AVIATION: Gamble in the Sky

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In an office atop a low, green building on the outskirts of Seattle, Wash. stands a potted, prickly-pear cactus plant. The office is the headquarters of William Mc-Pherson Allen, president of Boeing Airplane Co.; the cactus was given to him almost nine years ago as a symbol of his job when Allen took over as Boeing’s new president. Scrawny, stunted and thorny, the plant then symbolized Boeing’s postwar plight, with two of the company’s plants silent and empty, 38,000 of its wartime workers out of jobs. Today, President Allen’s bitter little cactus is tall, green and fat, and as flourishing as any in the entire Pacific Northwest.

Last week Boeing Airplane Co. was also flourishing. Under Bill Allen’s careful tending, the company backlog has grown to almost $2.5 billion, the biggest in the industry. Sales in 1953 hit $900 million. Profits last year soared to $20 million, more than any other U.S. planemaker.

But the most exciting thing about Boeing’s spectacular course last week was a brand-new airplane that was rolled out for its preflight tests—a big, sleek, new job painted a rich yellow and chocolate brown, with sharply swept-back wings and four huge jet engines slung underneath.

The new craft: Boeing Airplane Co.’s Model 707, the first jet-powered transport plane ever built in the U.S.

As engineers watched, the 707 ‘s four jets started up with a low whine that rose to a scream, then a roar. The engine tests took three days. Then the chocks were pulled from the wheels, and the big plane rolled down the runway, circled and rolled back again, swaying as Chief Test Pilot Alvin M. Johnston checked rudder and ailerons, bucking as he eased on the brakes. On an earlier taxi test, the 95-ton ship had snapped a landing-gear support, had to be sent back to the shops for repairs (TIME, May 31). Last week “Tex” Johnston was doubly careful; for five days the tests went on before he was satisfied that the plane was ready for flight.

This week Boeing’s new 707 is scheduled to speed down the runway, and go skyward on her maiden flight.

Outspeeding a Comet.

America’s first entry in the jet-age commercial air race is far more than just an answer to Britain’s ill-fated Comet I, or the Comet’s bigger sisters II and III. The 707 is as much of an advance over Britain’s early leader as the swift advance of jet-aircraft design will allow. Its graceful fuselage sweeps back 128 ft., a full 35 ft. longer than the Comet I. In its fuselage, almost as wide as a living room and as long as a ballroom, it can carry 130 passengers, v.

48 for the Comet I.

Its four burly Pratt & Whitney J57 jet engines blast out more than 40,000 Ibs. of thrust, twice the power of the Comet’s four engines, enough to push the 707 through the sky at 550-m.p.h. cruising speed, about 60 m.p.h. faster than the Comet I, about 50% faster than the fastest prop-driven airliners. The 707 is designed to fly the Atlantic in less than seven hours, give the sun a race from east to west. It will be able to leave New York at noon, arrive in Los Angeles by 1:3O p.m.

The new jetliner will probably not be seen first as a civilian transport, but as a military plane, part of General Curtis Le-May’s Strategic Air Command. Though the Air Force has not yet placed a firm order, the 707 has been approved by the Air Policy Council and seems certain to be in the buying program as a flying tanker to refuel swept-wing jet bombers, thus give the Strategic Air Command more mobility and range. SAC’s B-47 bombers now get refueled in the air on their 10,000-mile missions from prop-driven KC-97 tankers. To do so, the B-47s have to drop from 40,000 ft. to 20,000 ft. With the new 707s, SAC bombers can take on fuel at combat altitudes and at combat speeds.

The Big Question. With a model already built, Boeing has won itself a long head start on the rest of the industry in the jet transport race. The credit goes to Boeing’s brilliant corps of engineers and to Bill Allen, the dry, deceptively plain lawyer who became Boeing’s president (and custodian of the cactus) in 1945. Allen is the man who gave the final go-ahead for Boeing to spend $20 million on the 707, gambling that he could sell it to the Air Force and the airlines. With Air Force orders in the offing, Bill Allen has apparently won half his parlay. If he wins the second half, he will crack the transport field wide open. The big question is: Will U.S. airlines buy the 707?

