turned over for safekeeping to the Smithsonian Insti-
tution, which pronounced it "one of the twelve most sig-
nificant aircraft of all time."
Two Boeing team leaders —mock-up

and model supewisor Theodore Peck (left)
and prototype project manager Lloyd
Goodmanson (right) —
study a model of the
707 prototype while another man tries
the pilot's seat in a full-sized mock-up
used to make sure that the aircraft's
components would fit together properly.
72
A one-winged wooden mock-up of the prototype sits behind concealing partitions the Renton factory. Since
in one wing would be a mirror image
74
A dummy engine nacelle is fitted to the outboard pylon of the mock-up's wing.
The huge wooden wheels of the landing gear are measured for clearance.
i other, it was not necessary for the mock-up to have both. In the plywood cockpit, engineers check out the placement of instruments.
75
8
5 7<
I*
itt /*
OflSi
i
The prototype s fuselage undergoes a

The
pressurization test in February 1954.
rope nets were draped over the cargo
doors to stop flying debris if internal pressure
blew the doors out. The test was
completed without incident.
=#4Sk M >3
Surrounded by scaffolding and file cabinets
holding plans and specifications, the Tfszi
prototype awaits its engines in May of 1 954.
just two months shy of its roll-out. Engineers
who were constantly solving problems
presented by the plane's advanced design
nicknamed the aircraft Tension Tech.
if
mt
>h
lL
76
mM
Workers on stephdders seal the inside of a "wet" wing—so called because it held fuel without the aid of internal tanks or bladders.
78
HN
A specially designed roller squeezes the aluminum wing skin into shape.
Workers cut wire to fit and assemble it into bundles for later installation.
An electrician sorts some of the 62 miles of wire used in the plane.
A riveting machine pins together a leading-edge slat for the plane's wing.
79
Attest in production after four years of testing the prototype,
a gleaming 707 is rolled out to the paint hangar in Renton in March 1 958.
80
81
tr ^
The coin, the watch and the flower
Within a few week? you'll be able to flower vou bought when you left will
These airlines already have ordered
board a luxurious Boeing TOT. \our be fresh when you arrive, for the 600-
Boeing jetliners:
first flight in this jetliner will be one of mile-an-hour Boeing jet will carry you
AIR FRANCE
the travel highlights of your life. You'll across a continent or an ocean in half AIR INDIA • AMERICAN'
cruise serenely through high, weather- the time needed by a conventional air- B.O.A.C • BRANIFF • CONTINENTAL
CI' BAN A • LUFTHANSA
less skies, so completely free from vi- liner. Flight in the TOT.even veteran air-
PAN AMERICAN • QANTAS • SABENA
bration you'll be able to stand a half- line travelers will find, new and excit-
is SOCTH AFRICAN
dollar on edge. The TOT cabin, the most ing— and secure. This superb luxury TWA • UNITED • VARIG
Also MATS
spacious aloft, will be so quiet you'll be liner is by Boeing, the most experienced
able to hear the ticking of a watch. The builder of multi-jet aircraft in the world.
V
The race to catch up
ere buying airplanes with mil-

lions of dollars we don't have," said Collett E. Woolman, president of
Delta Air Lines, just before his company ordered its first jetliners.
"We're going to operate them off airports that are too small, in an air
traffic control system that is too slow, and we must fill them with more
passengers than we have ever carried before."
Woolman, one of the most respected of all airline executives, was no
faintheart; he had expanded Delta from a tiny crop-dusting outfit in
Louisiana to a powerfully competitive airline. He was merely expressing

a deep-felt concern — shared by others — that the jets just might be
ahead of their time.
Yet there was no turning back now. After the tragic false start pro-
vided by the Comet, the jet age had begun in earnest on Sunday,
October 26, 1958, with the flight of Pan American World Airways
Clipper America carrying 111 passengers from New York to Paris. The
fact that most aviation historians herald that date as the birth of the jet
age nettles the proud British. Not only did the 707 trail the ill-starred
Comet 1 by nearly six and a half years, but 22 days before the Pan Am
inaugural flight, a BOAC Comet 4, a successfully redesigned aircraft,
had commenced North Atlantic jet service between London and New
York. There was a vital difference between the aircraft, however; filled
to capacity, the Comet 4 could carry only 67 passengers, scarcely more

than half the number aboard Pan Am's 707.
Clipper America's 111 passengers — 40 in first class and 71 in the
coach section — represented the largest number of people ever to have

boarded a scheduled flight, a sign of things to come. Indeed, Atlantic
crossings by air already outnumbered those made by sea, and on do-
mestic routes more and more people were taking advantage of low-cost
tourist fares to fly instead of ride to their destination. The untapped
market for the airlines was huge: Less than 10 per cent of the U.S. adult
population had ever set foot on a scheduled airliner. With jets, said
Eastern Air Lines president Eddie Rickenbacker, "air transportation
A Boeing advertisement from a 1 958 should make more progress in the next ten years than we have been
Time sells the public on the 707's smooth, able to accomplish in the past 25."
quiet, swift ride. Travelers quickly
showed their enthusiasm for the new plane

Rickenbacker' s blue sky prophecy was to prove correct — and then
at the ticket counter: In the first three some. But if the new era of travel was truly to belong to the faster, bigger
months of jet service, Pan American's 707s planes, major problems had to be solved. Airports, as Delta's Woolman
were filled to 90 per cent of capacity.
had been quick to point out. were unprepared for the jets. Fuel storage
83
capacity had to be increased to supply the jets' huge tanks. Taxiways Completing the first transatlantic
commercial jet flight, a Comet 4 with 31
had to be widened, not to accommodate the planes' undercarriages but
passengers aboard arrives at New York's
to save their engines, which hung so low that they could suck in debris
Idlewild Airport on October 4, 1958.
from the ground on either side of the pavement. Runways were not long Although the Pan Am 707 behind the
enough. Even the 9,500-foot strips at New York's Idlewild (today's Comet also had just flown in from Europe, it
had been on a test run and would not go

John F. Kennedy International Airport) had to be extended so that jets
into service until three weeks later.
bound for Europe could take off with a full load of fuel. Lengthening a
runway cost roughly $1,000 per foot, and extensions ranging from 500
to more than 2,000 feet could put an almost unbearable financial bur-
den on many airports and the cities they served. Congress would even-
tually come to the rescue in 1960 and allocate more than $57 million,
matched dollar for dollar with local funds, for airport construction.
Fortunately for most airports, the jet age began slowly enough. Pan
Am had the only six Boeings operating during the first three months
after Clipper America's inaugural flight. (The Pan Am's order for
rest of
20 of the first 707s was never filled; Trippe opted for a later model with
longer range.) Until Boeing and Douglas could provide more jets, other
lines would just have to wait —
all, that is, except National Airlines. This
tiny carrier was months away, from receiving its first DC-8 when, on
December 10, 1958, a 707, still bearing Pan Am markings but carrying
National passengers, took off from New York for Miami, Florida.
That National could upstage American, United, TWA and Eastern
was due entirely to its wily president, George Baker. A testy fellow,
Baker had a long hate list of airline executives. At the top of that list was
Eastern's Rickenbacker, with whom he was in direct competition on the
lucrative New York-to-Miami route. To get the better of Rickenbacker,
—
Baker turned to the man second on his list Juan Trippe.
Baker knew that the delivery of Pan Am's jets coincided with the start
of the line's annual winter doldrums, and he was sure Trippe would
have trouble filling seats on his 707s before spring reinvigorated the
business. Perhaps Baker could lease a couple of 707s from Pan Am in
84
-.
themeantime and beat Eastern into the air with jets. To get them, he
made Trippe an offer that sounded too good to be true — as indeed it
was. In return for the use of two 707s for the 1958-1959 winter season,
Baker proposed to pay a reasonable fee and to trade 400.000 shares of
National's stock, plus an option to buy another 250,000 shares, for
400,000 shares of Pan Am. The deal would make Pan Am the major
stockholder in National; by exercising the option, Pan Am could gain
outright control. When Trippe signed the contract, it seemed that a
long-standing dream of his was about to come true: At last he would
possess domestic routes to feed passengers into his international flights.
Baker was no fool. He was sure that the Civil Aeronautics Board
would disapprove the deal, but he gambled that the slow-moving CAB
would not do so for several months to come. The delay would give him
all winter to fly the two jets against Eastern's prop-driven Electras. And
in themeantime National would receive the first of its own DC-8 fleet.
It happened just as Baker had planned. By the time the CAB re-
viewed his agreement with Trippe and disapproved it. National had
turned a hefty profit flying Pan Am's 707s and enjoyed the distinction of
being the first U.S. airline to offer domestic jet service.
Other airlines rushed to join the jet parade. American inaugurated its
own service six weeks 707 flight from New York to

after National, with a
Los Angeles. Then late in March, Trans World Airlines flew its first 707
from San Francisco to New York. United, having ordered the Johnny-
come-lately DC-8s, had to sit on the sidelines until September. During
the intervening summer, rather than pit its piston-engined DC-7s in
hopeless competition against TWAs and American's bigger, faster

707s, United temporarily abandoned nonstop transcontinental ser-
vice — and a good thing it did. if Eastern's experience is an example of
what the outcome might have been.
For all of Eddie Rickenbacker's optimism about jet travel's bright
future, Eastern lagged far behind its competition in the acquisition of
Service equipment needed by a Pan Am

707, outlined on a runway, includes a
maintenance boom in the rear and a feet
of trucks to supply fuel, water, food

and cargo. The increased carrying
capacity of the new jet created headaches
for airports, not least of which was
the processing of passengers' luggage.
85
Pacesetter of the jet age
During a demonstration flight in 1957 commercial transport then in service.
aboard the prototype of the Boeing 707, The 707' s capacious fuselage accom-
American Airlines captain Sam Saint got modated as many as 130 passengers. Its
his first taste of the jet age. 'We burst out
'
wings, designed to flex in rough air. were
of the highest cloud layer into the upper swept back 35 degrees and housed tanks
air," he later recalled, "then it hit me. holding 17.000 gallons of fuel, enough
This was right — the way flying ought to to give the plane nonstop transcontinen-
be: smooth, solid, quiet and with obvi- tal range. The engines were slung on py-
ous power to throw away. Everything lons — a Boeing innovation beneath —

about this machine built confidence." the wings in a now-familiar arrangement
That confidence was well placed, both that both enhanced the wings' lifting
for the airlines that would operate the efficiency and contributed to easy en-
707 and for the company that risked gine maintenance.
building it at a time when other U.S. From the start. Boeing's bold gamble
manufacturers were still insisting the fu- paid off: The 707 quickly became the
ture lay in propeller craft. With its four world's most widely used long-range air-
13.000-pound-thrust turbojet engines, liner. By 1962. four years after their in-
the 707 was 15 times more powerful, troduction. 707s had logged 1.7 million
twice as fast and nearly double the size hours in the air and carried 30 million
of the Boeing Stratocruiser. the largest travelers 750 million passenger miles.
86
J*w
ci/PP£«
AMERICA
uT
The 707's 145-foot-iong fuselage, 130-

foot wingspan and 257, 000-pound weight
made it the world's largest airliner when it
—
appeared in 1958 and a cruising speed of
535 rnph made the fastest as well. This
it
one, wearing Pan American World Airways'

colors, inaugurated nonstop transatlantic
jet Clipper service that same year.
jets. Rickenbacker had ordered DC-8s in time to be high up on the

delivery schedule, but he had subsequently surrendered Eastern's place
on the list to wait for a later model equipped with bigger engines. Delta
Air Lines' president Woolman. holding a far lower priority for the DC-8.
quickly grabbed Rickenbacker's abandoned order and beat Eastern
into jet service by almost a year.
The effect was devastating. Eastern had been operating Electras be-
tween New York and Houston and filling an average of nine out of 10
seats on each flight. But after Delta launched DC-8 service on the same
route. Eastern's traffic consisted largely of Delta's overflow. Two
months later. Rickenbacker abandoned the once-lucrative New York-
Houston nonstop routes, and he went on to take a beating in every
other market where his prop planes were competing with jets.
Meanwhile, Continental Air Lines, the fourth domestic company to
acquire jets, established 707 service on its Los Angeles-to-Chicago run,
a market it had successfully penetrated during the piston era against the
opposition of three well-established lines: United, American and TWA.
Little Continental had been able to muscle in beside the titans because
of the marketing acumen of its president. Robert Forman Six, whose
stony mien, an associate once remarked, resembled a "fifth head on
Mt. Rushmore." Something of an industry maverick, the formidable
Six insisted — —
and had proved that a small airline could compete With one engine and 28 feet of the
starboard wing gone, Pan Am Flight 843
with the giants if it demonstrated imagination and a gut feeling for
streams smoke and fire. A TWA flight
passenger welfare. He thrived on playing David to the airline industry's engineer, Emest Barter, photographed the
Goliaths, meeting the competition with innovations that often stunned burning jet from his automobile
his more cautious rivals. on San Francisco's Bayshore Freeway.
Continental had signed for only four 707s, but Six made the most of
his modest investment. He had the planes' tails painted gold to symbol-
ize a "Golden Jet" theme he thought up and specified plush interiors to
make the competition's jets seem spartan. When passengers flocked to

Continental, he accommodated them by flying his planes 16 hours a
day, twice the other lines' average. He kept his schedules by handling
maintenance late at night, when the aircraft were idle. And to avoid
taking a jet out of service for a week to perform the overhaul required
after 8,000 hours of operation, Continental's mechanics instituted
"progressive maintenance." The overhaul was divided into tasks that
could be completed during the regular nighttime maintenance shifts.
Eventually, most airlines would adopt Continental's innovation.

Continental's success with its jet fleet was yet another goad to the
airline industry to invest in the new planes. But the gamble was great:
The planes cost $5,500,000 apiece, and what if these huge and com-
plex machines turned out to be unsafe? A single crash would take 110
lives, nearly twice as many victims as would die in the fall of a DC- 7. It
took little imagination to see that a spate of accidents such as befell the
Comet could scuttle the jet age and leave the airlines with scores of
aircraft no one would fly on.
To reassure the public about the jets, the airlines placed only the most
88
Ate
—
It
Folks, we have a little minor problem"
Two minutes after taking off from San the Pacific but then decided to head for
Francisco International Airport, bound Travis Air Force Base 50 miles away.
forHawaii on the 28th of June, 1965. With the jet now under marginal con-
Pan American Flight 843 was at 700 feet and the fire subsiding, Kimes clicked
trol
and climbing when suddenly the out- on the microphone to talk to the anx-
board engine on the Boeing 707's star- ious passengers. "Folks," he began, "we
board wing burst into flames. have a little minor problem. Well," he
"All at once there was a big explosion added, "maybe it's not so minor." Ev-
and and then the engine fell off,"
fire, erybody burst out laughing, and Kimes
recalled one passenger, a teacher who kept up his chatter. A nurse on board the
had been sitting across the aisle from her plane recalled later that passenger panic
children. "The fire kept getting larger was "reduced immeasurably."
and my children started to cry. remem- I Unexpected hazards still lay ahead for
ber my daughter saying, 'Mommy, the Flight 843. As the plane neared Travis,
fire is coming toward me.' Then the wing Kimes found that the landing gear did
started to crumble and fall off." not work; two crewmen had to crank the
In the cockpit Captain Charles Kimes gear down by hand. Then, he spotted a
could not see the damage so horrifyingly dust devil, or small whirlwind, just off the
but he had felt
visible to the passengers, end of the runway and swerved to avoid
the 707 shudder violently, then jerk to being caught in its turbulence. Finally, 19
the right. Kimes wrestled with the con- harrowing minutes after the engine ex-
trols, and by using the rudder and left ploded, the captain brought the crippled
aileron trim tab, he steadied the plane. jet — and its 152 grateful passengers
For a moment he considered ditching in in for a perfect landing.
89
In an extraordinary photograph taken by
passenger James Krick, flames eat away the
707's outer wing moments before the
section broke off. Astonishingly, no one was
injured by the hail of debris that fell
on the busy San Francisco suburb below.
The demolished engine lies where it came to

rest in an alley after crashing through the
concrete wall of a cabinet shop and missing
workmen by only 1 5 feet. The engine,
subsequent analysis revealed, had exploded
when a turbine wheel disintegrated.
90
L^OAM
91
92
~m\
seasoned pilots at the controls. As late as 1962, the average age of
jetliner captains would be 50, compared with an average age of 38 for
all airline pilots. A pilot switching from piston planes to jets had first to
attend ground school to learn about the new aircraft. Then he spent
several hours in a flight simulator that duplicated the controls and the
feel of the plane before actually taking one aloft under the guidance of
an instructor pilot. "The most important rule about a jet," said TWA
Captain Harold Blackburn, "is that you must fly it by the book. If you try
to fly it by the seat of the pants, you can be in a lot of trouble in a hurry."
But if jetliners were more demanding than pistons in this respect, they
were less so in another. Because of the jet engine's simplicity, a 707 had
at least 115 fewer instruments and controls for the engines than a
Constellation. There were, for example, no carburetors on the turbojets

and consequently no need for fuel-mixture controls. Having no propel-
lers, a jet could dispense with the controls for de-icing them.
The planes, being new, had bugs that had to be workedOver a
out.
four-month period in 1959, the airlines reported more than 30 occa-

sions on which the 707's hydraulically actuated landing gear refused to
lower. Later, several DC-8s had similar troubles. In each case, the crew
merely resorted to one of the jetliner's two back-up systems, one electri-
cal and the other manual.

The difficulty was traced to the pump that supplied hydraulic fluid to
the eight-wheel main The pumps were wearing out faster than
gear.
At a news conference the day after the anyone had expected under the demands of daily airline operations and
incident, Captain Charles Kimes modestly
remarked he had done "nothing
that
the temperature extremes they were exposed to from 100° on the —
ground to 50° below zero at cruising altitude. Both Boeing and Douglas
outstanding." Boeing engineers felt
otherwise. "We run just about every kind advised the airlines to modify the pumps, but while the corrective action
of test imaginable," said one technician, was in progress, the embarrassing failures continued.
"but you never imagine a plane in this
The undercarriage troubles were more vexing than dangerous,
kind of situation remaining fly able. That
cockpit was full of real pros.
but there were other incidents — of the white-knuckle variety. Three
months after Pan Am began jet Clipper service, one of the airline's new
707s was flying at night from Paris to New York at 35,000 feet. Captain
W. Waldo Lynch, having left his copilot at the controls, stood in the
cabin chatting with passengers when the autopilot disengaged and put
the plane into a dive so shallow at first that the crew did not realize they
were As the seconds ticked by, the dive steepened, in-
accelerating.
creasing the plane's speed until the aircraft began to buffet violently.
Thrown to the cabin floor, Lynch, struggling against massive centrifugal
forces created as the plane lapsed into a nose-down spiral, crawled
along the aisle to the cockpit, where the copilot was battling to regain
Jagged pieces of metal protrude from
the 707' s charred wing. The fact that the control of the craft. In front of him, the artificial horizon, an instrument
fire advanced no farther along the that indicates whether an aircraft is flying level, was tumbling, and out-
wing with its fully loaded gas tanks was due
side, the stars pinwheeled.
to the quick response of the flight
engineer, who cut off the fuel flow to the
Somehow, Lynch managed and the navigator
to climb into his seat,
missing outboard engine. reached over to fasten his seat belt. "I have command," Lynch shouted
and took a quick look at the altimeter. It was unwinding so fast that he
could hardly read His feet seemed pinned to the floor and his arms felt
it.
93
Braniff's
weak, but with a superhuman effort he rolled the wings level. It took the
flying colors
combined efforts of both him and the copilot to end the dive. When the
artificial horizon finally registered level flight, Lynch looked at the now-
In the mid-1960s, as competition among
steady altimeter. It read 6.000 feet. They had plunged nearly 30,000
airlines took a frenzied turn, Braniff In-
feet in less than a minute. ternational came up with what many
Lynch continued to Gander, Newfoundland, where he was sched- considered an improbable scheme for
uled for a refueling stop. Mechanics inspecting the plane found that the sprucing up its image and attracting cus-
surfaces, wing panels and ailerons had been damaged. tomers. It had its jet fleet painted in eye-
horizontal tail
catching colors: gaudy greens, blues and
Pan Am dispatched another 707 to Gander to pick up the passengers
oranges. Within a year revenues had in-
while Lynch' s craft underwent temporary repairs so that it could be
creased 18 per cent.
flown to Seattle for further examination. Encouraged by passenger response to
There, Boeing engineers discovered that in its 29,000-foot plunge, its dazzling planes. Braniff in 1973 de-
the 707 had approached the speed of sound at close to 700 miles per vised an even bolder plan for promot-
ing its routes to "colorful and excit-
hour and had been subjected to stresses beyond those that Boeing
ing" South America. It paid Alexander
thought the airplane could endure. If Lynch had not regained control
Calder, the American sculptor famous
when he did. the jet would have disappeared into the Atlantic, casting a
for his mobiles. $100,000 to create the
dark shadow over the future of jet transportation. world's first flying work of art (right).
Other pilots besides Lynch had harrowing experiences. Captain Calder experimented with numerous
Howard Cone, taking a Pan American 707 on a practice flight over designs, trying them out on six-foot-long
France, learned firsthand of the jets' built-in susceptibility to a phenom- models, before settling on a red, blue
enon called the "Dutch Roll" — the tendency of a sweptwing aircraft

and yellow abstract partem that was then
transferred to a Braniff DC-8 by a team
under certain conditions to swing unchecked, like a wildly rocking ham-
of painters. Free publicity from press
mock. The roll sometimes was induced by turbulence but also could coverage of Calder' s masterwork more
occur during and banks. The 707, with wings swept
fairly steep turns than repaid Braniff s investment.
back five degrees more than the DC-8's. was more susceptible to this
problem. Cone's 707 rocked so violently that an engine pod was
wrenched from one of the wings, severing fuel and hydraulic lines.
Cone managed to set the plane down safely in London. To remedy the
problem. Boeing added three feet to the 707' s vertical stabilizer, thus
giving the pilot better control over the plane.
The 707 and DC-8 displayed another form of instability they could —
stall in severe turbulence. The term for this was an "upset." Paul Soder-
lind, a flight operations executive at Northwest Orient Airlines, devised

new techniques to combat it. He discovered that some pilots were
slowing down in storms as a precaution against structural damage. In a
jet, because the narrow, sweptback wings are less effective at low
speeds than those of earlier airliners, throttling back could permit a
severe downdraft or updraft to throw the plane into a stall. Recognizing
the jets' superior structural strength. Soderlind recommended flying
faster in storms to prevent stalls.
While the airlines and airplane manufacturers were working out the
problems of the new planes, a new government regulatory body came
into being in 1958. the Federal Aviation Agency, which replaced the old
and tired Civil The first FAA Administrator

