Original photo caption:

MODEL 34, BIG DIPPER 1945
PUSHER -- Anticipating a boom in private flying at the end of World War II, Lockheed designed and built this pusher-type four-place airplane, called the Big Dipper. Engine located in fuselage aft of four-place passenger compartment turned the propeller at the end of shaft extending through vertical stabilizer. The airplane has a tricycle landing gear and unusually good visibility. The availability of war-surplus aircraft was so great that large-scale production of the Big Dipper was not undertaken.

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03/15/2020. Remarks by Johan Visschedijk: "In another attempt to break into the light aircraft market, in October 1944 Robert Gross and Mac Short authorized John Thorp, the designer of the Little Dipper, to start preliminary work on a two-seat aircraft of advanced design. Primarily intended as a research vehicle, it was also seen as a potential 'flying Jeep' for the military or as a 'flying automobile' for the private-owner market. Thorp, under the direction of chief project engineer Robert Reedy, designed a low-wing monoplane with fixed nose wheel landing gear incorporating several unusual features, including a side-by-side enclosed cabin in the nose and 'all-flying' horizontal tail surfaces.

Even more unusual, although it was also featured in the Cloudster II then being designed by the Douglas Aircraft Company, was the engine location in the center fuselage section. The 100 hp Continental C-100-12 four-cylinder engine was buried aft of the cabin and was fan-cooled, with air exhausting above the fuselage. A non-flexible drive-shaft terminating aft of the rudder drove a two-blade pusher propeller.

Construction of the prototype Big Dipper was begun in July 1945 in a small rented building at the Lockheed Air Terminal in Burbank. Upon completion, the aircraft was trucked to Palmdale where flight testing could be undertaken in greater secrecy. There it was first flown on December 10, 1945, by Prentice Cleaves. With the exception of a vicious root stall during climbs at high angles of attack, the Big Dipper was found to have exceptionally good handling characteristics and its performance also exceeded expectations. After being tested for some 40 hours at Palmdale, the aircraft was flown back to Burbank where it was to have been fitted with a wing root fillet to eliminate the stall tendencies.

However, it was decided to postpone this modification temporarily and the aircraft was ordered back to Palmdale in the afternoon of February 6, 1946. To avoid a taxiing delay at Burbank, and thus jeopardize the secrecy still surrounding the aircraft, Prentice Cleaves decided to use a shorter, upward-sloping runway. In the process, Cleaves was forced to attempt a steep climb when trying to coax the aircraft out of this short strip. Predictably, the Big Dipper stalled and crashed. Cleaves and Frank Johnson, who had replaced John Thorp as project engineer, were hurt and the aircraft destroyed.

As by then it had been concluded that the private-aircraft market was glutted, Lockheed dropped further development of the Big Dipper and of its proposed Super Dipper, a four-seat, high-wing monoplane with a 145 hp engine driving a pusher propeller."