Great Planes - Boeing 747

Video from the channel ElementalShield about Boeing 747, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 53:19. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

Episode of the Great Planes series dedicated to the Boeing 747, produced around 1989, when the model turned twenty-one. It combines narration, period footage and interviews with Boeing executives and engineers to explain how the aircraft was conceived, built and certified, and what effect it had on international air transport.

The documentary reviews Boeing's track record with large aircraft: the XB-15, the Model 314 Clipper flying boat commissioned by Juan Trippe for Pan American, the pressurized Stratoliner, the B-17 and B-29 bombers, the Stratocruiser and the Dash 80, which gave rise to the KC-135 and the 707. The loss to Lockheed in the C-5A military transport competition in September 1965 freed up resources for the 747. Trippe and Boeing president William Allen sealed a verbal agreement in early 1966, and Boeing required orders from at least three airlines for 50 aircraft before launching the program that summer.

To build it, Boeing erected in Everett, about 40 miles north of Seattle, the largest building in the world by volume, with 43 acres under one roof and a steep-grade railway from Puget Sound. The work suffered 67 straight days of rain, and the workforce was nicknamed The Incredibles. Joe Sutter led the design, which went through nearly 50 wind-tunnel configurations. Pratt and Whitney developed the high-bypass JT9D engine and tested it on a B-52. The first 747 rolled out of the factory on September 30, 1968, with 26 airlines holding 158 orders, and the FAA certified it in December 1969 after about 1,500 hours of flight testing, including rotation-limited takeoff tests, aborted-stop tests and flutter testing at Mach 0.99. The episode also covers the 200B, SR, SP, Combi and freighter versions, the 300 with the extended upper deck, and the 747-400, with winglets, a two-crew cockpit and a nonstop London-Sydney flight in 1989.