Boeing

History

Catalog — Aircraft

• June 15, 1916

  Boeing Model 1 Sheet pending

  Variants (1)

  • Modelo 1
• December 27, 1919

  Boeing B-1 Sheet pending

• June 2, 1923

  Boeing Model 15 Sheet pending

  Variants (20)

  • FB-1
  • FB-2
  • FB-3
  • FB-4
  • FB-5
  • FB-6
  • Modelo 15A (PW-9A)
  • Modelo 15B (PW-9B)
  • Modelo 15C (PW-9C)
  • Modelo 15D (PW-9D)
  • Modelo 58 (XP-4)
  • Modelo 67A (FB-7)
  • Modelo 67 (FB-5)
  • Modelo 68 (AT-3)
  • PW-9
  • PW-9A
  • PW-9B
  • PW-9C
  • PW-9D
  • XPW-9
• December 5, 1924

  Boeing NB Sheet pending

  Variants (5)

  • NB-1
  • NB-2
  • NB-3
  • NB-4
  • VNB-1
• July 7, 1925

  Boeing Model 40 Sheet pending

  Variants (16)

  • Model 40
  • Model 40A
  • Model 40B
  • Model 40B-2
  • Model 40B-4
  • Model 40C
  • Modelo 40
  • Modelo 40A
  • Modelo 40B
  • Modelo 40B-2
  • Modelo 40B-4
  • Modelo 40B-4A
  • Modelo 40C
  • Modelo 40H-4
  • Modelo 40X
  • Modelo 40Y
• November 3, 1926

  Boeing F2B Sheet pending

  Variants (5)

  • F2B-1
  • Modelo 66 (XP-8)
  • Modelo 69-B
  • Modelo 69 (XF2B-1)
  • XF2B-1
• February 3, 1928

  Boeing F3B Sheet pending

  Variants (3)

  • F3B-1
  • Modelo 74 (XF3B-1)
  • XF3B-1
• June 25, 1928

  Boeing P-12 Sheet pending

  Variants (30)

  • F4B-1
  • F4B-2
  • F4B-3
  • F4B-4
  • Model 100
  • Modelo 100
  • Modelo 100A
  • Modelo 100E
  • Modelo 100F
  • Modelo 101 (XP-12A)
  • Modelo 102B (P-12B)
  • Modelo 102 (P-12)
  • Modelo 218
  • Modelo 222 (P-12C)
  • Modelo 223 (F4B-2)
  • Modelo 227 (P-12D)
  • Modelo 234 (P-12E)
  • Modelo 235 (F4B-3)
  • Modelo 251 (P-12F)
  • Modelo 256
  • Modelo 267
  • Modelo 99 (F4B-1)
  • Modelos 83 y 89 (XF4B-1)
  • P-12
  • P-12B
  • P-12C
  • P-12D
  • P-12E
  • P-12F
  • XP-12A
• August 1928

  Boeing 80 Sheet pending

  Variants (9)

  • Model 80
  • Model 80A
  • Model 80A-1
  • Model 80B
  • Modelo 226
  • Modelo 80
  • Modelo 80A
  • Modelo 80A-1
  • Modelo 80B-1
• December 29, 1928

  Boeing Model 95 Sheet pending

  Variants (2)

  • Modelo 95
  • Modelo 95A
• July 1, 1929

  Boeing Model 203 Sheet pending

  Variants (4)

  • C-587K
  • Modelo 203
  • Modelo 203A
  • Modelo 204B
• May 6, 1930

  Boeing Monomail Sheet pending

  Variants (6)

  • Model 200
  • Model 221
  • Model 221A
  • Modelo 200
  • Modelo 221
  • Modelo 221A
• April 13, 1931

  Boeing YB-9 Sheet pending

  Variants (4)

  • Modelo 214 (Y1B-9)
  • Modelo 215 (XB-901 / YB-9)
  • Y1B-9A
  • YB-9
• March 20, 1932

  Boeing P-26 Peashooter Sheet pending

  Variants (8)

  • Model 281
  • Modelo 248 (XP-936)
  • Modelo 264 (YP-29 / XP-940)
  • Modelo 281
  • P-26A
  • P-26B
  • P-26C
  • XP-936
• February 8, 1933

  Boeing 247

  First flown on February 8, 1933, the Boeing 247 is regarded as the first modern airliner: an all-metal monoplane with retractable landing gear, an autopilot and de-icing equipment. Only 75 were built, because its very success drove the competition to Douglas and the lineage that produced the DC-3.

