Lockheed L-12A Junior Electra, Avalon Airshow 26 Feb-3 Mar 2019
The Lockheed L-12A Junior Electra on display at AIRSHOW 2019 is owned and flown by Doug Hamilton from Whorouly in Victoria. VH-HID was built by the Lockheed Aircraft Company, Burbank, California in 1937 and was delivered to the United States Army Air Corps on the 23 March 1939 as a C-40A. Allocated serial number 38-545 the aircraft was reclassified as a UC-40A in January 1943.
Following the end of WWII the aircraft was sold by the military and entered the US Aircraft Register as NC48471. It remained in the US with various operators and changes of registrations until cancelled in as a US aircraft and re-registered in Australia as VH-HID on 16 September 1987. The aircraft was eventually registered to Doug Hamilton on 9 August 2007 after being owned and flown by a number of operators since arriving in Australia.
The Lockheed Model 12 Electra Junior, more commonly known as the Lockheed 12 or L-12, is an eight-seat, six-passenger all-metal twin-engine transport aircraft of the late 1930s designed for use by small airlines, companies and wealthy private individuals. A smaller version of the Lockheed Model 10 Electra, the Lockheed 12 was not popular as an airliner but was widely used as a corporate and government transport. Several were also used for testing new aviation technologies.
After Lockheed had introduced its 10-passenger Model 10 Electra, the company decided to develop a smaller version which would be better suited as a "feeder airliner" or a corporate executive transport. At the same time, the U.S. Bureau of Air Commerce had also sensed the need for a small feeder airliner and announced a design competition for one. In order for a candidate to qualify for the competition, a prototype had to fly by June 30, 1936.
The new transport had its first flight on June 27, 1936, three days before the competition deadline, at 12:12 PM local time, a time deliberately chosen for the Model 12's number. As it turned out, the other two competition entries, the Beechcraft Model 18 and the Barkley-Grow T8P-1, weren't ready in time for the deadline, so Lockheed won by default. The "Electra Junior" name did not catch on in the way that the original Electra's name had. Most users simply referred to the aircraft by its model number, as the Lockheed 12.
The Lockheed 12 proved much more popular as a transport for company executives or government officials. Oil and steel companies were among the major users. A number were purchased as military staff transports by the United States Army Air Corps, which designated the type as the C-40, and by the United States Navy, which used the designation JO, or in one peculiar case, R3O-2. With the arrival of World War II, many civilian Lockheed 12s were requisitioned by the U.S. Army and Navy, Britain's Royal Air Force, and the Royal Canadian Air Force.
This Lockheed 12A has flown in Australia since delivery in 1937 to the Broken Hill company
Two civil Lockheed 12s ordered by British Airways Ltd. were actually intended for covert military espionage. Sidney Cotton modified these aircraft for aerial photography and, while pretending to conduct ordinary civil flights, used them to overfly and photograph many German and Italian military installations during the months preceding World War II.
The greatest military user of the Lockheed 12 was the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army Air Force, which bought 36. Sixteen of these were the Model 212, a specialized version created by Lockheed for training bomber crews, which had a .303-caliber machine gun in an unpowered, partly retractable gun turret on top of the fuselage, a second .303-caliber machine gun fixed in the nose, and bomb racks under the wing center section that could hold eight 100 lb (45 kg) bombs.] The other 20 aircraft were transport versions based on the Model 212.
NACA's Lockheed 12A used for deicing testing
Lockheed built a total of 130 Lockheed 12s, ending production in 1941. With the arrival of World War II, Lockheed concentrated its production efforts on more advanced military aircraft, such as the Hudson bomber and the P-38 Lightning twin-engined fighter. The Lockheed 12's market was left to the Beechcraft Model 18, thousands of which would eventually be produced.
A number of Lockheed 12s have survived to the present day, mostly in private hands. Several of these are still flying.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Model_12_Electra_Junior
