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AIRCRAFT LOCKHEED CONSTELLATION Airliner Designs: This INCREDIBLE Aircraft Changed Everything PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qunbRD2ktO4 Peter Burgess COMMENTARY I am archiving this video in 2025 to remind me of the impressive progress that has been made over the years in aronautical engineering and the role competent human individuals have had in delivering 'progress'. I never got to fly in a Lockheed Constellation, but some of my early flghts were in aircraft that are part of this story. One of my first commercial flights was in a Douglas DC-3, an aircraft that was a workhores during WWII. I had a good number of flights in the Lockheed Electra during my uS corporate career! I have been interested in the 'management' of the corporate enterprise and the resultant progress (or not) of society all my adult working life. This video is a very useful addition to my archives and the combination of stories of corporate progress, technological progress and multiple progresses of impressive individuals. This video added a lot to my understanding of this part of aviation history. I am left with an ongoing gap in how these activities link to what was happening the places like the UK during the 1930s, 40s and 50s both in terms of airframes and power units! Peter Burgess
This INCREDIBLE Aircraft Changed Everything Airliner Designs May 4, 2025 50.2K subscribers ... 405,376 views ... 15K likes #panam #planes #documentary The Lockheed Constellation roared onto the scene in the late 1940s and took the commercial aviation world by storm. Until then, passengers had had to make do on small aircraft at the mercy of the weather; DC-3s and their like, although trailblazers in their own right, were overshadowed by this incredible new plane. But it wouldn't be an easy road; from the ravages of war to the uncertainty of a new peace, the Constellation faced unexpected challenges along the way that threatened to destroy it. Designed by a team at Lockheed headed by the legendary Clarence 'Kelly' Johnson, the Constellation began life as the C-69 flying with the USAAF before being released from active service to become a truly beloved airliner. The story of its development is an epic that began back in the 30s with such aircraft as the Lockheed Electra, Hudson and P-38 Lightning and its design would inspire competition in the form of the Douglas DC-4. This is the incredible true story of the origins of one of history's finest aircraft; the Lockheed L-049 Constellation! Written by Grant Newman & Mike Brady Animated by Alec http://thisdayinaviation.com/ https://northwestairlineshistory.org/'Queen of the Skies' by Claude G. Luisada The Flight Detective, (2024). Have you seen these Lockheed Constellation sleeping berths? Travel Update: https://travelupdate.com/constellatio... Dougherty, P. (2021). Prototype Boeing Superfortress bomber crashes into Seattle's Frye packing company on February 18 1943. HistoryLink.org: https://www.historylink.org/file/2874 Driscoll, L. M. (2022). Lockheed Constellation. United States Lines: https://united-states-lines.org/lockh... Dwyer, L. (2024). Lockheed P-38 Lightning. The Aviation History Online Museum: http://www.aviation-history.com/lockh... Ethell, J. L. (1983). P-38 Lightning. Zokeisha Publications Ltd. Francillon, R. J. (1987). Lockheed aircraft since 1913 (2nd ed.). Putnam Aeronautical Books. Francillon, R. J. (1995). McDonnell Douglas Aircraft since 1920: Volume I (3rd ed.). Putnam Aeronautical Books. ICAO. (2024). The History of ICAO and the Chicago Convention. ICAO Safe skies, sustainable future: https://www.icao.int/about-icao/histo... Marson, P. J. (1982). The Lockheed Constellation Series. Air Britain (Historians) Ltd. Martin, L. (2020). How the Constellation became the Star of the Skies. Lockheed Martin: https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/... Martin, L. (2020). Johnson's hunch becomes a Lockheed signature. Lockheed Martin: https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/... Martin, L. (2020). Kelly Johnson, Architect of air. Lockheed Martin: https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/... Martin, L. (2020). The Hudson. Lockheed Martin: https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/... https://www.airwaysmag.com/legacy-pos... https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/time... https://sandiegoairandspace.org/exhib... https://www.saam.org.au/history_group... #aircraft #aviation #history #design #engineering #constellation #planes #airplane #airliner #panam #twa #lockheed #documentary 0:00 Intro 1:55 Origins 5:37 Lockheed's Electra Family 12:43 The Hudson 14:40 Lockheed Excalibur Concept 15:14 Excalibur Becomes the Constellation 17:53 P-38 Lightning\| 24:39 Wartime 26:50 First Flight 28:07 C-69's Career 32:33 The War Ends 34:20 The Constellation is Born 38:50 The Constellation's Amazing Design 46:21 Outro Transcript 0:00 Intro system 125.7 [Music] In the late 1940s if you wanted to catch a plane around the States or even over to Paris chances are you'd be stepping aboard one of history's most beautiful aircraft Technologically innovative brilliantly economical and blisteringly fast This aircraft's mere appearance epitomized the optimism of postwar air travel and just oozed sex appeal At the time the commercial aviation industry was struggling to gain a foothold after the ravages of six years of bloody war But the Loheed constellation played an invaluable role in overcoming obstacles with plenty of charisma and panache The 1:07 Connie was a trend setting airliner that changed the landscape and saw sterling service around the world But in the fiercely competitive battle between the ultimate piston engine air transports she came in second in sales to industry rivals The story of its development is actually an epic spanning decades She came along after a series of increasingly more impressive designs Some which are today considered iconic and some which suffered bad teething issues What was about to happen would see some of the greatest pioneers in commercial aviation combine their talents to produce a truly spectacular aircraft Ladies and gentlemen I'm your friend Mike Brady from Airliner Designs and this is the story of the Loheed Origins [Applause] 2:06 Constellation Once upon a time if you needed to hop on