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Aviation History
1960
1960 - 2303.PDF
FLIGHT, 14 October 1960 603 TALKING TO MR BEALL Boeing's Senior Vice-President in London LAST week Wellwood E. Beall, senior vice-president of theBoeing Airplane Co, was in London to attend the FourthJ International Conference of Manufacturers—largely a stratospheric investigation of the Inner Six and Outer Seven.While here he found time to put us broadly in the picture in a number of highly topical fields.Boeing, which on many counts is the largest aircraft company in the world—in payroll, plant area and turnover we calculate italmost to match Hawker Siddeley Aviation and the British Air- craft Corporation combined—has during the past 20 years manu-factured a far greater weight of airframes than any other firm. For several years past the world's biggest jet aircraft have beencoining off the lines at Seattle, Renton and Wichita at the rate of approximately 40 per month. This business is now dwindling,and it was interesting to learn how Mr Beall viewed the future. Wellwood Beall has, of course, been for a generation one of thebest-known personalities in the entire field of aviation. He was for many years both vice-president engineering and vice-presidentsales of his vast company, either of which jobs would tax the resources of any ordinary man. For brevity, we have set out hisremarks more or less as he made them. Would you care to comment on the future of the 707 programme?It was mid-September when I left Seattle, but I would say that we have now delivered around 179 of the 707/720 family.Total firm orders are certainly more than 250—maybe as high as 260—and we expect to go on selling for many years. How about the big cargo jet? As you know, we have for many months been trying to sell suchairplanes to the military. We have actually proposed two models. One is a development of the Intercontinental, powered by a newmodel of Pratt & Whitney fan engine and fitted with a swing-tail. The other proposal is a minimum-cost modification of the KC-135tanker. MATS want a large number of "interim" airplanes, and are taking their time before coming to a decision. We expect toknow by the middle of this month? the Canadians may be able to pull the deal with the CL-44—a warmed-over Britannia [sic]built by Canadair—and I would not like to predict the outcome. Whichever way it goes we could sell the airlines a very fine cargojet with a payload ranging up to around 100,0001b, if development costs—which would be high—could be written off against otherorders. We have talked to many operators, Pan American in particular. How will you rival the VC10 family?I realize that the Vickers design is meant to carry more passengers, but we could put another 20ft into the 707 any time.One thing that really surprises me is that the VC10 doesn't have any flap-blowing. Everybody wants to know about the 727.During the past three years this project has passed through a lot of evolutionary stages. In its present form it is a 135,000 to140,0001b design which looks pretty much like your de Havil- land 121. How does it compare with the Trident—that is, the 121?Well, de Havilland came over to see us to talk a deal on the 121, but they wanted us to manufacture an exact copy and thiswould not suit the American market. Our airlines want six-abreast seating and a real short-field airplane. . . .But the Trident is designed for 6,000ft runways. Oh sure, but our operators want 4,500ft. The 727 has a biggerwing than the 121, and all sorts of high-lift devices. We are shooting for a CL of around 2.5, and nobody else is near this.The penalties you pay in cruising speed and other factors are insignificant on short stages, and we can still price the airplaneat less than the cost of a 720—say, $4m. For one thing, the fuselage cross-section is the same as that of a 707, and thereshould be a proportion of common tooling. So the 727 is to be a local-service vehicle?Indeed yes. It has got to be able to get into and out of really small fields, and hot and high ones at that. For example, United,who have a requirement for a lot of these airplanes, want to use it for Denver through Chicago-Midway to NY-La Guardia. Thetrouble is, everybody keeps trying to push the weight up, and we have to resist that. What engines?Our project team prefer your Rolls engine similar to the one in the 121. This would be made by Allison as the AR.963.American operators are not happy with this set-up. I don't think they like the divided responsibility, and for them we have pre-pared a Pratt & Whitney JT8D version, even though this engine has a rather larger diameter. Let me say, though, that Boeing Mr Wellwood Beall, Boe- ing senior vice-president; ". . . for a generation one of the best-known personalities in the entire field of aviation" have the highest opinion of Rolls-Royce engines, and a lot of ourcustomers use them in 707s. What is the status of the 727 project? We have pu: in a very great effort on basic design, aerodynamicand flutter models, detail drawings, and so forth; but nothing has been released to the shops. We had a close look at the numberof firm orders needed for us to go ahead, and I think the answer was described as "around 100." We are at present quotingdeliveries from January 1, 1964, or perhaps a little later. Sooner or later, of course, we will have to decide what to do with thisproject. I believe the time will come at the December board meeting, and my guess is that it will go ahead—the chance iscertainly better than 50-50. What happens if the 727 dies? My guess is that the market will go to the S|iper Caravelle.As you know, Douglas are doing a lot of work with Sud on this airplane, which is a real short-field transport, but with a newwing to raise the cruise Mach from 0.74, I believe, to 0.9. The Convair 60 seems dead, and I do not believe US airlines wouldbuy the 121. Last year Douglas lost $33.8m—three times as much as anyother firm in the world. Are they in really bad shape? No. I think this mighty loss figure stems from their systemof accounting, which is particularly rigid and calls for the writing- off of every cent of development effort as it is incurred. Somepeople spread it over years; at Boeing we have a fairly stringent system, but not quite so ruthless a one as Douglas. Don't forget,from here on Douglas will be a'l profit on the DC-8. What about a supersonic airliner? I do not think there are any grave technological problems, butnobody wants to be the first to jump. You British have stressed to me the danger of becoming committed to M2 or 2.5 and sud-denly facing competition at over 3. Certainly many people— Dassault, Convair, North American—have considerable experiencewith supersonic-cruise airplanes, and our Bomarc has for years been flying at 2.7. I do not think it is possible to rework a bomberinto a transport. We looked hard at our B-47 and 52 when we first thought about jet airliners and you couldn't use one bolt.On the other hand, facilities for building and testing such aircraft could be very useful; we formerly had the wing of the B-70, andthe installations for producing it could be invaluable on a large supersonic transport. Our Ministry of Aviation would like to co-operate on such aproject internationally. Both your groups—George Edwards, Roy Dobson, I've knownthem for years—have talked with us, and we have said: "Who's going to pay, and what will it cost?" I think your Minister men-tioned a figure of £100m; that's an awful lot of money. Personally I do not believe it would be possible to develop an Anglo-Americanproject, but if one of your groups—either, I have no preferences —were to work with us on two rather different concepts—say,one short-haul and one long-haul—then you could do it for much less cost than separately. Is there any chance of a joint Boeing/Douglas/Lockheed/Con-vair/North American project—or something like an "American Aircraft Corporation"? I think that sort of thing is rather remote at present. It seemsto me we have far more competition with our own opposition on the West Coast than with your people over here and with Sud. What about the future? We have the prime contract for Minuteman, the second-genera-tion ICBM, and this is a real giant programme. We look on it as our biggest business for some time to come. Then there is ourDyna-Soar hypersonic space glider—that's something I really like. You may never make much money on such advanced work, but it'ssomething you have to do.
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