Pictured is a line-up of the first three L-1011s produced. The picture is a Lockheed press image from Don's archive but was not dated. I would assume that it was taken in either 1971 or 72? The image was taken at Lockheed's Palmdale facility in California and it shows, from front to back, N1011, N3001 painted in TWA colors and N301EA painted in Eastern Air Lines colors. N1011, the one in the very front of the picture ended up becoming a movie prop for Disney before it was scrapped. At least portions of the cabin and the cockpit section of N1011 got rescued and are now on display as a cut-off at the
Delta Air Transport Heritage Museum in Atlanta. Delta re-painted the prototype aircraft to Delta colors. I am still amazed that Lockheed did not preserve the iconic N1011 as a museums item, but I guess after Lockheed pulled out of the commercial market holding on to the commercial aircraft legacy was not that important.
Great photo!
ReplyDeleteDon wrote me back I clearly got the date of the picture wrong: "On your blogspot, you have a photo of S/Ns 1001, 1002, and 1003. and you are uncertain where it is 1970 or 1971. It was definitely not 1970, because 1002 and 1003 had not yet been built. Remember, S/N 1002 was delivered to Eastern as N301EA, even though it was painted in TWA colors during Flight Test. Ship 3, which flew as N301EA, in Eastern colors, during flight test - was changed to N302EA for delivery. Confusing !!!"
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