• December 1933

  Boeing-Stearman Model 75 Sheet pending

  Variants (15)

  • A75N1
  • N2S-1
  • N2S-2
  • N2S-3
  • N2S-4
  • N2S-5
  • NS-1 (Modelo 73)
  • PT-13
  • PT-13A
  • PT-13B
  • PT-13D
  • PT-17
  • PT-18
  • PT-27
  • X-70
• July 28, 1935

  Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress

  The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress was an American four-engined heavy bomber designed in the mid-1930s for the United States Army Air Corps. Fast for its size, able to work at high altitude and bristling with defensive guns at the expense of bomb load, it dropped more bombs than any other aircraft of the Second World War and ranks as the third most-produced bomber in history, after the Consolidated B-24 Liberator and the Junkers Ju 88. The design answered an Air Corps proposal issued on 8 August 1934 to replace the Martin B-10. Boeing built the Model 299 prototype at its own expense to a design led by E. Gifford Emery and Edward Curtis Wells, borrowing from the experimental XB-15 and the Model 247 airliner. It first flew on 28 July 1935 with Leslie Tower at the controls, and the name came from Richard Williams of The Seattle Times, who looked at the guns poking from the fuselage and called it a flying fortress. On 30 October 1935 the prototype stalled and crashed because the control gust locks had not been released, killing Major Ployer Peter Hill and Tower, disqualifying the aircraft from a competition won by the Douglas B-18 Bolo, and prompting the written pre-flight checklist that pilots still use. The Army nonetheless ordered thirteen service-test machines in January 1936, and the type entered service with the 2nd Bombardment Group at Langley Field. Development moved quickly. Exhaust-driven General Electric turbo-superchargers, derived from Sanford Moss's work, gave the bomber the operating altitude that shaped how it fought. Models A through D remained defensive in conception; the B-17E, with a fuselage stretched by roughly three metres, a far larger fin and gun positions in the tail, dorsal turret and a ventral ball turret, was the first built to attack. The B-17F carried the burden of 1943, and the definitive B-17G reached thirteen 12.7 mm machine guns including a chin turret; 8,680 of that version alone were built. In action, the Royal Air Force sent it against Wilhelmshaven on 8 July 1941 with disappointing results and later moved it to maritime patrol. Its defining campaign was the American daylight offensive over Europe, opened on 17 August 1942 against the marshalling yards at Rouen-Sotteville. The raids on the ball-bearing plants at Schweinfurt showed what unescorted daylight bombing cost: on 14 October 1943, remembered as Black Thursday, 77 of the 291 Fortresses despatched were lost, and deep missions were suspended until P-51 Mustang and P-47 Thunderbolt fighters with drop tanks could escort the bombers all the way. In the Pacific its career was shorter — caught up in the Pearl Harbor and Philippines attacks, effective in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, then displaced by the B-24 and B-29 from mid-1943, though it continued in search and rescue. Inventory peaked in August 1944 at 4,574 aircraft, and of the roughly 1.5 million tons of bombs Allied aircraft dropped on Germany and occupied Europe, more than 640,000 tons fell from B-17s. Its reputation rested as much on its ability to absorb damage and come home as on those totals; Luftwaffe pilots likened attacking a combat box formation to taking on a flying porcupine. It became the emblem of American air power, and a 1943 survey found that nine in ten people asked knew what a B-17 was. When production ended in May 1945, Boeing, Douglas and Vega had delivered 12,731 aircraft. Some forty survive in United States collections and about forty-six worldwide, only a handful of them airworthy; the oldest is The Swoose, a B-17D that fought in the Pacific in the opening days of the war.

• October 15, 1937

  Boeing XB-15 Sheet pending

  Variants (3)

  • XB-15
  • XBLR-1
  • XC-105
• June 7, 1938

  Boeing 314 Clipper Sheet pending

  Variants (3)

  • 314
  • 314A
  • C-98
• December 31, 1938

  Boeing 307 Stratoliner Sheet pending

  Variants (6)

  • C-75
  • Modelo 300
  • S-307
  • SA-307B
  • SA-307B-1
  • SB-307B
• July 9, 1942

  Boeing XPBB Sea Ranger Sheet pending

  Variants (2)

