Category From props to jets

The riches-to-rags story of Britain’s de Havilland Comet 1 has been told countless times. A sleek new air­liner powered by turbojet engines is unveiled to an expectant industry in England in 1949. By the summer of 1952, this acclaimed new jetliner is in passenger service on routes throughout Europe and Africa, and a postwar world exults in wonderment at this new technological breakthrough. The joy is short-lived, however, when in January 1954, a Comet 1 disintegrates in midair after tak­ing off from Rome and plunges into the Mediterranean Sea with the loss of all passengers and crew.

Before a curious and grieving world can even understand what happened, a second Comet 1 crashes three months later also after taking off from Rome and under the same mysterious circumstances with the loss of all on board. This was the fifth crash of a Comet in its first two years of commercial operation, and now the race is on to find the technical culprit that is destroying Britain’s newest, most modern, and most celebrated air­plane. With the second inflight breakup accident comes the immediate grounding of the type, and a loss of face and confidence in Britain’s aviation supremacy. What
kind of insidious inflight occurrence caused two of the world’s most modern jet aircraft to experience catas­trophic structural failure and literally explode in midair? Was it a bomb? Was it human error? Or was it possibly a design flaw in the aircraft itself?

After complex underwater salvage operations aided by the Royal Navy recovered major portions of the air­frames from both Rome crashes, the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) at Farnborough launched an investigation of never-before-seen proportions. The hunt began for the cause of the accidents with the reconstruction of actual aircraft wreckage on an arma­ture that indicated beyond any shadow of a doubt the airplane had indeed disintegrated in midair. Then an Italian fisherman’s net yielded the “smoking gun” that confirmed the solution to the mystery. A frame from one of the Comet’s square passenger windows found in the fisherman’s net showed that the fuselage had rup­tured from metal fatigue at a point near the corner of the window, extending upward to an equally rectangu­lar Automatic Direction Finder (ADF) antenna housing on the top of the fuselage. The rupture caused an explo­sive decompression of the cabin, leading to immediate catastrophic structural failure of the rest of the airframe.

In historical hindsight, this fact would seem to indi­cate that de Havilland had not tested its new airplane sufficiently, but nothing could be further from the truth. Knowing full well this airliner would be operat­ing at speeds and altitudes twice that of existing piston – powered aircraft, de Havilland engineers proceeded with fatigue testing of every minute facet of the Comet’s design and construction. With untiring effort, struc­tures were put to the test where engineers attempted to duplicate the rigors of countless aircraft “cycles,” that is the series of structural loads resulting from a takeoff, climb to altitude, descent from altitude, and landing. Exhaustive testing at Hatfield simulated an aircraft ser­vice ceiling of 40,000 feet. What couldn’t be duplicated, however, were the severe temperature differentials from sea level to 40,000 feet, and as a result of these accidents, new methods of load simulation were devised at Farnborough for use on future aircraft designs.

With a complete Comet fuselage immersed in a giant tank of water to simulate pressurization forces on the cabin at altitude, patterns now began to emerge that led to the possibility of metal fatigue in the outer skin of the fuselage. When the test cabin itself ruptured inside the water tank, the pattern of metal fatigue was conclusively established. Further study and matching of wreckage fragments from the first Comet lost revealed that the explosive decompression forces were so great that dark blue-black paint from the letter “C” in the BOAC title above the windows was found in a deep gouge on the leading edge of the right wing indicating violent span-wise or lateral impact. This clue graphically showed that the explosive force of the rupture was so great that it exceeded the forward velocity of the air­plane at that moment.

As with any aviation accident, tragedy yields infor­mation and knowledge so that a particular problem can be avoided in the future. In the case of the Comet, met­allurgy techniques, manufacturing methodology, and aircraft skin structural properties were modified to include an integral reinforcing framework built into the
skin itself much like “quilted” aluminum foil used in common households today. Additionally, the passenger windows on all British airliners built after these acci­dents were manufactured in the shape of an ovaloid to eliminate the smaller-radius corners from which the fatal fatigue cracks emanated on both Comets that dis­integrated.

Although the reputation of Britain’s commercial aviation industry was tarnished by the discovery of the design flaw that led to these accidents, de Havilland went back to the drawing board and developed improved and more advanced versions of the Comet which eventually reentered passenger service in 1958 and flew successfully well into the latter part of the twentieth century. But the story of the Comet deserves closer scrutiny than just the crash investigation, as this airplane represented the great hope and rebirth of Europe’s proud aviation industry rising from the ashes of World War II’s destruction, and was intended to show the world that England was once again a leader in aircraft design.

Evolving from design studies in 1944 for a small jet – powered mail airplane with a canard wing planform, the original de Havilland Comet was envisioned as a small high-speed, six-passenger transport powered by three turbojets buried in the aircraft’s tail section. As further marketing studies clearly indicated the need for a larger – capacity aircraft, the DH-106 emerged as the final con­figuration, featuring four 5,000-pound-thrust de Havilland Ghost turbojet engines buried inside the wing root with a slightly swept wing and conventional straight tailplanes. This new aircraft would carry 44 passengers at speeds of 490 mph on route segments of up to 1,500 miles. With its bare metal skin gleaming in the hazy summer sunshine, the formerly secret jetliner was rolled out of the factory hangar on July 27, 1949.

