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Lockheed L-049 Constellation
The Lockheed L-049 Constellation was the first model of the Lockheed Constellation aircraft line. It entered service as the C-69 military transport aircraft during World War II for the United States Army Air Forces and was the first civilian version after the war. When production ended in 1946 it was replaced by the improved L-649 and L-749 Constellation. History Design and development In June 1939, Howard Hughes, the owner of Transcontinental & Western Air (later called Trans World Airlines and abbreviated TWA for short), prepared a meeting at his Hancock Park residence in California. Jack Frye (then president of TWA) attended along with three executives from the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation which included designer Clarence "Kelly" Johnson. During the meeting Hughes expressed his concerns for what he called the "airliner of the future". Lockheed's airliner under development at the time, the L-044 Excalibur, did not meet the requirements. When the meeting ended with Hughe ...
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Trans World Airlines
Trans World Airlines (TWA) was a major American airline which operated from 1930 until 2001. It was formed as Transcontinental & Western Air to operate a route from New York City to Los Angeles via St. Louis, Kansas City, and other stops, with Ford Trimotors. With American Airlines, American, United Airlines, United, and Eastern Air Lines, Eastern, it was one of the "Legacy carrier#Defunct legacy carriers, Big Four" domestic airlines in the United States formed by the Air Mail scandal, Spoils Conference of 1930. Howard Hughes acquired control of TWA in 1939, and after World War II led the expansion of the airline to serve Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, making TWA a second unofficial flag carrier of the United States after Pan American World Airways, Pan Am. Hughes gave up control in the 1960s, and the new management of TWA acquired Hilton Worldwide, Hilton International and Century 21 Real Estate, Century 21 in an attempt to diversify the company's business. As the Airline D ...
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Howard Hughes
Howard Robard Hughes Jr. (December 24, 1905 – April 5, 1976) was an American business magnate, record-setting pilot, engineer, film producer, and philanthropist, known during his lifetime as one of the most influential and richest people in the world. He first became prominent as a film producer, and then as an important figure in the aviation industry. Later in life, he became known for his eccentric behavior and reclusive lifestyle—oddities that were caused in part by his worsening obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), chronic pain from a near-fatal plane crash, and increasing deafness. As a film tycoon, Hughes gained fame in Cinema of the United States, Hollywood beginning in the late 1920s, when he produced big-budget and often controversial films such as ''The Racket (1928 film), The Racket'' (1928), ''Hell's Angels (film), Hell's Angels'' (1930), and ''Scarface (1932 film), Scarface'' (1932). He later acquired the RKO Pictures film studio in 1948, recognized then as one ...
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Raymond Loewy
Raymond Loewy ( , ; November 5, 1893 – July 14, 1986) was a French-born American industrial designer who achieved fame for the magnitude of his design efforts across a variety of industries. He was recognized for this by ''Time'' magazine and featured on its cover on October 31, 1949. He spent most of his professional career in the United States, becoming a naturalized citizen in 1938. Among his designs were the Shell, Exxon, TWA and the former BP logos, the Greyhound Scenicruiser bus, Coca-Cola vending machines and bottle redesign, the Lucky Strike package, Coldspot refrigerators, the Studebaker Avanti and Champion, and the Air Force One livery. He was engaged by equipment manufacturer International Harvester to overhaul its entire product line, and his team also assisted competitor Allis-Chalmers. He undertook numerous railroad designs, including the Pennsylvania Railroad GG1, S-1, and T1 locomotives, the color scheme and Eagle motif for the first streamliners of ...
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Juan Trippe
Juan Terry Trippe (June 27, 1899 – April 3, 1981) was an American commercial aviation pioneer, entrepreneur and the founder of Pan American World Airways, one of the iconic airlines of the 20th century. He was involved in the introduction of the Sikorsky S-40, which opened trans-Pacific airline travel, the Boeing 307 Stratoliner which introduced cabin pressurization to airline operations, the Boeing 707 which started a new era in low cost jet transportation, and the Boeing 747 jumbo jets. Trippe's signing of the 747 contract coincided with the 50th anniversary of Boeing. Early years Trippe was born in Sea Bright, New Jersey, on June 27, 1899, the great-great-grandson of Lieutenant John Trippe, captain of the . Because he was named "Juan", he is widely assumed to have been of Hispanic descent, but his family was actually Northern European in ancestry and settled in Maryland in 1664. He was named after Juanita Terry, the Venezuelan wife of his great uncle. Trippe attended the Bov ...
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Hughes Tool Company
Hughes Tool Company was an American manufacturer of drill bits. Founded in 1908, it was merged into Baker Hughes Incorporated in 1987. History The company was established in December 1908 as Sharp-Hughes Tool Company when Howard R. Hughes Sr. patented a roller cutter bit that dramatically improved the rotary drilling process for oil drilling rigs. He partnered with longtime business associate Walter Benona Sharp to manufacture and market the bit. Following her husband's death in 1912, Sharp's widow Estelle Sharp sold her 50% share in the company to Howard Hughes Sr. in 1914. The company was renamed Hughes Tool Company on February 3, 1915. After Hughes Sr. died of a heart attack in 1924, the younger Howard inherited the majority interest in the company, and then convinced his relatives to sell their shares to him as well. Legally emancipated at the age of 18, Howard began using the profits from Hughes Tool to fund his other ventures. Toolco paid Hughes an annual salary of $50 ...
