World War II ended nearly 70 years ago after two Boeing bombers dropped, on separate days, two atomic bombs that devastated two Japanese cities — Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Boeing’s bombers had already become icons of the war. But despite the company’s prominent role in American war efforts, its future was far from certain when the shooting ended.
Before the war was even over, Boeing considered making cars and washing machines to augment its airplane business.
Ultimately, Boeing’s wartime experiences were key to its dominance in the jet age. The war brought the company newfound regional significance and political clout, fostered a company culture capable of weathering postwar ups and downs, and helped Boeing’s technical expertise leapfrog ahead.
Before the war, Boeing largely had been pushed out of the commercial market by Douglas Aircraft. In 1939, 90 percent of the world’s commercial air traffic was flown on Douglas aircraft, according to the U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission.
Boeing tried to elbow its way back into the market with its 307 Stratoliner, the first commercial airliner with a pressurized passenger cabin. The plane was a flop. First delivered in 1940, Boeing sold 10 of the aircraft.
Instead, Boeing depended on military contracts. It faced fierce competition from Douglas, Lockheed, North American Aviation, Vought and Consolidated Aircraft, among other airplane makers.
Like others, it rapidly expanded during the war. It ramped up production. In 1942, Boeing made 60 planes a month. In March 1944, it churned out 362 planes.
“They put them out really fast,” former Boeing worker Hildred Piel told The Daily Herald in a 2007 interview.
She was one of the thousands of female workers — Rosie the Riveters — hired by Boeing during the war. She signed her name on the company’s 5,000th B-17, a moment captured by LIFE magazine in an iconic image. “I painted my name on the belly,” she said.
Boeing’s workforce grew from about 3,000 in 1939 to more than 31,000 in 1945. Most of those workers were at its Seattle and Renton plants.
The company had two subassembly plants in Everett during the war. One made parts for the B-17, the other for the B-29.
By comparison, though, Douglas’s wartime workforce peaked at 160,000.
Technological advantage
As successful as Boeing bombers were, other bombers were produced in greater numbers.
The B-29, though, was perhaps the most technologically advanced airplane of the war. It introduced computer-controlled systems and a fully-pressurized crew compartment, among its many advances.
The sleek airplane helped Boeing develop close ties with key leaders in the Army Air Corps advocating for strategic air power. These ties helped Boeing land important post-war military contracts: the B-47 and B-52 bombers, and the KC-135 tanker.
These projects gave Boeing a huge advantage over its competitors when it came to jet age technology.
The B-47 bomber set the standard for big jets. It was the first big plane with swept wings and jet engines on pylons, rather than built into the wings. Those features greatly improved its performance by reducing drag.
Nearly 70 years later, big jets pretty much look the same, Boeing historian Michael Lombardi said. “That airplane is the model for all the airplanes we build today.”
Boeing didn’t develop its swept-wing technology in house. It piggybacked on German research confiscated after the war. As the Allies advanced into Germany, American military leaders tapped industry experts, including George Schairer, one of Boeing’s top engineers, to help collect important research material at captured German facilities.
At a research center at Völkenrode, Schairer found Germany’s work on swept-wing jets. Recognizing its significance, Schairer hurriedly wrote a colleague in Seattle, including a diagram of a wing and mathematical formulas detailing how the design reduced drag.
Back in the States, Schairer led a team in redesigning the wings on the development project that would become the B-47. The plane’s advanced design helped the company win the Air Force contract, which helped it stay afloat in the uncertain post-war economy.
Boeing didn’t simply copy others’ research, though.
The company had been heavily investing in research and design since the late 1930s. It was the only company to build a high-speed wind tunnel at the time. During the war, it greatly increased the number of engineers it employed.
Unlike many of its competitors, it continued putting substantial resources into research and development after the war, as well, said Polly Myers, author of Capitalist Family Values: Gender, Work, and Corporate Culture at Boeing.
Workforce shifts
Most of those engineers came from the University of Washington, where Myers today is a lecturer in the history department.
Managers and engineers alike came to make up a greater percent of Boeing’s workforce.
“Engineers were hired to help innovate, and managers were hired to help deal” with the company’s shift to mass production, she said.
Despite the Rosie the Riveter image, Boeing workers and managers had worries and complaints, she said.
Racial tensions on the shopfloor were so high that Boeing managers considered building a segregated factory for black workers. The company’s white-collar workforce was mostly white-skinned. They dodged the racial tension through lack of diversity, she said.
Post-war employment was far from certain. Indeed, the company had to lay off most of its workforce after the war.
The pervasive “sense of things in flux and uncertainty was stressful for workers and management” alike, she said.
Boeing managers had to find a way “to build cohesion among such a big workforce,” Myers said.
Culture of family
The company very deliberately encouraged a workplace culture built on the idea of Boeing as a family. It continued that focus after the war. Overall, workers and managers bought into it, as did the Seattle community, she said.
That sense of collective identity helped Boeing weather its postwar ups and downs. In the coming decades, as Boeing developed distinct operations for defense, commercial airplanes and space, its company culture helped it maintain its sense of unity, she said.
When the shooting ended, so too did the wartime contracts.
Boeing had to slash its workforce, which dropped to fewer than 9,000 in 1946.
The layoffs caught the attention of the political, business and community leaders in Seattle and across the state. When the Air Force a few years later pushed Boeing to transfer B-47 production to Wichita, Kansas, there was real concern here that the company would move all its operations there.
The war had made Boeing one of the region’s biggest employers, giving it new prominence. So, while U.S. Sen. Homer Bone, D-Tacoma, had blasted the company in the 1930s for how much it profited off federal contracts, the state’s political machinery backed Boeing across party lines after the war, according to Richard Kirkendall, a history professor at the University of Washington.
Labor and business groups joined politicians in backing Boeing. Despite a strike in 1948 by Boeing workers represented by the International Association of Machinists, the union supported the company on issues of common interest.
Seattle, especially, came to see its future intertwined with Boeing, according to Kirkendall.
When the Air Force ordered the B-52, it required that the work be done in Seattle.
Boeing President Bill Allen made sure the company made the most of its work building jet bombers. It had gained experience, and perhaps more important, it already had invested in tooling and production facilities.
Wellwood Beall, the company’s head of sales and engineering at the time, later told an interviewer, “We looked hard at our B-47 and -52 when we first thought about jet airliners and you couldn’t use one bolt. On the other hand, facilities for building and testing such aircraft could be very useful…”
Battle for market share
Boeing wasn’t the first company to make a commercial jetliner. British firm de Havilland, Avro in Canada and France’s Sud Aviation all had jets for sale before the 707 flew. And Douglas’ reputation was so strong that many airlines waited for its DC-8, which followed the 707 a year later.
Those earlier jets ran afoul of technological, political and market risks. The DC-8 performed well, but Douglas’ production and management systems did not, according to a study by Jonathan Leonard, a professor at Berkeley and Adam Pilarski with Avitas, an aviation consulting firm.
Seventy years ago, Boeing planes slugged it out in the skies over Europe and the Pacific.
Today, Boeing planes are battling another European foe. This time, though, the fight is for market share with Airbus.
Dan Catchpole: 425-339-3454; dcatchpole@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @dcatchpole.
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