July 31, 2019 • 41 mins
World War II led to many contracts between Boeing and the United States military. In this continuation of the Boeing story, we learn about the aircraft Boeing designed and its first jet-propelled aircraft.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios,
How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
I Heeart Radio and How Stuff Works and a love
all things tech. And in our last episode, I covered
the early history of Boeing, from its founding to the
(00:26):
early years of World War Two, when the pioneering aviation
company was making long range bombers with the designation B seventeen.
Now I didn't get to this factory, but at its
peak production in nineteen four, airplane manufacturers were producing sixteen
B seventeens in twenty four hours. Now that wasn't just
(00:49):
Boeing's factories, mind you. Though Boeing was the company that
designed the B seventeen, other manufacturers got the license to
produce that same design in order to meet the military's
need for more aircraft. Today, we're going to continue the
company's history largely through World War Two, because a lot
happened with Bowing at that point, and we're also going
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to talk about some other military aircraft as well as
the commercial aircraft that Boeing would become known for. In fact,
let's start with a passenger aircraft that Boeing was working
on while it was also ramping up production of the
B seventeens. So in the mid nineteen thirties, this is
before the United States was in World War Two, the
airline Pan American Airways better known as pan AM at
(01:34):
the time, wanted more aircraft capable of making the transatlantic
flight between Europe and North America. PanAm was one of
many companies that sprung up in the nineteen twenties to
meet the demand of carrying air mail and then evolved
into a passenger service airline. The airline already had a
few aircraft from another manufacturing company called Martin, so Bowing
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bid on this PanAm contract, and one the contract called
for the design of a flying boat, which kind of
tells you everything you need need to know about that
type of aircraft. So, unlike a seaplane, a flying boat
doesn't have pontoon landing gear, nor doesn't have wheels to
land on firm ground. Instead, the fuselage of the plane
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itself is designed to float, and the aircraft lands and
takes off from the water, so it looks like a
boat with wings. These aircraft could be quite large because
they used very large bodies of water as airports, so
there was no need to build runways or landing strips
that could be large enough to accommodate them, and that
was a real limiting factor on early airports. You would
(02:44):
go out and build an airport with a landing strip
and you know, uh, you know, some some takeoff strips
and everything was sized to the planes of the time.
But that meant as they built larger planes, they wouldn't
fit on those older airports. Well, this got around that
because the airport was essentially the ocean or very large lakes,
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and those were huge, there was no need to worry
about the size constraints. Boeing used much of the design
for their bomber prototype, the x B fifteen, to serve
as the foundation for this new commercial aircraft. This was
the same prototype that served as the starting point for
the B seventeen design. So the end result was a
(03:27):
four engine plane propeller engines, mind you, not jet engines,
and the plane was called the Model three fourteen Clipper
because the aircraft had a max speed of one eighty
eight miles per hour or three hundred and three kilometers
per hour, and it's cruising speed was closer to a
hundred fifty five miles per hour or two d nine
(03:47):
kilometers per hour. There weren't that many seats aboard the aircraft.
This allowed for a seating plan in which the seats
could be converted into beds because a light could take
twenty hours or so if you're going across the ocean,
if it's going to be a twenty hour flight, you
need to have a lot of space for people to
(04:07):
be able to recline and sleep. I mean, that's almost
a full day of flying. PanAm really pulled out all
the stops, which, now that I think about, is another
example of a tech phrase based off of a largely
obsolete type of technology. Anyway, they made service aboard these
planes a real luxury. It was high class travel, and
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so it was for a very small population of disgustingly
wealthy people. And I might be showing a bit of
envy here, but anyway, this was one example of a
civilian aircraft that Boeing would make around the same time
that was starting production on those B seventeen bombers for
the military. Now, that luxury experience wasn't always a smooth one,
(04:55):
because the Model three four teen Clipper wasn't a pressurized aircraft,
so that minute actually had to fly at lower altitudes,
which also meant it would have to fly below or
through weather disturbances, so you can encounter some pretty rough
turbulence depending upon the weather along your flight route and
all around. That same time, Boeing designed and built a
(05:17):
commercial transport aircraft that could fly much higher because it
had a pressurized cabin, it can maintain a higher air
pressure inside the aircraft than would be outside the aircraft
at altitude. This particular aircraft had the designation of Model
three oh seven, but it was better known as the
(05:37):
Strato Liner, and we're gonna get a lot of Strato
aircraft in this episode. Now. The Strato Liner was based
off of Boeing's B seventeen designed directly. It was not
based off the x B fifteen experimental aircraft like the
three fourteen Clipper. The Strato Liner was an aircraft that
(05:57):
Boeing had built for pan Am. It's are in manufacturing
and testing these airplanes in nineteen These would be the
first passenger aircraft to offer pressurized cabins, and they were
also propeller planes. The pressurization allowed the aircraft to climb
to higher altitudes without the pesky issue of subjecting passengers
to low air pressure where the air isn't thick enough
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for you to actually get a good lungful. So that
meant that you could have a pressurized cabin and the
passengers could, you know, remain conscious. The strato Liner had
a limited ability to pressurize the cabin. You couldn't actually
climb up to the stratosphere in a strato liner, but
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it was still a pretty remarkable feat of engineering. The
Strato Linner had a passenger capacity of thirty three and
it would have a crew of six on top of that.
While the initial plan was to use them for commercial
air travel both across the ocean and as coast to
coast service in the United States, World War two would
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mean that many of these aircraft would be purchased by
the United States military to be used as transport for
personnel and in the military. The strato Liner would receive
the designation of C seventy five, exact same aircraft, although
with the amenities really stripped out, it didn't need to
be quite so fancy for military use, but it got
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a new designation. I should also add that the strate
A Liner marked one of Boeing's big tragedies. On March eighteenth,
nineteen thirty nine, Boeing was demonstrating the strate A Liner
for a Dutch airline called k l M. A k
LM technical director named Albert Vaughan Baumhauer served as co
pilot on this test flight, and there was a Boeing
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test pilot who was serving as the captain. There were
eight other people on the plane as well, one of
them from t w A. Most of the rest were
either from Boeing or the Dutch air Ministry. And during
the test, the pilot lost control of the aircraft and
the aircraft went into a dive and the pilot was
unable to recover, and so the strato Liner crashed and
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all of the people aboard died in the plane crash.
After an investigation, Boeing engineers would add more components to
the flight control system of the strato Liner, mainly a
dorsal fin that would help with rudder control on the
tail and thus improved its safety that way. But this
was a very tragic way to learn that. Lesson, there's
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another strato Liner incident I should mention when that didn't
have a tragic ending, but It's interesting because this was
a relatively recent event. Now keep in mind these aircraft
originally flew in the nineteen forties. But the incident I'm
talking about happened on March two thousand two, so not
that long ago. A three oh seven Strato Liner, registered
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to the National Air and Space Museum and operated by
Boeing was to go through a pretty routine series of tests.
There were two pilots and two test engineers aboard the plane,
and it was to takeoff and land about three times.
And it was flying between two different airstrips, one in Everett,
Washington and one in Seattle, Washington that belongs specifically to Boeing.
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And meanwhile it was supposed to go through some routine
maneuvers along the way. The first flight from Seattle to
Everett went off without a hitch, but the second flight,
the return trip from Everett to Seattle, was a different story.
In fact, there are two different stories. So here's how
the official story unravels. Shortly after takeoff from Everett's pain Field,
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the number three engine, so like the three fourteen, the
strate A Liner had four propeller engines. The number three
engine experienced a surge. Then it normalized, and it was
at that point that the crew decided to scrap all
the maneuvering test plans that they had in store and
instead just fly straight to the Seattle landing Strip and
land at Boeing Field. On approach to Boeing Field, a
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light in the cockpit indicated a problem with the landing
gear on the left side of the plane, so they
aborted the initial landing because clearly there was something going
on with the landing gear, and they went into an
orbit pattern around Bowing Field. The captain manually hand cranked
the landing gear so it was down into place until
(10:19):
the indicator light lit up green, letting you know the
landing gear was fully extended. But that wasn't the end
of their problems. While the landing gear was now down,
before the crew could go into an approach course for landing,
that third engine indicated a loss and fuel pressure and
then failed completely. The other three engines also began to
(10:39):
indicate lower fuel pressure, and the captain feathered the engines.
