Tex Johnston rolls a 707

On August 7, 1955, Alvin M. “Tex“ Johnston stuns the crowd at the Seafair Gold Cup hydroplane race on Lake Washington by barrel (or aileron) rolling the prototype Dash-80, the precursor to the Boeing 707, thus launching the era of the modern commercial jet. Johnston’s co-pilot was Boeing test pilot James R. Gannett (1923-2006). (What Johnston did with the airplane was called a barrel-roll but some consider it an aileron roll in which a plane rotates on its long axis, rather than describing a “barrel“ loop.