Ten 307s were built.
NC19906 was temporarily marked as
NX1940 and
NC1940 for publicity purposes.
Prototype The first Boeing 307 Stratoliner, serial 1994, registration
NX19901, made its first flight from
Boeing Field, near
Seattle, on December 31, 1938, prior to its intended delivery to Pan Am following testing and certification. As related
above, it crashed on a test flight on March 18, 1939, killing all ten occupants, and forced several design changes, of which the fin and rudder are the most immediately obvious.
Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij N.V. (KLM) KLM was considering four-engine airliners for the European routes and a longer-ranged four-engine aircraft for their routes to the
Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia). Aircraft considered included the
Douglas DC-4(E), the Boeing 307, the
Junkers Ju 90, the
Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor, and the
Bloch 160, of which only the DC-4 and 307 came close to meeting requirements. with options for 18 aircraft and with first delivery in 14 months. By January 14, 1937, the price had increased for 18 aircraft to $265,000 each, not including pressurization equipment. Following T&WA defaulting on payments, the first three T&WA aircraft were offered to KLM in late 1939, but a quick decision was needed by Saturday, March 18, 1939. KLM was unable to make that decision before the offer expired and requested an extension.
Australian National Airways (ANA) Another company that Boeing was in discussions with was
Australian National Airways, who they quoted $310,000 per Stratoliner, or $340,000 for a pressurized version, on July 27, 1938, registered as
NX19904, for $315,000 had it fitted with much more powerful
Wright R-2600 engines for its transformation into "The Flying Penthouse", which included a bedroom, two bathrooms, a galley, and a bar as well as a living room. renovating it so he could sell it, which, like the T&WA and Pan Am aircraft, then included an interior designed by
Raymond Loewy. Oil tycoon
Glenn McCarthy bought it to coincide with the opening of his new Shamrock Hotel, renamed it
Shamrock, and had it repainted; however, McCarthy defaulted on payments and it was returned to Hughes. After various repossessions, deaths, and failed sales, it became the
Cosmic Muffin, in which form it survives.
Transcontinental & Western Air (T&WA or TWA) As one of the companies sponsoring the development of the Douglas DC-4, Transcontinental & Western Air lost interest due to delays and poor performance, but the agreement they signed with Douglas limited the maximum weight of any replacement design to . After discussing their needs with Boeing, T&WA signed a contract with Boeing to buy six 307s with an option for 13 more for $1,590,000 on January 29, 1937, with deliveries to be made in mid-1938. and, by March 1939, Hughes had a controlling interest in Trans-World Airlines (or TWA, as it was rebranded once he had taken over), with roughly 46% of the shares. By August 1939, TWA and Boeing had resumed negotiations, and TWA would get five 307s, and Hughes would get one. or $350,000 per aircraftthree times the cost for Douglas DC-3s. In early 1940, Hughes bought up all remaining outstanding TWA shares not otherwise reserved for employees. The date chosen for TWA's first service flight was July 8, 1940, to coincide with the anniversary of TAT's 48-hour coast-to-coast service, in which trains were used for night legs. A few weeks later, on September 26, a TWA Stratoliner bound for New York, at , with a
jetstream providing a strong
tailwind, reached a ground speed of . Flight 45 added stops at Philadelphia and Pittsburgh on December 1, 1940.
TWA ICD Wartime operations On December 14, 1941, representatives from various airlines as well as the
Air Transport Association of America (ATA) met with Colonel
Robert Olds of the
Air Corps Ferrying Command (later renamed
Air Transport Command) over the use of their airliners in wartime. Pan Am had already signed a contract on the 13th, in which it would keep its 307s but sell the 314s to the government. ICD Supervisor pilots and captains were paid $1100/month, first officers $800/month, Navigators $600/month, Flight Engineers (FEs) $500/month, and Flight Radio Operators (FROs) $400/month. The ICD was initially set up at the crowded Washington
Bolling Field but soon transferred all of their operations to nearby
Washington National Airport. The first North Atlantic crossing was in March 1942, when a flight from Washington to
Prestwick carried senior military and government officials including the Army Chief of Staff General
George C. Marshall, General
Dwight D. Eisenhower (to command
Operation Torch for the invasion of North Africa), Deputy Chief of Staff of
Army Ground Forces General
Mark W. Clark, Operation Torch Air Force liaison officer Colonel
Hoyt Vandenberg, Chief of the Navy's
Bureau of Aeronautics Rear Admiral
John Henry Towers, who oversaw Navy aircraft procurement and training, and presidential advisors
W. Averell Harriman and
Harry Hopkins, who were crossing to negotiate the
Lend-Lease program. Many of the surviving members of the raid followed soon after in another Stratoliner. The first aircraft to land at these fields, which were north of the Arctic Circle, was an ICD C-75, on April 20, 1942. On July 10, 1942,
Ascension Island's airfield opened in the South Atlantic, Two main routes were flown, between Washington, D.C., and Cairo across the South Atlantic, and between New York and
Prestwick, Scotland, across the North Atlantic. They often flew non-stop the between
Gander, Newfoundland and Prestwick, Scotland in the north, and the between
Natal,
Brazil, and
Accra,
Ghana, in the south. After July 1942 a refueling stop at
Ascension Island was added in the South Atlantic. In the north, stops in Iceland or Greenland were often necessary when flying west against unusually strong prevailing winds. As
Douglas C-54 Skymasters took over the Gander–Prestwick route, the C-75s operated between
Marrakesh and Prestwick over the Atlantic.
