Boeing 707: the aircraft that made Boeing

Published

2026-11-10

Updated

2026-11-10

Facts checked

2026-10-27

Boeing came to the jet airliner as a company that for over twenty years had not made money on a non-military aircraft. In 1952 its board put $16 million of its own money, nearly all the profit earned since the war by Boeing's own account, into a prototype in which the Air Force had shown no interest. The Dash 80 flew on 15 July 1954, and the Air Force bought first: 29 KC-135 tankers, ordered soon after the first flight. One prototype became two different aircraft, the tanker and the 707 airliner, and the 707, in HistoryLink's judgement, was the first truly successful jet airliner built in large numbers: 856 were delivered, 725 of them to airlines, against 556 Douglas DC-8s.

A bomber maker that lost money on airliners

Since the start of the Second World War Boeing had been the undisputed king of the bomber builders, as TIME put it. William Allen, the company's lawyer, became president on 1 September 1945, his 45th birthday, and within 60 days $1.5 billion of contracts were cancelled and more than 38,000 workers laid off (TIME, 1954). The post-war airliner did not help: only 56 Stratocruisers were built for civil customers, and Boeing lost $13.5 million on them by Fortune's count, $15 million by TIME's, a loss more than made up by sales of the military version, the C-97.

Fortune summed up the record in 1957: the one commercial success had been the Model 247 of 1933 (Fortune, 1957). The strength lay elsewhere: Boeing had built more heavy military aircraft than any other American maker and more multi-engine jets than all the others put together. Its engineers had learned jet engines and swept wings on the B-47 and B-52 bombers, first flown in 1947 and 1952 (ASME, 1994).

In August 1949 Boeing showed Pan American a jet airliner brochure. "We discussed 61 passengers up to 103; it was as daring as we dared to be," recalled Maynard Pennell, later chief project engineer of the 707. Boeing decided against building a jet mainly for Pan Am, fearing a repeat of its experience with the 247, and the other airlines, Fortune wrote, were completely unenthusiastic.

Britain moved first. The de Havilland Comet flew in July 1949, and American airlines sent people to England to look at it. No American maker, Fortune wrote, felt it could risk the $15 million a prototype would cost, and a bill for a government-funded prototype died quickly in Congress. By the autumn of 1950 Boeing knew it would have to build one itself, though its annual earnings in 1946-1949 had averaged less than $1.4 million.

A $16 million bet, 1952-1954

The board decided in 1952: $16 million of Boeing's own capital went into a prototype, in the expectation that the airlines and the Air Force would buy it once it had flown, the Smithsonian writes (National Air and Space Museum). The ASME brochure measures the bet as a quarter of the company's net worth. Work formally began on 20 May 1952 in a closed-off area of the Renton plant near Seattle (Boeing History Chronology).

The project number was a disguise. The jet was passed off as another version of the Model 367, the C-97 piston transport, and by the 80th version bore no resemblance to it, but for security it was still called the 367-80, hence Dash 80. It combined a large cabin based on the C-97's dimensions with a 35-degree swept wing modelled on the B-47's and B-52's but much stiffer, and four Pratt & Whitney JT3 jets on struts beneath the wing; the fuselage was 132 inches wide at most. Meant for airlines and military alike, it had few windows and two large cargo doors.

On 14 May 1954 the Dash 80 was rolled out at Renton. William Boeing, the company's 72-year-old founder, came to watch, and his wife Bertha christened the yellow and brown aircraft with real champagne. By then Boeing had gambled a second time: it was tooling up for a production aircraft, although neither the Air Force nor any airline had placed a single order (Boeing).

On 15 July 1954, the 34th anniversary of the company's founding, test pilots Tex Johnston and Dix Loesch took the Dash 80 on its first flight. It lifted off from Renton at 2.14 p.m. and landed 2 hours 24 minutes later at Boeing Field in Seattle. Asked how it flew, Johnston said: "She flew like a bird, only faster" (This Day in Aviation).

