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Profile – Lockheed Constellation
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Lockheed called her the ‘Queen of the Skies’ and In her day she was the biggest, most powerful and most expensive of all the commercial airliners. Many admired her for her luxury and aesthetically pleasing lines and, even when her life as an airliner was over, the military continued operations for another 20 years. She was the· ‘Connie’. . .
Lockheed’s Constellation Part I
In 1940, with the European powers locked in combat and their aircraft industries concentrating on the production of bombers and fighters, two American companies, Douglas and Lockheed, began producing large four-engined, long-range transports, a move which would lead them into being, after the war, the major suppliers of commercial aircraft to the world’s airliners.
The idea for this went way back to 1935 when the senior executives of United Airlines, Pan American, Transcontinental and Western Air (TWA), Eastern Airlines and American Airlines agreed to pool their money and resources for the development of a large four-engined airliner. It was unanimously agreed there was a real need for a bigger transport plane than those already in existence.
Douglas, the first manufacturer to work on the specifications, evolved the DC-4E prototype which made its maiden flight on June 7, 1938. It was a large 52-seat aircraft with a tricycle landing gear to give its 14ft (4. 3m) diameter three-blade propellers, which were driven by Pratt & Whitney R-2180 Twin Hornet engines, sufficient clearance from the ground. It also had a triple tail because it stood so high that one vertical fin would have been so large that it could not have been housed in a hangar. One aviation reporter called her “The Grand Hotel with wings” for the accommodation and furnishings were truly luxurious.
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