The captain determined that the aircraft didn't have sufficient fuel
pressure to make it back to Bowing Field, and so
he chose to make an emergency water landing. In Elliott Bay.
The crew got the aircraft down into the water where
the airplane remained afloat, and all of the crew were
able to evacuate wait the strato Liner and they were
(11:01):
whisked off to safety. The plane was later retrieved from
the bay. It had to be crane lifted out of it.
But here's the other story. Now, First of all, I
have to say this other story sites unnamed sources, so
we have to take this with an enormous grain of
salt because it could be totally untrue. But this story
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states that the Boeing pilots were actually funding this test
flight out of pocket, that they were essentially doing this
because they both really wanted to fly a strato Liner.
I mean, this was a classic propeller plane, and they
had actually planned on doing some circuits, meaning they were
going to fly around and have fun in this giant aircraft.
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And that's kind of understandable. I mean, it is a
historic aircraft, and they were paying for it themselves, so
you can think, all right, well, it might seem a little,
you know, silly, but it also seems reasonable. Mean if
they're paying for everything, except obviously things didn't turn out okay,
So According to this version of the story, the pilots
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only paid for about three gallons of fuel when they
were at Boeing for the beginning of their trip, and
their initial plan was they would fly the aircraft to
pain Field and they would do a little few circuits,
but then they would land at pain Field and refuel
at pain Field because at pain Field the gas was
slightly cheaper, or really the airplane fuel was slightly cheaper,
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and they could use that fuel for the rest of
their flight shenanigans. But apparently at some point along the
way here, having all this fun, the pilots forgot about this.
Maybe they were enjoying flying the strate A liner too
much and they failed to refuel the plane sufficiently. So
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they took off from pain Field for trip number two,
and they had not properly refueled, and they started flying
circuits again, taking the plane out on the joy ride,
and engine three sputtered and died because there wasn't enough
fuel in the system. They feathered the engine and they
decided they needed to land the aircraft, and that's when
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they found out that the landing gear couldn't lower. And
why couldn't the landing gear lower? Well, the power for
the landing gear would normally be provided by engine three,
but they had feathered engine three. Effectively, they had shut
down the engine, so the engine could not provide the
power to lower the landing gear, which meant they had
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to lower it manually. And then they decided they would
go back to Bowing Field rather than land back at Pain.
Remember Pain is where they took off, but they decided
rather than returned to that that landing strip, which might
have actually been closer before they started doing all their
circuits and stuff, they decided to keep on going towards
Bowing And making matters more confusing is that the Strato
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Liner maintenance facility was at Hayne. So why fly back
to Boeing Field. Well, again, according to this unnamed source
in this story, it's because the crew wanted to go
back to Boeing Field because that's where they parked their cars,
so the inconvenient if they landed in Pain to get
everything maintained and fixed. Now, if this version of the
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story is true, the failure was on the part of
the flight crew, not the aircraft. Now, again, I have
no clue if the details of that story are true,
but it was pretty big news in Seattle in two
thousand two that Boeing had to ditch a Strato liner
in that bay. So Boeing was making civilian aircraft for
airlines and bombers for the US military leading up to
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the United States entering World War Two, which happened in December.
In nine, a former Boeing leader came back to see
the company through the massive wartime production operations, and that
was Philip G. Johnson, who had worked for Boeing since
nineteen seventeen, and he rose to the level of president
of United Aircraft and Transport Company. That was the holding
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company of Boeing's various businesses. But then the government, the
US government forced that company to break apart, so he
left Bowing in ninety three and then established trans Canada Airlines. However,
he returned to Boeing to serve as the president. He
was responsible for the company's performance during wartime. And when
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we come back, I'll talk about the B twenty nine
super Fortress and how Boeing switched into full on military mode.
But first let's take a quick break. It's hard to
stress exactly how much the bombing of Pearl Harbor affected
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the United States. Not only did it mean the US
would officially declare war and into World War Two. It
was also a terrifying example of how aircraft could pose
as a serious threat. One of the actions Boeing took
was to disguise its manufacturing facilities so that when viewed
from the air, the facilities looked like a nondescript community.
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They built makeshift houses of stuff like burlap, and they
put those on the rooftops of their buildings so that
it looked like it was just a little poor community
instead of buildings that were housing aircraft manufacturing facilities. But
inside those buildings Boeing was ramping up production on the
B seventeen bomber, and in their manufacturing facilities in Renton,
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Washington and Wichita, Kansas, the company prepared to make another
long range bomber, the B twenty nine super Fortress. The
military had determined that Boeing's B seventeen would be suitable
for use in the European theater during World War two,
but that a different aircraft would be required for the
Pacific theater. There was a need for aircraft that could
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carry a heavier bomb payload many thousands of miles, so
Boeing was and of several companies to submit a proposal,
and along with manufacturing companies Martin, Douglas, and Lockheed, Boeing
was invited to build a prototype of its design for
military consideration. Lockeed and Douglas would both cancel their projects
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before they actually got to the prototype stage. They ultimately
determined that it wasn't a profitable approach for them. The
Army Air Corps, which would officially become the US Army
Air Forces in would choose Boeing's design as their primary bomber,
and then Martin's design. The B thirty two served as
a backup. Boeing delivered some prototypes and before long entered
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into full production mode. The need was greater than what
Boeing could accomplish on its own in its own facilities,
and so a Bell Aircraft manufacturing plant and a Martin
facility also would end up producing some B twenty nine aircraft. Also,
this was the age of Rosie the riveter. That's the
iconic image of a one and dressed for manufacturing work.
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She's flexing her muscles looking really powerful. Well, that wasn't
just an example of propaganda. The workforces in these facilities
were largely made up of women because the male working
force was largely off at war, so most of these
aircraft were primarily put together by women. The B twenty
nine relied on an eleven person crew that included the pilot,
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the co pilot, You had several gunners, You had the bombardier,
you had the navigator. There are a couple of others
as well. The B twenty nine was heavier than the
B seventeen, weighed in at seventy four thousand, five hundred
pounds when empty or thirty three thousand seven ms, and
it was also longer than the B seventeen and also
had a wider wingspan than the B seventeen. The aircraft
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would be used extensively in the Pacific, and it had
pressurized sections so that the crew could move through them
even when the plane was flying at high altitudes. One
ex option of this was for the poor guy who
served as the tail gunner. So the tail gunner position
itself was pressurized. I mean that only makes sense. You
need to have a conscious gunner in that position. But
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the area immediately around the tailgunner position, which was you know,
sealed off from the rest of the aircraft, that area
wasn't pressurized, so if you were the tailgunner, you would
get into the tail gunner position before the aircraft had
climbed into that higher altitude. You'd seal yourself in your position,
would be pressurized, and then you'd be stuck there until
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the aircraft had descended to a low enough altitude where
you could get out without having the problems of low
air pressure. So that must have been pretty confining. Four
of the machine gun turrets on the B twenty nine
were capable of operation via remote control, which was a
real innovation at the time, and then that two crew
members could control the four turrets, and like the B seventeen,
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most of the guns aboard the B twenty nine were
fifty caliber machine guns. It was a B twenty nine
super fortress called the and Nola Gay that would carry
the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. Another B
twenty nine called box Car, dropped the one on Nagasaki.
These two attacks would be the first and the last
nuclear attacks in history so far, hopefully they represent the
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last one ever. The B twenty nine project would actually
be the most expensive military project in World War Two.
It was, in fact more expensive than the Manhattan Project
that was the project that was responsible for developing and
building the atomic bombs, but the B twenty nine cost
more money. During World War Two, Boeing also lost its
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company president, Philip G. Johnson, whom I mentioned just before
the break. He died from a massive stroke as he
was overseeing operations in the Wichita, Kansas manufacturing facility. In nine.