Aeronautics Administration.
was a former World War II fighter pilot and retired Air Force general
named Elwood R. "Pete" Quesada. He was stocky, rosy-cheeked and
he seemed to wear a perpetual smile. His appearance could not have
94
^fe
ginal. Flying Colors
been more deceptive. Quesada was trigger-tempered, demanding,

and determined to wipe out the old CAA's image of ineffective
forceful
bureaucracy and weak-kneed leniency. Classic was the story of a CAA
inspector who, when asked why he did not crack down on erring airline
pilots, inquired plaintively, "How do you spank a Greek god?"
Quesada stamped his own commanding personality on the new
agency. From the day he took autumn of 1958, airlines and
office in the
their crews, commercial and private pilots, and aircraft manufacturers

received citations in unprecedented numbers for rule violations. Even
while Pan Am's Waldo Lynch was being hailed as a hero for snatching
his 707 from disaster, Quesada socked him with a $1,000 fine for being
out of the cockpit unnecessarily and issued a stern edict: Henceforth,

pilots would not be allowed to leave the flight deck for anything less than
a call of nature. FAA inspectors riding the jets even began holding stop
watches on captains when they went to the lavatory — six minutes was
the unofficial time limit.
Yet Quesada was not relentlessly petty. One of his first acts was to
begin modernizing the air traffic control system. At the time, air traffic
95
The first U.S. President to travel by jet,

Dwight D. Eisenhower reviews an honor
guard at Rome's rain-soaked Ciampino
Airport. Behind him is a new Air Force
Boeing 707. which he used on a peace
mission to 11 nations in Europe. Asia and
North Africa. By the time he arrived home
18 days later. Ike had logged 19.600 miles.
controllers were using outmoded radar inherited from the U.S. armed
forces. The Air Force, however, was operating a much more advanced
radar network as the eyes of its air defense system. And in April 1960
Quesada initiated research that would lead to the use of this equipment
for the control of civilian aircraft. In the meantime, he began a landmark
experiment with the FAA's antiquated equipment to track not only all
the aircraft flying in airline corridors, but all planes flying at airline alti-
tudes, between 24.000 and 35.000 The test affected only 120.000
feet.
square miles of airspace in the Midwest, but it was the first step toward
an air traffic control system that eventually would monitor every airliner
from takeoff to landing.
Quesada's methods seemed arbitrary at times, and during his regime
he feuded bitterly with every segment of civilian aviation from the Air
Line Pilots Association to private flying clubs. Rightly or wrongly. Que-
sada regarded his job as a crusade to keep America's planes and airways
safe for the flying public.
Public confidence in the jets was increased after the Air Force bought
three 707s for its VIP transport fleet and assigned one of them to the
President of the United States in 1959. The impetus for the switch from
the piston-engined Constellation Columbine to a jet originated with
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. He had seen Soviet officials arrive
at international meetings aboard the Tupolev 104 jet transport, a con-
verted bomber that Aeroflot had been
1956 (pages 62-65).
flying since
and considered it degrading for Dwight Eisenhower not to avail himself
of the most modern air transportation. He argued that if Air Force One
were be a 707. a bigger and better jet than the Russians',
to it would
demonstrate America's technological superiority.
On August 26. 1959. Eisenhower jetted Europe on a trip that took
to
him to Germany. England. France and Scotland— more than 8.700 air
96
•**m
—
miles covered in less than 20 hours' flying time. The President's jet
enhanced his already considerable reputation as a globetrotter. In the

piston-engined Columbine, he had averaged 120 hours of flying time a
year, enough to carry him some 30,000 miles. But in 1960, his last year
in office, the speed, quiet and comfort 707 induced him to spend
of the
193 hours aloft, traveling almost 79,000 miles. But if Ike had quickly
come to appreciate the world-shrinking virtues of the jet, so, it seems,
had less illustrious travelers, both in America and abroad, and passen-
gers were now flocking to the new planes in ever-increasing numbers.
Sheer novelty was a major incentive wasfor one's first jet flight. It
something to brag about. "I just flew back from California in a jet" was
more than a bald statement of fact; it was a badge of adventure. The
airlines spent millions extolling the attractions of jet service but the best
advertising was word of mouth. It was not exaggerating to say that no
one who had experienced the vibration-free ride and the remarkable
speed of a jet would ever be satisfied with a piston-engined plane again.
The question, What was it like? usually brought forth such prosaic
adjectives as great, incredible or marvelous. But occasionally, a more
vivid description could be found. After his first flight in a jet, Rod Serling,
a prominent television writer, penned a letter to his brother: "I couldn't
help but think as we flew over the midwestern plains and then the
deserts and mountains how long had taken our ancestors, less than a
it
century ago, to travel a journey that was taking me less than six hours
and how far we had come in technology in Nor have
so short a time. I
ever felt so secure in an airplane. When we began our descent into Los
Angeles, I had the sensation that we were riding an enormous railroad
track toward the ground ..."
If the experience of flying by jet produced any initial anxiety in the
passenger, it was largely caused by unfamiliar sounds and new sensa-
tions. For several years, 707 and DC-8 captains would soothe nervous
passengers with reassuring announcements
— "That thumping sound
you'll hear is merely our landing gear being lowered." Passengers ac-
customed to flying in piston-engined airliners had never heard the noise
before; the wheel wells were in the engine nacelles, too far from the
cabin for the undercarriage to be heard as it was raised or lowered. But
in jets, the landing gear retracted directly into the fuselage.
Air travelers quickly discovered an unexpected bonus in flying by
jet — a general and marked decrease in airsickness, attributed almost
entirely to the steadiness of flight at altitudes where plane-tossing turbu-
lencewas rarely encountered. But many passengers traded a queasy
stomach for a troublesome new disorientation, jet lag, the inability of the
body to adjust quickly to a distant time zone. Jet trips disrupted biologi-
cal rhythms. was only too easy to leave New York for Los Angeles at
It
5 p.m., arrive as early as 8 local time and then stay awake until midnight;
by then, of course, it was 3 a.m. in New York. Fatigue, insomnia and
constipation — all symptoms of jet lag — became prevalent. Moreover,
97
Flying between beacons ABC and DEF,
the pilbTseleQsa course — in this case 180
degrees from stat\Sn-QEF—<ind holds it by
keeping the course deviatiorufrdtcatorfCDI)
needle centered. Here, the needle is defl*
to the left, telling the pilot to turn left to
remain on course; the "to" in the window
shows that the course is toward the station.
± VOR STATION ABC
CONE OF SILENCE
Tracking an unseen pathway in the sky
To find their way from one airport to an- relies on an instrument landing system
other and land safely even in inclement (ILS) that helps to guide the plane on-
weather, airline pilots have a variety of to the runway. The ILS consists of a
sophisticated radio aids at their dispos- localizer beacon that tracks the aircraft
al, as shown in this series of diagram- onto the runway centerline and a glide
matic renderings. slope transmitter whose beams are an-
For cross-country navigation. VOR. gled about three degrees from the hori-
or very high frequency omnidirectional zontal to bring the plane down at a
range, radio beacons transmit continu- steady rate of descent.
ous signals that can be picked up by These signals are picked up by the VOR STATION DEF Cjri
the airliner's VOR receiver and display- plane and displayed by the glide slope
ed to the pilot on a cockpit instrument (GS) and localizer needles (LOC) on MARKER BEACON RECEIVER
known as the course deviation indicator the ILS receiver. Another instrument,
(CDI). The readings of the CDI needle the marker beacon receiver, picks up EJEI
are independent of the aircraft's magnet- signals from the two marker beacons
ic compass heading and show where the along the approach path that tell the
course is in relation to the airplane. Small pilot the distance to the runway thresh-
windows on the instrument's face tell old. At the second beacon, an approach
which course has been set and whether it lighting system helps the pilot to judge
is toward or away from the VOR station. visually the last few thousand feet be-
On arriving at the destination, the pilot fore touchdown.
GLIDE SLOPE TRANSMITTER
9. After touchdown, the pilot slows the plane 8. At an altitude of about 200 feet, the plane
during its landing
then turns off the
roll, crosses the middle marker beacon and
runway and taxis to the terminal. The most the pilot must decide whether it is safe to
sophisticated version of this instrument land: inbad weather, if he cannot see the
landing system can be hooked into the runway approach lights, he must put the
aircraft's automatic pilot and programed to airplane into a climb and either make a new
land the plane in absolute zero-zero weather. approach or fly to another airport.
98
3. After crossing the "cone of silence" directly above the
/>oi( i >n, where signals are weak, the "from" in the CDI window
slu urs that the plane has passed the station. The needle now
tells the pilot to turn right to stay on course.
VOR RECEIVER/CDI
4. As the plane nears the airport's outer marker beacon, the

tower instructs it to enter a holding pattern at an assigned
The pilot then flies a precisely timed course fixed
altitude. at one
end by the outer marker beacon until told to descend.
HOLDING PATTERN
5. Awaiting its tum to land, the aircraft

1,000 FEET is instructed by the tower to descend
to lower levels in the holding pattern,
or stack. Air traffic controllers maintain
a separation between all planes,
1.Each very high frequency
1.000 FEET of at least 1,000 feet vertically and
omnidirectional range (VOR)
three miles horizontally.
beacon radiates signals
and Morse code identifying
letters that provide heading
references. Bearings from these
stations define the airways used
for navigating across country.
6. After receiving permission to land, the

pilot descends until he intercepts the beams
from the instrument landing system. The
glide slope and localizer needles show that
the correct approach path is below and to
the left of the plane's line of flight.
7. On final approach, the pilot follows

the instrument landing system (ILS) beams
toward the runway. The glide slope
and show that the plane
localizer needles
is properly positioned on its approach.
TOO LOW
AND
TOO FAR LEFT
99
jet lag could impair judgment to such a degree that some firms ordered
traveling executives not to decide policy or sign contracts within 24

hours of a five-hour time change. At least one airline instructed its air
crews not to reset their watches for the time at their destination — and to
eat and sleep in accordance with back-home schedules.

their
Nevertheless, travelers loved the jets —

and so did the airlines. The
turbojets' reliability, something the industry measured with Time Be-
tween Overhauls, or TBO. delighted executives. The best piston engine

had a TBO of about 800 hours, and initially the FAA extended that
interval to 1.000 hours for the jets. By 1962. the average TBO had risen
to 4.000 hours, and eventually the FAA would discard all TBO sched-
ules, provided that a few critical components were inspected or replaced
at specified intervals. This represented an enormous saving in money.
The complete overhaul of an engine required the disassembly of all

major parts at a cost of $90,000: in the past airlines had paid only
$114,000 for a complete DC-3. fresh from the Douglas factory.
The jets' fleetness and spacious interiors were cause for joy. too. The
difference in speed between the fastest piston-engined transport and a
jet was 240 miles an hour, a differential almost as great as all the speed
increases made by commercial airplanes between 1918 and 1953. In
those 35 years, transports had struggled from a top speed of 90 miles an

hour 1918 to 350 miles an hour in 1953; the jets cruised at 590 miles
in
an hour and could carry twice as many passengers as the DC-7s. These
two advantages made it possible for an airline to fly a specified number
of passenger miles with fewer jets than with piston-engined aircraft and
helped to offset the high cost of the new planes.
Fuel consumption remained heavy, but even here there was cause
for celebration. Fully loaded, a 707 or DC-8 had a fuel efficiency of
about 42 passenger miles per gallon, while a DC-7 could deliver 59
passenger miles with the same quantity of fuel. But these figures were
moderated by the low price of the kerosene used in jets — 10 cents per
gallon in the early 1960s compared with 25 cents a gallon for the high-
octane fuel that powered piston engines. In fact, the overall cost per
passenger mile of the 707 and DC-8 turned out to be lower than that of
a DC-7. The introduction of turbofan engines in 1960 cut fuel consump-
tion, lowering costs further. And there was an additional boon: They
were less noisy than the turbojet.

Noise had been one of the negative side effects of the jet age. People
living near airports complained about a whole range of discordant
sounds, from the banshee wail of taxiing jets to the ceiling-shaking
thunder of the engines on takeoff. Not too long began serving
after jets
Dallas, residents of a big apartment building painted a huge sign on
the roof. "JETS GO HOME!"' That protest was to be multiplied a

thousand times. To counter it. early 707s and DC-8s were equipped
with a cluster of "pipe organ" tubes at the rear of each engine. These
diffused the jets' noise to some extent. Unhappily, they also reduced
thrust by as much as 10 per cent and added about $10,000 a month to
100
each plane's fuel costs. Now the turbofan engine offered a solution. The
roar of a jet is caused primarily by the high speed of the exhaust from the
combustion chambers. Diluting the exhaust with slower air passed
around the engine by the fan makes the turbofan noticeably quieter
than the turbojet (page 23).
The advantages were appreciated by airlines the world
of the jets
over. Of the first two hundred 707s and DC-8s ordered, more than half
were exported. Along with the aircraft they bought from American
companies, some European and Asian airlines purchased American
technical know-how to help launch them into the jet age. United Air
Lines' highly regarded training facilities in Denver became an aeronauti-
cal United Nations, teaching foreign pilots how to fly jets. West Ger-
many's Lufthansa continued to owe much of its success to a technical
mission from Trans World Airlines. When Lufthansa started up again
after World War II, TWA coached the German airline in every phase of
its operations, from marketing to flying. By the time Lufthansa ordered
jets, it had been thoroughly trained in American airline methods.
For many nations a jet-equipped airline became a symbol of prestige,
JtL a means of showing the flag. Often heavily subsidized by their govern-
ments, such airlines posed what independent U.S. airlines regarded as
an unfair threat. By 1962, Pan Am found itself competing with 13
airlines crossing the Pacific, 23 in Central and South America, and 29
over the North Atlantic.
Competition among world airlines for passengers became increasing-
ly intense. And nowhere was the contest more apparent than among
those flying the Atlantic. Airlines never seriously tried to rival steamship
companies in luxury; there was a limit to the comfort that could be
designed into a relatively narrow cylindrical tube holding more than 100
seats. Still, first-class passengers were coddled with such amenities as
free lounging slippers and three choices of entree for dinner along with
as much alcohol as they could drink. In 1961, TWA introduced first-run
movies for first-class passengers. This sales device proved so successful
that other airlines scrambled to install projectors in their planes as soon
as TWA's exclusive contract with the movie supplier expired.
Despite their jet-age rivalries, the world's airlines learned to cooperate
with one another. Half a dozen major companies created a spare parts
A cartoon from a 1965 issue of Life depicts
pool in the early 1960s that, according to one member, Air France,
the sybaritic pleasures of jet travel. In the
mid-1960s, when airline competition heated slashed inventory costs by 70 per cent. The men in the cockpit in turn
up, TWA was first to offer movies, luring banded together in the International Federation of Air Line Pilots, an
customers with the line, "Don't just sit there!
organization dedicated to the principle of learning from one anothers'
Fly TWA and see a movie on the way." The
experiences. Thus no incident concerning safety in the sky could be
result: six to eight more passengers per flight.
swept under the rug of national pride.
The jet shrank the world and, through travel and commerce, brought
peoples together. Destinations a week away by automobile or bus,
or four days by train, suddenly were reachable in a few hours. Pitts-
burgh was next door to Paris, and Louisville around the corner from
London. Suddenly everyone could be a jet setter. ^^
101
fl clash of titans
uring the 1950s, while Great

Britain and the United States were struggling for supremacy in the jet
field, France was quietly working to carve out its own share of the
fabulous new market. Noting that de Havilland, Boeing and Douglas
had decided to build long-range aircraft, the French government in the
autumn of 1951 sponsored a competition among the country's aircraft
builders for the design of a short- to medium-range jetliner that could

carry about 60 passengers up Such an aircraft would be
to 1,200 miles.
ideally suited to the short distances between European cities that the
bigger jets could not fly economically and might recapture the promi-
nence that French aviation had enjoyed at the end of World War I.
Soon, engineers at six companies were hard at work drafting entries

for the competition. In September 1952, France's civil aviation agency
—
announced the winner Sud Aviation, a plane manufacturer in Tou-
louse that had come up with a most unusual scheme for placing the jet's
two engines at the tail, rather than on the wings. Sud Aviation named its
entry Caravelle, after the small sailing ships that were workhorses of
commerce and exploration in the 15th and 16th Centuries.
The new plane had its critics. The naysayers worried that an aft-
engined airliner would be tail-heavy and dangerous to fly. They also
doubted the wisdom of powering a jetliner roughly the size of a DC-6
with only two engines: If one failed on takeoff or landing, would there be
enough power to keep the Caravelle airborne? Finally, they questioned
the entire concept of a jet built for hops of only a few hundred miles.
Flying from one city to the next, the Caravelle — or so the argument
went — would have too little cruising time at the high altitudes where the
fuel-gulping jet engine is most efficient.
Fortunately the critics did not prevail. In seven years of development

and testing, the Caravelle proved all fears unfounded. So that the Cara-
velle could fly safely if an engine failed, the designers installed power-
ful Rolls-Royce Avon turbojets, each developing 12,600 pounds of
Six Boeing 727 jets of the many-hued thrust, equivalent inpower to six of the piston engines on DC-6s. And
Braniff fleet snug up to loading bridges at because the Caravelle had only two engines, it made a profit for airlines
Dallas-Fort Worth Airport in 1979. The on flights as short as 200 miles. Since the engines were at the rear,
727 's 2,000-mile range, roomy passenger
the wings were uncluttered, giving the plane exceptional maneuverabil-
cabin and ability to take off on less than
5,000 feet of runway helped make the plane ity — and there was little cabin noise. Indeed, it was so quiet inside a
the world's best-selling airliner; more than Caravelle that passengers would show a preference for the plane over
1,600 were in operation by the early 1980s.
turboprop airliners. And not least of the Caravelle's qualities was its
103
A clash of titans
beauty. "It was," one airline captain said, "the only airplane I ever flew A passenger aboard a French-built Caravelle
" jet (left) basks dreamily in sunlight streaming
that just had to be called 'She.'
through one of the triangular windows that
Air France, naturally, was first in line for the Caravelle. Its order for a were celebrated in an Air France poster
dozen of the new airliners in November 1955 galvanized the British into (above). The unusual shape provided as
action.They suddenly realized that British European Airways, which wide a downward view as a rectangular
window but was more resistant to stress.
flew many of the same routes on the Continent as Air France, would
have to replace its turboprops with short-haul jets or face economic
defeat at the hands of the French.
But for a British airline to fly a was unthinkable; Britain
French jet
must build its own small jetliner, and BEA already knew what it wanted:
a plane that could lift a 19,000-pound payload from a 6,000-foot run-
way and carry it 1,000 miles. In addition, the cabin had to be 11 feet
across, wide enough to seat three passengers on each side of the aisle.
At BEA's urging, three companies entered a competition to build
the new jet, and on paper at least, all three satisfied the airline's speci-
fications. But one company had an unbeatable edge the proud —
de Havilland concern. Everyone knew that de Havilland had the most
experience with jets.
There was, however, a problem: Before work could actually begin on

the plane, the government had to grant approval. BEA was, after all,
a government-owned airline, and all equipment purchases required a
nod from the Air Ministry. But at the moment, the Air Ministry took a
dim view of the country's aircraft industry; it saw a field overcrowded
with small, inefficient, unprofitable companies that could notcompete
with the American giants Boeing and Douglas. Its solution was to tie
approval of the plane, known as the D.H.121, to a merger of de Havil-
land, Hawker Siddeley and Bristol, the three manufacturers that had
submitted designs to the Air Ministry. The companies balked, refusing
104
bfii
this kind of "shotgun wedding," as one British aviation journal put it.
Faced with BEA's determination to have the D.H.121 or nothing and

the aircraft manufacturers' intransigence, the Ministry relented and re-
luctantly accepted a consortium of builders that would allow de Havil-

land. Hawker Siddeley and Bristol to retain their individual identities. It
was something of a pyrrhic victory for de Havilland, however. In 1960,

the company was bought by Hawker Siddeley and in the takeover the
D.H.121 was renamed the Trident.
The design for the Trident called for engines in the rear like the
Caravelle, which was now in service with several airlines. But instead of
two, there was to be a mounted inside the fuselage, behind the
third,
cabin. Air for this engine would come from an intake just in front of the
horizontal stabilizers. Recognizing how much power three Rolls-Royce
turbojets would provide. Hawker Siddeley began to make the plane
bigger and heavier. At its largest the Trident would have been capable of
carrying 12 tons of passengers and cargo as far as 2.070 miles. But
A foreshortened view of the Trident,
Britain's answer to France s Caravelle, BEA would not be swayed from its original specifications and insisted
shows the T tail, with the third engine that the Trident be scaled down. If it was not. the airline would cancel
buried in The Hawker Siddelev jetliner
it.
its order. Hawker Siddeley complied, concentrating on a plane with
was the first commercial aircraft to
use electronic gear enabling it to make an a 79-passenger capacity and 1.000-mile range.
automatic touchdown in bad weather. The Trident would be unconventional in more than its engine con-
105
A clash of titans
figuration. The horizontal tail stabilizers were to be mounted on top of The Dash 80, the 707 prototype, flies
fitted with a fifth jet to analyze the effects of

the vertical stabilizer, an arrangement known as a T tail that made the
an aft-mounted engine. The ungainly
plane exceptionally stable at low speeds. So that the Trident could
exhaust pipe diverted the extremely hot jet
operate fully loaded from a 6.000-foot runway, special wing flaps were blast to prevent damage to the tail.
developed that provided more lift on takeoff. And in yet another inno-
vation the nose gear was to be installed off-center, allowing it to be
retracted to the side instead of forward or to the rear; this made room for
baggage near the front of the plane, helping balance the weight of the
engines at the tail.
Across the Atlantic, just about the time that BEA came up with its
specifications for the D.H. 121, or Trident, a young engineer at Boeing.

