Boeing Completes the Maiden Flight of Its Model 314 Clipper

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Beginnt am 07.06.1938

Boeing Completes the Maiden Flight of Its Model 314 Clipper · Chronopin

The first Boeing Model 314 Clipper made its maiden flight on June 7, 1938, staying aloft over Puget Sound for 38 minutes^[2][3]
The pilot is named slightly differently by the two accounts - "test pilot Eddie Allen" in HistoryLink and "test pilot Edmund T. Allen" in Wikipedia - and the flight identified insufficient rudder control^[2][3]
There was no prototype: the production aircraft NX-18601 was launched into the Duwamish Waterway from Boeing's Plant 1 and towed to Elliott Bay, its wingspan barely clearing the bridge supports even turned diagonally, with taxiing trials beginning 3 June when Allen found it too lightly loaded^[2][3]
The aircraft came out of Pan American's February 1936 design competition - against Douglas, Consolidated, Martin and Sikorsky - for a 10,000 lb payload, minimum 2,400-mile range and 150 mph cruise at 10,000 ft^[2]
Boeing first decided not to bid until engineer Wellwood E. Beall drafted a design reusing the XB-15 bomber's wing with Wright R-2600 Twin Cyclone engines giving 50% more power than the XB-15's 850 hp units, at an estimated 40,000 lb weight and a 152 ft wingspan; Pan American awarded a $4.8 million contract on July 21, 1936 for six aircraft with an option for six more, and Boeing missed the delivery date by 13 months^[2]
Production figures agree on twelve built, with nine going to Pan Am; the type entered service in 1939 and was retired in 1951, the last surviving Clipper being scrapped that year after wartime service and obsolescence against faster postwar airliners^[2][3]
It was the first aircraft to carry a sitting American president, flying FDR to the Casablanca Conference in 1943^[2]
The same day as the maiden flight, the Douglas DC-4E prototype also flew for the first time, in southern California^[3]

Notable features

Dornier-style sponsons on the lower hull stabilised the flying boat on the water, served as a boarding platform and, with an aerofoil shape, added lift in flight^[2]
A Free Documentary episode calls it "the biggest airplane of the nineteen hundred thirties and the first to take passengers non-stop from the USA to Europe", "a gigantic floating body as a fuselage, combined with state-of-the-art wings from a military experimental aircraft", with a range of 5,900 km and a maximum speed of 320 km/h^[1]
Its cabin had "spacious sections with luxurious chairs as seats, a dining room in which the stewards serve a six course menu and even a honey moon suite", which with its engineering "make the B 314 famous all over the world"^[1]
Its Wright Twin Cyclone engines were the first to use 100-octane gasoline in commercial service, and the wings were thick enough for a crawlspace through which a flight engineer could service engines in flight; 431 in-flight engine repairs were made between June 1939 and June 1941^[2]
The 314A version carried a crew of 10 to 16 and 68 day or 36 sleeping passengers; it was 106 ft long with a 152 ft wingspan, weighed 84,000 lb gross, had four 1,600 hp Wright GR2600A2A radials, and reached 210 mph with a normal range of 3,685 mi^[2]

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Boeing Completes the Maiden Flight of Its Model 314 Clipper

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Belege 385 % SICHERHEIT

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