TIME put the question plainly in its issue of 19 July 1954. The Model 707, it wrote, was the first jet transport ever built in the United States; it could carry 130 passengers against 48 in the Comet I and would cost upwards of $4 million, against $1.85 million for a Douglas DC-7. "The big question is: Will U.S. airlines buy the 707?"

The tanker that carried the airliner

The Air Force had its reasons. Its B-47 bombers refuelled from piston-engined KC-97 tankers and had to drop from 40,000 to 20,000 feet to do it; with a jet tanker, TIME explained, they could take on fuel at combat altitudes and speeds. There was no firm order yet, but the Air Policy Council had approved the aircraft. General Curtis LeMay of Strategic Air Command, the ASME brochure says, saw the prototype in 1954 and convinced the government to buy a tanker version rather than wait for the winner of a paper competition.

The order came soon after the first flight. The Air Force bought 29 tankers, designated KC-135, and production of the KC-135 began on 1 September 1954, according to Boeing's chronology.

For Boeing the tanker was more than a sale. The plan, as HistoryLink describes it, was to let Air Force development money cover part of the costs and to save by building tanker and airliner on one assembly line (HistoryLink). Fortune showed the scale of the bet: in the first half of 1957 faster B-52 deliveries and the first deliveries of the new jet tanker lifted Boeing's sales to $652 million and its profit to $16.5 million, while the company was investing about $185 million in the 707, $36 million more than its entire net worth in 1956.

On 18 July 1956 the first KC-135, City of Renton, was rolled out at Renton, followed minutes later by the last KC-97, a scene Boeing calls a vivid picture of its complete conversion to jet power. The KC-135 first flew on 31 August 1956. By 1966 Renton had built 820 C-135s and KC-135s, 732 of them tankers and 88 for special duties.

The airliner was not a converted tanker. Both inherited the basic design of the Dash 80, Boeing says, but they were very different aircraft and neither was derived from the other; the 707, This Day in Aviation adds, had a different structure and a wider fuselage. By the time the first 707 reached American Airlines, TIME wrote in November 1958, the type had 50,000 hours as a military tanker and commercial prototype, making it "the most thoroughly flight-tested and debugged air transport ever to go into service" (TIME, 1958).

Selling the jet, 1955

Douglas, Fortune noted, had built aircraft for the airlines continuously since 1934, apart from the war years, and had an unmatched reputation; in 1955, according to HistoryLink, it was offering the airlines an aircraft that had not yet been built, and winning.

Boeing answered with a show. In August 1955 it gathered airline representatives at the Gold Cup hydroplane races on Lake Washington in Seattle for a Dash 80 fly-past, and in full view of thousands of spectators Tex Johnston barrel-rolled the prototype over the lake, to the audience's intense delight and Boeing's profound shock, the Smithsonian writes; Boeing's chronology counts two rolls (This Day in Aviation).

On 13 October 1955 Pan Am ordered 20 Boeing 707s developed from the Dash 80, the first of Boeing's jetliners with sevens in their names, and at the same time 25 Douglas DC-8s. "The race was on," Boeing's history says. The Pan Am side of the deal is told in the Pan Am series.

Three days later, on 16 October 1955, the Dash 80 flew nonstop from Seattle to Washington, D.C., and back, breaking every transcontinental record for a commercial transport at average speeds of 592 and 567 miles an hour.

The decisive inch

Pan Am's order hid a problem measured in inches. According to HistoryLink, Douglas offered the DC-8 with a fuselage 147 inches wide, enough for six seats abreast, while Boeing wanted a single width of 144 inches for the airliner and the tanker, to save on tooling. For the airlines that was too narrow.

Boeing gave way. It had refused to widen the 707 for six-abreast seating, the Pan Am Historical Foundation writes, but agreed once it learned that Douglas was designing a six-abreast cabin (Pan Am Historical Foundation). In the Smithsonian's account, Juan Trippe overcame Boeing's resistance by ordering 20 707s and 25 DC-8s, and at Pan Am's insistence the 707 was widened to carry 160 passengers six abreast (National Air and Space Museum). The costly decision, HistoryLink writes, was Bill Allen's: at 148 inches the 707 was now one inch wider than the DC-8.