First flown at Hatfield later that very same day by de Havilland’s Chief Test Pilot, John Cunningham, the Comet wowed all observers although most of the crowd, including the British Press, had already gone

home thinking the flight would be scrubbed due to typically inclement British weather. As word spread of this new airplanes successful and impressive flight tri­als, the traveling public began to anticipate a sense of futurism at the thought of being able to actually fly around the world in a jet-powered commercial airliner. Such an expectation was especially pervasive consider­ing that only the Canadians had a competing design with their smaller Avro Jetliner, and that the American aviation industry didn’t even have an airplane on the drawing boards to seriously compete for the Comet’s pride of place.

Ordered initially by BOAC, the Comet 1 soon began to attract the attention of other world airlines, and tentative orders followed from Aeromaritime, Air France, Canadian Pacific, the Royal Canadian Air Force, and Britain’s Royal Air Force. With the promise of even larger and longer-range Comet versions, Pan American World Airways and Capital Airlines in the United States proudly added their names to de Havilland’s order book. By the time BOAC’s first Comet 1 entered passenger service on the London-South Africa route on May 2, 1952 (via Rome, Cairo, and points south), the airplane was firmly expected to be a world beater, bringing deluxe passen­
ger service and significantly reduced travel times to routes emanating from Europe, and eventually other continents as well.

To put the Comet’s operational service into per­spective, simply read about the other airliners flying at this same time. In 1954, Lockheed Constellations along with the Douglas DC-6 and DC-7 were the pressurized “queens of the skies” throughout the world, offering new levels of passenger comfort, speed, and range to the world’s airlines. This was especially true when com­pared to the unpressurized 200-mph Douglas DC-4s that entered service immediately following the war. With the Comet, the world had a brand-new airliner capable of more than doubling all of these operational parameters in the same time period.

By the beginning of 1954, BOAC’s Comet routes had expanded to include the Middle East, India, Singapore, and Japan. As was inevitable with any new paradigm, however, accidents began to occur that, in all fairness, could have happened with any aircraft. On October 26, 1952, a Comet was damaged after stalling on takeoff in Rome. On March 2, 1953, another Comet was destroyed while taking off from Karachi, and then on May 2, 1953, a third Comet was lost in a raging thunderstorm near Calcutta. These accidents did not go

unnoticed, but when Comet G-ALYP mysteriously fell from the sky near Alba, Italy, on January 10, 1954, the world took special notice. BOAC temporarily grounded all of its Comets until it was determined that what had occurred was strictly a one-time happenstance, and the type was returned to service on March 23. Then, only two weeks later on April 8, Comet G-ALYY repeated the Alba tragedy, and the Comet Is brief but supreme reign was over.

eliable coast-to-coast nonstop flights could, the­oretically, have begun with the introduction of DC-4s and Constellations following the end of World War II. In fact, TWA operated one “scheduled” Los Angeles to New York nonstop on February 3, 1948, when a fierce winter storm covered the Midwest. Flight 12’s regular Kansas City and Chicago stops were canceled and the Model 049 Connie covered the 2,470-mile flight in 6 hours 55 minutes.

While air travel began its rapid growth during this time period, the number of transcontinental tick­ets probably did not justify such flights. Although the market was sufficient by the early 1950s, and aircraft could stretch their legs across the country nonstop, they did not. Why?

In his book, Howard Hughes and TWA, Robert W. Rummel wrote that the airline’s traffic managers argued against the longer flights, based on their
belief that passengers wanted an en-route stop to get out and stretch their legs, and that no one wanted to fly nonstop across North America for up to nine hours. Perhaps a more important reason was that pilot contracts and U. S. federal air regulations pro­hibited flights of more than eight hours without an augmented crew, which would also result in addi­tional costs to the airline. TWA operated its transat­lantic flights this way as a matter of expediency, but not on long domestic routes where crew changes could be easily carried out.

When American Airlines announced plans to begin coast-to-coast nonstop service with its new DC-7s, TWA quickly inaugurated its own nonstop service and upstaged the competition. On October 19,1953, “Ambassador” Flight 2, an overnight service from Los Angeles to New York-Idlewild, operated with the Model 1049 Super Constellation, which could barely cover the distance in less than eight hours; it was scheduled for 7 hours 55 minutes. Prevailing winds would not permit a westbound flight within the time constraint, so a 15-minute stop was made at Chicago for a crew change with no local traffic allowed!

Not to be upstaged, American Airlines quickly retaliated with DC-7 “Nonstop Mercury” flights in both directions, on November 29. Although the Douglas was faster than the Super Connie, and flew an eastbound 7-hour 15-minute schedule, it could not
reliably operate its under-eight-hour westbound time frame, a fact quickly pointed out by American’s pilot union but quietly ignored by federal officials. More than a dozen modifications were carried out in an effort to squeeze extra speed from the DC-7’s R-3350 engines, but this was not enough to resolve the dilemma.

Then, early in 1954, government restrictions were lifted to make transcontinental nonstops in excess of eight hours “legal,” and American revised its west­bound schedule to 8 hours 15 minutes. While TWA and its pilots reached agreement on overtime for duty in excess of eight hours and began nonstops in both directions, American and its crews deadlocked over the work rules. The entire pilot workforce walked out on July 31, 1954.

