The Boeing Company
In 1903 William E Boeing left Yale University and headed West to Grays Harbor, Washington State, where he traded in timber. By 1908 he had made his fortune and moved to Seattle.
In 1910 Boeing travelled to Los Angeles to visit the first American Air Meet which was taking place. Despite his best efforts to get a ride in one of the aeroplanes he came away empty handed. On his return to Seattle William Boeing decided to investigate all he could about aeronautics, he became friends with George Conrad Westervelt, at Seattle's University Club. Westervelt was a navy engineer and had studied aeronautics at M.I.T. The pair were given a ride on a Curtis bi-plane which impressed neither of them and they decided that they could build something better.
In 1915 Boeing took flying lessons from Glenn Martin, before leaving for California, he asked Westervelt if he would start work on their aircraft's design. Westervelt produced a design for a twin-float seaplane named B&W. The aircraft was built in Boeing's boathouse. The navy decided that they wanted Westervelt on the East coast and so Boeing completed the project alone. Two B&W seaplanes were built. Boeing made the first flight himself when he tired of waiting for the test pilot he had hired to make the flight. On 15th July 1916 Boeing incorporated his company as Pacific Aero Products Co. A year later he changed the name to Boeing Airplane Company.
Boeing retained Tsu Wong to replace Westervelt as designer and by 1917 there were 28 people on the payroll. The B&W did not sell and Boeing had to use his own fortune to guarantee loans to enable the company to pay the staff wages.
America was now embroiled in the Great War and opportunity knocked for Boeing. The navy required training aircraft and Tsu Wong had designed the Type C which fitted the bill nicely. Boeing shipped two Type C's by rail to Pensacola, Florida to demonstrate them to the navy. An order for 50 Type C's was placed. By the middle of 1918 Boeing employed 337 people but things were about to change. With the end of the war there was no work and Boeing started manufacturing furniture to keep the company alive.
Between 1919 and 1925 Boeing completed small military contracts and civil projects which kept the company in the public eye but which produced little revenue. In 1925 Boeing won a contract to build 71 NB training aircraft for the navy. Five more were exported to Peru. During this period Boeing produced the Model 15 (PW-9) fighter for the army air service. As a result of this contract Boeing became a leading supplier of military aircraft, 586 fighters in the P-12/F4B were eventually built. In 1927 Boeing won a contract from the U.S postal service to deliver air mail, Boeing Air Transport (BAT) was formed to fulfil the contract. BAT was not just a delivery service, the company ran the airfields and trained both ground crew and pilots. BAT also carried its first passenger, a reporter, between San Francisco and Chicago. In its first year of operation BAT carried 1863 passengers in the Model 40A mail-plane. The popularity of the service led Boeing to design and build the company's first passenger aircraft the Model 80, a bi-plane which could seat 12 passengers.
During the development of the Model 40A William Boeing forged links with Fred Rentschler, president of Pratt & Whitney. In 1929 the pair formed a holding company, United Aircraft and Transport Corporation (UATC), Boeing and Rentschler swapped shares in their own companies for shares in UATC. The influence of the new company spread like a virus, encompassing shipbuilding and other aviation companies; Chance Vought, Hamilton Metalplane Co, Standard Steel Propeller, Sikorsky and Northrop, Stout Airlines, National Air Transport, and Varney Airlines. The airlines were grouped together as United Airlines which was able to provide a coast-to-coast service.
The UATC story went from strength to strength, it was by now a massive multifunctional organisation. In 1933 the Model 247 airliner was designed for the in-house United Airlines. The aircraft was so superior to other machines then available it naturally attracted the interest of airlines outside the UATC group. Boeing President Claire Egtvedt asked the UATC board for permission to sell Model 247's to the other carriers, with deliveries commencing with line number 21. The UATC board, probably feeling omnipotent, refused stating that United Airlines order for 60 aircraft must be completed before any other deliveries. This decision was possibly the worst that the company had ever made - they effectively shot themselves in the foot. A less than pleased Jack Frye of TWA issued a specification which produced the Douglas DC-2. The rest they say is history, so was Boeing as a manufacturer of civil airliners for the next 22 years.