Lockheed's curvaceous Constellation family of airliners famously served during the "golden age of aviation". From its first flight in 1943, until the last plane rolled off the assembly line in 1958, the Constellation evolved into several variants for commercial passenger and freight use, plus military variants for the United States Air Force and Navy.

Facing a need for larger transport planes in the 1930's, Lockheed began research on what would be the L-044 Excalibur, a large four engine, pressurized airliner. TWA, encouraged by its largest stockholder, Howard Hughes, requested a 40 passenger airliner that could fly 3,500 miles, well past the design capabilities of the Excalibur project. This initial design was christened the L-049.

When World War Two began, the US Armed forces took over all civilian aircraft production, and facing a chronic shortage of transport planes, considered the L-049 as the C-69 Constellation. C-69's consisted of both confiscated civilian airframes, and new built aircraft. But the Connie, a new and unproven design, powered by a new and unproven radial engine, proved very temperamental, and the break-in period of the new airliner on her test flights, proved to be a problem filled experience. There were many airframe bugs and chronic engine problems that kept the C-69 from service. With the war over, the US military abandoned the C-69, and all airframes were converted back by Lockheed to L-049 standard for postwar passenger use.

Facing stiff competition from Douglas and its newly unveiled DC-6, Lockheed began looking at ways to improve range and load carrying of the Connie. From the L-049 came the L-649 and L-749. The L-649 was only purchased by Eastern and Chicago and Southern (which eventually merged with Delta), while the L-749 became the mainstay seller with additional fuel tanks for added range. As Douglas stretched the DC-6 to create the DC-6A and DC-6B, Lockheed followed suit with the Super Constellation.

Adding fuselage plugs fore and aft of the wing to provide more seating and cargo capacity, the L-1049 was initially hampered by a lack of power. Initially Lockheed wanted to use the newly developed R-3350 turbocompound radial engine, but this radial was only for military aircraft, and civilian aircraft would have to wait on the turbocompound Duplex-Cyclone until it became available in 1953. The L-1049C was the first variant to use the R-3350 972TC-18DA-1. The L-1049D was a cargo only variant, modeled after the military C-121C (L-1049F), and the L-1049E was a passenger variant with the load capacity of the D model.

At 102 built, the L-1049G, "Super-G" was the top selling variant of the Super Constellation. To extend range, the Super-G was the first civilian variant to incorporate 600 gallon wingtip tanks. The L-1049H was a convertible cargo/passenger version of the Super-G.

The final variant of the Constellation, the L-1649A, incorporated a new wing design, with the fuselage and power packages of the L-1049G. With a thin 150' wing, the Starliner was quieter, by moving the noisy radials out further another five feet, and had additional fuel to finally be able to fly transoceanic flights both ways without refueling. Only 44 Starliners were built, as the first jets rendered the Constellation obsolete.

The military, taking interest in the Constellation again, ordered the L-1049 as the C-121C/R7V-1 transports, and EC-121 Warning Star early warning radar picket planes. The last Constellation retired was an NC-121K, flown to retirement by the USN in 1982.

These paint schemes depicted here are some of the Constellations that appear in my stories. What do you think? Got a favorite?