Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and How Stuff Works and I love
Speaker 1: all things tech. And as I record this, there is
Speaker 1: an ongoing story in tech and aviation news. You've probably
Speaker 1: heard about it that's focusing on the troubles with Boeing's
Speaker 1: seven thirty seven Max aircraft. So far, it's resulted in
Speaker 1: two fatal accidents in less than half a year, which
Speaker 1: led to the entire fleet of seven thirty seven Max
Speaker 1: aircraft being grounded across the world, while lots of people
Speaker 1: are looking into it and figuring out how to fix
Speaker 1: things and how to prevent such tragedies from happening in
Speaker 1: the future. Now, in a subsequent episode, I'll look into
Speaker 1: that specific problem more closely, because obviously it is very important.
Speaker 1: A lot of people lost their lives in those tragedies.
Speaker 1: But today we're going to look at the history, the
Speaker 1: origins of Boeing and the role that the company has
Speaker 1: played in technology over the years, not just in commercial jets,
Speaker 1: but also military technology like helicopters and bombers and things
Speaker 1: like that, and missiles as well as even components for
Speaker 1: space vehicles. And the company is more than a century
Speaker 1: old at this point. So how did it all get started? Well,
Speaker 1: we should probably begin by focusing on the founder of
Speaker 1: the company itself, William E. Boeing. William E. Bowing was
Speaker 1: born in eighteen eighty one in Detroit, Michigan, and his
Speaker 1: is not a rags to riches story. It's more like
Speaker 1: a riches to holy cow. That's a lot of money
Speaker 1: riches story. His father was Wilhelm Boeing. Uh that spelling
Speaker 1: of Boeing is slightly different from the modern spelling. Modern
Speaker 1: spelling is b o e i n g the Anglicized
Speaker 1: spelling of Boeing, but originally it was b oh with
Speaker 1: an oombl out i n g. So. Hillhelm Boeing immigrated
Speaker 1: from Europe to the United States in eighteen sixty eight.
Speaker 1: Wilhelm himself was from a well to do family, though
Speaker 1: he did not have a fortune to his name upon
Speaker 1: arriving in the US. He had a lot of connections
Speaker 1: which helped him out. But he didn't exactly come over
Speaker 1: to the States with pockets full of cash. He had
Speaker 1: to make his own fortune. He would meet a man
Speaker 1: named carte Ortmann, who essentially helped Wilhelm get into the
Speaker 1: lumber trade, where he would flourish and he amassed a fortune.
Speaker 1: He also got into mining during his own lifetime. The
Speaker 1: mining operations that he created weren't terribly um profitable, but
Speaker 1: they would prove to be so in the long run.
Speaker 1: It was just unfortunately after he had already passed away.
Speaker 1: He also eventually married uh cart Portman's daughter, Marie, and
Speaker 1: they had three kids, including William E. Boeing Uh. He
Speaker 1: was born into wealth as a result, and Wilhelm would
Speaker 1: die in eight nine. He contracted influence. He actually died
Speaker 1: on a train ride back home. William Boeing was only
Speaker 1: eight years old at that time. His mother remarried and
Speaker 1: he was sent off to attend a prestigious boarding school
Speaker 1: in Switzerland. So talk about a life that I can't
Speaker 1: really identify with at all. He would return to the States.
Speaker 1: He attended other rather exclusive prep schools before he would
Speaker 1: eventually enter Yale University, and he decided to study engineering.
Speaker 1: Now at the time, the engineering program at Yale was
Speaker 1: a three year program, but Boeing wanted to pursue his
Speaker 1: own fortune a little earlier than that, and so he
Speaker 1: draw out of university after just two years. He then
Speaker 1: decided to move to the Pacific Northwest and following his
Speaker 1: father's footsteps and get into the lumber trade. At this point,
Speaker 1: the Michigan area was pretty heavily deforested. I mean there's
Speaker 1: still had plenty of forests, but the lumber industry had
Speaker 1: really operated for quite some time there, so he decided
Speaker 1: the Pacific Northwest was the next prime real estate for
Speaker 1: the lumber industry. Boeing's company, the Greenwood Timber Company, proved
Speaker 1: to be very successful, and by now it was the
Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds. Around nineteen ten, William E. Boeing would
Speaker 1: attend an air show near Los Angeles, California, and he
Speaker 1: got a look at early airplanes. Now keep in mind
Speaker 1: this is nineteen ten. The Right brothers had their successful
Speaker 1: flights just in nineteen o three, so very early days
Speaker 1: for aviation. William Boeing was immediately interested in airplanes and aviation,
Speaker 1: and he even tried to arrange for a ride in
Speaker 1: an airplane, but found that none of the pilots were
Speaker 1: particularly willing to provide one, and so it would go
Speaker 1: until about nineteen fourteen. That's when William Boeing met another
Speaker 1: person named George Conrad Westerveldt. He was an officer in
Speaker 1: the U. S. Navy who also had a fascination with
Speaker 1: aircraft and had been stationed over on the West Coast.
Speaker 1: The two men became close friends. They shared a lot
Speaker 1: of common interests together, and in nineteen fifteen they met
Speaker 1: an aviator named Terra Mahoney and he was happy to
Speaker 1: have them aboard his Curtis seaplane and he gave them
Speaker 1: some flights around and that just cemented their interest in aviation.
