![]() ![]() But Carl Cleveland, then head of Boeing public relations, says that's not so. There were rumors that Boeing had quashed the stories. But if they expected to read about it in the next day's newspapers, they were disappointed. They had just witnessed aviation history. The barrel roll went so smoothly that a glass of water could have been placed on the instrument panel, and not a drop would have been spilled because of the gravitational forces present in such a maneuver.Īfter passing over the race course, Johnston made a wide turn and then returned - repeating the roll. Inside the aircraft's cabin, the Boeing engineer placed his camera next to the windshield and clicked off a sequence of photographs. As the plane briefly flew upside down, the crowd below gasped in amazement. A Boeing engineer, along for the ride, also was in the cabin with a camera.Īs the aircraft flew over the race course, Johnston put it into a barrel roll, a spin on its axis. Alongside him, in the co-pilot's seat, was Jim Gannett. Johnston, wearing a flight suit and his trademark cowboy boots, was in the pilot's seat. It had been agreed beforehand that Johnston would fly it over Lake Washington, where 250,000 people - including several of the nation's top aviation executives - were gathered for a Gold Cup hydroplane race, the feature event of Seafair. ![]() The plane was the company's pride and joy, its entry into the age of commercial jet aircraft. 7, 1955, Johnston, then Boeing's chief test pilot, had been flying over the Olympic Peninsula and the Pacific Ocean at the controls of Boeing's new Dash 80, the prototype for the 707. Most of the story, however, can be pieced together from an interview this week at Johnston's home in an Everett mobile-home park. It is being published by the Smithsonian Institution, which has ordered Johnston not to divulge too much detail in pre-publication interviews. The book - ``Tex Johnston: Jet Test Pilot'' - was six years in the writing. Alvin ``Tex'' Johnston, the Boeing test pilot whose barrel roll over a Gold Cup course in a commercial jet 35 years ago was one of the most famous maneuvers in aviation history, has broken a long silence about the incident in his memoirs. ![]()
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