The company’s legendary president, C. R. Smith, on military leave at the time, returned infuriated about the work stoppage. He quickly reached an agreement with the pilots that called for extra pay on flights —on DC-7s only—exceeding eight hours, end­ing a 24-day strike. TWA retained a bit of an advan­tage with eight sleeping berths available on its Super Connies, unlike the DC-7’s standard “day plane” configurations, but both carriers offered lounges and lavish meal service. United Air Lines, which received its first DC-7s six months behind American Airlines, launched nonstops from San Francisco to New York —again eastbound only —on June 1, 1954; west­bound flights began nearly a year later.

San Francisco and Honolulu. Its furnishings included provisions for 28 upper – and lower-bunk berths. In a day configuration, the airplane could accommodate up to 103 passengers, and featured a unique 14-passenger lounge located below the main cabin. Only 56 Stratocruisers were built, for Pan Am (21, including the prototype), Northwest (10), American Overseas (8), BOAC (10), and United (7). Northwest was the last of the original customers to withdraw the type, on September 15, 1960.

Unlike surplus DC-3s and DC-4s, used Stratocruisers were difficult to place with second-tier operators. Knowing this, the type’s original owners traded them in to aircraft manufacturers as down pay­ments on jet equipment. Transocean Air Lines, then the largest non-scheduled airline, bought 14 Stratocruisers that Boeing acquired in this fashion. Barely two years later, the airline went bankrupt and its Strats were sold
at auction with only four in flyable condition. A few other short-lived attempts were made to utilize second­hand examples, but did not succeed.

The only long-term success realized with second­hand Stratocruisers came in the form of Aero Spacelines’ radical modification to the airframe that resulted in the “Pregnant Guppy,” with an enlarged fuselage capable of ferrying oversize cargo. On the mil­itary side, the Israeli Air Force picked up five ex-Pan Am 377s for use as freighters, two of which were con­verted to swing-tail configurations.

Although Boeing could not claim great success from its civil Stratocruiser version, it prospered from the construction of 888 C-97/KC-97 military variants. But Stratocruiser production was important in allowing the manufacturer to keep its hand in the civilian airliner market, which it would begin dominating in the 1960s, with its revolutionary turbojet 707 series.

Boeing, primarily a builder of bombers and transports, designs a brand-new prototype that will change the heady game of airliner manufacturing forever. Developed to become a high-speed tanker for the Air Forces emerg­

ing fleet of new jet aircraft, this four-engine transport becomes an obvious candidate for airline service as well. The public begins to embrace the concept of air travel by jet, and the revolutionary Boeing 707 is born.

By Jon Proctor

ost first-time travelers aboard the Electra were, like the airlines, transitioning from aircraft such as the DC-6 and Constellation plus, to an extent, Convair and Martin twins. With the Electra’s self – contained boarding stairs forward of the wing, one had a chance to get up close and personal with the air­plane before even stepping aboard. Compared to the older piston-powered airliners, the Electra looked big, in part because it sat higher off the ground. Its larger passenger windows and fatter fuselage were noticeable, but what really impressed me upon step­ping toward the air stairs were the engines and abso­lutely huge propellers, which reeked of power even while resting at the gate.

Stepping into the airplane, I was impressed with the softer, indirect lighting and a cabin design that gave it a roomy appearance. Soft background music added to the contrast between old and new. Designed for short – to medium-haul routes, most Electras featured carry-on luggage compartments near the forward door. It was almost like boarding a Convair-Liner, yet as I looked aft, the rear lounge mimicked a DC-6 or DC-7, as did the galley adjacent to the second door behind the wings, where I was used to boarding a Douglas.

My first Electra flight was on Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA), from San Diego to Los Angeles in December 1959, only two months after the type entered service along the California coast. Even in its
98-seat, all-coach layout, it felt roomy, probably enhanced by the six-seat lounge one would not expect to see when riding on a $5.45 ticket.

I chose to sit in the last row of the forward cabin, just ahead of the prop line, so I could see those mighty Allisons fire up. From my window seat, I watched as the props blended into what looked like two giant saucers. Expecting a higher noise level as we pulled away from the gate, I was surprised to feel the brakes release and no increase in propeller rotation, only a slight engine-pitch adjustment. Welcome to the world of constant-speed propellers.

After a short taxi to Runway 27, and no pause to run up engines, the propeller pitch changed again and I was pushed back into my seat as the Electra acceler­ated rapidly. Unlike the longer takeoff roll I was used to, this bird literally jumped into the air and climbed through the marine cloud layer at a steep angle, burst­ing into bright sunlight.

PSA kept the cockpit door open in flight (those were the days!), with a red cloth rope across the open­ing, giving passengers a peek at the front office. Although the flight engineers seat partially blocked the view, one could see the wide work area that required separate throttle quadrants for the captain and co-pilot.

Although this first flight was smooth, I later found that the Electra s relatively stiff, stubby wings made it more susceptible to turbulence. Its cabin noise level close to the engines was higher, much like the propliners it replaced, but even attached to the

propeller, the turboprop engines featured much lower vibration levels, adding to overall passenger comfort.