Speaker 1: Boeing decided to officially enroll in flight school in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifteen in Los Angeles, California. He completed his training, and
Speaker 1: then he decided to, you know, treat himself the only
Speaker 1: the way that that multi millionaire types can. He bought
Speaker 1: his own airplane. There was a model t a seaplane,
Speaker 1: and essentially this was a type of training aircraft. To
Speaker 1: be fair, there weren't a whole lot of different varieties
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifteen. There's still very early days for aircraft.
Speaker 1: He did not exactly fall in love with this airplane
Speaker 1: as soon as he purchased the aircraft, he had to
Speaker 1: pay for a replacement pontoon. This seaplane had a single
Speaker 1: pontoon upon which it would land, as opposed to the
Speaker 1: dual pontoons you often see with seaplanes. He hired on
Speaker 1: a crew to maintain the plane, but he didn't own
Speaker 1: it for very long before it had an accident and
Speaker 1: got partially wrecked. In the fall of nineteen fifteen, it
Speaker 1: crashed into Lake Washington. Boeing was not aboard the plane
Speaker 1: at the time, so he wasn't piloting the aircraft or anything,
Speaker 1: so he was not injured in this, but the aircraft
Speaker 1: itself was damaged, and Boeing was just largely unimpressed with
Speaker 1: the performance of the aircraft. He became convinced he could
Speaker 1: help design a superior airplane. Now, around that same time,
Speaker 1: there were more than a dozen fledgling companies that were
Speaker 1: trying to design and build aircraft, but I don't mean
Speaker 1: to suggest there were a lot of actual aircraft being
Speaker 1: produced as a result. In fact, in nineteen fourteen, there
Speaker 1: were fewer than fifty planes manufactured by all of these
Speaker 1: companies put together, and at this point there were no
Speaker 1: real practical applications for planes, so there wasn't much call
Speaker 1: for making more of them. They were mostly seen as
Speaker 1: playthings for wealthy hobbyists who were otherwise pretty bored with life.
Speaker 1: So if you had a lot of money and you
Speaker 1: didn't have a whole lot of concern for your own
Speaker 1: personal safety, you might try to start building aircraft or
Speaker 1: buying one. So a lot of those companies were founded
Speaker 1: by people who weren't that different from William Boeing himself.
Speaker 1: Though at least Boeing had had some engineering training under
Speaker 1: his belt, some of the people who founded some of
Speaker 1: these early airplane companies didn't even have that. Boeing reached
Speaker 1: out to Westervelt to help him with the design, and
Speaker 1: they also hired on a mechanic and pilot named Herb
Speaker 1: Munter as well. Westervelt secured time with a wind tunnel
Speaker 1: that was operated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or
Speaker 1: m i T, and they tested their various designs. They
Speaker 1: would bring wooden models to test in the wind tunnels
Speaker 1: and take very careful measurements of how well those designs
Speaker 1: were doing. These were not full scale replicas, but you know,
Speaker 1: small scale wooden ones. Ultimately, Westerveldt designed a plane that
Speaker 1: didn't look that much different from the Model T A
Speaker 1: C plane that Boeing had purchased in the past. There
Speaker 1: were some important differences, So the Model T A had
Speaker 1: that single pontoon on it, but the new aircraft would
Speaker 1: actually have two pontoons to help with stability. But in
Speaker 1: many other ways, it was a fairly close copy of
Speaker 1: that T A airplane. They called this first plane that
Speaker 1: they built the Blue Bill, and they put it through
Speaker 1: a test flight on June fift nineteen sixteen. It was
Speaker 1: a success. It actually did very well on that test flight,
Speaker 1: and it would become the basis for the company's first aircraft,
Speaker 1: which became known as the BMW Model one B and
Speaker 1: W stood for Boeing and Westerveldt. Of course. One month
Speaker 1: after that test flight, on July nineteen sixteen, William Boeing
Speaker 1: filed articles of incorporation for a new company called the
Speaker 1: Pacific Aero Products Company. Those articles of incorporation were rather vague,
Speaker 1: no telling if it was purposeful or not, but it
Speaker 1: would end up being a huge help to the company
Speaker 1: a little later on. I'll explain more in a bit,
Speaker 1: but this is the company that would ultimately become bowing
Speaker 1: and why Boeing The company traces their history back to
Speaker 1: nineteen sixteen. Officially, the company would change its name a
Speaker 1: little less than a year after it had formed, and
Speaker 1: it became the Boeing Airplane Company in May nineteen seventeen.
Speaker 1: But we've got a little bit more to talk about
Speaker 1: before we get to nineteen seventeen. So Westerveldt would not
Speaker 1: stay on. He couldn't. He was actually transferred back to
Speaker 1: the East Coast. So he had this sort of end
Speaker 1: his official business relationship with Boeing. However, he would remain
Speaker 1: important to the company. He would refer talent from the
Speaker 1: East Coast to go and work for his friends company
Speaker 1: out west, and one of those referrals was a man
Speaker 1: named Wong Sue, who would become known as the first
Speaker 1: actual engineer on Boeing's staff, and some would even call
Speaker 1: him the father of Boeing because of his influence in
Speaker 1: those early early days. So Wang Sue was born in Beijing, China,
Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety three. When he was only twelve years old,
Speaker 1: the Manchu government would select him to become a navy
Speaker 1: cadet at the Young Thai Naval Academy. When he was sixteen,
Speaker 1: the government sent him to study naval architecture and engineering
Speaker 1: in England at Armstrong Technical College. Then he had the
Speaker 1: opportunity to attend m I T and study their brand
Speaker 1: new courses in aeronautical engineering. It was the first of
Speaker 1: such programs in the United States. He expressed a desire
Speaker 1: to stay in the US for a couple of years
Speaker 1: beyond his graduation in order to get some practical experience
Speaker 1: designing and building aircraft before returning to China. When Westervelt
Speaker 1: was looking for someone to send over to Boeing, Wong's
Speaker 1: instructor at m I T, the guy who actually created
Speaker 1: this aeronautical engineering UH program at M I T, a
Speaker 1: guy named Jerome Huntsucker amediately said that Wong was the
Speaker 1: right candidate. He would play an important part in Boeing's
Speaker 1: early successes. So the original Boeing factory back west was
Speaker 1: a boat house that wasn't too far from Seattle, Washington
Speaker 1: on the Duomish River. And by the way, I'm sure
Speaker 1: I'm mispronouncing and butchering names, and I will continue to
Speaker 1: do so throughout this episode, and my deepest apologies for that.
