Decisions, Decisions

In Britain, turboprops already ruled the airways, from the small Miles Marathon to the gigantic Saunders-Roe Princess flying boat. Short or long range, these new hybrid engines flew on them all. In America, many major aircraft manufacturers were contemplating and developing their own turbine-propeller-powered airframes. There was the giant XC-132 cargo carrier from Douglas, and even Boeing’s first B-52 strategic bomber design concept was a turboprop! All existing airplanes were being designed around future turboprop powerplants (as noted in the sections on Lockheed’s Constellation series). But these same companies were also concurrently thinking pure jet, which brings us to the DC-7D.

As early as 1952, Douglas had secretly established a jet-engine airliner study group. For public consump­tion, however, and that of the airline chiefs, Douglas later offered rather half-heartedly what everyone con­sidered a stopgap airplane powered by RB.109 turbo­prop engines from Rolls-Royce. The aircraft was based on the DC-7C airframe, but had a swept vertical stabi­lizer and a 40-inch fuselage stretch. C. R. Smith at American was interested, but at the urging of Art Raymond, Vice President of Engineering at Douglas, Donald Douglas made the decision to skip the turbo­prop and go directly to pure jet power. The result of that pivotal decision was the DC-8.

Facing all the other airliner manufacturers at that time was the very same choice Don Douglas had to

make. Should they play the game by putting off the inevitable transition to pure jets and produce a turbo­prop airliner? If they did, they had to realize that the market was going to be medium to small at best. There was, therefore, every reason to believe that supplying such an airplane would be a money-losing proposition. And yet, if the manufacturers jumped right to jets with all their inherent risks, would the airlines be willing to jump with them?

In the meantime, minds were made up at American and Eastern Air Lines to ask for bids on a clean-sheet – of-paper turboprop design, with Lockheed’s Electra emerging as the winner of that competition. This suited Lockheed who had lost a “promised” contract for the Air Force’s new four-engine jet tanker, which steered them directly to the consolation prize of turboprop power. By mid-1955, American had signed on for 35 Electras while Eastern ordered 40.

While Boeing had flown its Dash 80 prototype and Douglas was planning its own new DC-8 Jetliner, air­lines that wanted to hedge their jet bets bought Electras as well to “complement” their pending pure-jet fleet. Marketing logic dictated that the intermediate technol­ogy of the turbine-propeller would be just fine for fly­ing from New York to Chicago, or even all the way from New York to Los Angeles, just in case the jets didn’t quite work out. As an aside, Western Airlines with its new route authority to Hawaii a few years later was quite willing to use Electras rather than buy or lease the 707. For Western, the Electra was the wonder

airplane of the era; such was its economy of operation, flexibility, and quasi-jet-like speed. Western did not order pure jets until 1960.

Once all was said and done in the saga of the tur­boprop in America, things turned out pretty much as expected. The British supplied the first round of air­planes: Viscounts to Capital and Northeast, where Britannias were also nearly a reality for both carriers. The Electra was built for the second round of equip­ment upgrades, delivering a larger airplane with greater range. With only 170 aircraft produced, however, the Electra program ultimately lost money, as predicted. At the smaller-size end of the spectrum, Fairchild license – built the twin-engine F-27 turboprop from Fokker for local service airlines, with a total of 129 coming from its Hagerstown, Maryland, plant.

By 1959, the surprising quality, reliability, and ready acceptance by passengers of the pure jets, com­bined with a sudden reality that more airline seats were needed in the market, accelerated the arrival of shorter – range jetliners such as the Caravelle, 720, 727, and finally, the DC-9 in the mid-1960s. This negated the need for further large turboprop designs, and early-on stifled sales of the Electra (and in Britain, the Vanguard). The F-27 soon became a victim of its own success in stimu­lating new traffic at the small airlines, for it rapidly became too small, and larger equipment was ordered rather than more of the basic F-27.

Truly niche aircraft, the turboprops of the 1950s provided a valuable transition, or “bridge,” in the pro­gression from props to jets. But the window of oppor­tunity was quite small, and for one manufacturer, Lockheed, the decision to spurn pure jets would have competitive ramifications for years to come, completely changing the dynamics of the market and its players in the new world order of commercial jet airliners.