This year, Boeing Aircraft is celebrating its 100th anniversary. First incorporated in 1916 by budding pilot and aviation enthusiast BOEING William Boeing, the company has become synonymous with the U.S. airline manufacturing industry, and also relies heavily on its military successes, present and past, for its corporate identity. In the first three issues of AIN’s Farnborough Airshow News, Pete Combs delves into the company history. Look out for parts two and three in our July 12 and 13 editions, or find the entire text online at our website, AINonline.com Model 40 Model 8 Far from the plants where airplanes are built, away from the B-1 (Model 6) excitement of engineering discovery and the glamor of test pilots’ derring-do, Michael Lombardi’s domain is a large room on the basement level of a nondescript building at Boeing’s Bellevue, Washington campus. It is a bunker crammed with papers, blueprints, models—even a mannequin in a flight suit. Here, Lombardi quietly and faithfully sifts through reams of corporate documents, pores over correspondence and delicately catalogs precious artifacts. This is the place in the Boeing collective brain where memories are stored. As Boeing gears up to celebrate its centennial, this is Ground Zero. started a course under the Model C In the Beginning… tutelage of Lloyd Smith. Like many aviation ven- On completing the course, I tures, the Boeing Company ordered for my personal use started as a love story between a plane known as Model TA a young man and an airplane. from the Martin factory. The www.ainonline.com It was 1909, at the Alaska- machine was delivered to me Yukon-Pacific Exposition in in October of 1915 and, being Seattle. William Boeing, the convinced that there was a 28-year-old son of a wealthy definite future in aviation, I German mining and lumber became interested in the con- magnate, was enthralled. He struction as well as the flying a better plane ourselves and graduate of the Massachusetts was a tinkerer, a perfectionist of aircraft.” build it faster.” Institute of Technology, sent who often toyed with designing Perhaps his interest in build- Westervelt went to work on a scale model of the plane to boats. Fascinated by vehicles ing aircraft was spurred by a designing the aircraft he and his alma mater for evaluation. that could sail the sky, Boeing crash that partially wrecked his friend called the “B&W”— The model spent six hours was determined to learn all he the Martin hydroaeroplane. for Boeing and Westervelt. But in the university’s wind tun- could about this new endeavor Martin told Boeing it would before they began to assemble nel before Westerveldt pro- called “aviation.” take months to fabricate the it, Westervelt wanted to make nounced it airworthy. “At that time I was merely necessary replacement parts. sure it was safe. That led to a Boeing aeronautical engi- desirous of learning to fly,” Boeing told his close friend, radical new procedure that is neer Sarah Musi sits in the Boeing told writer Harold Lt. George Conrad Wester- employed by aircraft design- company’s archival bunker, Crary. “In August [1914], I velt (USN), “We could build ers to this day; Westervelt, a her hands covered with white © 2016 AIN Publications. All Rights Reserved. For Reprints go to B&W “Nobody in the United States World War I, Boeing employed and soon became the first air- BOEING was doing this. From tribal 355 workers. But when the war craft to fly over Mt. Rainier. knowledge and memory, air- ended in late 1918, peacetime In 1925, convinced that craft designers would fly first amounted to hard times for the an air-cooled radial engine and test later. That is not what fledgling company. would be more efficient and we’re about today. Now, we The Boeing Airplane Com- practical than an inline liq- spend years in wind tunnel pany began making furniture, uid-cooled powerplant, the testing before we build any- cases for photographs, even company used a radial in thing. Back then, they spent materials used to manufacture the design of the Model 40, all of six hours.” women’s corsets. In the mean- built to replace the worn-out The design proved stable. time, Boeing was trying to de Havilland DH-4s carry- cotton gloves. Gingerly, she Based on that, Boeing and convert the process of building ing mail. With the Model 40, unfolds an ancient piece of Westervelt started work on military aircraft to making air- Boeing won a government paper covered with lines and their “B&W,” a boxy-look- planes for civilian purposes. At contract to fly mail between plot points. It is the first-ever ing biplane on floats. Exactly a times, Boeing had to use mon- Chicago and San Francisco, wind tunnel data from the month later, Boeing