Originally Posted By: Astro14
Originally Posted By: 440Magnum
FE's were only kept in the 707 and 727 cockpits by union rules by the early 60s, and don't even exist anymore. But they had a BIG job on the last generation piston-engine aircraft.
The Flight Engineers were absolutely needed on the 707 and on the 727. Those panels and all the systems management were part of the airplane design. The 747, of similar vintage, needed an FE as well. Take a look at a 727 FE panel for example - The FO and CAPT couldn't perform even the simplest tasks from their stations, e.g. throw the 7 switches in proper sequence required to start the APU...or parallel the generators...all things that are done automatically now...but were done by hand in the early years of the jet age.
http://cdn-www.airliners.net/aviation-photos/photos/2/3/0/1255032.jpg
Step up to the 747, and the engineer had even more to do...including things like engaging body gear steering below 25 knots on rollout, along with managing fuel feed, transfer, and pressurization, electrical load and paralleling, and hydraulics...
http://cdn-www.airliners.net/aviation-photos/photos/6/7/1/0764176.jpg
Now, the 737-100 "required" an FE because of union rules...even though an engineer panel was never built into the airplane. The "FE" just sat on the jumpseat...so, perhaps you're thinking of that airplane.
"Need a FE" vs. "designed to have a FE" are very different things... and the 727 vs 737 illustrates it perfectly.
On the last generation piston airliners and even on turboprops- the FE was in many ways more important than the bus driver.
The B-36 is the ultimate example, but even military jets like the B-52 and turboprops like the Orion, C-130, etc. had a pretty busy FE.
I can't speak directly to the 707 as I've never known anyone who flew one (I have known a couple of people who flew KC-135s, which are very similar... though not "the same" by a long stretch even though that's a common misconception). Given that its (original) engine systems were a good bit more primitive than the 72 and 73, I can imagine that its FE was reasonably busy managing them and the primitive cabin environmental systems as well as electrical. But conceptually, the need was already vanishing. with no mags, turbos, cowl flaps, 2-speed superchargers to shift, prop pitch to manage, RPM's to synchronize, cylinder head temps, high oil consumption, etc. to track.
I've talked at length to a former 727 pilot who came up through the ranks starting as a FE... and the FE was absolutely NOT "necessary" for the airplane from a basic design and workload management perspective. The cockpit layout was designed, by CHOICE, not NECESSITY, with some controls only present at the FE's console... but that doesn't mean they had to be there at all. It was done solely to preserve the job of the FE, and he said it was the most mind-numbingly boring thing he ever did and that it was practically considered hazing for new employees to make them suffer through being a 727 FE. All those controls could have been reallocated so that the pilot and co-pilot could cover them easily without making their workload too high, as was eventually done on the 737. After all, the 72 and 73 were only a couple of years apart in their introduction, and not significantly different at all in systems.