Cool Precision Turned Components Producers images

A handful of good precision turned components producers images I found:

Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center: North American P-51C, “Excalibur III”, with tails of Concorde & Boeing 707 in background

Image by Chris Devers
Quoting Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum | North American P-51C, &quotExcalibur III&quot:

On Might 29, 1951, Capt. Charles F. Blair flew Excalibur III from Norway across the North Pole to Alaska in a record-setting 10½ hours. Utilizing a program of very carefully plotted &quotsun lines&quot he developed, Blair was in a position to navigate with precision where standard magnetic compasses often failed. Four months earlier, he had flown Excalibur III from New York to London in much less than 8 hours, breaking the existing mark by more than an hour.

Excalibur III 1st belonged to famed aviator A. Paul Mantz, who added further fuel tanks for extended-distance racing to this normal P-51C fighter. With it Mantz won the 1946 and 1947 Bendix air race and set a transcontinental speed record in 1947 when the airplane was named Blaze of Noon. Blair bought it from Mantz in 1949 and renamed it Excalibur III, soon after the Sikorsky VS-44 flying boat he flew for American Export Airlines.

Present of Pan American Globe Airways

Manufacturer:
North American Aircraft Firm

Date:
1944

Country of Origin:
United States of America

Dimensions:
Wingspan: 11.3 m (37 ft)
Length: 9.eight m (32 ft 3 in)
Height: three.9 m (12 ft 10 in)
Weight, empty: four,445 kg (9,800 lb)
Weight, gross: 5,052 kg (11,800 lb)
Leading speed: 700 km/h (435 mph)

Components:
General: Aluminum

Physical Description:
Single seat, single engine, low wing monoplane, Planet War II fighter modified for racing.

• • • • •

Quoting Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum | Boeing 367-80 Jet Transport:

On July 15, 1954, a graceful, swept-winged aircraft, bedecked in brown and yellow paint and powered by 4 revolutionary new engines initial took to the sky above Seattle. Built by the Boeing Aircraft Firm, the 367-80, much better recognized as the Dash 80, would come to revolutionize industrial air transportation when its created version entered service as the famous Boeing 707, America’s first jet airliner.

In the early 1950s, Boeing had begun to study the possibility of making a jet-powered military transport and tanker to complement the new generation of Boeing jet bombers entering service with the U.S. Air Force. When the Air Force showed no interest, Boeing invested million of its own capital to develop a prototype jet transport in a daring gamble that the airlines and the Air Force would acquire it when the aircraft had flown and established itself. As Boeing had accomplished with the B-17, it risked the firm on one particular roll of the dice and won.

Boeing engineers had initially based the jet transport on research of enhanced designs of the Model 367, far better recognized to the public as the C-97 piston-engined transport and aerial tanker. By the time Boeing progressed to the 80th iteration, the design bore no resemblance to the C-97 but, for safety reasons, Boeing decided to let the jet project be identified as the 367-80.

Function proceeded quickly after the formal commence of the project on May 20, 1952. The 367-80 mated a massive cabin based on the dimensions of the C-97 with the 35-degree swept-wing design and style primarily based on the wings of the B-47 and B-52 but significantly stiffer and incorporating a pronounced dihedral. The wings had been mounted low on the fuselage and incorporated higher-speed and low-speed ailerons as properly as a sophisticated flap and spoiler system. 4 Pratt &amp Whitney JT3 turbojet engines, each and every generating ten,000 pounds of thrust, were mounted on struts beneath the wings.

Upon the Dash 80’s 1st flight on July 15, 1954, (the 34th anniversary of the founding of the Boeing Company) Boeing clearly had a winner. Flying 100 miles per hour more rapidly than the de Havilland Comet and substantially larger, the new Boeing had a maximum range of a lot more than 3,500 miles. As hoped, the Air Force purchased 29 examples of the design and style as a tanker/transport soon after they convinced Boeing to widen the design and style by 12 inches. Happy, the Air Force designated it the KC-135A. A total of 732 KC-135s were constructed.

Rapidly Boeing turned its consideration to selling the airline industry on this new jet transport. Clearly the market was impressed with the capabilities of the prototype 707 but never a lot more so than at the Gold Cup hydroplane races held on Lake Washington in Seattle, in August 1955. During the festivities surrounding this event, Boeing had gathered many airline representatives to get pleasure from the competitors and witness a fly past of the new Dash 80. To the audience’s intense delight and Boeing’s profound shock, test pilot Alvin &quotTex&quot Johnston barrel-rolled the Dash 80 more than the lake in full view of thousands of astonished spectators. Johnston vividly displayed the superior strength and performance of this new jet, readily convincing the airline business to purchase this new airliner.

In browsing for a marketplace, Boeing located a ready customer in Pan American Airway’s president Juan Trippe. Trippe had been spending much of his time looking for a appropriate jet airliner to allow his pioneering business to maintain its leadership in international air travel. Operating with Boeing, Trippe overcame Boeing’s resistance to widening the Dash-80 design, now recognized as the 707, to seat six passengers in every single seat row rather than 5. Trippe did so by putting an order with Boeing for 20 707s but also ordering 25 of Douglas’s competing DC-8, which had yet to fly but could accommodate six-abreast seating. At Pan Am’s insistence, the 707 was created four inches wider than the Dash 80 so that it could carry 160 passengers six-abreast. The wider fuselage created for the 707 became the regular design for all of Boeing’s subsequent narrow-body airliners.

