Boeing 707 - New Haynes Manual

Considering that Haynes has already done "Owners' Workshop Manuals" (!) for the D.H. Comet, VC-10, Concorde and 747, it seemed only natural to do one on the Boeing 707, the plane that, more than any other, started the commercial airline revolution that today has seen most of the civilized world's residents having flown on jetliners, and doing so routinely and repeatedly.

Well, the book is finally here, and I think it is a good one. It naturally starts with a brief history of Boeing's earlier commercial aviation activities and covers the development of the 367-80, the first of the line. Its test program and the resulting changes to the definitive 707 are detailed, and all of the subsequent 707 variants are described individually, including the short-fuselage -138 for Qantas, the -227 for Braniff, and the 720. The various engines and the move to the "widebody" cabin interior are covered, and there is a brief roundup of the competing jetliners from around the world.

The "Anatomy" section covers the structure and all the various systems, relatively briefly but including an isometric cutaway and numerous drawings from the technical manuals. The "Airline Service" section gives a reasonable history from entry into service to eventual conversion to freighters and goes right to the end of scheduled service. The "707 in Uniform" concentrates on U.S. usage like the E-3, E-6, E-8, C-18 and VC-137 but also includes the C-135 variants (which originated from the same source) and worldwide military usage.

"Flying the 707" includes detailed photos of the instrument and flight engineer's panels and covers a typical flight in a -320B from preflight check to engine shutdown. The use of the simulator is covered and some of the more significant accidents to befall 707s are described. There is a section on maintenance and a list of Boeing customer codes for all airlines that ordered 707s or 720s from the manufacturer, followed by a reasonable four-page index.

I should point out that throughout the book are numerous sidebars on a gray background, some quite short and some adding up to several pages. Among the topics covered are: early flutter problems, the infamous barrel rolls, the later life of the Dash 80, the long life of several Qantas -138s (including John Travolta's), the Chinese Y-10 near-copy, water injection, sound suppressors, Middle East airlines at war, and the 720 controlled impact demonstration that didn't quite turn out as planned. So, as you can see, most nuances of the 707's story have been taken care of. I think this 188-page book belongs in every U.S. airliner enthusiast's library.
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In 1954-55 I did the structural cutaway of the entire wing, keel beam, struts, and engines. Later, I was in charge of the wiring and plumbing illustrations of these items for the KC-135 and 707 series and I can see in the Haynes book that they printed what I did. I can post copies of some of the drawings.

 

Bob, it would be interesting to see which of your contributions to the 707 design made it into the manual. I still credit the 707 with making me an aeronautical engineer, although it did that by simply flying noisily over my house on Long Island in 1959. (I was 6 years old at the time.)

You may also be interested in the new September issue of "Aviation History" magazine, which has a tribute article to the 747 written by Clive Irving. It features Joe Sutter prominently, but also mentions some other gents whose names you'll probably recognize: Rowland Brown, Ed Wells, W.T. Hamilton and Jack Waddell.

 

First, I noticed that the illustration shows a 707-320B series with the early fan engines. My only contribution to that illustration was figuring out how to decipher the Boeing drawings to show how the parts went together. The walls in the Production Planning area were plastered with our illustrations. They were the people that that generated the work orders for them so that they could figure out how to plan the production processes.
Brown, Wells, and Hamilton were in the "Ivory Tower" and I did not meet them. However, I knew Jack Waddell from my 747 days. I also sometimes met Sutter on the 747 final assembly line, both of us there on Saturdays and Sundays. Jim, I'm not a graduate engineer but somehow ended up in the PD unit, fooling everyone ,I guess. It was my most enjoyable time at the Kite Factory.

 

Well, Bob, you were still a valuable asset to the company, and at least you were an employee. Both times I worked there, I was a "visitor"; at least I think that's what my badge called me!

 

I'll admit. When I first read this, I thought it was an elaborate joke. A Haynes manual for a big Boeing? I'll be dipped.

 

It's one of a long series. It may have started some 12 years ago as a joke, when Haynes decided to do an Owners' Workshop Manual for a "Spitfire", which probably had everyone thinking that it was for a Triumph, when in fact it was for a Supermarine! But it sold like hotcakes, and today there are several dozen such manuals for famous aircraft, tanks, ships, racing cars, spacecraft and even sci-fi!

