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TWA Guy with a Connie

My grandfather, Warren Erickson, a Trans World Airlines mechanic and inspector. He's in Burbank, California as a quality assurance guy stationed at Lockheed's plant as TWA accepted the Constellation into their fleet. This picture, taken in 1958 or 1959, is from a promotional set showing Warren inspecting part of the wing. My Mother told me that TWA commissioned these shots taken as a way of showing their top guy was on the job.
The Constellation was a Clarence "Kelly" Johnson design. It was a cutting edge airplane. Nothing was sleeker than the Connie. The Connie had a lot of growing pains, as did other piston engine airliners of that era. By the time Lockheed and TWA worked out the problems in the late '50s the aircraft was obsolete.
I have posted a couple other photos of Warren here and here.
Thanks, and enjoy. View full size.

My grandfather, Warren Erickson, a Trans World Airlines mechanic and inspector. He's in Burbank, California as a quality assurance guy stationed at Lockheed's plant as TWA accepted the Constellation into their fleet. This picture, taken in 1958 or 1959, is from a promotional set showing Warren inspecting part of the wing. My Mother told me that TWA commissioned these shots taken as a way of showing their top guy was on the job.

The Constellation was a Clarence "Kelly" Johnson design. It was a cutting edge airplane. Nothing was sleeker than the Connie. The Connie had a lot of growing pains, as did other piston engine airliners of that era. By the time Lockheed and TWA worked out the problems in the late '50s the aircraft was obsolete.

I have posted a couple other photos of Warren here and here.
Thanks, and enjoy. View full size.

On Shorpy:
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Connie, the best of the bunch

From the summer of 1952 until July of 1956 I flew in just about every commercial aircraft flying. I remember the Constellation and the Super Constellation as the most comfortable and dependable aircraft of the bunch.

The Fowler Flaps in the Phoenix summer heat had us flying in a bit past half way down the runway while the DC-6/7 counterparts were using up most of the runway.

Two most vivid recollections in the Connie was a stall landing at Philadelphia. The co-pilot must have been flying as we quit flying perhaps 20 or 30 feet up and had a hard landing. No problem, we walked away from that.

Another was flying inbound to LA International over Palm Springs with a thermal updraft taking up and up. The pilot chopped power for 5 seconds or so until we stabilized and we continued on.

Lockheed was ahead of the pack when it installed turbo-compound versions of the R3350 engine on the Super Connie and made coast to coast possible, no more stops in Kansas City or Chicago to fuel up. Lockheed had developed substantial experience with this engine on the P2V Neptune Navy patrol bomber. This gave them a leg up on getting this engine certified for commercial use.

A bit more history, Lockheed bought Connie serial number 1 from TWA and stretched it 18 feet to create the Super Constellation. The super-compound R3350 was tested in the right outboard position to obtain certification. This occurred at two different time periods.

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