Speaker 1: That is a failing on my part. Well, William Boeing
Speaker 1: had some interesting ideas about creating incentives for employees his engineers.
Speaker 1: He said, well, you know what if you are designing
Speaker 1: a plane, if you're building a plane, you also can
Speaker 1: fly it. You're allowed to fly the planes that you're building.
Speaker 1: So they weren't just the engineers and manufacturers, they were
Speaker 1: the test pilots as well, and Wong would get to
Speaker 1: construct planes for Boeing and get to fly them if
Speaker 1: you wanted to the first plane, Wong would have a
Speaker 1: hand in designing, and really the main one was the
Speaker 1: Model C, which was ready for its first test flight
Speaker 1: on uh November five, nineteen sixteen, which was just a
Speaker 1: few months after the BMW test flights. So one thing
Speaker 1: that really struck me as I was doing research for
Speaker 1: this episode was how close together some of these dates are. Like,
Speaker 1: it's amazing to me. The thought of putting together a
Speaker 1: prototype aircraft and then flying it, and then going right
Speaker 1: into the design and production of a different prototype aircraft
Speaker 1: right away and being able to do it within a month.
Speaker 1: It's phenomenal to me. Now. Granted, in these days these
Speaker 1: aircraft were made out of canvas and wood, that would
Speaker 1: be a while before they would switch over to metals
Speaker 1: like aluminum. But still, and you know, they were also
Speaker 1: in lumber country up in the Pacific Northwest. They had
Speaker 1: no shortage of that, and and of course Boeing himself
Speaker 1: operated a lumber uh company, so that helped as well.
Speaker 1: But still, it's pretty amazing to me. Anyway, the BMW
Speaker 1: had showed that Boeing could make a working aircraft, but
Speaker 1: it had very little application outside of that wealthy obbyist market, which,
Speaker 1: as you might imagine, was a pretty limited slice of
Speaker 1: the population. The Model C would prove to be much
Speaker 1: more versatile, and it was helped in no small part
Speaker 1: by the fact that over in Europe the Great War
Speaker 1: what we would later call World War One, was raging
Speaker 1: and it was only a matter of time before the
Speaker 1: United States was pulled into it. So the aircraft that
Speaker 1: flew on November five, nineteen sixteen was called d C four,
Speaker 1: and that was because it was the fourth airplane that
Speaker 1: William Boeing ever owned, and Wong would redesign the Model C,
Speaker 1: giving it a bigger rudder, among other changes, and this
Speaker 1: redesign Model C was ready by April nineteen seventeen. That
Speaker 1: was the same month that President Woodrow Wilson would declare
Speaker 1: war on Germany, putting the United States into World War One.
Speaker 1: As for Wong, he received the princely sum of fifty
Speaker 1: dollars and seventy seven cents for his work as an
Speaker 1: engineer and then was released from Boeing the company, that is,
Speaker 1: on May twenty, nineteen seventeen. He returned to China and
Speaker 1: he established the first Chinese airplane factory there. So, while
Speaker 1: we're talking about money, this fifty dollars and seventy seven
Speaker 1: cents that Wong earned for all his work with the
Speaker 1: Boeing Company, let's talk a little bit about how much
Speaker 1: the Boeing Company earned from a contract they made with
Speaker 1: the United States Navy during World War One. The Navy
Speaker 1: wanted proof that the Model C would meet its needs,
Speaker 1: and they asked for a demonstration at a naval base
Speaker 1: in Pensacola, Florida. Now, for those of you not familiar
Speaker 1: with US geography, Pensacola, Florida is pretty darn far away
Speaker 1: from Seattle, Washington. The two locations are on opposite sides
Speaker 1: of the country. Seattle, Washington's in the northwest, Pensacola, Florida's
Speaker 1: in the southeast. And the United States is really wide. Well.
Speaker 1: This presented something of a challenge because the Mode SEE
Speaker 1: aircraft had a fairly short range of flight. These early
Speaker 1: airplanes could not go that far, so in order to
Speaker 1: get to this demonstration, Boeing actually had to pack a
Speaker 1: couple of planes up in pieces disassembled on a train
Speaker 1: an urban munter. The mechanic and pilot I mentioned a
Speaker 1: little bit Ago, as well as a factory superintendent named
Speaker 1: Claude Berlin, would travel with these disassembled planes across the
Speaker 1: country on train, arriving at Pensacola and then assembling them
Speaker 1: again so that they could be flown on behalf of
Speaker 1: the Navy so that they could evaluate the aircraft. Now.
Speaker 1: The flight test was a huge success, and the Navy
Speaker 1: put in an order for fifty Model c's. The price
Speaker 1: tag for those fifty planes was five hundred seventy five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, so quite a bit more cheddar than Mr
Speaker 1: Wong had earned. The Boeing company would build a new
Speaker 1: manufacturing facility near Seattle nicknamed the Red Barn, and the
Speaker 1: Navy would also order a couple of other special aircraft
Speaker 1: on top of these fifty Model cs. They wanted a
Speaker 1: couple of modified models c's sometimes referred to as E
Speaker 1: A s of e A standing for experimental aircraft, and
Speaker 1: these were land planes. They were meant to land on
Speaker 1: firm ground rather than on water. They also asked for
Speaker 1: another variant called the C one F, which had a
Speaker 1: single main pontoon as opposed to the pair of pontoons,
Speaker 1: as well as a couple of auxiliary floats to add stability.
Speaker 1: And that was the beginning of some pretty lush days
Speaker 1: for Boeing. But when we come back, I'll talk about
Speaker 1: another industry that opened up real opportunities for Boeing beyond
Speaker 1: the military. But first let's take a quick break. You know,
Speaker 1: it's got to be pretty weird to have a business
Speaker 1: really take off, because whatever it is that you happen
Speaker 1: to be making is really important for war efforts, because
Speaker 1: your profitability is dependent upon violent struggles in which millions
Speaker 1: of lives are potentially at stake. And moreover, it creates
Speaker 1: an odd situation which you might on some level wish
Speaker 1: for continued hostilities because that means you stay in business.
Speaker 1: It's pretty dark. In fact, the Boeing Airplane Company was
Speaker 1: almost completely dependent upon military contracts. In addition, to the
Speaker 1: model C aircraft they were making for the Navy. They
Speaker 1: also secured a contract to build another company's aircraft. This
Speaker 1: would be the Curtis H S two L from the
Speaker 1: Curtis Aeroplane Company. The Navy would use these types of
Speaker 1: aircraft on anti submarine patrols off the coast of France,
Speaker 1: and the Navy anticipated a greater need than what Curtis
Speaker 1: could produce in its own manufacturing facilities, so Boeing landed
Speaker 1: what would have been a pretty lucrative contract to create
Speaker 1: licensed versions of the same aircraft. So Bowing didn't design
Speaker 1: this aircraft. They were working from a Curtis design uh
Speaker 1: and they would get a certain amount of money for
Speaker 1: producing these aircraft. However, before Boeing could really get moving
Speaker 1: on this production, World War One came to an end
Speaker 1: and the Navy canceled the order for those HS two
Speaker 1: L planes. At that point, Boeing employed three seven people,
Speaker 1: but the contract with the military was seen as a
Speaker 1: really pivotal contract for the company's survival. It was important
Speaker 1: because there weren't really any other streams of revenue coming
Speaker 1: in that were reliable. So William Bowing first loaned some
Speaker 1: of his own money to the Boeing Company for the
Speaker 1: purposes of meeting payroll, because they weren't bringing in enough
Speaker 1: revenue to pay everybody. Even so, the demand for aircraft
Speaker 1: plummeted once the war was over, and Boeing had little
Speaker 1: choice but to scale back the airplane company. They reduced
Speaker 1: it down to sixty seven employees by nineteen nineteen. But
Speaker 1: Boeing had another application for aircraft early on that wasn't
Speaker 1: dependent upon military actions, and it wasn't commercial flights either,
Speaker 1: because those were still several years away. Instead, it was
Speaker 1: delivering the mail, or at least the potential for that.
Speaker 1: On March third, nine, nineteen, William Boeing himself co piloted
Speaker 1: a plane that was designated the Sea seven hundred, so
Speaker 1: another variant of the Model C. It was to carry
Speaker 1: mail from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, to Seattle, Washington, and
Speaker 1: technically it was the first international airmail delivery to the
Speaker 1: United States. I think it was something like sixty letters
Speaker 1: or packages, so it wasn't a whole lot, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't exactly a total success. Boeing and his co pilot,
Speaker 1: a guy named Eddie Hubbard, were forced to land prematurely.
Speaker 1: They landed about twenty five miles north of Seattle, because
Speaker 1: again these aircraft weren't really capable of taking very long
Speaker 1: flights and they were running very low on fuel. But
Speaker 1: it was a sort of proof of concept for air
Speaker 1: delivery and would help establish the practice in earnest. Later on,
Speaker 1: the Post Office would take full control of that for
Speaker 1: quite a few years. Now, there was a real danger
Speaker 1: of Boeing going out of business in these early years.
Speaker 1: Not only did the contracts with the military dry up,
Speaker 1: but the country was also entering into an economic depression.
Speaker 1: This wasn't the Great depression that would come on a
Speaker 1: little bit later, but it was an economic depression and
Speaker 1: there was very little call for aircraft. So to keep
Speaker 1: the factories in operation, the company began to produce other stuff.
