(first posted 10/29/2012) I’ve never seen a better shot to illustrate how closely related the Porsche 356 and Volkswagen are. Duh; since the 356 started out essentially as a re-bodied VW, that’s a given. But even more than ten years later, they still look joined at the hip. Literally, in this case by Ferry Porsche, who grew up watching his father bring the Volkswagen to fruition, and then built the 356 using the family parts. All in the family, and literally so since once again since 2011.
And if this picture isn’t already worth a thousand words, there’s that P&W JT4A turbojet hanging off the early Pan Am 707. Ever hear one of those pre-turbo fan jets take off? Ear splitting. OK; maybe that’s not a favorite thing anymore, since I hear a somewhat muted version in my ears all the time now. Unforgettable, though.
Interesting picture. Volkswagens and 707s both had a long, long run. Both had a big impact on transportation as well. They had thier own unique sounds too.
The Canadian Forces had at least one C-135 with the old turbojets up until the late ’80s. I saw/heard one takeoff out of Vancouver in ’86 or so, I still remember that sound. 4 trails of black smoke too. It’s not hard to understand the concerns about airport noise that the early jets caused once you’ve heard one.
That PanAm 707 looks like a very early one since it has turbojets rather than low-bypass turbofans which came later (such as the RR Conway & JT3D). The JT3D (AKA TF33) became a sort of commodity std., VW-style, because so many were built. Now many have been replaced by CFM56 high-bypass turbofans.
Re 1st-gen jet noise, in the ’80s I stayed in a motel beyond the end of Carswell AFB in Ft. Worth TX, and the KC-135s w/ TF33s were far noisier even than the B-52s they accompanied since the latter were higher above when they passed overhead.
Nowadays I think turbofan noise is even lower than from gen’l aviation prop planes, or at least less annoying.
NY dealer plates on both the cars too, old jets were insanely noisy, I remember a friend of mine doing a demonstration at his fathers freight warehouse which was about less than half a mile from the end one of the runways at MIA, with a 727 on take off overhead he yelled at me as loud as he could about 4 feet away from me, and nothing….just screaming jet overhead. It was impressive, and I was glad I didn’t work there.
FWIW, the 727 already had turbofans; these pure jets were even substantially louder and screechier, and were banned before long. But if you’re standing close enough, it doesn’t make much difference.
A friend from my younger days ended up as a C-130 pilot in the CAF. When I mentioned seeing the old C-135 take off he told me that it was severely restricted as to where/when it could operate, and that it was technically “illegal”. It was almost unbelievably loud, but I guess they got away with it due to it’s status as a military aircraft. Crude and rude, but it did the job. Much like a beetle……
One reason this picture speaks to me is because in 1983, I was invited to LAX to inspect a 707 the TM movement was considering buying for Maharishi. It was an old ex-Pan Am (I think) 707-300 series, and still had the original turbojets, just like this one. I’m hardly an aviation expert, but I pointed out that as far as I knew, that plane would be banned from US airports within a year or two. They looked into it and decided to pass on it.
It was amazing inside: fully converted to a private biz-jet, with large bedroom, bathroom with gold-plated hardware, dining room, conference room; and a steerage section in back. Looked like something out of a James Bond movie; very mid-late sixties. A real time capsule.
It was in the private jet part of LAX, and we stood outside when it came in and left. The taxiing sound alone was absurd; maybe that’s where I got my tinnitus from.
Remember the scene in Bullitt when McQueen lays under a taxiing Pan Am 707? I think they towed the plane to film the scene, but I can’t imagine how it would feel to actually have done that.
In the late 1970s I accompanied my dad to Comox, BC to fetch my aunt and uncle, my uncle being a Sargent in the airforce. The C-135 was never called anything but a 707 to anybody in the military. Anyway, the noise of even landing was deafening, which is why they were operated at CAF bases that were out in the boonies, as most were.
At the same time to old CF101 Voodos were taking off on full afterburner and they got really near the 707, whereupon both pulled snap-rolls and headed up for heaven. Now, that was noise. My uncle mentioned it when he got off the plane. It was a cool sight to see both piece of 50’s tech strutting its extremely powerful (in a tankish way) stuff.
The noisy KC-135 (not many pure C-135s) has a slightly narrower fuselage than the 707, hence a different factory model number: 717. BTW Boeing had to widen the 707 during design after airlines objected to planned 5-across seating.
