The Saturn ... Lockheed’s Latest

ATC Observer, Volume 3, Issue 6, 1 January 1945, Page 6

The Saturn ... Lockheed’s Latest

S promise of flying for every man in every town through a network of interurban airlines advanced recently when the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation announced a post-war aeroplane for the job the Saturn 75.

The new aeroplane will be manufactured when military production, on which Lockheed’s factories are now fully employed, permits. The Lockheed Saturn, Model 75, is the first of the American commercial aircraft to utilize for peaceful flying the improvements in aerodynamic, structural, and mechanical design which have been made during the war. In announcing the new aeroplane, Robert E. Gross, President of Lockheed, said that two interurbanor feeder lineoperators had purchased Saturns, subject to approval of their route applications by the Civil Aeronautics Board, and that others were negotiating contracts. “The Saturn is a significant aeroplane,” said Mr. Gross. “It will bring flying to Main Street, and that is the

fit st step toward the universal air transportation so much discussed for the post-war era.

The Saturn is expected to carry on the traditions of the Lockheed Electra which was established as the standard feeder line aeroplane ten years ago, and which became popular on every continent. The Electra to-day is doing a yeoman service across the Andes and through the Arctic, on the interior air lines of New Zealand, on short hauls in Europe, and over sparsely populated areas in Australia. Manufacture of the Saturn must wait upon Lockheed’s heavy responsibilities in military production, Mr. Gross stated. He said the Company’s volume of war work had increased in the face of cutbacks elsewhere and that production of the peace-time plane would not be allowed to interim e with current output of the Lightning P-38, the Constellation supertransport, the Navy Ventura bomber, the Boering Flying Fortress also built by Lockheed, and a new fighter type. The Saturn, which will . meet all

Civil Aeronautics regulations for transport aircraft, is a high wing, all metal, land-based monoplane carrying 14 passengers, a crew of two, baggage and cargo. It is powered by two Continentalbuilt Wright engines of nine-cylinder, air-cooled design, which develop 525 horse-power for take-off each. The aeroplane has a cruising speed of over 200 miles per hour, and a top

speed of 240 miles per hour. Maximum range is 1.600 miles with eight passengers, crew and baggage. The Saturn’s take-off distance is 1055 feet, which with its low landing speed of 73 m.p.h., ensures ready use of small airports. It has a rate of climb of 1230 feet per minute. Its service ceiling is 26,000 feet, and the

aeroplane will maintain a 14,200 foot

The strength of slope currents is often indicated by the type and height of clouds which form over hills. They are grouped as orographic clouds. A slope current can under certain conditions produce cumulus clouds and in this respect may be regarded similarly to a thermal bubble, but being forced upwards through deflection instead of rising owing to its lower density through higher temperature. We can see what will happen when this slope current of comparatively higher density rises and pushes air up with it. If it reaches condensation level or the air it pushes up, then cloud will form; but where the slope current drops, the cloud will disappear again, hence we have what it known as a lenticulas cloud, forming and dissipating continuously, and thus remaining over the same spot on the ground, no matter how strong the wind (see fig. 2a). A slope current, of course, is often combined with a thermal, and here we have orographic cumulus formed, and these, unlike lenticulas, will drift away with the wind (see fig. 2b).