Claremont Claire ex Vette, whose name I continue to butcher,
but he had served as president of Boeing from nineteen
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thirty three to nineteen thirty nine, would actually step back
into the position for the remainder of World War Two
as a sort of an interim president, and then he
would hand the company over to William M. Allen in nine.
Boeing made a couple of other military aircraft during World
War Two besides the famous B seventeen and B twenty
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nine bombers. You may have heard about the B fifty
super Fortress, and to be fair, the B fifty was
really a redesignation of what was originally called a B
twenty nine D, so it was part of the B
twenty nine super Fortress family, but then got rebranded, if
you will, into a B fifty. Boeing also made a
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long range cargo military aircraft called the Strato Freighter, and
it also made a fighter plane, the XF eight B.
This was a single engine propeller plane intended for the U. S.
Navy as not just a fighter, but also like a
torpedo bomber. Boeing produced a prototype in NT four, but
World War Two was over before the company was scheduled
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to enter into full production mode, so the project was
scrapped with only three aircraft, all prototypes ever built. Boeing
would also take the design of the C nine Strato
Freighter and then refit it to serve as a commercial
passenger aircraft. The new design needed a new name, which
would become the Boeing three seventy seven Strato Cruiser. Boeing's
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customer was once again pan Am. This aircraft was a
bit more posh than the military variant, as you might imagine.
There were different passenger configurations for the Strato Cruiser, but
generally it could hold between sixty three and eighty four
passengers with a crew of four. The main cabin had
a staircase that led down to a lower deck, and
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the lower deck actually served as a drinks lounge. Very
very you know that kind of swinging. You know, I
feel like I should remind you guys that these aircraft
were all propeller airplanes. These are not jet engine aircraft.
Yet we're not quite there, So this was considered, you know,
very swanky kind of travel arrangements back when, you know,
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traveling on an airplane was a big deal and usually
only the world to do could afford to ever set
foot on them. While I'm on the Strato Cruiser, I
should talk about the aircraft's safety record, because it's pretty dismal.
Right now, the seven thirty seven Max aircraft from Boeing
is in the news due to some truly horrible accidents
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that have happened with it. But that's not the first
aircraft from Boeing to have problems that lead to tragedy. Now,
it seems like the main fault for the Strato Cruiser
lay in the choice of propellers. At the time of
its construction, Bowing had essentially two choices for propellers for
the Strato Cruiser. One was made by Curtis Electric and
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the other was made by Hamilton's Standard. The Curtis Electric
propeller blades were heavier and more complex from an electro
mechanical perspective and probably more expensive to the Hamilton's standard
propeller blades would rely on a hydraulic system, so mechanically
they were simpler, and they were also four hundred pounds
lighter than the Curtis electric propeller blades, so Boeing went
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with the Hamilton's standard ones. They were lighter and they
were less complicated. Unfortunately, the Strato cruisers operations sometimes placed
more force on those propellers and their engines than they
were rated to withstand, and that would lead to the
propellers becoming unbalanced, which would then cause powerful vibrations that
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could damage the engines, sometimes ripping them clear off the aircraft,
as appeared to be the case on April nine, that's
when a Strato Cruiser en route to New York from
Rio de Janeiro crashed in the Brazilian jungle. All fifty
people aboard that plane died in the crash. This was
the worst of the tragedies involving the Strato Cruiser, but
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sadly it was not the only one. There were others
as well. There were enough incidents to lead the f
a A to issue an airworthiness directive about the Hamilton's
standard propeller blades, and while several accidents were traced to
problems with propellers and ultimately with a sealant that was
used to hold these hollow propellers together, other accidents had
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other causes, and there wasn't the only cause of accidents
aboard Strato cruisers. One involved a cabin door being improperly sealed,
and upon climbing to cruising altitude and achieving its pressurized status,
that door ultimately failed and the cabin suffered explosive decompression,
and it resulted in one passenger dying. Truly awful awful events.
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Between nineteen forty seven to nineteen fifty, Boeing would manufacture
fifty six Strato cruisers, and during the time of their operation,
a total of one thirty nine people died in accidents
involving Strato cruisers, the last of which took place in
nineteen seventy with a converted Strato cruiser that was meant
to carry heavy aircraft parts. Now I got a backtrack
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just a bit, because we were in the nineteen forties
and then I just went down the Strato cruiser line.
But in ninety six Boeing signed a contract to develop
what was called the ground to air pilotless Aircraft. And
from that name it sounds like it could be a
remote controlled drone, but that's not it. That was actually
the name for a two stage missile designed to fly
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faster than the speed of sound, the first missile Boeing
ever designed. It was an anti aircraft missile meant to
intercept aircraft that could fly up to seven hundred miles
per hour or one thousand, one hundred twenty six kilometers
per hour and up to altitudes of eight thousand feet
or two thousand, four hundred thirty eight meters. The GAPPA,
as it was called g A p A, never saw
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active use in defense, but did serve as the basis
for future missiles designed by Boeing. Also in nineteen six,
Boeing agreed to supply two prototype aircraft designated XB forty
seven to the Army Air Forces. This was a long
range bomber design with six turbo jet engines, so jet engines,
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not propeller engines. It also had a swept wing design,
which means the wings weren't at a straight ninety degree
angle out from the body of the aircraft. The wings
of the XB forty seven were angled back with respect
to the aircraft's cockpits, so that's how most swept wing
aircraft are. There are a few that actually have wings
that are angled forward rather than backward. During World War Two,
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the German military had settled on swept wing designs for
high speed aircraft. They found that they were more stable
than could withstand the forces better than straight winged aircraft,
so after the war those designs would find their ways
into aircraft plans in the former Allied nations to clear
the United States, and wind tunnel tests confirmed that the
design was far more stable for high speed aircraft than
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the straight winged version, so that was the design for
the XP forty seven. The engines of the XP forty seven,
the nickname of which was the strato jet, we're in
what we're called pods or nacells. These were suspended under
the wings of the jet, and like I said, there
were six engines. So on each wing you had two
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engines that were side by side in a single nay
cell that was closest to the body of the aircraft,
and then the third engine for that side was suspended
toward the end of the wing. So it's a pretty
funky looking bomber, And if you listen to my episode
about jet engines, you'll remember that they're a little challenging
to get going when you're on the ground. Once you're
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traveling at an appropriate speed through the air, the air
rushing through the jet engines is sufficient for it to
maintain operation. But at rest that doesn't work. So these
XB forty seven jets had to have a little help
when they needed to take off, and that help came
in the form of eighteen rocket units in the fuselage,
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So those rockets would ignite for takeoff, and the XB
forty seven would have what was called a jet assisted
takeoff or jt J a t O. And the XB
forty seven would also have to deploy a drag parachute
to slow its speed when it was coming in for
a landing. The XB forty seven became the model for
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the B forty seven bomber. That bomber only needed armament
in the rear of the plane because it moved so
fast that no fighter aircraft of the time could attack
it from any angle but from behind. So the B
forty seven would become the backbone of the new United
States Air Force Strategic Air Command, which operated the bombers
(29:52):
from nineteen fifty one to nineteen sixty. Now I'm gonna
take another quick break, but when we come back, we'll
talk about a few more aircraft that emerged in the
years following World War Two, as well as Boeing's attempt
to get into commercial jet airliners. Okay, so I mentioned
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the XB forty seven agreement happened in nineteen forty six.
That same year, Boeing also landed a contract to design
the B fifty two long range bomber. The B forty
seven would have six engines. The B fifty two had eight,
with engines paired up in nace cells. But that's not
how the design first began. The original plan for the
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B fifty two was for it to be a six
engine propeller bomber with a straight wing design. Those plans
were obliterated in nineteen forty eight when a military officials said,
now we want a jet powered bomber. So the design
team that had been working on the B fifty two
for two years pulled a crazy weekend shift to come
(31:02):
up with an all new jet powered design with a
swept wing approach. The Air Force ordered thirteen B fifty
two S, and Boeing built three that were designated B
fifty two A, but then converted production toward a new
model called the B fifty two B. It followed the
same design but had larger engines and could carry more weight.