an airplane chances are it would look something like this sleek and gleaming silver In the late 1930s and early 40s a new generation of passenger airliner was slowly appearing at airports around the world Technology was changing at such a rapid pace that air passengers viewed these modern allmetal behemoths like how we might view spaceships today if aliens were to land on Earth They were captivating made of polished metal and free of all the struts the wires and all those other cumbersome excesses that characterized aircraft of the 20s and before The Douglas DC3 revolutionized air travel and became ubiquitous serving routes ranging from the US mainland to Southeast Asia and the Far East In the years to come you were just as likely to see a DC3 flying over Chicago as you 3:00 were over the Himalayas But the DC3 for all of its uses was small and totally at the mercy of the elements In fact so many were lost that today online cataloges like Wikipedia have had to break down their indexes of destroyed DC3s by month of each year going back to 1937 Something bigger and safer would be needed to take the traveling public to the skies And some dreamers even schemed of an aircraft that could bridge the USA and Europe to challenge the great ocean liners that dominated the Atlantic passenger trade [Applause] [Music] In the summer of 1939 legendary magnate aviation pioneer and all-around eccentric Howard Hughes had invited engineer Kelly Johnson and a handful of executives to meet with his transcontinental and western air team Hughes was the airlines owner and he wanted to discuss what he called the airliner of the future something that 4:04 could carry more people further and faster than ever before and at the same time settle an old rivalry between TWWA and the likes of Panaman Kelly Johnson was a brilliant aircraft designer from Lockheed then a relatively small firm that was locked in a desperate struggle with rivals of its own like Boeing and Douglas Johnson and his team had worked long and hard on the design of an airliner they called the Excalibur that existed only on paper But it became clear that the performance Hughes wanted couldn't be met by that design It would need to carry more passengers around 100 mph faster and 1,000 ft higher than what Johnson and his team thought their design could manage This specification was extremely ambitious for the time and it's difficult to convey exactly how much more advanced than existing airliners this aircraft would have to be Hughes wanted a deluxe transcontinental airliner capable of flying non-stop between Los Angeles and New York in 8 or 5:03 nine hours carrying 6,000 lb of payload at a speed of between 240 to 300 mph and at 20,000 ft That was a distance of over 2,000 mi at a height that even military transport struggled to reach and at the speed of the most modern single seat fighters Johnson and his team at Loheed would have to go back to the drawing board and leverage all their experience and knowhow to give Hughes the kind of airliner he needed to dominate the skies And fortunately Loheed had exactly the kind of experience it would take to pull it [Music] Lockheed's Electra Family 5:44 off The journey had in many ways begun nearly a decade earlier in the early 1930s Back then the Loied Aircraft Corporation's president Lloyd Steerman proposed that the company build a 10 seat allmetal airliner which his designers Hall Hibid and Richard von Hake and to a lesser extent Steman 6:02 himself set to work on This would be the elegant Loheed model 10 Electra a critical design which would go on to save the company Loheed was emerging from serious financial troubles at the time following the Great Depression and even went into receiverhip in 1931 It was a rocky time but the company hoped the Electra would give them the win they desperately needed Preliminary designs for the Model 10 revealed a sleek low-wing airplane with a single fin capable of carrying 10 passengers who had to step right over a carry-through wing spar that crossed straight through the cabin Then there came a sliding doors moment early in its design While its aerodynamics were being triled at the University of Michigan a young 23-year-old aerodynamicist's assistant named Clarence Kelly Johnson wrote an unofficial report on it He suggested changes which included the removal of the single fin Now this was a very bold move and actually impressed Hibid so much that he offered the young man a position with his staff His first task redesigning the Model 10's tail 7:06 Johnson added two oval end plate fins at the ends of the horizontal stabilizer which was incorporated into the prototype while it was still under construction This gave the aircraft all the necessary lateral stability and vertical stabilizer surface area it needed while keeping the tail relatively small so it created less drag and could fit in most hangers without snagging on the roof or a door By bringing Johnson into the Loheed fold Hibbit didn't realize it at the time but he was nurturing the career of one of the greatest aircraft designers in history A local Michiganite born to Swedish parents Kelly Johnson was 13 years old when he won his first prize of many for aircraft design His nickname Kelly was a childhood one It came from the popular British music hall song 'Has anybody here seen Kelly?' And it stuck with him for the rest of his life A prodigy among intellectuals Johnson would be responsible for such iconic aircraft as the P38 Lightning the P80 Shooting Star 8:02 and even the Black Project aircraft at the much later skunk works like the U2 and SR71 spy planes But that was all a very long way off Back in the early 1930s Johnson was a young gun trying to make his way in a cutthroat industry but he had the exact kind of guts and ability to do it Hibid would later comment on Johnson's uncanny ability to design good aircraft That damn Swede he said he can see the air But back in the day that damn Swede had some other worries about the Electra's design He rallied for a change to the windscreen to make it more streamlined and went so far as to suggest the removal of the wing fillets These sit at the inboard edge where the wing meets the fuselage The idea was they improved the flow of air around areas where there was a sudden change in the flow like a wing to fuse large joint But Johnson was afraid the oversized