Speaker 1: This was partly possible because, as I mentioned earlier, when
Speaker 1: William Boeing was first incorporating his business, his articles of
Speaker 1: incorporation were pretty darned vague, So his company was allowed
Speaker 1: to make lots of different stuff, and he dedicated factories
Speaker 1: to build whatever was in demand, like furniture, So you
Speaker 1: could have ended up with a dining table created by
Speaker 1: aeronautical engineers possibly. The company also had a contract to
Speaker 1: provide maintenance and service to military aircraft, which helped a little,
Speaker 1: and Boeing would land another big military contract. This time,
Speaker 1: the agreement involved the design and construction of twenty g
Speaker 1: A one and twenty g A two bombers. Now, these
Speaker 1: were also aircraft that weren't designed by Bowing. These were
Speaker 1: designed by the New Army Air Service, and Boeing would
Speaker 1: just act as the producer of those aircraft. The manufacturer
Speaker 1: of those aircraft. The company got to work, but the
Speaker 1: Army canceled the contract after ten g A one bombers
Speaker 1: and three g A two bombers were complete. However, the
Speaker 1: Army also chose Boeing to build two hundred MB three aircraft,
Speaker 1: and the NB three were fighter planes, also not designed
Speaker 1: by Boeing. They were created by a different company called
Speaker 1: Thomas Morse. So why did Boeing end up with the
Speaker 1: contract to build this other company's planes. It's because William
Speaker 1: Boeing was incredibly aggressive when bidding for contracts, and Boeing
Speaker 1: came in with the lowest bid at one point four
Speaker 1: million dollars for two d aircraft, and so the government said,
Speaker 1: you win, you get to build them. Meanwhile, there was
Speaker 1: still a need to find civilian uses for airplanes. Eddie
Speaker 1: Hubbard would convince William Bowing to make a sincere push
Speaker 1: for air carrier operations, so airmail. Essentially, those were the
Speaker 1: guys who had made history back in with what had
Speaker 1: been at the time mostly a proof of concept airmail run,
Speaker 1: but Hubbard felt that it was a possible legitimate avenue
Speaker 1: and a source for revenue for the company outside of
Speaker 1: military contracts. At the time, the United States Post Office
Speaker 1: was operating all of its own aircraft for air mail delivery.
Speaker 1: The aircraft in question was a clunky beast called the
Speaker 1: d H four, and it wasn't a particularly agile for
Speaker 1: more importantly safe aircraft. The Post Office initially hired forty
Speaker 1: pilots to deliver airmail by and this is a sobering fact,
Speaker 1: thirty one of those forty pilots had died in plane crashes.
Speaker 1: So the Post Office sought for a new, more reliable,
Speaker 1: and more maneuverable plane to take over the job of
Speaker 1: the d H four, which obviously was not not performing
Speaker 1: up to standards. It was far too dangerous. Boeing proposed
Speaker 1: a new design. They called it the Model forty A.
Speaker 1: One of the most important components of this particular aircraft
Speaker 1: was that it would use a totally different kind of
Speaker 1: engine from previous aircraft. So engines can get really hot
Speaker 1: and airplane engines like the d H four relied on
Speaker 1: water cooling, but that meant the airplane would have to
Speaker 1: carry a tank of water in addition to everything else
Speaker 1: in order to keep the engine cool. Water is heavy,
Speaker 1: and the slashing of water can make it hard to
Speaker 1: fly a plane steady. The Model forty A instead had
Speaker 1: an air cooled engine designed by a company called Pratt
Speaker 1: and Whitney, which was essentially part of the Boeing family.
Speaker 1: As the name implies, these engines manage heat by dissipating
Speaker 1: it into the air, typically through a finned surface. The
Speaker 1: finned surface increases surface area and thus increases air cooling efficiency.
Speaker 1: In addition to the opportunity to build air mail aircraft,
Speaker 1: Boeing also had the chance to bid for actual airmail
Speaker 1: routes see the Post Office. Would open up this possibility
Speaker 1: because the US government passed a piece of legislation called
Speaker 1: the Contract air Mail Act, and that did pretty much
Speaker 1: what the name suggests. It gave private come and E's
Speaker 1: the opportunity to bid on airmail routes on a contract basis,
Speaker 1: and there were lots of different private companies that could
Speaker 1: do this. There are a lot of companies that were
Speaker 1: operating very small regional aircraft services. So Hubbard would convince
Speaker 1: Boeing to go after one of these routes, this being
Speaker 1: a big one between San Francisco and Chicago. Boeing once
Speaker 1: again got really aggressive with his bidding for that particular contract.
Speaker 1: In fact, his bidding was almost too aggressive. The Post
Speaker 1: Office very nearly disregarded Boeing's bid because they considered it
Speaker 1: too low to actually be serious. It was much much
Speaker 1: lower than the main competitor for that contract, that was
Speaker 1: a company called Western air Express. Bowing used his political
Speaker 1: connections to reach out to Wesley Jones, who was a
Speaker 1: Senator from Washington State, in order for Jones to reach
Speaker 1: out to the Postmaster General and reassure the Postmaster General
Speaker 1: that Bowing, both the man and the company was serious
Speaker 1: and that the company was completely capable of doing the
Speaker 1: job at the quoted price. Even so, Boeing was compelled
Speaker 1: to put his money where his mouth is. He had
Speaker 1: to post an eight hundred thousand dollar bond to guarantee
Speaker 1: his company would actually live up to its contractual obligations.
Speaker 1: I guess you got to spend money to make money
Speaker 1: with the ink drying on that contract. Boeing also reached
Speaker 1: out to Pratt and Whitney with an order of twenty
Speaker 1: five of those air cooled engines, and William Boeing would
Speaker 1: form a subsidiary company called Boeing Air Transport. It officially
Speaker 1: went into business on July one, nineteen twenty seven. The
Speaker 1: contract would give Boeing the stability it needed to continue
Speaker 1: to grow. In addition, Charles Lindbergh made history by flying
Speaker 1: across the Atlantic Ocean in nineteen twenty seven, which prompted
Speaker 1: renewed interest in aviation, and the stock market was performing
Speaker 1: well right at that time, so bowing the company went
Speaker 1: public in n in an effort to raise more money
Speaker 1: through a stock offering that also began to offer out
Speaker 1: the opportunity for passengers to fly on aircraft. Now, this
Speaker 1: was not exactly luxury travel, nor was it a big
Speaker 1: commercial jet or anything along those lines. Boeing altered a
Speaker 1: few of its Model forty A aircraft, the ones that
Speaker 1: were being used for airmail, and these altered aircraft had
Speaker 1: two whole extra seats in them, so you had the
Speaker 1: pilot and co pilot seats, and then you had two
Speaker 1: passenger seats, so passengers could book one of two seats
Speaker 1: and travel with all the airmail to a specific route.
