William Edward Boeing
Sky King
Copyright 2009 by Daniel Alef
First Smashwords Edition
ISBN: 9781608040834
All rights reserved. This article may not be reproduced in any form, in whole or in part (beyond that copying permitted by U.S. Copyright Law, Section 107, "fair use" in teaching or research. Section 108, certain library copying, or in published media by reviewers in limited excerpts), without written permission from the publisher.
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On Jan. 2, 1910, leading aviators from around the globe converged on Dominguez Hills near Los Angeles for the Los Angeles Air Meet. During the 10-day event, 226,000 spectators saw a dazzling display of airplanes and flight. Many world records were broken; one pilot soared to 4,164 feet, while Glenn Curtiss hit a blistering 55 mph with a passenger on board. The planes so fascinated one onlooker, 29-year-old William Edward Boeing, that he left a lucrative business and embarked on a new career, aviation, and forever changed the world of flight.
Born in Detroit in 1881, Boeing came from a wealthy family with extensive mining and timber interests in the Mesabi Range of Minnesota, Washington and redwood forests of California. When Boeing was eight, his father died of influenza. His mother subsequently remarried and by all accounts her new husband and Boeing did not get along. Boeing ended attending school in Vevey, Switzerland, where he developed his reserved nature, one that would make him appear rather cold and aloof in adulthood.
He only spent a year in Switzerland, then returned to the States where he continued his education in American private and public schools before entering Yale in 1899. It is unclear why, but in 1903, a year before graduating, he left Yale to pursue a future in timber and logging in Gray's Harbor, Wash.
He was good at it. His company, Greenwood Logging, grew rapidly; by 1908, Boeing had become a wealthy man. He moved to Seattle, where his prospects in lumber appeared unlimited.
The following year, Seattle hosted the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Expo, its first world fair. Boeing was one of the 3 million spectators attending the fair and saw J.C. Mars fly a 95-foot dirigible. It piqued Boeing's interest enough to compel his attendance at the Los Angeles Air Meet.
In Los Angeles, he sought a ride on an airplane, but none of the pilots would oblige him. He returned to Seattle disappointed, but with an inextinguishable spark of interest in flight.
Over the next five years, Boeing ruminated over aviation. He and George Conrad Westervelt, a Navy engineer, held extensive discussions at Seattle's University Club about their mutual interest in airplanes, though neither of them had ever flown.
At the same time, Boeing, a bachelor, built Aldarra, a 19,000-square-foot Mediterranean Revival mansion in the Highlands, a new and exclusive community near Seattle. Situated on a bluff overlooking Puget Sound, Aldarra was completed in 1914. Four years earlier Boeing had acquired Heath Shipyard where he also built his first yacht, the Taconite, named after rich iron-bearing ore, deposits of the Mesabi Range that helped Boeing become rich.
I
n
1915, Boeing finally went on his first flight when Terah Maroney, a
pilot visiting Seattle, agreed to take him and Westervelt up in a
Curtiss biplane. Boeing sat on the wing! Westervelt later noted that
he couldn't "find any definite answer as to why (the plane) held
together." They believed they could build a better biplane.
That autumn, Boeing headed to California to take flying lessons from aviation pioneer Glenn Martin. Upon completion of the course he purchased a Martin Model TA for his personal use. When he returned to Seattle, he and Westervelt adjourned to Boeing's boathouse and began construction of the Bluebill, a two-passenger, twin-float seaplane made of wood, linen and wire. It was also known as the B&W. When the Navy reassigned Westervelt to Washington, D.C., Boeing continued with the project on his own.
On June 15, 1916, Boeing, sitting at the Bluebill's controls, revved up the engine and took it on its maiden flight over Lake Union, reaching a top speed of 75 mph. A month later, he formed Pacific Aero Products Co. and in May 1917, a month after the U.S. entered World War I, he renamed his firm the Boeing Airplane Co.
Boeing used his old shipyards on the Duwamish River for his principal place of business and began construction of a second B&W. The main building was a red barn with Boeing Airplane Co. emblazoned across the top in large white letters. His 28 employees included carpenters, seamstresses, boat builders and pilots.
The Navy was not interested in the B&W, so Boeing sold the two planes to the New Zealand Flying School. But as World War I intensified, Boeing sought a different plane for the military. He hired an aeronautical engineer, built a wind tunnel at the University of Washington, hired several engineering students who would go on to become presidents of the company, and began the development of the Model C airplane.