Man behind the 747 tells his story
Aerospace Notebook: Man behind the 747 tells his story
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
By JAMES WALLACE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
It was a cold winter's day in 1969, with patches of snow on the ground at Paine Field in Everett, when a new Boeing jet rose majestically into leaden skies -- and changed aviation more than any commercial plane that has followed.
The Boeing 747, the first widebody passenger jet, has carried millions of passengers, U.S. presidents and even the space shuttle since that maiden flight on the morning of Feb. 9 so long ago.
Today, a new generation of Boeing engineers is at work in Everett on what will be the first major derivative of the 747 in 20 years. The 747-8 will have new technology, and the fuel-efficient engines of the 787. It will be longer and carry more passengers than any previous version. But it's still a 747, Boeing's flagship jet and the world's most recognized airplane.
That the 747 is not only still around but about to be reborn as the sixth variant since the initial jumbo jet is testament to the team of engineers known as the "incredibles" who designed the 747 in the 1960s, and to the salty, iconoclastic young engineer named Joe Sutter who led them and fought the many battles with Boeing executives and with Pan Am's Juan Trippe to see the project through to the end.
Sutter, white-haired and soon to be 85 but still razor-sharp, has finally told his life's story, and that of the 747, in a book with aviation writer Jay Spenser.
"747: Creating the World's First Jumbo Jet and Other Adventures from a Life in Aviation," won't hit book stores until May. But last week I received an advance copy from the publisher, Smithsonian Books.
Many of the stories in the book about the 747's development have been told before, but they are fun to read again and this time in Sutter's own words. And there are new nuggets about the Boeing engineer who became a legend.
Sutter was born in Seattle and grew up in a lowermiddle-class Beacon Hill neighborhood. His father, an immigrant from Slovenia, owned a meat-cutting shop. On summer days, Sutter and his brother would walk down to the flying field beside Boeing's old Plant 1.
Later, as a paper boy, Sutter had a route that ended at Boeing Field, and he would "lean my blue Elgin bicycle against the low fence and watch aviation history unfold."
His friends wanted to be pilots, but Sutter was not sure what he wanted in life until February 1933, when he saw Boeing's new 247 plane take off from Boeing Field. He was 11 years old.
It was the world's first modern airliner, with 10 seats for passengers.
"As I watched this captivating vision of aviation's future dwindle in the distance, I knew at last what I wanted to do in life. I would become an airplane designer. I saw with great clarity that multiengine machines like the Boeing 247 were aviation's future, and I wanted to be part of it."
Sutter would go on to finish at the top of his aeronautical engineering class at the University of Washington.
He was still in the Navy at the end of World War II when he received job offers from Boeing and from Douglas Aircraft.
Although Sutter was interested in flight tests, George Schairer, who ran Boeing's technical staff at the time, convinced Sutter that a job in aerodynamics would be more interesting. Sutter figured that he would stay with Boeing for a few months, and then he and his wife, Nancy, and their new baby would head off for Douglas and sunny Southern California.
Instead, Sutter remained with Boeing and in the 1960s was one of the engineers on the new 737 program. The initial design called for a T-tail with aft mounted engines.
Sitting at his desk one day, Sutter took scissors and cut up a drawing of the plane and began moving the engines around.
There had to be a better design, he figured. But putting the engines on struts under the wing like the 707 would block boarding access to the main cabin door on the shorter fuselage of the 737.
"I slid the cutout tight under the wing and felt a sudden flash of excitement. Instead of mounting the engines away from the wing on struts, why not mount them hard against the underside of the wing itself?"
The 737, with Sutter's engine idea, would go on to be the world's best-selling jetliner. The 5,000th plane will soon be delivered to Southwest Airlines.
In August 1965, Sutter and his wife took a week's vacation at their cabin on Hood Canal.
Pan American World Airways had been pressing Boeing about a plane much larger than the 707.
Sutter was chopping firewood at his cabin when the phone rang. Boeing's chief engineer for commercial airplanes wanted him to head the company's studies for a bigger plane.
Boeing would soon lose a competition to Lockheed for a large military transport known as the C-5.
"I should add that fostering large high-bypass engines was all that the USAF C-5 competition contributed to the Boeing 747, as my new airplane would be called. Time and again there appears in print the logical but false assumption that Boeing took its losing military C-5 bid and revamped it as the commercial 747. In fact, the 747 would be an entirely original design that owes nothing to the C-5."
The story of the 747 is well-known, how its development nearly bankrupted the company.
Sutter's book recounts many of those tales, including how Pan Am's Trippe wanted a double-decker plane but Sutter and his team decided on a single very wide passenger deck with just an upper-deck hump behind the cockpit.
"In looking back over the 747 program, I don't believe Boeing would have manufactured well over 1,350 747s -- or even 300 for that matter -- if my design team had delivered that double-decker everyone expected us to create. It also seems to me that what my design group actually achieved has never been fully understood or appreciated within Boeing. My hope is that this book will redress this oversight."
Although he retired from Boeing in 1986, Sutter has continued to work for the company as a consultant. He still has an office in the commercial airplanes headquarters building near Renton. He lives in West Seattle.
Recently, Sutter was invited to the Everett plant to be part of an employee event celebrating the approval by Boeing's board to build the 747-8.
After executives finished speaking, many of the Boeing employees crowded around Sutter. They wanted autographs or just to shake the hand of the man known as the father of the 747.
In his book, Sutter recalls a meeting with Charles Lindbergh in the Pan Am boardroom in New York when the 747 was still fairly new in service. Lindbergh had been a consultant to the airline during its development.
"This is one of the great ones," Lindbergh quietly told Sutter. He was speaking of the 747.
The same can be said of Joe Sutter.