Speaker 1: Air travel for passengers was in its infancy and Boeing
Speaker 1: was a dominant player in that space. It was a
Speaker 1: small space, but Bowing had carved out a pretty significant
Speaker 1: portion of that pie. Uh The estimate was that Boeing
Speaker 1: was handling about of all passenger and airmail travel in
Speaker 1: the United States at this time, and William Boeing wanted
Speaker 1: to bring his subsidiaries altogether and unify them under a
Speaker 1: single holding company. And this was in an effort to
Speaker 1: remain competitive against other growing companies, and it led to
Speaker 1: the foundation of what was called the United Aircraft and
Speaker 1: Transport Corporation, which was formed in nineteen twenty nine. It
Speaker 1: was essentially an umbrella company for the new Boeing air
Speaker 1: Transport Company, the older Boeing Airplane company, Pratt and Whitney,
Speaker 1: that engine manufacturing company I talked about a second ago,
Speaker 1: and some other smaller companies that Boeing had kind of
Speaker 1: acquired along the way. In nineteen thirty the United States
Speaker 1: Congress passed the air Mail Act in an effort to
Speaker 1: improve air mail service across the United States and to
Speaker 1: encourage the development of commercial air travel for passengers. As
Speaker 1: part of that strategy, companies like Boeing would be allowed
Speaker 1: to make use of the infrastructure that the United States
Speaker 1: Post Office had established when it first built out airmail routes,
Speaker 1: so all those air travel booy's and things of that
Speaker 1: nature these companies were allowed to use. The Postmaster General,
Speaker 1: a guy named Walter Brown, thought the best way to
Speaker 1: improve airmail service was to rely almost exclusively on larger
Speaker 1: air carrier companies, and he put criteria in place that
Speaker 1: only the big companies could actually meet, and it ended
Speaker 1: up pushing out a lot of smaller, independent companies that
Speaker 1: had been doing these routes up to that point. And
Speaker 1: more importantly, some of those smaller companies had been doing
Speaker 1: this at more competitive bids than the bigger companies. So
Speaker 1: a reporter investigated this matter in nineteen thirty three and
Speaker 1: discovered that the Postmaster General had met with a few
Speaker 1: select large companies like Boeing's parent company, and essentially divvied
Speaker 1: up the nation's airmail routes between a select few big companies,
Speaker 1: leaving out these smaller ones, even the smaller ones that
Speaker 1: were posting more competitive bids. This prompted a full on
Speaker 1: investigation into the matter by Congress, and ultimately the investigation
Speaker 1: found that Brown technically didn't do anything against the laws,
Speaker 1: so the Postmaster General didn't technically do anything illegal, but
Speaker 1: it seemed like it was unethical, and so Congress ended
Speaker 1: up putting pressure on the airplane companies as well as
Speaker 1: on President Franklin Roosevelt to make something happen to change things.
Speaker 1: So Roosevelt initially ordered that all air mail service should
Speaker 1: fall exclusively under the auspices of the Army Air Corps
Speaker 1: in ntour, and that the Army Air Corps was to
Speaker 1: take over immediately and provide that service, which ended up
Speaker 1: being a disaster. Twelve pilots would die in crashes within
Speaker 1: the first two months of this change, which of course
Speaker 1: prompted the President to reverse this decision and flip it
Speaker 1: back so that private companies would provide airmail service. However,
Speaker 1: Hugo Black, who was the the politician who had actually
Speaker 1: overseen the congressional investigation into the whole mess earlier would
Speaker 1: offer a new piece of legislation called the Airmail Act
Speaker 1: of nineteen thirty four, and that prohibited companies from operating
Speaker 1: as both an airplane manufacturer and an airmail carrier. You
Speaker 1: could do one or the other, but you couldn't do both.
Speaker 1: You could not be both an airmail carrier and build airplanes.
Speaker 1: And the big companies that have been part of the
Speaker 1: cozy relationship a couple of years earlier were expressly forbidden
Speaker 1: from getting airmail contracts. So those same big companies that
Speaker 1: the Postmaster General had met with in just a you know,
Speaker 1: a few years earlier, were they were out of luck.
Speaker 1: So in response, United Aircraft and Transport would break apart
Speaker 1: into three separate companies. There were two manufacturing companies. There's
Speaker 1: the Boeing Airplane Company that's the one we're gonna stick with,
Speaker 1: that's still bowing that oversaw manufacturing operations west of the Mississippi.
Speaker 1: There was United Aircraft that was a manufacturing company that
Speaker 1: had its factories east of the Mississippi. And then you
Speaker 1: had a third company that would actually act as an
Speaker 1: air transportation company for cargo and for passengers that would
Speaker 1: become United Airlines. So I could talk all about United Aircraft,
Speaker 1: United Airlines, but that's for a totally different show. So
Speaker 1: when we come back, I'll talk more about the history
Speaker 1: of Boeing, starting with the departure of its founder. But
Speaker 1: first let's take another quick break, all right, So we're
Speaker 1: up to nineteen thirty four. The holding company that had
Speaker 1: only been around for a few years had to break
Speaker 1: up into three different companies, and William Boeing, who did
Speaker 1: not take this terribly well, was fed up with everything
Speaker 1: he had to give testimony during that congressional investigation, and
Speaker 1: during that process he felt he was being somewhat unfairly
Speaker 1: targeted he and his company, so he chose to retire.
