Original photo caption:

MODEL 33, LITTLE DIPPER 1944

WEE ONE -- Aimed at the fly-for-fun market, the Lockheed "Little Dipper" was a one-place low-wing monoplane with fixed tricycle landing gear. It was powered by a two-cylinder engine and featured bubble canopy and landing flaps. Although the war produced thousands of qualified pilots, when fighting ended it also provided an excess of relatively inexpensive surplus airplanes and Lockheed turned its production efforts to other fields.

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03/15/2020. Remarks by Johan Visschedijk: "Conceived as a light monoplane, cheap to build and operate, but safe enough to be flown by relatively inexperienced pilots, this aircraft began as the personal venture of Lockheed engineer John Thorp. Developing this project in his own time, Thorp initially planned it as a two-seater with a 40 to 60 hp engine. Once his plans were sufficiently advanced, he showed them to his boss, Mac V. F. Short, the head of Lockheed's special projects group. Short liked what he saw and, after suggesting that the aircraft would be underpowered as a two-seater but would have good performance as a single-seater, obtained in April 1944 the agreement of Robert Gross, the company's president, to have the project taken over as the Lockheed Model 33.

As wartime restrictions and allocations of resources to projects of national interest prevented Lockheed from carrying on the design of an aircraft for the private market, the company succeeded in attracting to it the attention of the US Army. As proposed to the Army under the name of Air Trooper, the single-seater was suggested as an 'aerial flying motorcycle'. Authorization was granted to Lockheed to proceed with the construction of two prototypes at the company's expense. Fitted with a fixed nose wheel landing gear and an open cockpit, the aircraft was powered by a 50 hp engine specially developed by Air-Cooled Motors, and using two cylinders from a larger Franklin power plant to drive a two-blade propeller. The first aircraft (NX18935) began flight trials at the Lockheed Air Terminal in late August 1944, with initial flights being made by Bud Martin.

During these trials the aircraft was fitted with a one-piece canopy hinged on the port side and fully enclosing the cockpit. The little monoplane showed pleasant handling characteristics, with safe flying speed as low as 40 mph (64 kmh) and STOL performance, take off in 100 ft (31 m) with clearance of a 50 ft (15 m) obstacle being achieved in 400 ft (122 m). Nonetheless, with the end of the war fast approaching, the Army lost interest in the project. Lockheed and John Thorp, however, having achieved their goal of developing a prototype for an inexpensive light aircraft, planned to market it after the war as the Little Dipper private aircraft.

Unfortunately, the market for this type of aircraft failed to materialize in the immediate postwar period and with financial restraints then facing the company, Lockheed was forced to take advantage of an income tax credit by writing off the Little Dipper. Accordingly, the prototype and the partially completed second aircraft were broken up and sold as scrap in January 1947."