Brown, Byron, LCDR

Lockheed R6V Constitution

Ship No. 1
The first Constitution, BuNo 85163, was built in the summer of 1946 at the Lockheed plant in Burbank, California. Due to the aircraft's large size—the tail towered 50 feet (15 m)—Lockheed had to build a special hangar for final assembly. The hangar, Lockheed-California's Building 309, measured 408 ft (124 m) long, 302 ft (92 m) wide, and the equivalent of six stories tall. The footprint of the hangar covered 4 acres (16,000 m2). It costed $1,250,000.

Ship No. 1 was delivered to Navy Transport Squadron VR-44, based at Naval Air Station Alameda, on 2 February 1949. Both it and its sister ship, Ship No. 2 (which followed six months later), flew the route between California and Hawaii, approximately 2,390 mi (3,850 km).

Ship No. 2
The second Constitution, BuNo 85164, first flew on 9 June 1948. Unlike Ship No. 1, the upper deck was fully furnished as a luxury passenger transport, with accommodations for 92 passengers and 12 crew. Accommodations on the upper deck of the first Constitution were decidedly more spartan. On the rear of the forward bulkhead, in front of the spiral staircase leading to the lower deck, there was a permanent display case containing a scale model of the original USS Constitution sailing ship.

The lower deck had 7,373 cubic feet (208.8 m3) of cargo space, and it was loaded by an electrical hoist. The lower deck could also be converted to seat an additional 76 passengers.

The second Constitution, like its predecessor, also made a non-stop transcontinental flight. On 3 February 1949, the aircraft flew 74 members of the press from Moffett Field to Washington National Airport. At the time, this was the largest number of people flown across the United States in a single flight. This flight inaugurated six months of regular service between Washington, D.C. and San Francisco.

In the early 1950s, Ship No. 2 made a Navy recruiting tour of 19 cities. The side of the fuselage proudly advertised "Your Navy—Air And Sea." Some 546,000 toured the aircraft's interior.

Final disposition
The Constitution had operational difficulties which prevented it from meeting its original design objectives. The large airframe needed more power than the four Pratt & Whitney R-4360s could deliver, and the engines had cooling problems. While this could be compensated for by flying with engine cowl flaps partially open, it increased drag and decreased range.

The Navy operated the two Constitutions through the end of the 1940s and into the 1950s. By 1949 the Navy announced that it could no longer afford to operate them, and offered them to airlines on a five-year lease. There was no interest from airlines in using the Constitutions (the airline version was named the Model 189), so the Navy retired both aircraft in 1953. They went into storage at Litchfield Park, Arizona in 1955. Both aircraft and 13 spare engines were sold for $97,785. Lockheed proposed the Model 389 and Model 489 airliners based on the Constitution, which would have accommodated up to 169 passengers. Neither of these "paper" projects received much interest from civil operators.

The first Constitution was brought to Las Vegas, where it served as an enormous billboard for Alamo Airways,[6] before being scrapped by Howard Hughes when he acquired the property. The second Constitution was flown to Opa-Locka Airport, Florida, where it was stored on the airfield before being towed to an empty lot several miles from the airport. There were plans to convert it to a restaurant and museum theme park. The project never materialized and the airplane was destroyed due to lack of funding and pressure from the city to have it removed.