  • PBB-1
  • XPBB-1
• September 21, 1942

  Boeing B-29 Superfortress

  The Boeing B-29 Superfortress was the four-engined heavy bomber with which the United States carried the strategic air offensive to the Japanese home islands, and the most advanced aircraft to see combat in the Second World War. Its name deliberately echoed the B-17 Flying Fortress it succeeded, but the comparison undersells it: the B-29 was built for high-altitude strategic bombing and combined a pressurised cabin, dual-wheeled tricycle landing gear and an analogue-computer fire-control system that let a single gunner, coordinated by a fire-control officer, aim four remote turrets. Design and production cost some $3 billion — far more than the $1.9 billion spent on the Manhattan Project — making the B-29 the most expensive programme of the war, at a unit cost of $639,188. It also remains the only weapon system ever to have dropped atomic bombs in combat. That ambition was paid for during development. The first prototype took off from Boeing Field, Seattle, on 21 September 1942, and the combination of a design at the edge of the state of the art, demanding requirements and immense production pressure left a trail of setbacks. Engines were the chief cause of maintenance headaches and catastrophic failures: the four eighteen-cylinder, turbosupercharged Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclone radials of 2,200 hp each eventually became a dependable workhorse in large piston aircraft, but early examples suffered severe overheating. Pressurisation, developed by Garrett AiResearch, forced a characteristic compromise: the forward and rear crew compartments were pressurised while the bomb bays were not, the two being linked by a tunnel. Aircraft left the factories unfinished and had to be completed at open-air modification centres during a Kansas winter; that "Battle of Kansas" readied 150 aircraft over the five weeks from 10 March to 15 April 1944. The operational debut was no easier. Operation Matterhorn, ordered by Roosevelt as a promise to China, deployed the B-29 groups to five main bases in India and four forward fields in southern China: on 15 June 1944, 68 aircraft took off from the Chengdu bases and 47 bombed the Imperial Iron and Steel Works at Yawata, the first attack on the Japanese islands since the Doolittle Raid of April 1942. Supplying the effort over the Himalayas proved unsustainable and the campaign moved to the Marianas, from where the 73rd Bomb Wing flew a first mission of 111 aircraft against Tokyo on 24 November 1944. High-altitude daylight precision bombing achieved little against the jet stream and heavy cloud, and in early 1945 Major General Curtis LeMay, commanding XXI Bomber Command, ordered most of the defensive armament stripped out and the force sent in at night, at low level, with incendiaries. The result was the most destructive bombing raid in history: on the night of 9–10 March 1945, 279 B-29s destroyed 267,000 buildings and a quarter of Tokyo (Operation Meetinghouse), killing some 100,000 people. Less remembered, the aerial mining of Japanese ports and shipping lanes (Operation Starvation), begun in April 1945, choked the country's supply lines. In August, two B-29s modified under the Silverplate programme — bomb bay enlarged for Little Boy and Fat Man, fuel injection, reversible propellers and lightened armament — dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the 509th Composite Group. The B-29 outlasted the war. It was the bomber on which Strategic Air Command was founded on 21 March 1946, and for years the 509th's Silverplate aircraft were the only ones able to deliver a nuclear weapon; the arrival of the huge Convair B-36 saw it reclassified as a medium bomber. In Korea it flew some 20,000 sorties and dropped 220,000 short tons of bombs, used 12,000 lb Tarzon guided weapons against the Yalu bridges and, once Soviet MiG-15 jets appeared in 1950, was pushed onto night missions; its gunners were credited with 27 kills and 78 aircraft were lost. It also served abroad: the Royal Air Force was loaned 87 Superfortresses under the designation Washington B.1, equipping eight Bomber Command squadrons between March 1950 and the return of the final aircraft in March 1954 — two passed to the Royal Australian Air Force in 1952, and the electronic-intelligence machines soldiered on until 1958. A total of 3,970 were built and retirement came in the early 1960s, but the airframe outlived the bomber. From it came the B-50, re-engined with Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Majors, whose Lucky Lady II made the first non-stop flight around the world in 1949 in 94 hours; the KB-29 tanker of 1948, the first link in American aerial refuelling; the C-97 Stratofreighter transport and its KC-97 tanker version; the Model 377 Stratocruiser airliner and, from it, the outsized-cargo Guppies. Several B-29s also served as motherships for experimental aircraft, among them the Bell X-1 of the first supersonic flight. The Soviet Union, without licence and working from aircraft interned after emergency landings on its territory, produced 847 Tupolev Tu-4s, a copy of the B-29 that gave Moscow its first strategic bomber. Twenty-two examples survive, most on static display. The representative variant spanned 141 ft 3 in (43.05 m) with a wing area of 1,736 sq ft, reached 357 mph, climbed to a 31,850 ft ceiling, ranged 3,250 miles and was flown by a crew of eleven.

• November 9, 1944

  Boeing C-97 Stratofreighter Sheet pending

  Variants (10)

  • C-97A
  • C-97C
  • C-97G / C-97K / HC-97G
  • KC-97A
  • KC-97H
  • VC-97D / C-97D
  • XC-97
  • YC-97
  • YC-97A
  • YC-97B
• November 27, 1944

  Boeing XF8B Sheet pending

  Variants (1)

  • XF8B-1
• June 25, 1947

  Boeing B-50 Superfortress Sheet pending

  Variants (20)

  • B-50A
  • B-50B
  • B-50D
  • B-54A
  • DB-50D
  • EB-50B
  • KB-50
  • KB-50J
  • KB-50K
  • RB-50B
  • RB-50E
  • RB-50F
  • RB-50G
  • RB-54A
  • TB-50A
  • TB-50D
  • TB-50H
  • WB-50D
  • WB-50H
  • YB-50C
• July 8, 1947

  Boeing 377 Stratocruiser

  The Boeing 377 Stratocruiser, the civil derivative of the C-97 and ultimately of the B-29 bomber, first flew on 8 July 1947 and entered service with Pan American on 1 April 1949. With its double-deck fuselage and lower-deck lounge it embodied postwar transoceanic luxury, though only 56 were built.

