The Model A17F and A17FS were like no other Beechcrafts ever built – powerful, brutish machines whose high performance was nothing short of spectacular for their time. Despite America’s bleak economic situation, Walter Beech and his chief engineer, Ted Wells, held tenaciously to the belief that there was a small, but profitable market for a…
On a cold December day in 1928, famous actor Wallace Beery walked into Olive Ann Mellor’s office, flashed his famous grin and plunked down a wad of greenbacks to pay for his custom-built Travel Air monoplane Ms. Mellor was stunned, not only by the sudden presence of an esteemed Hollywood star in her humble office,…
Beech Aircraft Corporation had long been recognized as a leader in the design of general aviation aircraft, but along with its successes there have been a number of would-be Beechcrafts that never made it to market. Introduced in 1981, the turbocharged Model B36TC Bonanza was Beech Aircraft’s answer to high-performance, turbocharged aircraft being offered by…
Throughout its 84-year history, Beech Aircraft Corporation designed and built a number of experimental airplanes intended to set the pace for competitors to follow. Some designs eventually took wing, but others never made it past the drawing board and faded into obscurity. In 1940, Walter Beech’s chief engineer, Theodore “Ted” Wells, and his staff were…
The Model A17F and A17FS were like no other Beechcrafts ever built – powerful, brutish machines whose high performance was nothing short of spectacular for their time. Despite America’s bleak economic situation, Walter Beech and his chief engineer, Ted Wells, held tenaciously to the belief that there was a small, but profitable market for a…
Throughout its illustrious history, the Beech Aircraft Corporation has distinguished itself as one of the world’s premier manufacturers of general aviation airplanes by consistently setting the pace for competitors to follow. Early in 1932, Curtiss-Wright engineer Theodore “Ted” Wells was completing the design of a cabin biplane featuring a powerful static, air-cooled radial engine and…
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,…
In 1928 pilot Arthur Goebel attempted to transform the Travel Air Type 5000 “Woolaroc” from a mild-mannered monoplane into a high-speed, cross-country racer with near fatal results. In the wake of Charles A. Lindbergh’s epic solo flight from New York to Paris in May 1927, Hawaiian pineapple king James Dole offered a $25,000 first prize…
During 1928-1929, the Travel Air Company’s Walter H. Beech had earned national acclaim for corporate leadership and technical innovation that further increased the reputation of Wichita, Kansas, as the “Air Capital of the World.” By 1928 it had become obvious to Walter Beech that the company he led was in need of a new product…
In only five years a Tennessee farm boy transformed Wichita’s Travel Air Manufacturing Company from humble beginnings into one of America’s leading builders of private, business and commercial airplanes. Late October 1926 the Travel Air Manufacturing Company lost its chief engineer, Lloyd Carlton Stearman, who had resigned to start his own company in California. Worse…