Joe Sutter, 4,500 engineers, the largest building in the world, and 29 months to a 747
In 1965, Pan Am's Juan Trippe wanted a jet two and a half times the size of a 707. Bill Allen at Boeing said yes — and bet the company on it. Pan Am signed a $525 million order for 25 in April 1966, deliverable by the end of 1969. Boeing didn't have the airplane designed yet. Boeing didn't have a factory big enough to build it. Joe Sutter, pulled off the 737 program just as that aircraft was launching, was named chief engineer. His team grew to 4,500 engineers — the largest single airplane engineering team ever assembled. Meanwhile, Boeing bought 780 acres of forest next to Paine Field in Everett and bulldozed 4 million cubic yards of dirt to build the largest building in the world by volume — 472 million cubic feet, 98.3 acres under one roof. The factory and the airplane were designed simultaneously. Boeing was spending $5 million a day. The first 747, "City of Everett" (N7470), rolled out of the new factory on September 30, 1968 — 29 months from go-ahead. On February 9, 1969 it lifted off Paine Field for the first time, flown by Jack Waddell, Brien Wygle, and Jess Wallick (the "Three Ws"). It flew well. The company nearly went bankrupt anyway — the early-1970s "Boeing Bust" cut Seattle's workforce from 101,000 to 38,000, and a famous billboard read "Will the last person leaving Seattle — turn out the lights." The 747 saved Boeing. More than 1,500 were built across 55 years; the final 747-8 freighter delivered in January 2023. The City of Everett, retired after 12,000 flight hours, came back to where Boeing began — the Museum of Flight at Boeing Field, parked a few hundred feet from the Red Barn.