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Between nineteen fifty two and nineteen sixty two, Boeing would
produce seven hundred forty four B fifty two's later versions
were more powerful and could fly further. The B fifty
two H, first flown in nineteen sixty one, is an
aircraft that, believe it or not, is still in service
with the US military today, and it's expected to remain
(31:46):
in service into the twenty fifties. That's a phenomenal aircraft.
On the B fifty two also had a nickname. It
was the Stratoh Fortress. Of course it was Bowing wasn't
done with propeller aircraft either. It also built the L
fifteen Scout, which was a short takeoff and landing aircraft
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with a single engine propeller engine. The company only made
a dozen of them, which ultimately found their way into
use in the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. Now,
as we've seen in this episode, for many years, Boeing
was relying heavily on military contracts for revenue. The conclusion
of World War Two meant that those contracts were becoming
(32:29):
less frequent. The company was eager to diversify and to
find other means of generating revenue, and so we come
to one of the more odd elements of Boeing's history,
the introduction of a gas turbine engine for a truck.
In nineteen fifty, so, in other words, a jet powered
truck sort of. Boeing was partnered with another Seattle based company,
(32:54):
the truck company Kenworth. The truck company had helped with
Boeing's manufacturing runs early or during the war, and so
Boeing outfitted a Kinworth truck with a one horsepower gas
turbine engine. The gas turbine seemed to have some pretty
clear advantages, at least on paper. It weighed a fraction
(33:15):
of the traditional diesel engines that were used in large trucks.
It could also accept lots of different kitents of fuel,
including gasoline, diesel, and even kerosene. The engine was also smaller.
It took up just thirteen percent of the same physical
space as a diesel engine, But when it came to performance,
the gas turbine engine just couldn't match the traditional diesel engines.
(33:40):
The truck went on a test run, actually several test
runs between Seattle and Los Angeles, and according to some reports,
these trips were taking several hours longer than a run
in a normal diesel truck. The performance was just lacking.
The trucks couldn't accelerate really well, they were putting way
too much exhaust out, and there was also a little
(34:02):
issue with fuel economy. Uh it was down to a
dismal one mile per gallon of fuel. Yikes. Boeing would
continue to work on gas turbine engines for land vehicles
and eventually landed a contract with a company called American
La France, which put them into fire trucks. And the
stories behind those were also pretty interesting, since it sounded
(34:23):
like the cruise using those trucks had to find creative
workarounds to compensate for the shortcomings of the engines. But
they also said that they were really fun to operate,
so I guess that's the tradeoff. Also in nineteen fifty,
Boeing submitted a proposal for the Baumark missile. This was
a design that incorporated stuff that Boeing engineers had learned
while making those GAPPA missiles back in nineteen six. The
(34:46):
Bomark was the first long range anti aircraft missile in
the world, and unlike GAPPA, this would be a missile
that Boeing would actually mass produce. While World War Two
was long over, the Cold War was really ram being up,
and the U. S Military had deep concerns about the
then Soviet Union's military capabilities, including the development of long
(35:08):
range bombers that could potentially fly over the United States.
The Bomark was meant to be a defense against those
types of aircraft. The anti aircraft missile was a young
enough technology that the Air Force didn't have a good
way to designate it, so originally, the Bomark was referred
to as an x F N nine, and the F
(35:30):
and x F stood for fighter, as in Bomark was
considered a pilotless aircraft, and fighters seemed to be the
closest thing they could use to describe it now. Eventually,
the Air Force would change its designation system and they
renamed it the I M, with i AM standing for
Interception Missile. Boeing would test the prototype of the Bomark
(35:53):
in nineteen fifty two and went into full production in
nineteen fifty five. The missile had some rawbacks. The biggest
one was that the earlier version of the missile relied
on liquid rocket fuel, and that liquid rocket fuel was
highly corrosive. Because of that, you couldn't pre fuel a
missile before you had to use it. The fuel would
(36:15):
actually corrode the interior of the fuel tank for that missile,
making it unreliable or worse. So you had to hold
off on fueling the things until it was time to
use them. And the fueling process took about two minutes,
and as you might imagine, every minute counts when you're
potentially defending against an incoming aerial attack. So Boeing later
(36:36):
addressed this problem by making a switch and they changed
out the liquid rocket fuel motors with a solid fuel
rocket booster that lowered the response time for the so
called super Bowmark missile to less than thirty seconds. The
company would produce five hundred seventy bo Mark missiles, which
became part of a network called the Semi Automatic Ground
(36:59):
Environment or SAGE. They were kept inside launch shelters and
remote locations. You've probably seen stock footage of these things,
where these these big hatches would open up and missiles
would come out. It's that kind of stuff. But these
weapons were mes defense measure against bombers aircraft flying overhead.
(37:20):
As the focus would shift to intercontinental ballistic missiles, the
usefulness of these older Beaumark missiles was determined to be
somewhat limited, and the military chose to decommissioned them in
nineteen seventy two. Now I'm gonna end this episode with
a project that Boeing started in nineteen fifty two. It
was known as the three sixty seven eighty, also called
(37:43):
the Dash eight. Boeing gave the project name the three
seven eighty to disguise its real purpose because the name
seemed to indicate that it was going to be a
variant of the C nineties seven Strado freighter. But this
was actually a project to explore the possibility of producing
jet propelled commercial aviation aircraft. So one of the words
(38:03):
passenger jets, and this wasn't a new idea. Bowing didn't
invent this. In fact, the Boeing president of the time,
Bill Allen, had been part of a group of Boeing
executives that went to see a jet powered airliner called
the Haviland Comment it flew in an air show in
the UK. The Comment made its first test flight in
(38:24):
nineteen forty nine, and it entered into commercial service in
nineteen fifty two. The same year Boeing committed to exploring
the possibility of getting into that same business in the
United States. The dash A D took about two years
from the launch of the project to the production of
the first aircraft, and that first model three eighty, debuted
(38:45):
on May fourteenth, nineteen fifty four. William Bowing himself, who
was seventy two years old at that point, attended the event.
The project had cost sixteen million dollars to fund. That
represented about two thirds of Boeing's profits since World War Two,
so this was a significant undertaking. The dash A D
(39:08):
served as the basis for a new line of aircraft
technically two lines of aircraft. Boeing even started to gear
up to go into full production, even though it had
not yet received a single order, either from the military
or from an airline like pan Am. But the demonstration
turned heads and before long the Air Force ordered a
(39:29):
military version of the dash A D. This one would
be called the k C one thirty five jet tanker
the commercial side was a tougher cell. Bowing was up
against its competitor Douglas. With much wheeling and dealing, Bowing
sales reps were able to land a contract with pam
AM to deliver twenty commercial versions of the Dash A
(39:51):
D which would be known as the seven O seven.
At the same time, PanAm had also put in an
order for twenty five d C eight from Douglas, so
Boeing's long term success in commercial jets was not yet assured.
In our next episode, I'm going to continue looking at
Boeing's history and commercial jets, as well as explore some
(40:12):
of the technology behind the recent tragedies with the seven
thirty seven Max, and we'll talk more about the different
layouts and configurations of these aircraft. And uh, hopefully you
guys are finding this interesting. I'm finding it fascinating. I've
always heard bits and pieces about Boeing, but this is
the first time I've taken a deep dive into their
history and the various aircraft and technologies they've been uh
(40:36):
instrumental in developing, And to me, it's pretty interesting stuff.
If you guys have suggestions for future topics of tech stuff,
send me a message. You can email me at tech
Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or dropped by
our website that's tech stuff podcast dot com. You'll find
an archive of all of our past episodes, as well
as links to where we are on social media, and
(40:58):
you also find a link to our online story or
where every purchase you make goes to help the show
and we greatly appreciate it, and I'll talk to you
again really soon. Text Stuff is a production of I
Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from I
heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
(41:19):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios,
How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
I Heeart Radio and How Stuff Works and a love
all things tech. And in our last episode, I covered
the early history of Boeing, from its founding to the
(00:26):
early years of World War Two, when the pioneering aviation
company was making long range bombers with the designation B seventeen.
