Lockheed
5 types · 0 airframes
Pre-1950 Narrative
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Aircraft Types
Lockheed Constellation
Lockheed's Constellation family, the "Connie", was a four-engined, pressurized airliner designed for TWA to Howard Hughes's specifications and first flown in 1943 as the military C-69. Put into airline service after the Second World War, its speed, range and distinctive triple-tail, dolphin-curved shape made it the defining piston-engined airliner of the late 1940s and 1950s, in civil and military transport service, until jets overtook it at the end of the 1950s.
Lockheed F-104 Starfighter
The Lockheed F-104 Starfighter is a single-engine supersonic fighter designed by Kelly Johnson's Skunk Works team for Lockheed and first flown on 4 March 1954. It was the first U.S. jet fighter in service to sustain Mach 2, a narrow fuselage wrapped tightly around a General Electric J79, with a wing of only 21 feet 11 inches span. The U.S. Air Force introduced it in 1958 but bought only 296 of the 2,578 built; well over half were licence-built in Canada, Europe and Japan, and fifteen NATO and allied air forces flew the type. Starfighters flew 5,206 sorties in Vietnam, set world speed, altitude and time-to-climb records in their early years, and in German service lost 292 of 916 aircraft, earning the name Witwenmacher, 'widowmaker'; the type's export sales were later tainted by the Lockheed bribery scandal. Italy, the last military operator, retired the F-104S in 2004, NASA flew research Starfighters until 1994, and a few remain in civilian operation today.
Lockheed F-80 Shooting Star
The Lockheed F-80 Shooting Star was the first jet fighter used operationally by the United States Army Air Forces. Designed by Clarence "Kelly" Johnson's Skunk Works team in 1943 and flown on 8 January 1944, it set its single British Goblin engine in mid-fuselage behind a nose carrying six machine guns, and it reached service too late to see combat in the Second World War. Redesignated F-80 when the Air Force became a separate service, it was the Air Force's first front-line jet in Korea, where Lt. Russell Brown was credited with downing a MiG-15 on 8 November 1950 in what the Smithsonian calls the first all-jet air-to-air combat, a claim Soviet records dispute. Outclassed as a fighter by swept-wing jets, it spent most of its career attacking ground targets. Sources count production differently — 1,731 built by Pima's reckoning, 1,714 production aircraft by Wikipedia's — the last American examples were withdrawn in 1959, and Chile, the final operator, kept its aircraft until 1974.
Lockheed Model 9 Orion
The Lockheed Model 9 Orion was a single-engined American airliner of 1931, the last wooden type Lockheed built and, by the accounts cited here, faster than any American military aircraft of its day. Swissair's two Orions ran what AeroHaber calls the fastest airline service in Europe in 1932. United States rules ended the type's passenger career in 1934, and only 35 were built. A single survivor, converted from an experimental Altair and flown by Jimmy Doolittle for Shell Oil, is displayed in Swissair colours at the Swiss Museum of Transport in Lucerne.
Lockheed XFV-1 Salmon
The Lockheed XFV-1 Salmon was an experimental tailsitter built for a U.S. Navy programme that sought a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) fighter able to operate from the afterdecks of conventional ships and protect convoys. Two prototypes were ordered in 1951, but only one was completed and flown; because the more powerful Allison T54 engine the design was drawn around never became available, it flew on a temporary conventional undercarriage and made 32 flights in 1954-55, transitioning between horizontal and vertical flight in the air but never taking off or landing vertically. The Navy cancelled the project in June 1955, and the flying prototype is now displayed at the Florida Air Museum in Lakeland, Florida.