Metal Forming of Metallic Aircraft Wing Covers: Process Origins, Industrial Development and Programme-Level Evidence

Metallic wing covers are defined here as wing skins with mechanically attached or integrally machined stringers; an integrally stiffened panel is the monolithic case. This structured narrative review examines upper and lower metallic wing covers as manufacturing objects in civil transport, business-aircraft and selected military fixed-wing programmes. Public evidence, spanning shot-peening process origins in the 1920s–1930s and principal aircraft-programme evidence from the 1950s onward, was synthesised from peer-reviewed papers, SAE Technical Papers, patents, trade literature, government reports and supplier disclosures using explicit source weighting rather than statistical aggregation. Evidence was graded by source strength, and patents were treated as capability evidence rather than proof of serial production unless independently corroborated. The synthesis shows that forming-route selection is governed by structural scale, cover role, curvature class, alloy and temper, inherited stock state, panel architecture, and compensation or validation capability. Upper/lower cover divergence is directly evidenced for selected Airbus, Gulfstream and B-1B cases; where cover-separated routes are not publicly disclosed, it is treated as inference rather than production fact. The strongest public evidence supports peen and particle-impact routes for directional or inflected lower covers, creep age forming for large smooth heat-treatable covers, and specialised laser or hybrid routes where independently corroborated.