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Pratt & Whitney R-2800
The Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp is an American twin-row, 18-cylinder, air-cooled radial aircraft engine with a displacement of , and is part of the long-lived Wasp family of engines. The R-2800 saw widespread use in many important American aircraft during and after World War II. During the war years, Pratt & Whitney continued to develop new ideas to upgrade the engine, including water injection for takeoff in cargo and passenger planes and to give emergency power in combat. Design and development First run in 1937, near the time that the larger competing 18-cylinder Wright Duplex-Cyclone's development had been started in May of that year, the displacement R-2800 was first-flown by 1940, one year before the Duplex-Cyclone. The Double Wasp was more powerful than the world's only other modern 18-cylinder engine, the Gnome-Rhône 18L of . The Double Wasp was much smaller in displacement than either of the other 18-cylinder designs, and heat dissipation was a gr ...
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Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclone
The Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclone is an American twin-row, supercharged, air-cooled, radial aircraft engine with 18 cylinders displacing nearly . Power ranged from 2,200 to over 3,700 hp (1,640 to 2,760 kW), depending on the model. Developed before World War II, the R-3350's design required a long time to mature before finally being used to power the Boeing B-29 Superfortress. After the war, the engine had matured sufficiently to become a major civilian airliner design, notably in its turbo-compound forms, and was used in the Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation airliners into the 1990s. The engine is commonly used on Hawker Sea Fury and Grumman F8F Bearcat Unlimited Class Racers at the Reno Air Races. Its main rival was the , Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major, first run some seven years after the Duplex-Cyclone's beginnings. Design and development In 1927, Wright Aeronautical introduced its famous "Cyclone" engine, which powered a number of designs in the 1930s. A ...
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P-38 Lightning
The Lockheed P-38 Lightning is an American single-seat, twin piston-engined fighter aircraft that was used during World War II. Developed for the United States Army Air Corps by the Lockheed Corporation, the P-38 incorporated a distinctive twin-boom design with a central nacelle containing the cockpit and armament. Along with its use as a general fighter, the P-38 was used in various aerial combat roles, including as a highly effective fighter-bomber, a night fighter, and a long-range escort fighter when equipped with drop tanks. The P-38 was also used as a bomber-pathfinder, guiding streams of medium and heavy bombers, or even other P-38s equipped with bombs, to their targets."P-38 Lightning"
National Museum of the United States Air Force. Retrieved 21 Janu ...
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Wright R-1820
The Wright R-1820 Cyclone 9 is an American radial engine developed by Curtiss-Wright, widely used on aircraft in the 1930s through 1950s. It was produced under license in France as the Hispano-Suiza 9V or Hispano-Wright 9V, and in the Soviet Union as the Shvetsov M-25. Design and development The R-1820 Cyclone 9 represented a further development of the Wright P-2 engine dating back to 1925. Featuring a greater displacement and a host of improvements, the R-1820 entered production in 1931. The engine remained in production well into the 1950s. The R-1820 was built under license by Lycoming, Pratt & Whitney Canada, and also, during World War II, by the Studebaker Corporation. The Soviet Union had purchased a license for the design, and the Shvetsov ''OKB'' was formed to metricate the American specification powerplant for Soviet government-factory production as the ''M-25'', with the R-1820's general design features used by the Shvetsov design bureau for many of their future rad ...
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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 their successful R-1820 Cyclone 9. The result was the R-2600 Twin Cyclone, with 14 cylinders arranged in two rows. The R-2600-3 was originally intended for the C-46 Commando (being fitted to the prototype CW-20A). It was also the original engine choice for the F6F Hellcat; a running change (one which would not stop production) for the CW-20A, and one in late April 1942 for the second XF6F-1, led to the adoption of the Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp in the R-2600's place for both designs. The Twin Cyclone went on to power several important American World War II aircraft, including the A-20 Havoc, B-25 Mitchell, TBF Avenger, SB2C Helldiver, and the PBM Mariner. Over 50,000 R-2600s were built at plants in Paterson, New Jersey, and Cincinn ...
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L-044 Excalibur
The Lockheed Model 44 Excalibur was a proposed United States, American airliner designed by Lockheed Corporation, Lockheed. The Model 44 was the first four-engined design from the company, a low-wing monoplane with a retractable tricycle landing gear. Originally fitted with Vertical stabilizer, 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 was close to ordering the Excalibur when Lockheed abandoned the project to devote its resources into developing the Lockheed L-049 Constellation, Model 49 Constellation that had been ordered by Trans World Airlines. Design and development In the late 1930s, American aircraft companies such as Boeing and Douglas Aircraft Company, Douglas 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 Douglas DC-3, DC-3, was having trouble fi ...
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Clarence "Kelly" Johnson
Clarence Leonard "Kelly" Johnson (February 27, 1910 – December 21, 1990) was an American aeronautical engineering, aeronautical and Systems engineering, systems engineer. He is recognized for his contributions to a series of important aircraft designs, most notably the Lockheed U-2 and Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, SR-71 Blackbird. Besides the first production aircraft to exceed mach number, Mach 3, he also produced Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, the first fighter capable of Mach 2, Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, the United States' first operational jet fighter, as well as Lockheed P-38 Lightning, the first fighter to exceed 400 mph, and many other contributions to various aircraft. As a member and first team leader of the Lockheed Corporation, Lockheed Skunk Works, Johnson worked for more than four decades and is said to have been an "organizing genius". He played a leading role in the design of over forty aircraft, including several honored with the prestigious Collier Trophy, a ...
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