Jet Age: The Comet, the 707, and the Race to Shrink the World

206 Pages·2011·3.94 MB·English

by  Sam Howe Verhovek

Table of Contents

Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Preface

one - The de Havilland Comet
two - The Boeing 707 Jet Stratoliner
three - Dreamers and Aviators
four - Empires in the Sky
five - Ambassadors to the Air
six - The Comet Mystery
seven - The Race to Shrink the World

Epilogue
Acknowledgements
INDEX

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Published simultaneously in Canada
Photographs: p. xiii: United Airlines Creative Services; pp. 1, 149 (top): © BAE SYSTEMS; pp. 23, 81,
111, 211: The Boeing Company Collection at The Museum of Flight; pp. 37, 149 (bottom): Science
Museum / SSPL; p. 179 (left) © Boeing; (right) British Airways Heritage Centre
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Verhovek, Sam Howe.
Jet age : the Comet, the 707, and the race to shrink the world / Sam Howe Verhovek.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN : 978-1-10144439-9
1. Aeronautics, Commercial—History. 2. Jet planes—History. I. Title.
TL515.V
629.133’349—dc22

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Lisa, come fly with me
It is doubtful if aeroplanes will ever cross the ocean. . . . The public has greatly
over-estimated the possibilities of the aeroplane, imagining that in another
generation they will be able to fly over to London in a day. This is manifestly
impossible.
—William Pickering,
astronomer, Harvard University, 1908

From the commercial point of view, I see no prospect of large aeroplanes,
carrying large numbers of passengers, competing either in price, convenience,
safety or even in speed, with trains.
—Mervyn J. P. O’Gorman,
Superintendent, His Majesty’s Balloon Factory (UK), 1911

In the opinion of competent experts it is idle to look for a commercial future for
the flying machine. There is, and always will be, a limit to its carrying capacity
which will prohibit its employment for passenger or freight purposes in a
wholesale or general way. There are some, of course, who will argue that
because a machine will carry two people another may be constructed that will
carry a dozen, but those who make this contention do not understand the theory
of weight sustentation in the air.
—W. J. Jackman and Thomas Russell,
Flying Machines: Construction and Operation, 1912

They’ll never build ’em any bigger!
—C. N. “Monty” Monteith, chief engineer, Boeing Airplane Company, on
introduction of the ten-passenger Boeing 247, 1933
Preface
This is a book about the first generation of jet airliners and the people who
designed, built, and flew them. Long before there was a World Wide Web, the jet
airplane wove the world together by enabling people to travel great distances in
a matter of hours, and thus must rank very high on the list of humanity’s most
important technological creations. If medieval serfs or the Founding Fathers
were somehow transported forward in time to the present day, what would they
find most astonishing? Google Earth, perhaps. The iPhone, sure, though I
suspect that before too long they would rib us about all the dropped calls. But I
think there’s a good chance that they would be most amazed by our jetliners,
whizzing around up there at more than 500 miles per hour.
The dream of flight goes back to the very beginning, when man first saw bird,
but it is only in the last few generations that it has been fulfilled. Yet today the
modern airliner is in so many ways a victim of its own success, such a
commonplace that few of us even pause to look at one soaring in the sky or think
much about jet travel at all except when it inconveniences us, when our plane is