Jack Steiner. was made assistant chief of the Preliminary Design Unit.
Fresh from the bustling, well-established 707 program. Steiner en-
tered an uncharted wilderness of tenuous theories and vague goals.
His chief task was to inspect and appraise a thick file of proposals
for a short- to medium-range jet transport that could fly in and out
of airports too small for the 707. The dossier contained no fewer than
38 different designs.
Boeing, at that point, was of two minds about building a smaller jet.
The field was already crowded with competitors, not only abroad, but at
106
—
home as well. Douglas had a team working

on a scaled-down version
of the DC-8, and Convair, with orders from TWA and Delta on the
books, had begun building the 880, a four-engined jetliner about two
thirds the size of the 707 and intended for medium-length routes in the
500- to 1,000-mile range.
A number Boeing wondered if a short-haul jet
of executives at
would be worth the effort. Boeing already had the 720, the lighter and
slightly truncated version of the 707 built originally for United Air
Lines. Would not the production of a smaller jet draw sales away
from the 720? The doubters seemed vindicated when the airlines be-
gan showing a preference for the 720 over Convair's 880, even though
the two planes were similar in size. Steiner, however, remained con-
vinced of the need for a brand-new jet transport, one that could match
the 707 economy, yet serve airports with short runways. If such a
for
plane could be built, it would not undercut the 720, he reasoned but it —
would effectively shut out the turboprops like the Lockheed Electra and
the British Vickers Viscount.
Boeing spent a full year on preliminary studies before naming
Steiner, in May 1957, head of an official task force, to settle on the
design of such an aircraft. Right from the start, Steiner's team faced
formidable problems. For one thing, the airlines could not agree on the
kind of aircraft they needed. United wanted a small jet but insisted that
four engines were absolutely essential for the airline's lucrative oper-
ations in mile-high Denver, where the relatively thin atmosphere re-
quired increased power for takeoff. (Douglas had drawn up a plane, to

be called the DC-9, that satisfied United, but the idea was scrapped
when no other airline expressed interest.) Eastern believed a four-
engined plane would cost too much to operate; it preferred two power
plants but might settle for a third as added security on its overwater
routes to the Caribbean. Eastern also warned that it would reject an
airliner that could not operate from short-runway airports such as New
York's La Guardia. TWA's engineers leaned toward three engines as
both safer than two and more economical than four.
Evaluating the airlines' various needs, Boeing settled on a three-
engined model. But where should these power plants be placed?
Steiner's crew wrestled with several concepts. It even contemplated
mounting the third engine on one side of the fuselage, with the other
two tucked under the wings. Surprisingly, this arrangement worked
aerodynamically, but the idea was discarded on the ground that passen-
gers would reject a plane that looked lopsided. Boeing finally borrowed
the —
scheme worked out for the Trident positioning the third engine
—
behind the cabin and adopted the Trident's T tail as well.
Technical problems were by no means the only ones Steiner's
group had to work out. Boeing's marketing experts had told Steiner
to come up with a jet that would sell for no more than three mil-
lion dollars, about the price of a Caravelle. But this would severely
restrict its dimensions and limit the number of passengers to 75
107
A clash of titans
too few in Steiner's opinion. Moreover, a smaller plane would not yield
the low passenger-mile costs that Boeing and the airlines were after.
But if Steiner added more seats, the bigger craft would be less likely
to meet either Eastern's short-runway requirements or Boeing's own

price ceiling. And even if Boeing were somehow to build a jet for three
million dollars, would be virtually identical, from the airlines' point

it
of view, to the Caravelle and Trident.

For a while it seemed wiser for the company to abandon the project
and join forces with the British or French in selling and perhaps even —
building — the Trident or the Caravelle in the United States. But the
idea, though seriously considered, never got beyond the talking
stage —
and just as well. For gradually the Steiner team, which had
gone on working, had brought within grasp a jetliner that promised to
surpass all competition.
two years of the task force's existence, the number of de-
In the
sign studies had grown from 38 to 150. Of these, 68 had undergone

wind tunnel evaluation before the team, which now consisted of
1,000 engineers, made its final choice. Designated the 727, the
plane would embody three features that would make it a truly re-
markable aircraft while at the same time meeting the diverse require-
ments of the airlines.
First, the 727's fuselage would be the same width as that of the
707/720 series. This would not only cut tooling costs for Boeing and
maintenance costs for the airlines, but it would allow six-abreast seating
of 120 passengers. Second, the engine chosen for the 727 promised
unheard-of economies. Boeing had all but signed a contract for a Rolls-
Royce turbofan when the Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Company showed
Steiner the blueprint for a new turbofan, the JT8D. Though the concept
had been worked out in less than a week under the pressure of the
approaching deal between Boeing and Rolls-Royce, the Pratt & Whit-
ney engine looked so good Boeing could not easily pass it up. Forty per
cent of its thrust would come from a large fan in front (page 23), making
itmuch more economical to run than any other engine of the day, and
much quieter as well. Moreover, in selecting the JT8D, Boeing met
United Air Lines' demand for a plane with power; the three engines,
each developing 15.000 pounds of thrust, could easily lift a fully loaded
727 from Denver's mile-high runways.
The 727 was a unique arrangement of wing
third feature of the
flaps. In the space of just a few seconds the wing's normal blade-
like shape, ideal for high-speed flight, could be modified into a
kind of "parasol" (page 110) for landings. ("On this bird," one
captain would later remark admiringly, "you don't lower the flaps.
You disassemble the whole damned wing.") When fully opened, the
flaps increased the 727's wing area by 25 per cent, permitting the
plane virtually to float to the ground. This was exactly what East-
ern needed; so equipped, the 727 could take off from and land on short
runways, such as the 4,980-foot strip at New York's La Guardia.
108
As a jet engineis hoisted toward them, But if Steiner's fledgling airliner incorporated these three expen-
Boeing workers prepare to connect it to a
727 fuselage. Designers standardized
sive features, it would have more
to sell for $4.2 million —a third
than Boeing's marketing experts had stipulated. In the autumn of
the 727 so that 90 per cent of the parts were
identical in every variation of the plane. 1960, the board of directors put the decision of whether to go
ahead in the hands of president Bill Allen. Daunted by the $100 mil-
lion estimated development costs, Allen announced that Boeing would
proceed only if the company received firm orders for at least one hun-
dred 727s by December 1. But with the deadline just a day away, it
found it had only 20 orders from United, with options for another
20 of the aircraft, and 40 from Eastern. The total, including the 20
options, was 20 short of Allen's 100-aircraft goal. Allen faced a di-
lemma. If he did not proceed with the 727, Boeing would lose millions
that it had already spent bringing the design and would have to
this far
lay off hundreds of workers. If the company went ahead, it would have
to sell nearly a billion dollars' worth of the planes before seeing a
profit. A decision had to be made. Allen, swayed in the end by Stein-
er's conviction that the 727 was a winner, took a deep breath and
authorized start-up.
The 727 rolled out of the factory two years later, on November
first
27, 1962, and went almost immediately into flight tests that showed it to
be an even finer aircraft than Steiner or anyone else had dreamed, with
109
The most challenging problem confront-
ing the designers of the Boeing 727 was
what kind of wing to give their new bird:
The requirements were for an airfoil that
would enable the transport to cruise at
nearly 600 mph, yet take off and land on
relatively short runways. Boeing's de-
signers spent 5,000 hours testing various
configurations in wind tunnels, and the
result was a compound wing loaded with
"feathers," or sophisticated aerodynam-
ic devices. When slats and
extended,
flaps on the edges of the wing curved
downward, allowing the jet to descend
slowly to earth. During high-speed hops
between cities, the slats and flaps retract-
ed to create a sweptback, streamlined
blade. Marveled one pilot: "It's a mag- A Boeing 727 has its flaps and slats fully extended in the landing position.
ic carpet wing."
EFFECTIVE AREA OF
UfT
AIRFLOW
if^
?
wing
2^^^=
^^«i
A cross section of the 727 wing shows the
shape that the wing assumes for most flight 1 LEADING-EDGE SLAT
/=¥=
FORE FLAP MID FLAP AFT FLAP
regimes. The leading-edge slats and
triple-slotted trailing-edge flaps retract to
form a compact, uninterrupted surface

that has low drag characteristics.
GREATLY INCREASED AREA

OF UFr
FORE FLAP
When the slats and the three-part flaps LEADING-EDGE SLAT MID FLAP
are extended, they provide a large area on

top of the wing, producing the lift needed
for slow approaches to short runways. The
openings behind the slats and between
the flap segments also boost lift by keeping
the airflow smooth and close to the wing.
110
mmm i
an amazing capacity for taking off from, and landing on, short run-
ways at a steep angle of ascent or descent. A veteran aviation writer
wangled a ride on one test flight that was to simulate an engine failure
—
on takeoff from a high-altitude airport Butte, Montana. As the ac- jet
celerated down the runway, the writer — who was the cockpit sitting in
jump seat — looked apprehensively the Rocky Mountains towering

at
just three miles ahead. Halfway down the 6,800-foot strip, the copilot
reduced thrust on the right engine to The startled writer gulped, but
idle.
the 727 took it all in stride. The pilot pointed its nose into the air, and the
plane climbed swiftly on two engines over the mountains. "Quite a
machine," the test pilot said. "I had the feeling," the writer reported
later, "that he would have enjoyed getting out and patting the 727
affectionately on her metal hide."
Besides exhibiting astonishing takeoff performance, the 727 was
an admirable 15 knots faster than wind tunnel
had predicted.
tests
Equally amazing, fuel consumption was 10 per cent less and payload
10 per cent greater than Boeing had expected. All in all, the 727
added up to a jetliner well worth its $4.2 million price tag, and
Boeing mapped out a nationwide tour for the fourth 727 off the as-
sembly line to stimulate sales. The road show got rave reviews not
only from airline officials but from the press. Takeoffs could be
alarming for the uninitiated, as the plane pitched its nose upward 18
degrees before the main landing gear left the ground. "No one was
prepared for that steep ascent," said a reporter who had gone for a
demonstration ride. "Practically everyone aboard thought that the tail
was dragging and that we'd never get airborne."

In a further sales effort, Boeing showed off the plane to the world
on a trip that took it to Europe, South Africa, the Middle East, In-
dia, Australia and Japan. On one Australian demonstration flight,
the pilot brought the plane to a complete stop only 1,500 feet from
touchdown, to the applause of the entire cabin. The short landing was
possible because of the 727' s powerful brakes as well as its low ap-
proach and landing speed. "I must stress." wrote a British flier,
"the visible, palpable effect of that slow approach speed. It gives

the pilot time when he needs it most — when the chips are down, in low
ceilings and poor visibility."
The 727 soon became known as a superb airliner and began to sell
briskly. The initial United and Eastern orders were followed by a flood of
contracts from both foreign and U.S. airlines. Boeing's billion-dollar

gamble was paying off.
Not since the legendary DC-3 had any transport received such pilot trust
and affection as the 727. Among its crews the 727 quickly acquired a
reputation as a pilot's airplane, a craft that handled quickly and easily,
more like a fighter, in fact, than a heavy transport. But 19 months after
the first trijet went into service, there occurred the first of a series of
tragedies that reminded pilots of what some of them seemed to have
111
A clash of titans
BillLear and his

forgotten: For all its superb qualities, the 727 had to be flown by the Cadillacs of the air
book just like the 707 and DC-8.
On August 389 from La
16. 1965. a United Air Lines 727. Flight In 1959, while the large aviation compa-
Guardia. was approaching Chicago's O'Hare Airport across Lake nies were concentrating on developing
short- to medium-range jetliners. Wil-
Michigan. The pilot acknowledged clearance to descend from 14.000 to
6,000 But instead of leveling off at the new altitude, the plane flew
liam P. —
Lear an electronics genius with
feet.
and exploded. All aboard were killed.

only an eighth-grade education was —
into the water obsessed with one thought: He would
Why United' s Flight 389 plunged into Lake Michigan remains a mys- build a small jet for businessmen's use.
tery to this day. Investigators could recover only part of the wreckage, As the inventor of the first lightweight
and the flight recorder, which might have solved the puzzle, was never autopilot for military jets and other elec-
tronic devices, Lear already had three
found. Circumstantial evidence suggested that in the final minutes
decades of aviation experience when, in
the 727 was descending too fast. The wreckage indicated that the pi-
1962. he sold his $100 million electron-
lot had leveled off. but too late to avoid crashing. Perhaps the crew
ics firm and risked $1 1 million on the first
had misread the altimeter. twin-engined Learjet. Just nine months
Less than three months later, an American Airlines 727 plowed into a later.Lear's Model 23 took to the air.
hill while on final approach to Cincinnati airport in poor weather. One By June 1965. twenty-six of the small,
rather cramped planes had been sold for
of the survivors, an off-duty captain with the airline, told investigators
$600,000 each, and that year the Learjet
that the initial descent seemed rapid, and the flight recorder confirm-
set three world speed records for its class
ed this impression. The sink rate was recorded at 2.100 feet per by flying from Los Angeles to New York
minute: the recommended maximum at low altitude was about 800 and back in 10 hours and 21 minutes.
feet per minute. The official verdict on the accident was that the crew Models 24 and 25. with several major
had failed to monitor instruments properly. By the time they realized improvements, rolled out to great ac-
their predicament, it was too late to slow their descent, and the plane claim in 1966. Customers loved the little
jets, apparently agreeing with Lear that
crashed short of the runway.
"you cant stand up in a Cadillac either."
On November 11. 1965, only three days after the Cincinnati acci-
But by early 1967 inadequate marketing
dent, a United 727 approaching Salt Lake City radioed from 10.000 techniques and unprofitable subsidiaries
feet: "We have the runway in sight." The copilot, who was flying the forced Lear to sell his company.
ship, began to descend quickly, at more than 2.000 feet per minute over No man to give up. Lear at the age of
the last 90 seconds of the flight and 2,300 feet per minute during the 73 launched one more ambitious proj-
1976. he began work on the Lear
ect. In
final 60 seconds, nearly three times the maximum recommended by
Fan 2100. a revolutionary six-passenger
United. The only way to check such a rate with wing flaps fully extended
businessman's plane that would use two
is to speed up and increase lift. When the jet was 90 seconds from
turbine engines to drive a 90-inch pusher
touchdown, the copilot reached for the throttles. "Not yet." the captain propeller mounted at the rear of the
said. Those two words doomed the flight. By the time the captain took craft. The ultralight 2100 was designed
over the controls and shoved the throttles forward seven seconds both for speed and economy —
and was
from the runway, nothing could have been done to save the plane. expected to be cheaper to operate than
anything of its size on the market.
The 727's undercarriage hit the ground more than 100 yards short
Bill Lear died of leukemia in 1978. just
of the runway and collapsed. The jet caught fire and
on its torn
slid
as the plane was coming off the drawing
belly for some 3,000 feet, flames enveloping the cabin. Of the 85 boards at his new firm. LearAvia. His
passengers aboard, 41 perished. widow. Moya Olsen Lear, honored his
When the fourth crash — this one
727 attempting to
of a Japanese deathbed wish and used the proceeds
—
Tokyo International Airport came nearly three months later,
land at from his $100 million estate to finish the
project. The 2100 flew for the first time
members of Congress demanded that the trijet be grounded. But the
on New Year's Day. 1981— with 180
Civil Aeronautics Board, unconvinced that the plane was at fault, resist- orders already on the books.
ed the pressure and established a special committee that, after a thor-
ough investigation of the 727's flight characteristics, exonerated the
airliner. The cause of the accidents lay not so much with the 727 as with
112
113
A clash of titans
the pilots, who had miscalculated when to apply power and arrest
descent. In the wake of the crashes, airlines established firm regulations

about how great a sink rate was permissible during final approach and
landing, and the crashes ceased.
With its good name restored, the 727 went on to win fame as the
most successful commercial transport in history. By the time a new
generation of airliners was ready to replace it in the early 1980s,
nearly 2,000 Boeing 727s had been sold or ordered. That Boeing
could sell so many is all the more remarkable because the 727 did
not have the market to itself for long. Its $4.2 million price was
too steep for many small companies that flew short hops, and the plane
was uneconomical for larger airlines to operate on similar routes.
What was needed was a still smaller airplane, and into this gap stepped
the dogged British and mighty Douglas.
Despite the Trident's promise, the plane turned out to be a dis-

appointment. Production delays had allowed the 727 to beat it
into service. Moreover, the Trident carried too few passengers to
compete with the 727. With sales of the Trident languishing, the newly
formed British Aircraft Corporation — the Air Ministry had finally suc-
ceeded in consolidating the aircraft industry — set on a short-

its sights
range jet. would be a small craft that,

It with two engines mounted at the
tail instead of three, would be profitable in short-haul service.
On May 9, 1961, BAC — even though it had only one order for 10 of
the new planes — bravely announced that the One-Eleven, as the air-
liner was designated, would go into production. Originally, the specifi-

cations had called for about 80 seats and a range of up to 1,600 miles.
Had such a plane been built, it would have had capabilities virtually
identical to the Trident's, but having one fewer engine, it would have
been cheaper to operate. However, the airliner was scaled down to

curtail production costs and wound up with only 65 seats and a much
shorter range —
less than 900 miles.
This was a crucial error; the One-Eleven would be seen as too small.
But for the moment at least there was no competitor in sight save the
Caravelle. Indeed, a wave of early U.S. orders for the One-Eleven 30 —
planes for American Airlines alone —
convinced BAC that it had a
money-making successor to the turboprop Viscount, the only British
transport to have invaded the American market successfully.
Unknown to the British, Douglas was about to enter the lists. Four
years earlier, when the company had canceled its four-engined DC-9
project, it already had a smaller, twin-engined jetliner on the drawing
boards. Called Model 2011, the plane was the product of an engineer-
ing team headed by John Brizendine, who years later would become
Douglas' president. But after United ordered 20 Caravelles from Sud
Aviation, Douglas reconsidered and decided that the way to
its effort
address the market was as the French company's U.S. sales agent.
—
The partnership proved to be a failure Douglas managed to lease
114
—
Two technicians prepare a model of the

DC-9 twin-jet for wind tunnel testing. As a
result of such tests. Douglas increased
the tail's size by one fifth to improve the
plane's stability and maneuverability.
only a small number of Caravelles to TWA — and the contract was

canceled after two years.
By then. Donald Douglas found himself under pressure from with-
in his own company to get into the short-range competition. Much of
it was coming from Jackson R. McGowen. a crack engineer and
salesman credited with snaring many DC-8 orders. He pointed out
that the company already had on hand plans for the Model 2011
and that the plane had caught the fancy of Delta Airlines' president
Woolman. On April 8. without a single contract in-house. Douglas
announced that it would build Model 201 1 as the DC-9. The step was a
bold one, and it kept Douglas in the transport business. In May Wool-
man signed an order for 15 DC-9s.
The plane would turn out to be larger than the BAC One-Eleven, but
smaller than the 727. with its powerful Pratt & Whitney JT8D engines
mounted near the tail on either side of the fuselage. Easy maintenance
—
and a two-man flight-deck crew one man less than flew the 727
promised the lowest operating costs of any airliner yet.
Douglas had beaten Boeing to the punch. Not until early 1965,
only three days before the DC-9's first flight, did Boeing announce
115
A clash of titans
that would manufacture its own short-range jetliner, the 737.

it
The plane's design was influenced greatly by the requirements of

Lufthansa, the first airline to place an order for it. The Germans
insisted on a passenger capacity of at least 100 10 more than the —
DC-9 could accommodate. The only way that Boeing could fulfill
this requirement was to give the 737 the same width as the 727
and 707. Shorter by 10 feet than the DC-9, the stubby 737 resem-
bled a beer barrel with wings.
Boeing's entry into the short-range contest, even though came it
late, clearly outstripped the BAC One-Eleven in power and ap-

proached the DC-9 in economy. Airlines liked the width of the 737
fuselage, which allowed six-abreast seating instead of the DC-9's
five. But unfortunately for Boeing, the 737 ran afoul of the Air
Line Pilots Association. ALPA had not objected to a two-pilot com-

plement for the BAC One-Eleven; there simply was not room in the
cockpit for a third crew member. Nor had the union insisted that
the DC-9 carry a three-man crew; before ALPA could specify other-
wise. Delta's pilots had agreed to operate the DC-9 with two pilots
only. But by the time the 737 entered airline service in 1968, ALPA
demanded that the plane be flown by three pilots, even though the third
would have little to do.
The policy hurt 737 sales for several years; the expense of a redun-
dant crew member raised the 737's operating costs and made the
plane unacceptable to many airlines, particularly to rapidly expanding
but small companies like North Central Airlines became Republic
(it
Airlines in 1979). which flew between Minneapolis and Denver and

between Duluth and Chicago. However, the worldwide fuel crisis in
1974. combined with a recession and increased competition among the

airlines, forced ALPA to abandon its three-man policy, and 737 sales
immediately picked up.

