Ted Wells never intended his Model 17 to fight a war, but when duty called the Staggerwing served American and Allied forces worldwide with distinction.
The first Model 17 to wear “war paint” was C17R-115, designated as a JB-1 by the United States Navy when it entered service in 1936. Always in search of sales, Walter Beech was interested in obtaining more business with the U.S. military. In 1938 the company submitted the D17S version in a competition held by the Army Air Corps and the Navy. The Beechcraft was up against some formidable competition from Stinson Aircraft, Spartan Aircraft and the Molded Aircraft Corporation.
When the dust settled at Wright Field in Ohio where the trials were held, the D17S emerged victorious and 13 airplanes were ordered, to be designated YC-43 by the Army and GB-1 by the Navy. Essentially “off-the-shelf” airplanes, they were fitted with parachute-type seats and various other military equipment. These airplanes had a maximum speed of 202 mph and a range of more than 800 statute miles. Of the 13 ships delivered in 1939, the three YC-43s were assigned to U.S. military offices in London, Paris and Rome, while two of the 10 GB-1s served the Navy in Madrid, Spain, and Mexico City. The remaining eight ships were operated at various Naval bases in the United States.
Shortly before war enveloped Europe after Germany’s invasion of Poland in September 1939, the British were hard pressed to detect the presence and movements of the German fleet. Specifically, the British Naval Intelligence Division became increasingly concerned that if war was declared, the Germans would attempt a “breakout” into the North Atlantic, sending their capital ships into the sea lanes between England and the United States. What the Admiralty needed was a reconnaissance mission by a non-military aircraft that could locate and report the position of those warships.
For that clandestine task, a man named Sidney Cotton, who had purchased Beechcraft C17R-118 early in 1939, was asked by the Admiralty to overfly the port of Wilhelmshaven in northern Germany. His mission was to photograph any ships at anchor there. Cotton responded to the call and prepared his Staggerwing for the flight. All he needed was good weather and an effective plan of action, and Cotton soon had both. On Sept. 2, one day after Germany’s invasion of Poland began, pilot Robert Niven and a trained photographer departed the aerodrome at Heston for Germany. The C17R was well suited to the task at hand. With a maximum speed of more than 200 mph and the ability to climb and maintain an altitude of 20,000 feet over Wilhelmshaven, the Beechcraft would be difficult to detect.
After making the long climb toward the Dutch coast, Niven entered German airspace but encountered no Luftwaffe fighters as he neared Wilhelmshaven, where the Luftwaffe was known to conduct routine patrols over the port.
Fortunately, the mission was flown exactly as planned and the Beechcraft returned to Heston safely. After the photographs were developed and analyzed by the Admiralty, it was determined that the battle cruiser Gneisenau and the battleship Deutschland were in port. Unknown to the Admiralty, however, between Aug. 25 and Niven’s secret mission Sept. 2, the pocket battleship Graf Spee had weighed anchor and slipped away undetected into the North Atlantic. The day after the C17R’s flight, England and France declared war on Germany. During the next four years, Cotton’s gallant Beechcraft soldiered on after being impressed by the Royal Air Force in May 1941 but was scrapped in 1944 after an accident that damaged the airplane beyond economical repair.1
Meanwhile, back in America, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was making good on his promise to keep the United States out of the European conflict. As the Battle of Britain raged in the skies over southern England during the summer and autumn of 1940, Roosevelt became increasingly convinced that America could not, and would not, allow England to sink into oblivion under German occupation. His resolve to help Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill and the British people fight the Third Reich led to creation of the Lend-Lease Act in March 1941. It put America’s industrial might to work supplying ships, tanks, airplanes and armaments to the Royal Navy, the Army and the Royal Air Force, while helping to break the economic grip of the Great Depression. Germany, however, was not Roosevelt’s only concern. In the Pacific, Japan was flexing her military muscle as she endeavored to implement the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.” America’s diplomatic relations with Japan had been on a slippery slope since the mid-1930s when she had invaded China, and by mid-1940 the situation had reached crisis proportions. Warlords such as Hideki Tojo were not interested in negotiation, only domination. When the United States stopped exporting oil and raw materials to Japan, the die was cast that eventually led to the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor Dec. 7, 1941.
As Old Glory continued to fly atop the smoldering carnage of Battleship Row in Hawaii, the Japanese war machine sprang into action and quickly captured American military bases at Wake Island and in the Philippines. Grossly unprepared to fight the attacking Japanese juggernaut, the United States and Filipino forces under the command of General Douglas MacArthur fought bravely, and Beechcraft Model B17R-63 played a minor but heroic role in the final defense of the rock fortress known as Corregidor.
Originally sold into the Philippines in 1935, the Beechcraft was later impressed by the American military to fly humanitarian missions, bring in food and medicine as well as ferrying pilots to bases where fighters and bombers were being assembled to strike back at the Japanese. An example of how important the B17R was to the soldiers fighting on Corregidor – in April the airplane was used to evacuate P-35 and P-40 pilots as the Americans continued their retreat southward to Mindanao. After flying many missions in support of MacArthur’s rapidly dwindling forces, the B17R finally met its end in mid-April when it was intercepted by Japanese floatplane fighters and shot down near Malaybalay. The fight for the Philippines ended May 6, 1942, when American and Filipino forces surrendered to the enemy.
