Tristar Turns 40

(Today's post had originally intended to run last week, but was preempted by the C-17 retirement event)

Thursday, April 26th, marked a quiet little milestone in commercial aviation history, the 40th anniversary of the introduction of Lockheed's L-1011 Tristar airliner. Launch customer Eastern airlines took delivery of their first L1011, N306EA, on April 26, 1972, and immediately put it into service on the Miami-New York run.

To celebrate, I'm featuring the only L-1011 photo currently in the MojaveWest archive, a color 8x10 print that was taken of Delta's first L-1011, N401DA (c/n 1041) as it took off from runway 25 at Palmdale's Air Force Plant 42. This plane, the 41st Tristar built, rolled off the Lockheed assembly line on September 7, 1973 and was delivered on October 3rd. There's no way to tell whether this photo is of its first flight or the delivery flight, but those two date do give a bracket for about when it was shot.

After flying with Delta for just over a decade, 701 then saw service with Total Air, Air America, Egyptair, Air Algerie and ATA; she was scrapped in Roswell NM in 2006. (A cool website documenting the last flight of a Delta L-1011 can be found here.)

At the end of their lives, some of Delta's Tristars came back to the Antelope Valley where the sat for years out at the Mojave Airport before being cut up for scrap. I was working as an inspector out there at the time, and after about 10 years of sitting there, the ownership of the boneyard fleet had just transferred to a different company, and me and my crew were tasked with inventorying them. These planes were had galleys on the lower deck equipped with big ovens, and we were surprised to find that there were ceramic dishes of dessicated, mold-covered "food" still in them!

There are plans to bring an L-1011 back to Palmdale for permanent display at the Joe Davies Heritage Airpark on the south side of Plant 42.

Note of irony: so one day, I was standing out in the sun next to the runway at Palmdale shooting a test event...almost in the exact spot that the above L-1011 photo was taken. A couple of days later I went on vacation and drove 360 or so miles north to visit family in the Sacramento area, and went antiques shopping with my brother. There, in a glass case in one of the local shops, was the 8x10 color print that is featured above. Weird!

Valkyrie Coming

After the last few posts on North American Aviation's B-25 Mitchells, it seemed appropriate to jump to this press release wirephoto of what was arguably North American's technological apex: the XB-70 Valkyrie. It was a mere 25 years from the inception of the B-25 program to the first flight of the XB-70, but the two aircraft represent an almost unfathomable leap in technology (for comparison, it's been 15 years from the inception of the JSF program to where we are in just flight test for the F-35 family).

For those who think that the political controversies over the F-22 and F-35 programs are something new, the XB-70 program is testament that they aren't. The Valkyrie efforts were an on-again-off-again see-saw. NAA got the go-ahead to build the plane in 1959, then it was scaled back, accelerated, and then cancelled, with the prototypes redesignated as research aircraft. Two XB-70s were completed and flown, with a third (a YB-70, actually) cancelled while under construction.

The caption for today's 1964 image reads: "PALMDALE, CALIF., May 10 -- CONTROVERSIAL BOMBER TO MAKE BOW -- The XB70A bomber, subject of many controversies during the past several years, is pictured in its hangar at Palmdale, Calif., where it will be rolled out into the open for the first time Monday. Only two or three of the 2000-mile-an-hour planes will be built as a result of a cutdown on the program ordered by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara."

The St. Petersburg Times, when they used an image, would typically glue a copy of the actual newspaper edition to the back of the file copy, to show that it ran. This photo has none, so presumably it wasn't published, at least by that paper.

Incidently, if you look closely at the roof structure in this recent Global Hawk rollout photo, you'll recognize that the hangar which saw the birth of the XB-70 continues to see new planes develop!