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Old 28th March 2010 | 14:38
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WHBM
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There were the two Electra breakups in mid-air, but there were several mishandling on approach accidents which happened to the Electra fleet in its early years, and one of these did happen to a unit of the Antipodean fleet.

Lockheed always regarded the four Antipodean (Qantas/TAA/Ansett/TEAL) Electra fleets as a common one, and they were negotiated all together in a single extended sales negotiation, and shared some resources. TEAL, the New Zealand overseas airline of the period, was partially owned by Qantas, and lost an Electra at Auckland in a training landing accident (fortunately the crew walked away from it). Although a different cause than the Whirl Mode breakups, the wings did indeed break off on touchdown, to get back to the original question.

There were, of course, only a few aircraft in each of these down-under fleets, less in total than any one of the main US fleets.

In recent times there was a video on YouTube of a Lockheed Hercules adapted for firefighting duties having its wings detach and fold upwards during the drop, and immediately crashing. My first thought on seeing this was that the Hercules is fundamentally an Electra, same powerplants, same design team, just a differently shaped fuselage .....
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