Jet Age

Author: Sam Howe Verhovek
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 158333436X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
The captivating story of the titans, engineers, and pilots who raced to design a safe and lucrative passenger jet. In Jet Age, journalist Sam Howe Verhovek explores the advent of the first generation of jet airliners and the people who designed, built, and flew them. The path to jet travel was triumphal and amazingly rapid-less than fifty years after the Wright Brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk, Great Britain led the world with the first commercial jet plane service. Yet the pioneering British Comet was cursed with a tragic, mysterious flaw, and an upstart Seattle company put a new competitor in the sky: the Boeing 707 Jet Stratoliner. Jet Age vividly recreates the race between two nations, two global airlines, and two rival teams of brilliant engineers for bragging rights to the first jet service across the Atlantic Ocean in 1958. At the center of this story are great minds and courageous souls, including Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, who spearheaded the development of the Comet, even as two of his sons lost their lives flying earlier models of his aircraft; Sir Arnold Hall, the brilliant British aerodynamicist tasked with uncovering the Comet's fatal flaw; Bill Allen, Boeing's deceptively mild-mannered president; and Alvin "Tex" Johnston, Boeing's swashbuckling but supremely skilled test pilot. The extraordinary airplanes themselves emerge as characters in the drama. As the Comet and the Boeing 707 go head-to-head, flying twice as fast and high as the propeller planes that preceded them, the book captures the electrifying spirit of an era: the Jet Age. In the spirit of Stephen Ambrose's Nothing Like It in the World, Verhovek's Jet Age offers a gorgeous rendering of an exciting age and fascinating technology that permanently changed our conception of distance and time, of a triumph of engineering and design, and of a company that took a huge gamble and won.

Tex Johnston

Author: A. M. "Tex" Johnston
Publisher: Smithsonian Institution
ISBN: 1588344479
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
One of America's most daring and accomplished test pilots, Tex Johnston flew the first US jet airplanes and, in a career spanning the 1930s through the 1970s, helped create the jet age at such pioneering aersospace companies as Bell Aircraft and Boeing.

The Boeing 707

Author: Barry J. Schiff
Publisher: Aero Pub Incorporated
ISBN: 9780816856534
Category : Boeing 707 (Jet transports)
Languages : en
Pages : 78

Book Description
Text, photographs, and line drawings trace the developmental history of the commercial passenger jet and the "Great Race" between Boeing, Convair, and Douglas Aircraft Companies.

Boeing 707

Author: Wolfgang Borgmann
Publisher: Schiffer Military History
ISBN: 9780764363450
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 144

Book Description
Concise visual history of Boeing's first jetliner.

Boeing 707 Group

Author: Graham M. Simons
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473861365
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 513

Book Description
A definitive look at the plane that revolutionized air travel and its place in aviation history from the author of Comet! The World’s First Jet Airliner. The Boeing 707 family—that includes the forerunner Model 367-80, the KC-135 series of military transports and the slightly smaller Model 720—was the pioneer of the sweptback wing, incorporating podded engines borrowed from the B-47 military bomber. It was the aircraft that many regard as the design that really ushered in the Jet-Age. This book from the established aviation historian Graham Simons examines the entire course of the Boeing 707’s history, charting an impressive design evolution and illustrating the many ways in which the 707’s legacy continues to be felt to this day. In laying the foundation for Boeing’s preeminence on the world’s jetliner market during the 1980s and 90s, the 707 paved the way for future innovations in both civilian and military fields and Graham Simons has put together an image-packed history that records the historic and landmark milestones of this iconic aircraft type. “The book is well worth the price and will provide many hours of intriguing reading and research support. It is a good addition to one’s aviation bookshelf.”—Air Power History “An impressive volume that is well-written, and easy to read. Its research is of a high standard. It will, of course, appeal to Boeing 707/C-135 ‘enthusiasts’ and as such could well become a ‘Standard Reference Work’ on its subject.”—NZ Crown Mines