Small jetliners like the DC-9 and 737 brought the jet revolution to
towns and cities that hitherto had been served by piston-powered
planes, and they spawned a steady growth in air travel that helped
create giant airlines out of onetime midgets. Allegheny Airlines, for
example, began a transformation with the purchase of its first small jets
in 1965. In 14 years, it would outgrow its name and become USAir.
more passengers than Pan Am. operating more
carrying daily flights
than TWA and serving more cities than American.
With the proliferation of 737s. DC-9s and. to a lesser extent,
BAC One-Elevens, the jets had at last fulfilled the potential envisioned
for them by Eddie Rickenbacker in 1955. Airliners, taking off and land-
On November 29. 1973. proud workers
ing as often as once a minute from airports like O'Hare in Chicago. at the Boeing plant in Renton. Washington.
Heathrow in London and Orly in Paris, crisscrossed the countries of celebrate the roll-out of the 1.000th 727
the world like airborne trains, transporting millions of passengers bil- jetliner. The forward part of the fuselage was
emblazoned with a sampling of the
lions of miles each year. Yet almost before the airlines and their
logos seen here, representing the airlines
customers had become fully accustomed to the new order, even more and other companies throughout the
remarkable jet aircraft were discernible just ahead. ^*- world that were then operating 727s.
116
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117
Workhorses for the short haul
"I'm leavin' on a jet plane." ran the words of a popular 1960s

song, a refrain that captured the public's enthusiastic endorse-
ment of this rapid new means of travel. Yet jet speed and
comfort were not immediately available to everyone. The earli-
est commercial jets operated profitably only over long-distance
AIR p |
routes,and they could not land on or take off from the limited
runways of smaller airports.
By mid-decade, however, plane makers had come up with a
second generation of jetliners specifically designed for shorter
hops. Within a few years, the short-haulers had largely re-
placed propeller-driven passenger aircraft in American and
European skies.
The workhorse demands of the short-haul market forced
designers to modify basic concepts of airplane design. The
French Caravelle. for example, surprised the aviation world
with two engines mounted at the rear of the fuselage, an
its
arrangement that had distinct advantages for a modern pas-

senger jet. Apart from making for a quieter cabin, it allowed
flaps to be fitted across the entire wingspan, dramatically im-
proving short runway performance. Douglas designers adopt-
ed an almost identical twin-engined arrangement a few years
later for the DC-9.
Both the British Hawker Siddeley Trident and the Boeing

727 had three tail-mounted engines. The third engine gave the
planes extra flexibility in terms of range and safety —
an impor-
tant consideration for carriers that flew over bodies of water.
For reasons of economy. Boeing returned to a twin-engined
design for its stubby 737, mounting the turbojets conventional-
ly under each wing. And the company's more recent 757, a
larger, advanced-technology aircraft expected to operate well
into the 21st Century, also has two engines, slung from pylons.
The airlinersshown here and on the following pages are in
relative scale. The year given next to the model number is the
first date of commercial service.
118
SUD AVIATION SE-210 CARAVELLE 1959)
III (
One of the most successful European

jetliners ever constructed, the French
Carauelle incorporated a Comet nose
section bought from de Havilland and
employed two 11, 400 -pound-thrust Rolls-
Royce engines. It cruised at 450 mph and
carried 80 passengers up to 1.000 miles.
HAWKER SIDDELEY TRIDENT 3 (1970)
Originally designed by de Havilland. the

Trident was built by Hawker Siddeley
after a series of British aircraft industry
mergers in the late 1 950s. The model
shown here held 180 passengers and had
a range of more than 1.000 miles.
BEA
i
»HIIIIII»r^'f MIMU'M
SOD
iiiiiinir
'Vfh »«- -M-^fc
120
BOEING 727-200 (1964)
Powered by three 15,500-pound-thrust

turbofan engines, the 727 was the first
American trijet and became the world's
best-selling airliner. It seats up to 189
passengers and has a range of 3,000 miles.
MCDONNELL-DOUGLAS DC-9 SRS.40 (1966)
Designed along lines similar to the
Caravelle's, the DC-9 quickly outstripped

the French jet in sales, even though it
appeared several years later. Powered by

two 15,500-pound-thrust engines, it carried
125 passengers up to 1.670 miles.
/
9/ /f AVIAJV OY-KCA
rip Qui i n i ii i ill I
ef —
BOEING 737-100 (1968)

The smallest Boeing passenger jet. the 737 is
an economical short-hauler that has the

same fuselage width 707 and 727.
as the
This early version couldcany up to
1 00 passengers on routes of 700 miles.
BOEING 757-200(1983)
Powered by two 37 .000 -pound-thrust
turbofan engines, the 757 incorporates
weight-saving materials in its structure and
features an electronic instrument system
that displays flight data on color video-tube
screens. It carries up to 218 passengers
and has a 2.000-mile range.
122
Ml
mtmrnmamumj. .ma:
Colored dyes simulate airflow patterns on a scale model of the supersonic Concorde that has been submerged for tests in streaming water.
^Rl
The fastest- and the biggest
InSeptember 1962, a Citroen se-

dan pulled up at an old factory on the outskirts of Paris. The building
had once been owned by Louis Bleriot, the French aviation pioneer
who in 1909 was the first to fly the English Channel; now it belonged to
Sud Aviation, builders of the Caravelle. Out of the car stepped Lucien
Servanty, Sud Aviation's chief designer, and his counterpart at the
British Aircraft Corporation, Dr. William Strang.
The two men walked into the building, found an empty office and
locked the door. Hours later they emerged with a set of preliminary
designs for the first airliner to fly faster than the speed of sound. It was
aptly named would demand the ultimate
the Concorde, for the project
in aeronautical cooperation between France and Great Britain.
Across the Atlantic, meanwhile, the huge and enormously successful
American aircraft industry was beginning to move in an entirely different
direction — toward much larger airliners, not faster ones. The United
States Air Force had started the trend in 1962 by giving a contract to
Lockheed for a giant cargo plane called the C-141 Starlifter. A fuselage
145 feet long and four 21,000-pound-thrust turbofans enabled the
transport to carry nearly 71,000 pounds of troops and equipment
more than 4,000 miles nonstop. A plane of similar capacity might ap-
peal to airlines; projections indicated that traffic would soon ex-
ceed 100 million passengers a year, and fleets of mammoth airliners
would be needed to handle such volume. But it would be Boeing, not

Lockheed, that would first rise to the challenge with a fantastic jumbo jet
known simply by the numerals 747.
Thus the stage was set for a two-pronged assault on the future. One
path would lead to the swiftest commercial aircraft ever placed in regular
service, the other to the largest. At the outset, both directions seemed to
promise great profits. Speed was the essence of air travel. Were not
jetliners already well on the way to supplanting slower piston-engined
aircraft? And bigger planes, as long as there were passengers to fill them,
had so far proved vastly more profitable than the smaller ones that
preceded them. No seer could predict that in the end only one of the
endeavors — the jumbo — would succeed,
jet stimulating competition
among aircraft manufacturers to create similar airliners. For a variety of
reasons, the supersonic project would wither; the Concorde would re-
main a superb technological triumph, but, sadly, a money-losing aircraft
that nobody really wanted, not even its British and French developers.
125
The fastest — and the biggest
It seemed to make eminent sense and French,

in 1962 for the British
hotly competitive in most matters, to cooperate on the Concorde.

Both nations understood the necessity of countering what French
President Charles de Gaulle described as the "American colonization of
the skies." Each had decided independently of the other to build a
supersonic transport as a way of breaking the United States monopoly
but had been stymied by the expense. Better for the two nations to
share the development costs — and the profits, when they came — than
not to proceed at all.
There were pressing political reasons as well as economic ones for the
British to collaborate. Having at first refrained from joining the Common
Market, to go it alone. Britain was now having second thoughts. It saw its
participation in the creation of the supersonic transport as an opportuni-
ty to prove to France, which could veto its admission to the Market, that
it could be a reliable and valuable partner.
Servanty's and Strang's cooperation at the old Bleriot factory had
been the first step in the development of a supersonic jetliner. Now
some formal accord was needed. This was soon worked out. and
on November 29. 1962. the Anglo-French Supersonic Aircraft Agree-
ment was signed. The development of the plane and the entire bill —
for it —
was to be shared equally by the French and British govern-
ments; Sud Aviation and the British Aircraft Corporation would not risk
a sou or a shilling. And as an indication of both nations' sincerity, there
was no cancellation clause.
The announcement of the Anglo-French accord caused little stir in
the United States. American plane builders had abandoned the idea of a
supersonic transport. They knew that such an airliner could not be
developed in the United States, any more than it could in Europe,
without government backing. The expense was simply too high. The Air
Force had in service a supersonic medium bomber, the Convair B-58.
and had contracted with North American to build three prototypes of a
larger one, the XB-70. Had the XB-70 been successful, it might have
paved the way for a supersonic airliner, but in 1961, the Department of
Defense canceled the project. One prototype was never finished, one
was destroyed in a mid-air collision and the third was put on display at
the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio.
Thus, the French and British took the lead by default and ran little risk
of losing even though it was May of 1963 before detailed
it,
drawings for the Concorde were far enough advanced for work to
begin on two prototypes, one in France and one in England. Ostens-
ibly, two planes were needed to give both countries experience in
building an SST and to expedite flight testing, which was expected

to get under way sometime in 1967. But the two prototypes also be-
trayed the undercurrent of suspicion between the French and the

British; each feared that the other would somehow contrive to take
all the credit for the Concorde.
The prototypes were designed to carry 118 passengers at a cruising
126
Mil
speed of Mach 2.2, slightly more than twice the speed of sound, or
1 ,450 miles per hour at a cruising altitude of 50,000 feet — but no faster.
A speed limit was necessary if the aircraft was not to heat up excessively
Even in
in flight. the— 94° temperature and thin atmosphere where the
Concorde would cruise, a plane exceeding Mach 2.2 would become so
hot from friction that would have to be constructed of a
it metal more
heat resistant than aluminum, such as titanium or stainless steel. But to
employ these materials would add immeasurably to its cost.
To be certain that the Concorde could endure the temperature
extremes of supersonic flight, British engineers built a closely fitting
casing around the fuselage and one wing of a test airframe. Through the
narrow space between plane and casing, they blew hot and cold The air.
test would be repeated thousands of times to prove that the aluminum
would not become brittle with fatigue from thermal contraction and
expansion in flight.
This was only one of many tests carried out on the airframe. The
wings were the subject of particular investigation. The designers had
come up with a delta shape suitable for a plane flying faster than the
speed of sound. The wing was put through 5,000 hours of wind tunnel
tests,and though the French balked at the delay these tests caused,
the time was well invested. Even the slightest flaw in the design could
have produced air resistance that might have shortened the plane's
range by hundreds of miles.
As a result of the delta shape, the wings would not only be ef-
ficient for supersonic flight but would provide enough lift to al-
low the Concorde to land at 177 miles per hour, significantly faster
than a 707. Even at that speed, however, the wings would lower the
plane gently to earth only if Concorde steeply
the pilot pointed the
into the air —
which, unfortunately, meant that he would be deprived of
a view of the runway ahead of him. Here the engineers came up with
an ingenious solution; they gave the plane a nose that, at the touch
of a control, could be tilted downward, thus providing maximum visi-
bility during landing.
The plane was powered by four Olympus engines built jointly in
Britain and France; together they would provide more than 150,000
pounds of thrust, twice as much as the engines on a 707, whose gross

weight was close to that of the Concorde.
In every respect the Concorde promised to be a technical tour
de force without precedent in commercial aviation. Yet even as the

prototypes took shape, on paper and then in the hangars of Sud
first
Aviation and BAC, the French and British were beginning to feel
apprehensive about the Concorde's future. Some airlines had com-
plained that the plane was too small. The designers responded by
changing the blueprints; they stretched the fuselage by eight and
one half feet and raised the number of seats to 136. But coming as
late as it did, this modification could not be incorporated into the
prototypes and had to await actual production of the aircraft.
127
128
Mm Mtftl
Size was a problem that could at least be addressed. More worrying
was the noise the Concorde's four mammoth turbojet engines would
make. Quieter turbofans had been judged unsuitable for supersonic
flight, since their large air intakes caused excessive drag. Without the
muffling effect of fans, the Olympus engines would thunder louder on
takeoffand landing than those of any other airliner. Some cities might
ban the Concorde because of the noise.
But the roar of the engines was nothing compared with the effect
the shock wave, or sonic boom, might have on public acceptance of the
SST. Radiating outward from any plane flying faster than sound, the
shock wave could shatter windows, crack walls and shake plaster from
ceilings. In 1964. the Federal Aviation Administration had sponsored an
experiment called Operation Bongo Mark 2 in which Air Force B-58
supersonic bombers subjected the 324,000 inhabitants of Oklahoma
City to 1.254 sonic booms over a five-month period. Before the assault
ended, 15,000 complaints had been filed. A large proportion were
fraudulent, but many were not; more than $200,000 had to be paid in
damages. It would hardly be surprising if many countries prohibited

supersonic flights over their land.
On top of these headaches came the realization that the Concorde
might not be much of a seller. Early estimates had put sales at between
160 and 400 aircraft by 1980. But by March 1967, only 74 options for
had been taken by 16 airlines, including Pan Am. Air France.

the aircraft
BOAC. Japan Air Lines and Australia's Qantas. Many of these options
had been secured only because the Concorde had been redesigned to
carry the more profitable payload of 136 passengers. But this change
had added to the already skyrocketing projected investment costs. Fur-
ther changes to satisfy the airlines' demands for more cargo space
would escalate costs still higher, to more than $1.75 billion $1.3 bil- —
lion greater than the original 1962 estimate.
It soon became obvious to the British and French governments that
none of the public monies expended on development were likely to be

recovered. But the project went forward; national pride was involved,
particularly among the who turned increasingly rigid the gloom-
French,
One of the first color pictures of the Tu-144 ier the commercial assessments became. No one wanted to admit but it.
prototype seen in the West delineates the

theConcorde was beginning to look distinctly like a white elephant.
spectacular S curve of the jet's wing. The
Soviet designers gave the wing this shape to Even with its carrying capacity increased, it would still be transporting far
eliminate nose shock waves as the jet fewer passengers than the intercontinental version of the Boeing 707.
crossed the sound barrier. The wing was Worse, would consume 20 per cent more fuel for an Atlantic crossing.
it
later modified to have straight leading edges

Airlines would have to charge a premium for tickets, making the round-
for improved supersonic performance.
trip fare $328 higher than a first-class seat on a regular jetliner and —
$1,394 higher than the tourist fares that made up the bulk of the traffic.
"The Concorde." said a member of Parliament in 1966, "is not for the
ordinary man in the street. It will be for the international jet set. people
power game on other people's money politicians, busi-
playing the —
nessmen and diplomats."
When, in 1963 and again in 1964, Britain quietly approached
129
France to discuss canceling the project or altering it to save mon-

ey, the French refused. The Concorde would proceed as planned,
warned the French, or else. If Britain withdrew, membership in
the Common Market would be even more elusive. Since there was no At first glance, the Soviet Union's su-
personic transport, the Tupolev 144,
cancellation clause in the Concorde agreement, France could sue
appeared to be a twin of the Anglo-
in the World Court and in all probability it would win, causing
French Concorde. It featured a similar
Britain great embarrassment. Moreover, Britain would lose all the fuselage and sweptback wing and the
money it had invested in the endeavor and any residual rights in same "droop-snoot" hinged nose to im-
the airplane if the French went ahead on their own. Short of risking prove the forward view from the cockpit.
all this. had no choice but to go on.
Britain So close was the resemblance that West-
Work was completed on the French prototype in August 1968 but em aeronautical engineers called the de-
sign "Concordski." The craft was slightly
taxi tests exposed problems with the brakes and landing gear. Not only
larger than the Concorde, with room for
did correcting these deficiencies cost the French and British more mon- 121 passengers — and a bit faster, with a
ey, but they cost time, depriving Britain and France in the end of the claimed speed of 1,500 mph.
prestige of being first to fly a supersonic airliner. Eager to publicize their supersonic lin-
That distinction went to the Russians, who on December 31, 1968, er, the Soviets exhibited it at the Paris Air
rushed their Tupolev 144 into the air for its maiden flight. The Tu-144 Show in 1971 and again in 1973. At the
second show it took off on a short flight
resembled the Concorde so closely that the British dubbed it the
and, with all eyes upon it, ran into trou-
"Concordski" and suspected the Russians of industrial espionage. Be ble and crashed (sequence at right). The
that as it had generally proved ineffi-
may, Soviet commercial aircraft Soviets never released an official expla-
cient and uneconomical and had never posed a threat to Western nation of the cause of the accident.
manufacturers. The Tu-144 would be no exception and would soon Over the next four years subsequent
fade from the scene (page 128 and right). models underwent extensive tests, while
rumors reached the West of numerous
The French prototype, emblazoned with the words British Aircraft
problems, including unacceptably high
Corporation-Sud Aviation France Concorde, lifted off the runway on fuel consumption. In November 1977,
March 2, 1969. The 42 minutes, and no attempt was made
flight lasted the Tu-144 went into weekly passenger
to exceed the speed of sound. The British prototype flew on April 9, also service between Moscow and Alma Ata
at subsonic speed. Both groups were being cautious. A true demonstra- in Soviet Central Asia. But in just 10
tion of the Concorde's potential would have to wait until further tests
months, the trouble-plagued craft was
and appraisals of the plane in flight had been made.

grounded more or less for good again —
without explanation.
In the meantime, on the other side of the ocean, work was getting
started on the 747 — in a roundabout way. In 1962, Boeing saw an
opportunity for itself in the shortcomings of Lockheed's C-141 Star-
lifter. Maynard Pennell, the man who had so emphatically assured Bill
Allen at Farnborough more than a decade earlier that the company

could make a better airliner than the Comet, had his staff analyze the
cargo-carrying capacity of the They discovered that despite
Starlifter.
the plane's mammoth size, the C-141 was short on volume; the jet
would be full long before it had been loaded to its maximum takeoff
weight. Pennell and his engineers proposed that Boeing undertake the
design of a transport even larger than the C-141 and quickly roughed
out the preliminary design of a cargo plane longer and wider than the
C-141 and having 10 times the capacity.
Boeing was confident it could build such a giant. Among other things,
it could apply the experience gained in developing the 727 to designing
flaps that would allow the new transport to operate from existing run-
130
"" •Mi
A sequence of photographs shows the
Soviet Tu-144's disastrous flight at the 1973
Paris AirShow. After making a low pass over
the airfield, the pilot pulled the nose up
sharply. The aircraft climbed to 4,500 feet,

then suddenly dived earthward, its tail
separating as it fell. The plane turned over,

then blew up in a ball of flame, sections of it
crashing on the main street of a nearby
village. Seven villagers, mostly children,
were killed, along with the jet's crew of six.
131
ways. And with an eye to an Air Force contract, Boeing made certain
that the plane would have enough wheels in the main landing gear to
spread the weight of the jet so that it could fly into and out of airfields
with grass landing strips.
The was quick to recognize the aircraft's potential as a