fillets were creating drag instead Aerodynamics trials with the wind tunnel models proved Johnson's instincts were right and the fillets 9:00 were taken off Fillets correctly sized and placed could drastically assist the aircraft's drag reduction and they would become standard on most locked airliners after But for the time being Johnson had given the Electra yet more speed With these changes Loheed produced a hit Coming at a time when most American passenger aircraft were tri motors and many of them were still wood or fabric the Model 10 Electra which was all metal was a commercial success with Northwest Airlines putting it into scheduled services first in 1934 Other US airlines followed suit and then Electras shipped all over the world flying the lines from Argentina and Australia to Japan and New Zealand In fact the Electra was sometimes bought to serve individual passengers as the forerunner of the modern-day business jet By far the most famous user of the Electra was Amelia Hehart the record- setting darling of US aviation She bought a model 10E converted especially for long-distance flight And it was in this exact aircraft that she and her co-pilot Fred Nunan disappeared in July 1937 while attempting to circumn the 10:05 globe But that unfortunate incident aside the Electra was exactly the kind of aircraft Loheed needed to mark its place in the fiercely competitive aviation world And its sleek aerodynamic form with those powerful engines relative to its size set the pattern for all Loheed aircraft to come [Music] But even then following the success of the Model 10 and its offshoot the shorter Model 12 Electra Jr Hibbit and Johnson realized that to compete with newer airliners from its aviation rivals Loheed needed a bigger plane At the time the Douglas Aircraft Company was dominating airliner sales with its entries into the allmetal monoplane airliner set the DC1 DC being short for Douglas Commercial then the DC2 And then in 1936 the pinnacle of pre-war airliner designs the Douglas Sleeper Transport better known as the iconic DC3 This 11:05 puppy totally changed the air travel landscape It was technologically advanced with modern navigation aids and enough passenger and cargo space to make a good profit It dominated the pre-war airline market in the USA beginning a trend of successful airliners that Loheed's brightest endeavored to outsell but continually played second fiddle to Douglas became the team to beat in the cutthroat commercial airplane sales game for the next 30 years With the appearance of these bright new airliners Douglas had thrown down the gauntlet and hibid and Johnson had to respond But their horse in the race the Model 14 named creatively the Super Electra although an inspired design could not match the commercial juggernaut that was the DC3 The Super Electra is probably most notable for introducing innovations like the Fowler flaps trailing edge landing flaps that retracted outwards from the wing to increase its total area and aviation first But still sales of the Super Electra to US Airlines were not high compared to its rival the DC3 and only 112 of the airplane were ever built 12:08 Disappointed by the poor domestic sales of the Super Electra a redesign of the aircraft was launched which saw the Model 14 stretched and fitted with more powerful engines This became the Model 18 the Loadar Although its success could not match the DC3 still the Loadar was a commercial hit abroad in both military and civil service which saw over 600 of the type being built For a relatively small firm like Loheed this was a big deal and it paved the way for bigger things [Music] ahead With the clouds of war on the horizon in Europe a massive rearmament program was undertaken by the British The Hudson 12:48 armed forces And with Britain's factories filled to capacity with orders for new aircraft all eyes turned to factories in the United States That year in April British civil servant Sir Henry Self and a delegation went to America to order airplanes to assist in rearming the RAF At the time Loheed was at a 13:07 turning point once again because despite its factory building aircraft and new designs being investigated it was again facing bankruptcy They'd run out of orders It was a serious existential threat to the company but it would soon prove to be an unexpected benefit Hibid and Johnson sensed an opportunity They set to work immediately to impress the British delegation Their task present the Brits with a general purpose bomber and reconnaissance airplane They stuck with what they knew basing their design on the Super Electra Thankfully their determination paid off The British were very impressed by a wooden mockup that only took 24 hours to build Loheed called it the B-14 but history would call it the Loheed Hudson A few different things interested the British about the Loheed design in competition with old rivals like Douglas and Boeing But chief among them was the speed that Loheed promised to build the aircraft on the production line Because 14:03 remember they unlike Douglas and Boeing had no other orders They could just start cranking Hudson's out The British Air Ministry placed the largest single order in the company's history 200 Lockheed model B14L maritime patrol bombers would be built in a new factory in sunny Burbank California RAF air commodor Arthur Harris who' accompanied the British mission to America in 1938 wrote 'I was entirely convinced that anyone who could produce a mockup in 24 hours would indeed make good on all his promises and this Loheed most certainly did The Hudson was an important win for Lockheed Excalibur Concept 14:42 Loheed but even before war had erupted important conversations were happening about something bigger and better In the late30s Sir Henry Self had approached Loheed looking for new aircraft And Johnson and his team had begun investigating an airliner that might challenge Douglas's massive DC4E a huge 15:00 one-off 42 passenger carrying aircraft built at the behest of United Airlines This project became the Loheed Model 44 Excalibur which was really just a scaled up Electra with four engines tricycle undercarriage in space for 32 passengers Excalibur Becomes the Constellation 15:17 But then came that fateful meeting with Howard Hughes So Hughes wanted the airliner of the future something much more easily said than