Boeing 307 Stratoliner

Boeing 307 Stratoliner by Roden

1/144 scale
Kit No. 339
Price: $25.00
Decals: One version – TWA (includes Boeing logos)
Comments: Engraved panel lines

History

By the mid-1930’s, the major airlines had carved out a growing market for commercial air travel, building on the success of aircraft such as the Boeing 247, the DC-2, and the DC-3. But the appeal of air travel was limited by its realities: while it was faster than taking a train, flying at lower altitudes, even in good weather, subjected passengers to significant turbulence resulting in airsickness. And since commercial aircraft of the day were unpressurized, flying above the weather at higher altitudes in smoother air meant there was less oxygen, and oxygen deprivation led to altitude sickness. Worse, oxygen deprivation for more than a few minutes was often fatal. Aircraft engines also saw their performance drop off at higher altitudes where the oxygen quality was poor.

Two innovations made air travel at higher altitudes faster and safer, which in turned helped the growth of the budding industry. One was the development of an effective turbosupercharger, a device using exhaust gases from an internal combustion engine to drive a turbine compressing fresh air and feeding it back into the engine. This allowed aircraft engines to operate as efficiently at high altitudes as they did at sea level. This solved the need of the engines for more air at altitude, but did nothing for the passengers. The second innovation addressing this was the pressurized cabin, the answer to the passengers’ oxygen deprivation at altitudes above 20,000 feet.

The Boeing 307 Stratoliner was the world’s first airliner with a pressurized cabin. It was in part a development of the Boeing Model 299, a design that ultimately became the B-17 Flying Fortress. Work on the Model 299 began in 1934 with the goal of meeting a U.S. Army Air Corps requirement. This bomber prototype flew for the first time in 1935, and by December of that year, Boeing’s engineers had turned to the challenge of a civilian airliner that would incorporate the Model 299’s newest design features. Key elements of the design that the Model 307 shared with the B-17 were its wing and tail assemblies, as well as its Wright-Cyclone engines, equipped with the game-changing turbosuperchargers. But the Stratoliner had a completely different, cigar-shaped fuselage whose circular cross-section was, structurally speaking, ideal for the installation of a pressurized cabin.

Production of the Stratoliner began in 1937 when Boeing and TWA placed orders for four and six aircraft, respectively. The Boeing 307 prototype took its maiden flight on December 31, 1938, but crashed during a later demonstration flight on March 18, 1939. After several modifications the second prototype flew in May, and the first airline deliveries began in 1940. The airlines introduced the Stratoliner with a great deal of fanfare. Both spacious and luxurious, it was then the most modern airliner in the sky, with a soundproofed, air-conditioned cabin and a full galley able to serve complete meals. By day it seated 33 passengers in deeply cushioned seats, and by night it could accommodate 16 passengers in sleeping berths, with 9 additional passengers in chaise-lounge chairs.

Pan Am inaugurated service to Mexico City on July 4, 1940, and TWA followed with New York to Los Angeles service on July 8th. Cross-county flight time was reduced to 13 hours at 222 mph at 19,000 feet — well above the roughest air. One aircraft was specially built as an executive aircraft for TWA’s new owner, Howard Hughes. Hughes dubbed his Stratoliner “the Flying Penthouse” and planned to use it to beat his own 1938 round-the-world flight, but his plans changed with the American entry into World War II in December 1941.

During the war all Boeing 307’s were impressed into service as military transports, with some being used for VIP travel to carry General Dwight Eisenhower, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands. TWA’s Stratoliners were returned to the airline in 1944 and would undergo extensive overhaul and modification for their return to civilian passenger service, which resumed on April 1, 1945, just a month before the war in Europe was over. TWA continued operating the type until 1950, while Pan Am sold its Boeing 307’s in 1948. The Stratoliner blazed a new trail in commercial aviation with its pressurized cabin, pointing the way to the Boeing 707.

The Kit

Roden’s Boeing 307 Stratoliner features completely new tooling – it is definitely a 2019 release, despite concerns of some modelers that it may have been just a re-boxing of the Maquette kit in the same scale, initially released in the late 1990’s. Roden’s kit is injection molded in grey and consists of 84 parts, five of which are clear plastic for the windscreen and cabin windows. The kit bears clean, but in the case of the fuselage, slightly heavy engraved panel lines. The merit of this is that the detail of the exterior surfaces will not be hard to bring out, even though the kit is in 1/144 scale.

The landing gear and engine detail are a bit soft, but the compensation is that the cowlings are quite well detailed and will complement the meticulous engravings on the wings. The kit has no interior detail of any kind, which is not surprising in this scale. The propellers are well-formed and to scale and will not require much touch up. A few of the parts have a bit of flash and will require clean-up, but nothing major.

Markings

The kit provides decals for a solitary TWA aircraft, likely from the 1940-41 period, although the airline flew this type also from 1945-50. The markings have realistic color but the outlines of the TWA logo are a bit rough in places, as though someone’s hand slipped while using a pencil-thin paintbrush — those errors will not be easy to cure and some modelers may opt for aftermarket TWA markings. A notable omission is that there are no other markings, despite the fact that the Maquette version offered markings that more accurately reflect the Stratoliner’s total history, including markings for both Pan Am Airways and the U.S. Army Air Force.