• December 17, 1947

  Boeing B-47 Stratojet Sheet pending

  Variants (22)

  • B-47A
  • B-47B
  • B-47E
  • DB-47B
  • DB-47E / YDB-47E
  • EB-47E
  • EB-47L
  • ERB-47H
  • KB-47G
  • Modelos 424, 432 y 448
  • QB-47E
  • RB-47B
  • RB-47E
  • RB-47H
  • RB-47K
  • TB-47B
  • WB-47E
  • XB-47
  • XB-47D
  • YB-47F
  • YB-47J
  • YDB-47B
• April 15, 1952

  Boeing B-52 Stratofortress

  The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress is a subsonic, eight-engined heavy strategic bomber conceived in the early Cold War to deliver nuclear weapons anywhere on the globe without relying on intermediate bases. It has flown with the United States Air Force since 1955 and can carry up to 32,000 kg of weapons with a typical combat range of about 14,200 km without aerial refuelling. Its official name is seldom used: in the aviation community the aircraft is known by the nickname BUFF. It is the survivor of an entire generation of bombers — the B-58 Hustler, the B-1 Lancer and the B-2 Spirit all came later, and several retired first — and its blend of long reach, enormous payload and comparatively modest operating cost explains that longevity. The programme began with the performance characteristics circulated by Air Materiel Command on 23 November 1945 for a bomber able to carry out the strategic mission without depending on bases controlled by other countries. Boeing won the competition in June 1946 with Model 462, a straight-wing aircraft powered by six turboprops that bore little resemblance to the final machine. Two years of successive revisions followed — Model 464 and its derivatives, USAF pressure on speed and range, and a cancellation narrowly averted in December 1947 — until, over a weekend in a Dayton, Ohio hotel in October 1948, Boeing's engineering team recast the proposal as a swept-wing jet bomber. From that came the definitive layout of eight turbojets in four twin pods. The YB-52 prototype made its first flight on 15 April 1952 from Boeing Field, Seattle, with test pilot "Tex" Johnston at the controls. Production was split between the Seattle and Wichita plants to speed deliveries and ended in 1962 with the last series, the B-52H; 744 aircraft were built in all. The first operational B-52B reached the 93rd Bombardment Wing at Castle Air Force Base, California, on 29 June 1955, and the wing became fully operational in March 1956. Under Strategic Air Command the type became the airborne pillar of American nuclear deterrence, with standing ground alert and, for years, armed airborne patrols. In January 1957 three B-52Bs completed Operation Power Flite, a non-stop round-the-world flight covering 39,147 km in 45 hours and 19 minutes with several aerial refuellings — a deliberate demonstration of the bomber's global reach. Its combat debut was far removed from that nuclear brief. On 18 June 1965 thirty B-52Fs opened Operation Arc Light over South Vietnam; to exploit the conventional role, B-52Ds received the Big Belly modification, which raised the internal load to 27,000 kg carried as 108 bombs. The campaign culminated in December 1972 with Operation Linebacker II, the type's most intense and also most costly action, with losses to surface-to-air missiles and North Vietnamese fighters. Operation Desert Storm followed from 16 January 1991, and in September 1996 a bomber mission launched conventional CALCM cruise missiles on a 34-hour, 26,000 km round trip — an example of the global strike from home territory that defines the aircraft today. Since the mid-1990s only the B-52H remains in service; 102 were built and delivered between May 1961 and October 1962, and the USAF holds an inventory of 76 aircraft. It is the only version that left the factory with Pratt & Whitney TF33 turbofans instead of the J57 turbojets of earlier series. The upgrades under way — the CONECT avionics and datalink programme, an AESA radar and, above all, re-engining with the Rolls-Royce F130 selected in September 2021, which will bring the B-52J designation — are meant to keep the fleet in the line into the 2050s, more than a century after the prototype first flew. In parallel, NASA operated its own airframes from 1959 to 2007 as motherships that air-launched the X-15, X-24, X-38 and X-43, a chapter of the aerospace story the bomber shares with its military record.

• July 15, 1954

  Boeing 367-80 Sheet pending

• August 31, 1956

  Boeing C-135 Stratolifter Sheet pending

  Variants (16)

  • Boeing Modelo 717 (C-135/KC-135)
  • C-135A
  • C-135B
  • C-135F
  • EC-135G
  • EC-135L
  • JKC-135A
  • KC-135B
  • NC-135A
  • NKC-135A
  • RC-135S
  • RC-135T
  • RC-135U
  • RC-135V
  • RC-135W
  • VC-135B
• August 31, 1956

  Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker

  The Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker is the jet tanker with which the United States Air Force left piston-engined tankers behind. It grew out of the same demonstrator as the Boeing 707, the 367-80 or "Dash-80", but it is not a militarised 707: it has a narrower, shorter fuselage and a structure of its own, and Boeing gave it the internal designation Model 717. It first flew on 31 August 1956, entered service with Strategic Air Command in 1957, and the last example was delivered in 1965, as part of a C-135 family that exceeded 820 aircraft. Designed to refuel nuclear bombers, it became a force multiplier for tactical fighters and bombers over Vietnam and has taken part in every American air campaign since. Two re-engining programmes (TF33 on the E model, CFM56 on the R and T) and several avionics upgrades have kept it in the front line for almost seven decades, while the KC-46 Pegasus gradually takes over.

