Douglas DC-8

The DC-8 lost the sales war to the 707 and won almost everything else. In August 1961 one was put into a shallow dive over Edwards and hit Mach 1.012, the first airliner, and still one of very few, ever to go supersonic. And where 707s were largely scrap by the 1980s, DC-8s kept flying: the Super 60 stretches and later CFM56 re-engining made them durable freighters into the 2000s.

The Super 61 and 63, at 57.12 metres, were the longest airliners in the world until the 747, a slim tube carrying 259 passengers, the true prototype of the stretched narrowbody.

NASA flew one as a flying laboratory until the 2020s, and Samaritan's Purse still operates a DC-8-72 on relief missions, a 1960s jet still earning its keep.