Boeing
6 types · 52 airframes
Pre-1950 Narrative
Boeing was founded in 1916 by William E. Boeing in Seattle, Washington. The Boeing Company started in 1916, when American lumber industrialist William E. Boeing founded Pacific Aero Products Company in Seattle, Washington. In 1917, the organization was renamed Boeing Airplane Company, with William Boeing forming Boeing Airplane & Transport Corporation in 1928. In 1934, aircraft manufacturing was required to be separate from air transportation.
Aircraft Types
Boeing 707
The Boeing 707 was the first commercially successful jet airliner: a four-engined, swept-wing transport developed from Boeing's privately funded Dash 80 prototype of 1954. First flown in December 1957, it entered service with Pan American in October 1958 and made jet travel routine on domestic, transcontinental and transatlantic routes through the 1960s and 1970s. Its widened, six-abreast fuselage set the pattern for Boeing's later narrow-body airliners, and military versions kept the family in production until 1991, long after the airliners retired.
Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress
The B-17 Flying Fortress was Boeing's four-engined heavy bomber, designed in the 1930s for daylight precision bombing and first flown in 1935. More than 12,700 were built. Flying the American daylight campaign over Europe, it dropped more bombs than any other U.S. aircraft of the Second World War and earned a lasting reputation for bringing damaged crews home; fewer than 50 complete airframes survive.
Boeing B-29 Superfortress
The Boeing B-29 Superfortress was the United States Army Air Forces' four-engined heavy bomber of the Second World War, designed by Boeing around pressurized crew compartments, remote-controlled gun turrets and the range to bomb Japan from distant island bases. First flown in 1942, it flew incendiary and mine-laying campaigns against Japan in 1944-45, and Silverplate B-29s dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It served again in the Korean War, was retired in the early 1960s, and about two dozen survive, two of them still flying.
Boeing B-52 Stratofortress
The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress is an eight-engined strategic bomber that first flew in April 1952 and remains in United States Air Force service more than seven decades later. Designed to carry nuclear weapons deep into the Soviet Union, it became the backbone of Strategic Air Command's deterrent, then flew conventional bombing campaigns in Vietnam, the 1991 Gulf War, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. Boeing built 744, the last delivered in 1962; only the B-52H variant remains in service, assigned to Air Force Global Strike Command, and planned engine and radar replacements are intended to keep the fleet flying into the 2050s.
Boeing F4B
The Boeing F4B was a single-seat biplane fighter built by Boeing for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, with a near-identical Army counterpart, the P-12. First flown in 1928 as a company private venture, the series became the primary fighter of both services in the early 1930s; total production of the F4B/P-12 series reached 586 aircraft. It was the last wooden-winged biplane fighter Boeing produced for the U.S. military. Front-line service ended in the late 1930s, second-line and training use ran into the early 1940s, and a handful of aircraft survive in museums.
Boeing P-26 Peashooter
The Boeing P-26 "Peashooter" was a single-seat fighter built by Boeing for the U.S. Army Air Corps, the service's first all-metal monoplane fighter. First flown in 1932, it combined all-metal monoplane construction with an open cockpit, fixed landing gear and wire-braced wings, and served as the Air Corps' front-line fighter through the mid-to-late 1930s. Export Model 281s fought in Spain and China, Philippine aircraft fought the Japanese invasion in December 1941, and Guatemala operated the type until 1957. Two originals survive: one displayed by the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum and one flown by Planes of Fame Air Museum.