Originally Posted by
Alan Baker
I imagine that the reason that airlines bought 707-320Cs rather than -320Bs was the greater resale value, The future of passenger travel in the early/mid sixties was supposed to be supersonic, which is why the 747 was designed to have the capability for nose loading of main deck cargo. Ultimate payload range was not really a factor in those days as so many long haul routes were multi stop.
Wasn't the reason the 747 was designed with nose loading capability that at the time Boeing were pitching for a large military transport, which was actually awarded to Lockheed for the C-5A? As an aside I recall that when Seaboard World operated the 747-200F the idea was to be able to load 2 x 20ft ISO size containers side by side through the nose, don't know if that ever happened though.