Lockheed’s Electra — Part 2
A long and draining war
As the Second World War drew to a close in 1945, aviation had established itself in a paramount position. A post-war world without air transport was unthinkable. Aircraft would be faster, bigger and more capable then they were in the 1930s.
The jet engine had made its debut towards the end of the war. While the Luftwaffe was the first to have operational jet aircraft with the Messerschmitt Me 262, the Allies were developing them too. Lockheed Corporation’s legendary designer Clarence Leonard ‘Kelly’ Johnson had followed up on the iconic P-38 Lightning twin-engine, twin-tail-boom fighter with the P-80 Shooting Star, America’s first operational jet fighter, powered by a single Allison J33 turbojet.
Lockheed had a ‘good war’, if such a thing were possible. Their pre-war designs, especially the Electra family, had proved capable and versatile, although overshadowed by the larger Douglas DC-3/C-47. The Constellation series was now the airliner of choice, with every major airline operating them. But it was the military business that provided the profits. Lockheed’s T-33 Shooting Star jet trainer, developed from its P-80 namesake, would become one of the longest-serving of its type in history. The more advanced F-104 Starfighter was astonishingly fast for its time, though a handful to fly. The U-2 reconnaissance airplane (famous for its role in the Francis Gary Powers shoot down and capture saga in 1960) was unlike anything else — though a closely guarded secret. All these types would serve generations of pilots and cement Lockheed’s position as a manufacturer of excellence.
The airline world of the 1950s
Large propliners were dominant; Lockheed and Douglas were enjoying the lion’s share of the market with their Constellation and DC-6, respectively. But the turbine engine was making inroads too. De Havilland had already flown the Comet, and a British turboprop, the Vickers Viscount, was in commercial service with British European Airways. By 1952 Sud Aviation of France was working on the prototype of the Caravelle jet, which made its maiden flight in 1955. So the writing was on the proverbial wall for piston aero engines.
Lockheed made a last effort to breathe new life into the Constellation, with the L-1249, a hybrid design that had turboprop engines on a L-1049 fuselage. The military was interested and tested a few, but the airlines were not, so the four prototype airframes were adapted for conversion into conventional Super Constellations.
Unsuccessful though it was, the L-1249 was also the fastest transport of its time, so it was obvious that the limits of the piston engine had been reached. With jet engines promising even faster cruise speeds, the US airlines had to reluctantly accept that turbines were the future of aviation.
Boeing was already test-flying the Model 367–80, which evolved into the world-famous Boeing 707. But the early jets had significant performance limits. They needed long runways — especially at ‘hot and high’ airports — and had limited range, as BOAC had discovered with its first Comets.
The last great airline CEOs
A group of formidable men, who had been in the industry since its birth, still controlled the major US airlines of the time. Juan Trippe of Pan American Airways and TWA’s Howard Hughes were larger-than-life characters who were already legends in their lifetimes.
Eddie Rickenbacker was the boss of Eastern Airlines; a WW1 flying ace and famously irascible, he was just as well known as Trippe and Hughes. Leading American Airlines was C.R. Smith, the man who had pushed Douglas to add the additional row of seats that made the DC-3 such a resounding and enduring commercial success. Collett E. Woolman, President of Delta, was a former crop-duster pilot who founded his own airline and led it from the front, until his death in 1966. These men and their less flamboyant counterparts at United, Braniff, and Northwest dominated the airline scene.
American Airlines throws down a gauntlet
In 1953, C.R. Smith, ever the visionary and with his focus on domestic US routes, put out specifications for a fast (400 mph cruise speed) turboprop aircraft which could operate from all of the USA’s 100 major airports, many of which had short runways too small for a pure-jet.
Lockheed gained a head start. They had already won a competition in 1951 to build the US military a turboprop transport, which would become the legendary C-130 Hercules. Now, a new design was submitted, using the proven Allison T56 engines from the Hercules. It edged out rival designs from Douglas and Vickers.
Consequently, American Airlines ordered 35 examples of the new four-engine ‘propjet’ airplane, with Eastern signing up for 40 more. The Chairman of Lockheed, Robert Gross, christened the design the Model 188 Electra, in homage to the innovative aircraft that had been his first success. More orders followed with 14 airlines asking for almost 180 of the aircraft; it started looking like another success for Lockheed.
The Electra debuts
The L-188 Electra first flew in December 1957, beating the Boeing 707 by two weeks. Lockheed had spent four years and an estimated fifty million dollars in development costs. Deliveries to Eastern and American Airlines were made in December 1958 with the aircraft entering service in January 1959.
With a snub nose, short stubby wings, four huge propellers like windmill blades, and eschewing Lockheed’s trademark multiple tail fins, the Electra was not a particularly pretty aircraft; but it had the performance customer airlines wanted. The L-188 could operate out of short fields and cruise almost as fast as a jet, giving it a significant performance edge.