Speaker 1: He was fifty three years old. He divested all of
Speaker 1: his stock in the company in the process of retiring,
Speaker 1: and this really wasn't too far off from what his
Speaker 1: established plan had been, because he had frequently spoken of
Speaker 1: determining that he was going to retire by the time
Speaker 1: he was fifty, So he actually stuck around a little
Speaker 1: longer than his original intention happened to be. So it
Speaker 1: wasn't so much that he retired early. He actually retired late.
Speaker 1: If you take him at his word from his previous statements.
Speaker 1: Now I'm only going to focus on Boeing in your
Speaker 1: plane from this point forward, because, as I said, the
Speaker 1: other companies would require their own episodes. It would just
Speaker 1: make this far too long. Boeing the man leaves Boeing
Speaker 1: the company in clairemont Claire, act VET. And I know
Speaker 1: I've butchered that last name. It's E G T V
Speaker 1: E D T. It's a Norwegian name and I cannot
Speaker 1: pronounce Norwegian words to save my life. Anyway, he became
Speaker 1: the new chairman of Boeing. He had been working for
Speaker 1: the company since nineteen twenty. He started as a draftsman
Speaker 1: and designer. He rose to the position of chief engineer,
Speaker 1: became a vice president, and then would become the successor
Speaker 1: to William Boeing. And he also would play an important
Speaker 1: role in bringing the company to new heights. And yes
Speaker 1: that was a pun. See Another thing happened in that
Speaker 1: was really important to Boeing, and that's the the Army
Speaker 1: Air Corps had issued a specification sort of a request
Speaker 1: for proposal for the design of a long range heavy
Speaker 1: bomber aircraft. And by long range, we're talking five thousand
Speaker 1: miles of a range that's a heck of a distance
Speaker 1: to travel. So Lair pursued this opportunity. He submitted a
Speaker 1: bid that landed the company the chance to design a
Speaker 1: bomber of this type, and the prototype was called the
Speaker 1: x B fifteen. Initially, Boeing was competing against the Glen L.
Speaker 1: Martin Company, which today is actually part of Lockheed, but
Speaker 1: the Martin design never got to the prototype phase it
Speaker 1: was it was canceled while it was still an idea
Speaker 1: on paper. And the XB fifteen was quite a beast.
Speaker 1: It had four engines. Most bombers at the time only
Speaker 1: had two engines. It measured more than eighty seven and
Speaker 1: a half feet long or twenty six point seven meters,
Speaker 1: had a wingspan of nearly one fifty feet or nearly
Speaker 1: forty five and a half meters when it was empty
Speaker 1: without any bombs or anything like that. It weighed nearly
Speaker 1: thirty eight thousand pounds or more than seventeen thousand kilograms,
Speaker 1: and its top speed it could travel one dred ninety
Speaker 1: seven miles per hour or three D seventeen kilometers per hour,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't a speed demon, and that meant that
Speaker 1: a five thousand mile trip would take more than thirty
Speaker 1: hours to complete, so you would actually have multiple crews
Speaker 1: on one aircraft and they would operate in shifts. The
Speaker 1: bomber actually had sleeping quarters aboard it and so big
Speaker 1: it was at bunks that people could sleep in. The
Speaker 1: aircraft also featured an autopilot mode, which was pretty revolutionary
Speaker 1: at the time. It also had independent gasoline fueled electrical
Speaker 1: generators to act as auxiliary power units. So it was
Speaker 1: a really impressive aircraft and while the military would take
Speaker 1: possession of the prototype, it would not order more to
Speaker 1: be made. However, Boeing would incorporate much of that aircraft's
Speaker 1: designs into the next big project, known internally as Model TO,
Speaker 1: but it would be known to the rest of the
Speaker 1: world by the designation BE seventeen Flying for Trip. This
Speaker 1: was another response to an Army Air Corps specification. This
Speaker 1: one was searching for a long range bomber that could
Speaker 1: fly at high altitudes far above anti aircraft artillery range
Speaker 1: and also be used during daytime bombing runs. It had
Speaker 1: to travel at least two hundred miles per hour at
Speaker 1: top speed to meet specifications. Also had to be capable
Speaker 1: of flying for ten hours at least, so Boeing would
Speaker 1: go into competition with two other companies. Glenn Martin was
Speaker 1: one of them, and the Douglas Aircraft Company was the other,
Speaker 1: and this sort of flyoff competition would happen in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty five. Boeing's aircraft exceeded the specifications. It could travel
Speaker 1: at a top speed of two hundred eighty seven miles
Speaker 1: per hour with an average cruising speed of more than
Speaker 1: two hundred fifty miles per hour, so it was plenty
Speaker 1: fast enough according to the specifications. It was also heavily armed.
