This elegant, polished Lockheed 12a, owned by Robert Borrius-Broek of Wanaka, will be making its Classic Fighters debut in 2025.
As its name suggests, the Electra Junior was a smaller, faster version of the Electra 10 and became popular as a company aircraft for private executive transport.
Like its larger but almost identical Electra cousin, this beautiful aircraft has featured in many famous movies, most notably in the closing scenes of Casablanca with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.
One exceptional and famous use of a Lockheed 12a was as a spy plane. Sidney Cotton was an Australian pilot and entrepreneur, who was making regular business flights into Germany during the late 1930s. He was recruited by French and subsequently British intelligence to use an Electra Junior to take clandestine photographs of military activity in Germany, Italy and North Africa. The Lockheed was secretly modified with cameras hidden behind removable panels. Cotton was able to make numerous flights, often straying over sensitive military locations but always able to talk his way out of trouble. On one occasion, Cotton brazenly suggested taking the German Commandant of Templehof Airport up for a joyride along the Rhine. While the Commandant pointed out features below, Cotton was quietly clicking away on the camera controls beneath his seat. When war was declared, Cotton and his Lockheed 12a barely escaped Germany as the last civilian flight out of Belin in 1939.
Image: Lockheed Electra Junior - Photo by Gavin Conroy
This specific Lockheed 12a was built in 1937 and served in the US Army Air Corps from 1939 until 1943, when it joined the civil register.
The aircraft arrived in Australia in 1982 and was purchased by well-known Australian-based Warbird pilot Doug Hamilton in 2007. It was based at Wangaratta for the next 15 years with several other Warbirds that Doug owns.
During this period in 2014, the aircraft was painted in USAAC markings for an appearance in the true-life tale of Louis Zamperini, the Olympic track star who survived a plane crash 47 days adrift at sea and then as a prisoner of war in Japan during WW2 in the Angelina Jolie-directed movie, Unbroken.
On the 8th of May 2022, Doug Hamilton and Steve Death flew the aircraft from Australia to New Zealand via Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands. Two days later, they delivered the Lockheed 12 into the hands of new owner Robert Borrius-Broek in Wanaka. We look forward to welcoming Robert, this magnificent machine and his crew to Omaka for Classic Fighters in 2025.
Image: Lockheed Electra Junior - Photo by Gavin Conroy
About Marlborough Lines Classic Fighters Omaka: The airshow is the main fundraising event for the Omaka Aviation Heritage Museum, located in Blenheim, Marlborough NZ.