Air Force
carrier of men and equipment to distant trouble spots and lost no time in
asking Boeing to prepare a bid. But to make the situation competitive, it
also called upon Douglas and Lockheed to prepare bids for a large
aircraft of their own design.
Even as the three companies were laboring to meet the Air Force
specifications for the plane, American interest in a supersonic transport,
or SST, was being rekindled. Part of the impetus was the progress the
French and British were making on the Concorde, but an even greater
incentive came from what was still but a rumor in 1963: that the Soviet
Union had also decided to produce a supersonic airliner. "One of the
worst beatings we'll ever get," said American Airlines president C. R.
Smith, "is if we have to look up to a Soviet SST, the way we had to look
up to the first Sputnik."
Foremost among the SST's proponents was Najeeb Halaby, appoint-
ed by President John Kennedy to succeed Elwood Quesada at the
Federal Aviation Administration. He felt that the project was so vital to
American prestige that public money should

finance it. Kennedy
agreed. Thus on June 5, 1963, only one day after Pan Am revealed that
With its 19-foot-5-inch girth, the wide-
it had taken options on eight Concordes, the President announced
bodied 747 can comfortably accommodate
that the United States would develop an SST prototype. As eventual- three or four more passengers in each
ly approved by Congress, the project called for the government to
row than the earlier 707 (top), which has a
diameter of only 1 1 feet. And since the
assume 75 per cent of the estimated $1.5 billion development costs,
747's cabin is also 76 feet longer than the
with the federal funds to be repaid through royalties on every SST 707' s, the jumbo jet can cany two and
sold. Boeing, Lockheed and North American, the builder of the XB-70, a half to three times as many passengers.
were invited to submit bids.
Now two major competitions — one for the SST and another for the
giant transport, which the Air Force called the C-5A
were under way. —
InJune 1965, having submitted the lowest bid, Lockheed was named to
build the C-5A. Boeing could not conceal its disappointment over not
getting the contract. From an engineering standpoint, it felt that its
design was the best of the three. Rather than give up, Boeing began
thinking about converting the military transport into a commercial air-
liner. It had some reason to feel encouraged. No less a figure in the
aviation world than Pan Am's president. Juan Trippe, had indicated
that hewas interested in just such a plane. In fact, Pan Am officials
—
had been working unsuccessfully, as it turned out with all three —
competitors in the C-5A contest to come up with a plane that could be
adapted to commercial use.
When the announcement came Lockheed had won the C-5A
that
competition, Trippe immediately telephoned Lockheed to ask about
the feasibility of buying a civilian model of the transport. But knowing
that the C-5A would have to be completely redesigned and lacking the
132
Mt I
resources to do company had decided to concentrate on the
so. the
SST. Nor did Douglas care to evolve a new design from its C-5A entry.
This left the field open to Boeing.
At the risk of overextending itself with two blockbuster projects, the
SST and a large subsonic airliner, Boeing nevertheless decided to pro-
ceed.Under the supervision of its chief of technology, Joel Sutter, the
company*s C-5A entry was totally reworked and designated Model
747. would be the first of a whole category of jetliners known as wide-
It
bodies. The plane, as finally conceived, was to measure 19 feet 5 inches

across. Its width and its 231 -foot length would provide room for 450
seats — nearly two and a half times as many as the 707. Moreover, the
747 would be 30 per cent cheaper to operate than the 707 and DC-8.
and at 625 miles per hour, faster as well.
Trippe was suitably impressed. On April 13. 1966, he signed a letter
of intent to buy 25 of the jumbo jets. The price of this fleet was $525
million, more than any company had ever paid for the purchase of a
single type of airliner.
Then on December 31. Boeing received more good news. Its pro-
posal for a supersonic transport had won government approval and the
project was to begin at once.
Boeing's efforts to design an SST got off to a good start but soon
bogged down. The company came up with an innovative design for
wings that could be swung from almost perpendicular to the fuselage for
takeoffand landing to a sharply sweptback position for supersonic flight.

Not only would such an arrangement make the airliner more efficient at
subsonic speeds; it would make it quieter less power being required —
for takeoff. But there was a snag.
The wings would swing on two huge pivots. 36 inches in diameter.
The pivots, together with the machinery required to move the wings,
would weigh 40.000 pounds, even if made of lightweight titanium.
Their weight might have been offset by the exceptional efficiency of the
wings, but wind tunnel tests and computer analyses revealed deficien-
cies in the airworthiness of the design that could be corrected only by
adding stubby wings, called canards, to the nose section, thus increasing
the plane's weight still more.
Engineers pored over the SST blueprints and whittled away about
23.000 pounds. Hard though they tried, they were unable to keep the
SST from being more than 50.000 pounds overweight. "Instead of
entering into a situation where the problems began to offset one an-
other." said Edward Wells, chairman of Boeing's SST Technical- Advi-
sory Council, of the plane at this point, "the problems were actually
compounding." Shortly thereafter, it became evident that the swing-
wing would never work and would have to be replaced by a simpler,

fixed delta wing. Fortunately, when Boeing sought a contract extension
to change the wing design, the FAA agreed.
Boeing's other project — the 747 — was also running into problems,
some having to do with its size. The plane would make Lilliputians of all
133
747 ASSEMBLY SEQUENCE
HORIZONTAL STABILIZER
%<^ I—
NOSE
FORWARD BODY
FORWARD CABIN
WING STUB
WINGS JOINED WINGS JOINED BODY COMPLETE FINAL ASSEMBLY ROLL-OUT

WING ASSEMBLY
TO CENTER BODY
*% J
T
Q ^^™
^ 4%,i«^^
CENTER BODY «
I TAIL CONE
TAIL SECTION J.
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AFT CABIN VERTICAL FIN
existing jetliners.The fuselage was to be almost as long as a football As this construction-sequence diagram
field. The tail would reach as high as a six-story building. A seven-foot
from Boeing shows, the 747 assembly line
begins with the putting together of the
basketball player could stand in the mouth of one of the four Pratt &
wings. When this is done, other sections of
Whitney JT9D 41.000-pound-thrust turbofans with a foot of headroom the plane are added to them in a process
to spare. The wings spanned 195 feet 8 inches. So enormous was the that takes only about 45 days to complete.
747 that it would require an acre of parking space.

Taking its overwhelming size into account, some people jokingly
referred to the 747 as the "Aluminum Overcoat" and the "Big Ugly."
Others — particularly Boeing's executives — were concerned about the
effect that one crash would have on public consciousness. The mind-
boggling statistics — 450 passengers and 18 crew members dead
caused sober reflection, and Boeing went to extraordinary lengths
to make 747 safe. It appointed a safety committee, consisting of
the
five members, to consider every aspect of the aircraft. The committee
insisted on four main hydraulic systems, three of them to serve as

backups. It pushed for an undercarriage so strong that the plane could
land safely if two of the four main landing gears malfunctioned. Wings
were built to support a load 50 per cent greater than the jet would
normally be expected to carry.
Concern for passenger safety extended to the inside of the plane as
well. The 747 made extensive use of flame-resistant, nontoxic materials
for the cabin wall lining. The railing of the spiral staircase leading to the
upper-level lounge was moved farther from the wall to avoid the possi-
bility of a passenger getting an arm caught between railing and wall
134
y>m . Mfc I
Front and rear sections of a 747 are during sudden turbulence. The five safety specialists even examined the
delivered to the final assembly area from coffee makers to ensure that drain outlets were located far enough away
other parts of the plant by an overhead
from wiring to avoid short circuits.
crane. They be lowered onto adjustable
will
cradles (one can be seen under the nose) As the designers worked on the plane, they realized that it was begin-
for precise alignment with the core of the ning to suffer from the same affliction as the SST —
was gaining weight
it
airplane, then riveted in place.

rapidly. They did everything possible —
Boeing even sponsored a con-
test among employees to pare it down. A revamped wing shaved off
1,000 pounds. Heavy paper impregnated with Nomex (a new, flame-

proof du Pont plastic) was used for certain external parts that would be
exposed to little stress, lightening the load still more. And in another
weight-reducing measure the immense main landing gear beams, nine
feet in length, were made of titanium.
When it came to building the 747, Boeing was confronted by another

headache. With orders from Pan Am, United, Air France and others on
the books, it had no plant big enough to assemble its giant and had to
construct a new one near Everett, Washington. The building would
sprawl over 780 acres of land adjacent to a county airport with a runway
135
long enough to handle the jet. And in order for the 747 to roll out on
schedule. Boeing had to begin building components of the plane long
before the complex was complete.
On February 9. 1969. the first 747 was ready for its inaugural
flight. Excitement ran high as hundreds of spectators lined the run-
way. Boeing's chief test pilot. Jack Waddell. took it all in stride.
"I don*t know how you can glamorize it,'* he said later, "I had
a good night's sleep near Everett at a motel the night before, got
up and had a waffle and some sausages, my favorite, and went out
to the airplane." For Waddell, the flight was just another day's
work, although it ended prematurely when the flaps caused unex-
pected vibrations. There was no danger, but to avoid damaging
the new aircraft. Waddell brought the 747 back in. "The plane Undergoing stress tests, the wing of the 747
handles beautifully." he said after landing. "I'd call it a two-finger prototype becomes a blur as the main spar,
bent upward 26 feet by powerful hydraulic
airplane; you can fly it with the and thumb on the wheel."
forefinger
jacks, gives way. Heavy rope netting hangs
The problem with the flaps —
they had been misaligned during over the scaffolding to catch any parts
installation — was quickly rectified, and the 747 underwent further that may spring loose.
136
ite i
flight tests. While these were going on, pilots from airlines that
had ordered 747s attended the Boeing Airline Training School in Se-
attle. There they spent hours learning to fly the plane in a computer-
controlled simulator.
To give the pilots the experience of what it would feel like to taxi
around an airport in the giant aircraft, a unique device called "Wad-

dell's Wagon" was brought into play (Waddell had actually helped
design it). It featured a truck with three-story stilts mounted on it.
Perched atop the stilts was the shell of a 747 flight deck, and there the
pilot sat. directing the driver of the truck by radio. One pilot liken-
ed the experience to "sitting on the roof of my house and trying to drive

the thing into the street."
After years of expectation and build-up. the first scheduled 747 flight
proved something of an embarrassment. Following a short inauguration

ceremony in a terminal at New York's Kennedy Airport, the 336
Europe-bound passengers boarded the Pan Am plane, christened the
Clipper Young America. There was a delay of several minutes as the
flight crew struggled to close a balky door. Then 25 more minutes
elapsed before the ground crew had loaded all 15 tons of cargo into the
hold. When Young America finally taxied to the end of the runway for
takeoff, the pilot, 26-year veteran Bob Weeks, noticed that an engine
was overheating. He had no choice but to return to the terminal. Pan
Am had another 747 standing by. but by the time it was prepared for
flight, loaded with Young America's cargo and passengers, seven hours
had gone by. The 747. originally scheduled to depart at 7 p.m.. finally
took off at two in the morning.

Such a beginning might have been read as an omen. The airlines, it
turned out, were initially disappointed with the 747. Because of the
plane's weight, pilots were forced to run the engines at a higher power
setting, causing overheating. This led to more repairs and to higher —
maintenance costs than had been expected. Two years would go by
before Pratt & Whitney could increase the thrust of the JT9D turbofan
and cure the problem.
As if all this had not been disheartening enough to the airlines,
the growth in air travel that had been predicted four years earlier when
they had signed up for 747s was slow to materialize because of an
economic recession. The airlines suddenly faced the prospect of hun-
dreds of seats they could not fill.
Passengers themselves were not particularly enthusiastic about the

plane. Engine problems often delayed flights. Waiting lines for the
airliner's 12 lavatories would sometimes stretch down the aisles.
Food service was often erratic because flight attendants were unac-
customed to serving so many passengers. Charles Lindbergh, a Pan Am
board member, reported that on an early transatlantic flight the
harried cabin attendants took so long serving dinner that they never
got around to serving breakfast. After a 747 landed, it disgorged
an avalanche of luggage that overwhelmed the baggage-handling capa-
137
BOEING 747-100 PASSENGER TRANSPORT
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BOEING 747-200B COMBINATION TRANSPORT
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138
Mti
bilities of many airports and left passengers waiting half an hour
or more for their bags.
Gradually, these problems were ironed out, and the flying public
began to appreciate the 747' s advantages — its roominess, the wide
seats even in coach, the upstairs lounge. Pan Am turned the lounge
into a restaurant for first-class passengers; they could board a 747
and then "go out to dinner." Continental Air Lines outfitted the coach
section with a bar and featherweight piano, complete with pianist,
to serenade passengers.
The problems that Boeing had with the 747 were nothing compared
with those that the company's SST project presented. Public opposi-
tion to the idea of a supersonic plane had mounted as the project
wore on. In 1967, Dr. William Shurcliff, a Harvard University scientist,
organized the Citizens League Against the Sonic Boom. Soon, the
group began to distribute arguments condemning supersonic flights
over populated areas. Other scientists hypothesized that the exhaust

from SSTs, expelled into the atmosphere at high altitude, would start
a self-perpetuating chemical reaction that would ultimately deplete

a radiation-absorbing layer of ozone in the stratosphere and bring on
an increase in skin cancer.
Few of these claims were anything more than poorly documented

conjecture, but they were enough to incite the public against the SST.
As resistance grew, Congress began to express doubts about the plane.
President Richard Nixon, shortly after he was elected in 1968, appoint-
ed a 12-member committee to report on the project. Believing like
Presidents Kennedy and Johnson before him that the plane was essen-
tial to American prestige, Nixon hoped that the committee's report
would be a favorable one. Instead, it blasted the SST not only on

environmental grounds but on economic ones as well. Three billion
Three cutaways of the 747 demonstrate the
jet's versatility. At top is the conventional
dollars would be spent before the first SST came off the assembly line,
passenger plane, with a full 450-seat load. In and at best the government would not recover its investment until
the middle is the so-called Combi, which can 300 aircraft had been sold. When the committee's report became pub-
be converted to a 6- or 12-container cargo
lic, it all but sealed the fate of the SST, but not before additional
plane in as little as 11 hours. And at bottom
isan all-cargo 747, fitted with a special millions of dollars had been sunk The plane was final-
into the project.
swing-up nose door; the all-cargo version on May 20, 1971,
ly killed just about two years after the Concorde
holds as many as 29 outsized containers.
prototypes had first flown.
In Europe, the cancellation of the American SST cut two ways. British
and French proponents of supersonic air travel feared that the Con-
corde might run afoul of the same sentiments that helped scuttle
Boeing's SST. But they also knew that they now had the supersonic
field all to themselves. "The Concorde program," said Henri Ziegler,
president of Aerospatiale, "must be pursued with more energy and
confidence than ever." For this to happen, the options taken by the
airlines on the Concorde would have to be converted into sales.
So far, not a single company had given sign of ordering one. Then
in July 1972, BOAC, with eight options, agreed to purchase five
139
The fastest— and the biggest
British-built Concordes; Air France, also with eight options, signed A full-scale mock-up of Boeing's SST awaits
inspection by a Congressional budget
up for four to be assembled in Toulouse. Only the small size of the
committee at the company's Developmental
orders came as a surprise; BOAC and Air France, as flag airlines of
Center in Seattle. When the Senate voted to
governments that had invested millions in the plane, had no choice scrap the entire SST project, the mock-up,
but to order the Concorde. which cost $1 1 million, was sold at auction
for $31,000 and taken to Florida, where

For the world to be convinced of the Concorde's potential, a foreign
it was turned into a tourist attraction.
airline would have commit to the plane, and Pan Am was viewed as
to
the likeliest — —
and most important candidate. The French and British
calculated that no international airline could afford to be without Con-
cordes once this influential carrier bought them.
The assignment of making the sale went to the British. The task would
not be easy. For one thing, Juan Trippe, who had founded the airline
and who had been so quick to respond to each new development in
aviation, had retired, and the company was now run by Charles William
Seawell. formerly president of the U.S. division of Rolls-Royce Aero
Engines, Incorporated. Moreover, time was running out; Pan Am's
options were due to expire on January 31. 1973. BAC's sales team,
under Geoffrey Knight, head of the company's commercial aircraft
division, was well aware that Pan Am had just invested heavily in Boeing
747s. Suspecting that the airline could not afford Concorde for the
moment. Knight hoped to keep negotiations alive by persuading Pan
Am to extend its options.
When BAC's sales team sat down with Pan Am executives in
New York, they produced a market survey of businessmen who flew
regularly to Europe. The results showed that these travelers would
140
mm*
—
willingly pay extra for the speed offered by the Concorde — just half
the time it would take another jetliner to cover the same distance.
But Pan Am could not be persuaded that this enthusiasm would offset
both the high price of the airliner — $65 million against $21 million for a
747 — and much higher operating costs.
its
Pan Am made up its mind not to buy. "When the news finally broke,"
recalled one member of Knight's sales team, "I heard on the phone it
from Geoffrey, who told us not to be too disappointed. put the phone I
down, kicked a few things and swore a few times to let off steam. Then I
went and joined the others to go out and get sloshed."

Hope of selling the Concorde to any but a few airlines seemed now to
have evaporated. Within a month all but two of the companies holding
options on the plane allowed them to lapse, and neither of these two
Qantas and Japan Air Lines —
had the courage actually to go ahead and
order the plane for itself; they extended their options, but they would
never use them. BOAC and Air France would be going it alone.
In the interim, two more Concordes had been built, one in France,
the other in Britain. Incorporating the changes the airlines had originally
insisted on, these were preproduction versions of the plane and would
be used to satisfy civil aviation authorities that the Concorde performed

as promised and was safe to fly at speeds faster than sound. As part of a
publicity campaign, the two were flown to cities all over the world.
Britain's aircraft visited the Middle East and Australia. France's touched
down in Brazil, Peru, Colombia. Venezuela and on September 20,

1973, in Texas for the dedication of the new Dallas-Fort Worth Interna-
tional Airport. Thousands turned out in Texas to see the plane and walk
through it. Local dignitaries were taken up for supersonic junkets over
the Gulf of Mexico. "Everyone agrees Concorde's a show stopper,"
wrote the Dallas Times Herald.
Nine months later, as the publicity visits continued. Aerospatiale
staged a dramatic demonstration of the Concorde's marvelous speed.
At 8:22 a.m.. June 17, 1974, the French plane took off from Boston's
Logan International Airport and screamed eastward toward Paris. The
takeoff had been timed to coincide with the departure of an Air France
Boeing 747 from bound for Boston. When the airliners met over
Paris,
the Atlantic, the 747 was 620 miles out of Paris; the Concorde was
nearly 2.400 miles from Boston. After landing at the French capital, the
Concorde spent an hour and eight minutes refueling, then headed back
west. It arrived in Boston 1 1 minutes ahead of the 747.
Feats like this enchanted the public but unmoved.
left the airlines
They believed that the plane would lose money, even though the man-
ufacturers asserted that Pan Am and TWA together stood to lose $200
million worth of first-class transatlantic passengers a year to the Con-
corde as soon as it started flying the ocean regularly. The only way to
convince the airlines of the plane's worth, it seemed, would be to show
the doubtful how
Concorde performed in everyday operation.
the
A plan was developed for British Airways (the result of a merger
141
The fastest— and the biggest
in 1972 between BOAC and BEA) and Air France to inaugurate reg-
ular Concorde service in early 1976 between London and Bahrain
on the Persian Gulf and between Paris and Buenos Aires, Argentina.
But for the airlines to turn a profit, they would have to tap the
bustling traffic between Europe and the United States as well. And
here they faced a hurdle.
When they applied to the FAA for permission to begin Concorde
service to Boston, Washington, D.C., and New York, hearings were
held in these cities to assess the effect of the airplane on people and the
environment. Sonic booms had already been outlawed in the United
States. Now the Concorde's opponents attacked the airliner mercilessly
on the ground that its engines were too noisy. The outcry took on
aspects of mass hysteria. Citizens' groups protested. "It is absolutely
abhorrent to us," declared the leader of an organization named Con-
corde Alert. "We won't tolerate it. Scratch it and rip it out!" John
Kenneth Galbraith, the economist, added his voice to the chorus of
dissenters when he wrote in a letter to the London Times, "There isn't a
chance approaching that of an icicle in hell that the Concorde will ever
be allowed to touch down in American airports."
But the defended the plane, demolishing many of the op-
British
position's arguments as irrational, misinformed or simply venal. In

the end, a compromise was worked out; British Airways and Air France
could fly the Concorde into Washington and New York on a 16-month
trial. No sooner had the agreement been reached than the Environ-
mental Defense Fund sued the government in an effort to overturn

the decision. The effort failed, leaving a bitter taste in the mouths of
the plane's detractors. "This is a sad day for our people," lamented
Carol Berman of the Emergency Coalition to Stop the SST, "to realize
the Government has betrayed them like this."
On the 21st of January, 1976, fourteen seemingly interminable years
after Britain and France signed the agreement to build the Concorde,
A parachutebillows from the tail of a