Boeing's own history puts it simply: the airlines wanted the 707 fuselage four inches wider than the tanker's. That width and a length of 100 feet made it the largest passenger cabin in the air, and more than 100 windows let airlines rearrange the seats. Outside, the 707 and the DC-8 looked almost identical, but the 707's wing had more sweepback, so it flew about 20 miles an hour faster.

American Airlines got even more. Its president, C. R. Smith, held off until Pan Am had placed the first firm orders for the 707 and the DC-8 and United had chosen the DC-8, TIME reported. To win American's order, Boeing agreed to enlarge the 707 fuselage and to sell the aircraft for $500,000 less apiece than the DC-8.

There was also a nervous public to win over. Structural failures had grounded the Comet and, in Boeing's words, the enthusiasm for the commercial jet with it; those accidents are told in The de Havilland Comet. Boeing showed customers a film, Operation Guillotine: two metal blades pierced a conventional pressurised fuselage, which disintegrated; then five blades pierced a 707 fuselage, and air escaped in wisps, with no cracks and no structural failure. The ASME brochure lists the Dash 80 as the first aircraft to use fail-safe structural design to control the growth of fatigue cracks.

The first 707s in service, 1957-1959

The first production 707-120, N708PA for Pan Am, was rolled out at Renton on 28 October 1957 and first flew on 20 December (This Day in Aviation). On 15 August 1958 Pan Am took delivery of the country's first commercial jetliner, a 707-120, four months ahead of schedule.

In October 1958, the Smithsonian writes, Pan Am brought the jet age to the United States when it opened international service with the 707. The British Comet 4 had crossed the Atlantic with passengers on 4 October 1958, three weeks before Pan Am's first 707 passenger flight from New York to Paris on 26 October, HistoryLink notes. That flight and the race with the Comet are told in October 1958: Pan Am, the 707 and America's first transatlantic jet service.

Two months after Pan Am, National Airlines began domestic jet service with a 707-120 borrowed from Pan Am, and American Airlines flew its own 707s from January 1959. On 25 January 1959 American opened the first transcontinental jet route, New York - Los Angeles, by Boeing's chronology; that day Captain Charles Macatee flew Flagship California from Los Angeles to New York in 4 hours 3 minutes (This Day in Aviation). A nonstop 707 flight from New York to San Francisco took five hours, three hours less than in a piston-engined DC-7, and cost $115.50 one way including a $10 jet surcharge; by the Smithsonian's reckoning that was almost 40% faster and almost 25% cheaper than by piston airliner, and demand surged.

By November 1958 American had ordered 25 707s for long routes and 25 shorter-range Boeings, all to be delivered by 1962, TIME reported.

Douglas came almost a year later. The DC-8 first flew on 30 May 1958 and entered service with United and Delta on 18 September 1959, less than a year after the 707. When Pan Am's DC-8s went into service in the spring of 1960, the foundation writes, its Boeings had been flying for 16 months and had stolen the march.

A family, not a single airliner

To take the market from the DC-8, Boeing built variants for individual customers: special long-range models for Qantas of Australia, bigger engines for Braniff's high-altitude South American routes. Each was expensive, and with every version the financial risk grew, but after much effort sales picked up, and by Boeing's account the 707 outsold the DC-8. Offering several fuselage lengths, a larger wing for range and more powerful engines, HistoryLink writes, Boeing unknowingly built a family of 707s and set the stage for its great success in jet airliners.

The version ordered most often, according to Boeing, was the long-range 707-320 Intercontinental, its fuselage 8 feet longer than the 707-120's and its wingspan 12 feet greater. Pan Am's 707-321s, arriving from mid-1959 with more powerful JT-4 engines, could fly nonstop from New York to Frankfurt, Rome or Rio de Janeiro.