Speaker 1: Uh the initial designs had five thirty caliber machine guns
Speaker 1: and a capability of holding up to forty hundred pounds
Speaker 1: or twenty ms of bombs. The flyoff competition went incredibly
Speaker 1: well for Boeing, and the Army Air Corps put in
Speaker 1: an initial order of sixty five of the aircraft and
Speaker 1: nearly a hundred thousand dollars each, which amounted to about
Speaker 1: two million dollars per plane in today's money. However, a
Speaker 1: disaster nearly made all of that moot on October. This
Speaker 1: is still before the whole competition is over. Boeing has
Speaker 1: already received an initial preliminary order for those sixty five
Speaker 1: aircraft well on that day. On October, Boeing employee Less
Speaker 1: Tower and an Army Air Corps pilot named Major Player
Speaker 1: Peter Hill were to take the prototype for another test flight.
Speaker 1: But the control surfaces on the test the prototype aircraft.
Speaker 1: Those would be the surfaces that can move in relation
Speaker 1: to the aircraft to control things like steering, pitch, yaw
Speaker 1: and roll. If you've ever looked at an airplane's wing
Speaker 1: and you've seen a little flap that can go up
Speaker 1: or down, that's the sort of control service we're talking about. Anyway,
Speaker 1: they were all locked down and what was called gust
Speaker 1: lock mode gust as in gust of wind. This was
Speaker 1: to prevent those surfaces from being damaged by winds when
Speaker 1: the aircraft was actually on the ground. Proper operating procedure
Speaker 1: would include the ground crew disengaging the gust locks before
Speaker 1: the aircraft would be allowed to taxi and then take off.
Speaker 1: That would allow the pilot to have full control of
Speaker 1: the aircraft in flight. Tragically, that step was not done
Speaker 1: on October, so the gust locks were still in place
Speaker 1: when they took the aircraft up and as it was climbing,
Speaker 1: the aircraft stalled it went into a dive and Tower
Speaker 1: and Hill could not control the plane and the plane
Speaker 1: would crash. It kill both pilots and it injured several
Speaker 1: people on the ground. The crash meant the aircraft could
Speaker 1: not complete the full competition and the Air Corps would
Speaker 1: cancel the order of sixty five B seventeens. Instead, they
Speaker 1: opted to order the Douglas B eighteen Bolow aircraft. It
Speaker 1: might have all ended there, but the Air Corps personnel
Speaker 1: were so impressed by Boeing's performance that through some maneuvering,
Speaker 1: the next year they were able to place an order
Speaker 1: for thirteen B seventeens. This would be in November nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty six. These would be just the first B seventeens
Speaker 1: that Boeing would deliver to the US military. Over the
Speaker 1: next several years, orders would continue to come in for more,
Speaker 1: and for the first few years it was usually fewer
Speaker 1: than forty aircraft per year, but then the United States
Speaker 1: would enter into World War Two. But then the U
Speaker 1: s would enter into World War two and Boeing would
Speaker 1: have to step up production significantly. In total, the company
Speaker 1: would manufacture are nearly thirteen thousand B seventeen bombers is
Speaker 1: around twelve thousand, seven hundred or so. There were so
Speaker 1: many orders that Boeing would be in a new position.
Speaker 1: It would license out the aircraft designed to other manufacturers
Speaker 1: like Lockheed, Vega and Douglas. So similar to what Boeing
Speaker 1: itself had done in the past, now it was licensing,
Speaker 1: licensing out its own designs, and the design would actually
Speaker 1: evolve over time too. It wasn't like the B seventeen
Speaker 1: was designed, and that's exactly how it was made. From
Speaker 1: that point forward, the thirty caliber machine guns would be
Speaker 1: replaced by fifty caliber versions. At turrets were in the
Speaker 1: upper fuselage, the belly, and the tail of the aircraft.
Speaker 1: The B seventeen G variant, which entered into service in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty three, had thirteen fifty caliber machine guns. It
Speaker 1: was pretty intimidating. The Army Air Corps also had developed
Speaker 1: a strategy in which nine or twelve aircraft would fly
Speaker 1: together in what was called a box formation, sometimes called
Speaker 1: a staggered formation, which was a pretty daunting site. Even so,
Speaker 1: the B seventeens needed fighter pilot escorts. They could not
Speaker 1: just operate without any sort of fighter pilots around them
Speaker 1: because while they could suffer an impressive amount of damage
Speaker 1: and remain operational if they didn't have more maneuverable aircraft
Speaker 1: supporting them, they were very vulnerable to enemy fighters. By
Speaker 1: the way, despite the fact that there were thousands of
Speaker 1: these things made, the B seventeen was not the most
Speaker 1: produced bomber. That honor would actually go to the consolidated
Speaker 1: Aircraft B twenty four Liberator. But the B seventeen would
Speaker 1: be the most prolific US bomber in World War Two.
Speaker 1: It dropped more bombs than any other US aircraft, which
Speaker 1: is a dubious honor, to be sure, but one that
Speaker 1: spoke to Boeing's design. Now, in our next episode, I'm
Speaker 1: going to continue the story of Boeing and now the
Speaker 1: B seventeen set the stage for an even larger and
Speaker 1: much more expensive aircraft, the B twenty nine super Fortress.
Speaker 1: I'll also talk about Boeing's contribution to commercial aircraft and
Speaker 1: the space race. But for now it's time to sign off.
Speaker 1: So in our next episode will continue our story. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, if you have suggestions for future episodes of
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff, you can let me know by sending an
Speaker 1: email the addresses Tech stuff at how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: or you can pop on over to our website that's
Speaker 1: text stuff podcast dot com. You'll find an archive of
Speaker 1: all of our past shows. There, you'll find links to
Speaker 1: where we are on social media. You'll also find a
Speaker 1: link to our online store, where every purchase you make
Speaker 1: goes to help the show. We greatly appreciate it, and
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