Concorde prototype to slow it after landing.
Installed as insurance that the sleek, fast-
moving plane could be stopped before it
reached the end of the runway, the
parachute proved to be unnecessary and
was omitted from later models.
142
Sparkling in the sun, Britain's Concorde the plane at last entered commercial service. An Air France flight
prototype, carrying 12 tons of electronic took off from Paris bound Buenos Aires by way of Dakar on the west
for
monitoring devices in the cabin, undergoes
coast of Africa; at the same time, a British Airways Concorde de-
a test flight. After nearly seven years of
experimental service, the plane was parted London for Bahrain.
finally retired in 1976 to the Royal Naval The route to Bahrain took the British Airways Concorde, flying at
Air Museum at Yeovilton, England.
subsonic speed to prevent sonic boom, across Europe to Venice, at
the top of the Adriatic Sea, inone hour and 20 minutes. Over the
water, the plane accelerated at full throttle and began to climb.
Passengers felt two gentle jolts as the pilot fired the two pairs of
afterburners —
devices that temporarily increase thrust 25 per cent
by converting a jet engine's exhaust pipe into a combustion chamber.
Apart from these was no other sensation to show that
jolts there
the plane had exceeded the speed of sound. The only sure sign was the
Machmeter at the front of the cabin as its numbers changed from .99
to 1.00. the speed of sound.
"Halfway down the Adriatic," wrote Brian Calvert, copilot on the
143
British airways
Supersonic marvel
"After years of looking at it from every A fantastic 34,000 gallons of fuel are
possible angle I am still not sure

can pin I stored in wing tanks. As fuel consumed
is
down its exact shape," wrote former during flight, a system of pumps and
Concorde pilot Brian Calvert. "Flying valves shifts part of the fuel's weight to
overhead at a few thousand feet it is slen- auxiliary tanks located fore and aft to
der, feminine, dart-like. On final ap- compensate for changes in the plane's
proach it suggests a bird coming in to center of gravity.

land. Just after landing, with its nose still Inside the Concorde's rapier-slim fu-
down, it might be some prehistoric mon- selage up to 144 travelers are seated
ster with curious eating habits." four-abreast where they can see the
One thing certain about the shape of plane's speed displayed on small screens
the Concorde is that every line, curve called Machmeters that are mounted on
and twist of the supersonic craft: s 84- the cabin walls. But passenger comfort
foot wingspan and 204-foot-long fuse- leaves something to be desired. The
lage represents a precisely engineered seats are narrower than those in a jumbo
marriage of form and function. The jet's economy class section, and the win-
jet's
wing, an aerodynamic compromise be- dows are about the size of a paperback
tween the requirements of high- and book. Most passengers regard these as
low-speed flight, is swept back in a dou- relatively minor inconveniences, howev-
ble delta compound curve known as an er: Said one, "You can watch the Mach-
ogive. Slung beneath it on each side in meter or look at the pretty girls, eat and
two boxlike structures are four turbojets drink to an elegant capacity, and by that
providing 152,000 pounds of thrust. time you are there."
144
G-BOAD
jS!?Hritlif»H'"«" ,,
" >r
_-
First put into service in 1976, the supersonic
Anglo-French Concorde cruises at twice the
speed of sound and has a range of 3,050
miles. The one shown above wearing British
Airways colors is rendered in full flight; the

Air France plane below has its nose lowered
and gear extended for landing.
\ <:*
flight "we reached Mach 2 at 50.000 feet.'" Minutes later, the plane
"shot out into the Mediterranean and entered a left turn around the
south of Crete." The speed and altitude of the Concorde amazed
ground controllers. "At each change to a new control authority." said
Calvert, "our reported altitude caused disbelief; our time to the next
checkpoint was assumed to be an error." Cyprus flashed by just to
the north; minutes later the plane was "in a long, wide arc over Syria
when the sun set abruptly behind us."
Three hours and 37 minutes Concorde touched
after takeoff, the
down in Bahrain, a perfect inaugural flight. The Air France flight was no
less impressive —
5.741 miles from Paris to Buenos Aires in 7 hours 25
minutes, including about an hour refueling at Dakar. Four months later,
At the British Aircraft Corporation plant
both airlines began regular flights to Washington. D.C.: New York was in Filton. England, four production model
put on the schedule in the autumn. Concordes undergo final assembly.

Many large components, such as the nose
Those who flew on the Concorde loved the aircraft. Its slender cabin
and forward section, were built by
with double seats on each side of the aisle was an inch or so narrower subcontractors and delivered to the plant
than that of an old piston-engined Douglas DC-4. but few passengers with all systems completely installed.
146
-^
complained about cramped quarters in an airplane that cut flight time in
half. Businessmen whose companies generally paid for
in particular,
their tickets, appreciated the Concorde and became intensely loyal to

the sleek jet. A 1978 British Airways survey showed that 43 per cent of
its Concorde passengers had flown on the plane more than once. Al-
most half these repeaters had flown at least three times. Five had made
more than 50 Concorde trips, and the record was held by the vice
president of a Tennessee pencil-manufacturing firm who had made 63
supersonic crossings of the Atlantic. But even with such loyal customers,
the flights betweenEurope and North America could not turn a profit.
The Bahrain and Buenos Aires routes showed even less potential, and
these would eventually be suspended when less than half the Con-
corde's seats were regularly filled.
To the bitter disappointment of Britain and France, the Concorde
still was not selling. With the plane attracting so few new pas-
sengers, any airline that purchased it would have to battle British

Airways and Air France for their customers. What the Concorde needed
more than anything else was to attract a broader cross section of
the flying public than it was getting. But while fares for other jet
flights were decreasing, thanks to the greater carrying capacity of
the 747, the cost of a Concorde ticket remained out of reach for
all but a handful of travelers.
In September 1979, the British and French governments bit the bullet
and agreed to halt production of the Concorde after only 16 had been
completed. At a cost to them of $500 million each, was the most
it
expensive — and most disappointing — airliner the world had yet seen.
Since the early 1960s, the Concorde and the colossal Boeing 747 had
all but monopolized conversation in commercial aviation circles. But
another plane would win its share of attention.
Europeans, like Americans, were beginning to travel by air in rapidly
escalating numbers. Airways on the Continent were threatened by the

congestion that seemed likely to clog jet lanes in the United States. One
way to alleviate such dangerous crowding would be to introduce larger
jets number of smaller
with greater seating capacity, thus reducing the
planes flying the same routes. No matter how big the 747 might be, it
was not the answer, any more than the 707 and DC-8 had been a
decade earlier. All three were built for long-range service, which made
them uneconomical on most short European runs.
Aware of the need for bigger planes, French and British builders, later
joined by the Germans, set about in 1966 designing a wide-body air-
liner that could take off from short runways and fly the limited distances
between European cities. The new plane, named the Airbus A300,
would be built by Sud Aviation in Toulouse and powered by two Rolls-
Royce or General Electric turbofan engines.
But the Europeans were slow to move the project ahead and this gave
the United States a chance to get into the game. In the spring of 1966,
147
Ground controllers:
American Airlines' chief engineer Frank Kolk visited Lockheed in Bur-
wizards of the airways
bank. California, to discuss a new airliner to use on the heavily traveled
route between New York and Chicago. "Frank had with him," recalled The end-all. be-all of air traffic control
William Hannon. Lockheed's chief engineer, "a little five-page typed can be described in a single word: sepa-
document that he called a requirement." He wanted a fuselage, contin- From the moment a jetliner pulls
ration.
away from the terminal at one airport

ued Hannan. "that could carry a maximum number of people at a
until it taxis to a stop at another, it is kept
minimum cost per seat mile. To him this meant two engines, not three or a safe distance from other planes by men
four." But most important, the aircraft had to be able to fly out of New andwomen on the ground, most of
York's La Guardia Airport, which had a strict limit of 270.000 pounds whom know the flight only as a coded
on a plane's overall weight, about 110,000 pounds heavier than a blip on a computerized radar screen.
Boeing 727. Could such an aircraft be built? While Hannon pondered After takeoff, responsibility for the air-
linerpasses from the airport tower to a

the question. Kolk pressed on to Long Beach and presented his "re-
departure controller. Then, when the
quirement" to Douglas.
plane is about 30 miles away, the re-
Douglas and Lockheed both responded eagerly. Indeed. Lockheed sponsibility is assumed by the first of a
had already done some work in this direction. When it lost the SST succession of en-route controllers at re-
contract to Boeing, it found itself with 1.200 surplus engineers. The gional centers approximately 300 miles
company assigned them to the task of designing a wide-body. apart. An approach controller picks up
Any hopes that Douglas had of catching up with Lockheed were the flight as it nears its destination, and
six miles from the airport, the tower takes
soon dashed. The company was in shambles. One of its oldest cus-
over to monitor the landing and direct
tomers. Eastern, had sued for delayed DC-9 deliveries. The DC-8 the airliner to the correct gate.
program was in the red despite fairly good sales. DC-8 and DC-9 When each controller
traffic is light,
orders, in fact, were partly responsible for the disarray. To meet may be responsible for only one or two
the brisk demand, especially for the DC-9. Douglas had expanded planes at any moment. But during rush
its production lines —

but lacked skilled laborers to work on them. hours at busy airports, the number can
increase to 15. Keeping so many air-
Training costs had risen as efficiency went down, and there were
craft from colliding demands cool nerves
shortages of materials. All these factors conspired to wreck delivery and split-second timing. One controller,
schedules. Faced with a struggle to meet its payroll. Douglas ac- asked what kind of people are good at
cepted a merger with McDonnell Aircraft of St. Louis, a company his work, replied: "Not the ones that take
that normally specialized in military aircraft. The transfusion of McDon- a lot of time making up their minds."
nell cash saved Douglas from bankruptcy.

Lockheed was convinced that it was so far ahead of McDonnell-
Douglas on the design of a wide-body that there was nothing to worry
about. It had interested other airlines besides American in its plane,
though athird engine would be required for takeoff from short runways.
Even American agreed to the modification. The design had been re-
fined during 10.000 hours of testing scale models in a wind tunnel. The
result, by spring of 1967. was a completed design for a 300-passenger
airliner, powered by Rolls-Royce engines. Called the L-1011 TriStar.
the new jet looked to its creators like a sure winner. But when Lockheed
paused to check on the competition, it discovered, to its surprise, that
McDonnell-Douglas was gaining on it and rapidly. —
McDonnell-Douglas' plane was the DC- 10. Powered by three Gener-
al Electric turbofans. it closely resembled the TriStar. The only con-
spicuous difference between the two was the placement of the third
engine. In the TriStar. as in the Boeing 727. it had been mounted
behind the cabin in the fuselage. In the DC- 10. it was perched above the
fuselage in the middle of the tail. This position saved weight, simplified
148
From a radar control room in Garden City,
Long Island, planes are guided through the
congested airspace above the New York
metropolitan area's three major airports —
Newark, Kennedy and La Cuardia. The
controller at the console in the foreground
handles departures from La Guardia.
RUNWAY APPROACH PATH
FLIGHT NUMBER
SPEED
ALTITUDE
On the radar screen in the control tower

at Kennedy, airliners designated by number-
and-letter codes move across a map of the

airport environs. American Airlines Flight
124 (AA124), flying at 1,600 feet and 1 70
knots, will shortly turn right to land. All but
one of the other flights on the scope will
soon follow it into Kennedy. The Allegheny
plane (AL623) is headed for La Guardia.
149
maintenance and made more spacious cabin than in the TriStar,

for a With components manufactured in five
different countries, three Airbus Industrie

allowing a few more seats. American quickly became converted to the
A300 transports are assembled in the
Douglas plane and, in February 1968, announced that it would buy 25 Aerospatiale factory in Toulouse, France.
DC-lOs and take options on 25 more. A month later, United Air Lines The wide-bodied Airbus carries the same
ordered 30 DC- 10s and took options on another 30, thereby assuring maximum number of passengers —345 —
as Lockheed's TriStar L-101 1, but with one
McDonnell-Douglas of enough sales to make it feasible for the company
less engine the European jet is more
to go ahead with the plane. Despite the unexpected competition, Lock- economical to operate on short-haul routes.
heed had reason of its own to feel encouraged. Eastern Air Lines or-
dered 50 TriStars, TWA 44 and Air Holdings, Limited, a British com-
pany, another 50 to sell around the world.
The initiative originally held by Airbus Industrie, the European con-
sortium formed to design and construct the A300, now belonged to the
Americans. Airbus engineers were still tinkering with the A300's design,
attempting to shrink the plane, which, with room for more than 300
passengers, was viewed as too large. The Europeans had lost an op-
portunity to dominate the American market. By the time the A300
made its first flight late in 1972, Lockheed's L-101 1 TriStar had already
150
mk
been in service for six months, and the DC- 10 had been plying the skies
for more than a year.
During that period, the DC- 10 suffered a terrible setback. On June
12, 1972, an American Airlines DC-10 had just taken off from Detroit
when a cargo door blew off as the jetliner was being pressurized.
The sudden decompression buckled the cabin floor, rupturing some
of the hydraulic control lines that ran underneath. Had the 15 rows
of seats in the rear of the cabin been occupied, the additional weight
might have severed all the control lines and the pilot would have
been helpless. Because the seats were empty, the pilot managed to
land the plane in one piece.
An investigation determined that the latch on the cargo door had
been at fault. Its design was changed to make it easier to close securely,
and new latches were fitted to all —
DC-lOs all, that is, but two. Both
had come off the assembly line without the latch modifications. One of
them was found and modified before an accident could occur; the
At the Lockheed plant in Palmdale. other, a special high-capacity model with seats for more than 300 pas-
California, workers ready the 19foot-wide sengers delivered to Turkish Airlines, somehow was not.
passenger cabin of a TriStarL-1011 for final
On March 3. 1973. the Turkish plane, carrying 116 passengers from
outfitting. Seen in the background are
Istanbul, landed in Paris. From there, it took off for London with more
two shafts for elevators that will carry flight
attendants to and from the galley below. than 200 additional passengers who had been stranded in Paris by an
151
airline strike in Britain that had forced the cancellation of a BEA flight.
Over France, the latch, improperly fastened before takeoff, gave way.
The weight of a full load of passengers caused the cabin floor to collapse
completely, and the plane plunged to earth, killing all 346 aboard.
There were no other incidents for more than six years. Then on
May 25, 1979, as an American Airlines DC-10 left Chicago bound
for Los Angeles, the left engine tore off. The plane continued to
climb to about and then rolled to the left until the wings
300 feet
were almost vertical. All lift was lost and the airplane fell out of
the sky. By the time the DC-10 crashed, it had turned almost completely
over. Again there were no survivors.
After the accident, all DC- 10s were grounded pending an investiga-
which disclosed that a maintenance crew had cracked the engine

tion,
mount while removing the turbofan for maintenance. Though it had

been exonerated, the DC-10 became the target of much criticism and
concern. The pilots never lost faith in the plane, but for months after-
ward, many people refused to fly on it.
After an initial rush of orders, sales of both the DC-10 and the Tri-
Star slowed down dramatically. Douglas had found customers for
nearly 300 DC-lOs. Lockheed sold 244 TriStars, a large number but
not enough to recover development costs and losses incurred during
years when sales were slow. All told, Lockheed would lose an estimated
$2.5 billion on the plane.
In Europe the Airbus A300, first flown on October 28, 1972, was just
hitting its stride. Fitted with only two engines and with innovative,
lightweight wings, it was proving to be inexpensive to operate. Air

France had put the first A300 into service in May 1974, and in the
months that followed, the airliner sold briskly in Europe and Asia. Kore-
an Air Lines and Thai Airways International each purchased several of
the craft in 1975. Lufthansa, Indian Air Lines and South African Airways
were among others that agreed to buy the A300.
With the virtues of the Airbus now well known, American carriers
began taking an active interest in the plane. Eastern had been looking
for a two-engined aircraft with the latest technology in turbofans
and airframe to fly nonstop between New York and Miami. The Airbus
fit the bill, except for one thing — it contained more seats than Eastern
thought it could fill.
Eastern officials One of

prepared to negotiate with Airbus Industrie.
the chief Airbus salesmen was George Warde, a jovial horse trader who
had once been president of American Airlines and now headed the
European consortium's North American operations. The other was Air-
bus vice president Roger Beteille. Eastern badly needed replacement
aircraft for its aging 727 fleet, and Airbus Industrie badly needed a
foothold in the U.S. market.
When the bargaining began, Eastern's president Frank Borman, the
former astronaut, asked bluntly, "Why shouldwe buy your airplane?"
"Because if you don't you're dead," Warde replied. He knew that
152
»<
Incorporating the latest advances in fuel and maintenance costs on Eastern's aging 727s were shrinking
deck of a Boeing 767
electronics, the flight the airline's profits.
glows with information being fed from
computers aboard the aircraft to small
When Borman brought up his concern about filling most of the
television screens on the instrument panel. Airbus' seats. Beteille made an unprecedented move. He offered to
The computers not only help the pilot fly the reduce the price of the A300; once Eastern's traffic grew to a point
new airliner, but also diagnose malfunctions
where the seats were being filled, the airline could pay the difference
to help mechanics with maintenance.
between the original asking price and the reduced one. Warde called
this arrangement "operating support." Borman. after conferring with
his vice president for finance. Charles Simons, tentatively agreed

to the proposal on the condition that Eastern be allowed to borrow
four A300s and fly passengers in them for six months before the
contract was signed. Beteille's initial reaction was shock; Eastern might
as well have asked that the Eiffel Tower be moved to Miami Beach. But
Simons argued convincingly that the four planes would be "four flying
advertisements." Though Beteille still remained dubious. Warde was
153
convinced that a six-month trial would clinch the deal. Even before the
sixmonths were over, Borman knew the A300 was a superb airplane; it
drew raves from pilots. On April 6, 1978, Eastern signed for 23 aircraft
at $25 million apiece.
Borman was roundly criticized as unpatriotic for buying a foreign
airplane.He retorted that more than a third of the A300's price went for
components made in America, particularly its General Electric engines.
Besides, the deal was irresistible. No airline had ever been given more
favorable terms in a new-plane contract.
Eastern's publicly and privately expressed satisfaction with the
A300 was the testimonial that the plane needed. Before Airbus Indus-
trie had not sold an A300 in a year and a half.
signed with Eastern, it
Though there was no rush to the Airbus by other U.S. airlines, during
1979 the company supplied 38 per cent of the wide-body jets pur-
chased by non-Communist countries.
Ever since 1958 and the smashing success of the Boeing 707, the
Americans had practically owned the skies. But the A300 changed
that. The plane found a secure niche for itself and filled it be-
fore American aircraft manufacturers could respond with a twin-
engined wide-body that matched the A300's economy. Only Boeing
had plans for one, its 767. McDonnell-Douglas and Lockheed, after
toying with variations of aircraft that were already in service, elected to
abandon the field to the Airbus.
Though Eastern used the A300 successfully to replace an aging fleet
of 727s, the plane was too big and too expensive for most airlines to use
for that purpose. Boeing recognized that the 727 had seen better days
—
and had another new plane the 757, a jetliner with the same diameter
as a 727 —
on the drawing board to replace it. Incorporating the most
up-to-date engine and airframe technology, the 757 promised lower
fuel consumption, less noise and cleaner exhaust than the 727. But it
was expensive, too, and airlines faced with cutthroat competition and a
severe economic recession that stiffened customer resistance to the
higher fares that might help defray the cost of the new plane, were more
reluctant than ever to sign up for new planes.
Whatever the future may hold for airlines and plane builders, the
jetliner has already left an indelible mark. Jets carry 300 million
passengers annually in the United States alone and fly 97 per cent of
their scheduled flights, often in weather that would have grounded Three Boeing 767s (foreground) head
a line-up of 737s, 727s and an Air Force
airliners a short 25 years ago. Even so, the safety record of jets,
E-3 radar reconnaissance plane at the
despite well-publicized accidents, far surpasses that of piston aircraft. company's South Seattle, Washington,
Jets account for more than 90 per cent of all U.S. intercity travel in plant. The 767s are part of a fleet of
when five test aircraft undergoing trials to certify

public transportation. In 1960, was less than two years
the jet age
the new wide-body for airline service.
old, only 10 per cent of Americans older than 18 had ever flown in a
scheduled airliner; by the early 1980s the figure had risen to 65 per
cent. In two and a half decades, jets have made air travel a common
fact of life — accepted, trusted, routine. ^-^
154
Hi
155
The day of the jumbo jets
"I took one look," recalled San Francisco homemaker capacity, was built primarily for long-range routes. In-
Ginny Clausen, "and I said to myself, 'Oh. nothing this big spired by its example. European manufacturers pioneered
is going to fly."
" That was a typical response in the early the short-haul wide-body with their twin-engined 281-
1970s new Boeing 747, the world's first jumbo jet
to the passenger Airbus A300. But the American plane makers
airliner and the forerunner of all the wide-bodied jet trans- Douglas and Lockheed beat them to the intermediate-
ports shown here and on the following pages. This type of range marketplace with their DC-10 and L-1011 respec-
jetliner soon caught on. however, and the number of peo- tively, both high-density trijets that could carry approxi-
ple traveling by jet increased dramatically. By 1974 some mately 350 passengers. The more recent twin-engined
45 million more Americans had flown than was the case Boeing 767. which appeared in 1982, represents Ameri-
only six years earlier, a 28 per cent increase that would ca's attempt to capture the twin-engined wide-body mar-
have been unthinkable before the wide-body revolution. ket of the 1980s and beyond. Designed to operate with
Embodying the latest technology, each of the big planes maximum efficiency in the face of rising fuel costs, it ex-
was designed to carry large numbers of passengers varying tends what one writer called the "spacious age" of twin-
distances —
from flights of 6.000 miles to some of no more aislepassenger cabin comfort to routes never before
than 100 miles. The four-engined 747, with its 499-seat served by wide-body airliners.
156
**
BOEING 747-100 (1970)
The Boeing 747 has a massive 18-wheel