Now I didn't get to this factory, but at its
peak production in nineteen four, airplane manufacturers were producing sixteen
B seventeens in twenty four hours. Now that wasn't just
(00:49):
Boeing's factories, mind you. Though Boeing was the company that
designed the B seventeen, other manufacturers got the license to
produce that same design in order to meet the military's
need for more aircraft. Today, we're going to continue the
company's history largely through World War Two, because a lot
happened with Bowing at that point, and we're also going
(01:09):
to talk about some other military aircraft as well as
the commercial aircraft that Boeing would become known for. In fact,
let's start with a passenger aircraft that Boeing was working
on while it was also ramping up production of the
B seventeens. So in the mid nineteen thirties, this is
before the United States was in World War Two, the
airline Pan American Airways better known as pan AM at
(01:34):
the time, wanted more aircraft capable of making the transatlantic
flight between Europe and North America. PanAm was one of
many companies that sprung up in the nineteen twenties to
meet the demand of carrying air mail and then evolved
into a passenger service airline. The airline already had a
few aircraft from another manufacturing company called Martin, so Bowing
(01:58):
bid on this PanAm contract, and one the contract called
for the design of a flying boat, which kind of
tells you everything you need need to know about that
type of aircraft. So, unlike a seaplane, a flying boat
doesn't have pontoon landing gear, nor doesn't have wheels to
land on firm ground. Instead, the fuselage of the plane
(02:21):
itself is designed to float, and the aircraft lands and
takes off from the water, so it looks like a
boat with wings. These aircraft could be quite large because
they used very large bodies of water as airports, so
there was no need to build runways or landing strips
that could be large enough to accommodate them, and that
was a real limiting factor on early airports. You would
(02:44):
go out and build an airport with a landing strip
and you know, uh, you know, some some takeoff strips
and everything was sized to the planes of the time.
But that meant as they built larger planes, they wouldn't
fit on those older airports. Well, this got around that
because the airport was essentially the ocean or very large lakes,
(03:05):
and those were huge, there was no need to worry
about the size constraints. Boeing used much of the design
for their bomber prototype, the x B fifteen, to serve
as the foundation for this new commercial aircraft. This was
the same prototype that served as the starting point for
the B seventeen design. So the end result was a
(03:27):
four engine plane propeller engines, mind you, not jet engines,
and the plane was called the Model three fourteen Clipper
because the aircraft had a max speed of one eighty
eight miles per hour or three hundred and three kilometers
per hour, and it's cruising speed was closer to a
hundred fifty five miles per hour or two d nine
(03:47):
kilometers per hour. There weren't that many seats aboard the aircraft.
This allowed for a seating plan in which the seats
could be converted into beds because a light could take
twenty hours or so if you're going across the ocean,
if it's going to be a twenty hour flight, you
need to have a lot of space for people to
(04:07):
be able to recline and sleep. I mean, that's almost
a full day of flying. PanAm really pulled out all
the stops, which, now that I think about, is another
example of a tech phrase based off of a largely
obsolete type of technology. Anyway, they made service aboard these
planes a real luxury. It was high class travel, and
(04:31):
so it was for a very small population of disgustingly
wealthy people. And I might be showing a bit of
envy here, but anyway, this was one example of a
civilian aircraft that Boeing would make around the same time
that was starting production on those B seventeen bombers for
the military. Now, that luxury experience wasn't always a smooth one,
(04:55):
because the Model three four teen Clipper wasn't a pressurized aircraft,
so that minute actually had to fly at lower altitudes,
which also meant it would have to fly below or
through weather disturbances, so you can encounter some pretty rough
turbulence depending upon the weather along your flight route and
all around. That same time, Boeing designed and built a
(05:17):
commercial transport aircraft that could fly much higher because it
had a pressurized cabin, it can maintain a higher air
pressure inside the aircraft than would be outside the aircraft
at altitude. This particular aircraft had the designation of Model
three oh seven, but it was better known as the
(05:37):
Strato Liner, and we're gonna get a lot of Strato
aircraft in this episode. Now. The Strato Liner was based
off of Boeing's B seventeen designed directly. It was not
based off the x B fifteen experimental aircraft like the
three fourteen Clipper. The Strato Liner was an aircraft that
(05:57):
Boeing had built for pan Am. It's are in manufacturing
and testing these airplanes in nineteen These would be the
first passenger aircraft to offer pressurized cabins, and they were
also propeller planes. The pressurization allowed the aircraft to climb
to higher altitudes without the pesky issue of subjecting passengers
to low air pressure where the air isn't thick enough
(06:20):
for you to actually get a good lungful. So that
meant that you could have a pressurized cabin and the
passengers could, you know, remain conscious. The strato Liner had
a limited ability to pressurize the cabin. You couldn't actually
climb up to the stratosphere in a strato liner, but
(06:40):
it was still a pretty remarkable feat of engineering. The
Strato Linner had a passenger capacity of thirty three and
it would have a crew of six on top of that.
While the initial plan was to use them for commercial
air travel both across the ocean and as coast to
coast service in the United States, World War two would
(07:00):
mean that many of these aircraft would be purchased by
the United States military to be used as transport for
personnel and in the military. The strato Liner would receive
the designation of C seventy five, exact same aircraft, although
with the amenities really stripped out, it didn't need to
be quite so fancy for military use, but it got
(07:21):
a new designation. I should also add that the strate
A Liner marked one of Boeing's big tragedies. On March eighteenth,
nineteen thirty nine, Boeing was demonstrating the strate A Liner
for a Dutch airline called k l M. A k
LM technical director named Albert Vaughan Baumhauer served as co
pilot on this test flight, and there was a Boeing
(07:43):
test pilot who was serving as the captain. There were
eight other people on the plane as well, one of
them from t w A. Most of the rest were
either from Boeing or the Dutch air Ministry. And during
the test, the pilot lost control of the aircraft and
the aircraft went into a dive and the pilot was
unable to recover, and so the strato Liner crashed and
(08:04):
all of the people aboard died in the plane crash.
After an investigation, Boeing engineers would add more components to
the flight control system of the strato Liner, mainly a
dorsal fin that would help with rudder control on the
tail and thus improved its safety that way. But this
was a very tragic way to learn that. Lesson, there's
(08:24):
another strato Liner incident I should mention when that didn't
have a tragic ending, but It's interesting because this was
a relatively recent event. Now keep in mind these aircraft
originally flew in the nineteen forties. But the incident I'm
talking about happened on March two thousand two, so not
that long ago. A three oh seven Strato Liner, registered
(08:47):
to the National Air and Space Museum and operated by
Boeing was to go through a pretty routine series of tests.
There were two pilots and two test engineers aboard the plane,
and it was to takeoff and land about three times.
And it was flying between two different airstrips, one in Everett,
Washington and one in Seattle, Washington that belongs specifically to Boeing.
(09:11):
And meanwhile it was supposed to go through some routine
maneuvers along the way. The first flight from Seattle to
Everett went off without a hitch, but the second flight,
the return trip from Everett to Seattle, was a different story.
In fact, there are two different stories. So here's how
the official story unravels. Shortly after takeoff from Everett's pain Field,
(09:35):
the number three engine, so like the three fourteen, the
strate A Liner had four propeller engines. The number three
engine experienced a surge. Then it normalized, and it was
at that point that the crew decided to scrap all
the maneuvering test plans that they had in store and
instead just fly straight to the Seattle landing Strip and
land at Boeing Field. On approach to Boeing Field, a
(09:59):
light in the cockpit indicated a problem with the landing
gear on the left side of the plane, so they
aborted the initial landing because clearly there was something going
on with the landing gear, and they went into an
orbit pattern around Bowing Field. The captain manually hand cranked
the landing gear so it was down into place until
(10:19):
the indicator light lit up green, letting you know the
landing gear was fully extended. But that wasn't the end
of their problems. While the landing gear was now down,
before the crew could go into an approach course for landing,
that third engine indicated a loss and fuel pressure and
then failed completely. The other three engines also began to
(10:39):
indicate lower fuel pressure, and the captain feathered the engines.
The captain determined that the aircraft didn't have sufficient fuel
pressure to make it back to Bowing Field, and so
he chose to make an emergency water landing. In Elliott Bay.