Oh yeah, not the same engine, and way way after they 707’s had their engines replaced, still this was an era when every airline in and out of Miami had a 727, and man did those things scream, its rare to hear a 72 at MIA now.
I not only remember the old jets, I certainly flew on them as a kid. Convair 880s . . . . loud . . . smoky . . . thirsty. But . . . it cruised at 600mph.
TWA “Star Stream 880’s” and “Star Stream 707’s”. Out of SFO. Through the 70’s, TWA was on one side of the terminal, Western on the other with the old “Tiki” bar . . . .
Yeah, those Convairs were a massive business fail on the order of the Edsel, what happens when a corporate subsidiary goes rogue. Higher speed did not compensate for less-productive 5-across seating & greater thirst, and the Boeing 720 ate its lunch.
“4 trails of black smoke too.”
I alway get a kick out of seeing an old movie with a 707 taking off with those thick trails of black smoke pouring out. And damn, they were noisy, too. Great picture of simpler times.
I loved my Beetles in the 60’s but I wouldn’t drive one in today’s traffic filled with distracted drivers for anything. In my 60’s I’ll take airbags and crush zone protection. I well remember a schoolmate’s father receiving multiple fractures in both legs from a bad crash in his new 356 in 1960.
I just watched the 4 soot trails in the opening sequence from “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner” (1967) on TCM last night – I’m a car guy so I couldn’t tell you which model of plane it was.
Don’t apologize for your plane-spotting, for most 1st-gen American jet airliners had the same proportions & layout of 4 podded engines, and you had 3 makes to choose from: Boeing, Douglas, & (rarely) Convair.
Vicker’s chief designer said that his VC-10 was the only alternative to “reinventing the 707.” A fine plane itself, it sold poorly because its design brief (from its intended customer) made it more expensive to operate.
The VC 10 was big with BOAC – now British Airways – and did many routes to and from Australia. More like a 727 in layout in that all engines were at the back of the craft. I recall the tvs adverts for these in which they were called the “Hushpower” jet.
Until quieter high-bypass turbofans arrived, rear-mounting was the way to quiet down turbojet airliners; thus, the VC-10 was popular among passengers. But such T-tail designs have a weakness in their flight envelope: Deep Stall, blamed for some accidents in other types.
I remember seeing what must have been a holdover 707 take off from Logan about 12 years ago (we lived right across from the runway in Winthrop, so I could see all kinds of interesting equipment now and then), in Saudi Arabian Airlines livery, trailing that thicker-than-usual smoke and making more than the usual amount of noise. Don’t know if it was a VIP’s private plane, but I never saw anything like that again while I was living there, and I had gotten to know more or less when the major international flights were coming and going. (The most attractive livery? Korean Air 747s, a cheery sky blue.)
Note: This was before 9/11/01, so this was not a Saudi dignitary getting out of Dodge just afterward, with all the assorted conspiracy theories involved. Perhaps a princeling heading home from Harvard for the weekend…
I worked for a time running parts for an International tractor dealer located about a mile from Boeing Field. We had 707’s come over so low that we could see the rivets on them. Yeah, they were loud.
To really round out the Porsche portfolio these should be parked in front of a Sd. Kfz. 184 Elefant.
That ain’t nothin’. Try being directly under an F-4 Phantom in full afterburn when it is right on the deck.
When I lived in Deagu, Korea, I was close to the airport, which is shared by both military and civilian aviation. At the time they were still flying the F-4 and lord be-jesus were those things noisy. During alerts (and there were lots of them) the would keep the planes running on the tarmac and then run combat air patrols like every fifteen minutes a new pair would take off. I was like 2.5 km and my lord was the noise just deafening. Sometimes it went on for days and they seemed to put more assets up on weekends. I believe the Phantoms have been retired now and the ROKAF is flying F-15’s.
The ROK F-15E variant (F-15K) is called “Slam Eagle.” It has some local content per offset agreements.
I consider the Phantom the Harley-Davidson of fighters: big, loud, brash, & noisy. However its engines were smoky which didn’t help the element of surprise in combat. This might explain one of the Luftwaffe’s nicknames for it, translated “Air Defense Diesel.”
It is an example of a fighter not designed to be multirole, yet succeeding very well there compared to the outrageously expensive & delayed F-35.