My PSA flight touched down at Los Angeles International barely 20 minutes after liftoff from San Diego. A propeller-pitch change brought the Electra
to a quick stop on the runway, followed by a short taxi to the terminal on Avion Drive. The use of both doors allowed a less-than-10-minute turnaround, yet another Electra feature that made it attractive to air­lines, and an ideal fit for PSA.

Here is another example of a prop-era color scheme being applied to a new jetliner still years away from rolling out through the factory doors. Eastern’s classic "meatball" scheme, as it was popularly referred to, is applied to a DC-8 in this artist’s rendering, and doesn’t look all that bad. The large underwing lettering might not have been very effective when the jet was cruising at 35,000 feet. (Mike Machat Collection)

Factory brochure prepared for customer airlines by Boeing details the technical aspects of the new 707, although the jet’s final color scheme had not yet been defined. Here we see a DC-7-style paint job as it would have looked on the 707, but American’s first airplane was still several years away from reality when this book­let was prepared. It is interesting to note that American was the only U. S. airline to have the engine nacelles painted to match the fuselage markings. (Craig Kodera Collection)

Another clean and classic Raymond Loewy color scheme was developed for application to United’s new Douglas DC-8s and Boeing 720s. Nicely complementing American’s bare-metal-with-orange-striping motif and TWA’s striking red arrowhead design, the red, white, and blue of United’s new look was worn on its vast fleet of jets all the way into the mid-1970s. (Mike Machat Collection)

While the brilliant French Sud Caravelle became the Western world’s first short – to medium-range jet­liner in the late-1950s, a new flock of twinjet and tri-jet airplanes emerged in the following decade bringing sig­nificant advances in airframe, powerplant, and systems technology. In 1962 Britain’s Hawker Siddeley Trident became the first new smaller jetliner to take flight after the original Caravelle, but it was another three-engine design from Seattle that truly launched medium-range jet-powered service two years later. Boeing’s 727 was a revolutionary airplane when first flown, bringing jet speed, comfort, and convenience to smaller regional air­ports previously served by DC-6s, Constellations, and even Convair-Liners. With a total of more than 1,800 built in two basic models and operated by major carri­ers all over the world, the 727 was the most successful

airliner ever flown at the time, becoming the undisputed DC-3 of the Jet Age.

After a failed marriage between Sud and Douglas to market the Caravelle in the United States, Douglas developed its own twinjet airliner called the DC-9, which entered service in 1965. Starting as a 100-seater known as DC-9-10, the basic design grew in typical Douglas fashion all the way to the Series 50. The next step was a rather big one, when the latest iteration became the DC-9 Super 80 with larger engines, wings, tail, landing gear, and a stretched fuselage that held up to 165 passengers. The most advanced airliner of its time, the Super 80 was renamed the MD-80 (MD stand­ing for McDonnell Douglas, replacing the classic DC, or “Douglas Commercial” designation) and grew into the MD-90, and the shorter-fuselage MD-87. The final member of the family was originally called the MD-95, a name that morphed into the Boeing 717 when that company acquired McDonnell Douglas in 1997.

Meanwhile, in England, the newly established British Aircraft Corporation (ВАС) designed a small twinjet for inter-European routes that eventually became a DC-9 competitor. Called the ВАС 111, it entered service in 1965. Ironically, this airplane was flown in the United States, as well, by American, Braniff, and Mohawk to connect those carriers’ smaller cities to their 707 and DC-8 trunk routes.

By 1968, Boeing was building a shorter, twin – engine feeder liner of its own called the 737, launched by Lufthansa and first operated in the United States by United Air Lines, ironically replacing aging Caravelles on United’s routes. In a classic example of how dramat-

ically things can change in the airline industry, the mod­est and stubby little 737 grew in size, power, range, and passenger capacity over the years, and is now flying in its third design makeover, glass cockpit and all. With more than 6,000 delivered (and another 2,000 currently on order), the 737 has become the most successful single­aisle jetliner in history. To put all this in proper per­spective, the latest version in the 737 series can carry more passengers over longer distances on two fewer engines and with two fewer flight crew than Boeing’s original 707 could when first introduced in 1958!

Progress in aeronautics is nothing if not fast. Starting in the mid-1930s, commercial aircraft design took a huge leap skyward with the first DC-2 and DC-3, which at the time were termed the “Giant Douglas Flagships” by American Airlines. These twin-engine airliners were soon eclipsed by the four-engine Douglas DC-4E and Boeing 307, followed by the pro­duction DC-4 and Lockheed Constellation, with the Douglas DC-6 being considered the thoroughbred of that era. This significant march forward spanned a total of only 12 years, and took us from airplanes carrying 21 passengers in sometimes grueling unpressurized multi­stop transcontinental service, all the way to luxurious skyliners carrying 50 passengers in pressurized comfort spanning the great oceans, and doing so at about twice the speed of the fastest aircraft a decade earlier. Even at the intercity level, the modern new “twins” from Convair and Martin enjoyed the same speed and habit­able higher-altitude cabins as the larger aircraft. We see that the world of postwar commercial aviation enjoyed a quantum improvement from its pioneering forebears of the Depression era.