The airlines are not anxious to switch to jets, since they have just invested some $250 million for new fleets of prop-driven planes. But with Boeing’s 707, the pressure is on: the first big U.S. airline to buy the 707 will force the others to follow. Bill Allen is betting that he gets that crucial order. While his new jet will cost upwards of $4,000,000 v. $1,850,000 for a Douglas DC-7. Allen thinks the 707 will pay off. Its greater size and speed will enable it to do 2½ times the work of a DC-7 or Super Constellation. Allen estimates that it will fly passengers at the same cost per mile as a propeller plane, be easier to maintain, less complicated to fly. His $20 million bet is that Boeing can grab off the peacetime commercial market just as it has cornered the military market for big bombers.

King of the Bombers. Since the beginning of World War II, Boeing has been undisputed king of the bomber builders. But in the 38 years since William Edward Boeing, a wealthy lumberman’s son, founded the company as a hobby just outside Seattle, Boeing has also built everything from gnatlike fighters to giant flying boats, and can claim enough pioneering firsts to satisfy any planemaker.

From Bill Boeing’s first 75-m.p.h. seaplane in 1916 to Bill Allen’s 707. Boeing has turned out 22,500 planes of more than 200 different types. In the ’20s and ’30s, Boeing’s name was on some of the world’s fastest pursuit ships and bombers. Boeing pioneered today’s streamlined all-metal transports, built the famed four-engined Boeing “Clippers,” the first for regular transatlantic service. Betting its pocketbook on performance, Boeing has sometimes lost money. But on such bombers as World War II’s B-17 and B29, the design gambles have paid off. By 1945 half the nation’s total aircraft manufacturing space was devoted to building Boeing’s fabled Forts.

But after the war, Boeing went into a dizzying tailspin. The torrent of contracts dried to a trickle, and production lines slowed down. As a final blow, Boeing President Philip Gustav Johnson, hard-driving engineer who had piloted Boeing through the war years, died suddenly late in 1944, and Boeing was without a chief.

“Trouble Lies Ahead.” For a year after Johnson’s death. Boeing searched the U.S. for a new boss. As Boeing lawyer and a director, Bill Allen led the hunt. Finally, in desperation, Boeing’s board tried to convince Allen himself that he was the man for the job. He was no airman, but he knew Boeing’s finances inside out. Allen was stunned, did not even want the job. In his diary he listed his misgivings: “AGAINST—1) I do not feel I have the qualifications. That’s the all-compelling reason. 2) Trouble lies ahead. 3) Lack of seniority: if I don’t make a success of it, I would resign, then where would I be? 4) Worry. Could I physically stand it? 5) Less time with the children. Heaven knows it is little enough now. FOR—1) A little greater material return. 2) It would be a new challenge.” On Sept. 1, 1945, on Bill Allen’s 45th birthday, he decided to take up the challenge; he resigned from his law firm to become Boeing’s president at $50,000 a year. By surface indication, Bill Allen was taking over a soaring giant of the air world. Boeing employment still stood at almost 30,000 in Seattle, 17,000 at the two plants at Wichita, Kans. Sales for 1943 and 1944 were over $1 billion, and profits were almost $10 million. But this was an empire built on war contracts and things were happening to war contracts.

On the eve of his election, a big B-29 contract was canceled, and one Wichita plant had to be shut down. The next day, another sweeping cutback hit Seattle as well. New President Allen went home and muttered dazedly to his wife: “My lord, the roof has fallen in.” In 60 days, $1.5 billion in contracts were canceled, more that 38,000 workers laid off. Bill Allen remembered the grim joke North American’s James H. (“Dutch”) Kindelberger once told him on the boom-or-bust character of the industry: “If I stub my toe and fall while running to lay off people, we’re liable to lose our shirts.” Strikes & Stratocruisers. Allen tightened his lips, set out to see what he could salvage. He hardly looked like the man for the job, acted even less like it. He appeared shy and unsure, talked in stiff lawyerese, had little technical knowledge about engines or air frames. Yet he had three qualities common to most great plane builders. He knew when to gamble, he trusted his designers, and he knew how to forge them into a solid team. “We work together here, like this,” says a Boeing engineer locking his hands, “instead of apart like this,” sweeping them to the side. Bill Allen also knew how to make a tough decision. At one of his first full staff meetings, Allen calmly decided to put the demoralized company to work on a new transport plane.

