I Found Amelia Earhart's Plane

"Dunnik" (dunnik) 04/06/2014 at 18:15 • Filed to: PLANELOPNIK

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Well, not !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! 's exact plane - that's probably somewhere at the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! - but very similar: a Lockheed Electra Junior Model 12A, registration CF-LKD. The Model 12a is an improvement over the earlier Model 10, Earhart's plane. Apologies for the picture: was taken with a potato through a chain link fence. Here's a better shot of this aircraft, taken by a pro:

I found this aluminum skinned beauty parked at the Niagara District Airport, itself no stranger to history. During WWII, it was used as a training facility for the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The author of the famous poem "High Flight", Pilot Officer !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ., RCAF, trained here. The hanger and the barracks from that period are still in use today by private charters.

And no LCD screens or joysticks or keyboards or digital computers or radars in the cockpit of this plane. Only a seat and some pants. Back in its day, however, this was a plane on the cutting age of technology as a twin-engine monoplane.

A nice place to have a cocktail and watch the world below, and be mesmerized by the sound of its twin Pratt & Whitney Wasp radial engines. The 12a was probably the world's first business jet. I say "jet" because the term is instantly recongizable today, and "business prop" or "business radial" might be misunderstood. But unlike the Model 10a, which could carry 10 passengers (hence the name) the 12a carried half that - six -but carried them in much greater comfort. It was squarely aimed by Lockheed at the corporate market.

But this plane is no corporate fat cat. It is a World War II and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! veteran, serving in the RAF, RCAF, RNAF, USAAC/USAAF, USN and USMC. Mostly serving as a light transport, one variant was used as a gunnery trainer - several probably flew out of the very field where I spotted this survivor - and was armed with two ought fifties, one in the nose and one in a dorsal turret, as well as the capacity to carry up to 2,000 lbs. in bombs.

Still flying, after more than seven decades. What a plane!

sm70- why not Duesenberg? > Dunnik 04/06/2014 at 18:26

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I now want one of those retrofitted as a private "jet".

AthomSfere > Dunnik 04/06/2014 at 18:41

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Really, when you think about it... Not much has changed as far as the major stuff goes and this, sure no radar, screens, tracking devices, and it can't do MACH 4,012... But look at the cabin and the cockpit. By the time this plane was made we had already figured out most of the big stuff and settled on a design that would last another what, 100 years? More?

Fabulous post too!