The Lockheed Model 44 Excalibur was a proposed American airliner designed by
Lockheed.
The Model 44 was the first four-engined design from the company,
a low-wing monoplane with a retractable
tricycle landing gear
Tricycle gear is a type of aircraft undercarriage, or ''landing gear'', that is arranged in a tricycle fashion. The tricycle arrangement has one or more nose wheels in a single front undercarriage and two or more main wheels slightly aft of th ...
. Originally fitted with
twin fins, the design ended up with three fins.
It was to be powered by four
Pratt & Whitney Twin Wasp radial engines.
Pan American Airways
Pan American World Airways, originally founded as Pan American Airways and more commonly known as Pan Am, was an airline that was the principal and largest international air carrier and unofficial overseas flag carrier of the United States for ...
was close to ordering the Excalibur when Lockheed abandoned the project to devote its resources to developing the
Model 49 Constellation that had been ordered by Trans World Airlines.
Design and development
In the late 1930s, American aircraft companies such as
Boeing
The Boeing Company, or simply Boeing (), is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product support s ...
and
Douglas
Douglas may refer to:
People
* Douglas (given name)
* Douglas (surname)
Animals
* Douglas (parrot), macaw that starred as the parrot ''Rosalinda'' in Pippi Longstocking
* Douglas the camel, a camel in the Confederate Army in the American Civil ...
started developing airliners capable of carrying more passengers at longer ranges than any previous airliner. Douglas, which had the majority of the airliner market with its
DC-3
The Douglas DC-3 is a propeller-driven airliner manufactured by the Douglas Aircraft Company, which had a lasting effect on the airline industry in the 1930s to 1940s and World War II.
It was developed as a larger, improved 14-bed sleeper ...
, was having trouble finding customers for its proposed
Douglas DC-4E (not to be confused with the later
DC-4
The Douglas DC-4 is an American four-engined (piston), propeller-driven airliner developed by the Douglas Aircraft Company. Military versions of the plane, the C-54 and R5D, served during World War II, in the Berlin Airlift and into the 1960 ...
).
Around this time, the
Lockheed Aircraft Corporation
The Lockheed Corporation was an American aerospace manufacturer. Lockheed was founded in 1926 and merged in 1995 with Martin Marietta to form Lockheed Martin. Its founder, Allan Lockheed, had earlier founded the similarly named but otherwise-u ...
was studying different airliner projects. The first was the Model 27, which had a
canard configuration. The other two were the L-104 and L-105. The L-105 was smaller, with engines, and was more conventional than the L-104. These studies led Lockheed's Burbank facility to settle on a design dubbed Model 44, a four-engined airliner that was announced to the public in April 1939. Soon afterwards, the new airliner was dubbed Excalibur. The Excalibur resembled an enlarged
Model 10 Electra. It would be powered by four
Wright GR-1820 Cyclone 9 radial engine
The radial engine is a reciprocating engine, reciprocating type internal combustion engine, internal combustion engine configuration in which the cylinder (engine), cylinders "radiate" outward from a central crankcase like the spokes of a wheel. ...
s, rated at , or four
Pratt & Whitney R-1830 Twin Wasp
The Pratt & Whitney R-1830 Twin Wasp is an American air-cooled radial aircraft engine. It has 14 cylinders, arranged in two rings of seven. It displaces and its bore and stroke are both . The design traces its history to 1929 experiments a ...
radials. Its wingspan was , its length was , and its projected maximum speed was in the range. Several variants were proposed, to accommodate different passenger loads.
The original Excalibur design envisioned a 21-passenger payload, with a cruising speed. This was revised to 36 passengers at cruise at altitude. This change included increasing the fuselage diameter, making it comparable to the
Model 18 Lodestar, and increasing the wingspan to with an area of . A tricycle landing gear with steerable nosewheel was envisioned. With the revised specifications, the Excalibur could now effectively compete with the near monopoly Douglas had on the airliner market. Its projected performance was better (except in range) than the
Boeing 307 Stratoliner
The Boeing Model 307 Stratoliner (or Strato-Clipper in Pan American Airways, Pan American service, or C-75 in United States Army Air Forces, USAAF service) is an American stressed-skin four-engine low-wing Conventional landing gear, tailwheel mo ...
. The revision of specifications was partially due to a request from Pan American Airlines; their influence also caused the addition of the third tailfin. A variant designated the L-144, able to carry 40 passengers was planned, but was ultimately cancelled even though
South African Airways
South African Airways (SAA) is the flag carrier of South Africa. Founded in 1929 as Union Airways it later rebranded to South African Airways in 1934, the airline is headquartered in Airways Park at O. R. Tambo International Airport in Johannes ...
had placed a potential order for two examples. Lockheed proceeded with a full-scale mockup of the proposed Excalibur, including most of the airliner except the right wing.
The eccentric billionaire
Howard Hughes
Howard Robard Hughes Jr. (December 24, 1905 – April 5, 1976) was an American Aerospace engineering, aerospace engineer, business magnate, film producer, and investor. He was The World's Billionaires, one of the richest and most influential peo ...
, who recently gained ownership of Transcontinental & Western Air (dubbed TWA for short), decided to provide funding for the new Excalibur. He had a plan in mind to vastly improve the characteristics of the Excalibur by increasing comfort, speed and profit of the aircraft. It was thus that Hughes invited three workers from Lockheed and Jack Frye (president of TWA) to a meeting at his
Hancock Park
Hancock Park is a city park in the Miracle Mile section of the Mid-Wilshire neighborhood in Los Angeles, California.
The park's destinations include the La Brea Tar Pits; the adjacent George C. Page Museum of La Brea Discoveries, which displa ...
residence. The Lockheed employees included
Clarence "Kelly" Johnson and
Robert E. Gross. Hughes expressed his requirements for the "airliner of the future": a payload of 36 passengers (or 20 sleeping berths), a six-person crew, a range, a cruise speed, and a weight of . This meant that the Excalibur would have to get a increase in speed and be able to fly higher. It would need to cross the United States nonstop. The first decision was to re-engine the Excalibur with
Wright R-2600
The Wright R-2600 Cyclone 14 (also called Twin Cyclone) is an American radial engine developed by Curtiss-Wright, and widely used in aircraft in the 1930s and 1940s.
History
In 1935, Curtiss-Wright began work on a more powerful version of thei ...
radials, which had not been tested yet. The next decision was to start from scratch while saving the overall shape and triple tail configuration of the original Excalibur.
The new design differed so much from the original Excalibur, that a different model designation was needed. It was first given the temporary designation L-104, then it was later officially designated the Model 49 or "Excalibur A". In time, the Model 49 would become a completely different aircraft from the original Model 44. Lockheed later dropped the name "Excalibur" as the new airliner had little to do with its predecessor. The end result was the
Lockheed L-049 Constellation.
Specifications
See also
References
;Notes
;Bibliography
*
*
{{Lockheed
Excalibur
Excalibur is the mythical sword of King Arthur that may possess magical powers or be associated with the rightful sovereignty of Britain. Its first reliably datable appearance is found in Geoffrey of Monmouth's ''Historia Regum Britanniae''. E ...
Abandoned civil aircraft projects of the United States
Four-engined tractor aircraft
Low-wing aircraft
Excalibur
Excalibur is the mythical sword of King Arthur that may possess magical powers or be associated with the rightful sovereignty of Britain. Its first reliably datable appearance is found in Geoffrey of Monmouth's ''Historia Regum Britanniae''. E ...
Four-engined piston aircraft
Triple-tail aircraft
Aircraft with retractable tricycle landing gear