A Brief History
On December 18, 1995, a Lockheed L-188 Electra airliner driven by four large turboprop engines crashed in Angola, leaving 141 of the 144 people aboard dead. First flown in 1957 and entering service in 1959, the Electra was the first big turboprop powered airliner made in the USA.
Digging Deeper
While turboprop aircraft may look like the old fashioned prop planes of the past powered by internal combustion engines, the turboprop variety uses basically a jet engine or turbine engine to provide power, using a lower cost fuel and a lighter weight engine, allowing for lower take off and landing speeds, better for shorter flights and smaller airports.
Although the turboprop concept was patented in 1929, it was not until during World War II that an actual turboprop driven airplane was built. Offering efficiency and reduced maintenance, the turboprop system is not ideal for the highest top speed or the longest-range applications.
Some of the most notable turboprop powered aviation icons include the Lockheed C-130 Hercules and its variants, in service since 1956 and the giant Soviet/Russian TU-95 Bear bomber, in service since 1956. Many civilian airliners and business planes are turboprop powered.
Question for students (and subscribers) to ponder: What is the greatest turboprop airplane?
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Icon Group International. Turboprop: Webster’s Timeline History, 1926 – 2007. ICON Group International, Inc., 2010.
Key Publishing. Lockheed L-188 (Historic Commercial Aircraft Series). Key Publishing, 2024.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by Pedro Aragão of the aircraft involved in the accident while still in service with Líneas Aéreas Paraguayas (LAP), is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.
