cityoftacoma

An ultimately unsuccessful early Lockheed design -- four Explorers were built (two "4's" and two "7's"), and all four were destroyed in crashes. This 7 Explorer (NR-101-W / cn 148) named "Yankee Doodle" had an especially cruel fate: after crashing, its wings were re-used on Wiley Post's Lockheed Orion-Explorer hybrid (NR12283) which was subsequently lost in a crash after takeoff near Point Barrow in Walakpa Lagoon, Alaska in 1933, killing both aviation pioneer Wiley Post and humorist Will Rogers. RIP.

see history at dmairfield.com/Collections/Cosgrove%20Collection/People/g...

This is a photo of the September 18, 1929 crash in Burbank, California of the second Lockheed 4 Explorer (c/n 116), also the second named "City of Tacoma" and wearing the registration NR856H (the same registration as the first aircraft). Lockheed test pilot Herb Fahy had taken the aircraft up for a test flight when the tail started to experience flutter. The flutter resulted in first the rudder and then the vertical stabilizer tearing loose from the aircraft. Despite the damage, Fahy managed to bring the aircraft down suffering only a broken elbow and bruises in the resulting crash. See: aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=151211 and www.fiddlersgreen.net/models/Aircraft/Lockheed-Explorer.html