Lockheed Constellation 049 through 149

It is easy to lose sight of the fact that what started in 1936, as the modest 36-passenger Excalibur airliner from Lockheed, became the 049 Constellation only three years later, which was an airplane with a pressur­ized cabin capable of carrying 46 passengers over a dis­tance of 3,500 miles. At TWA’s behest for nine orders, Lockheed commenced with the airplane, making it the company’s largest undertaking to date. Pan American ordered 40 of the transoceanic type 149 (decreased in 1945 due to an order for the Boeing Stratocruiser). The prototype Constellation made its first flight on January 9, 1943, smack in the middle of the war. The airplane wore standard olive-drab-and-gray USAAF camou­flage and insignia. This date highlights the reason that the very advanced Constellation became available to the airlines so soon after the war. The first Constellations were actually Army Air Force C-69 transports, and prior to the war’s end, Lockheed manufactured 31 of these airframes making them available to the airlines at incredibly low prices.

High speed for the Constellation was derived from its powerful Curtiss-Wright R-3350 Duplex Cyclone engines, which gave the aircraft a 25-percent boost in power versus the Douglas DC-4. The “Connie,” as the flying public knew it, also offered greater range, faster speed, higher payload capability, and a commensurate lowering of cost-per-seat-mile [the cost of moving one passenger seat over a distance of one mile] some 23 percent below the Douglas air­liner. (Note: This book chronicles the ongoing and ever-present crosstown rivalry and “back and forth” success between the designs of Lockheed and Douglas during the 1940s and 1950s. There always seemed to

Despite the rapid delivery of DC-6s, United Air Lines continued to operate well-maintained but older DC-4s for sev­eral years. Mainliner Yellowstone, pictured at Oakland, California, in 1952, looks smart in the carrier’s new white crown livery. (William T. Larkins)

Inflight portrait of the Lockheed 049 Constellation shows the classic lines of the big Connie, triple tail and all. The outer-wing planform borrowed heavily from the lines of Lockheed’s twin-tail World War II fighter, the P-38 Lightning.

(TWA/Jon Proctor Collection)

The "front office" of an early-model Constellation shows cockpit state of the art, circa late 1940s. Note fabric – covered alcohol pans above the pilot and co-pilot glare shields that were used for de-icing the inner panes of the aircraft’s windshield. Although appearing rather primitive by today’s standards, this cockpit was considered just as advanced in its day as GPS navigation and digital instrumentation are now. (Craig Kodera Collection)

be a competition for orders between these two Southern California airliner giants.) The 049 was also the first production transport to have hydraulically boosted controls.

Pan American began the first scheduled transat­lantic service via the Constellation on January 20, 1946, from New York to Lisbon, while the first transconti­nental service came from TWA on February 15, 1946. TWA offered one-stop service between Los Angeles and New York for a scheduled time of 9 hours 45 min­utes. This was in stark contrast to United’s and American’s unpressurized DC-4s that made two stops while crossing the United States. This advantage made TWA the leader in postwar transcontinental service, although that would dissipate one year later as the DC-6 began its work at American and United.

First, as previously noted, the de Havilland Comet entered service in May 1952, but was subsequently grounded within two years, after its infamous series of accidents. Second, Boeing froze the design for its new “prototype jet transport” into a sleeker configuration with four jet engines, each in their own separate under­wing nacelle, a stubbier vertical fin, and a more airliner­like cockpit design. Disguised with a deceptive “Model 367” designation (used internally by the company for its KC-97 military tanker/transport version of the Stratocruiser), this larger, faster, and more powerful design was the eightieth configuration considered. Hence, the official name for Boeing’s new jet prototype became the 367-80.

Constructed in a special walled-off and highly secure area of Boeing’s historic Renton, Washington, facility, the “Dash 80” was built in only 18 months, and was rolled out for Boeing employees and industry representatives
on May 15, 1954. This one-of-a-kind proof of concept demonstrator was unlike any other airplane ever seen at that time. Painted in a striking school-bus-yellow and chocolate-brown color scheme, the jet was 128 feet long with a 130-foot wingspan and a tail height of 38 feet. The engines were Pratt & Whitney’s new J57 turbojets, and the airplane’s main landing gear sported four wheels on each side instead of the traditional two. Anyone who saw the Dash 80 knew it was something special. What they didn’t know was that this airplane would change air travel forever by siring an entire family of jet transports that would reduce travel times between any two places on earth by a staggering 50 percent.

Christened by Mrs. William Boeing as the “airplane of tomorrow,” the 367-80 soon underwent preparation for its first flight. After a series of rigorous systems checks and taxi tests, the giant craft lifted off from Renton’s runway for the first time on July 15, 1954,

piloted by Boeings Chief Test Pilot, A. M. “Tex” Johnston. The unique thing about that first flight is that there had been no airline orders placed for the airplane whatsoever. Not one! Then, as the new prototype began to demonstrate what a large jet-powered trans­port could do, the world began to take notice. So did the United States Air Force, which was in dire need of a faster aerial-refueling aircraft to service its new fleet of jet-powered strategic bombers and tactical fighters just then entering the inventory.

