At 4 a.m. one morning last November at Boeing’s Seattle plant a huge tarpaulin-covered shape was rolled out to the test areas under armed guard. The shape under the canvas was that of the Air Force’s newest and world’s biggest jet bomber, the XB-52, a 350,000-pound plane built on lines of a jet fighter. In the drawing above, Artist John T. McCoy shows the power and beauty of the plane which is the culmination of 35 years of progress in U.S. military aviation. In the drawings on the following pages, McCoy traces the ancestry of the XB-52 back to the wood-and fabric biplanes of World War I, then shows the developments of the fighter from the Spads bought from France in 1918 to today’s 700-mph jets and illustrates how far the Navy has come from its 85-mph flying boats. The untested XB-52, still far from the production line, will be of no immediate help to the Air Force.

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