Good Morning, Oppo

San Diego Air and Space Museum
San Diego Air and Space Museum

Have a Lockheed Explorer Model 4.

This aircraft was built for an attempt at a nonstop flight from Japan to the US. All that fuselage held enough fuel for a range of 5,500 miles. But it never made it into the air. Lockheed built four Explorers, and they were all lost to crashes.

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Famed aviator Wiley Post took the wing from a wrecked Explorer and bolted it onto a Lockheed Orion with floats. He had to do it himself since Lockheed refused to have anything to do with it. It was this nose-heavy hybrid that Post and Will Rogers were flying when they crashed and died in Alaska.

Let’s hope your day goes better.