Joseph Sutter, ’43, is the ‘father’ of the Boeing 747
Joseph F. Sutter has about 1,000 progeny — and all of them can fly. Sutter, who received a degree in aeronautical engineering from the UW in 1943, holds the unofficial title of “father” of the Boeing 747. A retired 41-year veteran of The Boeing Company, Sutter headed the team that designed the jumbo jet which he describes as “still queen of the skies.”
The queen of the skies got off to a modest start in the wake of Boeing’s loss to Lockheed for a contract for a giant military transport aircraft. At about the same time, company engineers were working on a prototype supersonic transport (destined to die for lack of government financing) which most of Sutter’s colleagues believed was the aircraft of the future. Sutter and his 747 group were, in fact, widely regarded by colleagues as putting their efforts into “obsolete technology,” he recalls.
Early sales expectations for the jumbo jet were a mere “couple of hundred airplanes,” says Sutter, adding that the original 747 was designed so that if it failed as a passenger carrier “it could be turned into cargo.” Today about 1,000 of the jumbo jets carry both passengers and freight worldwide.
Sutter, 71, went to work for Boeing as an aerodynamicist in 1945 and retired as executive vice president in 1986. He began his career working on the propeller-driven Stratocruiser and, before it was over, was instrumental in the development of the 707, 727, 757, 767, 747-300 and 737-300 as well as the 747. “If there was a golden era (of aircraft development) it was the era I was lucky enough to participate in,” he reflects, noting that when he signed on at Boeing few people traveled by air. “Now people take airplanes like taxis.”
This year Boeing honored Sutter’s contributions to the industry by establishing the Joseph P. Sutter Professorship for the Design of Complex Systems at the UW School of Engineering. The professorship was set up as part of a $5 million endowment program started by Boeing in 1986.
Sutter is now a consultant to the Boeing Commercial Airplane Group and chair of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel set up to advise NASA. He was also chosen to investigate the Challenger accident. “That was an interesting four months,” he says of the immediate post-Challenger period. “It was disturbing because NASA was not well managed.”
He believes the space agency is much better managed today. “They don’t fudge the margins anymore,” he observes about current shuttle flights. “If something isn’t up to ‘specs’ they pull it back into the hangar.” But he cautions that the space shuttle is “still a high risk vehicle. … I still cringe when I see them carry seven people. … If I were running NASA, I’d carry a minimum crew and they’d all be single men with no family to leave behind.”