—
undercarriage shown here lowered in
—
touchdown position to cushion landings
and distribute the plane's 390-ton weight
evenly on the runway. The 747 cruises at
580 mph and has a range of 7,090 miles.
LOCKHEED L-1011 TRISTAR (1972)
Advertised as the quietest wide-bod]; airliner
in service, the L-1011 is powered by

three 42, 000 -pound-thrust Rolls-Royce
RB.211 engines. It represented
Lockheed's attempt to regain part of the
commercial transport market, but
lagging sales halted production in 1982.
SL
DOUGLAS DC-10SRS.10 (1971)
The world s first wide-bodied trijet, the
DC-10 seats up to 380 passengers and has
a maximum range of 2,700 miles. Manx;
versions of the plane have been produced
for civil use, and it is also in service
with the U.S. Air Force as a tanker.
BOEING 767-200 (1983)
Representing yet another gamble on the

future by Boeing, the 767 uses an advanced
wing structure and weight-saving composite
materials to compete economically over
such routes as San Francisco-Cleveland. Los
Angeles-Miami and London-Cairo. It
seats up to 289 passengers.
ffifuniTeD
.* d * s J l i .# II I III
160
AIRBUS INDUSTRIE A300 B4 (1974)
Built by a consortium of French, British and

German manufacturers, the Airbus has
emerged as a steady seller around the world.
Powered by two 49, 000 -pound-thrust
turbofans, it carries up to 331 passengers on
short hauls. Its 151 -ton weight makes it
a relative lightweight among wide-bodies.
k
f? today—
jet port for
and tomorrow
When the commercialage dawned in the 1950s, air-

jet
ports rushed to enlarge and modernize existing facilities,

trying to keep pace with the progress of planes and the
great increase in travelers.Then the jumbo jets arrived,
and the resulting confusion on the ground was, in the
words of one American aviation official, "like the Queen
Mary docking every 30 minutes." Airports of completely
new design were clearly needed.
Fortunately, the problems had been anticipated by far-
sighted airport planners from Frankfurt, Germany, to
Dallas-Fort Worth in Texas. Among these were the archi-
tects and engineers of the Paris Airport Authority, who in
1966 began to build an extraordinary jetport on 7,670
acres 16 miles northeast of the French capital.
Aeroport Charles de Gaulle was neither the biggest nor
the busiest jetport in the world when opened in 1974, but
it
it could lay claim to being the most futuristic. The airport
was designed to meet Paris air traffic needs well into the
21st Century; plans call for it to grow to as many as nine
passenger terminals.
The first of these terminals, Aerogare 1 — seen on the
following pages in photographs taken around the time of
its inauguration — is a tour de force of stark, efficient de-
sign. At the center of its operations is a doughnut-shaped
concrete structure about the size of Rome's Colosseum
660 feet in diameter and 100 feet high. Its top three levels,
reached by ramps, provide parking space for close to
4,000 cars; the next three levels are used for passenger
handling; the lower levels house shops, restaurants and
facilities for baggage sorting. And in the middle of the
doughnut is what the designers called the "central void."
Crisscrossing this well are six surrealistic transparent
tubesfitted with conveyor belts that whisk some 10 million
people a year from level to level of the three passenger-

processing floors of the terminal. Seven tunnels each —
approximately 550 feet long and equipped with moving
sidewalks —
link the main Aerogare 1 building to seven
satellite where more than 100,000 planes a year
terminals
are loaded, unloaded and serviced.
A series of obliquely angled tumoffsfrom

a runway {far right) at Aeroport Charies de
Gaulle throws a pattern of jet-age whorls
across the French countryside. These high-
speed tumoffs enable jets to clear the
airport's two 11.880-foot runways without
slowing down to wake a 90-degree turn.
The 262-foot control tower — which
appears to lean in this picture because of
camera-lens parallax —contains radar
apparatus, radios and computers.
Additional equipment is housed in the
navigation center below the tower.
1
PI
Through softlylit tunnels between the
satellite terminalsand the main building of

thejetport, travelers glide along moving
sidewalks, passing beneath advertisements
beamed onto overhead globes.
Passengers glide through an inclined tube
connected with the transfer level of the
main terminal. Such tubes separate
arrivingand departing passengers,
decreasing the distances they would
otherwise have to walk.
In thisfisheve-lens view taken from a A bilingual information board hangs above

helicopter, sixconveyor tubes swoop from one of the terminal's modernistic sofas.
level to level in the 1 1 -story Aerogare 1. Another sofa remains covered in this picture
high above its central illuminated fountain. taken before the airport's opening.
'TTtimHitWimtn
mm
One of 32 booths designed for drive-up
ticketing and baggage checking sits empty;
outside the terminal. Too costly to equip
and run, the booths were never used.
After luggage has been checked inside

the terminal and sorted by hand,
unmanned, computer-controlled tractors
following buried electronic guidance
cables tow baggage carts to the planes.
A flexible motorized loading bridge

extends from a satellite terminal to an Air
France Concorde, ready for boarding for
the first supersonic passenger flight to Rio
de Janeiro, on January 21, 1976.
<J>
%i.
'/*
* .
* jun: m.
Mi HI
'••»•
predawn glow of fluorescent lights around its rim and along the approaching roads, Aerogare 1 waits for a new day's passengers
In the eerie
HHHi
Acknowledgments
The index for this book was prepared by Gale J. S. Lucas, J. W. Pavey. M. J. Willis. Imperial and Space Museum; James Waters. United Air-
Linck Partoyan. For their valuable help in the War Museum; John Bagley. Martin Andrewartha. —
Georgia Everett Hayes. Dick Martin.
lines;
preparation of this volume, the editors wish to Science Museum; Oldbury —M. Daunt; Wey- Lockheed-Georgia Company; Maryland Adele —
thank: In France: Paris —Rene Farion. Air bridge — Norman Aerospace.
Barfield. British C. Schwartz. Airport Forum: Missouri Gordon —
France; Colonel Edmond Petit, Musee Air-France; In Italy: Rome —
Countess Maria Fede Caproni. Le Bert. McDonnell-Douglas Corporation;
Jacques Reder. Aeroports de Paris; General Museo AeronaurJco Caproni di Taliedo. In the —
New York Berl Brechner. Flying magazine;
Pierre Lissarague. Director. Colonel Pierre United States: Arizona John Meyer. Pam — Ann Whyte. Pan American World Airways: Penn-
Willefert Curator. Musee de l'Air; Suresnes Pennegar. Gates Learjet; California Harry — —
sylvania James F. Krick: Texas —
Al Becker.
Jean-Claude Caillou, Aerospatiale; Vincennes Gann. Douglas Aircraft Company; Emerald American Airlines; Barbara Potter. Braniff
Marcellin Hodeir. S.H.A.A. In Great Britain: Jones. Sol London. Rich Stadler. Lockheed- International Airlines; Washington Floyd —
—
Bristol Howard Berry. British Aerospace; California Company; Connecticut Jim De- — Baldwin. Bruce A. Berkbigler. Lonna Brooks,
Bury St Edmunds —A. D. D. Henshaw; Fambor- vaney. Harvey Lippincott Robert Weiss. United Tom Cole. Leslie R. Harcus. Marilyn Phipps.
ough— D. W. Goode. Royal Aircraft Establish- Technologies' Pratt & Whitney;
Washington. Paul Spitzer. Gordon Williams. Boeing Commer-
ment; —John
Hatfield Scott. Darrell Cott. British DC. — Fred Farrer. Edmund P. Ken-
Mike Harris. cial Airplane Company. In West Germany:
Aerospace; Hendon— W. Mack.
R. Merton. P. nedy. Donald Shaklee. Federal Aviation Adminis- Bonn—General Adolf Galland (Ret); Mainz-
M. Tagg, Royal Air Force Museum; London tration; Philip Edwards. Donald Lopez. Pete Finthen — Karl Ries: Munich —Hans Ebert,
A. Gibson; Sir Arnold Hall; T. Charman. E. Hines. Suthard. Robert van der Linden. National Air Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm.
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Boyne. Walter J., and Donald S. Lopez. The Jet Memoir Doubleday. 1978. London: Putnam. 1959.
Age: Forty Years of Jet Aviation. National Air Heiman, Grover. Jet Pioneers. Duell. Sloan and Rickenbacker. Edward V.. Rickenbacker.
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Bright. Charles D.The Jet Makers: The
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Regents Press of Kansas. 1978. Hopkins. George E. The Airline Pilots. A Study
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Calvert, Brian. Flying Concorde. St Martin's Elite Unionization. Harvard University Press. Little Giant: The Story of Gates Learjet Robert
Press. 1982. 1971. J. Serling. 1974.
Christy, Joe. The Learjet. Tab Books. 1979. Hubler. Richard G. Big Eight: A Biography of an
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Costello. John, and Terry Hughes. The Concorde Airplane. Duell. Sloan and Pearce. 1960. The Only Way to Fly. Doubleday. 1976.
Conspiracy. Scribner's. 1976. Douglas J.:
Ingells. Sprigg. C. St John. British Airways. London:
Cunningham. Frank. Sky Master: The Story of L-1011 TriStar and the Lockheed Story. Aero. Thomas Nelson and Sons. 1934.
Donald Douglas. Dorrance and Company. 1973. Taylor. Frank J.. High Horizons: The United
1943. The McDonnell Douglas Story. Aero. 1979. Airlines Story. McGraw-Hill. 1964.
Daley. Robert. An American Saga: Juan Trippe 747: Story of the Boeing Super Jet. Aero. Taylor. John W. R. ed. Jane's Pocket Book of
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and His Pan Am Empire. Random House. 1970. Commercial Transport Aircraft. Macmillan.
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Davies. R. E. G. Airlines of the United States London: Putnam. 1960.
Vol. 3. Taylor. Richard L.. Instrument Flying. Macmillan.
since 1914. London: Putnam. 1972. Kuter. Laurence S.. The Great Gamble: The 1978.
Eddy. Paul. Elaine Potter and Bruce Page. Boeing 747. University of Alabama Press. Varley. Helen, ed.. The Air Traveler's Handbook.
Destination Disaster: From the Tri-Motor to the 1973. Simon and Schuster. 1978.
DC-10: The Risk of Flying. Quandrangle The McClement Fred. It Doesn Matter Where You
't Whitehouse. Arch. The Sky's the Limit: A History
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172
mm
—
Picture credits
I souk i's (or the illustrations In this book are

lu' .Jim Burke for Life 39-45: Popperfoto, London. 106, 109: Courtesy Boeing Commercial Airplane
listed below Credits from loft to right are separat- li i Imperial War Museum, London (2) — Popper- Company. 110: Courtesy Boeing Commercial
ed bv semicolons, from top to bottom by dashes. foto, London. 47: Associated Press, London. 48, —
Airplane Company; diagrams by Another Color,
I nilpapei (and cover detail, regular edition). 49: Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough, Inc. 1 13: Gordon Tenney —
courtesy Gates Lear-
Painting by Frank Wootton 6, 1 Courtesy Crown Copyright Reserved. 50: UPI. 51: Popper- jet —
Corporation © Jim Sugar from Black Star.
McDonnell Douglas Corporation 8. 9: Courte- foto,London. 52, 53: Royal Aircraft Establish- 1 15: Courtesy McDonnell-Douglas Corporation.
sy Mel )oniH'll Douglas Corporation; courtesy Pan ment, Farnborough, Crown Copyright Reserved. 117: Courtesy Boeing Commercial Airplane
—
American World Airways Courtesy McDonnell- 54-57: Courtesy Boeing Commercial Airplane Company. 118-123: Drawings by John Batchelor
Douglas Corporation. 10, 11: Courtesy Boeing Company. 59: Courtesy British Aerospace, Wey- 124, 125: Courtesy British Aerospace, Bristol.
Commercial Airplane Company, except upper Courtesy Boeing Commercial Air-
bridge. 60. 61: 131: Tass from Sovfoto; James H. Pickerell for
right, courtesy Pan American World Airways (2). plane Company. 62, 63: Drawing by John Batch- Aviation Week and Space Technology © by
12, 13: Courtesy Lockheed-California Company elor. 64: Howard Sochurek for Life —Sovfoto. 65: McGraw-Hill, Inc. (5) 132: Diagrams by Another
(2). Peter Stackpole tor Life. 14, 15: Leon Dish- Sovfoto. 67: George Silk for Life. 68: Burt Glinn Color, Inc. 134-140: Courtesy Boeing Commer-
man, courtesy National Air and Space Museum. from Magnum Photos. 69: George Silk for Life. cial Airplane Company. 142: © Yan from Rapho/
—
Smithsonian Institution The Bettmann Archive; 70. 71: Courtesy McDonnell-Douglas Corpora- Photo Researchers. 143: Arthur Gibson, London.
Musee Air France, Paris (2) 16. 17: Collection of tion 72-79: Courtesy Boeing Commercial Air- 144, 145: Drawings by John Batchelor. 146:
—
Richard Smith Allan Grant for Life. Royal Air plane Company. 80, 81: Leon Dishman, courtesy Courtesy British Aerospace, Bristol. 149: Enrico
Force Museum. Hendon 18. 19: Cornell Capa for National Air and Space Museum. Smithsonian In- Ferorelli from Wheeler Pictures. 150: James An-
Life. 20: Fox Photos, Ltd London. 23: Diagrams
. stitution 82: Courtesy Boeing Commercial Air- danson from Sygma. 151: Diego Goldberg from
by Another Color. Inc. 25: Leon Dishman, courte- plane Company. 84: Wide World 85: Frank Sygma. 153-155: Courtesy Boeing Commercial
sy National Air and Space Museum. Smithsonian Scherschel for Life. 86, 87: Drawing by John Airplane Company. 156-161: Drawings by John
Institution 26: Tass, Moscow —
Leon Dishman, Batchelor 88, 89: Ernest Barter, courtesy James Batchelor. 162, 163: Alain Nogues from Sygma.
courtesy National Air and Space Museum, Smith- F. Krick. 90. 91 Bob Bryant for the San Francisco
: 164. 165: Georges Beutter from Gamma/Liaison;
sonian Institution 27: Reg Corlett, courtesy de Examiner; James F. Krick. 92. 93: N. R. Farbman; —
Jean Gaumy from Gamma/Liaison Georges
Havilland Aircraft of Canada. Ltd. Terry — Fran Oritz for the San Francisco Examiner 95: Beutter from Gamma/Liaison. 166, 167: ©
Shwetz. courtesy de Havilland Aircraft of Canada. Editions Cercle d'Art, Paris —courtesy Braniff In- Phelps from Rapho/Photo Researchers
Ltd. 29-31: Courtesy British Aerospace. Hatfield. John Sadovy. 98. 99: Diagrams
ternational. 96: Georges Beutter from Gamma/Liaison; Alain
32. 33: de Havilland Aircraft Co.. Ltd.. courtesy by Another Color, Inc. 101: Drawing by John Nogues from Sygma. 168, 169: Georges
Ron Davies Collection. 34: Courtesy British Aero- HuehnergarthforLi/e. 102: © 1979 Herman J. —
Beutter from Gamma/Liaison (2) Jean Gaumy
space. Hatfield. 35: Central Press Photos. Ltd.. Kokojan from Black Star. 104: Musee Air France. from Gamma/Liaison. 170, 171: Frederic
London. 36. 37: Drawing by John Batchelor. 38: Paris. 105: Courtesy British Aerospace. Hatfield. Proust from Sygma.
173
Index
Numbers in italics indicate an illustration of the range jets, 106, 108, 112, 116; SST compared ClipperYoung America (Pan American). 137
subject mentioned. with, 127, 129 Columbine (Constellation), 96-97
Boeing 720, 107, 108 Combustion chamber, 22-23
Boeing 727, endpaper, 72, 102, 108-109, 111- Comet (de Havilland), 18-19. 19-42, 20, 32-33.
Accidents. See Crashes 112, 114-115, 116, 118, 120-121, 130, 148, 36-37. 83, 88, 130; building of, 29-31; and
Aerodynamics, 33, 59, 107; Concorde and, 144; 155; accidents and, 111-112, 114; logos, 117; Caravelle, 1 19; Comet 2, 28, 42; Comet 3. 33,
wing design and, 1 10 757 to replace. 154; wide-bodies compared 42; Comet 4, 83, 84; crashes 33-35. 38-42.
of.
Aeroflot (Soviet airline), 96. See also Tupolev with, 148, 152, 154; wing design, 110 39. 42-43; investigation of flaws. 44-53, Comet
aircraft Boeing 737, 116, 118, 122-123, 155 Racer, 23; U.S. manufacturers and, 55, 57, 58,
Aerospatiale, 139, 141; factory, 150 Boeing 747 (wide-body), 125, 130, 132, 133- 59, 62, 66. See also Yoke Peter; Yoke Uncle;
Airbus A300 (European wide-body), 147, 150, 137, 136, 138-139, 147, 156-157. assembly Yoke Yoke
1 60- 161; commercial success of, 1 52- 1 54 line. 134, 135; Concorde and, 141; different Common Market, the, Concorde and, 126, 130
Airbus Industrie (European consortium), 150, uses for, 138 Compressors, 22-23
152-154. See also Airbus A300 Boeing 757, 118. 122-123, 154 Concorde (SST), 124-125. 125-127, 129-130,
Aircraft Industries Association, 62 Boeing 767 (wide-body). 153, 154. 155, 160- 132. 139-143, 144-145. 146-147; Tu-144
Air Force One, Eisenhower and, 96-97 161 compared with. 130. See also Anglo-French
Air France, 28, 71, 101, 104; and Concorde, 129, Borman, Frank, 152-154; quoted, 152 Supersonic Aircraft Agreement; France, and
140, 141, 142-143, 145, 146-147, 168-169; Brabazon Committee, 21, 23 Concorde; Great Britain, and Concorde; Noise,
and wide-bodies, 135, 152. See also Concorde; Brabazon IV, 2 1 See also Comet
. SSTs and; Sonic boom; Speed, SSTs and;
Sud Aviation Braniff International Airways, 71, 94-95, 102 Supersonic transports (SSTs), U.S. and
Air India, 71 Braznell, Walt, 69 Cone, Captain Howard, 94
Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), 96, 1 16 Breguet aircraft, 763 Deux-Ponts, 15 Constellation ("Connie," Lockheed 1649A).
Airports, 71, 83-84, 85, short-range jets and, 106, Bristol aircraft,104-105; Brabazon, 16-17 12-13. 19. 21, 57, 59, 66. 93; Columbine,
107, 116, 118; wide-bodies and, 132, 136, British Aircraft Corporation (BAC): and 96-97
139, 147, 148, 162-171. See also Air traffic Concorde, 125, 126, 127, 140-141; One- Continental Air Lines, 71, 88, 139
control; Short-range jets; Supersonic transports Eleven, 114-115, 116. See also Concorde Convair aircraft, 55, 56, 59; B-58 supersonic
(SSTs), U.S. and; Wide-bodied jets British Air Ministry, 104-105, 114 bomber, 126, 129; Model 880, 107; XC-99, 16
Air traffic control, 95-96, 148-149, navigation British Air Registration Board, 38, 42 Crashes (accidents), 88; Boeing 707 and, 88-91;
instruments and, 98-99. See also Airports British Airways, and Concorde, 142-143, 144- Boeing 727 and, 111-112, 114; Comet and.
Allegheny Airlines (USAir), 116, 149 145, 146-147. See also British European 33-35, 38-42. 39, 42 A3; jet safety record and,
Allen, William M., 55, 57, 58, 60, 62. 68, 69, 109, Airways (BEA); British Overseas Aircraft 154; SST and, 130-131, wide-bodies and, 134-
130; quoted, 55 Corporation (BOAC); Concorde 135, 151-152
Alma-Ata, U.S.S.R., 130 British Commonwealth Pacific (airline), 28 Crete,146
Altitude, Concorde and, 146 BritishEuropean Airways (BEA), 104-105, 106, Cunningham, John, 28, 35. quoted, 28
Ambassador (de Havilland Airspeed), 14 152; Silver Wing service, 14. See also British Cyprus, 146
American Airlines, 23, 66, 69, 71, 84, 85, 86, 88, Airways
132, 149, 152; and short-range jets, 112, 114, British Ministry of Civil Aviation, Accident D
116; and wide-bodies, 148, 150, 151, 152 Investigation Branch, 40 Dakar, Senegal, Concorde and, 143, 146
American Auiation Magazine, 37 British Overseas Aircraft Corporation (BOAC): Dallas, Tex., 100; Times Herald, 141
Anglo-French Supersonic Aircraft Agreement, and Comet, 19, 24, 28. 33-35, 36-37, 38-40, Dallas-FortWorth International Airport, 102, 141
126, 130, 143. See also Concorde (SST) 83; and Concorde, 129, 140, 141. See also Dash 80. See Boeing 707, prototype for
Atlantic Ocean. See Transatlantic flights British Airways Daytime Sleeper (DC-6), 8-9. See also DC-6
British Royal Family, 33 Dayton, Ohio, Air Force Museum at, 126
B British South American Airways, 28 DC-2 (Douglas), 56
B-58 (Convair supersonic bomber), 126, 129 Brizendine, John, 1 14 DC-3 (Douglas), 6-7, 21,71, 100, 111
Baker, George, 84 Buenos Aires, Argentina, Concorde and, 142, DC-4 (Douglas), 6-7, 19, 21; Concorde
Barter, Ernest, photograph by, 88-89 143, 146, 147 compared with, 146
Berman, Carol, quoted, 142 Burbank, Calif., 56, 148 DC-6 (Douglas), 6-7, 8-9, 15, 19, 56, 57, 59. 66,
Beteille, Roger, 152 103
Bishop, Ronald. 23, 24, 34 DC-7 (Douglas), 6-7, 19, 56, 66, 71. 85, 100
Blackburn, Captain Harold, quoted, 93 C-5A (U.S. Air Force wide-body), 132-133 DC-7C (Douglas), 19-20
Bleriot, Louis, factory of, 125. 126 C-97 (Boeing). 57, 58, 59 DC-8 (Douglas jet), 62, 66-69, 67, 70-71, 112.
Boeing, Bertha, 60 Cairo, Egypt, 40, 160 115, 147, 148; airlines and, 84-85, 88. 93-94,
Boeing Aircraft Company, 7, 55-58; B-17 Flying Calcutta, India, 34, 38 95, 100-101; 747 compared with, 133
Fortress, 56, 58; B-47, 55, 57; B-52, 55. 57; Calder, Alexander, 94-95 DC-9 (McDonnell-Douglas jet), 114, 115-116,
C-97, 57, 58, 59; Model 80, 56; Model 247, Calvert, Brian, quoted, 143, 144, 146 118,120-121, 148
56, 69; Model 367-64, 58; Model 367-80, 58; Canada, de Havillands produced in, 27 DC-10 (McDonnell-Douglas wide-bodied jet).
Preliminary Design Unit, 106; and short-range Canadian Pacific (airline), 28 148, 151, 156, 158-159; Chicago crash of,
jets, 103. 104. 106-109, 111-112, 114-116; Capital Airlines, 25 152
Stratocruiser (377), 10-11, 57-58, 77. 86; Caravelle (Sud Aviation), 103-104. 105. 107. De Gaulle. Charles: airport named for, 162-171;
Stratoliner (B-307), 56, 58; and SST. 132-133. 108, 114-115, 118-119, 125; DC-9and, 120- quoted, 126
135, 139, 140-146, 148; SST Technical 121 De Havilland. Sir Geoffrey, 23, 24, 28, 30. 34;
Advisory Council, 133; and wide-bodies, 125, Chicago, 111., 56, 88, 148; DC-10 crash at, 152; quoted, 28
132, 133. See also Boeing 707, 720, 727, 737, O'Hare Airport, 112, 116 De Havilland aircraft, 103, 118. 119; Airspeed
747, 757, 767; Seattle, Wash. 40
Churchill, Sir Winston, Ambassador. 14; D.H.106, 23; D.H.121, 104-
Boeing Air Transport, 56 Cincinnati, Ohio, 112 105, 106; Dash-7, 27; Twin Otter, 27. See also
Boeing 707, 57, 58-62, 66-69, 68, 71, 147, 154; Citizens League Against the Sonic Boom, 139 Comet; Ghost turbojet engines; Trident;
as Air Force One. 96-97; airlines and, 82, 83- Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA). 33. 42, Vampire fighter
85, 84. 86-87, 88, 93-97. 100-101: 94-95 Delta Air Lines, 7 1 83. 88; and short-range jets,
,
Intercontinental version, 69, 71; Model 138. CivilAeronautics Board (CAB), 84-85, 112 107,115. 116
71, Model 720, 71; problems with, 88-93; Clausen, Ginny, quoted, 156 Denver, Colo., 101; and short-range jets, 107,
prototype for (Dash 80), 54-55, 60, 61 72-81, , Cleveland, Ohio, 160 108. 116
106; 747 compared with, 132, 133; and short- Clipper America (Pan American), 83. 84 Detroit, Mich., 151
174
I Wil.vs. Donald (><> (>•> 67, 70 71. 115 Hannon. William. 148 Machmeters. 127. 143, 144
D.HHjIas. Donald. Jr. 70 71 Harper. Robert. 24 MacRobertson Air Race, 23
Douglas alroafl I Model2011, 114 Hawker Siddeley aircraft, 104-105 See also Martin aircraft, 55. 56. 59
1 IS. ami short range jets, 103. 104. 107. 114 Trident Mediterranean Sea. 34. 45. 146
1 15; andwlde bodies, 132. L33, 148. 158 See Houston. Tex . 88 Metal fatigue, 38-39, 42, 52, 60
a/so DC senes aircraft. McDonnell Douglas Miami, Ra, 84. 152. 160
aircraft I Minneapolis. Minn.. 116
Dulles. John Foster. 96 Idlewild Airport (NY ), 84. See also Kennedy Monroe. Marilyn. 9
"Dutch Roll.' '"-I Airport (N Y ) Moscow. USSR. 63, 130
Indian Air Lines. 152 Movies (in-flight). 101
Instrument flying. 98 99
I astern Air Lines. 66. 71. 83, 84. 85. 88. and International airliners. 20 See also Transatlantic N
short range jets. 107. 108. 109. 11 Land wide- flights National Airlines. 84-85
bodies. 148. 150. 152 154 International Federation of Air Line Pilots. 101 Navigation instruments. 98-99
Eisenhower. Dwight D and Air Force One. 96-97
. Irkutsk. USSR. 63 Newark (N.J. ) Airport, 149
Elba (island). Italy. 35. 38-39. 41. 42 43. 47 Istanbul. Turkey. 151 New York, 20. 83. 84. 85. 88, 93. 1 12. 148, 152;
See Lockheed aircraft. Electra
Electra Concorde and. 142. 146. See also Kennedy
Emergency Coalition to Stop the SST. 142 Airport; La Guardia Airport; Newark (N.J.)
Environmental Defense Fund. 142 Japan Air Concorde and. 129. 141
Lines. 28. 71. Airport; Transatlantic flights; Transcontinental
Everett. Wash 136., Jet engines. 22-23 See also Turbofan engines; flights
Turbojet engines; Turboprop engines Nixon. Richard M

