Amelia Earhart’s Vega enjoys its retirement in a museum. Its proprietress was not that lucky.
Lockheed Vega, originally designed for military purposes, is a single engine airplane which can carry four passengers. But the main reason it is so well-known and made a name for Lockheed is Amelia Earhart’s completion of her legendary solo flights with this airplane.
The year is 1913. Two brothers; Allan and Malcolm Loughead, not so very long after Wilbur and Orville Wright accomplished the first motor-driven flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on the east coast, said “If the easterners are flying, why can’t the westerners also fly?” They promptly took off to the skies toward the city of San Francisco in the state of California in the west.
Probably because the officer in the Trade Register Room couldn’t write their last name correctly when in 1932 they bought the company known as Fledgling Aircraft Industry, they felt the need to change their family name to Lockheed.
As for the time after their work at the famous Wright aircraft factory, and for a while at the Martin aircraft factory; departures and reunions, like contentious lovers, characterize the typical brief history of the early American aircraft manufacturers!
* When Earhart was trying to fly around the world with this airplane, she got lost over the tiny Howland Islands between Hawaii and Australia.
* China Clipper
* The killer and the killed side by side… Admiral Yamamoto and the Lockheed P-38 Lightning.
* Constellation or the platonic love of aviators, Connie.
Few and far between, a process with ups and downs, finally the end product: Lockheed Vega!
Lockheed Vega, originally designed for the military, is a single engine airplane which can carry four passengers. But the main reason it is so well-known and made a name for Lockheed is Amelia Earhart’s completion of her legendary solo flights with this airplane. Thereafter, they made the famous flying boat and the China Clipper, which PanAm Airlines used when establishing their sea plane fleet.
Though unpleasantly, on July 2, 1937, Lockheed again garners notoriety: Amelia Earhart, while attempting to become the first female pilot to fly solo around the world, vanishes with a Lockheed Electra in the environs of the Howland Islands in the Pacific.
Then the war period--a dream for every aircraft manufacturer--comes and Lockheed begins creating real masterpieces: bombers such as the B-26 Marauder and the twin--tailed P-38 fighter plane, which brought down the airplane of the famous Japanese Admiral Isoroku.
As for today; Lockheed sustains a happy marriage with Martin, continuing its designs. In aviation, the following statement explains the philosophy behind this merger: “For the perfect airplane to be made, Lockheed must design it, Boeing must manufacture it, and McDonnell Douglas (which now belongs to Boeing) must market it.”
Immediately after the war, a design that every pilot fell in love with, the L-1049 Super Constellation, or, as it was nicknamed, “Connie.”
Then from Lockheed come names which the recent generation would also remember: The L1011 Tristar, S-3 Viking, U-2 Dragon Lady, and SR-71 Blackbird spy planes, F-104 Starfighter, C-141 Starlifter, C-130 Hercules, C-5 Galaxy, and of course the F-117 Nighthawk phantom plane. Meanwhile, let us also note that the famous Skunkworks, famous for its secret military aviation projects, is a unit established by Lockheed.
However, it only takes one foul event to tarnish this reputation. It came to light that huge bribes were given to the German, Italian, Netherlands and Japanese governments for their preference of the F-104 Starfighter war planes in the biddings. And now hang on to your hat; this chain of bribes continued from the end of the 1950s until the 1970s; in other words, almost 20 years! As a result of these scandals and some baffling investments, then the L-1011 which turned out to be a commercial fiasco, Lockheed comes to the threshold of bankruptcy.
* An F-104 Starfighter which belongs to the Turkish Air Forces.
* A C-130 Hercules belonging to the Turkish Air Force.
* The world’s largest military cargo plane: C-5 Galaxy.
* Lockheed’s “Golden Child” and the founder of SkunkWorks: Clarence “Kelley” Johnson.