Convair CV-710 Skylark

After it became clear that the US Air Force would not order the C-99 in quantity, Convair tried to sell a civil passenger transport variant, the model Convair 37 with a capacity of 204 passengers. Like the XC-99 this has the wing, tail and engines of the Convair B-36 Peacemaker bomber.

The model 37 was sold to a number of airlines as the CV-310 and was the start of a very successful family of airliners. Over the years the models 410, 510 and 610 were developed and sold. The ultimate variant was the model 710, or CV-710 which appeared in 1967. The CV-710 had a completely new fuselage and was the first of the so called “wide bodied airliners”. The CV-710 could carry 320 passengers in a 3-3-3 configuration.

It still retained the same basic wing structure. The engines used were upgraded versions of the  Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major. The Pratt & Whitney R-4360-140 solved a lot of the cooling problems suffered by the first Wasp Major versions and  produced over 5.500hp each.