• December 20, 1957

  Boeing 707 Sheet pending

  Variants (9)

  • 707-120
  • 707-120B
  • 707-138B
  • 707-220
  • 707-320B
  • 707-320C
  • 707-320 Intercontinental
  • 707-420
  • Modelo 367-80
• April 22, 1958

  Boeing Vertol CH-46 Sea Knight Sheet pending

  Variants (16)

  • Boeing Vertol 107-II
  • CH-113A Voyageur
  • CH-113 Labrador
  • CH-46A
  • CH-46D
  • CH-46E
  • CH-46F
  • HKP-4
  • HKP-4C
  • KV-107-II
  • KV-107/IIA-17
  • KV-107/IIA-2
  • KV-107/IIA-SM-2
  • UH-46A
  • UH-46D
  • YHC-1A
• November 23, 1959

  Boeing 720 Sheet pending

  Variants (4)

  • 720
  • 720-040B
  • 720-047B
  • 720B
• September 21, 1961

  Boeing CH-47 Chinook

  The Boeing CH-47 Chinook is a heavy-lift transport helicopter with tandem rotors, conceived by Vertol in the late 1950s and built today by Boeing. It takes its name from the Chinook people of the American Pacific Northwest. Among Western heavy-lift helicopters only the Sikorsky CH-53 lifts more, and very few designs from the early 1960s can claim, as the Chinook can, more than sixty years in both production and frontline service. The formula is simple and effective. Two turboshafts beside the rear pylon drive two three-bladed rotors turning in opposite directions, so no power is wasted on an anti-torque rotor. A wide rear ramp, several doors and three ventral hooks let it carry troops, vehicles, artillery or underslung loads. The YHC-1B prototype first hovered on 21 September 1961, and in 1962 the type became the CH-47A. Vietnam made it indispensable: it placed artillery batteries on otherwise unreachable ridges, kept them supplied with ammunition and recovered downed aircraft. The B and C models brought more power, and the CH-47D, in service from 1982, renewed the engines, blades, cockpit and avionics. Special operations MH-47 versions followed and, in this century, the digital CH-47F and its Block II development. Exported to some twenty operators and licence-built in Italy and Japan, the Chinook has fought in the Falklands, the Iran-Iraq War, the Gulf, Afghanistan and Iraq, and has been a first-rate tool after natural disasters, from a hurricane in Florida to the Fukushima nuclear plant. Its civil sibling, the Model 234, works in logging, construction and firefighting.

• February 9, 1963

  Boeing 727 Sheet pending

  Variants (9)

  • 727-100
  • 727-100C
  • 727-100QC
  • 727-200
  • 727-200 Advanced
  • 727-200F Advanced
  • 727-232
  • 727-295
  • 727 RE
• April 9, 1967

  Boeing 737

  The Boeing 737 is the single-aisle, narrow-body jetliner that Boeing has built at its Washington state factories since the late 1960s, and very probably the most widespread passenger jet ever made. It was conceived in 1964 to complement the three-engined 727 on short, low-density routes, and its decisive advantage over rivals was the fuselage cross-section inherited from the 707, wide enough for six seats abreast where competitors offered five. The first 737-100 flew on April 9, 1967, and launch customer Lufthansa put it into service in February 1968; the stretched 737-200, born from a United Airlines order, joined airline fleets in April of the same year and became the version that actually sold. Since then the design has evolved through four generations — Original, Classic, Next Generation and MAX — that replaced the low-bypass Pratt & Whitney JT8D turbofans with CFM56 engines and later with CFM LEAP-1B engines, covering roughly 85 to 215 passengers depending on the model. Beyond airliners, the 737 has spawned business jets (the Boeing Business Jet family), freighters and military aircraft such as the T-43 navigator trainer, the C-40 Clipper transport, the E-7 Wedgetail airborne early warning aircraft and the P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft. It remained the best-selling commercial aircraft until the Airbus A320 family overtook it in orders in October 2019, and by September 2026 it had collected 17,641 orders and 12,739 deliveries. Its recent history is overshadowed by two 737 MAX 8 crashes in 2018 and 2019, which killed 346 people and led to the worldwide grounding of the MAX from March 2019 to November 2020.