Calling them "Owners' Worshop Manuals" is definitely an exaggeration, since you could not possibly maintain any of these vehicles with the details within; I'd prefer the term "Enthusiasts' Manual". But they are serious reference books for the subjects covered.

 

Still remember my first flight in an airliner, a Pan-Am 707 from Oslo, Norway to Idlewild (now JFK) in 1961. A big adventure and very noisy.

 

Taz, in 1961 I was deeply involved in our new airplane, the 727. I was 35 then.

 

I hate to say it, but my first flight ever was in an Eastern DC-8-21 (a "DC-8B" in their literature) in the summer of 1960, from SJU to IDL and back.

We took an annual trip between P.R. and NYC and flew both Eastern and Pan Am, so my 1961 flight was probably on a Pan Am 707-121.

A spur-of-the-moment trip in November 1965, so my mom could see her dying brother in N.Y., was the most memorable, since we flew on Thanksgiving Day on Pan Am's Clipper Mayflower. How's that for coincidence?

 

Bob- I was 12 at the time. Turned 13 that summer in Palos Verdes, CA.

 

I have the Haynes P-51 workshop manual. Definitely not a service manual,but a must for any Mustang fan.

 

My friend Charles Kennedy wrote that book - available from his website: www.theairlineboutique.com

He's written a lot of other aviation books.

 

I just stumbled this and wanted to let you know that braniff is near and dear to my heart... I was the second youngest guy ever to complete flight engineer Turbo Jet training with them . Also I have about 2,500 hours in the B707. Like to have met this guy you had mentioned, anyone who has background with braniff or the 707 is okay in my book

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After looking at that cutaway illustration I figured that all of it came from the work that my group did in 1954-1955. There is no other way that the anybody could have acquired that. We did the entire airplane in an isometric view and then re-did it in isolated views that would be normal to a mechanic installing wiring or tubing in particular areas of the airplane. Labor intensive but but cheap at the time. One sixty three an hour.

 

Bob- All relative. A new Corvette in 1955 was $2774 base if you got the 6 cylinder, $2909 for the V8.

 

As my son, Spasso says, "It's all relative. But who can stand relatives!"

 

A 707, brand new, cost $6 million in 1959. Today, that probably wouldn't even buy one engine!

 

I think that an engine now is something like 4.5 million.

 

I've been looking at some old drawings recently and am always extremely impressed that these were done by hand. These days I find it irritating to have to redo taking pictures from CAD. I can't imagine having to redraw everything.

 

When I illustrated the KC-135 wing structure I started it just after January 1954. I finished it in June of that year. None of it was sketched by eyeball, it was scaled from the engineering drawings for every single part that were then graphically installed on the 1/10th scale isometric image of the structure. Other guys in our group were doing other parts of the airplane and soon one couldn't go through the planning, engineering, or tooling groups without seeing our drawings mounted on the walls. And yes, we had to erase and redraw things when we got a change from engineering, not much fun but part of the job. In those days it was 2H and 3H pencil on linen. On the 767 when I was in engineering, they changed to ink on mylar and then on the 777 it was CATIA.

 

Wow, I wish we had a 1/10th scale iso drawing of our structure. Sadly CATIA chokes if you try to load everything at once. Instead we tend to rely on the nice Flight Global cutaway by Joe Picarella for our reference.

 

On 777, a program had been developed called EPIC, which was effectively a digital mock-up, where multiple CATIA models could be loaded to view parts of the airplane with all structure and systems included. (EPIC stood for something like Electronic Pre-assembly Integration on CATIA.) Structure was colored green, if I recall, and each system had its own color, so you could distinguish between electrical, hydraulic, fuel, etc. There were also digital mechanics that could be added so you could see whether normal tasks could be accomplished without problem.

There was another program called Flythru which allowed one to take a "fantastic voyage" thru the aircraft as a fly might be able to do. I think these programs were developed in-house by Boeing but I'm not sure; Bob might be able to add to the story. These were once proprietary programs, but since we're talking technology which is now over 25 years old, I think that we can at least mention them.

 

Jim, you opened up a lot of memories about early CATIA on the 777. We got several awards for the programs that we developed and one was Fly Thru. It was a valuable tool to discover and identify interferences between structures and between structures and mechanisms. We did the first digital mockup to get the wiring and tubing installations done. Fly Thru was an invaluable tool to the production Illustration group (PIG). It didn't take long for them to lable their operation PIGS FLY.

 

That's a good one!