Fotos para la historia.-

Putting a prototype 707 through a barrel roll seems like an absolutely crazy idea. It's a huge airplane that was certainly not designed for acrobatics, but that didn't stop Boeing test pilot Tex Johnson from doing it anyway during a demonstration flight over Seattle in 1955.

Boing 707 doing a barrel roll. When the test pilot Tex Johnson was questioned about the stunt, he simply replied by saying – “Just selling airplanes”.

As part of the Dash 80s demonstration program, Bill Allen (Boeing President) invited representatives of the Aircraft Industries Association and International Air Transport Association to the Seattle's 1955 Seafair and Gold Cup Hydroplane Races held on Lake Washington on August 6, 1955. The Dash-80 was scheduled to perform a simple flyover, but Boeing test pilot Alvin "Tex" Johnston instead performed a barrel roll to show off the jet airliner. The next day, Allen summoned Johnston to his office and told him not to perform such a maneuver again.

Boeing Chief Test Pilot John Cashman stated that just before he piloted the maiden flight of the Boeing 777 on June 12, 1994, his last instructions from then Boeing President Phil Condit were "No rolls".

As Tex points out, contrary to what it looks like, this is a completely safe, hazard-free maneuver, because it's "1g." In other words, the entire maneuver takes place under one gravity, which is the same amount of force that you're feeling right now. While it's true that the airplane does end up completely sideways (twice) and upside-down (once), because of the way that the roll is performed, the force on the airplane remains constant as the acceleration vector changes. So, when the airplane is sideways, it's also accelerating sideways. When the airplane is upside-down, it's accelerating downwards. Throughout the entire roll, the airplane is accelerating in such a way that there's always one gravity of force pulling at it in the direction that it was designed for. As far as the aircraft is concerned, it's really not much different than flying straight and level: the stresses on the airframe aren't significantly increased, air is still moving over the control surfaces, and fuel is still flowing into the engines.

The 707 was not the only big airplane that pulled this off: the Concorde was barrel rolled multiple times during its testing.


The Boeing 367-80, or "Dash 80" as it was known at Boeing, was an American prototype jet transport built to demonstrate the advantages of jet aircraft for passenger transport. The Dash 80 was the prototype for the KC-135 Stratotanker tanker and the 707 airliner. It was built in less than two years from project launch in 1952 to rollout on May 14, 1954. Its US$16 million cost was an enormous risk for the Boeing Company, which had no committed customers. Only one was built; it is now in the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, an annex of the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum at Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia.