The Dash-80 rollover

I was sad and upset when the federal sequester of funds targeted things the public loves, like veterans memorials, national parks and especially the Navy/Marine Blue Angels Flight Demonstration Squadron and the Air Force Thunderbirds demonstration team. These exciting teams once again are giving the taxpayers their money's worth at air shows around the country. The Blue Angels performed at Lancaster's Fox Field at the Los Angeles County Air Show on Mar. 21-22. I was not able to attend, but our photographer Nick Smirnoff sent some photos from their practice runs a few days before.

My memories of both these demonstration teams go back to happy years in Seattle, when we would watch the Gold Cup hydroplane races on Lake Washington from our home on a hill overlooking the course. It was always a glorious day, featuring the thundering hydroplanes with their big Rolls Royce engines racing to cross the start line, their proud rooster tails throwing up a wall of water, hundreds of boats on the log boom and a big party at our house catered by Trader Vic's.

Who can forget the elegant pink Hawaii Kai or the local favorite Slo-mo Shun? We were hydroplane wonks.

Race day, Aug. 7, 1955. I was 11. We still lived in a small town in central Washington and had not yet moved to the big house in Seattle. We were guests on a boat on the log boom. The morning heats were completed. The Blue Angels or the Thunderbirds – I can't recall which, as they both flew at the Gold Cup races – had just finished performing. The TV camera crews and half a million people around the lake were kicking back for a lunch break or a swim before the final hydroplane races.

Suddenly there was a buzz and everyone's eyes turned toward an aircraft that was coming in from the south over Seward Park, a peninsula that juts into the lake. People initially thought it was a solo demonstration by one of the military team jets.

As the aircraft came closer, a murmur of recognition swept through the crowd as everyone saw it was the Boeing 707 prototype, the Model 367-80, or XB-80, known as the Dash-80. Boeing called it a prototype jet tanker-transport. It was a familiar sight in the skies over Seattle, and I recall the roar of the impossibly loud jet engines being tested to the max, apparently uncovered, at Renton Field, several hills and many miles away. Four Pratt & Whitney JT3 turbojet engines powered the aircraft.

At that time, the passenger airline industry was skeptical about purchasing jets. The first Western commercial passenger jet aircraft, the British De Havilland Comet, placed into service in 1952, had twice crashed, fully loaded with passengers, and was retired. The problem was found to be the square windows had created stress cracks. Airplane windows henceforth were round. Another early passenger jet was the Soviet Tupolev TU-104 twin-engine turbojet, which successfully flew commercially beginning in the early '50s.

Jets were associated with military and war, and people in the '50s were too close to wars and didn't want reminders, nor did they trust the darn things. The major American airline companies were not ready to commit to passenger jets until they found an aircraft they could trust, that performed well and was comfortable.

The legendary Boeing test pilot Tex Johnston had been given permission to stage a fly-by during the Gold Cup. Boeing executives were entertaining representatives of the international airline industry, who were convening in Seattle for meetings. Boeing President Bill Allen was on a barge on Lake Washington. Many of the Boeing execs were at the home of a future school friend of mine whose father was the company's chief aerodynamicist.

Instead of a sedate fly-by, Johnston emerged from the south, dropped down over Seward Park, came in low over the water and put that puppy into a beautiful slow barrel roll, pulling up over the Floating Bridge and rising into the sky.

Then Johnston turned around and did it again. He flew in the other direction, pulling up over Seward Park.

It left us breathless and cheering. It was an awesome sight. It was so big, so graceful, so powerful. So upside down.

The Boeing execs nearly had heart attacks. My uncle was with the gentleman whose company provided insurance to Boeing.

"We didn't insure a stunt plane," he gasped.

Later that day, Bill Allen called Johnston into his office for a good chewing out. Allen had taken a big gamble and the entire fate of the company was riding on those Dash-80 wings.

Allen did not fire Johnston. Funny thing, they started selling 707s pretty quick after that.

Johnston knew exactly what he was doing and exactly what that Dash-80 could do. For a long time, he had been executing the same maneuvers in routine tests out over the ocean. The only difference was that half a million people saw it that day. He had told no one what he intended to do. There were only a handful of people on the airplane. He said later he wanted to show how safe the aircraft was.

"I wanted to get their attention," Johnston said.

Few photos or film records of the event exist, or have made it from household archives to the public. The TV crews stationed around the lake were giving their cameras a rest before the final races. There was no mention of the event the next day in the Seattle papers. It's said (and may be true) that Boeing put some pressure on the newspaper owners to hush it up.

As if anyone who was there could ever forget. Years later, at high school reunions, I discovered that each schoolmate who was there that day – and who would be anywhere else on Gold Cup day! – remembered it differently. The first pass came in from the north. No, it came in from the south. Well, it came over twice, maybe you only saw it once. It was 100 feet off the water. No, it was 500, a thousand. No, it was barely a wing span off the deck.

I researched. I interviewed the aerodynamicist, my friend's father, who had been aboard most of the test flights. I got permission from Boeing to peruse Tex Johnston's original flight log in the Boeing archives in Bellevue, Wash.

It says: DATE 1955, 8-7, TEST NO. 70-1, FLIGHT NO. 129, FLIGHT TIME 1:18, TOTAL PERIOD TIME 3:13, TOTAL AIRPLANE TIME 194:27, TEST DESCRIPTION CHANGES AND REMARKS Slow Roll Over Gold Cup.

A grainy video (film) of the rollover can be found on the internet, but it fails to convey the true impact.

With the help of another classmate who is a Boeing test engineer, in 2002 I was able to visit a massive wooden hangar at Boeing field that shelters old aircraft. The Dash-80, a peace sign scrawled on her windshield and surrounded by crates of airplane parts, was dusty but dignified. She wore her original colors – a dull grey belly, a terra-cotta brown trim and yellow topside. Her nickname long ago was "The Flying Banana."

She shared space in that big hanger with a gorgeous silver Boeing 307 Stratoliner Clipper Flying Cloud, which – during the restoration process – was ditched in Elliott Bay off Seattle due to fuel miscalculation, and seriously damaged by exposure to the salt water.

The Dash-80 was a true test aircraft, pushed to the limit in every way. Through the years, engineers chopped and cut and patched and pounded and measured the aircraft, first to make the 707 model perfect, then to develop newer passenger jet models. To test the viability of the 727 tri-motor configuration, they slapped an extra engine on her back, then took it off. To test moveable stabilizers, they hacked holes in her rear and built lumpy frames out of wood. They sliced in doors and sealed the skin up again. They modified the flaps. They built a huge proboscis, then prettied her up with a new nose job.

She was the prototype of the most successful passenger jet airliner in history. The Dash-80 was the mother ship, the alpha aircraft, the creation that made the world smaller by half.

A few years after my visit to the dusty lady, in a final farewell flight the Dash-80 hopped her way slowly across the continent so as not to stress her old bones, to her ultimate destination at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Annex of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum near the Dulles International Airport at Chantilly, Va.

She has been designated one of the ten most important aircraft of all time.

I remember that day in 1955 and I cheer the jets of the military demonstration teams, happy that youngsters today get to experience the same thrill.

Well, almost the same.

The extracurricular stunt that Tex Johnston pulled off could never happen again.

Could it?