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Post by cowboy40 on Apr 1, 2022 0:01:34 GMT -7
When I was a kid, i found myself getting into aviation. I use to love watching airplanes take off from Will Rogers World Airport (KOKC) in Oklahoma City. We had a home that was just off the field. It was great watching those machines claws and scream for the sky. I found myself wanting to know everything I could about those "aeroplanes", so I read books, put together models, and tried to sneak onto the field...lol....made it a few times!!! Some of my favorites of all times would have to be the old propliners...  Douglas DC-4 "Skymaster" (NC90243) operated by American Airlines  Lockheed L-049 "Constellation" (N90816) operated by Trans World Airlines Right after World War II, Lockheed and Douglas would battle it out with each other to gain contracts from every major US carrier. These two birds helped open the system that we know today. |
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Post by starcruiser on Apr 1, 2022 16:35:13 GMT -7
And being that flying was still relatively expensive - passengers had it a lot better back then than now!
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Post by cowboy40 on Apr 1, 2022 18:42:15 GMT -7
And being that flying was still relatively expensive - passengers had it a lot better back then than now! Yes, in the late 40s and early 50s, that was pretty much the case. It was a luxury thing to climb aboard one of these ships, but by the early to mid 60s, this was starting to change. You can start seeing the problems of what we have today starting to come into play. The airlines went from trying to make it a good experience to one of lets see how many people we can cram into this metal cigar and hope the hell it doesn't fall out of the sky. It was an evolution of the post war boom in travel. During this time we saw the airlines moving into the hub and spoke means of routing their planes. In the pre-WW2 era, the carriers did a lot of point to point flying with aircraft like the Curtiss Condor and Ford Trimoters. This came out of the Air Mail routing of the 1920s. The airlines landing mail contracts and then passenger service came out of that. Things started to change, right before the war, when planes like the Douglas DC-2/DC-3 and the Boeing 247 started to enter service. These planes gave the airlines the opportunity to create short routes from smaller cities, and feed them into larger cities, then feed people back to the smaller cities...that was the spokes. Now at the larger city airports, where the hubs were set up, airlines could concentrate maintenance for the birds and establish headquarters and so on...the hubs concentrated the main facilities for service and control of the fleets. This even came down to the international carriers. They would move flights from major hub to major hub over the oceans. IN the 1930s, Pan American set up a series of point to point flight routes...Due to distances and over the water flight times, they had to set up control and maintenance at all the stops along the flight route, but when long legged land planes like the Lockheed L-1049 and Douglas DC-7 came about, the hub system was readily adaptable to Pan Am operations using interchange agreements with many domestic carriers world wide. Though things are starting to change back to the old point to point flight again. But, I still don't count the days of the Hub and Spoke system out yet. These changed came into effect during the days that those piston engines roared off the fields. More people wanted to travel, they wanted to pay less, and they wanted to get there quicker..these changes made it possible for the airlines to meet these demands. |
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Post by cowboy40 on Apr 1, 2022 18:56:42 GMT -7
To answer Lockheed's challenge of the Constellation, Douglas designed the DC-6, to match it...  Douglas DC-6 "Liftmaster" (N75321) operated by United Airlines during the early 1960s |
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Post by cowboy40 on Apr 2, 2022 16:16:06 GMT -7
Lockheed responded to the Douglas DC-6, with a longer legged Constellation....!!!  Lockheed L-749 "Constellation" (N6003C) operated Trans World Airlines into the 1960s |
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Post by cowboy40 on Apr 4, 2022 0:18:39 GMT -7
One of the American outliers, in the propliner era, was the Boeing 377 "Stratocruiser". While most propliners were limited to service ceilings of between 17,000 to 23,000 feet, the big Boeing could cruise as high as 33,000 feet with ease. This was able to be accomplished by the fact it had Pratt and Whitney R-4360 engines for power. Though these big engines gave the plane one hell of a performance: they also lead to the plan suffering from reliability issues. They had to spend a lot of time under going maintenance. This made them expensive to operate on already the high cost of the machines off the factory floor. The cost and operational problems meant that only 55 of the aircraft were built.  Boeing 377 "Super Stratocruiser" (N1029V) seen in 1960 Pan American livery |
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