established ey from his successful timber a route later flown by the B&W test. Pacific Aero Products (on July business to keep the aircraft tri-motor Model 80. Though aeronautical re- 15, 1916), employing 21 men operation going. “It is a matter of great searcher (and tower designer) and women who, on average, There was little market for pride and satisfaction to me www.ainonline.com Gustav Eiffel in France and earned 23 cents an hour. the Model C in a market flush to realize that within the short the Wright Brothers in the U.S. Less than a year later, busi- with military surplus planes. space of 12 years, an infant had used their own wind tun- ness was booming. Pacific Aero So one day, Boeing and pilot company with a personnel nels in early experiments, the Products, newly renamed the Eddie Hubbard took off for of less than a dozen men has technology was not in com- Boeing Airplane Company, Vancouver, British Columbia grown to be the largest plant in mon use at this early stage of began building the Model C, with 60 letters on board for the America, devoted solely to the aviation. “This was new,” Mu- a floatplane designed to train Canadian Exposition—in the manufacture of aircraft, and si told AIN, her eyes gleaming. Navy pilots. By the end of process, inventing “air mail.” at the present time employ- In 1919, the Boeing B-1 (also ing approximately 1,000 men,” known as the Model 6) flying Boeing told reporters in 1928. boat took to the sky, the first outright civilian design in the First Airliner company’s short history. Only Boeing executives quickly re- one was built, but it was the alized that the future of flight beginning of a new phase for was in all-metal aircraft rath- Boeing. The following May, er than the steel-tube, canvas, Model 247 the Model 8 made its first flight wood and wire airframes that © 2016 AIN Publications. All Rights Reserved. For Reprints go to BOEING Boeing-Designed Aircraft B&W Model 1 Model 15 (PW-9/FB) predecessors, owing in large part First flight: June 15, 1916 First flight: June 2, 1923 to its air-cooled 425 hp Pratt and This utility seaplane was William This was the first successful Whitney Wasp engine. Although it Boeing’s first project, undertaken Boeing fighter design, establishing never saw combat, the Model 69 with his friend, Lt. George Conrad the company’s reputation gained fame as the aircraft flown by prevailed until the late 1920s. In 1930, Westervelt (USN). They both had as a military aircraft manufacturer. the Three Sea Hawks, the U.S. Navy’s the company built the first two Mono- developed a yearning to fly. But after Boeing eventually built 157 Model first-ever precision aerobatic team. mail aircraft—fast and sleek, but un- Boeing’s Martin Hydroaeroplane was 15s, including variants. derpowered. Without a better power- damaged in a crash, replacement Model 40A plant and a constant-speed propeller, parts were impossible to find. So Model 21 (NB-1/NB-2) First flight: May 20, 1927 the Monomail was considered a fail- at Boeing’s urging, they decided to First flight October 20, 1923 Built by Boeing to fly mail ure. But the company profited from build their own airplane, “better and Boeing built 77 of these trainers, between Chicago and San the knowledge it gained, and in 1933, faster” than the Martin aircraft. based on the Model 15 design, Francisco. Twenty-four were Boeing introduced the twin-engine between 1923 and 1927. delivered by 1 July 1927. They flew Model 247, considered the world’s first Model C in the Boeing Air Transport livery. “modern” airliner. First flight: Nov. 16 1916 Model 40 Built completely of metal, the 247 The first “all-Boeing” aircraft First flight: July 7, 1925 Model 66 (XP-8) included a fully cantilevered wing, design, the Model C seaplane was These aircraft were designed to fly First flight: July 14, 1927 retractable landing gear and de-icing built as a trainer for the U.S. Navy. a single pilot and 1,000 pounds of Although it never entered boots. In an era of spotty engine reli- Boeing built 50 Model Cs, including mail, the first non-military design production, the Model 66 became ability, the 247 could fly on just one one used by Boeing himself to Boeing delivered since 1920. a demonstration platform for a powerplant in an emergency. It was deliver the first airmail. number of Boeing technological faster than the best fighters of the Model 64 advancements. era, capable of carrying 14 passen- Model 6 (B-1) First flight: Feb. 1926 gers and a crew of three from New First flight December 27, 1919 This floatplane trainer was Model 77 (F3B-1) York to San Francisco in less than Only one of these pusher-prop designed for the military at Boeing’s First flight: Feb 3, 1928 20 hours.