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Aviation History
1956
1956 - 0764.PDF
764 FLIGHT, 15 June 1956 "The view from the pilot's seat is excellent . • . the large forward-facing windows . . . must be 36in across." THE author, Capt. Anthony Spooner,D.S.O., D.F.C., is chairman of the British Airline Pilots' Association, and a seniorcaptain of B.O.A.C.'s Stratocruiser Fleet. A pilot of some 10.000 hours' experience, he isthe first Englishman to have flown the Boeing 707 prototype. We believe that his penetrat-ing personal account of his flight, which he made as an unbiased representative of thepilot fraternity and not as a prospective cus- tomer, is of outstanding merit as an assess-ment of a new type of aircraft. In this first instalment Capt. Spooner describes his visitto the Boeing plant and his impressions of the 707 on the ground: in part 2, next week, hewill describe its handling in the air. FLYING THE 707 A British Pilot Tries Boeing's Jet Transport PART 1. ON April 11, at the invitation of Boeing, I was privilegedto visit Seattle for three days and to fly the 707 proto-type. It is no small tribute to the far-sightedness of manufacturers that the importance of the pilot's opinion, asexpressed through his national associations and through the International Federation of Air Line Pilots Association, is nowsufficiently recognized for such visits to be arranged. So smoothly did the journey go that after departure byB.O.A.C. Monarch at 8 p.m. on Monday, April 10, I was able to touch down some 6,000 miles away at 8.30 p.m. the followingevening. I was naturally tired, partially because I had worked my passage across the Atlantic as a navigator, but none the lessnot unduly so, for both airlines had run to schedule and both trips had been carried out in near perfect weather. Also, mytransatlantic Stratocruiser and United Airlines' DC-6B were exceptionally quiet aircraft. More modern piston-driven equip-ment may be faster but certainly is not quieter. During my three-and-a-half-hour transit in New York I tele-graphed ahead to Mr. Ralph Bell, Boeing director of sales, and he kindly arranged for a car to meet me at the Seattle-TacomaAirport. This was but one of the thoughtful gestures which he and his staff made. During this visit I received as much courtesyand attention from all of Boeing as I would had I been a potential customer with a $100 million order burning a hole inmy pocket. This is one more example of the fact that responsible manufacturers are fully alive to the worth of pilot opinion, andit is in keeping with the policy recently adopted by Vickers and Bristols at home. Out at the huge Boeing plant early next morning, I was putin charge of Mr. Ray Chamberlain of the sales department. He readily understood my position and for the next three days actedas guide, counsellor and friend. He rarely left my side and spared no pains to ensure that I saw what I wanted and got ananswer to the many questions I asked. At no time was it neces- sary for me to emphasize the point that, although the operatoris the customer of the aircraft manufacturer, the pilot is the true consumer of his products. From Ray Chamberlain I learned that a special flight hadbeen arranged for me that afternoon. It should give satisfaction to pilots to realize that such a flight, costing more than $5,000,had been specifically arranged and that no attempt was made to fit it in with some existing test programme. By CAPT. ANTHONY SPOONER Later in the morning I had the pleasure of a frank talk withMr. W. E. Beall, the senior vice-president. Points arising from this talk were that Boeing did not necessarily confine their struc-tural programme to the strict C.A.A. requirements. When in any doubt, they did not hesitate to exceed these standards. Forexample, he referred me to the additional stress-factors they had given to the window cut-outs and to the fact that, thoughAmerican design philosophy favoured a multi-path constructional method in preference to the British guaranteed-life test-tankprocedure, Boeing, while keeping faith with all of the require- ments of the former, were in addition planning to subject acomplete 707 fuselage to a thorough water-tank test. However, they were not contemplating wing-flexing tests. Another point Mr. Beall rightly made was that Boeing air-craft had carried out virtually millions of flying hours in the 40,000-ft zones and they had done this in highly pressurized,large fuselages, yet they had never experienced a single decom- pression failure in flight. Thus, in building fuselages capableof withstanding high differential pressures, they were, in the 707, doing a little more than they had been doing in the militaryfield for the past seven or eight years. The rest of the morning was taken up in conversation withMr. Taylor, manager of customer relations, and with Mr. Jack Steiner, project engineer for the 707. I was to see a lot of JackSteiner for the next three days and I soon learned that he was a walking encyclopedia of technical information. His office is atthe Renton Plant some miles away. In this plant, which is soon to be considerably enlarged, the KC-135 (Boeing jet tanker) andthe 707 production lines are being laid down. Up to now, most of the 700-odd KC-97s (Stratocruiser tankers) had been builthere and the change-over from the one type to the new types is in full swing. To give some indication of the size of the futureproduction, I quote the figure I was given that some $45 million had been expended on the jigging alone. Clearly Boeing meanto build this new aircraft in hundreds, if not thousands. At present the KC-135 programme is ahead of the 707schedule. I was able to see for myself how near to flight the first of the production aircraft were and I saw signs that otherswould soon be following. There are no visible signs of any 707 assuming definite shape, but I understand that they arealready cutting metal for the first production model due to fly early in 1958.
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