Sarah…The ordering of 707s by BOAC was all tangled up in the tragedy of the Vickers VC7/V1000 project cancelled when 75% complete. The RR Conway engine was briefly the most powerful and economic engine on the 707 and DC-8 and went on the initial 707s for BOAC, Lufthansa, Air India, Varig, El Al, and Cunard-Eagle and on DC-8s for Air Canada, Canadian Pacific and Alitalia* but things were moving fast and by 1962 the 707-320B version with P&W JT-3Ds and much improved wing arrived able to operate US West Coast to Europe for Pan Am ( the Conway aircraft couldn’t do that with a commercial payload ). A 707-320C version with a cargo door followed , BOAC took 5 arguing no other cargo type was suitable, followed by 2 pax only707-336Bs …see
http://www.caa.co.uk/application.aspx?catid=60&pagetype=65&appid=1&mode=summary&aircrafttype=boeing%20707&dereg=true )
There’s a thread on pprune about BOACs 707s which has stuff about the crash of ‘RWE after an engine dropped off (it was an ex-Cunard Eagle model -465, some differences from the BOAC purchase and acquired 2nd hand)
http://www.pprune.org/archive/index.php/t-311275.html
The underfin was deleted from later 707-320B/C variants after a series of subtle flap and slat improvements made them unnecessary (see Airliner cafe’s Ultimate 707 guide
http://www.airlinercafe.com/page.php?id=72
You can see in your second photo how much the wing has been developed esp’ on the leading edge, not so visible is the increase in area closer to the fuselage on the rear edge…see in the airliner cafe page…….Mick
* Conway DC-8s went to some exotic operators including Cubana 2nd hand
http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?aircraft_genericsearch=&airlinesearch=&countrysearch=&specialsearch=&daterange=&keywords=DC-8-43&range=&sort_order=photo_id+desc&page_limit=60&thumbnails=
Well, I have discovered I am out of my depth against some of you very knowledgable guys. I am probably wrong about the first BOAC Boeings being second hand. I know the airline had a large fleet registered G-APF? and these seem to have had the old engines that I thought were Pratt & Whitney because of the odd jet outflow pipe shape. The later jets G-AX?? had what I thought WERE the rolls-Royce engines.
I just thought I’d read in a history of BOAC that they’d acquired a few used 707 jets in the early 1960s. But the G-APF? fleet are clearly pre-registered as though they were being built for the airline. I know the two state carriers held with this practice of pre-registering new fleets of airliners since the early post-war days.
Sign In
