Jet-Age Hercules

The U.S. Air Force, whose jet bombers travel at 650-plus speeds, has long had one big problem: its cargo-carrying and military airlift planes traveled only half as fast, were chiefly propeller planes. Last week the Air Force took a $1 billion step to develop a cargo-carrying jet air fleet. From Lockheed Aircraft it ordered a new 575-m.p.h. cargo-carrying jet, the Super Hercules (SOR 182). Lockheed won the contract over the competition of Boeing, Douglas and Convair, expects to deliver the first plane by late 1963. All told, the Air Force will get more than 100 planes.

The belly of the high-wing jet will be only 50 in. above the ground, so that trucks can easily be driven through its large tail door into its air-conditioned, pressurized cargo hold. Power from the four Pratt & Whitney turbofan engines will be great enough to lift the plane off 6,000-ft. runways with a 50,000-lb. load, making it possible to fly in and out of fields all over the world. It will fly the Atlantic with a 60,000-lb. load, the vaster Pacific with a 20,000-lb. load. The plane will be built at Lockheed's Marietta, Ga., plant where the workforce had been cut in half to 10.000 in the last three years and was going lower. Now, at least, it will slip no further.

The Air Force went to great lengths to keep news of its choice from leaking. Not even the ten members of the selection board knew how each other had voted.

The orders were written in longhand to prevent a stenographer from seeing them ahead of time. Result: Wall Street was taken completely by surprise. Lockheed stock jumped 55 points in one day. Investors knew that besides the military contract, commercial airlines will probably order the planes for their cargo service just as they did when Boeing developed its 707 passenger jet from its Air Force KC-135 tanker.

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