Lockheed Model 9 Orion
The Lockheed Model 9 Orion was a single-engined American airliner of 1931, the last wooden type Lockheed built and, by the accounts cited here, faster than any American military aircraft of its day. Swissair's two Orions ran what AeroHaber calls the fastest airline service in Europe in 1932. United States rules ended the type's passenger career in 1934, and only 35 were built. A single survivor, converted from an experimental Altair and flown by Jimmy Doolittle for Shell Oil, is displayed in Swissair colours at the Swiss Museum of Transport in Lucerne.
Why It Mattered
The Lockheed Model 9 Orion was a single-engined passenger aircraft built in 1931 for commercial airlines. Wikipedia's account describes it as faster than any American military aircraft of that time. The Swiss Museum of Transport's placard calls it the fastest passenger aircraft of its time and heads its panel 'Faster than any Fighter-Plane'; AeroHaber's line-by-line check of the placard judged the speed claims broadly fair for 1932, but found that 'twice as fast as its competitors' was closer to one and a half times. In Europe, the Orion gave Swissair the fastest airline service in Europe in 1932. Lockheed built only 35 Orions, and the type was the last wooden aircraft the company produced.
Design Notes
The Orion was designed by Richard A. von Hake, and it reused much from Lockheed's earlier wooden monoplanes: it shared the family's basic fuselage mould and wing, and carried the NACA cowling introduced on the Air Express. It had an enclosed cabin with seating for six passengers. Most variants used Pratt & Whitney Wasp radials; Swissair's two 9Bs had the 575 hp Wright R-1820-E Cyclone. Swissair seated only four passengers in its two aircraft, reserving the rest of the cabin for mail. The Orion received its Approved Type Certificate on 6 May 1931.
Operational History
The first Orion entered service with Bowen Air Lines at Fort Worth, Texas, in May 1931. Northwest Airways operated the type from 1933 to 1935, and American Airways operated several 9D Orions. Swissair's two Orions opened the new express route from Zürich via Munich to Vienna on 2 May 1932. Passengers paid a 10-franc express supplement, and in the first season the service carried 1,804 passengers and 11,000 kg of mail. Speed made the Orion a natural for air races: two Orions contested the first Bendix race of 1931, and on 11 July 1935 Laura Ingalls flew one from Floyd Bennett Field to Burbank, setting an east-west record for women. A modified 9E, the Orion-Explorer, was flown by Wiley Post and Will Rogers on a round-the-world flight attempt; both men died when it crashed in Alaska on 15 August 1935. In 1934 the Civil Aeronautics Authority restricted single-engined aircraft in scheduled passenger service, and a co-pilot became mandatory on aircraft fitted with retractable gear and flaps; the requirements brought an end to the Orion as a passenger-carrying airliner in the US. Afterwards Orions were used for mail or general cargo, or sold for private use and charter; at least twelve were purchased for service in the Spanish Civil War and destroyed in use. Swissair likewise sold its two aircraft in the mid-1930s, and they passed to the Spanish Republican side.
Afterlife
Of the 35 Orions built, only one survives. The survivor was not built as an Orion: it began as an experimental Altair with a metal fuselage, where the production Orions were wooden, and Lockheed converted it to Orion 9C configuration in 1934, after a belly-landing accident in Columbus, Ohio. Renamed 'Shellightning' by Shell Oil, it was flown by the company's aviation manager, James H. Doolittle, on cross-country and exhibition flights. Paul Mantz bought the aircraft in 1938 and raced it to third place in the Bendix races of 1938 and 1939. After further owners and years parked outdoors at Orange County Airport, it was acquired in 1976 for the Swiss Museum of Transport and rebuilt by the 'Fokker Team' of retired Swissair technicians. In August 1978 it taxied into the museum under its own power, and it remains on display in Lucerne in the livery of the original Swissair Orions.