Chasing the WINGED STAR

Air Classics, Jul 2004 by Wainwright, Marshall

Named the Air Express, the new model proved a success. Although nearly half a ton heavier, it outran the Vega by 35-mph, cruised at 150-mph, and had a top of three miles a minute.

In an era when speed was the chief goal, the Vega and Air Express were 4 undisputed leaders. Their accomplishments led to an advertising slogan with more truth than boastfulness.

"IT TAKES A LOCKHEED TO BEAT A LOCKHEED"

Continually striving for improvement, Lockheed engineers developed an engine cowling - a metal collar fitted around the radial power plants - that boosted speed nearly 20-mph. To it they added intercylinder baffles that prevented overheating. The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics accepted the devices as a standard.

Speed-minded flyers made Lockheed their mecca. Piloting Vegas and Air Expresses, such famous birdmen as Art Goebel, Bob Cantwell, Frank Hawks, Herb Fahy, C.B.D. Collyer, Roscoe Turner, and Leland F. Schoenhair winged to new records. Lockheed sales zoomed. In 1928 the company delivered $750,000 worth of airplanes, its biggest year.

Only a few short years before, investors had regarded aviation as the wildest kind of gamble. But by 1929 abundant capital appeared, and the industry took on new strength. Business was good throughout the US in early months of that year. Stocks reached all-time highs in july, and factories ran full blast. Along with almost everything else, aviation boomed. Sales of commercial planes and engines, four times as large in 1928 as in 1927, doubled again. Public enthusiasm for flying reached new heights.

THE DETROIT ERA BEGINS

The Lockheed company chose this time to enter into a new and ultimately disastrous liaison. In April, it negotiated to sell out to the ambitious Detroit Aircraft Corporation, a holding company organized as a "General Motors of the Air" to gather various aviation units into one interlocking structure.

Allan Lockheed was reluctant. "Out of the group that ultimately made up the Detroit Aircraft family," he commented later, "our company alone had any degree of financial stability. I was certain only tragedy could come out of the proposed sale."

But he was outvoted. In july, Detroit Aircraft purchased an 87 percent interest in Lockheed by exchanging 1.5 shares of its own stock for one. Lockheed. Allan resigned as vice president and sold his holdings at $23 a share.

NEWCOMPANY ORGANIZED

Later he organized the Longhead Brothers Aircraft Corporation with his brother and other investors and began developing a twin-engine cabin monoplane. In 1938, he announced plans for its production, using two 260-hp in-line air-cooled engines placed horizontally in the nose. But on a test hop over San Francisco Bay - where Allan had flown the first Lockheed Model G in 1913 - the pilot lost control. he and a passenger bailed out, leaving the plane to descend in slow circles until it hit waters of the Golden Gate and sank.

Lockheed determinedly stayed with aviation. During World War Two he was general manager of the aircraft division of a company in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that manufactured parts for Navy fighters. After the war he remained active as a real estate salesman in the mushrooming San Fernando Valley. But his interest in flying remained keen, and he served frequently as an aviation consultant up until the time of his death.