Boeing Marks 50th Anniversary of 707's First Flight

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<br /><br />Chris Kjelgaard<br />Senior Editor<br />Aviation.com Sat Dec 22<br /><br />Boeing celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first flight of the 707 jetliner on Thursday, Dec. 20.<br /><br />The 707 is not to be confused with the earlier Model 367-80, the "Dash 80" that Boeing intended as a prototype for a U.S. military program competition and which ultimately was the aircraft from which the KC-135 series of military tankers and transport aircraft was derived.<br /><br />Three and a half years before the 707 first flew, the Dash 80 made its first flight on July 15, 1954. During an early demonstration flight, its pilots famously threw the huge Dash 80 into a barrel roll in front of many industry witnesses. The event was caught on film.<br /><br />However, the Dash 80 directly led to the development of the 707 and the two aircraft are very similar in configuration, both having swept-back, low-mounted wings and horizontal stabilizers, and four under-wing jet engines.<br /><br />Dec. 20, 1957, the day of the 707's first flight, was a cold and rainy Friday in the U.S. Northwest. As noon passed, Boeing's chief of flight test Tex Johnston, his co-pilot Jim Gannet and flight engineer Tom Layne sat on the drenched runway at Renton Municipal Airport in the first production 707, checked weather reports and waited for the chance to take off.<br /><br />At 12:30 p.m., the decision was made to take off and the 707-120 powered into the sky. But as it climbed over the city of Renton, the unpredictable weather immediately closed in around the airliner and forced a landing at nearby Boeing Field after just seven minutes in the air.<br /><br />However, later in the day, the sky cleared enough for the crew to take the 707 up for a 71-minute flight. The day was the culmination of five years of hard work and momentous decisions. With the 707, Boeing's president William Allen and his management team had pinned the company's future firmly to the vision that jets represented the future of commercial <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>