Boeing 707 Prototype Flies: Jet Age Takes Off

Boeing bet $16 million of its own money on a prototype jet transport that the airlines had not ordered and the Air Force had not requested, gambling the company's future on the conviction that the piston-engine era was ending. The Boeing 367-80, known internally as the Dash 80, made its maiden flight from Renton Field outside Seattle on July 15, 1954, with test pilot Alvin "Tex" Johnston at the controls. The aircraft that emerged from that gamble would become the Boeing 707 and launch the commercial jet age. Boeing's decision was audacious because the commercial aviation market showed no clear demand for jets. The British de Havilland Comet had entered service in 1952 as the world's first jet airliner, but a series of catastrophic structural failures grounded the fleet by 1954. Airlines were wary of jets, and Douglas Aircraft dominated the propeller market with the DC-6 and DC-7. Boeing's advantage was military: the company had built the B-47 and B-52 jet bombers and understood swept-wing, high-speed aerodynamics better than any competitor. The Dash 80 was a revelation. Powered by four Pratt & Whitney JT3C turbojet engines, it cruised at 550 mph, nearly twice the speed of existing propeller airliners. During a demonstration for airline executives and military brass in August 1955, Tex Johnston barrel-rolled the Dash 80 over Lake Washington in front of thousands of spectators at the Gold Cup hydroplane races. Boeing president Bill Allen reportedly reached for his heart medication. Johnston later said the maneuver was a perfectly safe one-G roll; Allen reportedly told him never to do it again. Pan American World Airways ordered twenty 707s in October 1955, breaking the logjam. American Airlines and other carriers followed, afraid of being left behind. The 707 entered commercial service in 1958 and rapidly made propeller transports obsolete on long-haul routes. Transatlantic flight times dropped from twelve hours to seven. The aircraft sold over a thousand units and established Boeing's dominance in commercial aviation that persists into the twenty-first century. Every modern jetliner traces its lineage to the prototype that lifted off from Renton in 1954.