The new fighter also pioneered a concept that became part of every liquid-cooled American design thereafter: the “tunnel radiator.” Rather than mounting a bluff radiatorĬore right in the airstream, Boeing designed ducting that eliminated at least some of the radiator’s cooling drag. The FB-2 had a Boeing innovation that survives to this day: a tailhook.īoeing also went to school on the Fokker D.VII, which lent some of its key features, particularly the steel-tube fuselage, to the Model 15. The Navy called it the FB-1 (Fighter, Boeing) and the Army went with its own nomenclature, the PW-9 (Pursuit, Watercooled). In 1923 Boeing introduced its Model 15 biplane. Though Boeing ultimately came to be known as the preeminent big-airplane builder-four-engine flying boats, massive bombers, jumbo airliners-in the 1920s and ’30s it was a fighter company. Boeing, for its part, discovered the benefits of fast, simple, high-temperature arc welding over the classic oxyacetylene process, and it began to develop the efficient production-line methodology that became one of the company’s hallmarks. The Army consequently specified that a run of 180 DH-4s be renewed with steel-tube frames as DH-4Ms. Army officials had examined a steel-tubed Fokker D.VII after the war and quickly saw metal’s benefits over wood. The contract saved Boeing from becoming a small furniture-manufacturing firm, a fate that company executives had already begun to explore.Īn early-1920s deal to rebuild Army de Havilland DH-4s introduced Boeing to the intricacies of steel-tube fuselage construction. But Boeing had its own spruce-producing forests no need for them to buy the airframe’s wooden parts.
Boeing outbid everybody, including Thomas-Morse itself, which was so confident of winning that the company had already set up the jigs for the project. The MB-3A would become the Air Service’s go-to pursuit plane. It was the biggest single postwar aircraft contract up to that time. In 1920 the Army Air Service put out a bid for 200 Thomas-Morse MB-3A fighters, an upgraded version of the original 1919 MB-3. The Navy bought 50 Model 1 derivatives as trainers, and the Boeing Airplane Company was in business. That first floatplane was a clean-looking airplane for its time, and it grew into a small family of single-engine seabirds. But time after time, Boeing was willing to bet the farm that its crazy plans would prove profitable. Yes, there were stumbles along the way, some of which threatened to sink the company. That invented the high-speed jet bomber and the jumbo jet, and created the mold that to this day shapes jet airliners. That designed and built almost half of all the heavy bombers the U.S. The company that created some of the world’s biggest flying boats and helped make Pan American the world’s most important international airline. Army’s and Navy’s prime supplier of fighters. From that floatplane grew a corporation that in the 1920s and early ’30s was the U.S. Wealthy Seattle lumber company owner William Boeing was the moneyman, George Westervelt the MIT-trained engineer who designed the Model 1. And it accomplished that in more different categories of aircraft than did any other company in the history of aviation.ī&W stood for Boeing & Westervelt. The world’s largest aerospace company grew from a single simple, angular, twin-float seaplane: the 1916 B&W Model 1. Every successful company has to start somewhere, but the remarkable thing about Pacific Aero Products-today known as Boeing-is that it went on to design and build some of the most influential airplanes in the world. During its 100-year history, William Boeing’s company has developed many of the most iconic airplanes ever to take to the sky.
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