Why boeing 707

It's not, since the wing sweep is 35 degrees and not However, more people lean toward superstition and feel that the positive connotation of the number seven was the reason it was selected. The truth is a bit more mundane. Boeing has assigned sequential model numbers to its designs for decades, as have most aircraft manufacturers. Boeing commercial aircraft use their model number as their popular name: Model 40, Model 80, Model , Model Stratoliner and Model Stratocruiser.

Boeing planes built for the military are best remembered by their military designations, such as the B Flying Fortress or the B Stratofortress. William Allen, Boeing president at the time, decided that the company needed to expand back into commercial airplanes and pursue the new fields of missiles and spacecraft.

To support this diversification strategy, the engineering department divided the model numbers into blocks of for each of the new product areas: s and s continued to represent aircraft, s would be used on turbine engines, s for rockets and missiles and s were set aside for jet transport aircraft. Engineers reduced the fuselage length by 9 feet 2.

Boeing built s between and Its short- to medium-range role was later filled by s and s. Historical Snapshot. Technical Specifications. First flight Dec. Pan-Am, the airline forever associated with the , ordered 20 s and, at the very same time, 25 DC-8s. What was holding Boeing back was the fact that the was narrower and slightly smaller than the DC From that moment, the sales success of the Boeing was assured. Boeing built 1, s for commercial airlines between and , and a further for the military up until , while Douglas assembled DC-8s between and What is fascinating is just how much attention Pan-Am devoted to its beloved airliners.

Today, the millions of casually dressed passengers squeezed onto lookalike aircraft rarely glance at the machines that will wing them across continents. Airlines, meanwhile, sell themselves through cheap fares, in-flight entertainment and destinations rather than aircraft themselves.

The Boeing had, of course, been designed for a less crowded age. Even so, it was stretched over time with later models seating up to passengers. And as much as the Air Force might want to send its based aircraft off to the boneyard—the majority of those aircraft were delivered before most active service members were even born—the US Congress recently made that goal more difficult to achieve.

The E-8 JSTARS and its associated ground stations have been at the center of the Army and Air Force's joint surveillance, command, and control capabilities since the mids, after seeing early action during the Gulf War. Originally intended to serve as a flying command post with ground radar for tracking enemy armor, JSTARS added more sensors and capabilities over the past two decades as it evolved into an airborne reconnaissance, intelligence, and communications hub for joint operations, as well as linking troops on the ground with commanders and working with drones and other aircraft to find and fight insurgents.

While the 16 JSTARS aircraft in service have been useful in most of America's 21st-century conflicts, the airframes they are based on are not getting any younger.