In November 1945 Pan American signed for 20 Boeing Stratocruisers — big, 300-m.p.h., four-engined craft that could carry 81 passengers 3,000 miles nonstop.

Allen’s gamble gave Boeing a little breathing period, but the company was still in deep trouble. The planes were expensive to produce (price: $1,500,000), even cost lier to operate. Boeing made only 56 Stratocruisers for civilian customers. Net loss: $15 million. In 1948 more troubles piled up. This time they came from a bitter, 144-day strike by the Aero Mechanics Union at Seattle. Boeing wanted to revise wartime seniority provisions that prevented it from shifting workers and thereby cutting costs. The union said no, and 14,000 men went out. Civic groups in Seattle and the National Labor Relations Board asked Allen to bargain. He refused, contending that the strike was illegal under the union contract. Boeing stood to lose millions on Stratocruiser orders, but eventually, Allen won his fight. Boeing more than recouped its losses on commercial orders with orders from the Air Force for the KC-97, the cargo and tanker version of the Stratocruiser. To date, more than 500 KC-97s have come off the lines, a final vindication of Bill Allen’s first big decision.

Reaching for Tomorrow. Since those fateful first years, Allen has learned to live with the job. Behind his desk, he is sure of himself, knows what he wants to do and how. At home he is an amiable, storytelling host whose best jokes are on himself, who loves to sit around with old cronies, sipping Scotch and water and bursting out with gusts of staccato laughter. He lives in a handsome, ten-room house north of Seattle, with his wife Mary Ellen Field, their son James, and three daughters, Dorothy, Nancy and Ellen. Allen likes to dance, fish, play squash and golf, but seldom has time for such planned fun. On the golf course, he drives partners wild by dashing off every so often to call the plant. Says Allen: “Boeing is always reaching out for tomorrow. This can only be accomplished by people who live, breathe, eat and sleep what they are doing.”

As a boy back in Lolo (pop. 200), Mont., where he was born on Sept. 1, 1900, Bill Allen gave little indication of such single-minded devotion to the job ahead. He is remembered as a tall, stringy “toothpick” youngster. His father, Charles Maurice Allen, was a mining engineer who enjoyed taking Bill and his older brother Edward on long pack trips to live off venison and mountain grouse. At Montana State University Allen barely skinned through. It was not until he went east to Harvard Law School (class of ’25) that he decided to work hard for the first time in his life. But no matter how hard he studied, he was surprised to find that his grades remained mediocre. Allen came to the shocking conclusion that there were “a lot of people brighter than I was, so I made up my mind to work all the harder to make up for it.” When he went looking for a job with the Seattle law firm of Donworth, Todd & Higgins, he was so anxious to make good that he offered to work for $50 a month.

Allen got the job. A year later, in 1926, he drew an assignment to work with a bustling aircraft company on the outskirts of town. Its name: Boeing Airplane Co.

Into the Air. By then, Boeing was ten years old and was hailed as the biggest airplane plant in the U.S. To help run his company, Founder Bill Boeing had gone to the University of Washington for two bright young engineering students. Philip Gustav Johnson, only 32, a fiery, two-fisted organizational genius, was Boeing’s president; Clairmont Egtvedt, 34, was his opposite, a quiet, studious designer and Boeing’s vice president.

The company had built a total of 268 trainers, Navy torpedo bombers, shipboard fighters and other craft. But into every model went the company’s entire bankroll. “Usually, the main item on the agenda at board meetings was to pass a resolution accepting another contribution from Mr.” Boeing,” says “Clair” Egtvedt, now Boeing’s chairman. When the Post Office Department decided to get out of the airmail business in 1925 and asked private companies to fly a commercial route between Chicago and San Francisco, Boeing jumped at the chance. Boeing’s bid: $1.50 a Ib. for the first 1,000 miles, $2.89 for the entire trip—about what it was costing the Post Office to fly mail 223 miles from New York to Boston.

“Most people thought we were going broke when we took that contract,” says old Bill Boeing. But Boeing was gambling that it could build a plane cheap enough and efficient enough to carry the mail at a profit. Egtvedt designed the plane, the Model 40-A biplane. It could fly at a top speed of 135 m.p.h. with 1,200 Ibs. of mail and three passengers jammed in a tiny cabin behind the engine fire wall. A later model, the 40-B, was faster and bigger, and 38 were built.

