Background
Clairmont Egtvedt was born on October 18, 1892, in Stoughton, Wisconsin, United States. He was the son of Sever Peter Egtvedt and Mary E. Rublee.
His father was a farmer and his mother a homemaker.
Clairmont Egtvedt was born on October 18, 1892, in Stoughton, Wisconsin, United States. He was the son of Sever Peter Egtvedt and Mary E. Rublee.
His father was a farmer and his mother a homemaker.
Claire, as he was known, graduated from the local county high school in 1911. That same year he moved with his family to Seattle, Washington, where he enrolled in the Engineering School at the University of Washington in 1912. Egtvedt graduated with a B. S. in June 1917.
Upon graduation, Egtvedt went to work for the Boeing Airplane Company of Seattle, which William Boeing had founded the year before.
In 1918, Boeing promoted Egtvedt
to chief engineer, and in 1926, to vice-president and general manager.
In 1933, Egtvedt became the company's president. The next year, he became president of the newly reorganized Boeing Aircraft Company, which had subsidiaries in Wichita, Kansas, and Vancouver, Canada. He remained president until 1939 when Philip Johnson took over and Egtvedt was named the chairman of the board.
In 1939, he again became chairman, a position he held until April 25, 1966. In October 1933, Egtvedt made a daring decision to put the company's entire resources into modifying the Model 247 into the Model 299 bomber.
Planning began in early 1934 and the first prototype dubbed the YlB-17 by the Army Air Corps, rolled out of Boeing's Seattle factory in July 1935.
On August 20, 1935, Boeing senior test pilot Leslie Tower flew the plane from Seattle to Wright Field, Ohio, for competitive tests versus the twin-engine B-18 "Bollo. "
During the flight, the new bomber shattered all existing altitude and speed records in its class. On the morning of October 30, 1935, the tests began. With Egtvedt, U. nited States Army Air Corps Materiel Division Commander A. W. Robins, Boeing project engineer Robert Wells, and other interested parties looking on, the big silver plane taxied to the runway for takeoff.
At the controls were U. S. Army Air Corps Materiel Division's chief test-pilot Major Ployer ("Pete") Hill and copilot First Lieutenant Donald L. Putt, a future war ace. Also on the plane were Tower, Pratt, and Whitney flight engineer Henry Igo and C. B. Benton of Boeing.
In a matter of seconds after takeoff, the plane lay at the end of the runway in flames. Although many observers rushed to the crash site and pulled all five men from the wreckage, Hill died that afternoon and Tower a few days later. The other three, although seriously injured, survived.
The failure of Hill to unlock the rudder lock had caused the crash. The lock, a new device developed especially for this large plane, was to prevent wind damage to the wings while on the ground. Hill and Putt, not used to such a device, forgot to check it, and Tower forgot to remind them.
Despite the disaster, pretest flights had convinced men like Air Corps Deputy Brigadier General Henry H. ("Hap") Arnold, General Headquarters Air Force Chief Brigadier General Frank Andrews, and General Robins of the value of the aircraft.
Even though the B-18 won the 1935 contract, these men convinced the War Department to purchase thirteen experimental B-17A's. Over the next two years, bombers flew several spectacular missions, including the interception of the Italian ocean liner Rex.
This event occurred on May 12, 1938, when three B-17's led by Colonel Robert Olds and navigated by First Lieutenant Curtis LeMay simulated an attack against an invasion fleet by contacting the great passenger ship 725 miles out at sea.
Such successes eventually led to the construction of new models and the purchase of more aircraft. In 1938, Boeing produced the B-17B, with the B-17C/D appearing in 1940, and the B-17E in 1941.
Along with the B-24 "Liberator, " and later the Boeing B-29 "Super Fortress, " the B-17F/G's built between 1941 and 1944, were the backbone of United States strategic air power in World War II. Dubbed the "Flying Fortress, " the B-17's of the Eighth Air Force spearheaded America's precision daylight bombing raids against German war industry from 1943 to 1945.
By the war's end, 12, 731 B-17's had dropped 640, 000 tons of bombs on Europe. Although Egtvedt retired as Boeing's president in 1939, he continued to push Boeing to utilize the work of men like Phil Johnson to build the B-29. Based on design experiments with the XB-15 initiated by Egtvedt and air corps leaders at Wright Field in the 1930's, Boeing began construction of the B-29 in 1942.
The deployment of 3, 900 B-29's in the second half of World War II, assured the greatness and solvency of Boeing. Between 1946 and 1966 Egtvedt, as chairman of the board, continued to support the development of new commercial and military aircraft.
These aircraft included the Boeing 707 jetliner, which revolutionized passenger travel in the 1960s and the B-52 "Strato Fortress, " built in the mid-1950s, which remained the backbone of the American heavy bomber force through the 1980s.
Quotes from others about the person
"The father of the Flying Fortress".
Clairmont Egtvedt had a wife, Evelyn S. (Wayland) Egtvedt, whom he had married on October 14, 1926.