and SST, 139
.
Jet fighters, 21,23, 24 Noise. 100-101; cabin, 103; SSTsand, 129. 133,
F-86 Sabrejet. 61 Jet lag, 97, 100 142. See also Sonic boom
Fail-safe principle. 59 Johannesburg, South Africa. 19. 20. 28. 34, 55 North American XB-70. 126. 132
Farnborough. England. 130; Air Show. 55 See Johnson. Clarence L. "Kelly." 56 North Central Airlines (Republic Airlines). 116
also Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) Johnson. Lyndon B and SST. 139 . Northwest Orient Airlines. 94
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). 94-95. Johnston. A. M "Tex." 60-62. 61: quoted. 60. 61
100. and SST. 129. 132. 133. 142 Jumbo jets. See Wide-bodied jets o
Filton. England. 16-1 7. 146 See also British
Oklahoma Okla 129
City. .
Aircraft Corporation (BAC) K Olympic 160-161

Airlines.
Olympus engines. 127. 129
First class. 7. 101; Concorde and. 129. 141 Kennedy. John F., and SST. 132, 139
Flight attendants. 9. 12: first. 56 Kennedy Airport (NY). 137. 149: as Idlewild. 84 One-Eleven (BAC), 114-115, 116
Flying clubs. 96 Kimes. Captain Charles. 92-93: quoted. 89. 93 Operation Bongo Mark 2. 129
Flying Colors (Calder). 95 Kiryanov. Dima. 65 Operation Guillotine (movie). 62
Fokker aircraft. F-27. 26 KLM. 71 Operation Paper Jet. 58
Ford Tri-motor monoplane, 56 Knight. Geoffrey. 140. 141
Fomari. Antonio. 41-42; quoted. 42 Kolk. Frank. 148
Palmdale. Calif., 151
France, and Concorde. 125-127. 129-130. 132. Korean Air Lines, and Airbus. 152
Pan American World Airways, 7, 9. 12, 58, 66,
139-143. 144. 145. 146-147. 168-169. See Krick. James, photograph by. 90-91
68. 69. 71, 83-85. 84. 95. 101. 116; and
also Airbus A300; Air France; Paris; Sud Boeing 707. 84. 85. 86-87. 88-93. Clipper
Aviation
service. 87. 93-94; and Comet 28. 33; and
Fuel consumption. 23. 100; Boeing 757 and. 154; L-1011 TriStar (Lockheed wide-body). 148. 150-
Concorde. 129. 132. 140-141; and wide-
short-range jets and, 103. Ill; SSTsand. 129; 152.251. 156.153-159
bodies, 132, 133. 135, 137, 139, 140
wide-bodies and. 156 La Guardia Airport (N.Y.). 107. 108. 112. 148,
Paris, France, 20. 83. 93, 151; Aeroport Charles
Fuel crisis of 1974. 116 149
de Gaulle, 162-1 71: Air Show. 130-131.
Fuel injector, 22-23 Lear. Moya Olsen. 112
Concorde and, 141. 143. 146; Orly Airport.
Fuel storage capacity. 83-84 Lear. William P.,112-113
116. See also Transatlantic flights
LearAvia. 112-113
Patterson, William A.. 68. 71
Lear Fan 2100. 112-113
Peck. Theodore. 72-73
Galbraith.John Kenneth, quoted. 142 Learjets, 112-113
Pennell. Maynard. 55, 57. 130; quoted. 55
Gander. Newfoundland, 94 Life (magazine). 101
Pilot error, 112,114
Garden City. Long Island, air traffic control room Lindbergh. Charles. 58. 137
Pilots. 93; associations of. 96. 101. 116; training
at. 149 Lockheed aircraft. 7. 55. 56; Advanced
of. 137
Gas turbine engine. 23 Development Projects Staff (Skunk Works). 56; 93
Piston engines, 21; jet engines compared with,
General Electric engines: turbofan. 148. 154; C-141 Starlifter. 125. 130; Constitution. 16:
Pratt & Whitney engines: JT-3, 60. 69; JT-4. 69,
turbojet. 113 Electra. 25-27. 84. 88. 107; and SST. 132-133.
71; JT8D turbofan, 108, 115; JT9D turbofan,
George VI. King (Great Britain), 28 148; and wide-bodies. 125. 132. 148. 154.
134. 137
Germany. See Airbus A300; Lufthansa 156. See also Constellation ("Connie"); L-
Pressurized cabin, first, 56
Ghost turbojet engines (de Havilland). 24, 28. 35. 1011 TriStar
"Progressive maintenance," 88
47.60 London. England. 20, 33. 34. 83. 94. 151. 160; See also
Propellers, turboprop engines and. 21.
Gibson. Captain Alan. 34-35 Airport, 18-19. 20. 35; Concorde and. 142.
Turboprop engines
Gloster Meteor (jet fighter). 23 143. Daily Mail. 63; Heathrow Airport. 116;
Goodmanson. Lloyd. 72-73
Great and Concorde. 125-127. 129-130,
Britain,
Sunday Times. 37; Times. 142 See also
Transatlantic flights
Q
Qantas (Australian airline). 71; and Concorde.
132. 139-143. 144-145. 146-147. See also Long Beach, Calif.. 148 129. 141
Airbus A300; British Aircraft Corporation Los Angeles. Calif . 85. 88. 97. 112. 152. 160 Quesada. Elwood R. "Pete." 94-96. 132
(BAC); British Airways; London Lufthansa. 71. 101. 116. 152
Lynch. Captain W Waldo, 93-94. 95; quoted. 93 R
H M
Raymond.
Reno. Nev. 113
Art. quoted. 71
Halaby. Najeeb. 132
Halford. Frank. 23. 35 McDonnell-Douglas aircraft. 121. 148. 150 See Renton. Wash.. 72-81.117
Hall. Sir Arnold. 40-42. 45. 53; quoted, 45. 50, also DC-9; DC-10 Republic Airlines. 116
McGowen. Jackson B.. 115 Rickenbacker. Eddie. 83, 84. 85, 88, 1 16
51
175
Ri :> de Janeiro. Brazil. 168 of 125, 139-141, 147; Soviet Union and, 128, 25, 107,114
Ripley, Eric, 41 130-131, 132; U.S. and, 126. 129, 132-133, Turkish Airlines, 151-152
Rocky Mountains, 111 139, 140, 141, 142, 148. See also Concorde;
Rolls-Royce Aero Engines, Incorporated. 119, Noise, SSTs and; Sonic boom; Speed. SSTs u
140; turbofan, 108, 146; turbojet, 28. 103. and Union Aeromaritime de Transport. 28
105; and wide-bodies, 148, 158-159 Sutter. Joel. 133 United Air Lines. 58, 68-69. 71. 84. 85. 88. 101;
Rome, Italy, 40; Ciampino Airport. 34, 35, 96 Swissair. 71 and short-range jets. 107. 108. 109. 111. 112;
Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE), 40-41. 45. Syria, 146 and wide-bodies. 135. 150. 160-161
49, 50. See also Farnborough, England U.S. Air Force, 40. 57, 58. 59, 61, 62, 96; Air
Royal Air Force (RAF), 58 T Force One, 96-97; C-5A competition. 132-133;
Royal Canadian Air Force, 28 Tait, Sir Victor, 38 F-3 radar reconnaissance plane. 155, and SST.
Royal Naval Air Museum, 143 Thai Airways International, 152 126. 129; and wide-bodies. 125. 132-133.
Royal Navy, 39-40, 45 Thomas, Sir Miles, 28, 39; quoted. 35. 37 158-259
Runways. 84. See also Airports; Short-range Three-engined jets. See Trijets U.S. Congress. 59. 84. 112; and SSTs. 132. 139.
jets Time Between Overhauls (TBO), 100 See also Supersonic transports (SSTs).
140.
Time (magazine), 82 and
U.S.
s Titanium, 60, 62, 127, 133. 135 U.S. Department of Defense, and SST, 126
Sabena, 71 Tokyo, Japan, International Airport. 112 "Upset." 94
Safety record of jets. 154. See also Crashes Toulouse. France, 140. 147. 150 USAir. 116. See also Allegheny Airlines
Saint, Captain Sam, quoted, 86 Tourist class, 7, 15, 83; Concorde and. 129
St. Louis, Mo., 148 Transatlantic 12-13, 20, 21, 23. 60. 69.
flights. 7. V
Salt Lake City. Utah, 112 83. 84. 101; Concorde and, 129. 141-143, Vampire fighter (de Havilland). 23. 24
San Diego. Calif., 16 147; wide-bodies and. 137, 139 Venice. Italy, 143
San Francisco, Calif., 56, 85, 90-91, 160; Trans-Canada (airline), 71 Vickers aircraft: Viscount. 21, 25, 107. 114:
International Airport. 88-89 Transcontinental flights (U.S.), 23. 71. 85 V 1000. 50-59
Santa Monica. Calif. 7, 56, 66 Transpacific flights. 101 Viscount. See Vickers aircraft
Scandinavian Airlines System, 71 Transports, 21, 56, 100; Boeing 747 as. 138: C-
Sea Saluor (salvage vessel). 47 5A, 132-133; C-141 Starlifter. 125. See also
Airbus A300; Supersonic transports (SSTs)
w
Waddell, Jack, quoted. 136-137
Seattle, Wash., 55. 62. 94. 155. Boeing Airline
Training School, 137; Boeing Developmental Trans World Airlines (TWA), 66, 71, 84. 85, 88, Walker. Dr. Percy B. 41
Center. 140. See also Boeing Aircraft Company 93, 101; and Concorde. 141; "Connies" and, Warde, George, 152-154; quoted, 153
Seawell, Charles William. 140 13: movies and, 101: and short-range jets. 107. Washington. D.C., Concorde and. 142. 146
Second class, 15. See also Tourist class 115, 116; and wide-bodies. 150 Weeks. Bob. 137
Serling. Rod. quoted. 97 Travis Air Force Base (Calif). 89 Wells. Edward C, 57. quoted. 133
Servanty. Lucien, 125, 126 Trident (Hawker Siddeley), 105-106, 107. 108. Western Airlines. 71
Short-range jets, 103-123; wide-bodies and, 147, 114, 118-119 Whittle. Sir Frank. 21. 23. 28. 35, 37
150. 156. 160-161. See also Airbus A300; Trijets, 105-106, 111, 118; wide-bodies and, 148. Wide-bodied jets. 125. 132-133. 156-161:
Trijets See also Boeing 727; DC-10; L-1011 TriStar; airports and. 162-1 71 Concorde compared
;
Shurcliff, Dr. William, 139 Trident 132-133, 147-148. 150-

with, 144; U.S. and,
Simons, Charles. 153 Trippe, Juan, 28. 33, 69. 84-85, 132, 133, 140 154. See also Airbus A300; Boeing 747;
Six, Robert Forman. 88 TriStar. See L-1011 TriStar (Lockheed wide- Boeing 767; DC-10; L-1011 TriStar
Smith. C. R.. 23, 66; quoted. 132 body) Woolman. Collett E.. 88. 115: quoted, 83
Soderlind. Paul, 94 T tail arrangement. 105, 106. 107 Wootton. Frank, painting by, endpaper
Sonic boom. 129, 143; opposition to, 139, 142 Toulouse. France, 103 Wright, Wilbur, 60
South African Airways. 152 Tupolev aircraft: Tu-104. 62-65. 96; Tu-114. 26; Wright R-3350 turbo-compound radial engine, 66
South America, 94, 101. See also Buenos Aires Tu-144(SST). 128. 130-131, 132
Soviet Union. See Tupolev aircraft Turbines, 22-23
Speed. 100, 111; Learjetand. 112; SSTsand. Turbofan engines, 22-23. 100-101. 121, 123; XB-70 (North American), 126, 132
125, 127. 130, 141, 143, 144. 146; wide- General Electric, 148, 154; Rolls-Royce, 108. Yeovilton, England. Royal Naval Air Museum.
bodies and, 157. See also Machmeters 146; SSTsand, 129; wide-bodies and. 134. 143
Spirit of St. Louis (Lindbergh's plane). 58 137, 148, 152, 160-161. See also Pratt & Yoke Peter (G-ALYP, de Havilland Comet). 19,
Steiner, Jack, 106-109 Whitney engines 28. 36-37. 55; crash of, 34-35. 38-42. 39. 44-
Strang. Dr William, 125, 126 Turbojet engines. 21, 22-23, 24, 28, 33. 37, 56. 49.50
Stratocruiser. See Boeing aircraft. Stratocruiser 86. 101; Concorde and. 129. 144; General Yoke Uncle (de Havilland Comet). 52-53
Stratoliner. See Boeing aircraft. Stratoliner Electric. 113; piston engines compared with. Yoke Yoke (G-ALYY, de Havilland Comet), 40.
Stromboli (island). Italy. 40 93; Rolls-Royce. 28. 103. 105. See also Ghost 45
Sud Aviation, 103, 114. 147; and Concorde. 125. turbojet engines
126. 127. See also Airbus A300; Caravelle Turboprop engines, 21, 22-23. 25, 26; and short-
Supersonic transports (SSTs): commercial failure range jets, 104. 107; Vickers Viscount and, 21, Ziegler. Henri, quoted. 139
176
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M

Mil „___„ "

age to hundreds of small and medium-sized cities and towns

THE ENCHANTED WORLD

For information on and a full description of any of the Time-Life Books

541 North Fairbanks Court

This volume is one of a series that traces the adventure and

AND THE EDITORS OF TIME-LIFE BOOKS

TIMI I III BOOKS Al I XANDRIA \'ll« .INIA

EDITOR: George Constable Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data

Special Contributor: Lynne Bair

Correspondents Elisabeth Kraemer-Singh (Bonn); Margbt

1 A leap into the future 19

2 America enters the jet age 55

3 The race to catch up 83

4 A clash of titans 103

5 The fastest — and the biggest 125

Picture credits 173

"Spend a Two-Week Vacation Abroad? Why Not?"

aboard the piston airplanes ended, were the prototypes of

Four generations of propeller-driven Douglas airliners sit on

The DC-6 Dayplane-Sleeper could berth 26

A young model who would go on to fame

a Pan American flight attendant to store

not appear until the onset oj the irt oge

A double-decked Boeing 377 Stratocruiser

Carrying only 61 passengers in 6.600 cubic

Put into service in 1957, the triple-tailed

The de Havilland Airspeed Ambassador,

BEA's routes on the Continent.

Passengers enjoy a meal aboard the

The double-decked Brequet 763 Deux-

lower deck; there was no first class.

Cars are loaded through a rear door in

Taking off with the aid of rockets, a 92-ton

The only Bristol Brabazon ever built stands

A ConvairXC-99. able to carry 400

largecrowd had gathered at

Johannesburg. South Africa, via Rome. Beirut. Khartoum. Entebbe

ship as a major mode was making inroads on them.

the pi. hi.' thai inaugurated regular nonstop transatlantii

a turboprop, such an engine would come to play an important role in

a transport the size of a DC-3. driven not by propellers at all but by

fuel, in the opinion of many aviation authorities, made it economic. lllv

pulsion was the one branch i In which Britain was ahead oi

the United States —

ce: rank Whittli

here was the key —

A TURBOJET is essentially a tube that

COOL AIR FUEL INJECTOR SHAFT TURBINE

PROPELLER POWER TURBINES

COMPI EXHAUST GASES

A TURBOFAN'S big fan works much

:OMPRESSORS FAN TURBINE

SHROUDING Mill II SHAF1

pumped full of air under pressure to allow passengers to breathe with-

airliner had yet encountered. In order to maintain an atmosphere

pounds more than the pressure outside.