Jet Age: The Comet, The 707, And The Race To Shrink The World

The captivating story of the titans, engineers, and pilots who raced to design a safe and lucrative passenger jet. In Jet Age, journalist Sam Howe Verhovek explores the advent of the first generation of jet airliners and the people who designed, built, and flew them. The path to jet travel was triumphal and rapid—less than fifty years after the Wright Brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk, Great Britain led the world with the first commercial jet plane service. Yet the pioneering British Comet was cursed with a tragic, mysterious flaw, and an upstart Seattle company put a new competitor in the form of the Boeing 707 Jet Stratoliner. Jet Age vividly recreates the race between two nations, two global airlines, and two rival teams of engineers for bragging rights to the first jet service across the Atlantic Ocean in 1958. The story centers on great minds and courageous individuals, including Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, Sir Arnold Hall, Bill Allen, and Alvin "Tex" Johnston. The airplanes themselves emerge as characters in this drama, with the Comet and the Boeing 707 racing to be faster and higher than their propeller-driven predecessors. The book captures the spirit of the Jet Age, highlighting a technological triumph that redefined our notions of distance and time.