Then came the turbofan. British Rolls-Royce Conway turbofans lifted a 707-420 into the air on 20 May 1959, and Pratt & Whitney quickly produced its own JT3D, which in HistoryLink's words transformed the 707 into a stellar performer, and the orders poured in; the B in 707-120B and 707-320B stands for turbofan engines. Pan Am's turbofan 707-321B of 1962 reached 4,600 miles, nonstop from New York beyond Rio to Buenos Aires and from San Francisco to Tokyo without the 1,400-mile detour to Honolulu for fuel; in 1963 Pan Am opened the first all-cargo jet service with the 707-321C (Pan Am Historical Foundation).

For shorter routes and runways the 707 became the 720: the fuselage was shortened by 9 feet, the leading-edge flaps changed and turbofans fitted later. The 720 first flew on 23 November 1959, without a prototype, and United took 29 of them in two years (This Day in Aviation). Boeing built 154 720s between 1959 and 1967; their role later passed to the 727 and 737.

The 707 also became the president's aircraft. On 15 May 1958 the Air Force ordered three 707-120s, designated VC-137A, for the president and senior officials. With the president aboard they flew as Air Force One, and Dwight Eisenhower was the first president to travel in one. In 1962 a 707-320B, the VC-137C, took over as the presidential transport.

What the 707 made of Boeing

Boeing counts 856 707s of all versions delivered between 1957 and 1994, 725 of them, by 1978, to commercial operators; the Smithsonian counts 855 and 725 (Boeing). The last ones were military: the E-3 AWACS radar aircraft, a modified 707-320B, and the E-6 for the US Navy, of which the ASME brochure counts 68 and 17. Boeing's chronology records the roll-out of the 1,010th 707 at Renton on 30 April 1991, closing a 35-year production line, and HistoryLink names an E-3 as the last 707 airframe built.

Douglas built 556 DC-8s in seven major variants over 14 years. Almost twice as many 707s were built, HistoryLink reckons, and they returned a profit to their maker.

The 707 sold far beyond America. Boeing's salesmen started with Pan Am, TWA and Europe's large airlines; BOAC was among the first to order, and soon, HistoryLink writes, 707s were carrying passengers and freight throughout the free world. More than half the Dash 80's offspring went to foreign airlines, a major contribution to the American balance of trade by the ASME brochure's reckoning. Pan Am alone bought 130 707s over the years.

For Boeing the 707 changed the books. In 1958, HistoryLink writes, it finally turned the commercial side of the ledger from red ink to black (HistoryLink). The ASME brochure gives the economics: seat-mile costs 20 to 30 percent below those of the DC-6B, the most successful piston airliner of the time, and the Dash 80, in the brochure's words, the first commercial airliner economical enough to take the United States airlines off subsidy. The British Comet and the Soviet Tu-104 had entered service earlier, the Smithsonian notes, but the 707 and the DC-8 were bigger and faster, had greater range and were more profitable to fly. In two years, as Boeing puts it, the 707 helped change the way the world travelled: air eclipsed rail and sea.

The 707 also left Boeing a shape and a name. It was the first of the 7-series jetliners, and its wider fuselage became the standard for all of Boeing's later narrow-body airliners: the cross-section above the floor was the same on the 707, 727, 737 and 757. The number itself became fashionable: requests poured into Boeing to use "707" in product names, and Jantzen called its 1957 swimwear collection "the 707".

The Dash 80 kept working. From 1958 to 1970 Boeing used it to test improvements for the 707 and other aircraft, including the rear-fuselage engine nacelle for the 727. Boeing retired it on 22 January 1970, by This Day in Aviation's account; in 1972 it joined the National Air and Space Museum's collection, and in August 2003 it flew to its permanent home at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Washington. Pan Am's later bet on Boeing is told in Pan Am's 747 bet; more aircraft of the period are on the aircraft shelf.

Fly an airline of 1955

• Era: Jet Age, 1955
• Base: Seattle, SEA
• In the catalog: Boeing 707-120, from 1958

Start in 1955

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