William Edward Boeing

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William Edward Boeing , 1929

William Edward Boeing , born Wilhelm Eduard Böing (born October 1, 1881 in Detroit , † September 28, 1956 on the Puget Sound ), was an American aircraft designer and founder of the Boeing aircraft factory.

family

He was the son of the German mining - engineer Wilhelm Böing (1846-1890) and also German-born Marie Ortmann . In 1868, when he was 22 years old, his father Wilhelm Böing left his hometown Limburg an der Lenne (today the Hohenlimburg district of Hagen ) in the Sauerland and had made considerable wealth in Detroit with the timber trade.

Life

Memorial plaque for William Edward Boeing and his father Wilhelm Böing in Hagen-Hohenlimburg

Origin / youth

William Boeing jun. had to witness the early death of his father from influenza at the age of nine . The father was only 44 years old; his son adored him all his life. When William was 13 years old, his mother arranged for him to receive further education in a Swiss boarding school.

Return to the USA

In 1900 he returned to the United States, changed his name from Wilhelm Eduard Böing to William Edward Boeing and began studying at Yale University . As early as 1903 he finished his studies without a degree, first to join his father's wood processing company. Here he acquired knowledge of wooden structures that were later very useful in aircraft construction.

As head of the Greenwood Logging Company , which experimented with boat design, he traveled to Seattle , where he saw a manned aircraft for the first time in his life at the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Fair. From now on, the fascination of flying and airplanes never left him.

Start of aircraft construction

In 1915 in Seattle , Washington , Boeing and his colleague George Conrad Westervelt began work on their first aircraft, the B&W Seaplane , a seaplane made of wood, canvas and wire. When Westervelt stopped working on the project, Boeing completed the first two B & Ws without his help. The first flight with the first aircraft called Bluebill was carried out by William Boeing himself on June 15, 1916. In July 1916 he founded the Pacific Aero Products Company, which he renamed the Boeing Airplane Company in 1917 . After the USA entered World War I in 1917 , a Navy commission in Florida placed an order for the delivery of 50 aircraft for training purposes. Boeing received this; he was able to expand his company noticeably. After the end of the war, the oversupply of used former military machines reduced the demand for new aircraft considerably; William Boeing had to downsize the company again and focused on passenger, cargo and mail flights .

During the time of American prohibition , he devoted himself, among other things, to the construction of speedboats , which were equipped with aircraft engines and were probably used to smuggle alcohol between Canada and the USA. On March 3, 1919, William E. Boeing and his partner Conrad Westervelt transported the first airmail between the USA and Canada. He received a state concession for mail flights on the Columbia route from San Francisco to Chicago with his Boeing Model 40 A aircraft .

Boeing married Bertha Potter (divorced Paschall, 1891–1977) in 1921, who brought two sons into the marriage. Bertha and William had a son, William E. Boeing Jr. (1922-2015).

In 1927 Boeing founded his own airline, Boeing Air Transport , for which he bought other regional and postal airlines, e.g. Varney Air Lines , founded in 1926 . In 1928 the airlines and the aircraft manufacturing division were merged into the Boeing Airplane and Transport Corporation . In 1929, after the merger of the Boeing Airplane and Transport Corporation with the engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney and other aircraft manufacturers , Boeing finally founded the United Aircraft and Transport Corporation . In 1931, Boeing Air Transport and the acquired airlines also merged to form United Air Lines , under whose names passenger and mail flights were offered.

After the airmail scandal of 1934 , Boeing had to split up the United Aircraft and Transport Corporation on charges of monopoly formation . The separate companies Boeing Airplane Company , United Aircraft Company (since 1975 United Technologies Corporation ) and United Air Lines emerged from this . Boeing saw its reputation as an honorable businessman damaged by the indictment, then bitterly withdrew from aircraft construction and returned to the wood business until 1954, although he returned to his old company as a consultant during the Second World War and on important official occasions until his death , such as aircraft christenings , appeared with his wife as an invited guest from Boeing. In addition, from 1937 he also turned to horse breeding and real estate business.

He died of a heart attack on September 28, 1956 while sailing on Puget Sound on board his ship Taconite, built for Bertha in 1931 .

Boeing's companies today

The two companies that emerged from the founding of Boeing developed into the most important companies in the aviation industry:

United Technologies Corporation , which emerged from the United Aircraft Company, is a multinational high-tech corporation with nearly 200,000 employees and annual sales of more than $ 58 billion in 2011.

Honors

William Edward Boeing was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1966.

literature

  • Carl Cleveland, Boeing Trivia , (Seattle: CMC Books, 1989)
  • Harold Mansfield, Vision: A Saga of the Sky ( Duell, Sloan and Pearce , 1956)
  • Robert Serling, Legend & Legacy: The Story of Boeing and Its People (New York: St. Martin's Press , 1992)
  • “We can do better” William Boeing was not only enthusiastic about flying - he was also convinced that he could build “better” aircraft. Right from the start, as a look back at history shows. In: AERO International No. 8A / 2016, pp. 52–53

Web links

Commons : William Boeing  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The US Census of 1880 mentions him in the 2nd Ward, Detroit (Wayne, Michigan) as a "Lumber Manufacturer" and unmarried.
  2. ↑ a b TV documentary William Edward Boeing - The dream of flying. NDR / arte 2010
  3. ↑ The story of the first two B&W ( Memento from June 13, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), boeing.com
  4. ↑ Boeing Chronology (PDF English)
  5. ↑ Boeing History: The Boeing Logbook 1881–1919 ( Memento of May 10, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), boeing.com, accessed: May 2, 2012
personal data
SURNAME Boeing, William Edward
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American aircraft designer
DATE OF BIRTH October 1, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Detroit
DATE OF DEATH September 28, 1956
Place of death Puget Sound