In the wake of Pearl Harbor, the United States government acted swiftly to impress existing civilian aircraft into military service until military aircraft production could be accelerated. Hundreds of civilian airplanes were soon turned over to the military by their owners, including at least 129 Beechcraft Model 17s. Of these, the Army operated 118 and 11 were flown by the Navy. Two of the airplanes operated within the United States with the British Air Commission – the West Coast Delegation flew D17R-188 (redesignated RAF EB279) to supervise construction and delivery of airplanes ordered by Great Britain for its war effort, and D17S-327 (RAF EB280) served with the British Mission in Washington, D.C., performing diplomatic missions.
As demand for more aircraft increased during 1942, the Beech Aircraft Corporation began receiving additional government contracts for a series of Model 17s equipped for military service. The D17S became the standard airplane for all of the orders received and was designated as the C/UC-43 for the Army Air Forces and GB-2 for Navy. As 1942 unfolded, Walter and Olive Ann Beech had an order book that was bulging at the seams for Army and Navy versions of the D17S and the twin-engine Model 18, designated military AT- for “Advanced Trainer” (an airplane that proved to be highly versatile and with modifications served a myriad of training, liaison and VIP transport roles in the war).2 For example, during Fiscal Year 1942, the company had orders on hand for 1,287 airplanes worth nearly $60 million, rising to 2,921 airplanes in 1943 worth more than $126 million.
Because production of the AT-series of twin-engine airplanes took priority at the main factory building on East Central Avenue, manufacture of the C/UC-43 and GB-2 series airplanes took place at the south end of the airfield in a building originally erected in 1927 to build the Knoll cabin biplane. After the stock market debacle in 1929, the Knoll company went out of business and the facility was used by various aircraft maintenance businesses as well as the Yellow Air Cab Company, which also failed to survive the Depression.
Still critically short of production space, Beech Aircraft Corporation received funding from the government’s Reconstruction Finance Corporation to expand facilities to 50,000 square feet. In addition, the airfield itself was enlarged by 320 acres and the north-south runway lengthened to 5,000 feet. As the workforce exploded by thousands of people from 1942-1944, the company built 412 C/UC-43 and GB-2 biplanes. Although the Army Air Forces and the Navy accepted 270 of these airplanes, many were assigned to Allied nations. For example, the Royal Air Force received 105 airplanes, including 74 that were assigned to the Fleet Air Arm air stations for VIP transport duties. These Beechcrafts were designated Traveller Mk. 1. Another 122 GB-2s were accepted by the Navy and the Brazilian government acquired the 20 airplanes for its air force.
It is interesting to note that May 29, 1943, a German U-boat torpedoed and sank the S.S. Agurmonte off Cape Province, South Africa. The cargo vessel was carrying 12 Traveller Mk. 1s that were destined for British air bases in the Middle East region. The British did, however, operate six Traveller Mk. 1 biplanes on reconnaissance missions along the Suez Canal and above the Red Sea in search of U-boats. In addition, the Nationalist Government of the Republic of China received 10 UC-43/GB-2 airplanes and the United States provided another 31 to Brazil during the war.
With the end of hostilities in sight by mid-1945, orders for the venerable UC-43 and GB-2 ships began to dwindle, and after VJ-Day many of the military Model 17s began to find their way back to their original owners or migrated into the civil aircraft market as war surplus equipment. The Reconstruction Finance Corporation supervised civilian purchase of these airplanes, which sold for a fraction of their original cost. The Royal Navy returned a majority of its Traveller Mk. 1s to the United States, where they were either sold as surplus or scrapped, but a small number remained in England and were sold to private individuals.
It is a testimony to the leadership and the workforce of the Beech Aircraft Corporation that between 1941 and 1945 employment skyrocketed to 14,100 from 2,354, and more than 7,100 airplanes were built. The D17S proved to be a reliable, rugged workhorse in every theater of war in which it served. The UC-43 in particular, had ferried people, supplies and mail throughout the European Theater of Operations, flew above the trackless deserts of Arabia, and accompanied American forces in their relentless march from Guadalcanal to Tokyo Bay.
Despite its sterling record of military service, by 1946 the Model 17 biplane was considered obsolete. Its welded steel tube and hand-stitched, fabric-covered airframe had been eclipsed during the war by the all-metal monoplane. It appeared that the end had come for Ted Wells’ flying machine that had put Beech Aircraft Corporation on the road to success, but Walter Beech had a trick up his sleeve that would give the Staggerwing one last, brief moment of glory. KA
Notes:
- Information on Sidney Cotton and the C17R courtesy of historian Peter Berry.
- An excellent and highly comprehensive history of the Model 18 can be found in R.K. Parmerter’s “Beech 18: A Civil and Military History.”
Originally published in July/August 2010 issue of King Air magazine.