• February 9, 1969

  Boeing 747

  The Boeing 747 was history's first wide-body airliner and, for half a century, the very symbol of intercontinental flight. Nicknamed the "Jumbo", its partial double-deck silhouette made it the most recognisable aircraft ever built: ten-abreast economy seating, some 366 passengers in a three-class layout, a pronounced 37.5-degree wing sweep and a Mach 0.85 cruise. It was born in 1966 from a Pan Am order, when Boeing bet the company on an unprecedented leap in scale: an aircraft two and a half times the size of the 707 with a 30 per cent lower cost per unit of passenger-distance. Its two defining features, the nose door and the raised flight deck, came from a military competition Boeing lost, the CX-HLS. Building it required raising the world's largest building by volume at Everett, and the programme went from paper to first flight in barely 28 months, on 9 February 1969. It entered service with Pan Am on 22 January 1970 and cut seat-mile costs so sharply that it turned long-haul aviation into a mass phenomenon: the age of intercontinental tourism begins with it. The family grew from the original 747-100 to the heavier 747-200, the shortened ultra-long-range 747SP, the stretched-upper-deck 747-300, the two-crew 747-400 —the best-selling version, with 694 delivered— and the 747-8, the longest airliner in service. Its swing nose also made it the world's reference freighter and the basis of a family of derivatives with no equivalent: the Dreamlifter that carries 787 sections, NASA's two Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, the presidential VC-25As, the four E-4 airborne command posts and the flying observatory SOFIA. Production ended in 2023 after 1,574 aircraft delivered across a 54-year run, a record unmatched by any other commercial four-engine jet. The economics of long-range twinjets displaced it and the pandemic finished the job; yet its gradual retirement from passenger service has not dimmed its status: few machines have changed the way humanity travels as much.

• November 29, 1974

  Boeing Vertol YUH-61 Sheet pending

  Variants (2)

  • Vertol 179 civil
  • YUH-61A
• August 9, 1976

  Boeing YC-14 Sheet pending

  Variants (1)

  • Boeing YC-14
• September 26, 1981

  Boeing 767 Sheet pending

  Variants (8)

  • 767-100
  • 767-200
  • 767-200ER
  • 767-300
  • 767-300ER
  • 767-300F
  • 767-400ER
  • 767 alargado
• February 19, 1982

  Boeing 757 Sheet pending

  Variants (5)

  • 757-200
  • 757-200M
  • 757-200PF
  • 757-225
  • 757-300
• April 30, 1985

  British Aerospace Harrier II

  The Harrier II is the second generation of the vertical/short take-off and landing (V/STOL) combat aircraft pioneered by the British Harrier. It is a single-engine attack jet, powered by one Rolls-Royce Pegasus turbofan with four vectoring nozzles, built in the United States by McDonnell Douglas (now part of Boeing) as the AV-8B and in the United Kingdom by British Aerospace as the Harrier GR5, GR7 and GR9. Both branches share the airframe, wing and engine but differ in avionics, weapons and self-protection systems, which is why this entry treats them as a single family. The programme began in 1973 as a joint Anglo-American effort to cure the first Harrier's main weakness, its limited range and payload. Britain pulled out in 1975, and McDonnell Douglas carried on alone, reworking the AV-8A with a larger supercritical composite wing, a raised cockpit and a new fuselage. The first development AV-8B flew on 5 November 1981, the year British Aerospace rejoined the project, and the first GR5 assembled at Dunsfold took off on 30 April 1985. Later upgrades added night attack (AV-8B Night Attack and GR7) and radar (Harrier II Plus); around 340 aircraft were built over a production run of some twenty-two years that closed in 2003. The United States Marine Corps flew the type in front-line service from January 1985; the Spanish Navy became its first export customer with the EAV-8B Matador II, and the Italian Navy took it to sea aboard its light carriers. In Britain it served with the RAF and, through Joint Force Harrier, with the Royal Navy as well. Operating from assault ships, small carriers and rough forward bases, it saw combat in the 1991 Gulf War, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. The United Kingdom retired its fleet abruptly in December 2010 for budgetary reasons and sold the airframes to the United States as a source of spares; the Marine Corps stood down its last Harriers in June 2026. Its successor is the F-35B Lightning II, direct heir to the idea of a combat aircraft able to live away from conventional runways.

• September 15, 1991

  McDonnell Douglas C-17 Globemaster III

  The McDonnell Douglas C-17 Globemaster III is the large strategic military transport that the United States Air Force (USAF) ordered in the 1980s to replace the ageing Lockheed C-141 Starlifter and to take over part of the work of the giant C-5 Galaxy. What sets it apart is that it combines the intercontinental range and cargo hold of a strategic airlifter with the abilities of a tactical transport: it can land heavy loads on short, narrow and austere runways, and it can back up under its own power thanks to its thrust reversers. It grew out of the 1970s AMST programme and, in particular, McDonnell Douglas's YC-15 prototype, from which it inherited externally blown flaps. It won the C-X competition in 1981, first flew on 15 September 1991 at Long Beach, California, and formally entered service on 17 January 1995, after a troubled development in which cost overruns, delays and a failed structural wing test almost led to its cancellation. After the 1997 merger Boeing took over the programme and built the aircraft at Long Beach until 2015: 279 were produced, 223 for the USAF and the rest for the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, India, Kuwait and the European heavy airlift consortium based at Pápa, Hungary. Powered by four Pratt & Whitney F117 turbofans and flown by a crew of three, it has taken part in everything from the 2003 combat airdrop over northern Iraq to the 2021 Kabul evacuation, when one aircraft carried 823 people on a single flight, and it remains the backbone of American military airlift.

