Wide Body
Definitely not a weekend read, this book is worth the time invested. There is a lot of material for the technical reader. Boeing built their own wind tunnel and this set them apart from Douglas and Lockheed. Cheap power in the northwest made this possible. But it was men like Joe Sutter, Ed Wells, and George Schairer, with their drive and engineering skills that made Boeing airplanes the world’s best.
Clive Irving doesn’t just tell us how these planes came about. His book is filled with the personality of the men who built the company. Test pilots like Tex Johnston and Jack Waddel, who developed tests for passenger jets before the FAA wrote the regulations. Mel Stamper, “T” Wilson, Bill Allen, men who guided the company through lean years.
This is a book about people. The fact they built airplanes is a bonus.