BOEING 707 - America's First Jetliner

The dream of flying in an airliner finally came true in the late 1950s and we'll tell you the story of the legendary Boeing 707 in this aviation celebration episode with Mike Michet. The 707 was originally called the airliner that we are. I'm going to talk about this airplane during commercial aviation's historic transition from propellers to airplanes. Boeing had been in the airliner business since 1928. Its

first

model was the Ada. Then in the 1930s came the Model 247, an all-metal low-wing twin-engine airliner. The model 307 followed, this was the world's

first

pressurized airliner and it is noted that the wing and engines are based on the B-17.

Then came the model 314 seaplane which revolutionized air travel in the late 1930s and covered the Pacific and opened air routes to Europe over the Atlantic from the east coast of the United States. Finally the last airliner of the Boeing family was The 377 Strato Cruiser This was the quintessential luxury airplane with a lower deck lounge and spiral staircase that appeared again on the 747 jumbo jet but in 1954 Boeing had an airplane that revolutionized air travel forever: the model 367. 80 or simply known as Dash 80. It was the prototype transport plane that became the 707. I have talked about the iconic golden cup roll where the 707 was.

It rolled upside down over the city of Seattle during the Seattle Maritime Fair in 1955 .I painted it and there was a video about this painting and the story of how it all came together. I will leave a link to that video at the end of this program. The pilot of that amazing maneuver was Tex Johnson Boeing's chief test pilot and he saw the opportunity to demonstrate the plane before a crowd of three hundred thousand people and a group of airline executives who They were on a Boeing yacht anchored in Lake Washington and the plane taxied not once but twice and the rumor was that he was called on the carpet and the president of Boeing immediately fired him.

That was not the case. The flight took place on Sunday, the 7th. august 1955 and on monday morning a text message was called to bill allen's office seen here on the right

boeing

president bill asked tex what were you doing and johnston's response was that he was selling airplanes said allen you know that you can do it now we know that you can do it you will never have to do it again and Boeing was on its way to becoming the leading and now only American manufacturer of commercial airplanes. In 1956, the company was beginning to prepare promotional material for the airlines that had ordered the aircraft and at that time it was still a five-wide cabin.

It was eventually expanded to six to compete with the Douglas DC-8. The ground equipment for the 707 was an extensive fuel truck, water injection trucks, kitchen service, it was really a full ramp of equipment and this is back in the day. prior to modern terminals and jet lanes. blowing engines was a serious problem and again in tight spaces near a terminal with people boarding one plane, another one next to it spinning posed a big problem. The first 707, the model 120, flew in December 1957. It was powered by fourteen thousand pound thrust Pratt Whitney JT3A turbojets, it had a range of 3000 miles, so the dream finally came true and here we see the TWA 707 and this is called a 131.

Each airline had its own code number, so the technical designation of this plane is a 707 120 for two is a 707 131 leaving the final assembly building on a typical rainy day in Seattle, but it is a beautiful plane, the color scheme was designed by Raymond Loewy and as one pilot described it, the plane looked like it was traveling 600 miles. An hour sitting on the ground American was another early customer, their number was 23 so this is a 707 123 and Pan Am was the original launch customer for the plane and their number is 21 so this is a 707 121, but it is the original. configuration of the aircraft and pan am was the first to put it into operation at that time there was a race across the atlantic over which country in which airline would be the first to have a transatlantic jet service and the british comet 4 which was a The evolution of the The original Comet 1, which first flew in 1952, actually won that race on Saturday, October 4, 1958.

Here we see it in idlewild, a kind of prophetic photo with the Lockheed constellation on the other side of the blast fence, but the comet got there. tomorrow and not to be left behind, Pan American President Juan Tripp ordered a 707 to park at the door next to where the comet landed. This is the international rivals building or iab in idlewild. If you look to the right, you will see a crowd of hundreds of people, if not. thousands of people who had come to see the world's first planes land at the airport and my family was among that crowd it was a momentous day and something I will never forget I was 11 years old my father took this rather ironic photo of the DC-7 taking off in the background but I will tell you apart from smelling kerosene for the first time on an airport ramp and of course the roar of the crowd and the roar of the engines it was like seeing a spaceship, it was just the beginning of the future it was just one day momentous to put it in perspective this is what a ramp looked like that year you have this fancy Lockheed Twa Super G and DC-7 constellation on the other side of the ramp and This was a typical scene at an airport so look at this machine in comparison, really late on October 26, Pan Am flew its first jet flight from New York to Paris and this is an interesting trivia question: what was the first airline to fly scheduled jet service? within the united states the answer will surprise you, now it was national for the guys on your airliner, you will say that national nashville flew dc-8, well they did it about a year later, but in december 1958 they reached an incredible agreement with pan am what did he rent the 707 and this is how it worked pan am flew from europe in the morning national took the plane to miami from new york and again this is the winter time just before the holidays they got there after lunch they gave the back to the plane I returned to New York at dinner time and Pan Am then took the plane to Europe in the evening.

What an orderly arrangement, the airports of the future had not yet been built. This is weak on a representation and this airport was still a year or two old. away so what that meant was that the planes had to operate on the original ramps of the old terminals and this proved to be a challenge again, you had all that ground equipment and this is what it looked like in operation, you had a truck of fuel under each wing, water. truck on the trailing edge of the left wing why did I need a tanker? This wasn't for the kitchen.

Five thousand gallons were pumped into the engines during takeoff to increase thrust and we'll see the result of that in just a few moments. The plane explosion, as I mentioned, was a serious problem with a working engine, a working plane and passengers. boarding an adjacent plane, so the solution was to park the plane at the end of what they call the sheep pen or terminal finger. there is laxity here in 1959 and they put the 707 all the way to the end so they could tow it to a taxiway, start the engines and taxi it for takeoff, which meant you would exit the ramp and go up the stairs from the top of stairs, you would turn around and look back at that ramp, they were all piston-powered airplanes again, this is 1959.

It may seem strange, but there were times when there were one or two airplanes a day in Every one of these important airports was the beginning of air travel and here we see the first one taking off for the first transcontinental US flight on an American Airlines 707 plane from Lax to New York and this photo was taken from Imperial Boulevard in what is today. It's called Spotter's Hill, it's a beautiful viewpoint of Lax, but you realize that in 1959 there wasn't much there. You remember I mentioned the tanker truck. This is the result. This is thick, acrid, black smoke that would come out of those engines on takeoff. and in those days everyone looked and said, well, it's an airplane, this is what they look like and I have to tell you too, this is a six degree climb angle compared to piston airplanes.

Three degrees, this plane looked like it was going up. It's all relative when it landed in New York, the 707 parked across from where you see the Twa Connie at the end of that sheep running away from the other US-operated propeller planes from the north end of the old terminal. its planes parked on the ramp at the south end are very different from what they look like today. International flights came to the IAB building or international rivals and you see the new tower there in idlewild. I should mention that idlewild became JFK uh in 1963. The 707 120 could fly to Europe nonstop east if the winds were right, but on the return leg it had to stop in Shannon, Ireland, or Gander Newfoundland to refuel. and get to New York.

It also had five cabin crew members, all men in those days a pilot a co-pilot a flight engineer a radio operator and a navigator for international travel quite different to today so what do these aircraft have in common with the Boeing 707? Well, they all share the same engine, the military derivative of the J-57. and from the top left you have the north

america

n f-100 super saber the f-102 delta convair dagger on the bottom left the vaught f8 crusader and the douglas f4d sky ray all used the j57 engine the military version of the 707 power plant In 1958 The 707 320 series or the intercontinental made its first flight and this was again a game changer.

It became the first aircraft to be able to fly in both directions non-stop over the Atlantic. It was powered by a thrust of 18,000 pounds. Pratt Whitney JT4A. turbojets and had a range of 4000 miles. Here we see an Air France 707 320. You can see the slightly different shape of the engine to the cells and pylons and these are the planes that shared that engine. The military version was the J75 from the top left. the republic f-105 thunder chief convair f-106 delta dart bottom left north

america

n prototype f107 and oh wait, it looks like an sr-71 but it's the a12 it's the boat the first prototype used by the cia before the cia was created air force the sr-71 and the first prototype of that plane that flew with pratt would need j75 because the j-58 engine that came into operation was not completely ready yet, so please do not write any comments.

I know the blackbird was powered by the uh the j58 but the prototype flew with the j75. A unique version of the 707 was built for Qantas to be able to reach the plane across the Pacific and this was the model 138 used only by this airline. What they did was shorten the fuselage by 10 feet but gave it improved engines and this gave it a much greater range. The last of the series of original 707s was the 420, which is the same as a 320 intercontinental but powered by Rolls-Royce Conway engines and the last member of the family. a younger brother to the 707, the 720.

It was nine feet shorter than the standard aircraft, but was much lighter and had a slightly different wing, allowing operations from shorter runways in smaller cities and became the airliner of Boeing's medium range passenger aircraft, the first in the concept of building a family of aircraft that eventually included the 727, 737 and so on, the 720 had a unique outer pylon, it did not have the turbocharger seen on the inner pylon and here We see it with the straight turbojet, but then came the turbofan, the jt3d, and this was an improved engine that allowed more thrust, it was quieter.

You'll notice that it doesn't need the noise suppressors you saw in the original version and was just an overall improvement all around. This is a two. plane and its commercial name was Dynafan engine and there is the Boeing 707, this is a 131b and the definitive 707, the 320, this is a C model for cargo and technically it is a CF convertible freighter, it has a cargo door, it can be used like all-cargo plane and could be converted to a six-wide passenger configuration for military charter flights, which is exactly what I flew on this same plane from Travis Air Force Base in San Francisco to Yokota Air Force Base in Japan when I was in the air force.

Beautiful machine. This also became the basis for military variants of the 707 and by the way, that's not the KC-135, the fastest and largest passenger airliner bound for Europe, the dream of an intercontinental airliner came true, there's the 707 320. Oh, do you remember that American flight from lax taking off on runway two five well here's a photo taken from roughly that same location and this is what lax looks like today it's ironic that in the background is the american airlines terminal All this progress was possible thanks to a revolutionary airplane, the Boeing 707, and there you have the story of an incredible machine that changed air travel forever.

Thanks for celebrating aviation with Mike Mishat and, as always, a special thank you to the great people and organizations who made this video possible. We hope you enjoyed the presentation and evennext. do you mind