• June 12, 1994

  Boeing 777 Sheet pending

  Variants (8)

  • 777-200
  • 777-200ER
  • 777-200LR
  • 777-300
  • 777-300ER
  • 777-8
  • 777-9
  • 777F
• November 29, 1995

  Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet

  The F/A-18E/F Super Hornet is a supersonic, twin-engine, carrier-based multirole fighter that began life as an enlarged development of the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet and is now built by Boeing. The E is a single-seater, while the F carries a crew of two in tandem. It kept its predecessor's designation so that it could be sold to Congress as a low-risk derivative, yet it is essentially a new aircraft: roughly 20% bigger, with a third more internal fuel, a larger wing, more powerful F414 engines and a much smaller frontal radar signature. Navy crews call it the “Rhino”, a nickname that keeps it distinct from older Hornets on the radio. The programme grew out of the turmoil that hit US naval aviation at the end of the Cold War. The cancellation of the A-12 Avenger II in 1991, the demise of a navalised F-22 and deep budget cuts left the Navy without a replacement for the A-6 Intruder and without an affordable successor to the F-14 Tomcat. Ordered in 1992, the Super Hornet first flew on 29 November 1995 at St. Louis. Full-rate production began in September 1997, one month after Boeing took over McDonnell Douglas, with Northrop Grumman building the centre and aft fuselage and the vertical tails. It joined the fleet in 1999 and reached initial operating capability in September 2001 with squadron VFA-115. Since then it has been the backbone of American carrier air wings. It replaced the F-14, the A-6, the S-3 Viking and the KA-6D tanker, can refuel other aircraft from a buddy store, and spawned the EA-18G Growler electronic-warfare variant. It has flown combat missions over Iraq and Afghanistan, against the Islamic State and against the Houthis in the Red Sea, and in 2017 it scored its first air-to-air kill, a Syrian Su-22. Only two foreign customers have bought it: Australia, which took 24 F/A-18Fs from 2010 as a stop-gap after retiring the F-111, and Kuwait, with 22 single-seaters and 6 two-seaters. Boeing pitched it widely, to Brazil, India, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Switzerland and Spain among others, and usually lost to the F-35, the Rafale, the Gripen or the Typhoon. The Block II standard, with the APG-79 electronically scanned radar, and Block III, with a large touchscreen cockpit and open mission systems, have kept it relevant. Production was due to end in 2027, and the Navy plans to replace it with the future F/A-XX from the 2030s. The very first Super Hornet built has been on display at the National Museum of Transportation in St. Louis since 2024.

• September 2, 1998

  Boeing 717

  The Boeing 717 is an American five-abreast narrow-body airliner with two rear-mounted engines, conceived for the 100-seat market. It originated inside McDonnell Douglas in the early 1990s as the MD-95, a shortened derivative of the MD-80 and the last link in the broader DC-9 family, and it inherited that lineage almost intact: it seats up to 134 passengers, has a design range of 2,060 nautical miles and is powered by two Rolls-Royce BR715 turbofans mounted at the rear of the fuselage. The programme changed its name because of a corporate merger. When Boeing absorbed McDonnell Douglas in August 1997, most industry observers expected the MD-95 to be cancelled; instead Boeing pressed ahead and rebranded the aircraft as the Boeing 717, reusing a designation the company had applied to the C-135 Stratolifter military transport and the KC-135 Stratotanker. The launch order had been signed by ValuJet Airlines, later renamed AirTran Airways, in October 1995, and that same carrier would receive both the first and the last airframe. The 717 had a short commercial life and modest sales, but an excellent operational record. Production closed in May 2006 after 155 aircraft had been delivered, and the type has never been involved in a hull loss or a fatal accident. As of November 2024, 99 examples remained in service; Delta Air Lines, its largest operator, and Hawaiian Airlines were still flying it in 2025.

• September 18, 2000

  Boeing X-32 Sheet pending

  Variants (2)

  • X-32A
  • X-32B
• May 22, 2002

  Boeing X-45 Sheet pending

  Variants (2)

  • X-45A
  • X-45C
• July 20, 2007

  Boeing X-48 Sheet pending

  Variants (2)

  • X-48B
  • X-48C
• April 25, 2009

  Boeing P-8 Poseidon Sheet pending

  Variants (2)

  • P-8A Poseidon
  • P-8I Neptune
• December 15, 2009

  Boeing 787 Dreamliner Sheet pending

  Variants (3)

  • 787-10
  • 787-8
  • 787-9
• May 26, 2010

  Boeing X-51 Waverider Sheet pending

• April 27, 2011

  Boeing Phantom Ray Sheet pending

• June 1, 2012

  Boeing Phantom Eye Sheet pending

• September 25, 2015

  Boeing KC-46 Pegasus Sheet pending

• December 20, 2016

  Boeing T-7 Red Hawk Sheet pending

• September 19, 2019

  Boeing MQ-25 Stingray Sheet pending

• —

  Boeing XP-9 Sheet pending

• —

  Boeing OC-135B Open Skies Sheet pending

• —

  Boeing C-32 Sheet pending

  Variants (2)

  • C-32A
  • C-32B
• —

  Boeing Model 2 Sheet pending

  Variants (3)

