On August 7th, 1955, hydroplanes blasted through the waters of Lake Washington for the annual Seafair Cup races. Thousands of fans from across the Evergreen State gathered to watch, including a chartered boat filled with bigwigs from airlines from around the world and Boeing CEO Bill Allen. Coincidentally, the annual convention for the International Air Transport Association (IATA) found its way to Seattle during the world-famous races. Realizing that airline executives from around the globe were gathering in his company’s backyard, Allen invited them for a day on the water to glance at what Boeing had been working on.
In the sky was just that — a ketchup and mustard-painted jet passing overhead was Boeing’s prototype for the 707, the 367-80. While Boeing was better known then for building bombers in fake neighborhoods, the brand’s first jetliner was a byproduct of a study on creating a jet-powered transport and tanker for the military. The proposal for the aircraft fell on apathetic eyes, but Boeing knew they had a winner on their hands and hoped to show the concept’s capabilities airborne to win customers over. The company rolled the dice and put 16 million dollars into the prototype that was now soaring over Lake Washington.
That roll of the dice currently lay in the hands of Alvin “Tex” Johnston. A test pilot in the 707 program, Johnston had been asked by Allen to simply perform a flyover of the race. That wouldn’t be the case, however, because Johnston was about to demonstrate the capabilities of the jet in ways that would become folklore. Decades before Richard Russel jumped into a Horizon Air Dash 8, thousands of Seattleites were about to watch an airliner upside-down.
I was inverted
Formerly a civilian flight instructor from Admire, Kansas, Johnston joined Boeing in 1948 to test their B-47 bombers in Wichita. Now based out of Seattle with his family, Johnston had been flying the 707 since its maiden voyage in July of 1954. In the months of flying the 367-80 around the country to win over customers, he quickly learned the ins and outs of the Dash 80, as it came to be known internally.
Rarely showing up to the flightline without cowboy boots and a Stetson hat, Johnston earned the moniker of Tex and was even allegedly an inspiration for the character of Major Kong in the 1964 film “Dr. Strangelove.” That’s the kind of badass Tex was — and why it wasn’t too shocking to find out he wanted to roll the jet.
On that summer afternoon, in front of over a thousand spectators, he did just that. Flying at over 490 miles per hour, Johnston pulled the airliner into a barrel roll. Allen watched in horror as his lone prototype went inverted over Lake Washington. Onboard the jet, flight engineer Bel Whitehead pointed his camera out of the starboard side and gave us one of the most unfathomable shots ever taken from an airliner’s window.
To ensure the stunt was no mechanical mishap, and just in case anyone missed the first one, Johnston took the 248,000-pound jet upside-down with a second roll on the return trip. According to The Seattle Times, Allen turned to Bell Aviation’s Larry Bell, whose heart condition forced him to be medicated, saying, “Give me one of those damned pills. I need it worse than you do.”
Selling with stunts
The following day, an enraged Allen called Johnston into his office to ask him what he had done. The answer from Tex was simple: “Selling the airplane.”
Technically, he really was. Within a month of the stunt, Pan Am ordered 20 planes, the first of the over 1,000 that would be built and flown by airlines worldwide. The 707 would ultimately get its military role as well, and the Air Force ultimately picked up the phone to buy the jet as a tanker. The KC-135 Stratotanker variant remains in service to this day, just one of the many missions served by the jet. From the first jet-powered Air Force One, to an Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) as well as an airborne command post, the 707 has been a key player for the Air Force for decades.
Nearly 40 years after the stunt, Boeing test pilot John Cashman was ready to start another new era for Boeing with the 777’s maiden flight. Before taking off, President Phil Condit offered a simple message for Cashman.
“Good luck, John. And no rolls!”