Boeing quickly “put its money where its mouth was” by flying the Dash 80 on a series of impressive demonstration flights, taking any number of special industry guests and aviation luminaries for their first rides in a jet-powered aircraft. Names like USAF Chief of Staff, General Curtis LeMay soon graced the passen­ger roster as he evaluated the airplane for its impending role as the Air Force’s new “flying gas station,” to be known as the КС-135 Stratotanker. Excitement was building around the new jet, as the publics anticipation of flying in America’s first jet airliner grew in magni­tude. The Dash 80 was catapulted to national attention when Tex Johnston performed not one, but two barrel rolls while flying over the famed Gold Cup speed-boat races at Seattle’s Sea Fair in August 1955. Asked later by Bill Boeing why he did it, Johnston replied in his typi­cal droll manner, “I was selling airplanes.”

On one memorable demonstration flight, Johnston was told by the Boeing Field tower to remain in posi­tion on the ramp with engines running. It was a typical rainy spring day in Seattle, and Tex noticed a company car racing out to the airplane. Emerging from the back seat was a tall, slim figure clutching his raincoat tightly to his body. Rushing up the boarding stairs, the gentle­man walked into the cockpit and unceremoniously took his place in the airplane’s jump seat. Tex turned around to greet him, and shook hands with none other than Charles A. Lindbergh, acting in an advisory capacity for Pan American World Airways. According to Johnston, Lindbergh later sat in the co-pilot’s seat and even took the controls of the Dash 80 while flying over Portland, Oregon, at 600 mph. Johnston marveled at how much aviation progress had been made in the less- than-thirty-year time span since Lindbergh’s epic solo transatlantic flight in 1927!

On October 16, 1955, with William Boeing and other VIP guests on board, Johnston flew the Dash 80 from Boeing Field in Seattle to Washington D. C., reaching a top speed of 620 mph and arriving at Andrews Air Force Base in only 3 hours 48 minutes. The fact that this flight established a new U. S. coast-to – coast cross-country record did not go unnoticed by the world’s airlines, and orders for a slightly larger produc­tion version of the new jet, called the 707, started com­ing in to Boeing in impressive numbers.

Boeing’s first airline order was from Pan American when its President, Juan Trippe, ordered 20 of the new jets. American’s C. R. Smith ordered 30, and then came Continental and Braniff orders. Surprisingly, the first foreign air carrier to order the 707 was Belgium’s Sabena, followed by Air France. Bringing up the rear in this initial batch was TWA with its pivotal order for 8 of the new jetliners, bringing the total 707 order book to 81 airplanes. Although this will be covered in more detail later, it should be mentioned that by this time, rival manufacturer Douglas Aircraft, still king of the airliner builders, had recorded 124 orders for its similar­looking, but yet-to-be-flown DC-8 Jetliner.

For awhile, it appeared that Boeing would never be able to break the decades-old stigma of being in Douglas’s shadow as an airliner builder, but when BOAC, Lufthansa, El Al, and Air India lined up to order longer-range versions of the 707, Boeing’s tally grew to 145 before the DC-8 ever flew, and the race was on. As we will see later, both of these jetliners evolved into larger and more improved airplanes, but once Boeing gained the advantage and pulled ahead of Douglas, there was no turning back. With its Dash 80, Boeing literally “bet the company” that this revolutionary new aircraft would eventually become a commercial success, and it will be considered for all of history to be one gutsy $15 million gamble that paid off quite handsomely.

Even though the first turboprops were entering service and using existing airports without any major problems, airline and airport planners wisely realized that the next generation of pure-jet airliners would require a host of new and improved airport features to
safely and effectively accommodate their operations. In addition to the obvious need for longer runways and safety overrun areas, the larger jetliners would require more ramp space for turning and parking, plus wider taxiways and runways to keep their outboard nacelles from hanging out over adjacent grass areas full of potentially engine-damaging debris.

Nicely showing the evolution and progress in airport terminal design is this series of photographs depicting terminals at Los Angeles and New York International Airports. Passengers gather at the ticket counter at LAX in 1952. (Craig Kodera Collection)

Several years later, the terminals did not look all that different as this American Airlines Captain checks in at the ticket counter in February 1961. Type for flight information board in background was set by hand, one letter at a time! (Craig Kodera Collection)

Overhead view of LAX in November 1959 shows the very beginning of the integration process as the new jets entered airline fleets. Note the position of the 707 parked at the end of one of the terminal fingers, away from the gaggle of propliners lined up at the original airport concourses. A United DC-8 can be seen parked under a main­tenance hangar overhang at lower left. (Craig Kodera Collection)

Newly designed airport infrastructure was also planned with novel features such as blast fences to keep ramp vehicles from being blown over by jet exhaust. Fully enclosed moveable “jet bridges” designed to shield passengers from the weather would be attached directly to terminal buildings, completely eliminating the need for passengers to be exposed to the elements. After all, it was rather hard to sell luxurious jet service when passengers were being drenched while walking

from the gate across a rain-soaked red carpet and up slippery metal boarding stairs to the airplane.

In anticipation of serving both the aircraft and passengers of the Jet Age, airline terminals themselves moved upscale. Large two – and even three-story com­plexes with floor-to-ceiling dark-tinted plate glass windows and arched or cantilevered roof structures were designed to replace simpler terminal buildings with their cinder-block walls, chain-link fences, and

Quonset-hut extensions. In most cases, this new modern look was referred to by the marketing forces of the day as being the “Airport of Tomorrow” to foster even more excitement at the thought of futuristic air travel by jet.