The crew got the aircraft down into the water where
the airplane remained afloat, and all of the crew were
able to evacuate wait the strato Liner and they were
(11:01):
whisked off to safety. The plane was later retrieved from
the bay. It had to be crane lifted out of it.
But here's the other story. Now, First of all, I
have to say this other story sites unnamed sources, so
we have to take this with an enormous grain of
salt because it could be totally untrue. But this story
(11:23):
states that the Boeing pilots were actually funding this test
flight out of pocket, that they were essentially doing this
because they both really wanted to fly a strato Liner.
I mean, this was a classic propeller plane, and they
had actually planned on doing some circuits, meaning they were
going to fly around and have fun in this giant aircraft.
(11:46):
And that's kind of understandable. I mean, it is a
historic aircraft, and they were paying for it themselves, so
you can think, all right, well, it might seem a little,
you know, silly, but it also seems reasonable. Mean if
they're paying for everything, except obviously things didn't turn out okay,
So According to this version of the story, the pilots
(12:07):
only paid for about three gallons of fuel when they
were at Boeing for the beginning of their trip, and
their initial plan was they would fly the aircraft to
pain Field and they would do a little few circuits,
but then they would land at pain Field and refuel
at pain Field because at pain Field the gas was
slightly cheaper, or really the airplane fuel was slightly cheaper,
(12:31):
and they could use that fuel for the rest of
their flight shenanigans. But apparently at some point along the
way here, having all this fun, the pilots forgot about this.
Maybe they were enjoying flying the strate A liner too
much and they failed to refuel the plane sufficiently. So
(12:51):
they took off from pain Field for trip number two,
and they had not properly refueled, and they started flying
circuits again, taking the plane out on the joy ride,
and engine three sputtered and died because there wasn't enough
fuel in the system. They feathered the engine and they
decided they needed to land the aircraft, and that's when
(13:12):
they found out that the landing gear couldn't lower. And
why couldn't the landing gear lower? Well, the power for
the landing gear would normally be provided by engine three,
but they had feathered engine three. Effectively, they had shut
down the engine, so the engine could not provide the
power to lower the landing gear, which meant they had
(13:33):
to lower it manually. And then they decided they would
go back to Bowing Field rather than land back at Pain.
Remember Pain is where they took off, but they decided
rather than returned to that that landing strip, which might
have actually been closer before they started doing all their
circuits and stuff, they decided to keep on going towards
Bowing And making matters more confusing is that the Strato
(13:58):
Liner maintenance facility was at Hayne. So why fly back
to Boeing Field. Well, again, according to this unnamed source
in this story, it's because the crew wanted to go
back to Boeing Field because that's where they parked their cars,
so the inconvenient if they landed in Pain to get
everything maintained and fixed. Now, if this version of the
(14:18):
story is true, the failure was on the part of
the flight crew, not the aircraft. Now, again, I have
no clue if the details of that story are true,
but it was pretty big news in Seattle in two
thousand two that Boeing had to ditch a Strato liner
in that bay. So Boeing was making civilian aircraft for
airlines and bombers for the US military leading up to
(14:42):
the United States entering World War Two, which happened in December.
In nine, a former Boeing leader came back to see
the company through the massive wartime production operations, and that
was Philip G. Johnson, who had worked for Boeing since
nineteen seventeen, and he rose to the level of president
of United Aircraft and Transport Company. That was the holding
(15:06):
company of Boeing's various businesses. But then the government, the
US government forced that company to break apart, so he
left Bowing in ninety three and then established trans Canada Airlines. However,
he returned to Boeing to serve as the president. He
was responsible for the company's performance during wartime. And when
(15:26):
we come back, I'll talk about the B twenty nine
super Fortress and how Boeing switched into full on military mode.
But first let's take a quick break. It's hard to
stress exactly how much the bombing of Pearl Harbor affected
(15:48):
the United States. Not only did it mean the US
would officially declare war and into World War Two. It
was also a terrifying example of how aircraft could pose
as a serious threat. One of the actions Boeing took
was to disguise its manufacturing facilities so that when viewed
from the air, the facilities looked like a nondescript community.
(16:09):
They built makeshift houses of stuff like burlap, and they
put those on the rooftops of their buildings so that
it looked like it was just a little poor community
instead of buildings that were housing aircraft manufacturing facilities. But
inside those buildings Boeing was ramping up production on the
B seventeen bomber, and in their manufacturing facilities in Renton,
(16:32):
Washington and Wichita, Kansas, the company prepared to make another
long range bomber, the B twenty nine super Fortress. The
military had determined that Boeing's B seventeen would be suitable
for use in the European theater during World War two,
but that a different aircraft would be required for the
Pacific theater. There was a need for aircraft that could
(16:53):
carry a heavier bomb payload many thousands of miles, so
Boeing was and of several companies to submit a proposal,
and along with manufacturing companies Martin, Douglas, and Lockheed, Boeing
was invited to build a prototype of its design for
military consideration. Lockeed and Douglas would both cancel their projects
(17:16):
before they actually got to the prototype stage. They ultimately
determined that it wasn't a profitable approach for them. The
Army Air Corps, which would officially become the US Army
Air Forces in would choose Boeing's design as their primary bomber,
and then Martin's design. The B thirty two served as
a backup. Boeing delivered some prototypes and before long entered
(17:40):
into full production mode. The need was greater than what
Boeing could accomplish on its own in its own facilities,
and so a Bell Aircraft manufacturing plant and a Martin
facility also would end up producing some B twenty nine aircraft. Also,
this was the age of Rosie the riveter. That's the
iconic image of a one and dressed for manufacturing work.
(18:02):
She's flexing her muscles looking really powerful. Well, that wasn't
just an example of propaganda. The workforces in these facilities
were largely made up of women because the male working
force was largely off at war, so most of these
aircraft were primarily put together by women. The B twenty
nine relied on an eleven person crew that included the pilot,
(18:26):
the co pilot, You had several gunners, You had the bombardier,
you had the navigator. There are a couple of others
as well. The B twenty nine was heavier than the
B seventeen, weighed in at seventy four thousand, five hundred
pounds when empty or thirty three thousand seven ms, and
it was also longer than the B seventeen and also
had a wider wingspan than the B seventeen. The aircraft
(18:49):
would be used extensively in the Pacific, and it had
pressurized sections so that the crew could move through them
even when the plane was flying at high altitudes. One
ex option of this was for the poor guy who
served as the tail gunner. So the tail gunner position
itself was pressurized. I mean that only makes sense. You
need to have a conscious gunner in that position. But
(19:12):
the area immediately around the tailgunner position, which was you know,
sealed off from the rest of the aircraft, that area
wasn't pressurized, so if you were the tailgunner, you would
get into the tail gunner position before the aircraft had
climbed into that higher altitude. You'd seal yourself in your position,
would be pressurized, and then you'd be stuck there until
(19:36):
the aircraft had descended to a low enough altitude where
you could get out without having the problems of low
air pressure. So that must have been pretty confining. Four
of the machine gun turrets on the B twenty nine
were capable of operation via remote control, which was a
real innovation at the time, and then that two crew
members could control the four turrets, and like the B seventeen,
(20:00):
most of the guns aboard the B twenty nine were
fifty caliber machine guns. It was a B twenty nine
super fortress called the and Nola Gay that would carry
the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. Another B
twenty nine called box Car, dropped the one on Nagasaki.
These two attacks would be the first and the last
nuclear attacks in history so far, hopefully they represent the
(20:24):
last one ever. The B twenty nine project would actually
be the most expensive military project in World War Two.
It was, in fact more expensive than the Manhattan Project
that was the project that was responsible for developing and
building the atomic bombs, but the B twenty nine cost
more money. During World War Two, Boeing also lost its
(20:46):
company president, Philip G. Johnson, whom I mentioned just before
the break. He died from a massive stroke as he
was overseeing operations in the Wichita, Kansas manufacturing facility. In nine.
