Lockheed Big Dipper

The Lockheed Model 34 Big Dipper was an American two-seat monoplane designed and built by Lockheed at Burbank to research the company's possible entry into the civil lightplane and military light utility aircraft market. John Thorp developed it from his Little Dipper work as a prototype for a lightplane Lockheed hoped to sell for 1,500 dollars after the war, and as a possible flying jeep for the Army. It was a low-wing cantilever monoplane with fixed tricycle landing gear and an enclosed cabin seating two side by side, unusual in carrying its 100 horsepower Continental engine behind the cabin to drive a two-bladed pusher propeller. Only one was built, and it first flew on 10 December 1945. After a wing-root stall problem it crashed on 6 February 1946 while taking off from a short runway, and with the prototype lost and war-surplus aircraft flooding the market the program was abandoned.