done The new aircraft would need to fly as fast as a modern-day fighter plane But Johnson and Co didn't laugh at the idea They set about thinking about how they could pull it off They scrapped the Excalibur and went back to the drawing board To achieve that incredible performance Hughes insisted that the aircraft needed to be pressurized to make sure it could reach those high altitudes where it wouldn't be hampered by poor weather He also insisted on fitting the now legendary but then new and largely untested right R3350 duplex cyclone engine which combined with a low drag fuselarge 16:03 profile might give that high expected performance This was a massive gamble by Hughes instructing an aircraft company that specialized only in small twin engine airliners to build such a large advanced aircraft with performance that outshone anything else in the air at the time was an enormous risk But Hughes having flown his own Loheed 14 around the world in 1938 was convinced that if anyone could do it the irrepressible team of Hibid and Johnson could By July 1939 they had drawn up a design which had been guided by the Excalibur and it was a thing to behold even on paper It drew from the collective experience the team had earned from the previous 8 years of designing aircraft together It made use of the Model 14's groundbreaking Fowler flaps and the twin fins fitted to company aircraft since the Model 10 but it was supplemented by a center fin the first fitted to a company aircraft while still distinguishing it as a Loheed product 17:01 This trifin tail also had a very practical purpose By splitting the surface area of one huge fin into three smaller ones the model 49 would be able to fit within the smaller TWWA hangers of the day Designing the model 49 was a defining moment for Loheed He had later said that up to that time we were sort of small-time guys but when we got to the constellation we had to be big time guys We had to be right and we had to be good It wouldn't be an easy road because the team was suddenly confronted with an unexpected design hurdle The model 49 didn't just borrow from older airliners that Loheed had produced It also took its wing profile enlarged and expanded from a fighter they had been developing for the US Army Airore But it was a design which would shortly show an alarming Achilles [Music] P-38 Lightning 17:57 heel Keen to vive for more military contracts Loheed had submitted a twin boom fighter design by Johnson to the 18:04 Army Airore what they called the Model 22 It was designed as a pursuit fighter with one thing in mind absolute speed Once again Johnson's keen eye had paid off Lockheed secured a contract for a single prototype given the designation XP38 It first flew in January 1938 and was unlike any other fighter in existence at the time Again Loheed had broken the mold with the P38 It was eventually named the Lightning Fitting because this remarkable fighter was shockingly quick but there was trouble on the horizon Tests showed that the aircraft began to experience what pilots thought was a tail flutter violent shaking and buffering of the tail if it wasn't rigid enough But Kelly Johnson was adamant the issue was something else In the spring of 1941 Major Sigma Gilkkey encountered the issue when diving his aircraft from a height of 30,000 ft On reaching a speed of 320 mph 19:01 the entire aircraft began shuttering violently and its speed increased uncontrollably resulting in the nose pitching down until the aircraft was speeding straight toward the ground Gilkkey was able to recover from this frightening episode but other P38 pilots were not so lucky In November a lightning crashed and killed test pilot Ralph Ferdin when the tail separated after a high-speed dive Johnson desperately requested wind tunnel tests to be run and they revealed a problem a little thing called compressibility The issue was clearly related to the Lightning's high speed especially in a dive It's worth remembering that the speed record set just before the war had been done by Hughes in his H1 racer clocking just over 354 mph The Lightning was rated at another 60 mph quicker This was just performance that had never really been reached or studied before It was a leap into the unknown and Johnson was keen to figure out what was going on He had already been worried about the effects of compressibility early in the plane's 20:03 design In fact he'd already written a report but the National Advisory Committee of Aeronautics the forerunner of today's NASA refused to conduct adequate wind tunnel testing With lightnings falling out of the sky though they had to at last relent Tests revealed that although the P38 couldn't reach supersonic speeds that is speed faster than the speed of sound around 760 mph it was going so fast that air traveling over the flight surfaces was reaching the speed of sound This had some dangerous complications The formation of small shock waves moved the crucial center of pressure on the wing further off towards the tail The shock waves could create a separation of air flow The tail couldn't effectively form the downwash required to generate lift The result was a big heavy aircraft moving at high speed which could no longer keep itself in the air effectively And of course the faster it went the worse the issue got in a kind of self-fulfilling cycle Not only that but the controls would lock thanks to the intense aerodynamic forces at play The P38 could 21:04 hurt into the ground leaving the pilot absolutely no options to regain control or even get out of the cockpit It was a horrifying realization that came after a prolonged period of frustration and testing for the Loheed team But with the cause discovered they realized something drastic needed to be done because P38s would soon be reaching frontline units Obviously the solution would require a redesign of the P38's wing But with war raging in Europe the solution had to be a stop gap The government would not allow the flow of P38s off the production line to be interrupted After wind tunnel testing was finished Loheed and the NACA came up with a small dive recovery flap under each wing just outboard of the fuse large booms It wasn't the cure hoped for by Johnson but it undoubtedly prevented the loss of more P38 pilots lives But this issue was concerning to Johnson and his team for other reasons because