747: Creating the World’s First Jumbo Jet and Other Adventures from a Life in Aviation

Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0060882425
Manufacturer: Collins
Release Date: 2007-05-01
Average Customer Review: (From 9 total reviews)
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Editorial Reviews

Product Description:

747 is the thrilling story behind “the Queen of the Skies”—the Boeing 747—as told by Joe Sutter, one of the most celebrated engineers of the twentieth century, who spearheaded its design and construction. Sutter’s vivid narrative takes us back to a time when American technology was cutting-edge and jet travel was still glamorous and new. With wit and warmth, he gives an insider’s sense of the larger than life-size personalities—and the tensions—in the aeronautical world.

Customer Reviews

We can all learn from Joe Sutter by N. Knutzen
Joe Sutter rose to lead the 747 program through hard work, preparation, and a little bit of luck. As an aspiring Boeing worker, I hope to do the same one day. All of the lessons learned from decades ago are still relevant today. Joe tells his story from all angles: professionally and personally. This is a highly engaging book, and if you are interested in the aerospace industry it is highly recommended.

Building The Greatest Commercial Airliner Yet by Dianne Roberts
747 is simply a must for anyone in the aerospace design industry, or for people who are just interested in how the 747 was built. Joe Sutter, the airplane’s director of engineering and the one most responsible for its actual design, has written a trim, quick, and enjoyable to read history of the 747 program encased in a semi-autobiography.

After a few chapters exploring the author’s early life, including his college time and Navy life, the book spends its bulk on a 50,000 foot overview of what was going on with the 747 development program from its inception until its most recent incarnation to fly in the form of the 747-400 family of derivatives. The final chapters sweep the remainder of the author’s professional career including his service on the Challenger Disaster commission. Joe (and after reading the book you definitely get the feeling he would prefer to be called that then Mr. Sutter) has certainly led a very interesting life, and has had the privilege of experiencing a truly gilded age of aviation from the peaks of its ambitions and the lows of its difficulties and uncertainty. But the star of the book is truly the magnificent 747 aircraft and even his more autobiographical chapters tie into the aircraft and its design.

Much of the author’s life exerted an inexorable influence on the design philosophy he brought to the plane. As an early child he grew up in Seattle and watched, literally from his neighborhood, as Boeing would roll out new aircraft through the twenties and thirties and try to push aviaiton forward and make the world a smaller place. Caught up in the majesty of flight Joe wanted very badly to design airplanes, but as WWII dawned when he was in college that would have to wait for more important world events to be sorted out. Joining the Navy he became a deck officer on a destroyer escort in the Atlantic, where he had a formative experience. Returning to Boston Harbor his ship started to become glazed with rapidly growing layers of thick ice in the midst of a storm, making the ship dangerously top heavy. With no anti-icing system and no ability to get people out on deck to hack off the ice the crew had to just ride out the storm praying they wouldn’t die. From this moment on the author decided safety would be a primary criteria of anything he designed.

The legacy of the 747 is one of carrying on Boeing’s legacy of leading the pack in aviation with an unparalleled record of safety, thanks to smart design and brute force quadruple redundancy. (Brute force is by no means meant perjoratively here!) The 747 came about during an amazing time in aviation history. It was the first wide body airliner (against the initial full double decker narrow body wishes of its launch customer), the first turbofan (or fanjet as they are sometimes called) powered airliner, and it was designed by a slimmed down workforce in the shadow of the ill fated 2707 SST, while the 727 and 737 were also absorbing significant company resources, and while Lockheed’s L-1011 and Douglas’ DC-10 provided competition. The story of how this giant came about and triumphed in spite of the decidely low expectations Boeing clearly had for it at the begining is a truly fascinating one, filled with such aviation luminaries as Juan Trippe, Bill Allen and Charles Lindbergh. Joe’s life on the program is also filled with equally amazing events including state department sponsored dinners with the Soviets in Paris at the height of the Cold War (in the spirit of “Detente”), and trips all over the world ranging from the expected places like Japan and New York, to Baghdad.

In addition to being a great story well told, there are real gems here for aviation program managers and aircraft designers about how to make a successful airplane. Absolutely worth reading, and would be something I would like to see as a textbook for aeronautical engineers, perhaps in an aerospace history course, to give them some real world perspective that is so often lacking in modern engineering degrees.

An outstanding book, highly recommended!

Doing the impossible, and living long enough to tell about it by Joel Landoe
Joe Sutter helped accomplish what was probably the most challenging engineering feat in history prior to 1970 by designing the largest jet aircraft in the world. His book touches briefly on the life journey leading up to his employment at Boeing and taking on some major assignments there, including running the 747 program. Joe’s book shows he was an engineer first, and a manager second. While downplaying his own ability to understand company politics and business dealings, you see that Joe really felt a strong sense of importance about each and every engineering assignment he had at Boeing. From the 707 to the 727 to the 747, Joe talks about each Jet as if they were his.

He shows how Boeing bet the whole farm on 747, and how that is typical of Boeing and a key factor to understanding the character of the Boeing Company. He discusses how he played a pivotal role both in the design and risk management process of 747. He shares some of the backroom strategy meetings where he convinced Boeing’s top leadership to build a single deck airplane versus the customer proposed double-decker, and offers insights as to why a double-decker is so much more expensive to build than a single deck aircraft. Insisting on a single deck configuration for 747, according to Joe was probably the most valuable contribution he made at Boeing, though he risked loosing his job and Boeing almost lost the support of their biggest Customer, Pan-Am by going with his approach.

Joe shared some other specific job experiences that helped groom him to run the 747 program, the lessons he learned, and the lessons he wish he had learned.

Joe wanted this book to inspire the younger generation of engineers, and he definitely does. Joe is a story teller at heart and his book is easy reading like some of the emails you might get from an 85 year old war veteran with inspiring and straight talk. I couldn’t put it down till it was done and recommend all my engineer buddy’s to pick up a copy.

747 by Joe Sutter by Roberta Jonnet
History was made in Everett, WA 40 years ago when the “Queen of the Skies” was developed and built. It was Boeing’s Jumbo Jet, a double-deck airplane. Everyone has interviewed Joe Sutter, the “father of the 747″,Chief Engineer on the project, and now he’s written his own account.

It’s his personal story as well as the making of history in aviation. Juan Trippe of Pan Am was a driver behind the development of this airplane.

The book gives one insight to the struggles of developing a new airplane.

You can take guided tours of the assembly plant in Everett, where they assemble the twin-aisle airplanes, including 747 and 787.

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Tags: aircraft, aircraft design, aircraft manafacturing, airliner, avaiation, aviation, aviation history, bill yenne, boeing, boeing everett, engineer, engineering, everett boeing, history, joe sutter

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