Meanwhile, Lawyer Allen took on the work of incorporating the new Boeing Air Transport Inc., which had been formed to fly the mail, and before long Allen found himself spending 90% of his time on Boeing business.

Boeing made money on its airmail route, saw profits go up from $115,000 in 1927 to $535,000 in 1928. The future looked wide open. Lindbergh had just crossed the Atlantic the year before, and the time was passing when flyers had trouble taking out insurance because of their calling. But it was still an infant industry where designers relied almost exclusively on light wood and stout wire.

Designer Clair Egtvedt hooted at their lack of imagination with a satiric couplet: When in doubt, build her stout Out of materials you know about.

The Wood Barrier. In 1930, Egtvedt and Boeing revolutionized plane design with the “Monomail.” It was a long way ahead of the thick wooden and fabric wings of the ’20s. Boeing’s new craft was all metal and sleek as a seal, with a single low wing stressed from within, and a retractable landing gear. In the air it could carry five passengers at an unheard-of top speed for transports of 160 m.p.h.

Shrewdly, Boeing followed up its Mono-mail with an all-metal, twin-engined B-9 bomber (nicknamed the “Panatela” for its cigarlike shape) that hit 186 m.p.h.

Soon after, it brought out its all-metal P-26, a monoplane fighter fast enough to catch its speedy bomber.

The Flying Boats. The ’30s were years of giddy growth for the young company.

In 1928 Boeing started up a School of Aeronautics in Oakland, Calif. A year later it changed its name to United Aircraft & Transport Corp., in rapid succession bought up Pratt & Whitney, Chance Vought, Sikorsky Aviation, Northrup, and five smaller companies. Two years after that, United Air Lines was formed to tie together the combine’s booming air-transport business. Phil Johnson moved to Chicago to head United Air Lines, soon turned over the reins of the Boeing division to Designer Egtvedt. Other young men hurried to Seattle as Boeing’s name spread—Edward Wells arrived at the age of 21, destined to design whole families of Boeing planes; hustling, roly-poly Wellwood Beall, 28, engineer, pilot and crack salesman who first taught engineering at the School of Aeronautics, then went off to sell Boeing planes to China.

The youngsters worked on a family of exciting new transports. In 1933 Boeing put out its 247, the country’s first twin-engined, all-metal transport that could keep its altitude with a full load on one engine. Boeing also put in such advances as trim tabs, supercharged engines and an automatic pilot, built 55 of the 247s for its United Air Lines sister subsidiary.

Five years later, Boeing’s team of Egtvedt, Beall and Wells flew its famed 74-passenger 314 flying boat (the “Clipper”), designed for the first regular transatlantic runs. Then they built another four-engined airliner, the “Stratoliner,” the first transport with a pressurized cabin for high-altitude travel. Boeing built 22 Stratoliners and 314s. But the planes, expensive to operate, and complicated challenges to airline maintenance crews, did not sell in quantity. Boeing lost a total of $4,500,000 on its twin giants and found itself in financial trouble.

One into Three. The turning point for Boeing came with its military planes, but it came in a way that almost wrecked Boeing. In Washington in 1934, a congressional committee began poking into Government airmail contracts, investigating charges that carriers were making exorbitant profits, that airline officers had run investments of a few thousands into millions. Boeing hotly denied the charges, said that it had started flying the air mail as the only transport company on its route, soon had two competitors. Nonetheless, the Roosevelt Administration abruptly canceled all airmail contracts; four months later Congress passed the Air Mail Act of 1934, forbidding any financial link between an airmail transport line and a manufacturer. In the meantime, the Army Air Corps was ordered to take over the airmail routes.

The order brought disaster: within a month and a half, ten Army pilots, untrained for bad-weather flying, were killed.

