The name Kidston will be familiar to serious players in the classic car and historic motorsport markets and indeed don’t stop by their website unless you have time to spare…
Less well known is their brokerage of fine historic aircraft and as I’m a sucker for a big radial engine and polished aluminium, I was smitten by the rare 1941 Lockheed Electra. Just ten Electra 12As are known to remain in flying condition worldwide; seven in the USA, two in Australia and this sole example in Europe. This is the lowest time airframe in existence and the only original example to have lived through history and time.
This Electra has enjoyed a romantic history too, although fate has been kinder to it. Some speculate that the Lockheed 12 seen at the end of the film Casablanca was ‘1287’- after all, it was still at Lockheed’s Burbank factory when the film was being shot almost next door at Warner Bros studios. Others say it was ‘1207’. Who knows? The war intervened and shortly after the Pearl Harbor attacks, the US Navy took delivery of ‘1287’, which flew the Atlantic and was assigned to the office of the US Naval Attaché in London. RAF Coastal Command took it over in 1945 for anti-submarine missions, and during D-Day festivities it was signed by celebrating pilots whose names are still visible on the empennage. Soon thereafter aviation pioneer, WW1 fighter pilot and dashing entrepreneur Sidney Cotton acquired the Electra for his private use including photo reconnaissance over Eastern Europe and the Middle East. A close friend of Ian Fleming, Cotton is often cited as the inspiration for Fleming’s most famous fictional character, James Bond.
For sale at €750,000 it’s a wonderful machine and something that I’d love to spend time touring around Europe in.
Images via http://www.kidston.com