Love a good F4! When I was in the Royal Australian Air Force cadets there were two squadrons of F4’s based at Amberley. At the end of the strip where they would take off it was wonderful the hear that literally deafening sound! The F4’s were on load until the F 111’s were delivered. What a story they were! Ordered in 1964, delivered in about 1978 and in service until about 3 years ago. In the end virtually all the guys flying them were much younger than the planes!
That Beetle on the left has melted a bit versus the one on the right. 😉
Quite a cogent observation.
“Keep refrigerated during transit”
The Royal Australian Air Force had turbojet powered 707’s even in the late 90’s for VIP transport. I was at RAAF Base Richmond (Western Sydney) in late 1997 and can remember the sound of those things taking off. Epic.
I used to work under the approach path out at Pitttown loud as.
When I was in elementary school, my best friend’s Mom had a green 356. I rode many miles in the back seat of that car. His parents were divorced and his Dad drove a maroon Beetle. I remember thinking, based on 1960’s American family values, that somehow it should have been the other way around. A couple of times as an adult I’ve crawled and twisted myself into the back seat of 911’s, and the memories of that 356 would come back. But I was an awful lot smaller then and I had no memories of being cramped in the 356.
What really blows me away is the difference in current market value.
$10k – $15k will get you a really nice Beetle, or a nearly unsalvageable 356 fright pig.
Not sure how much 707 you can buy for $10k.
“Not sure how much 707 you can buy for $10k.”
It would not surprise me at all that you could buy a 707 really cheap, given what they cost to operate and their level of complexity and obsolescence. I used to do a bit of flying and recall a factoid from the late 80s that even then, there were more DC-3s in active service than 707s, a fact that I found mind-boggling at the time, and is probably true today by an even larger margin.
There are STILL lots of DC-3’s in service . . . . Hawaii and Alaska . . . and elsewhere . . . .
Hell – theres plenty flying right here in Canada (Kenn Borek Air in Calgary has a couple dozen) and the US (Basler has re-engined 50 or so of them with PT-6 turboprops).
Not a single day has gone by since the 1930’s where somewhere in the world a DC-3 hasnt hauled a load of crap somewhere.
In San Juan during the early ’60s we lived directly opposite the main runway at San Juan Intl. On certain days, the planes took off a couple of hundred feet from our living room. We had jalousie windows and terrazzo floors. We simply learned to live with the din.
Later, when I lived just inside the beltway in Chevy Chase, MD, I could hear the SST as it flew by about ten miles from my house as it took off from Dulles. 1 pm every weekday. The SST wasn’t allowed to open it up until it got over the Atlantic after it crossed over Baltimore due to noise concerns.
If anyone’s ever been to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley outside of L.A., you have witnessed the 707 up close and personal (other than if you have ever flown on one, of course). One of the Air Force One 707’s (no, not the Kennedy one, but another that remained in service up to the time of “W”) is on display there, mounted in a huge hangar-like building adjacent to the Library complex like it is in full flight, ready to take off across the hills. It was dissasembled, trucked there, and reconstructed. Absolutely mindboggling, you can walk around a second story catwalk and almost reach out and touch the wings. Then you get a tour through the cabin, talk about James Bond. The thing is gargantuan. Not to be missed if you are ever out to Southern California. For all the CC enthusiasts, the early 80’s Reagan presidential Cadillac limousine is on display, too, a tour-de-force in its own right. Awesome stuff.
http://www.reaganfoundation.org/details_f.aspx?p=LM2023EAF1&h1=3&h2=7&lm=libraryandmuseum&args_a=cms&args_b=34&argsb=N&tx=18&sw=18
pretty cool stuff, doc!
If you can’t get to Simi but are in the Northwest, there’s a VC-137B (Air Force One-configured 707) in the Seattle Museum of Flight’s collection–you can also walk through this one (that and a nearby Concorde).
Almost all 727s (“two-sevens”) still flying in the US have hush kits. They cut into payload and alter the CG, but at least they’re not regulated out of high density altitude airports where noise could be an issue. The two-sevens are great for short field ops and high density altitude airports (like the Fed-Ex two-sevens in Grand Junction, CO).
As Paul said, the two-sevens have fans, although with only a 10% bypass ratio – meaning that the N2 shaft (the actual jet engine) is producing 90% of the thrust and N1 (the bigger outer fan) is producing the remaining 10%. Contrast that with the GE CF34-3B1s found on the Bombardier Canadair Regional Jets, and that basic relationship is reversed with a ratio of 20/80, meaning that N2 (the actual jet engine) is producing 20% thrust while the large N1 fan is creating the remaining 80%. In essence, the modern turbofans are like turbo-props, only with the N1 fan acting as a 28 blade propellor surrounded by the engine nacelle. Much more efficient and quiet, although their larger frontal area does create more drag in cruise as compared with the older and smaller fans and turbojets.
