Growing Up Boeing
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4.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Growing Up Boeing gives an insider’s perspective of the Boeing test pilots and engineers who regularly risked their lives as they tested and certified the early commercial jets, 707s through 767s, at the dawn of the jet age. Passionate about flying, Boeing test pilot S. L. “Lew” Wallick and his Flight Test colleagues lived lives full of risk and adventure while raising their families in the Puget Sound area of Washington State, a region strongly influenced by Boeing and aviation. Using personal interviews of the pilots and engineers, Lew’s daughter Rebecca weaves the accounts of many key test pilots and flight test engineers of this Golden Age of aviation into a narrative full of aviation history, behind-the-scenes drama, some well-kept secrets, and personal insights about how the Boeing test pilots worked, lived and raised their families. Growing Up Boeing offers the human side of Boeing’s flight test history.
Sit down, buckle your seat belt, put your tray table up, and prepare to take off on a nostalgic flight back in time, when the best test pilots flew by the seat of their pants, putting new commercial jets through tests that stressed and pushed the edge of performance envelopes, discovering their limits and tolerances and making them even better. Fly along on demonstration and proving flights as the test pilots help Boeing sell the airplanes to airlines around the world, meeting a few celebrities along the way. By the end of your flight, you’ll have a greater appreciation for the risks the crews took to ensure that we, the traveling public, can fly safely and comfortably to almost anywhere in the world today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this invigorating recollection of an era when airplane travel was new and glamorous, and test pilots were daredevils and role models, Wallick explores her father's career as a test pilot for Boeing stretching from the '40s well into the '80s. She recounts her own life and experiences as a family member, usually on the periphery of the action and sometimes along for the actual ride. Likewise, she includes the experiences, stories, and escapades of her father's colleagues to paint a larger picture of the industry and its evolution. From the early 707, Boeing's first commercial jet airliner, to the 747, from military airplanes to civilian aircraft, Wallick's father, former U.S. Navy aviator Lew Wallick, flies them all, often risking life and limb, and the author brings those stories to life. She writes of pilots' playful tendencies to roll their craft in midair no easy task with commercial jets and of Howard Hughes's eccentric, unpredictable participation. For anyone interested in this period or the faded mystique of the early jet age, it's a great resource. However, Wallick writes from the odd perspective of an outsider blessed with insider knowledge, dispensing vast amounts of technical jargon and model numbers in a dry manner, occasionally turning a delightful history into something more narrow and tedious. (BookLife)
Customer Reviews
Growing up boeing
I give this book a 4 star, for it's attention to details and content.
I enjoy'd reading this very much.
It showed how families can be affected by the work their parents do.
It told about many events that happened in the development of a new aircraft.
Jim