Flying Blind

Author: Peter Robison
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0593082516
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BUSINESS BEST SELLER • A suspenseful behind-the-scenes look at the dysfunction that contributed to one of the worst tragedies in modern aviation: the 2018 and 2019 crashes of the Boeing 737 MAX. An "authoritative, gripping and finely detailed narrative that charts the decline of one of the great American companies" (New York Times Book Review), from the award-winning reporter for Bloomberg. Boeing is a century-old titan of industry. It played a major role in the early days of commercial flight, World War II bombing missions, and moon landings. The planemaker remains a cornerstone of the U.S. economy, as well as a linchpin in the awesome routine of modern air travel. But in 2018 and 2019, two crashes of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 killed 346 people. The crashes exposed a shocking pattern of malfeasance, leading to the biggest crisis in the company’s history—and one of the costliest corporate scandals ever. How did things go so horribly wrong at Boeing? Flying Blind is the definitive exposé of the disasters that transfixed the world. Drawing from exclusive interviews with current and former employees of Boeing and the FAA; industry executives and analysts; and family members of the victims, it reveals how a broken corporate culture paved the way for catastrophe. It shows how in the race to beat the competition and reward top executives, Boeing skimped on testing, pressured employees to meet unrealistic deadlines, and convinced regulators to put planes into service without properly equipping them or their pilots for flight. It examines how the company, once a treasured American innovator, became obsessed with the bottom line, putting shareholders over customers, employees, and communities. By Bloomberg investigative journalist Peter Robison, who covered Boeing as a beat reporter during the company’s fateful merger with McDonnell Douglas in the late ‘90s, this is the story of a business gone wildly off course. At once riveting and disturbing, it shows how an iconic company fell prey to a win-at-all-costs mentality, threatening an industry and endangering countless lives.

The Decadent Society

Author: Ross Douthat
Publisher: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 1476785252
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
From the New York Times columnist and bestselling author of Bad Religion, a “clever and stimulating” (The New York Times Book Review) portrait of how our turbulent age is defined by dark forces seemingly beyond our control. The era of the coronavirus has tested America, and our leaders and institutions have conspicuously failed. That failure shouldn’t be surprising: Beneath social-media frenzy and reality-television politics, our era’s deep truths are elite incompetence, cultural exhaustion, and the flight from reality into fantasy. Casting a cold eye on these trends, The Decadent Society explains what happens when a powerful society ceases advancing—how the combination of wealth and technological proficiency with economic stagnation, political stalemate, and demographic decline creates a unique civilizational crisis. Ranging from the futility of our ideological debates to the repetitions of our pop culture, from the decline of sex and childbearing to the escapism of drug use, Ross Douthat argues that our age is defined by disappointment—by the feeling that all the frontiers are closed, that the paths forward lead only to the grave. Correcting both optimism and despair, Douthat provides an enlightening explanation of how we got here, how long our frustrations might last, and how, in renaissance or catastrophe, our decadence might ultimately end.

Boeing 707

Author: Ron Mak
Publisher: Historic Commercial Aircraft Series
ISBN: 9781913870898
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 96

Book Description
The first widely used commercial jet, the Boeing 707, brought America into the 'Jet Age' of the 1950s and created the template for worldwide air travel today. The 707 remained in production until 1978, then was retired to make way for more-modern jetliners. This book provides looks at a wide range of Boeing 707 variants in service around the world.

The Road to the 707

Author: William H. Cook
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Book Description
This book outlines the critical engineering discoveries leading to the jet transport age - from observations of birds in flight to modern jet transports. Starting with the Wright Brothers, it traces a path to the Boeing XB-47 swept-wing jet bomber, ending with the first generation of commercial jet transports: the Comet, the Convair 990, the DC-8, and the 707. Chapters include: The Pioneers; Airmail and the Early Transports; The 247 Airliners; The DC-3 and the Four-Engine Transports; The Four-Engine Bombers; The War Years; The Turbo-Jet Engine; The GE TG-180 Jet Engine; The Boeing High-Speed Wind Tunnel; The Swept Wing; The Jet Bomber; The Dash-80 Prototype; The 707-DC-8 Competition; and The Fan Engine. A clearly-written and easy-to-read book that is a must-read for all aircraft enthusiasts. William H. Cook started working for Boeing Engineering in 1938. There he held many prominent positions, including Manager of High-speed Wind Tunnel Design; B-29 Assistant Project Engineer; XB-47 Aerodynamics Unit Chief; and Chief of Technical Staff, Transport Division. Cook retired in 1974, but his engineering expertise is still in use today.

Growing Up Boeing

Author: Rebecca Wallick
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780991364800
Category : Airplanes
Languages : en
Pages : 342

Book Description
Part memoir, part biography, Growing Up Boeing tells the story of the pioneers of the Golden Age of commercial jet transports from an insider's perspective. Take a nostalgic flight back in time to the dawn of the jet age-1950s through 1980s-when the best experimental test pilots flew by the seat of their pants, putting new commercial jets through tests that stressed and pushed the edge of performance envelopes, discovering their limits and tolerances. Fly along on demonstration and proving flights as the test pilots help Boeing sell the airplanes to airlines around the world, meeting a few celebrities along the way. See how they lived their lives in the air and on the ground-their adventurous spirits, need for speed, leisure activities and families. Secrets big and small are revealed, as are hair-raising moments when the hazards, the incidents, near accidents, and tragic events inherent in exploring the limits of aeronautical technology and new airplane designs are described. This artfully narrated account breathes life into the extremely personal and human experiences that have, in some magical way, been shared at some level by so many, and provides more than a hint of what has made this aircraft manufacturer legendary.