Ah, the Lockheed Electra. The L-188 version, to be clear, not the Model 10 Electra, which is what Amelia Earhart was flying when she was lost.
The L-188 story is fascinating. Lockheed started working on a similar aircraft in 1951, but couldn’t get anyone to buy it. They kept refining the design (going from two to four engines and stretching the plane for increased seating) and, in 1955, Eastern and American placed orders. The first Electra went into service with Eastern in January of 1959.
There’s an excellent book, The Electra Story, by Robert J. Serling, that covers the history of the plane. The first accident was determined to be basically “pilot error”, though Serling quotes the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB – they investigated crashes until the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) took over in 1967) as stating “…the accident was an accumulation of several factors or errors which, together, compromised the safety of the flight“. (Among those factors: limited experience in the Electra, the plane was using a new type of altimeter different from the ones American used in Electra crew training, and inadequate approach lighting.)
The second two accidents were a lot more complicated. Two Electras (one operated by Braniff and one by Northwest Orient) came apart in mid-air and crashed, killing everyone on board. Much of Serling’s book deals with the investigation and the controversy surrounding it. There was a tremendous amount of pressure put on the FAA administrator by Congress and even some airlines to ground the Electra completely until the cause of the accidents was determined.
Lockheed went to extraordinary efforts to find out what had happened:
Each day Bob Gross met with all Lockheed department heads and key engineers. Each day he asked the same question:
“Do you have all the people you need and all the equipment you need? If not, well get it.”
They took him at his word.
It wasn’t just Lockheed, though. Amazingly (to me) both Boeing and Douglas provided engineers and equipment to Lockheed as well, even though the companies were fierce rivals.
Where safety begins, competition ends, for public confidence is the pillar supporting all commercial aviation. Any unsolved accident is a challenge to every airline and every airframe manufacturer, no matter what individual carrier or individual aircraft is involved. Buffalo and Tell City not only were unsolved crashes, but disasters that raised doubts about the industry’s very system of designing and testing new planes. Lockheed’s methods of developing and testing the Electra were almost identical to those used by other companies.
A man named Tom Harris was running Aero Design and Engineering at the time: they made the Aero Commander, a very popular general aviation aircraft. While on the road, he heard people talking about how unsafe and not airworthy the Electra was. When he returned home, he wrote a memo to his staff:
When we have completed an aircraft, and are satisfied that we have produced a safe and airworthy vehicle, we must of course secure this government certification. These two things accomplished, we go to the public and do our best to persuade potential customers that this is the machine they should buy. How well we succeed depends on how effective our persuasive efforts are. We ask for no help from others. We do expect, however, that to the extent our reputation has substance, and to the extent this government certification is valid, that others in the industry will respect our claim for airworthiness. We ask no praise from competitors, but in fairness and in behalf of total industry growth, we believe under this circumstance other members of the industry should not attack, criticize, or infer any unsafe situation with regard to such a product…
It has developed that some of our own people have opinions that the airplane is not safe to ride as presently being operated by the airlines; that it has an inherent defect which has not been determined or remedied, and that to fly in it is foolish and unwise.
At this point, I should like to make it very clear that I do not intend to ask anyone in this organization to fly in any aircraft which he or she does not wish to fly in, either because of the opinions as to safety, comfort, or any other reason. The people of Aero Commander are free to exercise their own judgment and conscience in determining what aircraft, if any, they are individually willing to travel in.
Having made this clear, I feel impelled also to make clear that in my opinion, as responsible members of the aircraft industry, we also have the obligation to avoid making any remarks about another manufacturer’s aircraft that tend to destroy confidence in it, or impute any dangerous condition to such aircraft that would damage its reputation as well as the reputation of this industry, of which we are a part. No one is expected to make statements in praise of an aircraft that they honestly do not feel warrants praise, but an aircraft which has the reputation and experience of a sound manufacturer and the certification of the FAA should be talked about by others in our industry as being safe and airworthy, and if it cannot be praised by an individual, certainly it should not be run down.
If we cannot say something good about airplanes such as this, I suggest that we should at least remain silent.
They don’t make them like that any more.
The cause of the crashes was determined to be a little understood (at the time) phenomena called “whirl mode flutter”. What was happening was that the outboard engines could get into a mode where they’d start vibrating, and the engine mounts were not stiff enough to stop the vibration. Those vibrations could, in turn, be transmitted to the wings and set up a resonance, which would turn into a violent oscillation that only ended when it tore the wing off. Lockheed retrofitted the Electras with stronger engine mounts and engine mount supports, and thickened the struts, which resolved the whirl mode issue. But there were some other high profile crashes (for other reasons) and the public lost confidence in the Electra. Production ended in 1961, with 170 built. Many of them continued in use as cargo, rather than passenger aircraft, though some smaller carriers continued to use Electras on their routes. And Lockheed built a modified version of the Electra which became the highly successful P-3 Orion.
I enthusiastically recommend the Serling book. I don’t recommend that you pay what Amazon is asking for the Bantam Air and Space reprint, as it seems to show up intermittently at better used book stores for much less. But you can get the Kindle edition at a reasonable price, or for free if you have Kindle Unlimited.
Those two crashes were in Tell City, Indiana and Buffalo, Texas. Buffalo is about three hours from Austin: when we get out of jail, I may take a road trip up that way.