Tour through a Lockheed Super Constellation - the “best three propeller airliner" in the world.

Video from the channel Paul Stewart about Lockheed Constellation, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 9:27. Language: English. Video type: Onboard.

Exterior and interior walkaround of a Lockheed Super Constellation preserved at the Qantas Founders Museum in Longreach, Queensland. For Qantas it was its first pressurised passenger aircraft. Built in 1953 as a US Navy cargo aircraft, it flew from 1981 for a fishing company between Manila and Japan, was impounded in 1988 and abandoned; the museum bought it in 2014 and shipped it to Australia for restoration.

The sloped nose shortens the nose landing gear leg, which is tall because of the large propellers, and the raised tail stays clear of the wake; the triple tail fin fit inside the hangars of the time. The video shows an unreliable 18-cylinder turbocompound Wright R-3350 engine, the source of the joke that it was "the world's best trimotor"; replica seats, since this airframe had no windows; the over-wing exits; the asbestos-lined box that carried the Olympic flame to Melbourne; and the flight deck, with flight engineer, radio operator, pilot and co-pilot, plus the navigator and his astrodome.

The Constellation first flew in 1943, and the stretched Super Constellation version was introduced in 1951. Qantas used it on the Kangaroo Route from 1947, and in 1958 sent two aircraft around the world in opposite directions. Capacity went from 38 seats to as many as 85 in the Super. In 1959 it was replaced by the Boeing 707 VH-EBA.