It was 30th October, 1935. The place was the Wright Air Field in Dayton, Ohio. A small crowd consisting of officers of the US Army Air Corps and marketing executives of two of the largest airplane manufacturers had gathered to witness a flight competition. The Air Corps were looking to purchase at least 65 next-generation long-ranger bombers. The two manufacturers in the fray were Boeing Corporation and Martin and Douglas. It was expected to be a mere formality as the Boeing Model 299 was seen to be a far superior aircraft in early comparisons. It could carry five times as many bombs as the army had requested, it could fly faster than any other bomber in history and fly twice as far. A newspaper reporter from Seattle who has seen the plane fly had dubbed it “The Flying Fortress” and that name had stuck. On October 30th Boeing Corporation’s gleaming aluminium alloy Model 299 taxied down the runway. It was sleek and impressive with a 103-foot wingspan and four engines jutting out from the wings instead of the usual two. The plane roared down the tarmac, lifted off smoothly, and climbed sharply to three hundred feet. Then it stalled, turned on one wing and crashed in a fiery explosion. Two of the five crew members died including the pilot, Major Ployer Hill. An investigation revealed that nothing mechanical had gone wrong. The crash was due to a “pilot error”. The Model 299 was substantially more complex than previous aircrafts, the pilot was required to attend to four engines. Each engine had a separate oil-fuel mix that had to be controlled. The retractable landing gear, the wing flaps, electric trim tabs needed adjustments to maintain stability at different airspeeds. While doing all this Major Hill had forgotten to release a new locking mechanism on the elevator and rudder control. The Boeing model was deemed, as a newspaper put it, “too much airplane for one man to fly”. The army air corps declared the Martin and Douglas’ smaller design the winner. And ordered 65 planes. Boeing nearly went bankrupt. However, the army still purchased a few Model 299 from Boeing as test planes and some insiders remained convinced that the aircraft was both flyable and superior. So, a group of test pilots got together to consider what to do. What they decided NOT to do was almost as interesting as what they actually did. They said, that pilots who would test fly the model 299, would not undergo any longer training than usual. They felt it would be impossible to have more experience and expertise than Major Hill, who had been the chief of flight testing for the Air Corps. Instead, they came up with an idea that was both simple and ingenious. They created a pilot’s checklist. It acknowledged that aeronautics had advanced so far that it would be humanly impossible to remember every element every time. Flying the new airplane was too complicated to be left either to muscle memory which was perhaps enough in simpler tasks like driving a car or to rely on the cognitive memory of one person however expert. The test pilots made their list simple, brief and to the point. Short enough to fit on an index card with step by step checks for takeoff, flight, landing and taxiing. It had the kind of stuff all pilots knew how to do. They check that the brakes have been released, that one by one all the instruments are set, the doors and windows are closed and locked, the elevator and rudder control unlocked etc. – really basic stuff. With this checklist in hand, the pilots went on to fly the Model 299 for a total of 1.8 million miles without even one accident. The army ultimately ordered 13,000 aircrafts and these allowed the US Army Air Corps to gain a decisive air advantage in the Second World War. Many of us who have read about World War 2 would know the Model 299 by its other name – the B-17 bomber. What a story! Business Points ( Tags ) #storytelling #business #bestseller #stories #checklists #LittleThings #WorldWarII