Claremont Claire ex Vette, whose name I continue to butcher,
but he had served as president of Boeing from nineteen
(21:07):
thirty three to nineteen thirty nine, would actually step back
into the position for the remainder of World War Two
as a sort of an interim president, and then he
would hand the company over to William M. Allen in nine.
Boeing made a couple of other military aircraft during World
War Two besides the famous B seventeen and B twenty
(21:27):
nine bombers. You may have heard about the B fifty
super Fortress, and to be fair, the B fifty was
really a redesignation of what was originally called a B
twenty nine D, so it was part of the B
twenty nine super Fortress family, but then got rebranded, if
you will, into a B fifty. Boeing also made a
(21:50):
long range cargo military aircraft called the Strato Freighter, and
it also made a fighter plane, the XF eight B.
This was a single engine propeller plane intended for the U. S.
Navy as not just a fighter, but also like a
torpedo bomber. Boeing produced a prototype in NT four, but
World War Two was over before the company was scheduled
(22:12):
to enter into full production mode, so the project was
scrapped with only three aircraft, all prototypes ever built. Boeing
would also take the design of the C nine Strato
Freighter and then refit it to serve as a commercial
passenger aircraft. The new design needed a new name, which
would become the Boeing three seventy seven Strato Cruiser. Boeing's
(22:35):
customer was once again pan Am. This aircraft was a
bit more posh than the military variant, as you might imagine.
There were different passenger configurations for the Strato Cruiser, but
generally it could hold between sixty three and eighty four
passengers with a crew of four. The main cabin had
a staircase that led down to a lower deck, and
(22:56):
the lower deck actually served as a drinks lounge. Very
very you know that kind of swinging. You know, I
feel like I should remind you guys that these aircraft
were all propeller airplanes. These are not jet engine aircraft.
Yet we're not quite there, So this was considered, you know,
very swanky kind of travel arrangements back when, you know,
(23:17):
traveling on an airplane was a big deal and usually
only the world to do could afford to ever set
foot on them. While I'm on the Strato Cruiser, I
should talk about the aircraft's safety record, because it's pretty dismal.
Right now, the seven thirty seven Max aircraft from Boeing
is in the news due to some truly horrible accidents
(23:38):
that have happened with it. But that's not the first
aircraft from Boeing to have problems that lead to tragedy. Now,
it seems like the main fault for the Strato Cruiser
lay in the choice of propellers. At the time of
its construction, Bowing had essentially two choices for propellers for
the Strato Cruiser. One was made by Curtis Electric and
(24:00):
the other was made by Hamilton's Standard. The Curtis Electric
propeller blades were heavier and more complex from an electro
mechanical perspective and probably more expensive to the Hamilton's standard
propeller blades would rely on a hydraulic system, so mechanically
they were simpler, and they were also four hundred pounds
lighter than the Curtis electric propeller blades, so Boeing went
(24:24):
with the Hamilton's standard ones. They were lighter and they
were less complicated. Unfortunately, the Strato cruisers operations sometimes placed
more force on those propellers and their engines than they
were rated to withstand, and that would lead to the
propellers becoming unbalanced, which would then cause powerful vibrations that
(24:45):
could damage the engines, sometimes ripping them clear off the aircraft,
as appeared to be the case on April nine, that's
when a Strato Cruiser en route to New York from
Rio de Janeiro crashed in the Brazilian jungle. All fifty
people aboard that plane died in the crash. This was
the worst of the tragedies involving the Strato Cruiser, but
(25:08):
sadly it was not the only one. There were others
as well. There were enough incidents to lead the f
a A to issue an airworthiness directive about the Hamilton's
standard propeller blades, and while several accidents were traced to
problems with propellers and ultimately with a sealant that was
used to hold these hollow propellers together, other accidents had
(25:30):
other causes, and there wasn't the only cause of accidents
aboard Strato cruisers. One involved a cabin door being improperly sealed,
and upon climbing to cruising altitude and achieving its pressurized status,
that door ultimately failed and the cabin suffered explosive decompression,
and it resulted in one passenger dying. Truly awful awful events.
(25:54):
Between nineteen forty seven to nineteen fifty, Boeing would manufacture
fifty six Strato cruisers, and during the time of their operation,
a total of one thirty nine people died in accidents
involving Strato cruisers, the last of which took place in
nineteen seventy with a converted Strato cruiser that was meant
to carry heavy aircraft parts. Now I got a backtrack
(26:17):
just a bit, because we were in the nineteen forties
and then I just went down the Strato cruiser line.
But in ninety six Boeing signed a contract to develop
what was called the ground to air pilotless Aircraft. And
from that name it sounds like it could be a
remote controlled drone, but that's not it. That was actually
the name for a two stage missile designed to fly
(26:40):
faster than the speed of sound, the first missile Boeing
ever designed. It was an anti aircraft missile meant to
intercept aircraft that could fly up to seven hundred miles
per hour or one thousand, one hundred twenty six kilometers
per hour and up to altitudes of eight thousand feet
or two thousand, four hundred thirty eight meters. The GAPPA,
as it was called g A p A, never saw
(27:02):
active use in defense, but did serve as the basis
for future missiles designed by Boeing. Also in nineteen six,
Boeing agreed to supply two prototype aircraft designated XB forty
seven to the Army Air Forces. This was a long
range bomber design with six turbo jet engines, so jet engines,
(27:23):
not propeller engines. It also had a swept wing design,
which means the wings weren't at a straight ninety degree
angle out from the body of the aircraft. The wings
of the XB forty seven were angled back with respect
to the aircraft's cockpits, so that's how most swept wing
aircraft are. There are a few that actually have wings
that are angled forward rather than backward. During World War Two,
(27:45):
the German military had settled on swept wing designs for
high speed aircraft. They found that they were more stable
than could withstand the forces better than straight winged aircraft,
so after the war those designs would find their ways
into aircraft plans in the former Allied nations to clear
the United States, and wind tunnel tests confirmed that the
design was far more stable for high speed aircraft than
(28:07):
the straight winged version, so that was the design for
the XP forty seven. The engines of the XP forty seven,
the nickname of which was the strato jet, we're in
what we're called pods or nacells. These were suspended under
the wings of the jet, and like I said, there
were six engines. So on each wing you had two
(28:28):
engines that were side by side in a single nay
cell that was closest to the body of the aircraft,
and then the third engine for that side was suspended
toward the end of the wing. So it's a pretty
funky looking bomber, And if you listen to my episode
about jet engines, you'll remember that they're a little challenging
to get going when you're on the ground. Once you're
(28:49):
traveling at an appropriate speed through the air, the air
rushing through the jet engines is sufficient for it to
maintain operation. But at rest that doesn't work. So these
XB forty seven jets had to have a little help
when they needed to take off, and that help came
in the form of eighteen rocket units in the fuselage,
(29:09):
So those rockets would ignite for takeoff, and the XB
forty seven would have what was called a jet assisted
takeoff or jt J a t O. And the XB
forty seven would also have to deploy a drag parachute
to slow its speed when it was coming in for
a landing. The XB forty seven became the model for
(29:30):
the B forty seven bomber. That bomber only needed armament
in the rear of the plane because it moved so
fast that no fighter aircraft of the time could attack
it from any angle but from behind. So the B
forty seven would become the backbone of the new United
States Air Force Strategic Air Command, which operated the bombers
(29:52):
from nineteen fifty one to nineteen sixty. Now I'm gonna
take another quick break, but when we come back, we'll
talk about a few more aircraft that emerged in the
years following World War Two, as well as Boeing's attempt
to get into commercial jet airliners. Okay, so I mentioned
(30:20):
the XB forty seven agreement happened in nineteen forty six.
That same year, Boeing also landed a contract to design
the B fifty two long range bomber. The B forty
seven would have six engines. The B fifty two had eight,
with engines paired up in nace cells. But that's not
how the design first began. The original plan for the
(30:41):
B fifty two was for it to be a six
engine propeller bomber with a straight wing design. Those plans
were obliterated in nineteen forty eight when a military officials said,
now we want a jet powered bomber. So the design
team that had been working on the B fifty two
for two years pulled a crazy weekend shift to come
(31:02):
up with an all new jet powered design with a
swept wing approach. The Air Force ordered thirteen B fifty
two S, and Boeing built three that were designated B
fifty two A, but then converted production toward a new
model called the B fifty two B. It followed the
same design but had larger engines and could carry more weight.