American Airlines’ new terminal facade at New York’s Idlewild Airport was the largest single-frame mosaic ever con­structed when it was finished in 1960. This structure, along with other inde­pendently constructed terminals for Eastern, United, Pan Am, and TWA comprised the "terminal city" concept at Idlewild. The terminal also featured separate upper and lower entrance roadways for departures and arrivals, respectively. (Mike Machat Collection)

Although public perception is that the Boeing 747 was the first airplane called a Jumbo Jet, that distinction technically goes to the McDonnell Douglas Super-60 family of advanced DC-8 jetliners. Douglas engineers at Long Beach created the world’s first 250-passenger air­liner by adding more than 37 feet to the original DC-8 fuselage, and then developing three versions of this new larger airplane by combining different engine, engine pylon, and wingtip designs to meet various airline requirements.

The first stretched model, the DC-8-61, simply added a longer fuselage to the existing DC-8-55 wing and engines. The DC-8-63 became the “Cadillac of DC-8s” by combining the -61 fuselage with a longer wing, new “flow-through” nacelles for its uprated fan – jet engines, and sleeker “cut-back” pylons for improved aerodynamics and drag reduction. By shortening the new longer fuselage and utilizing the Series 63 wing and engine configuration, the DC-8-62 was born, offering such ultra-long-range routes as New York to Hawaii nonstop for the very first time. Flown by United, Delta, Eastern, and National, plus Braniff, Air Canada, and a host of international carriers, the DC-8 Super-60 series brought a new paradigm of lower seat-mile economics to airline operators and passengers alike, setting the stage for the next big step in airliner development.

Responding to a U. S. Air Force request to develop a new giant jet airlifter, Boeing, Lockheed, and Douglas pushed the envelope of aircraft construction to new heights with the CX-HLS Program. General Electric and Pratt & Whitney did likewise for powerplant devel­opment. Standing for “Cargo Experimental, Heavy Logistics Support,” this new mammoth aircraft was to be able to carry outsize loads on its main cargo deck, with accommodations for up to 90 passengers or relief crewmembers in compartments housed in an upper deck. A new generation of high-bypass turbofans would provide a then-staggering 25,000 pounds of thrust each to lift this beast into the air.

Although Lockheed won the CX-HLS contract with its C-5 Galaxy powered by General Electric

engines, all five companies involved managed to parlay their newly acquired design expertise into the creation of giant new engines and airframes suitable for com­mercial passenger use.

First off the mark was Boeing with its impressive new 747 designed to the specifications of launch cus­tomer Pan American. More than 230 feet long and with a wingspan of 196 feet, this four-engine Goliath carried up to 400 passengers in mixed-class configuration with an exclusive upper-deck lounge located above the for­ward fuselage, accessible via a regal-looking spiral stair­case. Entering passenger service in 1970, the 747 went through the inevitable teething problems for integrating so large an airplane into the existing air-travel infras­tructure. It emerged, however, as a highly successful air­liner that provided affordable air travel to the masses and drove the basic cost of flying down to unheard-of levels. With more than 1,400 produced to date, the 747 soldiers on as the pioneering design that helped create the new age of affordable international air travel we somewhat take for granted today.

McDonnell Douglas entered the commercial jumbo-jet sweepstakes by complementing rather than competing with the 747. Responding to the needs of American and United for a widebody jet that could operate out of smaller airports like New York’s LaGuardia, yet still carry 275 passengers on medium – to long-range stage lengths, McDonnell Douglas came up with a three-engine design called the DC-10. The new jetliner proved to be popular with the traveling public, but suffered a series of design-related accidents that tarnished the proud Douglas name. The DC-10 also became the Air Force’s newest tanker named the KC-10 Extender, of which 60 were built, in addition to the 446 commercial DC-lOs produced in Long Beach. Production ended with a follow-on design, a stretched, re-engined, glass-cockpit-equipped jetliner called the MD-11.

Last, but certainly not least in this trio of airliner titans was the Lockheed L-1 Oil. The only jumbo jet to officially have a name, the L-1011 carried on Lockheed’s stellar theme with the clever moniker TriStar. Considered a more advanced aircraft than the DC-10 from a systems standpoint, the TriStar was capa­ble of Category III instrument landings and featured a center engine mounted in the aft fuselage fed by a streamlined S-duct air inlet. The L-1011 was ordered by TWA, Delta, Eastern, and Air Canada when McDonnell Douglas’ senior management refused to negotiate the price of its DC-10 for these same airlines. In so doing, McDonnell opened the door to intense competition from its cross-town rival. However, only 250 L-101 Is were built, and they were the last commer­cial aircraft produced by what is now the Lockheed Martin Company.

Beginning in 1944, designers at Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica were working toward a stretched and pres­surized improvement of their then-current DC-4/C-54. The key to this stretch was the Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp engine. As we saw above with the Constellation, and indeed as would be seen for the decades following this time period, engine advancement and the proper mating with the appropriate airframe would literally make or break an aeronautical design.