Cherokee, carrying returning American troops from Reykjavik to Gander at , was shot at by a US Navy ship that left over 200 holes in the aircraft's tail and nearly severed the elevator controls. At the same time
Curtiss C-46 Commandos and
Douglas C-47s and C-53s provided feeder links to the C-75s, C-54s and C-87s, as their range was inadequate for the Atlantic. to have the five aircraft rebuilt by Boeing, and the first of them resumed passenger service on April 1, 1945. The CAA recertified these as SA-307B-1 civilian airliners with their original registration numbers.
TWA post-war service and disposal On April 1, 1945, the first post-war civil commercial flight was made by
Zuni, as an SA-307B-1, from La Guardia to San Francisco via Pittsburgh, Saint Louis, Kansas City, Albuquerque, and Burbank, New TWA flight routes were added, with routes 370 & 371, between La Guardia and
Spokane through Chicago, Albuquerque, for fuel, and Burbank, and routes 48 & 49, between La Guardia and Kansas City through St Louis. The first coach service, from New York La Guardia to Chicago via Pittsburgh, was made on June 1, 1949, with a full load of 38 passengers. In November 1950, TWA introduced the similarly sized but cheaper-to-operate twin-engine
Martin 2-0-2A on domestic routes and transferred some DC-4s from international routes to domestic service, until TWA finally phased them out between April and July 1951. At that time the aircraft had an average of 25,205 hours flying time each, with
Cherokee having the most at 26,324 hours,
Pan American Airways (Pan Am) In 1937
Pan American Airways placed their first order for two Stratoliners, which they soon increased to six. Deliveries to Pan Am started in March 1940, and they had received their first three before war intervened and civil aircraft production halted. with service between
Miami,
Brownsville, Texas, and
Los Angeles. The former
Clipper Rainbow NC19902 was to have been sold to the short-lived Mercury Airways of South Africa and was even given the South African registration ZS-BWU. However, the sale was never completed, and, similarly, it was supposed to have been sold to
Aerovias Ecuatorianas, with registration HC-SJC-003, but that sale also appears to have fallen through. In 1951 it was sold to Aigle Azur as F-BHHR. The former
Clipper Flying Cloud NC19903 was purchased by the
Haitian Air Force () in 1954 and assigned the number
2003, but plans to use it for a passenger service by the
Compagnie Haïtienne de Transports Aériens (CoHaTA) were cancelled and it was fitted out as a presidential transport. When
François "Papa Doc" Duvalier came into power in 1957 he chose not to use it and instead had the aircraft sold the same year, with the money from the sale going toward five
North American T-6G Texan training aircraft. This aircraft returned to the U.S. and, after briefly being registered as
N9307R and
N19903, is now restored and at the
Smithsonian Museum as
NC19903.
Aigle Azur and Union Aéromaritime de Transport TWA sold all five TWA SA-307B-1s to the French operator
Aigle Azur (French for Blue Eagle) in April 1951, for $525,000, along with their remaining supply of spares.
Aigle Azur received them between May 14, 1951, and December 19, 1951. The Stratoliners were no longer competitive against the larger and faster
Douglas DC-6 and
Lockheed Constellation then entering service,
Union Aéromaritime de Transport merged with
Transports Aériens Intercontinentaux to become
Union de Transports Aériens (UTA) on October 1, 1963, but by then had already sold all of its Stratoliners to CITCA.
Airnautic Airnautic (or
Air Nautic) received three ex-
Aigle Azur SA-307B-1s in 1955 and 1956 including
F-BELU,
F-BELY, and
F-BELZ, which were operated in southern Europe around the Mediterranean providing charter flights, especially around Corsica. On December 29, 1962,
F-BELZ collided with a mountain while on a charter flight with 22 basketball players and fans while flying from
Bastia to
Ajaccio, on the island of Corsica. and in 1966
Airnautic ceased to exist, having been absorbed into
Air France.
Compagnie Internationale de Transports Civil Aériens (CITCA) Compagnie Internationale de Transports Civil Aériens (CITCA) bought five Stratoliners,
F-BELU,
F-BELV,
F-BELX,
F-BELY, and
F-BELZ, which were leased out to other operators. In 1965,
Cambodia Air Commercial leased
F-BELY as
XW-PGR, and
F-BELU as
XW-TFP, before both went to Royal Air Lao the same year, which then leased all five of the CITCA Stratoliners, which were also assigned Laotian
XW registrations, and
F-BELV became
XW-TAA and
F-BELX XW-TFR. The
Air Laos Transport Aériens and Royal Air Lao Stratoliners were flown between Vientiane and
Hong Kong with a large detour around
North Vietnam. The
International Control Commission (ICC; , or CIC) and its successor,
International Commission of Control and Supervision, leased three aircraft in 1964 under their old French registrations of
F-BELV,
F-BELU, and
F-BELX, which then had seating for as many as 60 and were used to provide what were often hazardous diplomatic flights around South-East Asia until 1974, when it suspended operations with the impending
defeat of US forces in Vietnam. They were flown under diplomatic immunity along specially delineated wide corridors between
Saigon in
South Vietnam,
Vientiane in Laos,
Phnom Penh in Cambodia, and
Hanoi in North Vietnam. On this flight there were five CIC delegates from India, three from Canada, and one from Poland, as well as four French crew members, The pilot of
XW-TFP was forced to ditch in the Mekong river on March 13, 1975, near the Laos–Thailand border while on a flight from Hong Kong to Vientiane. Both the pilot and co-pilot escaped the wreck but were captured by the communist
Pathet Lao and held until May. The wreckage was still there in 1986. ==Operators==