The great airmail purge was a disaster for Boeing. Under the law, United Aircraft & Transport had to split into three independent companies—United Air Lines, United Aircraft Corp.,† to make propellers, engines and planes, and Boeing Airplane Co. Says Allen: “We came out of it with less than $1,000,000 in liquid assets. We were still building the rest of an order for 136 P-26s for the Army, but that was it.” Bill Boeing disgustedly sold out his interests and retired. Phil Johnson, who by then was head of the parent United Aircraft & Transport organization, was “exiled” from the industry after the Government let it be understood that it did not want him to work for any plane or transport company. He went to Canada, where he helped organize Trans-Canada Air Lines for the Canadian government.

In its desperate plight, Boeing reacted in a characteristic manner: it decided to gamble $650,000 of its remaining bankroll on a plane to compete for an Army multi-engined bomber contract. To most bomber designers, the word “multi”meant just two engines. But Boeing, using its knowledge gained in big transports, planned on a true giant, the heaviest warplane ever built. Designed by Beall and Wells, Boeing’s prototype 6-17 weighed 22 tons, had four engines, could hit more than 200 m.p.h. for 3,000 miles at an altitude of 24,000 ft. Looking at it, a newsman exclaimed: “It’s a Flying Fortress,” and the name stuck.

Boeing took its new plane to demonstrate to Army Air Corps brass at Wright Field in Dayton. With an Army pilot in the cockpit, and Boeing’s Chief Test Pilot Leslie Tower aboard, Boeing’s 6-17 took off. But the pilot was unaware that the tail surfaces had a lock to keep them from being buffeted by the wind when on the ground. With the controls locked, the plane took off, lurched over on one wing, crashed and burned. Both Tower and the Army flyer were killed. Boeing collected $350,000 in insurance, but Douglas, with a twin-engined B18 in competition, walked off with the contract for 133 planes. Nevertheless, the Army Air Corps liked the Fortress well enough to order 13 for “service tests.” While the plane was proving itself, Boeing’s engineers went to work to’ build a better Flying Fortress. Beall and Wells put in bigger, goo-h.p. engines with turbo-superchargers, so that the Fort could operate at 38,000 ft. When World War II came along, Boeing was ready. Phil Johnson came back from his Canadian exile in 1939 to run the show. Bill Allen worked out production contracts. Wellwood Beall started the production lines humming. A year later, Boeing was in mass production. Orders were coming in so fast that Douglas and Lockheed also had to tool up to produce Boeing planes.

Bigger & Faster. The Air Force wanted the 6-17 to fight over Europe as a daylight bomber. To carry the air war across the Pacific to Japan, the U.S.

needed a bigger, faster bomber. By 1943 Boeing provided that, too. Boeing’s 6-29 Superfortress was twice as heavy as the latest model of its sister 6-17, and had a range of more than 3,500 miles.

While the first 6-29 was still being flight-tested, the Air Force dropped a bombshell in Boeing’s lap. The late General Oliver Echols, boss of Air Materiel Command, asked Beall: “We’re thinking of spending more on this airplane than on any other. Do you think we should do it?” The sum: $2 billion. Without batting an eye. Beall gave his conditions and his answer: “Yes.” By 1943, Boeing’s 6-29 was in full production at five plants. The U.S. needed the plane so badly that it was sped into production before Boeing could iron out all the bugs.

The first models were plagued by engine fires, tricky electrical systems, a hundred other deadly gremlins.

On a Wing & a Prayer. But in combat Boeing’s two Fortresses were unexcelled.

6-175 limped home almost broken in half from mid-air collisions with Nazi fighters, with tails and wings riddled like sieves, with three engines knocked out. In the Pacific more than 1,000 damaged 6-293 made the 750 miles from Japan to emergency landings on Iwo Jima. Boeing bombers made up 17% of all Air Force bombers, dropped 46% of all U.S. bombs on Europe, accounted for 67% of the enemy fighters shot down by bombers, dropped 96% of all the bombs that laid waste Japanese cities.

By war’s end the 6-175 and 8-295 were coming off the lines at the rate of 20 a day. Boeing alone made almost 7,000 of the total 12,371 6-173 produced in World War II, turned out 2,766 of the 3,970 6-293. At one of its Wichita, Kans. plants, Boeing also built 10,346 Kaydet trainers, more primary trainers than any other manufacturer, for fledgling pilots.

Through it all. President Johnson and Lawyer Allen were seldom out of sight of each other, flying in a 6-17 all over the U.S., wherever Boeing business took them.

