The transition of the Lockheed Hudson from a civilian airliner to a wartime reconnaissance bomber was a rapid process driven by the urgent needs of the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and the design ingenuity of Lockheed engineers.

Civilian Origins

The Lockheed Hudson was a military conversion of the Lockheed 14 "Super Electra," a fourteen-seater twin-engine midwing monoplane. This airliner, which first flew in July 1937, was a high-performance aircraft for its time, featuring advanced technology like Lockheed-Fowler flaps, which allowed for slower landing speeds and strong braking - a feature that proved invaluable for military operations from shorter runways. Coincidentally, a Lockheed 14 was the aircraft used by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain for his flight to Germany in September 1938 to negotiate with Hitler.

The British Purchasing Commission

In April 1938, a British Purchasing Commission arrived in the United States seeking a land-based aircraft for Coastal Command to serve as a navigational trainer and general reconnaissance bomber. Among the commission members was W/Cmdr A.T. Harris, who later became the Commander-in-Chief of RAF Bomber Command. Although the RAF had initially considered the Avro Anson for this role, the Lockheed Model 14-F62 offered significant performance advantages in terms of speed and range.

The "Kelly" Johnson Redesign

The military redesign was famously expedited by Lockheed’s legendary research engineer, C.L. "Kelly" Johnson. When the British rejected Lockheed's initial proposal, Johnson worked for eighty hours straight in a London apartment to revise the design. His task was to incorporate specific British military requirements into the civilian airframe, including:

• Military Armament: The addition of a bomb bay, bomb distributor gear, and internal storage for torpedoes and mines.
• Defensive Positions: A power-operated Boulton & Paul dorsal turret was specified, along with two fixed forward-firing guns for the pilot and a retractable ventral gun position.
• Navigator/Bomb-Aimer Station: The solid nose of the civilian version was replaced with a transparent nose to house a navigator's station equipped with a bomb sight.

Lockheed built a full-scale wooden mock-up of the converted aircraft in just three days, promising further modifications by "the next afternoon" to satisfy the commission's demands.

From Mock-up to Mass Production

The contract was signed on June 23, 1938, for 200 aircraft at a unit cost of approximately £17,000 ($90,000). The first Hudson Mk I made its maiden flight on December 10, 1938. By May 1939, the first production aircraft were delivered to No. 224 Squadron at RAF Leuchars, just months before the outbreak of World War II. Despite its civilian heritage, which was still visible in traces of green curtains and flooring in some early models, the Hudson became a robust and reliable warplane, eventually earning the nickname "Old Boomerang" for its ability to return home even after suffering heavy battle damage.