Description
Black and white 9 1/2″ x 13 1/2″ wartime ad for Boeing – Designers Of The Flying Fortress. This ad has a close-up of the landing gear of a Flying Fortress with a soldier standing on the wheel as he is working on something above. The ad headline says that we are “All set for an eighty-ton punch on the nose”. In then says that “In a perfect three-point landing, the landing gear must resist a force equal to the full weight of the airplane. In a moderately bad landing, the impact may double the force to be resisted. On a very bad one the force may be more than tripled. Try these figures on a 25-ton airplane – a Boeing Flying Fortress, for example – and you will see why the landing gear has to be able to take it, and take it, and take it. The design and development of landing gear is part of Boeing engineering history. More than 18 years ago, Boeing developed the first oil-hydraulic airplane shock absorber. This type of shock absorber is now in use on all large commercial and military airplanes, including the Flying Fortress. That the landing gear of the Fortress can take it has been proved many times in severe drop tests made by the Army Air Forces at Wright Field…and in landings, equally severe, made at other fields – from Hawaii to the British Isles”. This ad goes on with more talk about the landing gear.
Source: August 10, 1942 Life magazine.
