60th Anniversary. Article and video. Scroll down the article for the video. 60 years ago: The famous Boeing 707 prototype barrel roll over Lake Washington | The Seattle Times Separate video link. RAW VIDEO: 1955 barrel roll in a Boeing 707 | Video | The Seattle Times
In the early '90s, I was pleased to meet Tex Johnston, near the Museum of Flight, at one of Boeing Field's Flightfests. Naturally he was pushing his book, and sitting directly under the very airplane that he had barrel-rolled! (And people forget that he was an air racer, too, having won the first postwar Thompson Trophy race in the Bell Cobra II.)
I have posted it before that I was there and saw both rolls, first to the north and the second to the south. I knew one of the engineers on the flight and he said that if your eyes were closed you wouldn't have known what was happening, 1G all the way around. When we were watching the incident a man next to me said that it wasn't a roll "because you can't do that with those big planes." When Tex performed the second one I asked the guy what that was and there was no answer. And I stood there with my 8mm movie camera down at my side because I was so stunned by what I saw. I did a little work on that -80 before it flew and I witnessed the gear collapse after the taxi tests and reworked some of our drawings to reflect the new design of the trunnion bearing supports. No one realized what an impact that airplane was to have on Boeing history and world airline history. The original basic layout is still the standard today on any successful jet transport.
new-er (Oct.'21) vid - long version with some history Jump to 5:05 for full story of the stunt Aug.'15 - The Seattle Times https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/60-years-ago-the-famous-boeing-707-barrel-roll-over-lake-washington/ Tex Johnston: “The airplane does not recognize attitude, providing a maneuver is conducted at one G. It knows only positive and negative imposed loads and variations in thrust and drag. The barrel roll is a one G maneuver and quite impressive, but the airplane never knows it’s inverted.” Image Unavailable, Please Login .
From that particular point of view it looks like shedding lots of altitude from +/- 180º to 360º ......am I seeing that right? And would that typically be true of a 360?
This is the original photo taken during the first roll heading north. Beacon Hill is below and Harbor Island and Elliot Bay are seen in the background. I have a 16 X 20 of this hanging in my studio. It isn't a colorized copy. I knew the flight engineer who was on this flight and he said that if his eyes had been closed he would never have known that they had done the maneuver. I also watched it from the west shore of Lake Washington and i exclaimed that he had done a roll and the guy next to me said, "NO! those big airplanes can't do that." Then Tex came back and did the same thing heading south. I asked the "expert" next to me , "What was that?" There was no answer.Test pilot, Dick Taylor, did 1/2 Cuban 8's in B-47's when he demonstrated lob bombing techniques so the "big" Boeings are quite capable if they are flown correctly.
In that kind of roll you do loose a lot of altitude when going from the inverted because it isn't a slow roll that puts negative G on the airplane to maintain an altitude. You let the nose fall through while completing the roll . At the beginning of this maneuver you add some altitude and then loose it in the finish. I'm not sure what you are referring to with the 180/360. The airplane maintains the same general compass heading during the roll.
I'm the one in error here. You are correct in the loss of altitude during the rotation. I was thinking of compass heading , so I stand corrected.
