In the high desert north of Palmdale, on November 16, 1970, test pilot Henry Baird "Hank" Dees opened the throttles of a machine that looked less like an airliner than a dolphin wrought in aluminum. The Lockheed L-1011 TriStar climbed into the California sky, co-pilot Ralph C. Cokely at his side and two flight test engineers monitoring the banks of new technology. Lockheed had not built a commercial airliner since the turboprop Electra; the TriStar was their bid to leapfrog the competition with a wide-body trijet that could carry four hundred souls across oceans. Its most profound gift to aviation was invisible: a pioneering CAT III autoland system (the Trident made the first automatic landing in scheduled passenger service in 1965). On May 25, 1972, veteran pilots Anthony LeVier and Charles Hall demonstrated it in an AFCS demo, flying 115 passengers and reporters from Palmdale to Dulles with the AFCS engaged for the entire journey. Eastern Airlines had already begun scheduled service on April 30, 1972, linking Miami to New York. But Rolls-Royce's bankruptcy delayed deliveries, and the DC-10 reached the market first. Only 250 TriStars were built before Lockheed quietly exited the commercial arena in 1985. The California Wunderplane had outsmarted the atmosphere, but not the ledger.