Why was the Constellation's fuselage so expensive to manufacture?

The Constellation's most recognizable feature, along with its triple tail, is its dolphin-shaped fuselage. Unlike today's airliners, it had no cylindrical central section: its profile changed continuously along the entire aircraft, so that no structural section was the same as any other. That constant curvature is one of the reasons for the elegance attributed to it, and explains why its silhouette remains one of the most admired in commercial aviation.

The trade-off was cost. Each frame and panel had a different shape, which made construction more complicated and expensive. That is why the solution was eventually replaced by the tubular fuselage used in modern airliners: a tube withstands pressurization and depressurization cycles better and its production is more cost-effective, since it allows the same parts to be repeated along much of the aircraft.

The Constellation, designed by a Lockheed team that included Kelly Johnson and Hall Hibbard, brought together other unusual solutions for its time. Its wing closely resembled that of the P-38 Lightning fighter, from which it differed mainly in size; the tricycle landing gear was unusual in large aircraft of the era, and the triple tail was chosen to reduce the aircraft's overall height, since a single vertical tail would have had to be much taller. Lockheed built 856 examples at its Burbank, California plant between 1943 and 1958. Once production ended, the company chose not to compete in the first generation of commercial jets and focused on military contracts.