Super-Transport

Even contractors on the job didn't know what the Lockheed Aircraft Corp. was putting together at its Burbank plant. Transcontinental & Western Air, Inc. was going to buy the mystery ship --but most of the company's directors didn't know it.

TWA Moneyman Howard Hughes and TWA President Jack Frye collaborated on the original plans. They intended to keep the plane a dark secret. Her costs were not even entered on TWA books; Moneyman Hughes financed her privately.

Then war slowed her production down. Messrs. Hughes & Frye decided that two years of secrecy was enough; it was time to tell the world a little about the Constellation (TIME, March 2). Last week the Army gave permission to tell almost all.

Built to make nonstop, coast-to-coast flights for TWA, the Constellation has a range of 4,000 miles, can carry 57 passengers and a crew of seven. Her four 2,500-h.p. motors can boost her along at 283 m.p.h. cruising speed (100 m.p.h. faster than present transports), can rev it up to 350 m.p.h. The Constellation will be able to streak across the continent in eight and a half hours (four and a half hours faster than TWA's fastest).

TWA expects to take over its first $500,000 Constellation this June. When Constellations begin to roll off the Lockheed line, TWA hopes to get 40, Pan American 40. But the Army needs transports; and these will be the best transports going. The Army may not snatch the planes outright, may ask the airlines to operate them as air-cruising taxis for troops. TWA President Frye claims that 40 Constellations could transport 16,000 troops to Alaska in 26 hours, 7,500 troops to Hawaii in 48, make a round trip from Boston to Bristol, England, in 24.

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