Informative detail, thanks! I thought the 757 (itself out of production) would displace the “two-sevens” as they’re supposed to be exceptional “hot & high” performers, yet use high-bypass fans. The fuselage is basically the same.
Love them both. I saw a 356B coupe at a car show last summer. It even had a factory sunroof!
Someone should recreate that pic with Ferdinand Piech, a 98 Beetle and Mk 1 TT.
I’m not sure which aircraft could be used though. A380? 747-400?
“That’s one nice thing about the 707. It can do everything BUT read.”
Great book, good movie..
I stood next to an elderly George Kennedy at a taxi stand at LAX about 10 years ago. Ironic.
This is a great picture.
1958-59 Beetles are my favorite.
http://www.intermeccanica.com/ they build them here in vancouver.
Last night I was at a local Car Show and one fellow showed up in an unrestored 1958 Beetle , he knew _nothing_ about it no VW’s at all but thought it was worth over $4,500 as he claimed to have that much into it .
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Some rust , full synchro tranny and ‘ fresh air ‘ 1200 C.C. 40hp engine , wrong deck lid and RF fender .
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I keep saying I should have one last Beetle before I die but I can’t imagine one all beat up being worth that much $ .
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My Son is still dragging his feet on ever getting my old ’63 356B Coupe back on the road , I hope it doesn’t wind up junked as RUST NEVER SLEEPS .
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-Nate
http://www.specialtyauto.com/product_overview.htm a bit cheaper also mid engine too.
Jet noise? I was on the carrier John F. Kennedy in ’68-’69…F4s, RA5Cs and A4s. Listening to F4s catapulting off was pretty impressive!
I used to work at an office park that was under the approach path to Dobbins AFB in Marietta, GA. When the wind shifted, the C5-Bs took off over our office and were maybe 1000′ AGL at that point. Now that’s a LOUD airplane, and sounds like a thousand banshees knocking on your door.
Oh yeah , the noise is really bad ~ I worked at LAX and their maintenance sheds are all between the Western ends of both runways , they gave us custom fitted moulded ear plugs plus ‘ mouse ears ‘ to little effect .
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You could feel the jet noise in your bones .
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We had a hearing testing booth and one afternoon they forgot and locked up and an Airport Cop still inside (this was pre L.A.P.A. @ LAX days) , he kinda flipped out and emptied his service weapon trying to get attention….
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He was 3/4 crazy the next morning when they opened the soundproof door .
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I have terrible tinnitus now .
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-Nate
Fantastic shot
I like the old jets and the screeching whine and roar of the early 707 and DC-8: Aviation music!
My first jet ride was on a Panagra DC-8 flying from Panama to Bolivia. Always thought the DC-8 were more graceful looking. Later on when I worked for McDonnell Douglas, the old timers told me the Douglas planes were more rugged and more adaptable to being stretched, hence the Super 60 series. The pilots told me the 707’s were faster due to the 35-degree wing sweep compared to the DC-8’s 30-degree sweep, but the DC-8 had better handling characteristics.
Yes, noticed the similarities between the Porsche and Volkswagen; not surprising designed by the same man. I thought the 356 and Karmann Ghia looked more alike, and that the Karman Ghia was a poor man’s Porsche. A friend of mine had one and tried to soup up the Volkswagen engine, but realized putting a Porsche engine was the quickest way to get more bang for the buck.
Jet noise and supersonic booms were (are) normal things for anyone growing in Israel, unfortunately, so that I have been exposed to all of the aircraft mentioned above.
Just a note about the feature photo:
Jet engines have evolved at a stunning rate since
the 707 turbo jet engine above the man and the
cars pictured. The casing of the modern GE 90
ultrahigh bypass turbofan is of greater diameter
than the cabin of the 707/27/37 themselves!
And the pickup during takeoff is in – tense…
The old March Air Force Base in Riverside, CA. (now an ARB facility), has a nice little aircraft museum next to it. They have an early KC-135 on outdoor display, and if you stand in the right place you can see newer KC-135’s (R models?) still in service with the 452nd. Air Mobility Wing in the distance behind the display KC-135.