Johnson by then was tiring and leaning heavily on Allen’s judgment. In September 1944. played out by the “damn war,” Phil Johnson collapsed in a Wichita hotel room and died of a cerebral hemorrhage.

The Jet Age. As Boeing’s new president. Bill Allen not only had to survive the postwar cutbacks and the disappointment of the Stratocruiser. He had to plan ahead for the jet age. In December 1947 Boeing’s six-engined B-47, the first jet designed to carry A-bombs, made its maiden flight. So far. Boeing has built more than 700 B-47s at Wichita; Lockheed and Douglas have also gone to work, and the orders are still rolling in.

Today, Boeing’s 600-m.p.h. B-47 is the backbone of U.S. air might. But it is still a relatively short-range plane, dependent on overseas bases and mid-air refueling.

The only truly intercontinental bomber is Convair’s piston and jet-engined B-36, which can fly 10,000 miles without refueling. To replace the B-36 with a speedier all-jet plane. Boeing poured more than 3,000,000 engineering man-hours into a new super-bomber, the B-52.

Boeing built two prototype B-52s at a cost of $20 million apiece (estimated price in mass production: $8.500,000), with eight Pratt & Whitney J57 jet engines, and swept-back wings. The plane, which has a 185-ft. wing span, weighs 350,000 Ibs., more than any other U.S.

bomber in history, has a towering 48-ft.

tail, higher than a four-story office building, a bomb bay like a railroad boxcar.

Speed: faster than the B-47. Range: comparable to the B-36. Even such hard-to-please pilots as SAC’s cigar-chomping General Curtis LeMay found few faults.

(When LeMay first flew Boeing’s B-52, Allen asked him anxiously what he thought. LeMay’s good-natured complaint: “The seats are too hard.”) How many Boeing will build is secret, but the Air Force promises that there will be enough for at least seven of LeMay’s SAC wings. The number: 200 or more.

The Payoff. With the B-47 and B-5 and its KC-97 program, Boeing is in the best shape ever. This year, sales will reach the $1 billion mark, and profits will probably hit $31 million, 48% more than the peak war years. This spring Boeing’s 14,419 stockholders got the added dividend of a two-for-one stock split.

If the 707 lives up to its promise, Bill Allen and his Boeing team will have another winner. But they will not ease up on the throttle. Last March, when Air Force Chief of Staff General Twining flew to Seattle for the roll-out of the first-production B-52A, he turned to Allen just before the big plane poked its nose through the hangar doors. Said Twining: “The minute that airplane rolls out —forget it. Do what you have in the past. Start thinking about the next one, a better one, a bigger one, a faster one.” Bill Allen’s answer to Twining is the greatest research and development program in Boeing’s history. Under Senior Vice President Wellwood Beall, Boeing’s engineering department has grown into an army of more than 5,000 top designers, engineers and draftsmen. To build better planes, Boeing this year will spend nearly $5,000,000 on research alone. It will also build a new high-velocity wind tunnel to produce speeds of 1,100 m.p.h.

The Missile Age. On the drawing boards are whole fleets of new Boeing planes. Beall’s designers are working on a supersonic intercontinental bomber, have another Air Force contract for an engineering study for nuclear-powered aircraft. In Boeing’s top-secret electronics laboratory, others are busy with a $200 million development and production contract for Boeing’s F99 “Bomarc,” a pilotless interceptor plane to send after bombers. It is in the secret missiles that Boeing sees the aircraft of the future. Bill Allen and Wellwood Beall are convinced that the airplane and the missile are growing ever closer, will eventually become one and the same. When that day comes, Boeing’s Allen will be ready, as before, to plunk down Boeing’s bankroll to back the aircraft its engineers build. Allen knows that the future will be risky, but he has unlimited confidence in Boeing’s team. Nevertheless, Allen likes to stroll over and gently finger the sharp spines of his blooming cactus plant, remembering the dark days nine years ago.

Says he: “It’s just enough to remind me that life is sometimes like that—thorny, but well rooted.”

†United Air Lines is now the third biggest U.S. airline (No. i: Pam Am; No. 2: American), with assets of $156 million; United Air craft is the biggest propeller and engine maker, has assets of $298 million, also makes planes (Vought) and helicopters (Sikorsky).