Lockheed L-1049G Super Constellation

The Constellation started out as a slightly smaller plane with less powerful motors. As new radial engines were developed the Connie was stretched and modified to take advantage of the new motors. Regular bodies were Constellations, the long bodies were "Super" Constellations. Even the Super models had some limitations on range and speed but with the "G" version TWA was able to offer non-stop coast to coast flights and "usually" non-stop trans-Atlantic flights. "Usually" because headwinds westbound sometimes caused a fuel stop in Greenland. Even the first jets, the Boeing 707's had trouble westbound across the Atlantic on very windy days. The last operating Constellations I saw were at the Santo Domingo airport in the Dominican Republic in 1979. There are several preserved Constellations including the Presidential Constellation at the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio. The Kansas City group, Save a Connie, has one of the only operating Constellations and one of the only L-1049G Super Constellations left. [It is actually an L-1049H, but the H and G models were very similar and it has been restored to the G configuration.] TWA has its major overhaul base in Kansas City. Many of the L-1049G's were maintained there and there remains a group of people with a lot of technical experience with the big airliners.

I was most interested in seeing the Constellation which had been restored by the Save a Connie group out of Kansas City come to Goshen, Indiana, in the summer of 1996. I got to "hear" the plane and observe several take-offs and landings. TWA has used the plane earlier in the year to celebrate 50 years of trans-Atlantic service. Many of the design features of the Lockheed plane were put in at the request of TWA and specifically at the request of the then owner of TWA, eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes.

The L-1049G was designed in the late 1930's by former University of Michigan engineering student Kelly Johnson. Some wind tunnel work for this plane was done at the University of Michigan. Typical of Lockheed in those days, the design was brilliant and it sold well to the military as a troop transport and radar picket plane, but was not a winner in the commercial market. The Douglas series of 4-motor planes, while much duller and lagging behind the development curve of the Constellation, none-the-less handily out sold the Lockheed. The main wing of the Constellation was scaled up from the wing of the P-38 Lightening, another Kelly Johnson Lockheed creation.

To fully use the power of the new engines, very large propellers were attached. In order to clear the ground, the whole plane had to sit up quite high in the air. A single tail would have been too tall to fit into existing hangars. Therefore the triple tail was used. Also, from the Electra Series [Amelia Earhart's plane] through the P-38 fighter-bomber, Lockheed and Kelly Johnson favored multiple tails.

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Latest Update May 11, 1999