Loheed had been designing the model 49 airliner and transport and copied the P38's wing 22:03 profile Kelly later said 'I broke an ulcer over compressibility on the P38 because we flew into a speed range where no one had ever been before and we had difficulty convincing people that it wasn't the funnyl looking airplane itself but a fundamental physical problem.' We found out what happened when the lightning shed its tail and we worked during the whole war to get 15 more knots of speed We saw compressibility as a brick wall for a long time Then we learned how to get through it This kind of lesson was a bitter pill to swallow but it would prove crucial in pushing the design of TWWA's new airliner forward because it was designed to operate at the same speeds as the P38 The new airliner drew its wing shape from the fighter because of wind tunnel tests that showed that even though it suffered from more drag than other forms it would offer excellent stalling characteristics and maximum lift coefficient at the intended operating speeds That and the plan for would provide excellent handling qualities like remarkable stability and bad 23:03 turbulence and even a quick spin recovery that would one day see the new aircraft hailed as a favorite of pilots the world over But even though it was optimized for speed the Fowler flaps borrowed from the model 14 would make sure the aircraft would be able to land and take off at slow speeds without stalling and falling from the sky While the tail used an oversized elevator to provide even more lift at slow speed With lessons learned from the P38 Johnson ensured the future airliner wouldn't suffer from the same issues and the modified wing form was approved for use But as the design progressed once again Loheed's commercial foes Douglas and Boeing were also at work producing their own rivals to the Model 49 There was the redesigned DC4 and the Boeing 307 but the Loheed design was by far the most advanced This new aircraft had been referred to as the Excalibur But now with the design being finalized it got a new name one as pretty as its elegant lines It would be called the 24:05 Constellation Hughes was delighted by the final design He rewarded Loheed for sticking to the stringent requirements by placing an order for a total of 40 constellations from TWWA with construction beginning on the first example of an initial batch of nine aircraft in June 1940 Not to be outdone Pan-American ordered 30 The constellation was underway More orders started to come through even before the first prototype had taken to the air But then there came a shocking blow America was going to [Music] war After the Japanese attack on Pearl Wartime 24:43 Harbor December 7th 1941 all work on civil aircraft was ceased by order of the government It was like a thunderbolt The order threatened to totally halt the constellation's development and maybe even kill it But once again Johnson and Hibid sensed an opportunity The 25:00 constellation had all the characteristics of a plane that was extremely attractive to the military The airliner would be able to hit speeds faster than a Japanese zero fighter aircraft With a prototype under construction how could the army ignore it But what exactly would the army use it for Well after some twoing and throwing the Loied engineers grew impatient with the army's indecision and they prepared a detailed report on the militarized constellation effectively telling them what they could do with this new plane This actually had the desired effect and the army and Loheed signed a contract for 260 militarized constellations known as the C69 on September 9th 1942 to try the massive duplex cyclone engines before fitting them to the prototype Two of them were fitted to a Loheed Ventura a maritime patrol bomber based on the Model 18 airliner This unholy marriage of the constellation's massive engines on a smaller aircraft resulted in this machine being named the Ventilation By the end of November 1942 the prototype C69 was completed and it 26:04 had undergone engine runs and taxi trials but its first flight loomed large in the very near future On January 9th 1943 Loied at last unveiled the new aircraft ready for its maiden flight It was a striking looking thing Its elegantly contoured fuselage was designed with low drag in mind with curves that made it look like a dolphin from the side and an objectively beautiful silhouette It had been designed in strict secrecy At one point in the process only about a dozen people even knew of its existence The news generated a huge buzz in the aviation world And so it was in early 1943 that as the four big engines roared to life on Burbanks airport tarmac many eyes watched with abject First Flight fascination In the cockpit were Loheed's chief test pilot Milo Burcham and Eddie Allen from Boeing A strange pick but 27:03 Allan had experience with big birds that Bertam didn't Behind them in the cabin was Kelly Johnson and a handful of Loheed staff keen to see what the new kite could do Bertram and Allen taxied her and then poised at the end of the runway they advanced the throttles The four duplex cyclones began to roar and the constellation was off For the first time the big aircraft lifted off and started a career that would enter legend After a flight time of exactly 58 minutes the C69 landed at Murok Dry Lake for further flights away from the prying eyes of the general public Over the next few hours Allan in the cockpit gave his seat to Loheed test pilot Milo Burcham who quickly familiarized himself with the aircraft and conducted its return flight to Burbank After a total of six test flights in one day Allan turned to Loheed's president Bob Gross and said 'Mr Gross this plane flies perfectly You don't need me anymore I'm going back 28:06 home to Seattle.' C-69's Career 28:12 The C69 was destined to become an equipment and personnel transport for the US forces In February 1942 all the aircraft on order and under construction for TWWA and Panama were called up for US Army Airore later US Army Air Force Service And Lockheed was preparing to hand over the first prototype when tragedy suddenly struck On February 18 1942 just weeks after the C69 had first flown the second prototype Boeing B29 Superfortress plunged to the ground following an engine fire killing Eddie Allen at the controls The nine others aboard perished along with 21 people on the ground immediately losing their lives when it struck Seattle's Fry Meat packing plot The cause of the in-flight fire the B29's Riot duplex cyclone 29:01 engines Just after takeoff a fire broke out in number one engine the lefth hand outboard unit which quickly went out But shortly after Allan announced his intention to burn some fuel off before coming back to land the fire had reignited This time it spread furiously burning through the wing spars fed with raw fuel from the ruptured lines to the now silent number one engine Suddenly the stricken aircraft broke apart in the air and fell to the ground resulting in the deaths of those 34 people It sent shock waves through the US aircraft manufacturing industry The issue would need to be investigated and solved And in the cells of the Loheed C69s were the exact same engines that had caught a light aboard the B29 This was a massive blow to the company because the constellation was designed specifically to be powered by the big 18 cylinder radials at Howard Hughes specific insistence Loheed had also experienced trouble with them which included fuel leaks oversp 30:00 speeded engines and unsatisfactory feathering of the propellers It wouldn't be until June 18th that the prototype would take to the air again this time fitted with duplex cyclones that were lower rated than production engines that Loheed would hope be fitted eventually to inservice aircraft Of course performance would suffer but it would have to do The first prototype constellation was finally ready for the types albeit military inservice debut On July 27 1943 the first C69 was officially handed over to the army And despite ongoing issues like those pesky fuel leaks the constellation was put into service By this time though the Army had placed an order for another 180 examples It was time for the Constellation to prove itself and it was Howard Hughes who was at the forefront On April 17 1944 the second prototype this time decorated in TWWA colors instead of the military olive drab took off from Burbank and flew non-stop to Washington DC in just 6 hours and 57 minutes with Hughes and 31:03 TWWA President Jack Fry at the controls The flight was a roaring success and a PR triumph It was officially the delivery flight of the second prototype to the army But Hughes being the astute businessman that he was didn't miss the opportunity to show off to his competitors the aircraft that he had had a hand in designing At an average speed of 330 mph the flight shattered the previous transcontinental flight time set by Hughes himself and his singleseat H1 racer back in 1937 Then April 26th the aircraft was flown to Ohio where it received a welcome from a very special guest Orville Wright one half of the brotherly duo who had first sent a powered heavier than airplane into the sky way back in 1903 was invited aboard His eyes twinkled as he sat in the right seat Originally intended just to be a passenger Wright was invited up front by Lieutenant Colonel George Hatcher It was the first time in over two decades that the old 32:01 aviator had piloted an aircraft but his heart must have thumped as the four duplex cyclone engines and his command roared with mechanical fury of the constellation Wright said that it was absolutely marvelous You can say that I ran the whole thing Put exclamation points and question marks around that because all I had to do was just let it take care of itself It's a fine plane It was really fine Wright died a few years later in 1947 but that flight in the constellation was the last time he would ever take to the skies The War Ends 32:33 [Music] 32:46 Despite the war Loheed had inadvertently taken the lead in the development of a generation of airliners for a world that 32:52 didn't yet exist and wouldn't until peace was restored in 1945 But still the constellation's metal 32:59 was being tested Because of the war the army's grasp on the constellation was firm and a few different variants were 33:05 designed to cater to its needs This included the basic C69 fitted with 44 seats on the right hand side of the 33:12 cabin and four folding four seat benches on the left facing inwards with two lavatories at the rear of the cabin A 33:19 troop transport was also projected equipped with 100 bench seats and openings in the aircraft's windows to 33:24 make sure machine guns could be fired out but this was never built Then at the end of World War II with the Allies 33:30 victorious all the massive orders made for military equipment were cancelled This affected the C69 of course but what 33:38 was more troubling for Loheed was the fact the newly formed US Air Force decided to standardize its transport 33:44 fleet on aircraft built by Loheed's rivals Douglas equipping its 4ine transport units with the C-54 Sky 33:51 Masteraster a military version of the DC4 Of the 15 C69s in service all but 33:58 three were released America and its allies had emerged victorious and the C69 had played a small but still 34:05 important part But at last peace had arrived and a new dawn of commercial aviation was on the horizon Loheed had 34:12 positioned themselves extremely well and it was time to bring the constellation to America's airlines at last The Constellation is Born 34:20 [Music] 34:36 Right off the bat the Loheed L049 Constellation was a very attractive offering to airlines who suddenly faced 34:43 rapidly increasing peaceime commercial traffic The aircraft was like a breath 34:48 of fresh air Inside its magnificent sweeping fuselage a crew of four occupied the flight deck with 44 34:54 passengers seated two ab breast of the aisle in the spacious cabin Loheed reasoned that the extra complexity of 35:00 the aircraft's systems including a pressurization system warranted the added weight of a flight engineer and his station His role was vital being responsible for carrying out important functions like optimizing fuel consumption monitoring the cabin pressure and the multitude of all those electrical systems aboard But despite the drawbacks of having an increased crew size the presence of the flight engineer actually made the constellation a very easy aircraft to fly for the pilot and co-pilot Those big duplex cyclone engines would prove their worth as well They produced almost double the horsepower per engine of the competition Douglas and Boeing at around 2,200 shaft horsepower each This offered greater takeoff performance longer endurance and even better reliability now that the kinks had been ironed out of the engine units But of course it gave the civilian constellations that cracking cruising speed There'd been a huge amount of thought given to the aerodynamic shape of the fuselage and its drag reduction was a success Despite the frontal area of the DC4 and constellation actually being the same the drag on the ladder was 13% less than on the Douglas Other 36:06 innovations advancing it beyond its contemporaries included that pressurized fuselage Although the Boeing 307 pipped 36:12 it to the post as the first pressurized airliner pressurization on airliners meant they could at last fly at higher altitudes well above heavy weather and bad turbulence Electric compressors conditioned the atmosphere within the constellation's fuselage which was strengthened to withstand the difference in pressure within and outside the cabin Not only that but the cabin was air conditioned as well something passengers who might have to wait for push back in the heat of summer might well appreciate Another huge innovation was greatly appreciated by the pilots Loheed had spent years developing and improving a hydraulically boosted flight control surface system This was the aeronautical equivalent of a car's power steering and the constellation was the first airliner to be fitted with them as standard Loheed thought it was so important they built a full-scale prototype and tested it for 3 years even operating it at -70° 37:05 F So to that end too since the aircraft was designed to operate at very high altitudes the wings had to be fitted with electric deicing With the military cancelling its larger order of C69s these surplus airframes on the production line became available to civil buyers and the aircraft's first airline customer was of course Howard Hughes's TWWA which wasted no time in promoting the type's virtues granted permission to operate the type on December 11th 1945 A few days earlier a TWWA constellation named the Paris Sky Chief loaded with 23 invited guests flew the type's first transatlantic flight taking off from New York's Legardia Airport and landing at Paris's Orle airport just 14 hours 47 minutes later This was the first of many transatlantic flights the Constellation was to fly throughout her career but it was also the first ever for TWWA Importantly for TWWA they were able to secure the 38:01 exclusive rights to flights from the US to Paris Two months later on February 6th after agreements between the French and US had been signed the aircraft's first scheduled fair paying passenger transatlantic flight was made by a plane named Star of Paris Aboard with 36 passengers and seven crew with scheduled stops at Gander Newfoundland and Shannon Ireland The aircraft flew the same departure and destination as its sister over an elapse time of 19 hours 46 minutes of which 16 hours of those were spent in the air Fairs weren't cheap about $375 That's nearly $7,000 today But TWWA and Loheed had done it The constellation the queen of the skies had at last arrived in dramatic fashion [Music] The Constellation's Amazing Design 38:51 [Applause] [Music] The ability of the constellation to fly above 90% of the weather with its passengers in the comfort of a 39:03 pressurized cabin transformed air travel overnight Aircraft had made flights across the Atlantic before the war sure but the flight times were lengthy and levels of comfort were nowhere near as nice as what the constellation offered Before the constellation regular transatlantic travel was the preserve of ocean liners and the infrequent but luxurious giant zeppelins Before the war if you wanted to get across the Atlantic in under a day you just couldn't do it The options simply didn't exist The fastest ocean liner Queen Mary would still take 4 days and change German airline Lufansza had flown a Fuckwolf FW200 Condor between Berlin and New York in 1938 in just over 24 hours But this was just a trial flight The constellation completely upstaged aircraft which had once wowed the public The last flight of Panam's venerable Boeing Clipper service took place on April 8th 1946 when American Clipper carried 24 passengers from Honolulu to San Francisco in 16 hours 39 minutes But 40:02 a constellation had taken off and arrived 4 hours earlier with more than 40 passengers aboard The writing was on the wall A new era had arrived But despite the revolutionary record setting the constellation was also pretty familiar in many ways Despite shrinking flight times the aircraft's cabin layout mimicked the status quo but with the inclusion of sleeping births named sleeperes These enabled four passengers and their four seats on each side of the aisle to enjoy a lie flat bed The four seats folded down to accommodate two beds while another two folded down from storage above providing a kind of bunk arrangement The seat pitch was considerable as well Passengers had the option of stretching out with a favorable amount of recline on their seatbacks which still didn't impede on the personal space of the passengers behind The Constellation fleet was broken down into three distinct models The L049 the first had been the initial batch of those 88 C69 41:00 military aircraft converted for passenger use In late 1946 though came the L649 Only 22 of these were ever built but crucially aside from a redesigned cabin this model came with the improved R3350 duplex cyclone engine rated at 2,500 horsepower At last the aircraft could fully reach the potential dreamt up by the TWWA and Loheed executives back in 1939 The L649 was only to see limited use though because an even more improved model was on the horizon The L749 designed specifically for those big long-d distanceance international flights It had bigger fuel capacity giving it a maximum range of about 5,000 mi compared to the 649's 4000 The L749 became the standard Constellation model and most of the orders for the 649 were switched over 119 were made Joining TWWA in operating the constellation was rival Pan-American which received a total of 22 and American overseas Airlines who 42:01 received seven While the variant especially intended for overseas operation the model 749 had 23 machines go to US airlines including TWWA Panama and Eastern On its inaugural transatlantic service a Panama constellation actually beat TWWA's record-breaking flight time across the Atlantic by landing at Bournemouth England with stopovers in Gander and Shannon to slash TWWA's time by an incredible 7 hours International carriers who bought the flash new airliner included Air France Air India BOAC Dutch KM and Australia's Quantis to name just the biggest operators With the model 749 Loheed introduced the ability to fit the aircraft with different engines like the Bristol Centurus and the Prattton Whitney Double Wasp as it had done with its previous twin engine airliners back in the 30s But maybe surprisingly despite the type's troubling reputation customers preferred the duplex cyclone Immediately the constellation entered service and threw down the gauntlet to its US-built competitors by establishing international routes to destinations all over the world pushing deep into Europe 43:04 and inaugurating the first scheduled passenger service between Italy and the United States flown by a TWWA constellation appropriately named Star of Rome in February 1946 But domestically the constellation did not do well saleswise No thanks to Howard Hughes himself who when signing the contract with Locky to build the type had stipulated that no other airline except TWWA could fly transcontinental routes east to west across the US for a specified amount of time after they had begun its services This resulted in both American Airlines and United buying Douglas DC6s instead It was precisely the outcome Loheed didn't want Despite this though because of the advanced development of the C69 during the war and Loheed's decision to refit C69s on the production line as passenger airliners at the end of the war Loheed maintained a sizable workforce at a time when contracts were being slashed and mass staff layoffs were the order of the day at military 44:01 factories around the country as America's military production machine wound down for peace time This action alone ensured that Loheed was ahead in the constellation's development over its postwar rivals by nearly 18 months Despite all this momentum though Loheed did not begin to make a profit on the constellation until well into the late 1940s Not to be outdone Loheed's old rival Douglas had developed a bigger version of its DC4 unpressurized airliner as a direct competitor to the constellation It was called the DC6 First flying on February 15th 1946 and introduced into service the next year the DC6 like the Constellation was pressurized and was optimized for long-distance travel with the 1159 variant capable of reaching nearly 4,000 m Through the 50s and the 60s the two airliners battled one another for sales supremacy Each airline flying competing routes with these aircraft offering diversity and service in a bid to attract different customers But because 45:01 of how it uses restrictions on airlines buying constellations to fly those transcontinental US routes the biggest customers of the DC6 rivals to TWWA like American Airlines and United immediately began to make a profit with their Douglases What's more though the DC6 could match the Constellation's performance and it was more reliable Those big duplex cyclones still remained a maintenance headache throughout the constellation's career Whereas the DC6 was fitted with four 2100 horsepower Prattton Whitney double wasps It was the engine that had powered aircraft like the vout F4U Corsair and the Grumman F6F Hellcat during World War II Having reached a peak of maturity the R2800 was a warp proven reliable engine without the history of failures attributable to the constellation's duplex cyclones To add salt into the constellation's wounds sales of the DC6 really exceeded those of the original constellation by a huge margin All up a total of 277 Model 49 constellations were built compared to 704 DC6s Despite this globally speaking the 46:06 DC6 and the constellation dominated international air travel and nothing built anywhere else in the world came close That is to say until something bigger and faster came along Outro 46:22 [Music] The locking constellation was a world beater incorporating design aspects from the company's wealthy past in designing excellent civil and military aircraft at the hands of a talented team of engineers in service After a somewhat shaky start it spurred on the development of postwar international air travel for passengers in degrees of comfort they had not experienced before Its high performance technological 46:53 superiority and innovative design set it apart from its rivals thanks to men like Clarence Kelly Johnson and Howard Hughes 47:00 who had visioned enough to will this extraordinary aircraft into existence In sales it always played second fiddle to the juggernaut that was Douglas Commercial Airliners but still managed to outshine them with sheer charisma alone Its striking good looks ensuring it stood out on airport ramps wherever it made an appearance especially when compared to the somewhat utilitarian design of the Douglas's It was flawed suffering high maintenance times and a slew of issues thanks to the choice of engine But still it played a crucial role in bringing air travel to the public at large and connecting the world in a way that had never been seen before But the constellation story didn't end there With the program in full swing and Conny's flying around the world things nearly came to a grinding halt once more An existential threat to the program and Loheed itself once again came when the government finally wound down its wartime production in 1947 Over a thousand people at Loheed lost their jobs and the Connie it seemed might be doomed for cancellation What would happen next would see Hibid Johnson and 48:02 the Loheed executive team's relationship with the US military save the entire family of aircraft with the introduction of a new constellation for the Air Force and the Navy That and Loheed still had to answer the Douglas threat with their rivals out selling them and always confronted with the possibility of collapse In 1950 Loheed would introduce a new and improved Connie that would see service until the 1980s This would be the rise of the super constellation but that's a story for another day [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat

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