The Electra had an unfortunate beginning with American Airlines Flight 320 involved in a fatal accident on approach to New York’s LaGuardia Airport in February, only two weeks after the airline had taken delivery of the new type. Investigators attributed the crash to a combination of marginal weather and crew error, which at the time was considered an acceptable hazard of flying.
That disaster aside, passengers were not impressed by cabin noise in the Electra, compelling the manufacturer to offer a modification that was retrofitted to early aircraft in the summer of 1959. That was accomplished successfully, and almost 100 Electras were in airline service by the end of that summer.
Tragedy strikes again
The summer travel season of 1959 had been uneventful, with airlines recognizing the Electra’s combination of short-field performance, speed and fuel efficiency for the attractive propositions they were. More orders flowed in, and Lockheed was feeling optimistic. With competitors Boeing, Douglas and Convair building four-engine jets largely similar to each other, the Burbank company was the outlier, enjoying a niche.
Then on a clear September night in 1959 a brand-new Braniff Airways Electra literally fell out of the sky near a small town in Texas, killing everyone on board. There were no distress calls and evidently no warning. The aircraft seemed to come apart in mid-air, in a scenario eerily similar to the first Comet crashes.
Investigators were baffled, and the media had a field day speculating on what could have gone wrong. Theories abounded including thunderstorms (there were none in the vicinity); bombs (not an issue in the 1950s, terrorists had not targeted aircraft yet); and numerous other more speculative causes.
Six months of intensive work later, the US Civil Aeronautics Board (at the time the CAB was tasked with accident investigation) was baffled. Investigators knew that a wing had come off, but there was no evidence of structural damage that might have caused such a failure. They were about to close the investigation, with no ‘probable cause’ identified, when tragedy struck again.
Northwest 710 goes down
Another practically new L-188, Northwest Airlines’ first delivery in fact, disintegrated in mid-air — this time in broad daylight. Startled farmers working their fields in Indiana looked up to see an airliner, minus its right wing, plunge vertically into the ground.
A new type of aircraft with two unexplained accidents: the media went into a frenzy once again. This time many stakeholders too were concerned that, similar to the ill-fated de Havilland Comet, the Electra had a fatal flaw that would require the type to be grounded.
Quesada of the FAA
The Federal Aviation Act of 1958 had led to an agency with the same initials being formed. General Elwood Richard ‘Pete’ Quesada, a former fighter pilot and previously commander of the US Air Force Tactical Air Command, was picked as the Federal Aviation Agency’s first head.
Quesada was famously a maverick who enjoyed playing the ‘tough cop’. He was “ruthless, demanding and impatient … [and] courageous, frank and completely honest”, in the words of a biographer.
In this instance, he was under immense pressure to ground the Lockheed 188 Electra. As has been seen recently with the Boeing 737 MAX, resisting such demands is very difficult. But this was a simpler age, and resistance is what the FAA put up. Rather than stop the Electra flying, Quesada permitted it to continue operations, but at severely restricted speeds.
In addition, all Electra autopilots were to be disconnected, in case the fault was hidden in that system. Daily checks were to be conducted by the FAA (not the airlines) on a number of vital components. New innovations, ‘impact immune flight recorders’, were to be installed on every Electra so that should tragedy reoccur, more data would be available for analysis. This set the trend for the now ubiquitous ‘black box’ flight data recorder (FDR).
A calculated gamble
All these precautions notwithstanding, it was a very courageous stance, the likes of which are unlikely to occur today. Not surprisingly, the General was harshly criticized and even accused of corruption. Realistically, by refusing to ground the Electra, Quesada effectively put his career on the line.
Simultaneously Quesada ordered an investigation of unprecedented depth, mirroring in many ways what the British government did in the Comet affair. The other major manufacturers, Boeing, Douglas, Northrop and Convair, lent unstinted support. NASA, a government agency that had tremendous resources but no mandate to be involved in terrestrial matters, enthusiastically assisted the investigators.
Meanwhile the Model 188 Electra flew on in airline service and the aviation world held its collective breath.
The first part of the story covering the pre-war Electras is here and the concluding part of the Electra story is here.
This is part of a series on the propliners of the 1950s and the slow transition to the jet age. It all began with the DC-3 of course, and my columns move through the other Douglas propliners, the Boeing 377, Lockheed’s Electras and the elegant Constellation. The Brabazon Committee which sparked such a wave of innovation in the UK with the Vickers Viscount, the Bristol Britannia and the ill-fated de Havilland Comet. Many other significant aircraft, such as Avro Canada’s innovative but aborted C-102 passenger jet and the Sud-Aviation Caravelle, which led us into the start of the Jet Age have columns too.
A few quirky segues I couldn’t resist: the ‘Double Sunrise’ flights between my two homelands Ceylon and Australia; the wonderful Carvairs and that very British habit of taking your car on holiday. I also had to write a paean to my beloved A380 and all my pilot friends in the Gulf as COVID ended that little dream.
Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed the series as much as I have relished writing them. My special thanks to my old friend, mentor, editor and repository of knowledge Roger Thiedeman, for all the encouragement and support throughout this project.
