Gilmore's Electra

Note: Since this was original posted in late 2014, it has been rewritten and expanded, so is being re-posted.

During the 1930s, the Bureau of Air Commerce had been trying hard to promote the advancement of aviation in general, and airline travel in particular. After Lockheed successfully introduced their 10-passenger Model 10 Electra airliner in 1935, the Bureau saw the need for a smaller yet modern aircraft to be used by "feeder" airlines, and so sponsored a contest to promote the development of such a plane.

Lockheed scaled down the Electra airframe (but kept the same 450-hp engines) and introduced it as the Model 12 Electra Junior. Because the other two competitors (one of which was the Beechcraft Model 18) weren't ready by the June 30, 1936 deadline, the Electra Junior won by default.

NC18130 is a Model 12A, serial 1226, and rolled off the assembly line at the end of June, 1937. It was bought by oil tycoon F. C. Hall as the successor to his Winnie Mae and named Villa. Hall decided to sponsor its entry into the 1937 Bendix Trophy race from Burbank to Cleveland. The Electra Junior was flown by airshow pilot Milo Burcham (who in 1933 had established a world record of sorts by flying inverted for just over four hours), and Lockheed modified the plane with an extra internal fuselage fuel tank, allowing Burcham to fly the course non-stop.

For the race, Hall and his wife flew onboard with Burcham, and even though the plane carried passengers (not a normal thing in an air race!), the Lockheed airliner was so fast that they came in only a few minutes after a Seversky racer flown by Frank Sinclair. The effort resulted in a fifth place finish.

In November 1937, the plane moved over to Gilmore Oil, where it received the company’s trademark cream and crimson colosr scheme, and lion logo. Gilmore then used it as their executive transport plane.

In November 1941, Gilmore sold the plane to the Free French Air Force (FAFL), and she headed to war in Europe. The FAFL used the plane in various roles, from anti-submarine patrol to troop transport, to VIP transport for Generals Maréchel LeClerc and De Gaulle. Amazingly, she survived, and spent the next 65 years in Europe, principally in France, England and Ireland, owned for much of that time by the British Earl of Granard.

NC18130 is one of only ten or so Electra Juniors to have survived into the 21st century, and is the lowest time airframe of the bunch. In September 2007, after sitting for many years in storage in France, the Lockheed was restored to flying condition and returned to America, where it was once again registered as NC18130.

As of this writing, the plane has received a complete restoration in Monroe, Washington, and is currently for sale! If you want to purchase (or just oogle the restoration pics), you can see its listing on the Warbird Connection website. A very detailed history (in PDF form) can be seen here.

A Busy Day at Glendale

For a few magical years before World War II, Glendale's Grand Central Air Terminal was the hub of the aviation scene in Southern California, and so there was always something going on. On this day, probably sometime in 1932 or 1933, Goodyear's Type TZ airship Volunteer descends steeply for a landing while T&WA's Fokker F-32 NC-333N taxis up to the terminal. Just another day at Glendale....

The Volunteer (and the registration NC-8A) was actually a series of airships that all utilized the same gondola or "car", but which were equipped with progressively larger envelopes. Our photo most likely shows the Volunteer III, which first flew on September 5, 1931.

Also visible in the photo is Roscoe Turner's Gilmore Oil Lockheed Air Express (NR3057), a parasol-wing variant of the venerable Vega, and just beyond it, the window line of a Lockheed Orion, probably one of Varney Air's Northrop Delta (several folks, including Tim Kalina and John Underwood, wrote to correct me on this one!).

Although Volunteer wasn't based at Glendale, she was a frequent visitor. The photo below comes from the Archive's R.C. Talbott negative collection and features California Governor James Rolph getting a ride on the Volunteer; there's no way to tell whether this was on the same day as the photo above, or another visit by the airship.

Glendale had its own "pet" dirigible, the City of Glendale developed by Slate Aircraft (see our post from August 20, 2013, for a history of this ill-fated project). In the overhead photo below, the City of Glendale pokes its nose out from its hangar. Both photos in today's post come from a small collection that was saved from UPI's San Francisco bureau office just before the vast bulk of their old photo archive was discarded after the office closed.

In the view below, from Google Earth, I've tried to get the same approximate angle as in the one above.