Even though the British de Havilland D.H. 106 Comet and the Soviet Tupolev Tu-104 entered service earlier, the Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8 were bigger, faster, had higher range, and have been much more profitable to fly. In October 1958 Pan American ushered the jet age into the United States when it opened international service with the Boeing 707 in October 1958. National Airlines inaugurated domestic jet service two months later using a 707-120 borrowed from Pan Am. American Airlines flew the 1st domestic 707 jet service with its own aircraft in January 1959. American set a new speed mark when it opened the very first regularly-scheduled transcontinental jet service in 1959. Subsequent nonstop flights between New York and San Francisco took only five hours – three hours less than by the piston-engine DC-7. The a single-way fare, such as a surcharge for jet service, was five.50, or 1 round trip. The flight was practically 40 percent more quickly and virtually 25 % cheaper than flying by piston-engine airliners. The consequent surge of traffic demand was substantial.

The 707 was initially designed for transcontinental or a single-cease transatlantic variety. But modified with additional fuel tanks and more efficient turbofan engines, the 707-300 Intercontinental series aircraft could fly nonstop across the Atlantic with complete payload beneath any circumstances. Boeing constructed 855 707s, of which 725 have been purchased by airlines worldwide.

Having launched the Boeing Business into the commercial jet age, the Dash 80 soldiered on as a hugely successful experimental aircraft. Till its retirement in 1972, the Dash 80 tested many advanced systems, many of which were incorporated into later generations of jet transports. At 1 point, the Dash 80 carried three diverse engine types in its four nacelles. Serving as a test bed for the new 727, the Dash 80 was briefly equipped with a fifth engine mounted on the rear fuselage. Engineers also modified the wing in planform and contour to study the effects of diverse airfoil shapes. Quite a few flap configurations were also fitted which includes a extremely sophisticated program of &quotblown&quot flaps which redirected engine exhaust over the flaps to increase lift at low speeds. Fin height and horizontal stabilizer width was later improved and at a single point, a specific a number of wheel low stress landing gear was fitted to test the feasibility of operating future heavy military transports from unprepared landing fields.

Soon after a extended and distinguished profession, the Boeing 367-80 was ultimately retired and donated to the Smithsonian in 1972. At present, the aircraft is installated at the National Air and Space Museum’s new facility at Washington Dulles International Airport.

Gift of the Boeing Company

Manufacturer:
Boeing Aircraft Co.

Date:
1954

Country of Origin:
United States of America

Dimensions:
Height 19′ two&quot: Length 73′ ten&quot: Wing Span 129′ eight&quot: Weight 33,279 lbs.

Physical Description:
Prototype Boeing 707 yellow and brown.

• • • • •

Quoting Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum | Concorde, Fox Alpha, Air France:

The first supersonic airliner to enter service, the Concorde flew thousands of passengers across the Atlantic at twice the speed of sound for over 25 years. Created and constructed by Aérospatiale of France and the British Aviation Corporation, the graceful Concorde was a spectacular technological achievement that could not overcome severe economic troubles.

In 1976 Air France and British Airways jointly inaugurated Concorde service to destinations about the globe. Carrying up to one hundred passengers in great comfort, the Concorde catered to very first class passengers for whom speed was crucial. It could cross the Atlantic in fewer than four hours – half the time of a conventional jet airliner. Nonetheless its high operating fees resulted in extremely high fares that limited the quantity of passengers who could afford to fly it. These troubles and a shrinking marketplace sooner or later forced the reduction of service till all Concordes have been retired in 2003.

In 1989, Air France signed a letter of agreement to donate a Concorde to the National Air and Space Museum upon the aircraft’s retirement. On June 12, 2003, Air France honored that agreement, donating Concorde F-BVFA to the Museum upon the completion of its final flight. This aircraft was the initial Air France Concorde to open service to Rio de Janeiro, Washington, D.C., and New York and had flown 17,824 hours.

Present of Air France.

Manufacturer:
Societe Nationale Industrielle Aerospatiale
British Aircraft Corporation

Dimensions:
Wingspan: 25.56 m (83 ft 10 in)
Length: 61.66 m (202 ft 3 in)
Height: 11.three m (37 ft 1 in)
Weight, empty: 79,265 kg (174,750 lb)
Weight, gross: 181,435 kg (400,000 lb)
Top speed: 2,179 km/h (1350 mph)
Engine: 4 Rolls-Royce/SNECMA Olympus 593 Mk 602, 17,259 kg (38,050 lb) thrust each and every
Manufacturer: Société Nationale Industrielle Aérospatiale, Paris, France, and British Aircraft Corporation, London, United Kingdom

Physical Description:
Aircaft Serial Number: 205. Which includes four (4) engines, bearing respectively the serial quantity: CBE066, CBE062, CBE086 and CBE085.
Also integrated, aircraft plaque: &quotAIR FRANCE Lorsque viendra le jour d’exposer Concorde dans un musee, la Smithsonian Institution a dores et deja choisi, pour le Musee de l’Air et de l’Espace de Washington, un appariel portant le couleurs d’Air France.&quot