The DC-6 (later known as “the straight-6”) incor­porated many firsts for an airliner, and learned lessons from the first Constellations, thus refining the air travel “product” even further. For instance, the DC-6 had the first cabin heated by radiant heat in the cabin walls and floor; no-fog passenger windows; electric de-icing of

the wings, tail, and propellers; it was the first airliner to be air conditioned both in the air and on the ground; and it featured a cabin, which was pressurized automat­ically depending on altitude. The DC-6 boasted that a selected cabin temperature could be maintained within 3 degrees Fahrenheit because of the advanced heat – ing/air conditioning in the airplane.

One competitive aspect of the DC-6/Constellation duel was each airplane’s fuselage design. Lockheed created a beautiful and aerodynamically inspired curvaceous body for its airliner, and claimed lower drag and higher speeds (with a slight addition in lift). Douglas continued with its utilitarian approach to cabin design, and because it chose a cylindrical “tube” for its airplane, realized far more capability in terms of space and its utilization. It could also be argued that a constant-section cylinder is easier to adapt to a stretch and, therefore, easier to expand upon to grow the airframe (which we will indeed witness later). It is subjective, of course; we believe the early cabin interiors of the Douglas airplane had a more luxurious feel to them versus the Constellation, due to the use of a constant-diameter fuselage and cabin.

The DC-6 began life much like the 049: as a trans­port for the military services. The assigned number for the design was YC-112A. It flew for the first time on February 15, 1946 (a year after the Constellation entered airline service), and began flying in commercial service for American Airlines on April 27, 1947. This was also the day when United Airlines inaugurated its own DC-6 service. American had ordered 50 of the airplanes, United 35. American’s aircraft had accommodations for sleeper berths and the telltale small berth windows at the top of the fuselage. American’s config­uration was fifty passengers by day, or 24 by night using the berths.

As noted, the previous competitive edge enjoyed by TWA and its Constellations had, by September 1947, been replaced by the tripartite division of traffic across the United States that was pretty much in place prior to the war. The breakdown was as follows: American Airlines, 47 percent; TWA, 37 percent; and United Airlines, 16 percent.

A total of 175 DC-6s were built by Douglas before production ended in 1951.

Despite the success of Boeing’s prototype jet trans­port, not everyone in the airline industry was convinced that turbojets were the ultimate answer to airliner development…. Jet engines explode! Jet engines use too much fuel, and they might even catch surrounding airport structures on fire. They are unreliable and uneconomical, and will cause a fortune to be spent on lengthening runways and expanding terminal facilities. The answer is no, we’re not going to fly airliners pow­ered by jet engines!

So went the thinking in the U. S. airline industry immediately after World War II. And why not? The Jumo and BMW axial-flow turbine engines that came out of Germany after the occupation had been years ahead of their time as far as known metallurgy and materials were concerned. These engines lasted, if the fighter squadron was even lucky enough, perhaps 100 flying hours at best before they totally disintegrated.

In England and via license in the United States, centrifugal-flow jet engines seemed to be the answer to those reservations, with the possible exception of catch­ing on fire. Their ruggedness and simplicity made them more viable powerplants, and the military was anxious, if not simultaneously full of trepidation, at the thought of putting them into routine operational use.

As mentioned previously, the notion of using new turbojet engines for commercial airline applications were pipe dreams more than reality prior to 1950, although the wonderful Avro Jetliner would probably have changed all that (see Chapter 1 sidebar “Avro Jetliner: The Other First Jet,” page 17). The de Havilland Comet 1 almost did by 1952. And in 1954, at the introduction of the Dash 80 from Boeing, the tide was finally starting a slow turn in favor of pure jet airliners.

By the late-1940s, however, it was becoming apparent to airplane industry observers that postwar England had warmly embraced jet power, in all its forms. Eventually, from 1948 to 1958 no fewer than 10 different airliner designs came off the drawing boards either incorporating or anticipating the use of turbo­prop engines. Existing airplanes were also modified with turbine-propeller engines either experimentally or as operational upgrades. Why did they utilize turbo­prop technology to this extent? England was the leader in pure-jet technology, so why were they dithering with propellers (or airscrews, as they were called in that country)?

Well, the answers to these questions are many. Foremost was that jet engines at the time were just too underpowered to carry enough weight, and hence pro­vide enough payload and range for an airliner. Being underpowered also meant using long runways. (Most piston propliners of the era required as little as 2,500 feet of runway for takeoff while jets would easily require twice that.) Jet engines also took an appreciable amount of time to come up to full-power RPM from flight idle settings (known as “spool-up” time for the axial-flow designs). Pilots had to really anticipate the need for power far in advance. Unlike the piston engine, there was no instantaneous surge of thrust from the jets when one moved the throttle forward, which is never a safe situation in an airplane.

Enter the turbine-propeller combination. In a tur­boprop package, the jet engine is linked to a propeller via a reduction gearbox. The jet engine is typically spin­ning at a constant 100-percent rpm, while throttle con­trols are actually changing only the pitch of the blades, therefore allowing for the all important instantaneous thrust applications by the pilot. The added thrust of turbine efflux combined with the strong and immediate pull of the propeller makes up for the lack of thrust coming from an early pure-jet engine alone. Additionally, the air being moved over the wings from the propeller also adds an appreciable amount of self­generated lift. These obvious advantages were not lost on engineers and airline bosses alike, and it became a natural course of action for the world’s airlines, and hence their suppliers, to seriously consider turboprop powerplants.