(31:23):
Between nineteen fifty two and nineteen sixty two, Boeing would
produce seven hundred forty four B fifty two's later versions
were more powerful and could fly further. The B fifty
two H, first flown in nineteen sixty one, is an
aircraft that, believe it or not, is still in service
with the US military today, and it's expected to remain
(31:46):
in service into the twenty fifties. That's a phenomenal aircraft.
On the B fifty two also had a nickname. It
was the Stratoh Fortress. Of course it was Bowing wasn't
done with propeller aircraft either. It also built the L
fifteen Scout, which was a short takeoff and landing aircraft
(32:08):
with a single engine propeller engine. The company only made
a dozen of them, which ultimately found their way into
use in the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. Now,
as we've seen in this episode, for many years, Boeing
was relying heavily on military contracts for revenue. The conclusion
of World War Two meant that those contracts were becoming
(32:29):
less frequent. The company was eager to diversify and to
find other means of generating revenue, and so we come
to one of the more odd elements of Boeing's history,
the introduction of a gas turbine engine for a truck.
In nineteen fifty, so, in other words, a jet powered
truck sort of. Boeing was partnered with another Seattle based company,
(32:54):
the truck company Kenworth. The truck company had helped with
Boeing's manufacturing runs early or during the war, and so
Boeing outfitted a Kinworth truck with a one horsepower gas
turbine engine. The gas turbine seemed to have some pretty
clear advantages, at least on paper. It weighed a fraction
(33:15):
of the traditional diesel engines that were used in large trucks.
It could also accept lots of different kitents of fuel,
including gasoline, diesel, and even kerosene. The engine was also smaller.
It took up just thirteen percent of the same physical
space as a diesel engine, But when it came to performance,
the gas turbine engine just couldn't match the traditional diesel engines.
(33:40):
The truck went on a test run, actually several test
runs between Seattle and Los Angeles, and according to some reports,
these trips were taking several hours longer than a run
in a normal diesel truck. The performance was just lacking.
The trucks couldn't accelerate really well, they were putting way
too much exhaust out, and there was also a little
(34:02):
issue with fuel economy. Uh it was down to a
dismal one mile per gallon of fuel. Yikes. Boeing would
continue to work on gas turbine engines for land vehicles
and eventually landed a contract with a company called American
La France, which put them into fire trucks. And the
stories behind those were also pretty interesting, since it sounded
(34:23):
like the cruise using those trucks had to find creative
workarounds to compensate for the shortcomings of the engines. But
they also said that they were really fun to operate,
so I guess that's the tradeoff. Also in nineteen fifty,
Boeing submitted a proposal for the Baumark missile. This was
a design that incorporated stuff that Boeing engineers had learned
while making those GAPPA missiles back in nineteen six. The
(34:46):
Bomark was the first long range anti aircraft missile in
the world, and unlike GAPPA, this would be a missile
that Boeing would actually mass produce. While World War Two
was long over, the Cold War was really ram being up,
and the U. S Military had deep concerns about the
then Soviet Union's military capabilities, including the development of long
(35:08):
range bombers that could potentially fly over the United States.
The Bomark was meant to be a defense against those
types of aircraft. The anti aircraft missile was a young
enough technology that the Air Force didn't have a good
way to designate it, so originally, the Bomark was referred
to as an x F N nine, and the F
(35:30):
and x F stood for fighter, as in Bomark was
considered a pilotless aircraft, and fighters seemed to be the
closest thing they could use to describe it now. Eventually,
the Air Force would change its designation system and they
renamed it the I M, with i AM standing for
Interception Missile. Boeing would test the prototype of the Bomark
(35:53):
in nineteen fifty two and went into full production in
nineteen fifty five. The missile had some rawbacks. The biggest
one was that the earlier version of the missile relied
on liquid rocket fuel, and that liquid rocket fuel was
highly corrosive. Because of that, you couldn't pre fuel a
missile before you had to use it. The fuel would
(36:15):
actually corrode the interior of the fuel tank for that missile,
making it unreliable or worse. So you had to hold
off on fueling the things until it was time to
use them. And the fueling process took about two minutes,
and as you might imagine, every minute counts when you're
potentially defending against an incoming aerial attack. So Boeing later
(36:36):
addressed this problem by making a switch and they changed
out the liquid rocket fuel motors with a solid fuel
rocket booster that lowered the response time for the so
called super Bowmark missile to less than thirty seconds. The
company would produce five hundred seventy bo Mark missiles, which
became part of a network called the Semi Automatic Ground
(36:59):
Environment or SAGE. They were kept inside launch shelters and
remote locations. You've probably seen stock footage of these things,
where these these big hatches would open up and missiles
would come out. It's that kind of stuff. But these
weapons were mes defense measure against bombers aircraft flying overhead.
(37:20):
As the focus would shift to intercontinental ballistic missiles, the
usefulness of these older Beaumark missiles was determined to be
somewhat limited, and the military chose to decommissioned them in
nineteen seventy two. Now I'm gonna end this episode with
a project that Boeing started in nineteen fifty two. It
was known as the three sixty seven eighty, also called
(37:43):
the Dash eight. Boeing gave the project name the three
seven eighty to disguise its real purpose because the name
seemed to indicate that it was going to be a
variant of the C nineties seven Strado freighter. But this
was actually a project to explore the possibility of producing
jet propelled commercial aviation aircraft. So one of the words
(38:03):
passenger jets, and this wasn't a new idea. Bowing didn't
invent this. In fact, the Boeing president of the time,
Bill Allen, had been part of a group of Boeing
executives that went to see a jet powered airliner called
the Haviland Comment it flew in an air show in
the UK. The Comment made its first test flight in
(38:24):
nineteen forty nine, and it entered into commercial service in
nineteen fifty two. The same year Boeing committed to exploring
the possibility of getting into that same business in the
United States. The dash A D took about two years
from the launch of the project to the production of
the first aircraft, and that first model three eighty, debuted
(38:45):
on May fourteenth, nineteen fifty four. William Bowing himself, who
was seventy two years old at that point, attended the event.
The project had cost sixteen million dollars to fund. That
represented about two thirds of Boeing's profits since World War Two,
so this was a significant undertaking. The dash A D
(39:08):
served as the basis for a new line of aircraft
technically two lines of aircraft. Boeing even started to gear
up to go into full production, even though it had
not yet received a single order, either from the military
or from an airline like pan Am. But the demonstration
turned heads and before long the Air Force ordered a
(39:29):
military version of the dash A D. This one would
be called the k C one thirty five jet tanker
the commercial side was a tougher cell. Bowing was up
against its competitor Douglas. With much wheeling and dealing, Bowing
sales reps were able to land a contract with pam
AM to deliver twenty commercial versions of the Dash A
(39:51):
D which would be known as the seven O seven.
At the same time, PanAm had also put in an
order for twenty five d C eight from Douglas, so
Boeing's long term success in commercial jets was not yet assured.
In our next episode, I'm going to continue looking at
Boeing's history and commercial jets, as well as explore some
(40:12):
of the technology behind the recent tragedies with the seven
thirty seven Max, and we'll talk more about the different
layouts and configurations of these aircraft. And uh, hopefully you
guys are finding this interesting. I'm finding it fascinating. I've
always heard bits and pieces about Boeing, but this is
the first time I've taken a deep dive into their
history and the various aircraft and technologies they've been uh
(40:36):
instrumental in developing, And to me, it's pretty interesting stuff.
If you guys have suggestions for future topics of tech stuff,
send me a message. You can email me at tech
Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or dropped by
our website that's tech stuff podcast dot com. You'll find
an archive of all of our past episodes, as well
as links to where we are on social media, and
(40:58):
you also find a link to our online story or
where every purchase you make goes to help the show
and we greatly appreciate it, and I'll talk to you
again really soon. Text Stuff is a production of I
Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from I
heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
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