Videos: Boeing 747 First Flight (Feb 9, 1969 - My 8th Birthday!)
Tuesday, December 11, 2012 at 08:32PM
I stumbled across these two videos the other day and realized they were more than awesome enough for posting. You get about 15 minutes of the backstory leading up to the first flight of the prototype Boeing 747, which just happened to take place on my 8th birthday on February 9th 1969. This little piece of Martt trivia is part of the reason I have always felt very connected to the 747. (pretty amazing that the 727 also shares the same first-flight date, but that was on February 9th 1963, my 2nd birthday!)
The Boeing 747 represents one of the absolute most amazing feats of engineering and manufacture in the entire history of mankind... and when you couple that with it being one of the most beautiful airplanes ever built and its wonderful flying qualities (both from the cockpit and the cabin), it stands as one of the top 10 most important aircraft. Ever. You get a sense of that from these videos, which by the way are pretty old-school productions with some of the scariest background music ever. Sure reminds me of a lot of 16mm films I watched in science class back around 1969. Anyway, the content of these videos is awesome!
Photo of the 747 prototype during the official roll out event (photo: Museum of Flight)
And if the fact that the 747 first-flight occurred on my birthday isn't enough to show you why I've always had a special place in my heart for this 713,000 pound sweetie (UAL 747-100 max taxi weight) - then take a look at the two pix below. That's me in July 1970 (9 years old) checking out United's very first 747, N4703U, on the ramp at LAX with my dad. He was currently flying out of LAX as a 727 Captain, but he was putting in a bid to become a 747 co-pilot. We moved east to Illinois by winter and somewhere around February 1971 he was flying 747 right-seat out of ORD, shortly after the airplane had gone into service. In addition to getting to walk around (and thru) United's first 747 even before it went on line, as these pix show, I even got to go thru one week of ground school on the airplane with my dad in Denver a few months later! Maybe some day I'll tell you what I remember about making 3 takeoffs and landings in the full-motion 747 simulator as an 9 year old! Yeah, I was extremely aviation-privileged as a kid. Wow... I even have a hard time believing a lot of what I got to do by the time I was 18 : )
9 year old me (1970) soaking up the size of UAL's first 747 before it had entered service
Me in the First-class lounge (in the hump) on UAL's first 747 before pax had ridden there!
In the years that followed I had many opportunities to ride in the 747, with several of those rides with my dad up in the cockpit. He enjoyed the 747 more than any of the other airliners he had flown (DC-3, DC-4, DC-6, DC-7, Convair 340, DC-8, and 727) and he actually spent the entire remaining years of his career at United, a total of 16 years, in either the right seat or the left seat of the 747. He accumulated over 10,000 hours just in the 747! In ways I can't really explain, I feel like the 747 is a part of me... and wow, do I love that feeling!
You can learn a little more about the 747 first flight in this excellent post from the blog of Randy Tinseth who is vice president of marketing for Boeing Commercial Airplanes in Seattle. And that prototype 747, (N7470 - check out the FAA registry link) is on display at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. Here's their webpage about N7470. I must get out there one day and see that girl! (hmm, maybe AirPigz museum MeetUp 2014?)
And the next time you see a 747 fly overhead, or even better get to spend some time letting her take you somewhere, I hope you take the time to realize how much she means to world of aviation that we all love so much... she is truly the Queen of the Skies!
Reader Comments (3)
Hi Martt, Mike here. I've worked on 8403 / N7403U back in '84.
montarny e3d3fd1842 https://www.swagglite.com/verrextvestmet
montarny e3d3fd1842 https://www.swagglite.com/verrextvestmet