Trailblazers Living the dream Brien Wygle and other Boeing test pilots helped usher in the jet age—and lessons learned are still used today by dan raley As Boeing approaches the start of its second century in July 2016, Frontiers takes a look at some of the men and women who helped make Boeing a global leader in aerospace. This series highlights the innovation, skill and courage needed when daring to do the impossible. Brien Wygle won’t forget the first time he saw an airplane up close— it landed in his backyard. Wygle grew up during the Great Depression on a Canadian wheat farm, north of Calgary, Alberta, and plane sightings in the remote setting were rare. Whenever one flew overhead, Wygle and his two brothers stopped whatever they were doing and watched until it disappeared from view. They were more than a little astonished when a de Havilland Tiger Moth, an early-day biplane, touched down on the family acreage. The pilot explained he had an oil leak. “It was an exciting experience,” Wygle recalled in a recent interview in his Seattle-area home. “He landed right on our farm, which was startling. My father gave him some oil and electrical tape, and he took off again. … I thought, That’s what I want to do.” As Boeing prepares to celebrate its centennial, Wygle is among the many men and women who have made milestone contributions to the company. In his case, he used that childhood inspiration found on the Canadian prairie to become one of Boeing’s pioneer test pilots. Wygle helped usher in the jet era, then the jumbo-jet era. He was either the first or among the first to fly the 707, 727, 737, 747, 757 and 767. Coupled 38 Boeing Frontiers with his extensive military and brief commercial airline service, he logged about 12,000 flight-hours. He was at the forefront with others in determining flight limitations for each new jet model rolled out of the company’s factories, establishing safety measures that guide Boeing test pilots to this day. “The kinds of things that Brien did are still lessons our guys need to learn, and on rare occasion they may have to deploy some of those lessons,” Boeing chief test pilot Chuck Killberg said. “By relating cautionary tales where things went wrong, we try to teach upcoming test pilots”—to detect and avoid potentially risky flight conditions. Wygle launched his aviation career under demanding circumstances. Following high school graduation, he followed his older brother Hugh into the Royal Canadian Air Force and flew 202 missions during World War II , making cargo drops in a Douglas C-47 Skytrain over India and Burma (now Myanmar). He battled monsoons as well as adversaries. He landed on tiny airstrips built by British military forces, “deadsticking” one approach—making a forced landing without any propulsion— after suffering a dual-engine failure. Once the war ended, Wygle pursued an engineering degree from the University of British Columbia and kept flying. He joined the Royal Canadian Air Force Air Reserve and piloted everything from jet fighters to trainer aircraft, and worked for a small commercial airline. Wygle, however, wanted to be a test pilot. In 1951, he joined Boeing and was sent to Wichita, Kan., to fly the B-47, aviation’s first large swept-wing jet and the engineering blueprint for the commercial jetliners that followed. Once Boeing unveiled the B-52 and Dash 80, the prototype for the company’s first jetliner, the 707, Wygle was brought to Seattle. He and his colleagues trained airline pilots how to fly the 707. They were pivotal in establishing operational standards. “It was pretty groundbreaking, a lot of things that we did,” he said. “Everything had to be certified and the Federal Aviation Administration had not certified those planes before. These were jet airplanes, and we were first with them, the Boeing engineers and the test pilots. We helped set a lot of federal regulations
Frontiers July 2015 Issue
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