  • Modelo 2
  • Modelo 3
  • Modelo 4
• —

  Boeing E-4 Sheet pending

  Variants (2)

  • E-4A
  • E-4B
• —

  Boeing Model 8 Sheet pending

• —

  Boeing VC-25 Sheet pending

  Variants (2)

  • VC-25A
  • VC-25B
• —

  Boeing XF6B Sheet pending

• —

  Boeing T-43 Sheet pending

  Variants (2)

  • CT-43A
  • T-43A
• —

  Boeing TB Sheet pending

• —

  Boeing XP-15 Sheet pending

• —

  Boeing A160 Hummingbird Sheet pending

  Variants (2)

  • A160
  • A160T
• —

  Boeing GA-1 Sheet pending

  Variants (2)

  • GA-1
  • GA-2
• —

  Boeing YAL-1 Sheet pending

• —

  Boeing MQ-28 Ghost Bat Sheet pending

• —

  Boeing E-6 Mercury Sheet pending

  Variants (2)

  • E-6A
  • E-6B
• —

  Boeing CQM-121 Pave Tiger Sheet pending

• —

  Boeing Model 7 Sheet pending

• —

  EA-18 Sheet pending

• —

  Boeing X-40 Sheet pending

• —

  Boeing Model 42 Sheet pending

  Variants (3)

  • XCO-7
  • XCO-7A
  • XCO-7B
• —

  Boeing XP-8 Sheet pending

• —

  Boeing E-7 Wedgetail Sheet pending

• —

  MV-22 Sheet pending

• —

  Boeing Model 64 Sheet pending

• —

  Boeing X-37 Sheet pending

  Variants (2)

  • X-37A
  • X-37B
• —

  Boeing E-3 Sentry Sheet pending

  Variants (7)

  • E-3A
  • E-3B
  • E-3C
  • E-3D Sentry AEW.1
  • E-3F
  • E-3G
  • EC-137D
• —

  Boeing XP-7 Sheet pending

• —

  Boeing NC-135 Sheet pending

• —

  MH-139 Sheet pending

• —

  Boeing Insitu RQ-21 Blackjack Sheet pending

• —

  AH-64 Sheet pending

  Variants (1)

  • Hughes YAH-64
• —

  Boeing XPB Sheet pending

• —

  Boeing Insitu MQ-27 ScanEagle Sheet pending

• —

  F-47 Sheet pending

• —

  Boeing L-15 Scout Sheet pending

  Variants (3)

  • Boeing L-15 Scout (Modelo 451)
  • XL-15
  • YL-15
• —

  Boeing C-137 Stratoliner Sheet pending

  Variants (4)

  • C-137C
  • VC-137A
  • VC-137B
  • VC-137C
• —

  Boeing Model 6D Sheet pending

• —

  Boeing KC-97 Stratofreighter Sheet pending

  Variants (5)

  • HC-97G
  • KC-97E
  • KC-97F
  • KC-97G
  • KC-97L
• —

  Boeing EC-135 Sheet pending

  Variants (7)

  • EC-135A
  • EC-135C
  • EC-135H
  • EC-135J
  • EC-135K
  • EC-135N
  • EC-135P
• —

  Boeing Model 360 Sheet pending

• —

  Boeing E-767 Sheet pending

• —

  Boeing XP-4 Sheet pending

• —

  Boeing YQM-94 B-Gull Sheet pending

• —

  Boeing KC-767 Sheet pending

  Variants (2)

  • KC-767A
  • KC-767J
• —

  Boeing Model 204 Sheet pending

• —

  Boeing XAT-15 Sheet pending

  Variants (1)

  • XAT-15
• —

  Boeing P-29 Sheet pending

  Variants (4)

  • XF7B-1
  • YP-29
  • YP-29A
  • YP-29B
• —

  Boeing Condor Sheet pending

• —

  Boeing RC-135 Sheet pending

  Variants (10)

  • RC-135A
  • RC-135B
  • RC-135C
  • RC-135D
  • RC-135E
  • RC-135M
  • RC-135S Cobra Ball
  • RC-135U Combat Sent
  • RC-135V/W Rivet Joint
  • RC-135X Cobra Eye
• —

  Boeing Model 81 Sheet pending

• —

  Boeing X-50 Dragonfly Sheet pending

• —

  Boeing WC-135 Constant Phoenix Sheet pending

  Variants (4)

  • WC-135B
  • WC-135C
  • WC-135R
  • WC-135W
• —

  Boeing Bird of Prey Sheet pending

• —

  Boeing C-40 Clipper Sheet pending

  Variants (3)

  • C-40A
  • C-40B
  • C-40C

Catalog — Rockets

• 1967

  Saturn V

  The Saturn V was the three-stage super heavy-lift launch vehicle NASA developed for the Apollo programme and the first to carry humans beyond low Earth orbit. Thirteen vehicles flew between 1967 and 1973; nine sent twenty-four astronauts towards the Moon and the last one placed Skylab in orbit.