Jet Pioneer's Legacy Includes 707 Barrel Rolls

When Tex Johnston barrel-rolled the four-engined, prototype Boeing 367-80 ("Dash 80") over Lake Washington in 1955 -- twice -- James R. Gannett was flying right seat. Aero-News was saddened to learn Gannett died of a brain aneurism on Saturday, June 17, in Redmond, WA. The retired Boeing test pilot was 83.

"He was a good father and a good husband," son Craig Gannett told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "but the love of flying and solving problems was really his passion."

Born February 4, 1923, Gannett caught the flying bug after his father gave him $1 to ride in a plane. That single ride turned into a master's degree in aeronautical engineering from the University of Michigan, and a lifetime of aviation accomplishments.

Gannett spent 1950-1954 at Edwards Air Force Base in California testing experimental aircraft alongside celebrities like Chuck Yeager -- when he wasn't flying one of 55 combat missions during a nine-month stint in the Korean War.

In 1954, Gannett went to work for Boeing, where he first tested the Dash-80, the experimental version of the 707, and the first of the Boeing 700-series airliners.

"He left the Air Force when I was about 8 weeks old," Craig Gannett said. "We came to Seattle; we drove into town literally the day they rolled the Dash 80 out of the hanger…He literally arrived at the dawn of the jet age."

The 707 was Jim Gannett's first project, and he continued testing it and other 707 versions throughout his tenure at Boeing. Gannett helped develop the FAA pilot certification rules for jets, and trained airline pilots in the 707.

"A lot of his students went out and populated the airlines at the beginning of jets," said John Cashman, director of Boeing's flight crew operations and a former colleague of Gannett. That work earned him the inaugural Iven C. Kinsheloe award in 1958 from the Society of Experimental Test Pilots.

Gannett was the project pilot for Boeing's SST, the supersonic transport plane, and also tested the 727, 737, 747 and military adaptations of Boeing aircraft, including the 707-based AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System).

Craig Gannett said his father was more of an engineer than a daredevil. He spent the better part of his life developing better instruments for jetliners, some of which, Cashman said, are still used in today's Boeing 747s, 757s and 767s.

True to his passion, Gannett never stopped flying... in fact, the P-I reports he flew a single-engine Cessna on the Wednesday before he died.

(Aero-News thanks the Boeing Historical Archive for the photos of the Dash-80 barrel roll.)

FMI: www.boeing.com, www.historylink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=390